Silence Breaking (Storm and Silence 4)

Can I? Does that include my crossdressing and my recent ‘business deal’, My Lady?

But I didn’t even get a chance to ask that question. Instead, I was dragged away, well aware that something was going to happen to me that I hadn’t experienced for nearly fifteen years. I was going to be intensely, thoroughly, and lengthily mothered.

May God have mercy on me.

*~*~**~*~*

I was sitting in the small pink drawing room - a rather great honour, probably, for from the decor I deduced this was the favourite room of the lady of the house - when a knock sounded from the door. Lady Samantha ceased plying me with tea and biscuits for a moment, and glanced over her shoulder.

‘Come in.’

The door opened, and Rikkard Ambrose appeared in the doorway.

‘Not you! You stay out. You’ve caused enough damage as it is.’

‘Mother, I-’

‘Not another word!’

Hurriedly, I swallowed a mouthful of biscuit, clearing the way. ‘It’s all right, Lady Samantha. I don’t mind if he comes in.’

‘Of course you don’t, child.’ She gave me a smile that was more motherly than a pregnant midwife expecting her thirteenth child. I almost could read her thoughts stamped on her forehead: He’s let you get hurt so badly, and still you want to be near him. Oh dear, you can’t help yourself, can you?

Well, as a matter of fact, I couldn’t. But there was also the small fact that he was the one who signed my monthly pay cheque. I could hardly order him from the room, especially one that wasn’t mine.

Mr Ambrose’s jaw tightened. ‘I am coming in.’

‘Rikkard Ambrose, don’t you dare! I forbid-’

Ignoring his mother, Mr Ambrose strode into the room, followed by the hulking figure of Karim.

‘I will speak to Miss Linton alone, Mother.’

‘You will do no such thing!’

It sounded brave, and Lady Samantha even tried to put her hands on her hips and look

properly outraged, but next to the towering form of Karim and the black-clad menace that was her own son, she appeared distinctly unscary. There was simply no way you could look as sweet and harmless as Lady Samantha and order someone like Mr Rikkard Ambrose around. It was a physical impossibility. I wondered how she had gotten him to eat his spinach when he was little.

‘Please, Your Ladyship.’ Just as she was about to gather her courage and attempt to move mountains and icebergs for me, I placed a restraining hand over hers. ‘I’d like to have a word with him.’

‘Oh dear…are you sure?’ Her eyes wandered from me to Mr Ambrose, and back to me and the faint remnants of bruising still visible on my face.

‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure.’ Sure that I don’t want him to pick you up and throw you out of the room. Which he will do, if you don’t move.

‘Very well. You may speak with him, and I will go. But I will not leave you alone with him. A gentleman alone-’ She interrupted herself, glanced at Karim, and after some clearly painful deliberation, corrected herself: ‘Two gentlemen alone with a lady in her room - that isn’t seemly. I won’t allow it.’

Reaching for a little bell on the table next to the chaise longue where she had wrapped me up in blankets and started stuffing me with home-made biscuits, she rang. Immediately, a maid scurried into the room and curtsied.

‘Yes, My Lady?’

‘I shall leave for a little while. Remain here and keep Miss Linton, my son and Mr…’, again, she glanced at Karim, ‘…and his associate company. If Miss Linton needs anything, or there is anything else amiss, fetch me immediately, understood?’

The maid’s eyes flickered from me to Mr Ambrose and back. She blushed, and her eyes widened.

‘Oh. Um, yes My Lady.’

‘Good. I shall take my leave, then.’