Buch lesen: «Lords, Ladies, Butlers and Maids: Period Erotica in Private Houses»

Lips Like Heaven
Donna George Storey

A good servant is invisible. To be seen is to ask for trouble.

So my aunt told me before I went into service, soon after my parents died.

But she hadn’t warned me not to be heard.

My ‘trouble’ began innocently enough, with all four members of the staff gathered around the piano in the drawing room, enjoying a bit of music after a hard day’s work. Had the family been in residence, we would have properly confined ourselves to the servants’ hall, but the stylish London townhouse looked more like a storeroom as we prepared the newlywed home of Mr and Mrs Charles E. Shaw. Each day more crates arrived, luxurious furnishings ordered by the master’s wife-to-be. Meanwhile Alice and I polished woodwork, scrubbed floors and tidied up the mess left by the painters. Mr Barker, on loan from the master’s father’s London house, stocked the wine cellar and pantries, and old Tim put up fresh wallpaper. None of us knew if the mistress would keep us on, but the uncertainty gave our days a holiday air, which was why we dared assemble in the drawing room in the first place.

We never dreamed our master would drop in on us unannounced.

Mr Barker was playing the piano and I led the songs – back home I was famous for my clear soprano. ‘The English Jenny Lind’ the boys called me. And so I was quite lost in the light-hearted ditty ‘Now Is the Month of Maying’, when suddenly the smiling faces of my fellow servants froze in horror. Slowly I turned to see three tall gentlemen, resplendent in evening clothes, regarding the lot of us with amusement.

Mr Barker jumped to his feet and bowed stiffly. ‘Mr Shaw, I’m terribly sorry. We weren’t expecting you this evening, sir.’

I’d not yet met my employer. He’d been as invisible to me as I was supposed to be to him. Yet when the most handsome of the three said, ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Barker, I’m glad to see you all enjoying yourselves,’ and fixed his eyes directly on my person, my whole body tingled.

Mr Barker was the only miscreant to keep his wits. ‘We’ll be getting back downstairs, sir. May I bring refreshment?’

The master was still gazing at me. ‘I suppose we could do with another bottle of port. And I’d like this nightingale to stay and sing us a few songs.’

Mr Barker, Alice and Tim vanished like phantoms, and I was left alone with the gentlemen, altogether too visible to their glittering eyes.

‘Don’t be frightened.’ The master smiled. ‘You have a lovely voice. You could be on the stage.’

I blushed. Back home some had suggested as much, but more as a taunt for ‘putting on airs’ when I sang.

The master seated himself at the piano and began to play a lively tune I didn’t recognise.

‘I didn’t know you could play so well, Charles. Perhaps you should go on the stage yourself?’ said the blond gentleman who sported a thin moustache, smirking.

‘He only uses his talents to seduce married ladies, Sheldon,’ said the tallest man, who had striking green eyes. ‘I wonder if his own wife will prove equally irresistible?’

The master merely laughed.

As the gentlemen all seemed quite merry from drink, I inched toward the door, hoping to make my escape.

Alas, they hadn’t forgotten me. Green Eyes caught me by the arm and pushed me playfully toward the piano. ‘Don’t run away from us, little bird.’

‘Voice as sweet as a Lillie Langtry’s,’ the blond declared, his eyes sweeping over me as if I were something good to eat.

The master was watching me too. With his sky-blue eyes and wheat-coloured hair, he was by far the most handsome.

‘What’s your name then?’ he asked me gently.

‘Irene, sir.’

‘You’re new in our family employ?’

‘They took me on a few weeks ago to help get the house ready. But it’s up to your missus if I stay,’ I blurted out foolishly.

The blond gentleman slipped his arm around my waist. ‘If you don’t keep her, I will. How about a kiss from those heavenly lips, sweet bird?’

I turned my head away. I knew when a man was drunk, whether on French wine or public-house ale.

Fortunately the master came to my rescue. ‘Your seduction might fare better with a bit more subtlety and a lot more respect, my good man. Now let the poor girl go.’

‘If the lass were married, you’d sing a different tune, eh, Charles?’

The master glared at his friend and escorted me into the hall. ‘I apologise. Usually they’re good fellows, but they’re acting rotten tonight. Perhaps you’ll sing for me under more favourable circumstances?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Imprudent as it would surely be, the bold part of me very much wanted to.

‘Goodnight, then, little nightingale.’ With a smile, he bowed over my hand and gave it a kiss as if I were a fine lady.

Long after I returned to my narrow bedroom in the attic, my flesh still tingled from his touch.

* * *

Not one week later, Mr Barker approached me while I was unpacking dishes in the servants’ hall.

‘The master is here, Irene, and he’d like you to join him in the drawing room.’ I must have looked dismayed, for he added, ‘I know Mr Charles’s character well. He enjoys life as gentlemen do, but he’s never disgraced a servant. His tastes run to married ladies of his own station.’

‘So I’ve heard. I’m safe then?’

‘Quite.’

The master’s demeanour was very different from the night we met. He looked weary, but managed a smile when I joined him at the piano.

‘What would you like to sing tonight, Irene?’

‘Do you know “A Bird in a Gilded Cage”, sir?’

He frowned. ‘Unfortunately it reminds me too much of my own impending life sentence in a cage. How about another?’

‘“She Was Poor But She Was Honest”?’

He looked at me curiously, then grinned. ‘Oh, I see, you’re pulling my leg, you clever girl. Well, I’ve no intention of ruining a poor, virtuous maid. I am a gentleman above all, by aspiration, if not by birth.’

I had to smile, although I was sure he was toying with me as well. ‘How about a duet? “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden”.’

Pleased with my suggestion, he immediately launched into the popular tune. ‘Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?’

To my surprise, the master had a bewitching tenor voice, pure and slightly sad. Looking back, I see this was the moment I gave him my heart.

‘There are a few, kind sir, but simple girls, and proper too,’ I sang back, striking a coy pose as I did back home with my friends. Together we sang the famous song of courtship and flirtatious jealousy, warming to our roles as if we were indeed top of the playbill on a music-hall stage.

When the song was done, the master beamed. ‘That was jolly fun. We do harmonise well, don’t we?’ His blue eyes took on a mischievous glint. ‘You know, I’ve just come up with a wonderful plan. For revenge.’

‘Revenge against whom, sir?’

‘Those two ill-mannered brutes you met the other night. I’m giving a small party at a restaurant next week to celebrate my last days of freedom before I’m married off for the glory of our merchant dynasty. You could sing for us. I’d rent you a pretty costume and they’d have no recourse but to fall to their knees in admiration and apology. It would serve them right.’

‘It would, sir.’ I tried not to seem too eager, but thus far life in the city had meant homesickness and doubt about the future. Suddenly it promised untold adventures at this very moment.

‘We’d have to practise together every night.’

‘I’m at your service, sir. Singing with you cheers me as well.’

He paused and studied my face. ‘You’re so lovely. You must have a young man waiting at home for you.’

The beguiling heat of his attention loosened my lips more than was perhaps wise. ‘I do have an understanding with someone. He’s a baker’s apprentice, so we’re not free to marry for a while.’

‘Handsome, strapping lad, I’d wager?’

I nodded. That described my Paul well enough.

‘He’s a lucky man. I’ll think of him if ever I’m tempted.’ The master’s fingers brushed my hand ever so lightly. ‘Rest assured you’ll return to him as untouched as the day you left.’

The words themselves were soothing but his voice, dark and slow as molasses, hinted at unspeakable sins of the flesh. I felt a shudder – a sweet shudder – deep in my private places. I knew then I was no longer safe with him. Worse still, I was glad.

My adventure in the city had begun.

* * *

I wonder now if the master had planned it from the start, the path of degradation that gave me more pleasure than I’d ever known in my eighteen years? Not that he ever forced himself upon me. It was my own lust that drove me, one willing step at a time.

The following evening, when he requested one chaste kiss by the piano, I was the one to open my lips to him. I was the one who trembled with gladness when his mouth moved to my neck and uttered no protest when he fondled my bosom with his large, warm hands. He was the one to pull back panting and dishevelled, to send me off to a lonely bed out of respect to my betrothed.

The next afternoon we went to a theatrical shop in Covent Garden, where he had me fitted in a blue satin ‘songbird’ dress for the party. It was I who suggested a private showing of the new frock upon our return to the house. The costume was too low over the bosom and too high above the ankle to be respectable, but in the privacy of his dressing room the effect was most dramatic. The master showered me with the compliments that good manners had forbidden in the shop – how the dress exposed to advantage my divine décolletage and alabaster legs. Intoxicated by the homage, I pulled off the dress and bared my breasts fully to him. He stammered and swore he’d never seen a vision more lovely, snow kissed with berries. Then he suckled them while we lay on the daybed, until I begged him to take me. Once again, he withdrew, invoking my baker’s apprentice.

To be honest, I’d nearly forgotten Paul. He existed in an innocent past I might possibly return to one day, where aunts warned against honey-tongued seducers and honest girls found transcendence only in prayer. Now my greatest desire was to make the master lose his honour and become mine for a precious moment before marriage took him from me for ever.

Finally, he gave me a reward for my devotion. I was wrapped in his arms on the daybed, drunk on his kisses, when he shyly asked me to confess what liberties I’d allowed my sweetheart to take with my fair body.

I immediately stiffened. I’d never spoken such things aloud before.

‘Don’t be shy, Irene, dear. I won’t tell a soul.’

‘Well, I let him kiss me, of course.’

‘I suspected as much. Where did he kiss you?’

‘My lips and … my bosom.’

‘Nowhere else?’

‘No.’ Where else would there be?

He seemed rather disappointed at my purity. ‘I know there’s more, Irene. You’re far too comfortable in a man’s arms.’

I squirmed, oddly ashamed. ‘We did lie together in bed when his parents were away. But I didn’t let him undress me. He just held me and, well, he moved against me.’

The master’s breath quickened. ‘Did you touch his manhood with your sweet little hand?’

I began to realise it would be to my benefit to pretend I had. ‘Well, yes, but please don’t tell anyone. I’d die of shame.’

‘My lips are sealed, my dear. Did you like touching it?’

‘Yes. It was, um, very long.’ It seemed the proper thing to say.

The master sighed and pressed himself closer. ‘Tell me, Irene, did he spend? In your hand, perhaps, or elsewhere on your person?’

‘Why must we speak of him, sir?’ It was not so much the lewd questions but the silvery gleam in the master’s eye that discomfited, even as it aroused me.

He kissed my forehead. ‘Don’t you know? If a woman has already done something with one lover, it’s no longer a sin with the next.’

I’d heard a thousand rules about how a girl should comport herself with a man, but never this one. Suddenly my handsome master’s preference for married ladies began to make sense. Perhaps I could turn this queer lovers’ game to my advantage?

‘I’m ashamed to say where he did it, sir,’ I whispered into his shoulder.

‘You can tell me. I know all about what healthy young men and women do together. And I’m sure your beau has very healthy appetites.’

‘Will you say it for me then, sir?’

I felt his manhood twitch against my thigh. ‘Very well. Did he spend in your beautiful mouth?’

It was all I could do not to gasp. I’d never dreamed of such an act, and yet immediately my cheeks tingled with a perverse desire to be filled with the hard baton imprisoned in my beloved’s trousers.

‘Yes, in my mouth,’ I lied, ‘but it was only once. I felt so ashamed and clumsy.’

‘There, there, we all improve with practice.’

I took a deep breath. ‘May I practise with you, sir?’

He laughed softly. ‘You have become shameless, haven’t you? Still, the French way is a useful method to please a man when you don’t want a child. Your beau was honourable to suggest it, so I in turn would be honoured to help you refine your skills for him.’

Thus I found myself kneeling between the master’s naked thighs, in a most intimate congress with his male member. Half of me wanted to close my eyes in terror, the other half wanted to study it like a schoolbook: the ruddy, rigid pole rearing up from the cushion of hair, the purplish head that poked through the folds at the top. My belly was in a knot, excitement mixed with fear. Could he tell I’d told a fib?

His unfailing gentlemanly courtesy soon calmed me.

‘Kiss it first. Gently. That’s right. Now take it in your mouth. Just the tip.’

My lips stretched around his knob. Down between my legs, my other mouth contracted in sympathy.

‘That’s good. Now slowly, up and down. You remember well. Is this how he liked it?’ Gazing down at me with lust-veiled eyes, he rocked his hips up, pushing his cock deeper into my willing orifice. ‘You may feel like choking, but just relax your throat. Good girl. Very good.’

Never had I done anything so bestial, so decadent. Never had anything brought such dark pleasure. My master was finally in my power.

‘Put your hand around the bottom and hold it fast. Now move up and down, hand and lips together. Oh, God, yes.’

He arched back, his eyes squeezed shut.

‘Harder, suck it harder.’

My jaw was sore, but I persevered, revelling in the way the fleshy tube responded to my attentions.

‘Harder, oh, Jesus Christ Almighty.’

The shaft jerked between my lips. Hot, bitter liquid filled my mouth, and I fought the impulse to spit, forcing myself instead to swallow it down like a good girl takes medicine. The master groaned and pawed my hair, then went slack like a puppet.

I furtively wiped the last drops of male essence from my chin.

‘Come here, you darling girl.’ He hugged me close as if he’d never release me. ‘Lips like heaven, that’s what you have. Only your second time and you’re better than the whores in Paris.’

By and by, he asked if my betrothed had shown me the French way to please a woman.

‘He started to, but his mother came back from the market too soon.’ What else could I say? I was desperate to know that mysterious art.

‘Then I’ll carry on where he left off,’ he said, peeling away my drawers and putting his own heavenly lips to my secret female place. His tongue darted between my nether lips, probing the softness until I let out a cry of delight. Next he began to lick me there as you might a strawberry ice at a country fair, up and down, up and down, with unflagging ardour. A pressure was building in my belly, like a fire, crackling and wild. The fire blazed higher, then suddenly shattered in my womb into a thousand tiny flames. I writhed like a madwoman as an invisible fist closed and opened between my legs.

When I came back to my senses, the master was smiling down at me.

‘You’re a natural, you know. I wonder if you’d be my accomplice in another naughty scheme to put my friends in their proper place. Would you like to hear it?’