‘Do it, or I’ll stand you on the other side of the car.’
The road-facing side. I took off my coat, gloved fingers fumbling with the buttons.
‘Good. I’m tempted to cut a switch from those bushes, but His Lordship doesn’t want you marked. Hmm. Lift your skirt and hold it high.’
He had already seen my bottom, so I didn’t hesitate to show it him for a second time. Cars swished by, windscreen wipers clacking. I shivered all over.
The chauffeur put his leather gloved hand on my cold bum, caressing it for a moment, then he withdrew it and the next thing I felt was a good hard slap in the same place. He spanked me for a minute or so, hard and fast, warming me up until the glow covered both cheeks and he was satisfied.
‘Now. Inside, and no more questions.’
I sat down on my deliciously warm behind, but before he closed the door, he reached into a pocket and produced a length of black silk.
‘It’s not much fur
ther now,’ he said. ‘His Lordship does not want you to see the environs of his house until you arrive there. So I’m going to blindfold you.’
I looked up at him. His bright blue eyes were friendly. He wasn’t much older than me, pale and freckly with a rather wicked smile. I felt suddenly much safer than I had done, and the sight of his brown leather driving gloves made me blush.
The smell of them was glorious and profoundly arousing as he tied the silk around my head, covering my eyes. I breathed it in, wanting it to stay, but all too soon he removed his hands. I waited for the car door to click shut, but it didn’t.
‘Put your hands in your lap,’ he said quietly.
I placed them in front of me, and gasped when he picked them up and began binding them in what felt like another length of that same black silk. He tied an efficient knot, then did up my seatbelt and shut the door.
The car engine started up and the indicator clicked for a while until we headed back out on to the road, towards His Lordship’s lair.
Time passed slowly, or was it quickly? I couldn’t keep track of it in the dark. The road seemed very straight for a while, then there was a series of left and right turns that sent my tethered body leaning and jerking.
We stopped suddenly, then the chauffeur wound down the window, letting in a blast of cold and a few snowflakes, and I heard a sound I presumed to be the opening of electric gates. This had to be the place.
The crunch of tyres on gravel accompanied the car’s slow crawl forward, ending smoothly with the faint creak of gears and the dying of the engine.
‘I’ll help you out,’ said the chauffeur.
‘Thanks,’ I said, desperate to remove the blindfold, then, looking for a tiny moment of intimacy in the vast unknown, I asked him his name.
‘You’re not to ask questions, remember,’ he said. ‘Not unless His Lordship allows it. I’ll have to report you.’
He released my seatbelt, put an arm around my shoulders and helped me, so gently, out of the car, then he put a hand beneath my elbow, guiding my blind and bound self up some steps. The snow seemed colder when I couldn’t see it, the wind biting into my cheeks below the silk.
We stopped and the chauffeur clanged the bell.
I hoped we wouldn’t be stuck there on that snowy doorstep for long, and my hope was not in vain. The door opened, but nobody spoke.
Instead, the chauffeur nudged me over the threshold, and my arm was taken my someone else – a woman, I thought, judging by her floral scent and the click of heels on beeswaxed wood. The other smell that struck me as I shuffled along beside the strange female was that of roasting meat. I was hungry! I hadn’t had any lunch. Why hadn’t I had any lunch? I could have kicked myself – it might be hours before I got to eat again.
A door opened and I judged from the acoustic that we had moved from a large lobby into a small or densely furnished side room. Skinny, poky fingers untied my wrists.
‘You can take off your blindfold now,’ said a flat voice.
I lifted the silk from my eyes, squinted for a few seconds, then looked at the speaker. She wore an old-fashioned maid’s uniform, complete with frilly pinny and mob cap on a bony frame. She looked Spanish or Italian, with lots of black hair piled under the white linen, and sharp dark eyes.
We were in a small wood-panelled room that seemed to serve no particular function. It contained a long, velvet-upholstered bench and a huge wardrobe all the way along one wall. The only other furniture was a Victorian looking glass on a tilting stand. I felt too intimidated to speak, so I simply stood there, listening to my heart pound, waiting for the maid-person to say something else.
She sized me up in silence, keen eyes flicking from my feet to my woolly hat. She didn’t seem very impressed.
‘You should strip,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll fetch His Lordship.’