Teena: A House of Ill Repute (9 page)

We found three dresses, all fairly plain, of the sort of everyday design the lower class women wore out during the day. I could imagine Andrea's reaction when she saw the dowdy garments, but she was in no position to argue, and so I paid for all three, plus another corset, some under-drawers, some new shifts and four pairs of silk stockings, which were all the shop had in stock. I had hoped for some shoes, but the woman replied there was a cobbler on the far side of the river and I should try there.

The shoemaker offered a greater choice when we finally found him, and I realised he probably supplied footwear for all the classes, not just for the workers. He was quite a craftsman and some of his creations were real masterpieces of feminine delicacy. I decided it might help soothe Andrea's feelings if I treated her to something really pretty, and settled upon a pair of red leather shoes with pointed toes and surprisingly high heels reminiscent of the Louis Quinz period in France.

'Made those back about five years ago now,' said the shoemaker, whose name according to the sign outside was Milton Faraday. 'They were supposed to be for George Middlemiss's young French bride, but the poor lass took with the fever and died. Great shame that was, her being barely twenty years old, but then these things happen all too often.'

I paid for the red shoes, and also for a black pair with much less formidable heels and a pair of doeskin ankle boots, the latter being for myself, Angelina being light in the footwear department.

'I can offer a nice line in proper stout outdoor boots, too,' Faraday assured me. 'If you're thinking of doing much walking around these parts at this time of the year, then you'll be needing something with a bit of wear in them.' I opened my mouth to assure him I didn't intend to do any walking, not in these nor in any other parts, but then I stopped myself and considered again.

'That's very kind,' I replied. 'Perhaps you have something you could show me.'

Of course, he did, and I left with two pairs of very functional looking ladies' boots, the one pair slightly larger, for I had noticed Indira's feet were at least a full size bigger than Angelina's and that Andrea had only just been able to force her feet into the shoes in which she had escaped.

'So now what?' Andrea asked as I finished buttoning her into the least awful of the new dresses.

'Well, I haven't eaten yet this morning and neither have you,' I reminded her, 'so I reckon we should go down and organise some food, and then maybe we could take a little walk.'

'You've come up with a plan, then? She twirled around once, and then wrinkled her nose in disgust. 'Bloody awful taste, these country peasants,' she muttered.

'No, not really,' I replied in answer to her question, 'but I thought about what you said last night and we certainly can't just keep on running. So we'll need to find somewhere to stop, and Arundel could be as good a place as any. If we ask around, we may find a house or cottage that's up for sale or for rent.'

We didn't have to ask far, for a brief mention to the landlord downstairs elicited the information that there were two or three potential properties, and all within a mile of the town centre.

'Up Mill Road there's a cottage for rent,' he informed us. 'Belongs to the Tamworth family and was lived in by the old aunt up until just before Christmas, when she passed on, rest her soul. Mind you, she was nearly ninety, so she couldn't complain. Then there's Banks Cottage, over yonder on the far side of the river. Used to be part of the Beasley estate, but that's been split up since the old man died and the two sons are happier living up in the city. I don't think that's been sold yet, but you could check with their lawyer, Bartlett. His office is just up the High Street. He'll also be acting for John Goring, selling off the old mill house. It's not been used these past ten years or more and John's moved down to Brighton now. Place'll probably need some attention, but it's sound enough in construction and it ain't about to fall down.' He looked around at the three of us. 'Thinking of settling then, are you?' he asked.

I smiled my sweetest smile at him. 'My doctor suggested I should find somewhere with pleasant country air,' I replied. I patted the top of my chest. 'I've been unwell, you see, and the air in London these days... well, I'm sure you know what I mean.'

'Indeed I do, mistress,' he replied. 'Only been there a couple of times meself, mind, but that was more'n enough. Dirty, smelly place London. Don't see why people carry on living there. Wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have another outbreak of the plague there, and that's a fact.'

I suppose I had a picture of a quaint little cottage leaning against a larger and possibly now derelict mill building before we set out to view the old mill house, but what we found when we arrived was quite different. For a start, this particular mill had not been situated along Mill Road, which would have taken us past a pub and inn called the
Black Rabbit
, which is still there to this day, but rather it was on the further, eastern bank of the Arun and more than a mile further upstream. Don't bother looking for it now, however; I've been back since and there's no obvious signs of where it once stood, only the remains of what passed for foundations back then, which are hard enough to find even when you know exactly where to search.

'Wow!' I exclaimed, as I stepped down from the carriage.

Erik, who had already alighted from his seat in front, towered over me as usual, but even he seemed impressed. 'Large it is,' he agreed, nodding sagely.

'Bet it's bloody draughty though,' Andrea/Indira commented from the doorway of the coach.

'Probably,' I agreed, 'but at least all the windows seem intact. Not much in the way of mindless vandalism these days, I'd say.' I pushed open the gate standing in the middle of a low picket fence along the front of the house. It bounded a narrow strip of lawn, in which someone had cut and tended two flower beds, although these currently contained nothing more than the withered remains of some former summer plants and a couple of hardy weeds. I stood and stared up at the three-storey edifice, noting there were even dormer windows in the roof, which effectively added a fourth floor.

'It's massive,' Andrea declared, trudging up behind me. She was still sulking because I had insisted we wear our most sensible footwear for this expedition. 'Far too big for what we need,' she added.

I pursed my lips, my mind stepping up a couple of gears. 'Maybe,' I said half to myself, 'and then again, maybe not. The main thing is, it's cheap.'

'And stuck miles up this god-awful track,' Andrea observed. 'This might just as well be the backend of beyond.'

'Yes.' I smiled. 'It might.'

By the time Anne-Marie led us outside to the car it was already dark, and even through the layers of protective rubber I could feel the drop in temperature. My mind went immediately back to Arundel in the autumn of eighteen thirty-nine, from where I had returned only moments earlier. Incredibly, although this was now February and that had probably only been October, as far as I could make out, it had been far colder there and I marvelled at how the ordinary people had managed to brave the extreme conditions of winters past for so many generations.

From a distance, and away from any street lighting, there would have been little about Andrea and myself to draw the attention of the casual observer, though up close our appearance might have caused the odd raised eyebrow. For although the long rubber capes Anne-Marie had draped about us hid the more bizarre features of our outfits, they did not conceal the extreme nature of our heels, and neither, I suspected, would our rubber faces pass close inspection.

However, once we were inside the car and seated side-by-side in the back, there was little chance of our condition being observed, nor of anyone realising that beneath the capes our arms were bound helplessly behind us.

'What a well-behaved pair of dollies you are,' Anne-Marie enthused as she adjusted the rubber folds across our chests and fastened seat belts over them. 'Now you just sit there nice and quiet and we'll go for a nice little drive together.'

The journey was relatively uneventful, although every time the tyres hit any unevenness in the road's surface I squirmed as the dildo pressed deeper. Alongside me Andrea also seemed to be experiencing some embarrassments, and I assumed her one orifice had been similarly treated. The trip, which was probably not much more than forty-five minutes in reality, began to take on the proportions of an epic voyage, with me struggling to fight against the inevitable, not wanting to have to admit, not even to myself, that I could be so easily brought to orgasm by the combination of an inanimate rubber phallus and a bouncy car seat. Needless to say I lost the contest, not once, but four times, the final three climaxes coming virtually one after the other just after we turned off the main road and began a winding descent along a narrow country lane.

Carmen's house was set back even from this rustic piece of road, but thankfully, after one lurching bump over a rut just across the gateway, the approach was well maintained and offered a mercifully smooth final cruise of a few hundred yards. The building itself was nowhere near as impressive as the approach suggested, a nineteen-twenties or thereabouts structure of two storeys with a single storey extension of later vintage projecting from one end, to one side of which I could make out a double garage, and behind that what was either a large shed or small barn, though the exterior lights enabling me to get a decent view of everything else did not really penetrate that far back.

Anne-Marie drove slowly towards the garage although the open doors showed there were already two vehicles in residence, but at the last moment she veered to the left and negotiated the narrow gap between the side of the building and the end of the house extension. We emerged on the edge of a wide expanse of lawn, the lights from the house windows, and from a moon that emerged conveniently from behind the clouds, illuminating enough for me to see it was well tended and bounded on three sides by cordons of high trees.

'Right then, dolly girls,' Anne-Marie said, switching off the engine and hauling on the handbrake, 'we've arrived and now the fun can begin.' She got out, opened the rear door on Andrea's side and unfastened her seat belt. It then needed quite a lot of effort on both their parts for Andrea to climb out, and the same applied when it came to my turn, but eventually we were standing on the edge of the grassy area, caped, masked and our hands still bound. I looked around, expecting to see some sign of our hostess coming out to welcome us, but if anyone in the house had witnessed our arrival, they gave no indication of it.

I should at this juncture perhaps give a brief description of Anne-Marie's attire, for although it was in no way as bizarre as ours - she had to drive, after all, and might possibly have had to get out of the car, one never knows - she was still striking in tight leather jeans tucked into high-heeled knee-high boots, and tightly hugging her torso was a zipped leather jacket cut to emphasise her generous figure, bosom and buttocks alike. She also wore black leather gloves, so that only her face and head remained uncovered, giving her an aura of power and control that would have remained even had the two of us not been bound and gagged as we were.

'Now we have to walk down there through the trees,' she said, clipping leashes to each of our collars. 'Andrea's been here before, but Teenie, go very carefully. The path isn't all that level in places and there are usually bits of odd branch and twig all over the place, especially at this time of the year.'

And she wasn't kidding, I soon realised, for once we had crossed the lawn the trees closed in on both sides, blocking out almost all the light, a condition made even worse by my tinted lenses. I kept my eyes firmly on Anne-Marie's silhouette as she walked just in front of us, my right shoulder rubbing and bumping against Andrea's in the darkness, my feet occasionally landing on dry twigs that cracked beneath them, or stumbling against larger branches that fortunately were not so big they didn't kick out of my way. It was so overwhelmingly dark the only way I knew we were on a path at all was because Anne-Marie had told us we were. I was mightily relieved when, a few hundred yards or so further on, we emerged into a large clearing.

The moon had ducked for cover again during our perilous trek, but it chose to make a second reappearance a moment later, revealing an impressive looking stone structure about thirty yards in front of us. I say impressive because it was solid and high, but a second inspection showed there were several chunks of it missing, not surprising given that I quickly estimated it had to be several hundred years old.

'Welcome to Finton Priory, Teenie-slave,' Anne-Marie said.

I gawped up at the massive stone pillars and the heavily carved balustrade that had largely survived, although of the original roof only a couple of heavy beams now remained silhouetted against the night sky.

'Don't worry,' Anne-Marie continued as if sensing my misgivings, 'it's all perfectly safe. Nothing's fallen off these past few years and Carmen has a builder check it every few weeks. Besides, where we're going is more secure than an air-raid shelter.'

She wasn't kidding, either, for once we had entered through the arched doorway and trotted obediently in her wake up a central aisle that must once have been polished by the feet of generations of monks or nuns or both, we approached a huge carved block at least five feet high and ten feet from side to side. And we saw, as we moved around the side of it, it was at least a good eight feet from front to back. I immediately thought of an altar, but it had been built for more than just that purpose, because at the rear, a section of the stone had been swung away to reveal a doorway and stone steps leading down into the ground, their unevenness revealed by a pale light filtering up from somewhere deep below.