Kate and Julia: Abducted in India

Kate and Julia 1: Abducted in India
by Lindsey Brooks

Copyright 2011 Lindsey Brooks

Published by Strict Publishing International

Julia had always been self-conscious about her breasts. They were big and firm, and try as she might to restrain them they always seemed to find a way to thrust themselves boldly out from her chest. To her they were a symbol of her femininity, but to men she was all too aware, they were simply something to be stared at. And tonight a lot of men were staring.

The young second lieutenant had run out of polite conversation several minutes ago. Now his attention was on the pointed nubs of Julia’s nipples showing darkly through the thin satin of her evening gown and the silk chemise that was all she wore beneath it. Julia lifted her forearm to cover the unruly peaks, and looked at Kate.

The other three subalterns who had persuaded the girls to accompany them to the nightclub were clustered around the vivacious redhead. Only the young, fresh-faced and rather pimply boy, who was surely even younger than her own twenty years, had remained with Julia once the champagne had begun flowing. She was not surprised. Her efforts at conversation had been no more imaginative or successful than his.

But it was not her envy of Kate’s confident air and adventurous nature that had drawn her eye to the redhead. Painfully conscious that she was attracting a lot of attention, Julia went over to her companion and tugged insistently on her elbow. Kate turned, and, still smiling at some comment from one of her admirers, let the blonde-haired girl draw her away from the group.

“We should leave,” Julia said. “Look around. There are some very questionable things going on here.”

Kate followed her suggestion. The place was dimly lit, especially in its farthest recesses where Julia had noticed several male patrons who had arrived alone had been joined by some of the many young, unaccompanied women who were present in surprisingly large numbers.

She had also noticed, with increasing apprehension, that there were very few other European women in the nightclub.

“Well, what about it?” Kate asked. “Everyone’s having a good time, that’s all. You should try doing the same, Julia. Really, you take your sense of responsibility too far for your own good sometimes. You ought to loosen up and learn not to be so shy.”

“But… but there are Indian men here,” Julia said. “They keep looking at us. Oh, I wish I hadn’t let you persuade me to come here, especially when I’m wearing this dress. I didn’t think we’d be going any further than the hotel bar.” She looked self-consciously at the two large and only partially covered prominences on her chest.

“Nonsense, you need a bit of excitement,” Kate said. “You’ve hardly left Mrs. Winter’s side since you stepped off the boat. It’ll do you good to get away from her for a few hours.”

“It has,” Julia said, “but now it’s time to go.” She stepped aside as a tall, swarthy-faced man in native dress pushed past, leading a dusky-skinned girl by the hand. His bold, appraising gaze roved over both of the white girls before he made for a staircase discreetly tucked away in one corner.

“Good Lord!” Kate said.

“Oh, you see?” Julia’s tone was pleading. “Kate, this isn’t so much a nightclub as a…a….”

“Brothel,” Kate said, brows knitting in anger. She stared at the pimply youth who had stuck with Julia when the others had flocked to Kate, and he blanched under her fury. “They’re playing a joke on us,”

she hissed through clenched teeth. “Well, they’ve picked the wrong ones.

Fresh off the boat we may be, but we weren’t born yesterday.”

Swallowing her champagne in one gulp she barged her way back into the group of young second lieutenants.

In the short time she had known the redhead Julia had learned that the girl was not one to turn the other cheek. She winced at the thought of the scene Kate was bound to make and wished she could shrink into the shadows, but she would not desert her angry companion. She heard Kate’s raised voice demanding to know what they thought they were playing at, and then every other sound was drowned out by the band striking up a tune. The lights above the small, semi-circular stage at one end of the room suddenly flared.

What little native music Julia had heard had sounded tinny and slightly off-key to her ear. This was no exception, but she barely noticed as two pale-brown girls skipped from either side of the stage into the brightly lit patch at its centre and took her breath away as they began to dance.

Julia was disbelieving, awestruck and scandalised all at the same time. The girls were nearly naked. The skin of their nude torsos shone with the gleam of oil as they glided sinuously and seductively across the stage. A quick glance around showed that every male head, and most of the female ones, were turned towards the dancers.

Julia too was drawn back to them, despite her affronted modesty.

What sort of courage and confidence must it take to display themselves publicly wearing virtually nothing at all? Their pointed breasts were not quite as bare as she had at first thought, for each girl wore what appeared to be small, jewelled brooches over her nipples. However, the only other adornments on their upper bodies were a wide, choker-style pearl necklace and long, dangling earrings that swayed in time with the sensuous movements of their lithe bodies.

About her waist, each girl had a cord of beads and, hanging from it as far as her knees at front and rear, a strip of white silk that contrasted vividly with the rich, oiled brownness of her skin. The girls’ legs were oiled too, flashing and glistening in the lights as they pointed their toes or raised their knees in rhythm with the music and set the muscles rippling beneath the skin of their supple thighs.

It all seemed very exotic to Julia, just as most things had since she had stepped onto the dock at Bombay eight short and hectic days earlier, but the dance caused a greater stirring in her breast than anything else she had seen so far. In spite of the sleazy setting there was something earthy and primitive and undeniably sensual in the graceful movements of the girls’ limbs and the swaying of their hips and breasts. Strangely, it was something that appealed to Julia. Her cheeks went suddenly hot at her daring admission, and seconds later they felt as if they were aflame as a sudden pirouette and twirl by the two dancers made their skimpy loincloths lift as high as their waists. They wore nothing beneath. Along with everyone else watching Julia was presented with alternating flashes of the girls’ bare buttocks and the entirely hairless clefts of their sexes as they spun in circles on the stage. She stared in total shock as cheers and applause erupted from the audience.

While Kate had also been struck dumb by the performance, it appeared to hold less fascination for her than for Julia, who felt her arm unceremoniously seized by the redhead. Kate also grabbed the pimpled subaltern as she passed him and marched them both out of the building and onto the street.

“You may escort us to our hotel, lieutenant,” she told the youth stonily. He did not argue, and had the sense to keep several paces behind as Kate strode off, and to remain silent when she made some pithy comments about the morals and so-called sense of humour of the lower-ranking officers of the Indian Army.

Julia had difficulty keeping up with her companion. Still off-balance after the dancers’ performance and her rather unnerving reaction to it, she was beginning to wonder if two glasses of champagne in the hotel bar where they had met the subalterns and another two in the nightclub had not been a little too adventurous. She rarely drank alcohol, and the dizzy feeling in her head and the effort she was having to put into walking in a straight line were reminding her why.

The champagne was also the reason Julia felt only the tiniest twinge of nervousness when she realized they were breaking Mrs.

Winter’s strictest rule. Her employer had told both girls with a frequency that had become monotonous never to stray from the main thoroughfares of the cities they had stayed in. Most especially she had emphasised that on no account should they ever go out unaccompanied after dark, and Julia did not think the single, fresh-faced youth trailing reluctantly in their wake counted as an adequate escort.

Fortunately, the hotel was only two hundred yards from the nightclub, and the young English girl had barely had time to recognise her anxiety through her fuzzy-headed daze before they were at the door and Kate was bidding the boy a brusque goodnight.

Collecting their room keys, she led the way upstairs. Firmly holding the banister Julia followed more slowly. The hotel had no lift, and as a result the higher up the rooms were the cheaper they became.

That was important to Mrs. Winter, who, Julia had quickly realized, was by no means well provided with funds. It was all the more reason to be grateful to the older woman for giving her employment, and especially for giving her the chance to travel and hopefully gain some confidence and overcome her shyness.

“I ought to report those louts to Daddy,” Kate said while she waited at the first landing for Julia to catch up. “Officers and gentlemen indeed! That was an unkind trick to play on us. I wish they hadn’t all been so young. Older men wouldn’t have acted in such a juvenile way and they’ve been around long enough to have had lots more adventures.

They’re always so much more interesting.”

“I thought you didn’t want to get in touch with your parents yet,”

Julia said as they set off up the next flight of stairs.

Kate pulled a face. “I don’t. Not for a while anyway. I wouldn’t mind seeing Mummy and Daddy after so many months away, but Roger is another matter altogether. I got the most awful feeling from his letters that he’s going to repeat his marriage proposal the moment I get back.”

“Don’t you want to marry him?” It was not the sort of question Julia would normally have asked straight out, but the champagne seemed to have emboldened her.

Kate’s expression would have been answer enough. “He’s very sweet sometimes,” she said, “but hardly the sort of man I want to settle down with. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than be the wife of a colonial civil servant, however important he’s going to be some day.

Where’s the adventure in that?”

“Does everything have to be an adventure?” Julia asked.

Kate giggled girlishly, and Julia realized the redhead was not completely immune to champagne either. “Of course. What’s life without adventure and doing things on the spur of the moment? Isn’t that what brought you to India?”

“Not exactly,” Julia confessed. “It was more a matter of needing a job and… and what I was leaving behind.”

“Oh, I see!” Kate gave her a sidelong glance. “It’s not so much a matter of seeking something new as escaping something old.”

“You could put it like that. It was the Wall Street Crash. We...”

“Oh, don’t mention that horrid thing,” Kate cut in. “I swear everyone has a tale to tell about how they suffered from it. It’s so horribly boring.”

Julia closed her mouth, glad the girl had quashed her uncharacteristic urge to talk about the misfortune that had befallen her family.

Kate clapped her hands in sudden delight. “This is much more exciting than stuffy old Delhi and Roger. I’ll bet Daddy would be furious if he knew I was here.” She turned to Julia and gripped her forearm.

“We’re on the North-West Frontier, Julia, the very border of the Empire.

In a day or two we won’t even really
be
in the Empire. Did Mrs. Winter tell you anything about this native prince she’s going to visit? I’ll bet he’s a rogue, you know. These border princelings all are, according to Daddy. They’re still stuck in the Middle Ages and only half-civilised, hardly different to the barbarians that lived on the borders of the Roman Empire in ancient times.”

“I don’t know any more than you,” Julia replied. “Mrs. Winter only mentioned him that once, when we were on the train to Rawalpindi.

She’s never brought the subject up again.”

Kate gave an impish grin. “We’ll have to ask her over breakfast.

I’m dying to know what she’s up to, coming all this way from England.”

Julia had no intention of questioning Mrs. Winter about her motives for making the journey. It was none of her business. Besides, she suspected one of them at least was very mundane – it was far cheaper to live in India than it was in Britain. Of course, Kate had a much more imaginative and scandalous explanation.

“I’ll bet they were lovers when she was here with her husband and she’s come to renew their affair.”

“Oh really, that’s just fanciful,” Julia said, protective of her employer’s reputation. “I’m quite sure Mrs. Winter is a very proper and respectable widow. There’s no reason at all you should be inventing such lu… lu… lurid tales about her past or her present intensh… shuns.”

Kate giggled. “Well, at least I succeeded in one of my objectives this evening. I managed to get you tipsy. But you were quite right to get us to leave when you did. Those subalterns were very naughty boys to have taken us there.” From Kate’s tone, Julia guessed her anger towards the lieutenants had mellowed during the climb to their rooms.