Thyme II Thyme (2 page)

Which was when I discovered the pendant, hidden away, probably lost, in a dark recess in the kitchen. It was a locket, and inside was a miniature of a lady and a gentleman, a nice and very proper looking pair, vintage Georgian or early Victorian. There was nothing special about them and nothing special about the pendant either, I thought, other than the fact it was most definitely gold. How wrong could I have been?

I have since discovered that the pendant, thought not
de rigeur
for my time hopping, almost certainly was the initial catalyst. Exactly what it triggered in me and in the cosmos I have no idea, but trigger something it most certainly did.

I put the pendant on.

I fainted.

I woke up back in eighteen thirty-nine and, more to the point, I woke up in a corset even tighter than the one I had just struggled into and in a body that was most definitely not my own. I knew this for a fact because, other than being blonde like me, this girl had been barely five-feet tall in her stocking feet and had breasts you could have fit into one fair sized hand as a pair. I may not have been overly endowed but I had more up top than that!

Her name, it transpired, was Angelina and she was an ancestor, but that bit was less important than the fact that she was about to be forced into marriage with a particularly nasty piece of work called Sir Gregory Hacklebury, and that she was being held prisoner by a man to whom being called a bounder would have been a compliment. His chief maid, a demented female called Meg who was undoubtedly shagging his lights out, had been put in charge of the poor wench and was delighting in taunting and torturing her at every tip and turn.

Of course, it was all about money; Gregory had little and Angelina had lots, and in those days when a woman married a man everything she had became his property, including her body. Oh dear, what a shock to a modern lass like myself.

The rest I'll fill you in on as we go, but for the moment I should also add that when I finally returned to my own body and my own time, I met up with and befriended a girl slightly older than myself called Anne-Marie. I should also mention that she had several cousins by the name of Hacklebury who came from in and around a little village called Melbury Osmand in the neighbouring county of Dorset. She also had a sort of stepbrother named Andy, although Andy, it transpired, preferred to dress and act more like an Andrea, except when it came to exercising his little Percy department. I suppose you would call Anne-Marie bi-sexual and you would call Andy... well, you would call him unusual, at the very least. The same could be said of Anne-Marie, for she quickly introduced me to a combination of lesbian sex and bondage games, although not bondage in the true and cruel sense I'd experienced more than a century earlier.

We did a bit of research together. I had carefully explained what had happened to me to Anne-Marie and, wonder of wonders, she believed me and we went and met her cousins under some pretext or other. However, whilst there was a sort of Hacklebury resemblance in some of them, especially bachelor cousin George, there was nothing conclusive other than that we returned from Dorset with the certainty in our minds that Hacklebury must have fathered a child with Angelina, and that the line had continued. As to where that line had led and what direct or indirect links it had with me in the present, I had no idea. And to be honest, as the psychological scars began to heal quickly, I resolved to drop the whole thing once and for all and forget the past. Unfortunately, the 'thing' refused to drop me. Right in the middle of Andrea giving me the screwing of all time, I was whisked back once more...

1.

'Jeez, Teenie, you had us both really worried there for a couple of minutes!'

Anne-Marie's voice penetrated the mists and I forced my eyes to open. I saw their two faces, Anne-Marie's to my right, Andrea's to my left, consternation on the former, sheer fright on the latter.

'No, don't try to get up.' Anne-Marie pressed gently against my shoulders. 'Take it easy... there's a love. You passed out, in case you didn't guess already, and you look terrible.' She stroked my forehead and I realised the gag and harness were gone, as was the ribbon that had bound my wrists earlier, though my hands were still encased within the disabling gloves.

'Here,' Andrea said, turning away, 'try a sip of water.' Her hand hovered back into my field of vision and I saw she was holding a half filled glass.

I shook my head, but Anne-Marie already had her arm beneath my shoulders, lifting me and steadying me. I sipped indelicately; the cold liquid spilled out onto my chin but I didn't care.

'Better?' Andrea asked gently.

I nodded, grateful when I was allowed to fall back and sink into the softness of the pillow Anne-Marie had pulled beneath me with her free hand.

'A bit too much too soon, I think,' she said soberly.

I looked up into her eyes and shook my head again. 'No,' I managed to say, my voice half croak, half whisper. 'No, it was quite...' Mere words could not have gone even halfway down the road to describing what I had felt, but it was more than that, and something else, that I had to tell them. 'It was good,' I said lamely. 'Better than good, but...' I hesitated, once more at a loss for words. 'How long was I out for this time?' I asked instead.

I saw Anne-Marie's expression changing as understanding dawned in her eyes. 'Oh, my God!' she exclaimed, her hand rising to her mouth. 'You mean you went back there again?'

I heard a half strangled gasp from Andrea but my attention was now fixed firmly on Anne-Marie. 'Yes,' I said, 'I went back there again. How long have I been unconscious?'

Anne-Marie's mouth puckered and she looked across at Andrea. 'Five minutes,' she said. 'Maybe six, no longer than that.'

'No,' Andrea agreed, 'not long, though we were both really worried about you.'

'Sorry,' I said stupidly. Now I did try to sit up. Aided by Anne-Marie, I managed it, and then held my head in my near-useless hands breathing as deeply as the tight corset would permit. 'Five or six minutes, you say? And I definitely never left here at all during that time?'

'Of course you didn't,' Anne-Marie replied firmly. 'We lifted you onto the bed and untied everything and then I was slapping your face and splashing water on you, though nothing seemed to have any effect. I was on the point of calling an ambulance, but then suddenly you started to come around again.'

'Good job I did.' Despite everything I had just been through, I chuckled imagining the expressions on the faces of the paramedics called in to revive me in my present get-up. Then I sighed and lowered my hands. 'It didn't feel like a dream,' I told them quietly, looking up at the two pairs of eyes fixed immovably on me. 'It felt dead real again. Too damned real, actually.' My hand went up to touch the locket that still hung around my neck and my fingers stroked the smooth metal of the casing. Idly, I noticed they had removed the choker I'd been wearing around my neck earlier. 'And it was far longer than five minutes, believe me,' I went on. 'More like five weeks, at a guess.' I drew in another deep breath and shook my head. 'I need a stiff drink,' I announced. 'A bloody big stiff drink!'

'But what about—?' Anne-Marie stopped herself.

I smiled up at her. 'A drink first,' I said fervently. 'A drink first, and then I'll tell you all about it, though trust me, you aren't going to believe me.'

'Go get her a large brandy, Andrea,' she commanded.

I laughed. 'Bring the bottle and three glasses, and a spare one if you've got one - a spare bottle, that is. This is some story, and you're both going to need a drink almost as much as I am!'

The men, Hacklebury men especially, were bad enough, Angelina knew, but the maids and the other women were even worse, especially the cruel-eyed Meg, who made no attempt to disguise the way she relished every moment of her master's wife's suffering.

'Strip the hussy to her corset!' Meg snapped. 'Strip her down and then bring her round to the small pond. We'll give her a thorough soaking, and then you two can tighten her laces even more. She still has on the leather corset with the leather laces, I presume?'

'Yes ma'am,' the younger of the two under-maids, Florence, replied eagerly. 'Master said she was to be kept in it other'n either he or you said different. Said there's two more of the same been ordered, so she could be changed if'n she got a bit too sweaty and smelly.'

'Let her sweat and smell,' Meg growled. 'T'won't be long now before he'll not want to roger the bitch any more any ways.'

'Can't see what he finds attractive in her meself,' the second under-maid said, and giggled. She was older than Florence, though younger by some few years than Meg herself, and had about her the look of one who had been brought up in the fresh country air. She preened herself and thrust her chest forward so that her substantial bosom strained against the black linen of her uniform.

'She ain't ever going to have teats like yours, Betty, that's for sure,' Florence said with admiration. 'Skinny as a bloody garden rake, she is. More meat on a butcher's apron, as my old pa would say,' she added cheerfully as she drew the top of the bodice down about Angelina's arms, revealing her small breasts thrust cruelly upwards by the strictures of her tightly laced undergarment.

'Not even a decent mouthful there.' Betty sniffed disdainfully and reached out one finger to trace a line gently across the small mounds where they emerged from the lacy top ruff of the corset. 'Maybe we should give a little suck every day and see if we can't maybe encourage the little eggs to grow.'

'You can suck her tits any time you like,' Meg declared, 'but it won't make the buggers grow any more. That's an old wives' tale, that is. Only thing'll make those titties get bigger is if'n either his lordship or one of his kind plants a sprig in her, which'll like as not happen soon enough, if'n it hasn't happened already.'

'Little belly's going to be full of arms and legs?' Florence rubbed an open palm across Angelina's flat stomach. 'Well, at least it'll get you a bit of relief from all these stays.' She laughed again and patted the whalebone-encased figure in a manner that under different circumstances might have been interpreted as friendly or sympathetic.

But Angelina knew only too well that these horrific people had no such emotions to spare where she was concerned. 'Damn you!' she said. 'Damn all of you! Damn all of you to hell!'

Florence stepped back and sneered down at her, her florid face contorted into an expression of contempt. 'And fuck you, little mistress,' she hissed, 'because that's just what he's going to do, you know. He's going to fuck you until that pretty little fanny is red raw and that oh-so-trim little belly grows round and fat.'

'Yes, you little cow,' Betty snickered, 'and then we'll be here to see you properly milked every day, won't we, Flo?'

'That we will,' Florence agreed. 'We'll make sure the little calf sucks good and hard on those dugs, that we will.'

'That's enough!' Meg snapped, stepping forward. She stretched out a hand and stroked the side of Angelina's face. 'Our little cow will come to discover the truth soon enough, but meanwhile let's just try to help her come to terms with her role, shall we?' She stood back again, pursing her lips and nodding. 'He only wants you for breeding, you know that, don't you? And it doesn't really even matter which cock does the necessary, either. Just so long as someone plants the sprig, that's all it takes, and then we'll see what the future holds. For myself, my dear little mistress,' she continued, leaning close to Angelina, 'I just cannot wait!'

Even before I opened my eyes I knew I was back, back in eighteen thirty-nine, that is, and also back in big trouble, for I could smell that mixture of my own perspiration and the tight leather into which I had been laced, and my hips and arse throbbed from having lain too long in the straw on the hard floor of my specially built prison.

I struggled into a sitting position, no mean feat without the use of my hands, which were still trapped inside those awful disabling gloves, my wrists locked to the broad corset belt that was part of the suit. Then, grunting into the foul tasting leather gag that was strapped between my achingly distended jaws, I managed to stand up using the rough stone wall as support. Just as before, my feet were encased in those ridiculously high heels and I had to pause for a moment to re-accustom myself and balance before finally tottering across to where the top half of the stable door stood open, the bottom half locked and bolted against any hope of escape.

My field of vision hampered by the narrow eye slits in the all-encompassing tight leather hood I wore, I peered out to where the outer door of my prison stood wide open. No sign of my huge Viking minder as yet, though there was little doubt in my mind that friend Erik was not far away.

The first fingers of dawn were beginning to stretch against the dark sky in the east...

Like hell they were. In reality, the sky was a very dark grey with just a hint of the deep navy blue tinge that lets you know it's no longer actually night but that it will be another twenty minutes at least before it will be light enough to see anything, and that the chance of the morning sun coming up within the hour has been made more than unlikely by a thick layer of clouds.

I sniffed at the air, mostly a waste of time and effort really as the leather smell of my mask was all- pervasive, but I did get enough from that whiff to know it was damp outside and therefore not much better inside. The tight kid bodysuit they were keeping me in was less than comfortable, but at least it offered some protection, both against the elements and against my chafing or grazing myself on unsympathetic surfaces.