[More vanilla than most of my stories. A bit of a weakness of mine is posh people, especially women, talking dirty in a refined way. This is a bit of a Lady Chatterley's Lover rip-off that allows me to scratch that particular itch. Many thanks to rahatingt at Blue Moon for working on this with me.]
*****
It all began because Lady Constance De Coverlet had had a disturbed night.
Staying at the home of Lady Sarah Montague, her sister-in-law - Constance had married Sarah's brother many years ago - she had not been able to sleep in a strange bed, and had awoken early. Finding the house empty and still with an empty hour or more before one might expect breakfast, she had dressed and decided to take a walk about the house and its grounds. Though dawn had broken, the household had not yet risen, and she had the run of the long, echoing corridors and wood-panelled dining rooms and drawing rooms. She had dallied a while in the library, not because of the books, but instead admiring her own reflection in the looking glass; her fine, aristocratic features, her auburn hair ringleted and piled upon her head, her swelling bosom confined by the tight corset and bodice of her silver-grey satin dress and the creamy white skin of her neck above it with a golden locket strung on a black ribbon.
Her narcissistic contemplation had however been distracted by sounds coming from one of the rear corridors of the great house, towards the servants' quarters.
Thinking that this must be one of the servants already risen, Lady Constance made towards the sound, long silken skirts swishing, to investigate, and perhaps to secure for herself a little tea and toast. But the sounds were not the usual noises of someone moving crockery and tableware. Instead there was a rhythmic grunting interspersed with little feminine cries, as if of a woman in distress. Constance was about to call out when she was stopped dead in her tracks by voices.
"Look at you, you fucking whore," the deeper, guttural male voice said. "Your cunt is about to bite your arse it's so swollen and needy!"
Constance flushed at such disgraceful language, but what she heard next shocked her still further. A woman's voice answered, and it was unmistakeably a refined, cut-glass accent, clearly that of Lady Sarah, her friend and sister-in-law.
"Oh yes! Marcus, it needs you so badly! Please, spear me harder I implore you!"
Ashen faced, Constance could not help herself reach the scullery doorway from which the depraved sounds were issuing - beneath the human grunts and moans she could now, she was sure, hear a wet, rhythmic squelching and a slapping as of flesh against flesh. Her eye darted around the doorway, and there, on the floor, was Lady Sarah, on her hands and knees, her back to the doorway, her rich red velvet skirts gathered around her waist, exposing her creamy white buttocks and black stockings. Behind her, a menial - probably the gardener from the look of his muddy boots and trousers, the latter pulled down to his knees - was vigorously coupling with her, his muscular torso bare and glistening with sweat, his taut bottom moving rapidly backwards and forwards. He had reached forward and taken hold of Sarah's long, luxurious black hair, pulling it loose from its confining coiffure, holding her with it almost as a rider might hold a horse's reins, pulling back her head and forcing her to arch her back. Both participants' faces were contorted with raw, animalistic passion as he mounted her like a stallion and rutted there on the dirty tiles.
Constance stood there, transfixed by the sight, horrified yet unable to look away. Spittle flecked the gardener's lips as his mouth continued to spew a stream of the filthiest language that Lady Constance had ever heard.
"That's it, take it deep, you cunt, like the bitch in heat that you are. That's why you come to me, isn't it? To rut like a bitch in heat! Say it! Say it, you fucking whore!"
"Ah! Oh! Ah! Ah! Yes! Yes, it is! Oh please, Marcus, I cannot stand it! I... I am... going... to..."
Whether Constance let out a gasp at that, or flinched involuntarily, she could not say, but her presence was abruptly noticed. Not by Lady Sarah, who was twisting and bucking with complete abandon in the throes of some unseemly spasm, eyes tightly clenched, but by the beefy figure of the gardener, who suddenly glanced over his shoulder and saw Constance standing there. Constance put a hand to her mouth as the man stared lewdly at her, and then, slowly winked, and raised a finger to his lips to indicate silence, before turning and returning to his work with renewed vigour.
Constance turned and fled, desperate to escape this debauched scene as quickly as possible.
---
It was some hours later, in the drawing room, when the two ladies finally met after breakfast for a cup of tea. Both were immaculately dressed - from the look of Lady Sarah, there was no sign of her earlier exertions, except perhaps for a warm glow to her cheeks, as if of a brisk morning's ride in the grounds, and an expression of contentment. Constance, however, could barely bring herself to look at her sister-in-law, and spoke distractedly, unable to erase the image of earlier, and Sarah's vile display.
"My dear, you do not look at all well," said Lady Sarah, apparently solicitously, but with a slight smirk playing about her feline features. "May I ring for Peters to bring you a tot of brandy for that tea? It will perk you up no end, I promise you."
"It's nothing, truly," Lady Constance said, "please do not trouble yourself... I think perhaps I had a restless night."
"You are thinking of what you saw this morning, are you not?" asked Lady Sarah, watching her sister-in-law's face carefully.
Lady Constance jumped as if scalded. "I... I beg your pardon? I... I don't know what you mean..."
"Please, Constance," Sarah said. "We have known each other for twenty years or more now, ever since you married my brother the Duke. We need have no secrets between us. You tarried in that doorway for ten minutes or more. I cannot believe that in all that time you were not privy to a single sensible sight or sound."
Lady Constance blushed as scarlet as the dress she wore. "Forgive me, Sarah," she stammered. "I did not mean to spy upon you. It is none of my business."
"I did not expect you to be up and about so early," Sarah admitted. "But come now - surely you did not expect me to wear my widow's weeds indefinitely? It has been two years now since Arthur's death, and a woman has needs."
"Oh, but Sarah!" protested Constance, finally stung into anger. "With a servant! And a menial at that, still dirty from his exertions! How *could* you?"
"That is what makes it all the more delicious," purred Sarah, arching her back as she leaned back in the well-stuffed armchair. "He is of the lowest class, barely educated, with no trace of refinement or polish. But that makes him closer to his true nature, do you not see? Like the most savage tribesman of New Guinea, he is untouched by the deadening effects of civilisation. Instead, he is in intimate contact with his animal passions," her voice had lowered thickened as she spoke, her breast heaving. "He treats me as no gentleman would ever dare to, and when I am with him, I know that I am no lady, but rather that I am a *woman*."
"But..." Constance was scandalised. "The things he said to you! The language he used!"
"I know..." Sarah gasped. "Vile! Unspeakable! And yet, words have power. Can you confess that they did not touch something in your innermost core - your deepest, darkest interior? Were you not... stimulated?"
"His... rough talk was affecting," Constance admitted somewhat unwillingly. "But the way he treated you! Like a..."
"Like a common whore?" breathed Sarah. "Worse, perhaps. Under his tutelage I have performed acts that even the vilest streetwalker of Whitechapel would not dream to undertake. But to be under the control of such a man, to be bent to his every perverse desire... has given me such pleasures that I cannot even begin to describe to you. Constance, I tell you in all seriousness that I would rather be the whore of such a man than the grandest lady in England."
"Oh this is madness!" Constance exclaimed, throwing up her hands. "You have lost your mind, Sarah. Can you not see what you have become? Merely an animal, dependent purely upon the pleasures of the senses, fornicating in the fields, careless of who might see. To act in such a way is to become one with the beasts. We are better than this!"
