Amanda tossed her blonde mane back and surrendered up her nakedness to the shower. Closing her eyes, she relished the sensation of the jet of water raking her breasts. The sluice rinsed the foaming gel she had palmed into her bosom, driving the bubbles down her deep cleavage to her pubis below. The scented foam gathered in the nest of her gold pubic fuzz. Parting her thighs, and crushing her bottom into the black tiles behind, Amanda felt the cascade hammering at her belly, hips and thighs. Soon, the bubbles were swirling at her feet then draining away between her toes. With them went some – but not all – of her anger. Only a week ago, just as the Canadian project had been declared a success, she had been downsized from the consultancy. The process had been brisk and humiliating. Denied access to her desk in the Millbank office block, she had been handed the last eight months of her working life in a bin liner and escorted to the door. The severance cheque had been big, but the lies had been bigger.
‘My problem is, Amanda,’ the project manager had explained, ‘I just don’t have the scope here to use your talents to their full potential.’
Blonde, too young, too successful. A threat, Amanda had decoded.
As the anger seeped out of her naked body, new sensations flooded in. Glimpsing the reflection of her breasts in the tiles opposite, Amanda raised her hands and cupped their wet flesh. The trapped nipples, already hardened by the punishing shower, thickened and puckered into pleasure buds. Amanda squeezed her breasts, splaying her thighs wider apart and grinding her buttocks into the tiles behind. Below the dripping pubic fringe, within the velvet curtains of labial flesh, a flame ignited. Her hands worked her breasts more fiercely, ruthlessly seeking to fuel the fire. Closing her eyes tightly, Amanda vowed never to be bullied, cheated or manipulated ever again. She had brains, spirit and a good track record. She had been too naive and trusting – but would be so no more. From now on, she determined, punishing her captive breasts and tormenting her nipples beween finger and thumb pincers, she would play tough. Tough, and dirty, if she had to. The smouldering heat between her thighs blazed, releasing droplets of molten lust. Her labia parted with a hungry smile, the flesh-lips glistening in their eagerness. Amanda guided her right hand down, palming her flat belly and caressing her thighs. The tip of her thumb sought out and found her clitoris. The flesh-thorn rose to salute the touch of her thumb as it stroked – with ever increasing pressure – until Amanda arched up on tiptoe, tensed for her climax.
Snap. The brass letter box rapped loudly against the white door of her Notting Hill flat as the post hit the Macedonian carpet below. In her shower, the water a mere teasing trickle now, Amanda’s spinning brain pounced on the sound. Close to orgasm, and surrendering all sensations to it, she struggled to ignore the arrival of her mail and tried to concentrate on coming. But the sound had insinuated itself into her mind. Was it a reprieve? A belated recognition of the vital contribution she had made to the Canadian project? An invitation to return to her desk at Millbank? Thumbing herself mercilessly, the nude blonde pushed these annoying distractions aside – but they remained to haunt her. With a snarl of frustration, she grabbed a towel and scampered out to the hall to pick up the letter. Retracing her damp footprints, she perched her bottom on the edge of a leather sofa, sinking her cheeks into the supple hide. The letter absorbed her for several minutes. She read it quickly then perused it carefully at length, penetrating the thicket of legal jargon. She was, the letter instructed, to contact the senders – a firm of solicitors – who had information to convey to her which could prove to be of considerable material advantage. Pruning the letter of its herewiths and thereunto foliage, she knew she had come into some serious gravy.
‘Yippee.’ Amanda wiggled her bare bottom into the leather, hugging her breasts excitedly. Aunt Clare had died nine weeks ago. It must be her will. Scanning the letter, Amanda picked up the phone and made an appointment for ten thirty that morning.
Rushing the remains of her cold coffee and toast, Amanda dashed into her bedroom. Picking up the abandoned towel, she patted her breasts, removing stray toast crumbs and sparkling droplets of water. The satin flesh bulged as she rubbed more vigorously, squashing her swollen curves. With the towel between her thighs, she dragged it gently up towards her belly, catching and inflaming her clitoris. The climax denied her in the shower began to well up implacably. Amanda glanced at her Mickey Mouse clock. Nine twenty-three. She just had time.
Kneeling, legs apart, she threaded a single black Fogal stocking between her thighs, clasping it tightly – one hand in front, the other stretched out behind. The sheer nylon caught in her cleft, biting deeply into the shadowed flesh between her heavy buttocks. Amanda dug her toes into the carpet as she guided the stocking expertly, allowing it to ravish the ribbon of velvety flesh between her cheeks. The tremors in her belly arrowed down like forked lightning as the taut nylon skimmed between her sticky labia, teasing her clitoris up into a peak of exquisite agony. The stretched nylon grew stained and glistened darkly as she plied it deftly. Her blue eyes deepened from cornflower to indigo as the Fogal rasped her clitoris with an increasingly savage tenderness. Amanda gasped. Her pumping hands became a blur. At the base of her belly, the inner muscled walls spasmed – she suddenly squealed aloud and tumbled forward, pressing her face into the carpet. Squeezing her thighs together, trapping the skein of black stocking between her labia, she rolled over on to her back. She was coming. As the orgasm surged within her tingling slit, she splayed her legs and arms. Spread-eagled, she surrendered and came, pounding her buttocks into the carpet as the gentle violence of her climax gripped her naked body.
Nine thirty-eight. No time for another shower. Amanda splashed her sticky flesh with cupped handfuls of rose water to mask the pungent tang and stepped into a pair of white cotton panties. Although early June, with all the promise of another hot London day, she knew the treachery of a sudden summer downpour. Skirt and blouse, she decided, playing safe. The white panties stretched across her plump bottom, the elastic hugging her trim waist amorously. Palming them smoothly into place, she plucked at the cleft and fingered the cotton away where it clung to her sticky labia. The brassiere was ice-blue, a lightweight silk half-cupped confection that bound her bosom with surprising firmness, disciplining the ripe breasts and controlling their weight within its strict bondage.
Standing in front of her full-length looking glass, Amanda studied her reflection. The hastily donned scanties of cotton and silk contrived to reveal more than conceal her curved charms. Full frontal: she appraised her slender legs sweeping up to the firm thighs, their flesh honey-hued and satin soft. She patted her flat tummy and allowed her fingers to stray at the cleavage between her thrusting breasts. Through the pale-blue silk, she saw the bold, mulberry nipples. Turning, she glanced into the glass at her profile. The buttocks were pert, slightly heavy and invitingly rounded. The bosom was superb. Amanda twiddled with her left earlobe – a gesture common to her when contemplating. She perused her breasts, scrutinizing them closely – the half-cupped brassiere thrust them up deliciously.
Five to ten. Mickey Mouse looked as if he had just clapped his hands to hurry Amanda out of her narcissistic reverie. Her tangled mane of wet blonde hair was briskly towelled before submitting to twenty punishing strokes of her cherrywood hairbrush. Too hot for tights, and there was no time for the delicacy of stockings and a waspie suspender. Her breasts bulged in their half-cups as she stepped into a cream mini-shirt, and joggled as she struggled into a pale-blue shirt. Gold ear-studs. Cartier watch. One minute past ten. Amanda grabbed her sandals, purse and a cab in Pembridge Road and made it to the solicitors in Bird Cage Walk exactly on time.
The receptionist looked like she should have been in a girl-band. Reluctantly dragging herself away from her nail varnish, Cadbury’s Flake and fashion glossy, she showed Amanda into a spacious, yet still cluttered, office. Hogarth prints, deed boxes, files, folders and dusty legal tomes littered the walls, shelves and desk tops in sober chaos. An elderly man looked up, peering quizzically at Amanda over gold-rimmed glasses.
‘So good of you to come –’ he peered at the letter Amanda had shown him ‘– Miss Silk.’
Amanda, suppressing her smile at the memory of her black Fogal stocking, merely nodded and looked across the desk expectantly.
Twelve minutes later, Amanda was none the wiser. The solicitor mumbled and bumbled as he searched for documents, pored through closely typed paragraphs and fiddled endlessly with his glasses. Amanda, quick to think and fast to act, indulged his slow progress. Tuning into his old-fashioned charm and Victorian turn of speed, she settled down and waited patiently – wishing the polished seat of her wooden chair were a little kinder to her numbing buttocks. He rambled, in unconnected snatches of speed, about her late Aunt Clare’s sound business sense, but was maddeningly vague on detail. Nothing concrete was forthcoming, but clearly Aunt Clare had been running some sort of lucrative enterprise right up to the end.
‘A lady of considerable acumen,’ he remarked, flicking open a file which Amanda saw contained the will.
‘Am I –’ she began.
The door opened abruptly and a stern-faced woman in her thirties walked in. Amanda looked up, noting the grey eyes, dark hair and the supple grace of the athletic figure. Dressed in severely tailored business style, the woman exuded efficiency, authority and a brisk sense of purpose.
‘Thank you, Dobson. I will take it from here,’ she said crisply. ‘Amanda Silk? Celia Flaxstone. I am familiar with your late aunt’s affairs. I’m afraid I wasn’t available to greet you but I distinctly remember telling that wretched receptionist that I was to deal with you.’
Amanda noted the flash of anger in the grey eyes of Celia Flaxstone, though the thin smile on the lipstick-free mouth was sustained. A woman capable of wrath, Amanda thought. Mr Dobson ambled out as Celia Flaxstone commandeered his vacated chair.
‘How much has Dobson told you?’
‘Practically nothing.’ Amanda shrugged, slightly startled by the ferocity of the tone.
‘Practically?’ echoed the woman, searching Amanda’s face with her grey eyes.
‘Only that she was successful in her enterprise.’
‘I see.’ The tone softened – more from relief than civility. ‘To be brief. Your aunt had, in her later years, concentrated all her energies and assets in one enterprise. The details are immaterial –’
‘A farm? Racehorses?’ Amanda queried, remembering that Aunt Clare lived in the depths of Suffolk.
‘She was moderately successful,’ Celia Flaxstone continued imperturbably, ignoring Amanda’s questions, ‘but somewhat eccentric. There is a codicil in her will stipulating that any beneficiaries should refrain from inquiring into the nature of her business or indeed become in any manner whatsoever involved in it. I will add that in my –’
‘This business. What is it?’
‘I think I have made it clear that the codicil in her will precludes any disclosure of that nature. A little whim of an elderly lady, let us say, but which I, as her executrix, must honour and uphold. I suggest that –’
‘How much did it make?’
‘Difficult to say,’ the solicitor countered suavely. ‘I suggest that you leave it all to me. Your aunt was not all that successful. There is no fortune –’
‘But Mr Dobson –’
‘Dobson was being loyal. Age defending age.’
Amanda tugged at her earlobe, wishing that the gentle if maddeningly slow Mr Dobson were sitting opposite. She trusted him. She did not trust Celia Flaxstone. No, not distrust, exactly. But certainly dislike, Amanda reflected, twiddling with her ear.
‘Just leave it to me, Miss Silk. I will tie up all the outstanding loose ends for you and after an initial lump sum, say ten or twelve thousand, I will arrange an annuity for you, possibly amounting to as much as three and a half thousand a year.’
Amanda suddenly resented being managed so efficiently, as if she were a troublesome child. The solicitor was now speaking rapidly, overriding the chance to query or question what seemed to be already settled and decided. Amanda could not recall giving her consent. It was as if Celia Flaxstone were determined to exclude Amanda from getting anywhere near to her late aunt’s affairs.
‘I will organise death duties and capital gains, of course, as part of my letters of administration.’
She’s fobbing me off. She’s fobbing me off with ten grand and a yearly handful of chicken feed, Amanda suddenly thought. Her business experience, and the MBA completed last year, had taught her all she needed to know about capital transfer tax. Besides, if her aunt’s estate included buildings or land, the legacy would be much greater than any sum Celia Flaxstone had declared.
‘Ascot or Epsom?’
Amanda looked blankly across the heap of files.
‘The Season. Will you be going? The tennis starts at the Queen’s Club tomorrow.’
I’m getting the thank-you-for-coming-in-to-see-me-and-now-it’s-time-to-go treatment, Amanda realised, flushing slightly with resentment.
‘The will,’ she blurted out, not meaning to be so direct. ‘May I see –’
‘Probably still in the probate office,’ Celia lied, closing the folder Mr Dobson had earlier managed to locate and begin to peruse. ‘When in due course the document is forthcoming I will of course forward a copy to you.’ The grey eyes narrowed, the resolute lips pursed. Celia Flaxstone stood up and held out her hand. The interview was clearly at an end, although Amanda was far from satisfied.
‘Nice little windfall, and pocket money to follow. Provided the process is uninterrupted.’
Amanda sensed she was being warned off.
‘Best keep these things uncomplicated,’ the solicitor purred.
Celia’s grey eyes met Amanda’s blue gaze over the desk top. They shook hands perfunctorily, though Amanda sensed the strength in the solicitor’s firm grip. Amanda knew that the concluding words had been a subtle threat. Accept what I tell you – or else risk delay, perhaps risk everything. With this stern advice ringing in her ears, Amanda was escorted to the front door. It closed behind her and, to her surprise, Amanda heard the latch click and a bolt being drawn.
Blinded by the late-morning sun, Amanda paused, resting her hand on the black iron railings. They were hot. Stung into alertness, she felt her anger rising. She had, she knew, been efficiently managed by Celia Flaxstone, who was even now probably laughing at how she had effectively dealt with the dizzy young blonde who had come in hope of a fortune. Turning, she remembered the sound of the front door being locked and bolted. Amanda felt a blaze of angry resentment surging up within her. She would go straight back in there, she decided, and confront the capable Celia Flaxstone. Undaunted by the stern authority of the dominant woman, Amanda resolved to demand to see the will.
It started to rain. Preoccupied with her resentment of Celia, Amanda had not noticed the dark clouds gather to eclipse the sun over central London. The big spots of summer rain fell sporadically at first, but soon her bosom was damp, the ice-blue material of her blouse clinging to her swollen breasts. She skipped down the five stone steps, along the pavement then around the side of the solicitor’s office – a converted Georgian town house. She went down the narrow alley, threaded past a wheely bin and emerged into a postage-stamp-sized rear garden. A pair of French windows, open, would lead her back into the receptionist’s office, she calculated. Amanda approached, no real plan of action formed, cowering now in the steady deluge.
‘I told you twice. Amanda Silk was not to be seen until I was available,’ the harsh voice replied, cutting off the apologetic – almost tearful – receptionist.
Amanda paused, keeping carefully out of sight.
‘I’m sorry –’
‘You shall be, girl. Forgetfulness can be easily remedied, though. I am going to give you something you’ll remember. Bend over. Across the desk. Quickly, girl.’
Amanda’s blue eyes widened as she inched closer to the glass, spellbound by what she thought – but could hardly believe – she had just heard. She flinched as the glass doors were suddenly closed shut against the rain, leaving her unable to overhear any more. Pressing her breasts into the wisteria, at which her grazed nipples peaked up in protest, she sidled towards the large pane. Through its spattered glass, she peered in. The receptionist was bending over her desk, the bottle of nail varnish and half-eaten Flake crushed beneath her breasts. Amanda saw the varnished nails of the girl’s splayed fingers spangling under the glare of the desk lamp. Celia Flaxstone, her back to the French windows, had already dragged the girl’s skirt up over her hips and was now jerking down a pair of tiny black panties. The solicitor had grasped the elastic in her fist and her knuckles dimpled the soft swell of the girl’s buttocks as they were bared. The panties were left in a restricting band halfway down the thighs, biting into the flesh that they bound.
Amanda’s throat tightened and her pulse raced as she watched the solicitor dominantly palming the bare bottom she was about to punish. Words were being exchanged – stern admonishment from the chastiser, penitent mumbling from the lips of the girl – but Amanda could not make out what was being said. She strained to understand the muffled tones, horrified yet fascinated by the scene that met her gaze. The straightened index finger hovering above the naked buttocks tapped the left cheek imperiously. Amanda knew that the talking was concluded – and that the beating was about to begin.
It was incredible. Here, now, in Bird Cage Walk, where London at noon thronged with taxis, tourists and theatre-ticket touts, a bare-bottomed girl was about to be harshly disciplined.
Amanda felt her slit softening with sticky warmth as, through the glass, she saw Celia Flaxstone stoop, retrieve a wooden hairbrush from the bottom desk drawer, then slide the drawer shut with a thrust of her thigh. Weighing the heavy brush meditatively, she thumbed the soft bristles as the polished pearwood back kissed her open palm. Seconds later, the solicitor planted her feet apart and unbuttoned the cuff of her right sleeve. Loosened, the sleeve was drawn back up to the elbow. The slender fingers gripping the hairbrush tightened around the handle. The brush swept upward, pausing at shoulder height. Across the desk, the bare buttocks clenched, fearful of the impending stroke.
Amanda heard both the sharp sound of hard wood against soft flesh and the yelp of anguish. Twice, in blistering succession, the hairbrush swiped down across the upturned buttocks, reddening their peach tones instantly. The naked cheeks joggled beneath each fierce stroke.
Amanda crushed her rebellious nipples into the wisteria, dragging her bosom against the tangled foliage to fuel the burning delight. Dry mouthed, wide-eyed and with a tingling slit quite wet from her excitement, she stared into the office as though hypnotised. Celia Flaxstone had administered nine slicing swipes of the brush across the scarlet bottom. She now inverted the brush to stroke the bristles across the punished cheeks. Despite the black panties binding her lower thighs, the girl across the desk wriggled and writhed, her white sandals threshing the empty air behind her. Celia, utterly in control, reached down and pinned the squirming receptionist firmly by the nape of her neck. Amanda slipped her hand under her mini-skirt and thumbed her clitoris as she watched the varnished nails scrabbling to grip the desk top. She thumbed more frantically as she watched the dominant chastiser ravish the cleft between the hot cheeks with downward strokes of the bristles. Amanda started to come: she must not, she realised. She winced as she grazed her knees against the wall, desperately trying to deny herself the orgasm she burned for. No, not here, not now. Across the desk, as the bristles licked at her sticky innermost flesh, the receptionist pressed her face on to the polished wood, planting a red lipsticked kiss into the reflection of her own mouth as her clenched fists drummed frantically.
‘Pull your panties up, girl, and get back to work. I want that will retyped before it is sent off to the Silk girl,’ Celia Flaxstone barked, using the hairbrush fastidiously now to sweep an offending speck from her shoulder.
Retyped. Amanda, her brain a riot of confusion, grasped that single word – and glimpsed the enormous meaning it contained. She turned and scurried away, her heart suddenly hammering as she collided with – but caught and steadied with her trembling hands – a wheely bin.
Cooler, though neither calmer nor more collected, Amanda slipped into the powder room and went straight into a cubicle. Seconds later, with her mini-skirt around her hips, and one outstretched arm against the wall to support her quivering body, she yanked down her damp panties and fingered herself furiously. Crack, crack, crack: summoning up each searing stroke, Amanda relived the delicious display of dominance and discipline she had witnessed minutes before. Crack. At the seventh remembered stroke of polished wood across writhing buttocks, her knees buckled. Crack. At the eighth, her belly dissolved, the muscled walls shuddering as they spasmed. Crack. Behind closed eyes she saw the hot bottom receive the ninth – and came loudly.
Emerging from the cubicle, Amanda was greeted by the wide-eyed stare of three young women. Preening themselves for lunch, they had overheard her orgasm. They stood, open-mouthed, lipsticks frozen in midair. Amanda rinsed her hands, tossed her blonde hair and strode out into the busy restaurant.
London was lunching. The Cypriot manager, a wily old fox, placed the single blonde in the blue blouse on a banquette in the window. A lamb to pull in the expense-account wolves passing by. Amanda ordered lemon chicken and a Sea Breeze. Gazing out of the window as she nibbled at a bread stick, she suddenly realised that she could just see, sixty yards away on the opposite side of the street, the solicitor’s office. It had stopped raining. At the next table, the three pretty young lambs from the powder room chain-smoked through their first bottle of Chardonnay as they pretended to ignore the wolves at the window. From time to time they would glance at Amanda. Looking up, she saw the curiosity in their eyes develop into a keen interest. Later, tackling her mango water-ice, Amanda tried to shut out the braying laughter around her. Three wolves had joined the three lambs at their table – the Cypriot knew his stuff – and champagne had been ordered. Amanda needed to concentrate.
Her options were entirely different now, she realised. It was no longer a matter of simply returning to confront Celia Flaxstone about the will. Two significant things had altered all that. The words ‘bend over’ and ‘retyped’. Celia Flaxstone was a force to be reckoned with. That much Amanda fully appreciated. How to do so, she was not at all certain. Admitting her fear of the stern solicitor, Amanda scraped her spoon across her empty dish. Confrontation was completely out of the question. The memory of Celia Flaxstone burned as brightly in her mind as those strokes of the hard wooden hairbrush had burned that girl’s bare bottom. No, she decided, remembering some of the tricks her MBA had taught her. Lateral thinking was called for. Subterfuge.
She paid her bill but lingered over coffee. Before it had gone cold, Amanda saw what she had hoped to see: Celia Flaxstone emerging from the doorway, descending the stone steps into Bird Cage Walk and hailing a cab. Three minutes later – Amanda had calculated for five – the receptionist skipped down the pavement, yogurt and Walkman in hand, heading no doubt for St James’s Park. The hairbrush had not, Amanda noted, taken the wiggle from her pert walk.
She left the restaurant, detoured to buy a Hermes scarf and a pair of Raybans, and mounted the steps once more. Inside, closing the door carefully, she stood by the receptionist’s desk, listening intently. She heard the ragged applause from the Oval as Atherton swiped a six. Mr Dobson was listening to the cricket. But where? Three oak doors were ajar, because of the heat. The middle office was the one where the will awaited her curiosity. Amanda tiptoed to the door on her left. Peering in, she smiled as she saw Mr Dobson sipping his pale sherry. Good. The Hermes scarf and Raybans – together with her cover story of buying a farmhouse in Chiantishire and needing guidance on Italian property laws – would not be necessary if she was quick.
Inside the middle office, her search for the will proved fruitless. Damn. She could not risk staying too long, or making too much noise. At the Oval, the crowd roared as Atherton was dropped at the slips. Amanda froze, relaxing as she heard the cork to the sherry bottle pop softly. Defeated, she sighed and resigned herself to failure. Out by the receptionist’s desk, she paused, fingering the desk across which the girl had been punished. Remembering the wood spanking across bare buttocks, Amanda opened the drawer and peeped at the cruel brush. Fingering it slowly, her nostrils caught the unmistakeable tang of excitement and arousal. In the paper bin, she spotted the damp tissues. The receptionist had dried herself after the punishment, tossing the tissues away with the remains of her Cadbury’s Flake. Amanda smiled, thrilled to know another’s intimate secrets. Then she saw the will. Of course, she realised. Celia Flaxstone’s last words were to have the will retyped. As Atherton skied another improbable six, Amanda xeroxed the four-page original and made her exit unobserved.
Two days later, with London sweltering under a pitiless sun, Amanda sat naked in front of a large electric fan. It whipped up strands of her blonde mane, the fine hair lashing her cheeks. It whipped up the corners of the pages set out in two piles before her. Amanda ignored her hair but pinned the rippling pages down with her thumbs. Drawing her knees up to her breasts, her frown of concentration deepened as she studied the contents before her. The pages under her left thumb were from Celia Flaxstone, supposedly a copy of her late aunt’s will. The codicil preventing Amanda from making any inquiries into her aunt’s affairs was clearly typed before the date and spidery signature. The pages under her right thumb were those she had xeroxed from the original will. They contained several references to her aunt’s enterprises – hereafter known as ‘the business’ – but no codicil.
‘Gotcha,’ Amanda whispered, peeling her perspiring breasts away from her knees and, splaying her thighs as she swivelled towards the electric fan, surrendered her hot slit to its cool zephyrs. It was already in the eighties, and the fan proved insufficient. Scampering into the kitchen, she raided a bottle of Krug from the fridge. Squatting back down before the fan, she raised a toast to Aunt Clare and then hugged the chilled Krug between her thighs, allowing her labial lips to kiss the dark-green glass.
It was only after she had put the phone down that she was pleased she had decided to use the kiosk. Already, inquisitive fingers at the other end of the line would be jabbing at the 1471 buttons to trace her call. Using the phone in Westbourne Park Road, Amanda had dialled one of the two Suffolk numbers scribbled in the margin of the original will. Not her aunt’s home number, which she recognised. The other one.
‘Sternwood Grange?’ she asked, using the only clue buried in the four pages she had xeroxed.
‘Who is calling?’ a cautious voice countered, giving nothing away.
Ignoring this, Amanda asked for her aunt by name.
Amanda was in turn ignored. ‘Who is calling?’ the voice repeated.
Amanda echoed her request to speak with her aunt. A safe gambit, she thought. It was checked.
‘One moment please.’ Amanda was being redirected.
As she listened to the extension ring, she fed another pound into the box. The line went absolutely dead as the secrecy button was applied. There was a click. She heard breathing.
‘Sternwood Grange?’ Amanda asked.
‘How did you come by this number?’ a different voice countered politely.
Amanda pressed on, ducking the challenge and asking for her aunt, carefully avoiding any claim to kinship.
‘This number is ex-directory. Who are you, please, and how did you get this –’
Amanda, her hands now wet from the humidity of the phone box, hung up.
The weekend brought the inevitable thunderstorm and, with it, a slim report from the agency Amanda had instructed to investigate Sternwood Grange. The agency had been thorough but the facts were meagre. Confirming the address and ex-directory number, the report set out its findings in two brief paragraphs. Amanda read them over and over again. Sternwood Grange had been acquired by her aunt six years ago. Not listed as either a country club or a private hotel, it operated as something of an exclusive retreat for the very privileged. Special Branch had been known to escort some of the more illustrious visitors. Set in deep isolation in a forgotten pocket of rural Suffolk, it had a heli-pad, but otherwise access was severely restricted and strict privacy maintained. It was still a going concern, Amanda read, but the agency could not estimate its worth or value, drawing a blank after persuing a financial trail that expired in an offshore company.
One detail detained her. The female staff of ten were not recruited locally but were young women rescued from the wrath of Knightsbridge and Mayfair magistrates courts. Aunt Clare, Amanda mused, must have been running some eccentric charitable sideline, saving girls already in jeopardy from ending up on the game.
As the thunder cleared over west London, so did her resolve. The next step was obvious. Contact Celia Flaxstone, accept her terms. Then get down to Sternwood Grange, in disguise. Seek work there, as a maid, perhaps. Just for a week or two, giving Amanda the chance to work out exactly how much this exclusive retreat generated and how much her late aunt’s legacy was really worth.
* * *
Amanda settled back into the first-class comfort of the 15.05 as the train pulled out of Liverpool Street and nosed its way out across north-east London. Gazing out at the winking beacon on top of Canary Wharf, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the carriage window. Her blonde mane was now a brunette bob, the cut severely chic. She grinned at the transformation. She had shopped in the Portobello Road for the most tarty outfit, dumped the Cartier and worked out a plausible cover. Things had got a bit hot at the escort agency, she would say. The police had visited, so had the VAT men. Amanda – Mandy from now on – needed to go to ground for a couple of weeks. She had heard through the other girls about this place. Sternwood Grange, a place where a girl could seek work and refuge.
She dozed, lulled by the rhythm of the wheels. The train journey reminded her of going back to boarding school eight or nine years ago. Sleeping fitfully, she dreamed of those schoolgirl days – and nights.
Days spent on the hockey pitch, serge knickers biting into her buttocks as, below the hem of her short pleated skirt, her naked legs goose-pimpled in the autumn chill. The shrill blast of a whistle, the patter of pumps, the squeals of excitement, the sudden rush of play. Her breasts bouncing loosely beneath her skimpy hockey vest, she would sweep up the wing. Off-side. Pausing to finger the annoying serge knickers from her cleft, she would plant her feet apart, gripping the hockey stick for a bully-off. A furious tackle: two panting, sweating girls. A collision thigh to thigh, buttock to buttock, with a spirited defender. Later, in the steaming showers, naked girls would shriek and giggle as towels were flicked across bare bottoms, bosoms were squeezed and nipples pinched, and old scores settled as new ‘crushes’ began. Sometimes, the captain of prefects would prowl the changing rooms, cane in hand. The girl who had fouled so blatantly would be called out of the steam and sternly instructed to bend over. Instantly surrounded by a dozen naked, glistening girls who shivered with excitement, the bare-bottomed miscreant would be slowly, searchingly caned.
Then there were the nights. Murmuring contentedly in her dream, Amanda recaptured delicious memories of her boarding-school nights. The scramble for bed to avoid the swish of a slipper or sterner crack of a wooden paddle across upturned, defenceless young bottoms as the dorm senior patrolled between the beds. Lights out. Furtive rustlings as pubescent maidenhood pushed away thoughts of Latin unseens and the French pluperfect and secretly studied more urgent texts: fingers blindly reading the warm flesh between parted thighs. Lights on, abruptly. The dorm senior back to uncover and punish anything untoward. Forbidden literature, smuggled tuck, a trace of lipstick or any infringement of the spartan rules would merit instant chastisement. Amanda recalled spankings as discipline was dispensed. Lights out. Muffled sobbing from the hot-bottomed girl three beds along. Snuggling down into her starched sheets, Amanda would kindle her burning delight, her fingers busy at her hot slit.
The train hurtled through Manningtree. Amanda stirred sleepily and opened one eye. Startled by her silver leather jacket reflected by the tinted glass at her shoulder, she smiled and woke up. She was beginning a little adventure, an adventure in which she would outwit Celia Flaxstone and defend not only her late aunt’s wishes but her true inheritance.
Aunt Clare. Amanda resumed her interrupted sleep. Aunt Clare. The rhythm of the train repeated the name, insinuating it into Amanda’s dreams. She had not seen Aunt Clare since her eighteenth birthday. What a day to remember. Aunt Clare had taught Amanda at her knee – and across it – passing on her shrewd business acumen. She had sold the shares her aunt had given her for her seventeenth just before her eighteenth, the cash going on an extravagant caprice from Hyper Hyper for just under a thousand pounds. Asked for an explanation, Amanda had lied. Aunt Clare had been cross, very, very, cross. I’m too big to be spanked, thank goodness, and she’s too old to do it, Amanda had thought. As the stern sermon had come to a crisp conclusion, her aunt had taken the birthday blonde up from the drawing room to a bedroom above. A surprise, Amanda had thought gleefully. Upstairs, Aunt Clare’s hand had pressed the bell.
‘I am going to punish you,’ Aunt Clare had declared.
Amanda laughed in reply. ‘You’re too old,’ she had mocked, repeating her earlier thoughts. ‘And I’m too big–’
‘For your boots, young lady. Come in.’
Answering her aunt’s command, the new housekeeper stepped into the bedroom. ‘Madam?’
A beautiful young woman with large brown eyes. In her early thirties, she proved too strong for the younger girl to resist. Amanda was stretched across the bed, and her bottom was bared and prepared for punishment. Using the belt of the dress that had caused all the problems – crafted from supple pale-yellow leather – the athletic housekeeper had lashed Amanda as instructed.
‘Eighteen strokes,’ Aunt Clare had ordered. ‘One for each vain, foolish year.’
Cracking loudly and snapping harshly, the leather barked down across her reddening bottom. The hide proved painfully pliant, the young housekeeper deceptively strong.
‘Again,’ Aunt Clare had thundered, stretching out her hand to pin her squealing niece down by her shoulder into the duvet. ‘Again.’
‘No –’ Amanda sat bolt upright.
‘Ticket please, miss,’ a uniformed man said, shaking Amanda’s shoulder firmly to wake the sleeping blonde. ‘Thank you, miss. Change at Ipswich.’
Amanda drew several lingering glances as she waited for the queue at the coffee stall to shorten. The train to Saxmundham rattled in just as she asked for a large unsugared black. She made her train with seconds to spare. The summer countryside had not changed. It was exactly as Amanda remembered it when visiting her aunt. Deeply wooded acres opening out into large grain fields, the pale gold of June splashed with the scarlet of poppies.
She alighted at Saxmundham and almost made the mistake of giving her late aunt’s address to the taximan.
‘Sternwood Grange,’ she remembered, just in time.
‘You sure?’ he replied, the country vowels slow and almost slurred.
Amanda, conscious of her tarty appearance, flushed.
‘Cost you. It’s over fifteen miles away.’ He eyed her shrewdly. ‘Well off the beaten track.’ He got out of his taxi to take her bag, his frown showing his reluctance.
She got in, showing him a couple of tenners.
Sternwood Grange was tucked away in the heart of a densely wooded estate. Standing in two acres of neglected grounds, it was an early-Elizabethan pile which successive generations had both added to and improved. It boasted lawns which rabbits had commandeered for themselves, an overgrown terrace, a dilapidated tennis court and an overall air of faded grandeur. No gardener had plied a trowel or pushed a mower here for at least six years, probably from the time my aunt acquired the place, Amanda thought as she walked the last hundred yards from the taxi up the weed-choked drive to the front door.
A neatly uniformed, heavily breasted maid looked surprised to find Amanda on the doorstep. Reluctantly, she showed Amanda into the spacious hall. Amanda noted the lavish furnishings, ranging from gilded baroque to exquisite late Adam. The maid took her downstairs and disappeared into the housekeeper’s office, once the preserve of butlers who used it for their pantry.
‘Yes?’ the housekeeper inquired briskly, dismissing the maid and appraising Amanda’s tarty clothes.
Amanda’s heart stood still for a few seconds, then pounded rapidly against her ribs. It was Aunt Clare’s housekeeper – the new one – the one who had been instructed to lash Amanda’s birthday bottom with the supple leather belt.
‘Well?’ the housekeeper insisted crisply.
She won’t remember me. We only met once – memorably – and then she saw more of my bottom than my face, Amanda calculated, grateful for her disguise. Tears, she suddenly thought, might help. She let them flow, managing to sob gently. The housekeeper thawed and took the weeping visitor into her office. Strong tea was supplied from a blue and white pot. Sipping slowly, Amanda allowed herself to recover her poise.
‘You are in trouble?’ the housekeeper asked gently, her brown eyes softening as they drank in the young girl’s beauty.
Amanda took a deep breath and told her prepared tale.
‘And who was it you said told you of Sternwood Grange?’
Amanda hadn’t. ‘Foxie, a girl I know. That was her working name.’ Amanda decided to take a risk. She remembered the curious item about staff recruitment mentioned in the agency’s report. ‘She said some solicitor fixed it up for her.’
The housekeeper repressed a knowing smile. Amanda sensed that the risk had paid off.
After answering a few more questions which she had carefully anticipated, Amanda knew she was home and dry.
‘You may stay here on a trial basis for three weeks. The work is hard and the rules are very strict. And must be obeyed. And we will have to do something about those clothes, of course.’
Miss Partridge, the housekeeper, briefly outlined what Amanda’s duties as a maid would entail, warning her that the residents’ privacy must be observed at all times. Amanda was forbidden to approach or disturb them, or even go upstairs near their quarters, until given permission.
‘Who knows? If you work hard and obey the rules, we might promote you from maid to angel.’
‘Angel?’
‘They started out, like you, as maids, but progressed. They are devoted to the personal needs of our residents.’
‘You do pamper them,’ Amanda observed.
‘They pay,’ was the brief reply.
After an early supper of poached eggs, Amanda was shown to her room up in the rambling attic. They used the back staircase, bypassing the main house entirely.
‘Who owns Sternwood Grange? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Amanda added hastily, not wishing to appear too inquisitive.
Miss Partridge said rather vaguely that it was in trust.
‘I will see you first thing in the morning, Mandy,’ the housekeeper said, drawing the curtains together and switching on the dim light.
‘Thank you,’ Amanda replied, appalled at her dismal room. ‘What –’
‘No more questions for tonight, Mandy,’ Miss Partridge interrupted. ‘I’ve still got lots to do. The residents can be very demanding and the maids, I fear, are not always up to scratch. I hope you prove to be both willing and obedient.’
‘Oh, I will.’
‘There are a few simple but absolute rules the maids must observe. The only one you must obey tonight is not to leave your room. Understand?’
Amanda nodded.
‘Goodnight.’
The door closed, leaving Amanda feeling forlorn in her drab surroundings. She sat down on her narrow bed and reflected. The food was good, if sparse – she was going to miss raiding her fridge for wine and treats – and she was going to get a pert maid’s uniform, a secret fantasy she had never dared to indulge. She giggled naughtily. Most of all, a chance to work out the true worth of her legacy. This place must be worth a fortune, she must get to work at once. How many residents were there? How long did they stay? How much did they pay?
Time for bed. Tomorrow promised to be a busy day. No longer Amanda Silk, sophisticated business consultant, bubbling blonde girl about town – she was Mandy, Mandy the maid.
Naked, she slipped into bed. The late sunset fingered her bedroom with pinkish-gold light. She hugged her breasts happily at both the nightingale in the violet sky outside and at the success of her subterfuge which had launched her campaign.
Spank. Spank. Spank.
Mandy sat up in her narrow bed, propping herself on her elbows.
Spank. Spank. A smothered squeal followed, and was followed in turn by the sound of a bare bottom suffering two more crisp spanks. The punishment was being administered next door. Probably two maids quarrelling. Spank. Spank. Mandy strained to listen. Punishment? Or fierce love play? The squeals of protest suggested punishment. The plaster wall was thin. Through it, she heard the stern tones of the chastiser admonishing the chastised. The words were obscured by the wall between them but Mandy recognised the strictness in the timbre. A pause. A muffled sob. Spank. Spank.
Thrilling to the sounds of flesh upon flesh, the curved palm cracking down across rounded cheeks, Mandy kicked down her top sheet and parted her thighs. In the dying rays of the setting sun which bathed her skin in a lemon light, she prised her sticky labia apart and gently but firmly slid two straightened fingers into her tight slit, using the tip of her thumb to tease out and torment her clitoris. Spank. Spank. The bare buttocks next door were certainly getting it hot and strong. It was, it sounded to the eavesdropping nude, a ferocious punishment. Spank. Spank. The girl’s bottom must surely be ablaze by now. Squeezing her buttocks together, Mandy worked her fingers and thumb with cunning expertise. Spank. Spank. Closing her eyes, she imagined the naked bottom deepening from scalding pink to searing crimson. Spank. Spank. Faster and faster, she pleasured her wet flesh until with a suppressed gasp she arched up, her buttocks clear of her bed, and came. Squashing her breasts, punishing her erect nipples with sticky fingers, she orgasmed heavily. Lowering her hips, she ground her bottom into the bed, causing the headboard to rock and bump against the wall.
Her bedroom door opened and swung wide. Mandy jumped and whipped round, horrified at the intrusion. Staring with unfocused eyes, her face flushed, she grunted thickly. Miss Partridge filled the doorway, rolling down the sleeve of her spanking arm and buttoning the cuff deftly.
‘I am so glad to find you in bed,’ the housekeeper said softly. ‘I thought I heard a noise.’
Mandy, appalled at being discovered naked and in orgasm, scrabbled for her sheet and drew it over her belly and breasts.
‘Had you disobeyed me, I would have had to give you the same as I gave the girl next door. Understand?’
Mandy nodded meekly.
‘The rules here at Sternwood Grange must be strictly obeyed. I see,’ the brown-eyed housekeeper said in a softer voice, perusing Mandy candidly, ‘that you have just been amusing yourself. An innocent diversion, no doubt but –’ her voice hardened’– if the sheet is stained, you will find two pounds deducted from your wages to cover the costs of the laundry bill. Goodnight.’