Master of the House (20 page)

‘I’ll give you a mouthful,’ he muttered, snatching the card back off me.

Was that a threat or a promise?

No time to ponder the question, for we were at the office door, in a little anteroom full of typical anteroom stuff – a spider plant, a coffee table, orange-upholstered chairs – and some atypical. Artistic photographs on the walls of people in bondage, for instance.

The bouncer knocked and was invited to enter by a female voice. I was sure Joss had said Mal was a man.

We were ushered inside and found, in a very black and silver office, a woman sitting at a desk tapping away at a keyboard. There was nothing unusual about her – she wore a smart charcoal suit and her hair was scraped into a tight bun. She could have been any chic City worker bee, until one noticed that she was chained to the computer by an elegant length of silver that ended in a cuff at her wrist.

‘Sorry, Mal’s down in the café,’ she said, glancing up at us through red-framed spectacles. ‘He’s left me with the accounts. And I don’t get unlocked until they make sense, unfortunately. Do take a seat and I’ll buzz him for you.’

I tried to catch Joss’s eye, but he looked steadily away, which was just as well, because I’d probably have done something unmannerly like giggle or make a bemused expression.

Within two minutes, the door opened again and a man in a long black cape and Victorian topper entered. I hadn’t expected to encounter Dracula and I’m afraid I had to put my hand to my mouth to prevent nervous laughter spilling out.

‘Ah,’ he said, and Joss stood to shake hands. Mal’s fingernails were black. ‘Long time no see! Do you remember Mr Lethbridge, O, or was he before your time?’

O, apparently, was the woman at the computer. She gave us a closer look and said, ‘I’m not sure, sir.’

I had only ever heard people addressed as ‘sir’ in a customer service context and it underscored what I was here for. I was here to submit, along with lots of other submitters. She, presumably, was one of them.

‘It’s
Lord
Lethbridge now, actually,’ said Joss lightly.

I thought O was going to swoon.

‘Oooooooh,’ she sighed. ‘An actual real-live Lord? Our subs are going to be
all over
you.’

I didn’t like the sound of that.

‘Unless you’re exclusive,’ she added swiftly, noting my expression. ‘Are you?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘I’d like to introduce you to Lucy, my submissive.’

‘Hello, Lucy,’ they both said, and O added, ‘Your little maid-in-waiting, how absolutely charming.’

I didn’t think it was, particularly. I was nobody’s maid and I certainly didn’t do waiting. But I let it pass.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said. I didn’t think a handshake was appropriate somehow. Should I curtsy? The wild suggestion flitted through my mind before I settled on a respectful bow of the head. It seemed to go down well enough.

‘Where have you been all this time?’ asked Mal of Joss. ‘You were missed.’

‘I’ve been very busy with the estate,’ he said. ‘Inheritance tax and so forth. I almost let my membership lapse, but I’m rather glad I didn’t now.’

‘Well, and so are we,’ said Mal heartily. ‘So you’re here for the Masquerade?’

‘Absolutely. It’s Lucy’s first time at a public event and she’s extremely curious.’

‘Oh, you’ll adore it,’ said O.

‘Have you finished with those accounts?’ asked Mal, the words mild enough but the look that accompanied them rather blood-freezing.

‘No, sir,’ she said, and bent her head, returning to her keyboard.

‘O’s quite right,’ said Mal, smiling at me. ‘Our little get-togethers are something to behold.’ He turned to Joss again. ‘Your email said you might need accommodation?’

‘Yes, I thought the membership fee covered it? Is that right?’

‘It is, and you’re lucky that we’ve had a cancellation, so the Blue Boudoir is free for you today. Usually we’re booked up months in advance for the Masquerade but we’ve had a few drop out. Do you know Len Leather and his boys? Terrible shame, they’re very popular on the scene.’

I realised what it was about Mal that disconcerted me so very much. He had filed some of his teeth into points. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

‘There’s another favour I have to ask, if you don’t mind,’ said Joss. ‘Lucy was wondering if she could take advantage of your costume collection?’

‘Of course. I’ll have to bill you for the hire charge, I’m afraid …’

‘Oh, yes, that’s understood.’

‘Then I’ll have O help you out when she’s free. If she ever is.’ He gave her a meaningful look – her wrists had fallen idle again – and the tip-tapping started up with renewed vigour. ‘In the meantime, let me show you to your room.’

I gave O a little wave as we left but she didn’t seem to notice.

In order to get to the Blue Boudoir we had to go up to the very top of the building. This floor had been turned into a kind of gaslit wonderland, with flock wallpaper and portraits of Pre-Raphaelite-looking damsels with bare bottoms everywhere. The Blue Boudoir, at the end of the corridor, carried this theme on, with a four-poster bed standing the middle of velvety sumptuousness.

‘If you want to come down to the café for a drink,’ said Mal, once Joss had deposited our travel bags on the floor, ‘I’ll be down there for the next hour or so. After that, I’m afraid I’ll be rushed off my feet. So much to organise.’

He put a hand to his brow in a theatrical manner and tossed his long, dark hair.

‘If you need anything, just ring for one of our maids,’ he said, before leaving. Not in a cloud of smoke, but there was something of that effect hanging in the air after him.

‘Well,’ I said, looking around me. ‘This is nice. Just like Willingham Hall, but cleaner.’

‘Their maids are very good,’ said Joss, sitting on the side of the bed. ‘They love their work.’

‘Kinky maids, I take it?’

‘The kinkiest. Watch.’ He pulled the plaited cord at the side of the bed and a bell jangled.

Seconds later, a rather portly lady in a tight black PVC maid’s dress so short that a massive pair of frilly knickers and stockings were clearly visible underneath rushed into the room and fell to her knees in front of Joss. Oh, it wasn’t a lady. It was a man, very clean shaven and wearing a blonde bobbed wig under his mob cap.

‘You rang, sir, madam,’ he said, his eyes to the ground.

‘Yes, I did,’ said Joss. ‘Take off my shoes.’

The maid shuffled forwards and took Joss’s left foot in reverent hands. I watched, immobile with fascination, as he bent over it and began to lick the dust from the well-shone leather. It didn’t seem very hygienic, but the maid clearly enjoyed it.

Once every speck of London grime was off and the shoes bright as mirrors, the maid removed them, kissed Joss’s sock-clad toes and then bent right over in a gesture of complete obeisance.

‘Get up,’ said Joss.

The maid scrambled to his feet.

‘Sir, my mistress says I am to ask you for your feedback on my service.’

‘It was good, I suppose,’ said Joss.

‘Thank you, sir. Then she asks that you will show your pleasure by spanking my bottom.’

‘I see.’

‘What if he were displeased?’ I couldn’t help asking. Punishment for good service seemed rather harsh.

‘Then sir could take down my knickers and spank my bare bottom,’ explained the maid. ‘And mistress would punish me too, in front of all the other maids. She won’t accept poor service.’

‘And rightly so,’ said Joss. He hauled himself to his feet, ordered the maid to bend over and delivered four hard smacks to his frilly rump.

‘There. On your way now,’ he said.

The maid curtsied and made a demure exit.

‘I didn’t really want to take my shoes off,’ said Joss with a frown, removing a tissue from the box at the bedside and using it to remove all traces of the maid’s saliva. ‘I was going to take you downstairs for a coffee.’

‘What the hell is a BDSM coffee shop like?’ I wondered aloud.

‘Come with me and you’ll see,’ he said, but before I could move he grabbed my hands and pulled me down on to the bed with him. ‘How are you?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m fine. This is just so interesting. I’ve got a sort of professional versus personal conflict going on in my head. I really want to write about it.’

‘You can’t. Seriously. Absolute no-no.’

‘I know that. I wouldn’t. But it’s just so
interesting
.’

‘More interesting than me?’ he asked, putting his finger to my lips so I had to kiss and suck on it.

I shook my head, smiling as much as I could with a man’s finger in my mouth.

‘It’s going to get a lot more interesting,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better have you now, while I’ve still got your attention.’

‘You always have my attention,’ I said. ‘Anyway, that guy Mal said he’d be in the café – we ought to go down. Do we … I mean, should we
change
?’

I looked down doubtfully at the light summer dress I was wearing – a pale green cotton shift with slingback sandals. It didn’t seem very kinky.

Joss laughed. ‘No, not necessary,’ he said. ‘It’s mid-afternoon – most of the people in there will be on their way home from work or taking a break from shopping. You might find the odd gimp mask in among the jeans and tailoring, but nothing overwhelming.’ He squeezed me. ‘Sure I can’t interest you in a pre-coffee shag?’

‘I feel we ought to save ourselves,’ I said, although tempted. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’

* * *

The café was just like, well, a café. Blond wood and greenery, a long counter with cupcakes under glass domes, and – as Joss had said – a very regular-looking clientele. There were riding crops and canes mounted on the walls, but they blended in rather tastefully, as did the chained and corseted mannequins stationed at various posts. These were the kinkiest looking people there, and they weren’t even people. Some of them didn’t even have heads.

I treated myself to a cupcake with a liquorice whip wound around in the frosting, and a camomile tea for my nerves, and accompanied Joss to the nearest free table, taking care not to catch anyone’s eye.

There was no sign of Mal yet.

‘Will all these people be here tonight?’ I asked Joss in a low voice.

‘Some, maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Do you know any of them?’

He shook his head, making a face at the froth on his cappuccino. The barista had drawn a crook-handled cane in cinnamon.

‘Like I said, it’s been a while.’

Mal entered the room at that point, accompanied by an attractive woman in a PVC zip-up dress. She looked like something from the
Benny Hill Show
– blonde curls piled high on her head, cleavage that shoved itself at you and a hem that barely skimmed her bum. Not to mention the five-inch heels.

‘Ah,’ cried Mal, so effusively that all attention was instantly directed towards us. ‘Your lordship – I wonder if you remember Trixietots? She certainly remembers you.’

Joss half-rose, squinting at the blonde.

‘Oh, of course,’ he said.

She was beaming at him and pushing her bosom out.

‘Do you remember that party a few years back?’ she said. ‘The prison-themed one? I was one of your prisoners.’

‘Ah.’ Joss seemed extremely uncomfortable with the recollection, or perhaps it was my raised eyebrows causing the awkwardness. ‘Yes. Didn’t the handcuffs jam on your wrists?’

She laughed. ‘That’s right! We had to get Mal to file them off.’

‘The risks we take,’ said Mal smoothly, ‘in the name of pleasure. But it’s all worth it, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

He and Trixietots took seats opposite us.

‘So, you often run these themed parties then?’ I asked, in the spirit of journalistic enquiry.

‘Quarterly,’ said Mal. ‘Tonight we have a masked ball. Last time it was steampunk Victoriana. The time before, a Roman slave auction. O was an event planner in a former life and she rather excels at all the detail.’

‘What’s it going to be like, if you don’t mind me asking? Tonight, I mean. I’ve never been to an … event.’

‘Oh, fabulous!’ gushed Trixietots. ‘Have you read
The Story of O
?’

‘Can’t say I have.’

All three of them looked at me as if I had admitted to an act of sacrilege.

‘Well,’ she continued, dauntless in the face of my terrible kink-ignorance. ‘It’s based on the Roissy training school for submissives, you know? So all the subs will be in these beautiful dresses that open up at strategic places, if you know what I mean, and all the men will be in gorgeous suits. There’s another room where it’s all reversed with the dommes in suits and strap-ons and the male subs in a different version of the clothing … I wonder what they’ll be wearing though?’

Mal answered her question. ‘A lawn shirt, I believe, and a kind of stocking affair that leaves the, ah, areas in question exposed.’

‘Ah, right,’ said Trixietots. ‘And, of course, there’ll be lots of gay and bi couples and groups who can mix between the two, depending what they want to watch or get involved with. Basically, it’s a free-for-all.’

‘When you say free-for-all,’ I said after a beat, ‘do you mean that anyone can … do anything … to anyone?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mal, diving in to rescue the situation. ‘We respect exclusive couples and groups. Those submissives who are “available”, so to speak, will wear an outward token. By far the majority will be owned and collared submissives, in the exclusive service of their masters and mistresses. There will be more of your kind than Trixietots’.’

I looked at Trixietots, wondering how she could be so confident and happy about being available to all. It didn’t seem to faze her one little bit.

‘How long have you been doing this for?’ I asked her.

‘Kink?’ she asked, as if she didn’t understand my question. ‘Oh, for ever. Since I left school.’

‘Trixietots is one of our House Submissives,’ said Mal. ‘She works here.’

‘What does that entail?’

‘Lucy.’ Joss’s tone carried a hint of warning. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Mal and Trixie. ‘’Satiable curiosity, just like the Elephant’s Child.’

‘And we all know what happened to
him
,’ said Mal severely.

Yes. I seemed to remember there being a lot of spanking in that story too. I flushed and hid my face behind my teacup.