Hall of Infamy (26 page)

‘There! That shows off your figure lovely. The folk at the picnic will not be able to keep their eyes off you.'

Amelia clenched her fists in impotent fury. Creaking from her own impressive corseting, Betsy knelt to roll white silk stockings onto Amelia's shapely legs. Acutely conscious of the constriction of her stays, and the nakedness of her shaven sex so near Betsy's full lips, Amelia looked at the waiting Clara and felt her pulse quicken at the sight. Clara's stockings had already been fastened to the suspender-straps descending from her corset, and her sex was prettily framed. If only she might have a moment to herself, Amelia thought, her fingers twitching with the desire to assuage the itching in her loins. However, she dare not touch herself now, so she reluctantly tore her gaze away again.

As she did so, she heard the door open behind her.

‘Is that as tight as you can get them, Betsy?' Jamie's voice asked languidly. ‘Oh well, I suppose that will have to do. The usual knickers for Clara. Rubber bloomers for Amelia.'

Amelia turned, blushing furiously. The torture of the rubber pantaloons had been less frequent of late. She was so appalled that she almost got herself into real trouble, but somehow managed to turn her protest into a plea. ‘Please, sir. Must I wear those things today?'

‘Of course you must, Amelia. After all, everyone who is anyone will be there. Unless you would prefer something else?'

Amelia felt herself go pale at the implied threat. There was an awful silence that she dared not break, for fear of precipitating a fate even worse than she could imagine. Instead, she pleaded mutely, with her gaze. Jamie's own eyes laughed back at her and the fist in her stomach clenched even tighter.

‘No, I think we will just have the rubber bloomers, Betsy.' He turned to go and Amelia was engulfed by a wave of relief. Jamie stopped at the door and turned back. ‘Oh, but I do want them both in back-boards. Our girls must exhibit good posture and deportment on the day of the Silver Cup.'

‘I must say, you have done a splendid job!' Lord Alex boomed.

It was true that the sulky and every piece of tack gleamed from long hours of polishing and that Blossom herself had been curried and combed and oiled to sleek perfection. Mr Blackstock acknowledged the compliment.

‘Dick did a lot of work,' he said gruffly, ‘and it is easy to make a rig look good when the filly is a fine fit thoroughbred like this.'

The groom was holding Blossom by the bridle and he patted her cheek affectionately. She felt a surge of pleasure at the compliment. The words of approbation made her feel proud and happy.

‘Think we'll win?'

‘No doubt about it, your Lordship. The Reverend always gets the best from his mounts, and his Rose is a sturdy wench, but he has nothing to match these—' he gave Blossom's thigh a hearty slap ‘—thoroughbred legs.'

‘What about other entries?'

Blossom felt the sulky move as Lord Alex got into it.

‘Well, Justice Ormorund has not a prayer, as usual. I have seen his pony out on the downs, a big buxom girl called Belinda. Strong, but not fast enough to give Blossom a run. Then there is Mrs Treadwell. She's been training one of her girls, so they say.'

‘Not sure it's cricket, women riders in the Silver Cup. After all, Fanny Treadwell is a slip of a thing. She must weigh half of what I do.'

‘Aye and a quarter of what the Justice's poor mount has to pull! But I would not worry about the lady, sir. After all, it's her first year on the course.'

‘Well, I'm taking no chances. That blackguard Jack Campion has bet me a hundred guineas against the filly that I'll not win. I wonder if he knows something about Fanny that we don't? At any event, I'm going to take Blossom for a trot, just to the meadow and back to make sure she is well warmed-up.'

Blossom felt him take up the reins and listened for her master's voice. She knew she was as ready to run as she would ever be. The reins flicked on her bared shoulders and she gripped the shafts and pulled.

“Against the filly”, she thought as she moved off. What had her master meant by that?

‘Giddup!' Lord Alex called as she pulled the little sulky over the cobbles of the courtyard towards the drive. ‘Good girl, we'll show them, Blossom. That's it, girl—' the whip cracked, echoing around the court ‘—giddup!'

‘Jamie, they look delightful. Amelia dear, today is a happy day. No need to look so glum!'

Seated next to a small table upon which gleamed an impressive silver cup, Lady Alicia looked splendidly imperious in purple silk with a matching parasol. She was the still centre of a bustle of busy maids, as the nursery party arrived at the front of the house. There was something about Lady Alicia's air of languid elegance, her amused eyes and relaxed confidence, which made Amelia's blood boil. Even after all these months of bitter bondage, her aunt's amused disdain was almost too much too endure.

The cousins looked ridiculous. Apart from the usual shaming costumes, they both had back-boards buckled to their corsets beneath their silken smocks. These monstrous devices prevented any slouching at all. The girls' hands had been attached to a steel ring set in the top of the board, where it emerged from the neckline of the smock. A chain pinioned their wrist cuffs to this anchor, set so short that their arms were pulled up high behind their uncomfortably rigid backs. Amelia's arms ached terribly already, and the afternoon had barely begun.

An extra-wide collar that forced her to keep her head up and a long leash completed the ensemble. Amelia could not even look down to see how much of her distractingly tight rubber bloomers were showing beneath the smock. This is torture, she thought bitterly, as the cousins were told to kneel on the blanket laid by Lady Alicia's feet.

The centre of the picnic site was a little plateau of lawn, just in front of the house. Below it the lawns sloped down to the ornamental lake, in front of which passed a winding gravel drive.

‘Is Alex getting ready?' Jamie sat down next to Lady Alicia in one of the wicker chairs that had been set out just on the grassy plateau's lip.

‘Yes. Look!' She pointed her parasol at a little flurry of activity on the drive before the lake. ‘They are setting up the starting line already…'

‘Your Ladyship, what a lovely day for racing,
n'est-ce pas
?'

‘Mademoiselle Isobel, you look lovely. Everyone seems to be late today. Take this seat by me. Your girls can sit on one of these blankets.'

‘I saw Mrs Ormorund's carriage in the courtyard, so I do not think she will be very long. Ah, here she is!'

Amelia shifted her weight surreptitiously. The back-board and the wicked position of her arms was causing some distress, but she did not want to be accused of fidgeting. Once the race began, she thought, the company's attention would be on other things and then…

‘Do stop fidgeting, Amelia!' Jamie said sharply.

‘Ah, the pretty cousins.' Mademoiselle Isobel's voice was excited and gay. ‘You still have trouble with Amelia, monsieur?'

‘Amelia is a very wicked, wilful girl,' Jamie said regretfully.

‘I suspect that the devil himself would have trouble with that little minx,' Lady Alicia put in.

Amelia's face burnt. The collar prevented her from lowering her head so she stared at the starting line of the race, straight in front of her.

Mrs Ormorund arrived, then Hermione and Antonia Lockheart. Spinster sisters, ever active in the Townswomen's Guild, these ladies ran the genteel tearooms in Hatherby. Such grander folk took the wicker seats, their maids and shop-girls kneeling at their feet. A gaggle of gardeners, grooms and estate-workers took up position to the right. The reason was not hard to discern, for there it was that the reformatory girls sat in their neat rows, under the eagle eyes of their wardresses.

The tradespeople of the district brought their own blankets and spread them out on the grassy sun-bathed slopes. To Amelia's horror the little barber, Mr Catchpole, sat just below her with his wife. Worse, he turned and said something to the little woman, who looked at Amelia and giggled. Amelia cursed the tightness and semi-transparency of the rubber knickers, and wished most fervently that she was allowed to close her legs.

As more and more people arrived, it seemed as if Lady Alicia was the calm centre of a small cyclone of convivial sociability. Her friends grouped around her, more distant acquaintances pitching their blankets further from the elegant epicentre of the hubbub. This only heightened Amelia's ordeal. Kneeling at her aunt's feet, Amelia felt dozens of amused eyes on her, the sheer shame worse than the constriction of rubber or discomfort of the back-board. Her words to Clara that first day came back to her, bitter and unbidden. ‘Yes,' she had said, innocent and unknowing, ‘I expect that there will be lots of fetes.'

Blossom broke into a gentle trot as the gentle incline down to the lake made the sulky and Lord Alex seem the lightest of loads. He did not pull her up, seeming to sense that she was not tiring herself but just warming up her long legs as she loped down the drive. The slope steepened and the path dog-legged several times as it ran down to the lakeside. There were several other carts on the lawn below the house. Several naked pony-girls stood sweating between the shafts. The sight of them came as something as a shock to Blossom. It was not that she had thought of herself as a real pony, exactly, but she had almost forgotten that she must look like a nearly-naked girl. The sight of the others brought this fact home to her with a real jolt.

‘Ready to be beaten again, Justice?' Lord Alex called out.

A corpulent and florid-faced fellow waved dismissively. His pony was a big buxom girl with fine blonde hair. Blossom glanced down at her legs, which looked powerful, though neither so long nor so sleekly exercised as her own. Her pale face was a little red already, and pale blue eyes blinked, seemingly anxious, although the bit between the girl's teeth made her expression hard to read.

‘We will give you a run, this year,' Justice Ormorund said jovially. ‘Won't we, Belinda, girl?' He gave the girl a crack across the tops of her big thighs with the whip he held in his right hand. Pain furrowed the girl's pale brow, and she might have started forward but for the fact that he held her reins tight. Blossom watched Belinda's breasts wobble as the girl jiggled around in a dance of pain, constrained by her jingling harness. Then she felt herself urged on.

‘Women in the Silver Cup. Damned impertinence, to say nothing of the matter of weight,' Lord Alex boomed.

A small, attractive woman in her early forties grinned back unabashed. ‘Don't be a poor sport, Alex. You men are just afraid that I will beat you.'

‘Oh, you may beat me, Fanny,' the Marquis said jovially, ‘but I am damned if I will let you win the cup.'

The woman's mount, a sturdy-looking girl with brown hair in a ponytail, suddenly stepped forward and the little woman gave a slightly startled grunt. She hauled back on the reins and somehow got the girl to stop.

‘You stupid mare, Connie!'

Blossom's stomach tensed in sympathy at the unmistakable hiss of riding-whip cutting through the air. Mrs Treadwell gave her pony three sharp cuts, struggling to hold the girl back with the reins. Blossom looked on, astonished. Pony and rider were no better attuned than she had been with Lord Alex in her first few days. She knew she had nothing to fear from that quarter. Which was just as well.

Lord Alex guided her across the sward towards the watching crowd. Just before the slope began to climb in earnest towards the hall, some carpenters were finishing an odd structure. It was something like a football goal, with two uprights and a crossbar. Into this had been fixed a series of eyebolts. The workers were threading chains through these.

‘This is the whipping-frame, girl.' Lord Alex's voice was in her ear and the workers paused, distracted. Blossom felt the men's eyes on her all but naked body. ‘This is where the losers are brought to be flogged after the race. Not that you need worry, if you do what you are capable of.'

‘I would not count any chickens yet, Alex, nor polish any silverware.'

Blossom glanced sideways, grateful that Lord Alex no longer ran her with blinkers. The red-haired girl next to her was doing the same, giving her a cool appraising sideways stare. She was not as tall as Blossom, and her legs were not so long nor so well muscled, but she looked strong and fit. More than that, something determined in her eye made Blossom feel that this was her real rival.

‘Ha, you have had it too long, Richard!' Lord Alex snorted. ‘Your girl is good, but she does not have my Blossom's legs.'

As the other girl looked at her legs, Blossom was gratified to see something that looked very much like fear enter her eyes.

‘Look at the whipping-frame, Rose. Remember girl, I shall thrash you without mercy if you fail me,' the Reverend said quietly to his mount.

The girl looked away from Blossom at last, and up at the frame. Blossom saw her close her eyes, just for a second. Then the Reverend Dawes pulled his pony away. Lord Alex flicked the reins and Blossom moved off.

‘Almost ready to start, your Lordship.' A tall thin man in a stationmaster's uniform looked at his fob watch.