One Week in the Private House (21 page)

'Boy, this feels good,' she said, pausing between each word. 'OK, Julia, talk to me.'

'Have you been with the Master?'

'Uh-huh. We've been keeping each other occupied. He's a boy who likes a lot of action in the bedroom.'

'They say he usually has at least two courtesans, and they don't last long. And then of course there are his poor little slaves ...'

'I should be getting danger money. I detect a look of awestruck gratitude when those slaves of his look at me. He won't have the energy to whip them tonight, that's for sure.'

'Oh Jem!' There were tears in Julia's eyes. 'Has he hurt you?'

'Don't worry. I'm not hurt any more than I can take. And I think I have more to come tomorrow.'

'Is there anything I can do?'

'Just be here, Julia dear. Look after me. Sleep with me tonight. And tonight I mean just sleep. Kiss me goodnight, put your arms round me, watch over me. Keep the ghoulies and ghosties away. Will you do that?'

Td love to.' Julia plunged her arms into the bath and hugged Jem to her. Td do anything in the world for you.'

'Thanks. I hope you mean that, Julia. I may hold you to it one day soon. But right now I just feel delicate and vulnerable, and I've a suspicion I'll need to be neither tomorrow.'

'Well you look jolly comfortable in your bath. What's that on your finger?'

Jem put the encircled finger across her lips. 'Hush! It's a ring. A signet ring. I just pulled it from the very deepest recess of my private regions. I purloined it upstairs. Thought it might come in handy. Don't tell a soul!' She continued in her normal tone. 'Enough explaining. It's your turn to explain things to me.'

'What things, Jem?'

'Everything. Your new job in Security. Tell me all about that.'

Jem, with eyes closed, dozed in the water while Julia told her everything she needed to know: the organisation and methods of the Security Corps, Julia's assignment to watch over the suspicious visitor Lucy Larson, the helpful role played by the field operative Asmita, and the locations of the secret tunnels that ran from various parts of the estate to the small corner plot containing the Private House Health Club.

A beatific smile spread slowly across Jem's face as she soaked up the information. A plan was forming in her mind. Tomorrow would start like any other day in the Private House; but it would be a new dawn, if Jem's plan could be made to work.

Day 5:
Thursday

Barrel-vaulted passages pierced the five-metre thickness of the Round Tower's outer wall to connect the gallery that ran round the Great Hall to the upper storeys of the West Wing and the old East Wing of the House. These two much-altered edifices, the oldest parts of the House apart from the Round Tower itself and constructed in part in stone from the walls of the old castle, extended from the Round Tower to the south-west and south-east. Over the centuries more structures - another wing, a kitchen block, a stable block, and servants' quarters - had been added to the extremity of the old East Wing, which had been rebuilt as the central axis of the House. A corridor known as the Long Gallery ran along the entire length of its first storey.

It was only a little after dawn when Julia pulled aside the curtain at the end of one of the stone passages to find the Long Gallery flooded with yellow sunlight within which rippled the green refractions of dancing leaves. She stopped to peer through the lozenges of ancient, thick glass, but she hardly saw the stately, shadowed avenue of trees and the distant gilded rooftops of the old gatehouse, now the Health Club, within its walled enclave.

Her mind was teeming with thoughts of the Master's consort. Jem was her saviour, her confidante, her protegee, her friend; they had met only yesterday, but Julia felt they had known each other for years. She had thought she had grown out of schoolgirl crushes; she had never believed in love at first sight. But as the beautiful, dazzling,
exhausted
child-woman had fallen asleep in her arms, Julia had felt that her heart would burst. She had wept silent tears of overflowing affection, placed soft kisses on Jem's cherry lips, and ran her fingers through the waves of russet hair until she too had fallen into sleep.

She had woken at first light, pulled on a cloak, and left without waking Jem. If she opens those blue eyes, she had thought, I'll never be able to leave her. She had intended to go straight to her own room, above the Long Gallery, where Maxine would be waiting and worrying; but now she wanted solitude and time to think, and she made her way down the central staircase to the other side of the building, and out on to the terrace.

The gravelled courtyard was cold and gloomy in the shadow of the House. Dew sparkled on the wide lawn beyond, and Julia left dark footprints in the grass as she hurried across it to the sunlit boulevard of cobbles that ran from the East Courtyard to the walled cloister and marked the edge of the formal gardens. She rested against the edge of the vast stone bowl of the fountain; Proteus and his sea-nymphs, scintillating under a shower of droplets, contrived a stirringly erotic tableau even without the assistance of the living statues who would be chained to the assembly during the course of the day.

The formal garden had been Julia's favourite haunt on her previous visit to the Private House. She set off aimlessly along one of the avenues of cobblestones, waving absently to a team of gardeners, the first people she had seen awake this morning, as they emerged from the cloister to inspect the box-bordered flower beds. Further from the House there were pools and fountains, rockeries, and arbours, convoluted hedges, copses of slender trees, and even artificial hillocks on which had been constructed wild woodlands and rushing waterfalls. Every place held a memory for Julia, and in particular she remembered every one of the pavilions and follies that blossomed in the shady nooks of the garden.

The architectural whimsies were empty now, but later in the day courtesans,
gigQlos
and slaves would occupy them and exhibit their bodies for the entertainment of passing strollers.

On her last visit to the House Julia had slipped easily into the luxurious life of a courtesan. She had held court in one of the pavilions - which was it, she asked herself, shielding her eyes as she scanned the edges of the garden. Ah yes; there it was, deep in shadow, built against the east wall. It was a mock-Attic temple with white, fluted pillars. Julia had been dressed in a diaphanous robe of white voile, and she had been chained - very loosely, and for aesthetic appeal rather than for constraint - to the base of a cushion-strewn altar in the shadowy sanctum. A notice posted in the portico had encouraged passers-by to use her, the temple's priestess, on the altar, as the receptacle for their offerings to Aphrodite.

Those had been wonderfully carefree, relaxing days. Julia had received a stream of visitors of both sexes, each of whom would take her, according to his or her own predilections. Julia had found the experiences pleasant in almost every case, and nearly every one of her guests would stay to chat and gossip until another votary entered the temple and the previous visitor might leave, or might stay to watch. The Greek pavilion of Aphrodite had at times become crowded with people, some of whom had brought food and wine, and entire hot afternoons had been passed in the cool shade of Julia's temple: happy gatherings in which simple fare, sparkling conversation and languorous lovemaking had been enjoyed in equal measure.

What a life of ease Julia had led then! And how different this visit seemed. She had been here less than three days, and so far they had been more eventful than a normal fortnight in the outside world, and certainly less relaxing. But Julia had to admit that things were interesting; in fact, she felt more alive than she had for years.

And was she imagining that the House itself had changed, too? In appearance it was as she remembered it; but the safe routine of harsh initiation followed by unquestioning obedience to a life of lazy sexuality seemed to be disturbed. The atmosphere was electric rather than soothing. She would find huddled groups - guests, servants, slaves, courtesans, gigolos, and even Security staff and field operatives - deep in animated conversation rather than chattering idly. There was talk of unjustified punishments, although Julia knew that these were hardly unprecedented; of excessive demands being made on slaves and field operatives; of friction between the staff out at the airstrip; and, as an unspoken undercurrent, the hint that the pressures leading to these incidents came from the Very Top. Julia found it disconcerting but, like everyone else, she tried to concentrate on obedience and sexuality. Besides, she found the gossip exciting - and she had met the marvellous Jem.

Jem had been here as short a time as she had herself; surely Jem's arrival couldn't have anything to do with the air of unrest? No; others had told her of erratic orders that had been issued weeks earlier. And yet Jem's arrival remained significant to Julia; she saw Jem in her mind's eye with red-brown hair glowing like a halo round her wide blue eyes. Jem is a beacon, she thought, a light illuminating the Private House from a new angle .. . The vision faded. Julia wrapped her cloak around her body and returned to the House.

Maxine was lying on the floor at the foot of Julia's bed. Julia closed the door silently and watched her maid sleeping. The girl had thrown off a quilted bedcover and was now almost naked; her thin nightgown had ridden up about her generous hips and barely contained the rising and falling swell of her huge breasts. The tip of a thumb rested between her glistening red lips.

Julia threw her cloak on to the bed and knelt naked next to her maid. With careful fingers she untied the loose ribbons that held together the bodice of the nightgown and folded aside the flimsy cotton, revealing the voluptuous pink-tipped spheres of flesh. She curved her fingers and ran her nails from the undersides of the globes to the aureoles, delighting in the slow lifting of the heavy bulbs and the bright scratch-lines she was creating across their surface. Maxine moaned, and suQked her thumb. Julia continued to toy with the maid's breasts, lifting them and letting them fall, until the fluttering eyelids at last opened wide; and at that moment she smiled, and twisted both nipples between her fingers and thumbs.

'Ow!' Maxine said, her hands flying to her chest; and then, recognising Julia, she drew her hands behind her back and pushed her breasts into the air. 'It's you, Miss. And it's morning. Where have you been?'

Julia needed to use both hands to contain just one of Maxine's soft mounds, and she squeezed them in turn. The maid lifted one side of her body and then the other, and each time she did so the unattended breast flattened and rolled and spilled into her armpit, from which haven Julia would drag it by pulling on the nipple. This game continued until Maxine's nipples were crinkled and as hard as jewels, and her pale skin was red with scratches and slaps.

'You're a wonderfully well-trained servant,' Julia said at last. 'And I can quite understand why all your menfriends want to rub themselves up and down between these gorgeous titties. But tell me, Maxine: how did you come to be here in the Private House?'

'I'm not supposed to tell, am I, Miss? What if Security -oh.'

'Exactly. I'm in Security, so you can tell me. Are you a volunteer?'

'Me, Miss? Not likely! I was conned into coming here. I'd just finished secretarial college, and I thought I'd temp for a while. The agency looked all right, perfectly ordinary place; but I reckon they knew where they were sending me. It was just an office in the city, but they weren't interested in my typing speed, I can tell you. But I was very young: naive, I suppose. I let them take photographs, then they said they'd publish them in one of those girlie mags if I didn't agree to a holiday in the country. And I ended up here.'

'And then you found you were enjoying yourself?'

'You're joking! I hated it. I was a right tearaway, and I wasn't going to let other people tell me what to do. I
spent
most of my first visit in the dungeon, and even at the
end
of that I wasn't exactly a model of obedience. Then,
right
at the end, one of the courtesans saw me and
persuaded

Security to let me go and spend a day with her. Classic move, of course, like the cops using a hard man and then a soft man when they're questioning a suspect. But I fell for it, of course. I'd never really enjoyed sex until that day with Carla. And I haven't looked back since.'

'Are you on the permanent staff?'

'Almost. I don't like it outside any more. My Mum thinks I'm working in Dubai. I go back to see her every now and then; sometimes Security give me little jobs to do while I'm outside.' Suddenly the maid remembered her duties. 'But what about you, Miss? Where have you been? Is it time for you to report for training?'

'Don't worry, Maxine,' Julia said, helping her maid to stand, it's early. Plenty of time to get dressed. I've just spent the night in the Round Tower.'

Maxine's eyes widened into circles. 'With the Master! Oh, Miss, are you all right? You're not hurt, are you?'

'Not with the Master, Maxine. With his consort, Jem. She's chosen me to be her bodyguard.'

Maxine squealed and put her hand to her grinning mouth. 'Miss! Oh Miss! You? Her bodyguard? Oh, Miss Julia!'

'What on earth's the matter, Maxine? She's only a courtesan, of sorts, and a new one at that. I mean she's rather special, it's true -'