The Devil's Surrogate (9 page)

Matilda's
original fear and confusion had begun to clear and was now
beginning to metamorphose into a cold determination. Peering out
from her feathered bird mask, she watched as various grooms and
servants moved about through a steadily growing knot of what she
could tell was mostly nobility, even if some of their number were
most curiously garbed themselves. To her surprise she saw there
were women amongst them; women dressed in lavish silks and satins
she was sure would not have been out of place in the late king's
court, their hair piled high and beset with glittering jewelled
pins and bright ribbons. Their painted faces were animated with an
excited lust reflecting that on the features of their men folk, at
least on the features not hidden behind those dreadful black
masks.

One of the
younger grooms had taken great delight in explaining to the
bird-girls that these were the actual hunters and that the others
were merely spectators, some of whom would be watching from hides
and platforms set among the trees while the women would watch and
wait from the lawn, eager, no doubt, to see the captured bird
slaves brought home in triumph.

A red-haired female, the youngest among their number as far as
Matilda could tell, kept drifting towards the bird-girls, and
although she did not approach them directly, her interest was
obvious.
What does she find so intriguing
about a few helpless females dressed so ridiculously?
Matilda wondered. Was it their near-nakedness
despite their feather coverings, or was it just their overall
pitiful plight she was mocking by her nearness and the contrast
with her own beautifully tailored finery compared with their gaudy
feather traps?

One of the
unmasked men called out to the redhead. 'I say, Isobel,' his face
was flushed with drink and excitement, 'what on earth is going
through that pretty head of yours? I swear, you've looked over
every inch of these pretty little tweeters not once but a dozen
times. Fancy someone to hunt one for you, do you?'

The young
woman rounded on the fellow, eyes blazing. 'If I did,' she snapped,
'I'd not choose you as my champion, Guy Bressingham. I wouldn't
trust you to sit a horse in that state, let alone try to track one
of these pretties through Roderick's wood. You'd like as not fall
and break your fool neck, if I know you!'

'Tish!'
Bressingham chided her, raising a hand in a mock defensive gesture.
'You're too cruel my dear, too cruel by half. Give me half a good
reason and I'd be as good a hunter as any you care to name, but
then I don't see you as a hunted bird, more's the pity.'

'And if you
did,' Isobel retorted, 'it'd take more than you've got to ruffle my
feathers!'

'But we'll
never know, will we?' Bressingham replied, and deliberately yawned.
'I'd wager five hundred guineas I'd have you within the hour, but
then you wouldn't take that risk, would you?'

Immediately, several heads turned and even Matilda's ears
pricked up.
Five hundred guineas?
That was a small fortune, even in these
circles.

'Hah, a wager,
is it?' another man asked. He was some years older than Bressingham
and going badly to fat, which certainly precluded him from anything
as active as this hunt. 'Why, I'll offer even money on Bressingham
to anyone who wants to take it. I'm sorry, my dear Isobel,' he
leered at her, 'but the odds are against any of these birds
remaining on the loose for more than a couple of hours at best, and
I doubt you'd be quite as quick as they.'

'And why do
you doubt that, my lord?' Isobel snapped. 'Just because I haven't
spent my life scrubbing floors and carrying buckets doesn't mean I
cannot run. Besides, brains come into the equation, and I'd back my
intelligence against a dozen of these silly whores.'

'Ah, so you'll
accept my challenge?' Bressingham laughed, and the young redhead
looked suddenly confused and alarmed. 'Or perhaps your brains
aren't really what you claim them to be?' he added.

Matilda gawped
in disbelief as the scene unfolded before her. Surely this young
noblewoman wasn't intending to allow herself to be put through the
same humiliation that had been inflicted upon herself and these
other girls? And yet... maybe that was why she had been so
interested in them in the first place, she reasoned. Perhaps she
had been looking at them and wondering what it would feel like to
be so helpless, to know that soon she must run, if not for her life
then at least for her honour, whatever remained of it. Whatever the
reason, the redheaded fool seemed reluctant to back down.

'If you're so
certain, Bressingham,' she was saying, 'and if Lord Wormley is
offering even money on you, surely you can do better with your own
odds?'

'Six to four,'
Wormley suggested. The knot of guests was drawing in closer now,
eager to see the outcome of this contest.

Isobel looked
at the paunchy lord with obvious contempt. 'Six to four?' she
echoed. 'Pah! Have you no sense of chivalry? Lay me three to one
and I'll maybe give it some serious consideration.'

'I'd lay her
anytime,' Matilda heard one of the other men nearest to the
bird-girls mutter to his companion, but he was far enough away that
Isobel could not hear his jibe.

'Two to one,'
Wormley offered.

'And I'll lay
you five to two myself,' Bressingham announced, 'but that's a
private wager between the two of us. Wormley has the rights to the
main book, and I'd not presume.'

'Five hundred
guineas at five to two, you say?' Isobel's eyes narrowed and the
corners of her mouth twitched. 'One hour only? I stay free of you
for one hour, and I wear a marking so the other hunters know I'm to
be prey only to you?'

'Agreed,'
Bressingham replied.

Lord Wormley
nodded. 'Agreed, so long as Grayling has no objections.'

'Indeed, I
haven't.' The masked figure had appeared unnoticed from a
glass-panelled door opening directly onto the lawn from the
library. Behind him followed a second similarly attired figure, but
there was no mistaking Grayling, even beneath his disguise. 'No
objections whatsoever,' he added, 'and I'll lay a hundred guineas
on you myself, Isobel.'

'But she must
be garbed and treated exactly as the other birds,' Bressingham
insisted. 'The full costume, if you please, down to the very last
detail.'

To Matilda,
the two dildos inside her suddenly seemed to grow to twice their
actual size and she felt a chill of incredulity course through her.
Did this silly spoiled brat know exactly what she was being
manoeuvred into agreeing to? Would she yet draw back from the
brink, or would pride...?

'Agreed!'
Isobel declared. She turned to the cluster of bird slaves. 'I'm
afraid you poor things will have to wait around a little longer.
Sir Roderick, I presume you have a maid who will help me
prepare?'

Thomas
Handiwell had said to Hart, 'I fear this will be a wasted effort,'
and now, as they were confronted by the grim-faced men who stood
beyond the towering iron gates marking the boundary of the Grayling
estate, he could see he was to be proved correct in his
assumption.

At this stage
the perimeter wall was built of stone and brick, a massive,
impossible to scale edifice that rose maybe twenty feet on either
side of the solid gateposts with their stone lions glaring down
upon the road. Just within stood a small blockhouse that afforded
shelter to the four men who guarded the gate, four armed men who
could presumably call upon reinforcements if they thought their
outpost was under serious threat. Only one of them appeared to be
armed, and that with only a pistol tucked into his belt, but
Handiwell felt certain there would be other weaponry at hand if
required, and that they would seize it long before any serious
attempt could be made to force open the heavy gates.

It was the
pistol carrier who came up to the thick bars as they approached.
No, he replied in response to Handiwell's opening question, Sir
Roderick was not receiving visitors this day. No, he would not take
a message up to the house, but if the gentlemen cared to leave a
written note, he would see to it that it was passed to Sir
Roderick, and he felt certain a messenger would be sent if the
gentleman was prepared to grant them an interview. And no, he knew
nothing about banditry, abduction, or highwaymen, and the presence
of armed men elsewhere in the woods was none of his business,
although he knew Sir Roderick had grown tired of poachers taking
his game.

'No man goes
to such length to protect a few deer and pheasants,' Handiwell
muttered when they had wheeled their horses around and begun the
long trot back towards the main road. 'And Grayling must have
something akin to a small army in there.'

'I'd say he
has quite a private force,' Hart agreed. 'Certainly my small band
would appear to be heavily outnumbered, and even if they do agree
to send more men up from Portsmouth, well, if Grayling has a mind,
it would take quite a battle to force a way in there.'

'I think Riley
had it right, though the cheek of the Irish blackguard annoys me at
times. A full frontal assault is not the way, at least not at this
time. Without proof that it was Grayling's men shooting at us then
the fellow is quite within his rights to protect his own property,
and I cannot see any magistrate granting us a warrant.'

'Then we must
pray that your two Irishmen succeed where we cannot,' Handiwell
said, 'though it pains me to think we must trust all to a couple of
ex-poachers and a young boy who'll probably end up in the colonies,
or swinging from a rope for poaching himself!'

Ross seemed
totally unhurried and completely unworried by Sarah's obvious
discomfort. He drew a pipe from a pocket in his jacket that he
filled with deliberate precision and then lit, walking about the
chamber puffing deeply and filling the air with acrid tobacco
fumes. At first Sarah tried to follow him with her eyes, but she
soon gave up on this and returned to staring directly in front of
her, trying to ignore the persistent pressure of the
leather-covered shaft upon which she sat, and the dull throbbing
now emanating from her groin.

'A shame they
needed Titty Kitty for other sport,' he mused as he stepped back
into her line of sight. 'She's got a hungry little mouth and an
active tongue I should have liked to see lapping away at your pussy
for a while. Well, maybe tomorrow. I doubt she'll be available
before that, unless she's caught by that old fellow from Plymouth
who looks as if just the hunt would cripple him, let alone a good
fuck afterwards.

'Now then,' he
went on, lowering the pipe and staring straight at her, 'I think
maybe we should do something for those pretty bubbies. I have just
the thing here somewhere, if you'll excuse me for a moment. Don't
you go away.' Laughing to himself, he moved across to the bench
where Sarah heard him rummaging through its contents, until a soft
exclamation indicated he had found whatever it was he was looking
for. It turned out to be what she recognised from illustrations as
a cat-o'-nine-tails, although it seemed much smaller than she had
imagined, and the leather thongs looked much shorter and
lighter.

Ross brandished it before her, smiling. 'This is what we call
a
tit whip
, slave.
A fraction the size of the real thing - though we do use the real
thing on a girl's tits if she deserves it, so I should make sure I
behaved myself if I were you - and just right for a pair of lovely
bubbies like yours. See?' He flicked his wrist and sent the
tendrils snaking across Sarah's right breast.

The thongs
barely made a sound as they fell across her taut flesh, but a wave
of fire shot through her that made her writhe against her bondage
as the painful heat seared her entire being. Another flick of his
wrist, and this time the whip fell across her left breast, at least
two of the leather strands catching her nipple and causing an
explosive sensation that was at once pain and desire.

'I can see my
little toy is going to have exactly the desired effect today,' he
said, and flicked his wrist two times in succession.

Despite the gag, Sarah heard a plaintive mewling gurgle she
knew could only have come from her own throat. She knew also, as
the fire began rising inside her, that if it were not for the gag
she would surely cry out for him to stop this new torture and fill
her instead with the weapon she could see bulging against his tight
leather breeches.
Anything
, she thought wildly as she
closed her eyes and wriggled and gasped beneath the next pair of
assaults,
anything
had to be better than enduring this unfulfilled agony much
longer!

And then it
seemed that even Ross realised she could take no more, that she was
hovering over a precipice whose brink, once crossed, might mean the
end of her very sanity, because the steady whipping stopped.

She opened her
eyes, and as she tried to focus, she saw that he was already
standing naked before her, poised between her widespread knees, his
manhood rearing up as eager for her as she was for it. She felt his
hard smoothness pressing against a portal already wide open and
inviting, its wet lips offering no resistance to entry. Indeed, her
inner tunnel seemed to reach out and draw the throbbing phallus
into her. Yet another cry echoed inside her head, and Sarah neither
knew nor cared if it had sounded out loud or if it was just the
disembodied echo of her absolute surrender.

'There!' she
heard him gasp, and suddenly she was being filled as fully in the
front as she was in the rear, and this living invader seemed to
merge with the leather one, which felt as if it had sprung to life
inside her. With all her strength she pulled against her bondage,
eager to claim him and desperate to cling to him, but the thick
leather was unyielding, pinning her wide like a trapped butterfly
as his victorious spear began its pumping and thrusting dance of
conquest.