‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Very good.’
Her Ladyship nodded and left. Alone in the centre of the room, being sized up by six strange eyes, I suddenly felt more vulnerable than at any point since my arrival. What would I give for Damian the chauffeur to walk through the door now?
No sign of him, though – instead, Kat took hold of my hair and dragged me over to a large chest that lay at the end of the room, beyond the beds and drawers. She took out a tiny sheer white lace apron and told me to put it on.
‘This is my uniform?’ I picked up the insubstantial scrap and frowned. ‘Isn’t there more?’
‘Yes, there’s more. Shoes, stockings and suspenders. Plus your collar, of course.’
‘Right.’
The other women wore proper Victorian maid uniform – the only difference being the way their long black skirts were slit up the front and back. I longed for some of their coverage. This piece of woven air was hardly going to solve my goosepimple problem. I put it on, though, and tied it round the waist. The bib did nothing to conceal my breasts, gauzy as it was, and my bottom was completely exposed. I took the frilly suspender belt Kat offered me and clipped it to a pair of sheer black stockings, completing the look with high-heeled patent pumps. I looked nothing like a maid, everything like a whore.
The other maids lounged, smirking and watching, while Kat fixed my collar around my neck and buckled it tight. Next she rolled up my hair into a neat bun, pinning it into place.
‘What do we think, girls?’ she asked, twirling me around by the shoulders. ‘Is she ready for her lessons?’
‘Nice,’ they giggled in unison.
‘You’ve all done this?’ I asked them, on the verge of panic. ‘You’ve all been trained like this?’
‘Oh yes,’ said one, a demure blonde. ‘You’re the latest in a long line. Don’t worry, just enjoy it.’
‘Right,’ said Kat, ‘I think you’re ready. But one thing needs to be sorted out before you start.’ She reached under my apron and tugged at my pubic hair. ‘You need to get shaved. Damian will do it. Take her into the kitchen, Liv, and tell him he needs to get ready with the razor.’
‘What?’
But nobody was going to help me. The blonde girl, Liv, took my hand and led me out of the dormitory and along the corridor to the kitchen, where Damian himself sat with his feet up on the table, polishing his boots.
‘Well, good morning,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘Here’s our new girl.’
‘She needs your steady hand with the razor,’ said Liv.
‘Oh good. I was hoping for that.’ He winked at me and beckoned. ‘Come and sit on the table. I’ll just get my tackle.’
He was as gorgeous as I remembered, freckly and pale with the filthiest glint I’d ever seen.
I positioned myself on the edge of the table. Liv went over to the old-fashioned range and set about getting the kettle on. I tried to adjust my mindset, to view all this as normal, but it wouldn’t shift and everything remained obstinately bizarre. I’m not one for waxing – a neat trim is as much as I can manage when it comes to pubic topiary. I’d always been too shy to put my bush in the hands of a beautician – so it just seemed topsy-turvy in the extreme that I was now entrusting it to a bad red-haired man with a cut-throat razor.
He came back in with a bowl of water, a towel over his forearm and a blade that made me think of Jack the Ripper and screw my eyes shut.
He laughed at my fear, setting the bowl down on the floor.
‘I’m a dab hand at this, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. Raise your apron for me, doll, and spread your legs nice and wide. Here, lift up your bum.’
He slid the towel underneath me and waited until I was in position, wide-thighed with my apron bunched up in a fist.
‘Good. Now lie back. Think of England, if you like. Or think of whatever you want. Sex is always favourite.’
Oh, he was a cheeky bleeder, but it worked for me. My crotch tingled as I pressed my spine down on the hard deal surface and looked up at the ceiling.
The range was beginning to bring some much-needed warmth to the room and behind me Liv clattered about with pots and pans, preparing for the caterers, I supposed. Not that supposition-making was easy when a sexy man stood in your foreground, sharpening his razor blade on an old-fashioned leather strop. I wished I could take some footage of it, to be replayed at a less nerve-wracking, more leisurely time. I would be happy to watch it for hours.
But he put down the strop and the razor on the table, took a shaving brush and began to lather me up, circling the bristles from the base of my abdomen and down until the whole area was a mass of foam, even as far back as the crack of my bum. His brisk, firm appliance was performed by an expert hand – not a bubble of the stuff landed inside my lips, which I kept wide open for him.
‘That’s a nicely swollen clit,’ he commented, just at the moment that the caterers appeared, taking over at the range from Liv, who came to watch Damian’s handiwork.