Teena Thyme (12 page)

Except, I thought then, that she had tried to do exactly that and then suffered dreadfully for her courage. Well, to be accurate,
I'd
been the one who'd actually done the suffering, but the original Angelina must have known that something like that was inevitable and there was no way she could have known it would be someone else in her body when it happened.

So how had it happened? Obviously, this wasn't the first time I'd asked myself the question, but so far I hadn't come up with any answers that didn't defy logic, and I knew very little about either science or science fiction to be able to postulate any sort of workable theory. But then, as I now suddenly realised, that was hardly surprising. Time travel was supposed to be impossible, despite all the various stories in books, so the fact that I had managed it would defy all known logic, wouldn't it?

The locket had to be some sort of key to it though, I'd worked out, and if it wasn't then my name wasn't Teena Thyme. There had to be something in it - or about it - that had caused some sort of rip or glitch in the continuum, or whatever the writers called it. Strong emotions causing some sort of field around it? Maybe, though I hadn't felt anything unusual about it when I'd picked it up first time.

The big problem I had now, of course, was that if it was the locket that had brought me here, the likelihood of my getting back without it would appear to be something less than remote and the damned thing was now missing. I stared at the dainty little Angelina reflection again.

'So, where is it then?' I demanded of her. 'In one of these closets or drawers?' I looked quickly around the room; there were plenty of potential hiding places, but somehow I just knew I wasn't going to find the thing in any of them.

'He's got it, hasn't he?' I let out as long a sigh as my corset would allow and shook my head. 'Old bastard features himself, eh? But why would he want it? It's gold, fair enough, but it can't be worth that much. Or has he just taken it to spite you, I wonder?'

And then the penny dropped.

The wedding! Of course, Hacklebury was staging a mock wedding, according to Meg. Somewhere, somehow, he had managed to find a girl who looked enough like me - enough like Angelina, I corrected myself - to fool whatever witnesses he intended to invite along, so it would make sense to let her wear the locket for the mock ceremony if it was something that the real Angelina always wore, as I was pretty certain was the case.

But what next? I didn't really want to consider the possibilities too closely, as none of them was likely to involve an immediate improvement in my circumstances and one of them could quite easily involve a decided and very permanent downturn in them. Once Hacklebury had the wedding certificate in his hands, it also meant he had whatever fortune Angelina had been bequeathed, which meant he no longer had any practical use for her.

Ergo, he no longer had any practical use for me.

I turned awkwardly, and shuffled painfully across to the window. Outside, the world looked pretty and peaceful. Inside, it looked black and bleak and with every chance of coming to an abrupt and premature end for at least one of its inhabitants.

I slept hardly at all for the remainder of that night, fatigue bringing sporadic lapses into fitfully light dozes, from which I quickly awoke each time with jolts that brought gasps of alarm from my lips.

The dream itself didn't return as such, but I kept picturing isolated scenes from it, each one frozen like a still frame from a video recording. I had no real idea of what it all meant, of course, though it did occur to me that it might have been something from Angelina's past. Dreams are, after all, supposed to be triggered by real life events, even if some of the memories have hidden themselves away in the subconscious level, and nothing in that vivid sequence touched even the remotest chord for me.

Therefore, I deduced, it had to have come from Angelina and that could mean only one thing: I might have taken over her body, but somewhere in this brain something of her still remained. In fact, maybe all of her was in here with me somewhere, but if so, I thought as I lay there on my side staring out at the dark night beyond the window, why did she persist in hiding?

Of course, I concluded eventually, she might not actually have much choice in the matter. Whatever force had propelled me backwards through time and into her being might have its own reasons for wanting me in control, rather than her, but then did that make any sort of sense? Maybe not, I was forced to admit. But then, where was the sense in any of this?

7
.

Indira's touch was as gentle as ever. She sat behind me on the bed, her small hands feathering across my shoulders, tracing the outlines of my shoulder blades to where the top of my corset began and then flitting lightly to meet in the valley between them. I sighed and let my head fall back until it rested in another, much deeper valley.

'My little memsahib is so tired,' she cooed. 'I will ease these awful laces for you and massage the aches of the day, my little bird.' Her English was as flawless as ever, only the musical lilt of her velvet voice suggesting that her coffee coloured skin might not be some trick of the lamplight. I felt her full lips press against the nape of my neck and my right hand sought behind me, until it came to rest against the warmth of her naked thigh.

'Oh, Indira,' I gasped. 'What is to become of me? Why do they refuse to let you accompany me when I go? You have been my constant companion for ten years now, ever since papa decided I should come back here to England. It is
too cruel - too cruel by far.'

She reached around and placed two fingers across my lips, the fingers of her other hand stroking my forehead.

'Shhh, my little bird,' she whispered. 'There are things in this world that are beyond our power to influence and we must pray for the wisdom to know them when we see them. Your husband-to-be intends for you to have a fresh start and he will not want the likes of me to remind you of your past.'

Her hands moved again, pushing me into an upright sitting position again and I felt her fingers as they began tugging at the knots that held my corset laces. I sucked myself in, trying to relieve some of the tension, but in truth there was little margin for that.

'Such terrible instruments of torture,' Indira said. 'Why it should be thought necessary for a pretty creature like you to be squeezed into such a device, I have never been able to understand. And they call my people barbaric, these strutting men with their peacock airs.'

'It is the fashion, Indira,' I reminded her. 'I would that it would change, but I see no chance of that. Men see a small waist as something to be worshipped, or so I am told.' Indira made an impolite noise in her throat.

'They seek to hold women prisoners in their own clothing, more like,' she snorted. 'Why, look at this thing. If t'is not a cage then I have never seen a cage before. See here the bars, hidden in their satin finery maybe, but bars just the same. There, that has the last knot.'

I felt the laces begin to give, their retreat speeded by Indira's organised attacks upon them and air flooded back into those parts of my lungs that the corset's strictures had rendered obsolete for so long during the day. I gasped with a mixture of relief and bliss and, when she finally unhooked the basque and dragged the wretched undergarment from me, fell back across the bed and laughed shrilly as I savoured my body's brief freedom.

'Oh, Indie, my sweet darling!' I cried. 'Come hold me, take the little bird now you have freed it from its cruel cage!' She came to me, laying alongside me, her naked bosom pressed against my arm, one long brown leg coiling itself over my shorter, silk stocking clad ones. Her mouth nuzzled my ear through the mass of curls and I closed my eyes in anticipation of the ecstasy to come.

'Indie,' I breathed, 'what will become of you afterwards? After I am gone, I mean?'

'Shhh,' she urged, her breath hot against the side of my face. 'You must not worry yourself about me, my sweet little memsahib. I am well provided for by the terms of your poor father's will. His lordship has told me so. Enough for a small cottage somewhere and a pension for life, or else perhaps to return to my family in the Punjab.'

'But what shall I do without you?' I wailed. I lifted my left hand and reached across to her, my fingers finding the fulsome breast and the burgeoning teat my lips so desperately craved. A moment later her fingers found the first of the ribbons between my thighs and I felt the sharp tug as she loosed it with her customary skill.

'I shall speak to Gregory,' I resolved. 'I shall speak to him very firmly and make him understand how important you are to me, Indie.'

'Yes, my dove,' she whispered. 'You will speak to him, I know, and you will clap your hands and stamp your pretty feet, but alas, I fear you will not alter his decision. Sir Gregory will not want to share your affections, less still your bed.'

'But he cannot possibly know!' My entire body stiffened and I made to sit up again, but Indira pushed me back and rolled so that she was half on top of me, her weight pinning me helplessly. Her dark eyes stared into mine and I saw both the sadness and the fear there.

'He may not know, my little bird,' she said, 'but he has eyes to see with and ears to hear with. I fear he has guessed our little secret and he will not let things continue as they have done. He cannot possibly, can he? Think how his dignity and reputation would suffer if the truth travelled further.

'Sir Gregory Hacklebury, cuckolded in his own house and by a woman. Not just any woman, but his new wife's heathen maidservant, too. Think of what society would have to say about that, my sweet innocent little memsahib.'

'Damn society!' I cried. 'And damn all men for their hypocrisies.' I fell silent again, staring up at the ceiling and at the carved flowers and cherubs frozen in the plasterwork.

'Kiss me, Indie,' I said at last. Her deep red lips covered mine, her soft wet tongue easing them apart and seeking my own tongue. I felt the blood beginning to pulse in my veins and the familiar little tremors begin their dance in my legs. A single finger eased my drawers apart and probed for my tight little slit, which seized upon it as hungrily as a starving lamb would seize a ewe's nipple.

'Oh Indie!' I gasped. 'I cannot be separated from you, not now. There must be some way and I shall not rest until I find it!'

I woke shortly after and the memories of what had passed between the two of us in that bed assured me of no further proper sleep that night. I lay there, the image of the Indian servant girl so clear in my mind, yet knowing nothing of her, save that we had made a deeply passionate love and that it was obviously not for the first time.

So, innocent little Angie wasn't quite the innocent I'd supposed her to be, but a lesbian? I racked my brain, trying to recall anything I had read that might have helped throw any light on the subject, but it was all just general stuff. Women had been having sexual liaisons with each other since time immemorial, so of course Angie's little tryst shouldn't have come as anything of a surprise. But with her servant - and an Indian servant to boot.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm neither racist nor elitist, but that's me, and me was from a much more enlightened age. True, the eighteen-thirties were a lot more openly liberal than the years that were to follow them, when sweet Queen Vicky and her Germanically sired brood would set new standards that her subjects would at least pay lip-service to, but Angelina had been walking a right fraying tightrope.

Yes, men would probably turn temporarily unsighted eyes if their wives wanted to indulge each other behind closed boudoir doors - it gave them licence and freedom elsewhere and saved them having to wonder if the next little bundle of arms and legs that appeared might have been sired by a visiting stud, but there were certain things you weren't supposed to do in front of the servants, let alone with them.

And Indira whatever-her-name-was, beautiful though she was, also came from what nowadays would be politely referred to as an 'ethnic' root. Hells dentures, it hadn't been that many years since Wilberforce had led the crusade that finally banned slavery in Britain, and across the Atlantic the Americans and ex-patriot Brits in the West Indies were still hard at it, if you'll pardon the irony of that particular way of phrasing it.

Of course, it was quite acceptable for a bloke to get his jollies with a black or brown woman, be she servant or slave, but it just didn't work the other way around, not in a world where all the rules were made by men and for their own benefit. And if Angelina was sticking her neck out, the consequences for her maidservant were potentially a lot, lot worse.

I closed my eyes again, but the memory of those warm lips between my thighs and the incredible sensations wrought by that wicked tongue made me open them immediately. There was no way I was going to risk going back to sleep again, even if it proved possible. Too many disturbing emotions. One too many disturbing memories of my own...

I stayed awake until well after the sun finally put in its first appearance of the day, but then sheer fatigue gripped me and I fell into a deep and mercifully dream-free slumber for what was probably about four hours. Whether or not anyone looked in on me during this period - and I suspect they probably did - I neither knew nor cared.

However, a while after I awoke Polly appeared with a small tray, upon which she carried a small jug of water and a plate on which someone had placed a couple of slices of plain bread and three or four slivers of a pale coloured meat, which I eventually identified as pork. She said nothing to me and I, in turn, made no attempt to draw her into another fruitless conversation, but I devoured the meagre meal as soon as the door closed behind her.