Thyme II Thyme (21 page)

Sensing that the terrible caning was over, she gradually managed to stifle her sobs and I saw her shoulders relax somewhat she was so relieved.

'Now then, my girl,' her master said when she had calmed down, 'you have been properly punished, not just for your disobedience today but also for your generally impudent attitude. You seem to think you can do almost anything you please around here and I have to tell you that that is not the case. You are my servant and you will do precisely what I tell you to do, or whatever Miss Meg tells you to do on my behalf. You seem to think that being a pretty girl is enough to excuse your lack of discipline and respect,' he went on as he began fumbling with the sash of his robe. 'You need to understand that prettiness is no substitute for respect, for I can find any amount of pretty girls to amuse me. Perhaps I should replace you with one such?'

'No, sir, please,' she begged. 'I'll do anything you want of me, sir, honest I will.'

'I know you will, Polly.' His robe fell open to reveal a rampant erection as he stepped in front of her, seized her by the hair, forcing her head up to confront his excited state. Her eyes grew big and round, but not, I thought, from fright. 'You know what I'm going to do now, don't you, Polly?' he asked quietly.

She mumbled softly, 'Yes, sir.'

'That's right, I'm going to fuck you. I'm going to fuck you just to show you that you are mine to do with as I please, and you will remain mine until I decide to be rid of you.' He released his grip on her hair and allowed her head to fall as he moved around behind her again. He reached down between her legs, and I guessed he was untying the ribbons that held her pantaloons closed at the crotch. Sure enough, after only a momentary delay, he moved in closer to her, grasping his cock in his right hand and guiding its swollen helmet towards its target. I saw Polly's head come up again as she felt the first contact against her entrance, her lips parted in breathless anticipation.

'Yes,' I heard Hacklebury say, 'that's quite nice, isn't it, Polly?' His hips thrust forward and I knew he was entering her as I saw her lips quivering and her fingers clenching and unclenching. 'How does that feel now, Polly?' he demanded calmly, holding a statue-like pose pressed hard against the smooth globes he had just finished treating so mercilessly.

She sighed, 'It feels good, sir!' Then she moaned and I realised that the stupid girl actually meant it. Hacklebury had caned her arse, talked to her like she was dirt, now he was taking her when she was in no position to resist him, and yet she was actually enjoying it.

But then, I thought as he began to thrust in and out of her and her moans grew louder and louder, who was I to criticise her? She was just some poor street waif without the benefit of knowledge or education, whereas I...

I was awake again, lying in the dark with the images from my dream still fresh and clear in my mind. I sat up, swung my legs off the bed and padded across to the window, drawing back the curtain to peer outside. It was still dark and the clock on the bedside table showed it was just after four o'clock in the morning. I let the curtain fall and made my way back to sit on the end of the bed, wondering whether to put the light on and find my cigarettes, or whether to just get back under the covers and try to go back to sleep.

But I did not want to sleep again, not yet, even though I was still tired. The dream had been so real... I knew it had been more than just the product of my subconscious thoughts. I had been back there again, I was certain, though this time not as Angelina but as an unseen observer. The scene I had witnessed had been very revealing as well as traumatic, but I feared it had revealed as much to me about myself as it had about any of the participants.

I fumbled in the darkness until I found a dressing gown I slipped around my shoulders, and then I opened the door leading out onto the upstairs passage. A small nightlight burned over the top of the stairs and I made my way on tiptoe towards it, not wanting to disturb either Anne-Marie or Andrea, for I needed some time on my own to think and evaluate.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I closed the door, put the light on and took the electric kettle to the tap to fill it. A cup of tea and a cigarette were just the thing right now. I had picked up my packet together with my lighter before leaving the bedroom. A smoke would help me to concentrate, I reasoned. I plugged in the kettle, switched it on, and turned to pull a chair out from beneath the table while I waited for the water to boil.

Yes, that dream had definitely been more than just a dream.

I took out a cigarette and lit it, drawing on it deeply.

How had it all worked? Why had I not needed a body to go back this time around? And why had I been taken back to witness that dreadful scene? I had suspected well enough that Hacklebury would be little different with his servants than he had been with me, his supposed wife, but to actually see him doing it, and in such a brutally casual fashion...

The man was a pig, a bully, a sadist, a... words failed me, but the rage within me was building, an anger that was in some ways directed at myself for my own weaknesses. That bastard and his psychotic woman had treated me even worse than they had Polly, and yet had I not surrendered in much the same way, losing myself in the lusts they had somehow managed to stir in me? And had I not then surrendered in a similar manner, albeit under different circumstances, to Anne-Marie and her temptations and machinations?

What the hell was I doing, both here in the present and back there nearly a century-and-a-half ago? Had I no pride, no discipline, no sense of right and wrong? But of course I did, I reasoned as I stood up again to find a clean mug. Of course I had all of those things, but I also had little choice in the matter, at least in the past, where it wasn't
my
body that betrayed me. But this was my body here and now, and this was the body that had succumbed to the lures Anne-Marie had spun for it, allowing itself to be used as little more than a toy, allowing itself to be publicly exhibited, allowing itself the luxury of every sensation that stirred within it.

I made tea, finished my first cigarette and promptly lit another. Outside it was still dark and would be for another three-and-a-half hours, at least. Three-and-a-half hours until dawn and my two new friends sound asleep upstairs. Time enough for me to creep back up to my room, dress, and then slip away, not to Rose Lea but back to my own home, back to safety and sanity, normality and love. But also, sooner or later, back to Megan Crowthorne and Gregory Hacklebury, back in time yet again to mingle my fate with Angelina's, to wrestle with her destiny as I was now wrestling with my own conscience, back over and over again until it was settled, one way or the other. No, running away was no solution because the fault and the danger lay not here but somewhere inside myself, with something that had risen from the depths of time, and from depths of depravity I now suspected must lie hidden within each and every one of us waiting only for the right summons, the right trigger, to surface in all its black ugliness.

I had switched the kettle on again to brew a second cup of tea when Andrea appeared in the kitchen, or I should say Andy, for the wig and make-up were both gone and he was dressed in a baggy pair of pale blue pyjamas.

'Bit of a shock?' he asked, smiling at the look on my face. He moved past me and reached up to take another mug down from a row of hooks. 'I thought I heard someone come down earlier,' he said, dropping tea bags into both our mugs. 'Couldn't sleep?'

I hesitated for an instant but then related the dream to him, though I didn't mention any of my personal misgivings and the reason I had not wanted to risk going back to sleep straightaway.

'Spooky, huh?' He poured the now boiling water and reached for the sugar. 'And you're sure it wasn't just images surfacing from inside you?'

'Well, they probably did surface from inside me, but something must have put them there in the first place. No, that scene took place, all right. I don't know how, or why, but I'm as sure of that as I've ever been of anything in my life.'

'Well, as I said before, that doesn't help us much. We could have worked out for ourselves that Hacklebury enjoyed beating his maids and shagging them and we know that mad Meg tended to pander to his little foibles.'

'Yes, but I'd assumed it was because she wanted to keep him under control for herself,' I said. 'I assumed she was in love with him but now I don't think she was. Yes she was mad and yes she was cruel, but she didn't love him. She wanted to have control over him, but not for himself. No, it was all about money, land and power.'

'Well, if that record we saw was correct, then she got the land, all right,' Andy reminded me. We took our mugs and moved back over to the table. 'The only thing is,' he added, 'we don't know how she managed it, or whether she managed to keep it for long after she got it.'

'I'm not sure any of that stuff really matters, Andy. We've been chasing around trying to discover the results without tackling the causes. Meg was the cause of all the trouble, but Angelina is the mysterious cause of me going back into her body. I don't really have any real sense of her when I'm there, but I reckon she wasn't what we'd call a hard case, not in any way, shape or form. She resisted Hacklebury initially, we know, or at least I do from what was said and from those odd little flashes I was getting, but I don't think she was up to taking the physical stuff for long and somehow she sort of blanked out, at which point I was whipped in as a substitute. That's as near as I can work it out.'

'And until you get her out of her fix, you reckon you'll keep getting pulled back there?' Andy asked soberly.

I nodded. 'Yes, I think so. She needs help and somehow she's managed to reach out to me across one hundred-and-thirty odd years, though I doubt whether she knows she's doing it, let alone how. Maybe when the pain got so severe it triggered some power deep inside her, something that's in all of us but that we never usually know about, let alone get to use.'

'Well, pain can trigger all sorts of things, can't it?' he replied darkly, avoiding my eyes. 'I think we both know that, don't we?'

'Yes, but I'd rather not talk about that, if you don't mind. I'm not feeling very proud of myself right now, if you must know.'

'Nor am I.' He reached across the table and laid his hand over mine. 'I'm just a stupid little idiot who plays even more stupid games and who likes dressing up and pretending to be something he isn't. It's hiding from reality, I know, but I enjoy it and I can't stop myself. I wish I could.'

'You do?' I smiled across at him. 'But you do make a very pretty girl, you know.'

'Yes, I know,' he muttered. 'But I'd probably do it even if I didn't. I'd just look that bit more stupid, that's all.'

'But Anne-Marie encourages you, doesn't she?'

'Yes, but that's Anne-Marie for you. Don't get me wrong, I love her dearly, but she knows how to manipulate and control people and she likes getting her own way. You shouldn't blame yourself for anything that's happened lately. She knows just which buttons to push when she wants something.'

'You mean she wanted... wants me?'

'At the moment, yes, you're a sort of challenge to her, an opportunity for her to prove just how clever she can be. She sensed something when she met you, she worked on it, and you fell right into it.'

'Am I that obvious, then?'

'No, no more than any of us,' Andy said consolingly. 'We've all got our weaknesses and you'd be surprised how similar they often are. I've learned
that
even if I've learned little enough else. You mentioned pain and pain is only a pinprick away from passion. All the dressing up and tying up stuff is just an additional cover to hide behind, a way of burying what we think is our real selves and letting out the gremlins.'

'But why would Anne-Marie want to let my gremlins out in the first place?' I demanded.

He smiled. 'Because they're there, and because she knows how to, it's as simple as that. It's a challenge and a control thing. But I think the time is coming for me to take a bit more control for myself and to try and explain to her that I need to be my own person a bit more, even if that person does wear a skirt and stockings some of the time. But it might not be easy; I don't want to hurt her. Like I said, I love her but I'm not
in
love with her, not like I am with you.'

'With me?' I gasped and nearly dropped the mug that was halfway to my lips. 'You're in love with
me?
Are you kidding?'

'Cross my heart and hope to die,' he said, gesturing with his free hand over his chest. 'I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, except I couldn't say or do anything because Anne-Marie had discovered you, as it were, and as usual good little Andrea was supposed to just go with the flow.'

'I never realised... I didn't have the slightest idea,' I said, genuinely amazed by this sudden revelation.

'And now you're going to tell me I'm stupid because you obviously can't feel the same way about me, and that sort of thing.'

'I... I don't know,' I replied honestly. 'I mean, I never even thought about it. This whole thing so far has just been, well, you know what I mean.'

'Playing games, yes, I know what you mean, but it got sort of serious for me and when we... well, you know, when we did it those times, there was more to it than just the lust thing. It was actually harder for me to do that with you than it would have been if you'd been someone else. Oh, I'm not explaining this very well at all!'