Thyme II Thyme (3 page)

Yet was that the main reason for strapping and lacing me into this accursed garment? The main reason possibly, but not the sole reason. Hacklebury had some very curious ideas when it came to women and what he considered sexy, and figure-hugging leather fell into that category. What was it with men and leather? The magazines I'd seen, both behind the bushes at the edge of the school playing field and on the top shelves of a couple of newsagent's shops in Havant and Portsmouth, featured shiny black-clad female figures in outfits ranging from the more conventional motorcycle jacket and trousers - the jacket usually open in front to reveal varying degrees of amazingly well-developed mammary glands - to corsets I had regarded as being impossibly constricting, up until I'd been introduced to the real thing, that is.

I turned back from the doorway and stared at the featureless walls, pondering glumly. No, this whole thing smacked of something even deeper than Hacklebury being a leather fetishist. His mad maidservant had a hand in everything, or so it seemed, and apparently she was able to exercise an influence over her employer far above her presumed station as a mere domestic. She was obviously sane enough to appreciate that the likes of dear Gregory could never marry the likes of her, but she was determined to make it clear to me that my situation as his wife was considered even lower than her own might have been, even had I actually been his wife.

My thoughts turned to whoever it was they had found and used as my doppelganger, the girl who had stood in at the travesty of a wedding ceremony to make sure Angelina didn't say 'I won't' when it came time to say 'I do'. I still didn't know much about my ancestor, who's dainty little body I now once again occupied, but there was a feeling I couldn't get away from that she had a courage far greater than most young women of her age would have possessed. She had stood up to Hacklebury and to Meg and that was no mean effort, for she must have known the awful pair would make her pay for her defiance.

Where are you now, Angelina?
I wondered, and grimaced in a kind of smile around the disfiguring gag. Her body was here, of course, and I was in it, but where was her actual spirit, her so-called soul? Was she still in here with me somewhere, dormant, or simply keeping a low profile while I took over? Or was she elsewhere, maybe in someone else's body or simply floating in the ether? Could she see me? Could she feel me? Did she know I existed? Was she watching me now, perhaps even tuning into my thoughts?

Talk to me, you silly little bitch!

No answer. I waited, listening both outwardly and inwardly.

I could do with your help, Angelina. You may have a few answers that could be a bit useful.

Still nothing.

I'm on your side, girl, and two heads are better than one
. Of course, in our case, it was a matter of only one head between us and maybe two minds, but I'm sure you get the idea, and I hoped and assumed she would, too, if only she was listening.

Please? Pretty please?

I sighed. Oh well, I hadn't really expected her to suddenly pop up on the side. She'd made no effort to communicate the first time I'd found myself in her body, so why would she bother now? The conclusion, therefore, had to be that she couldn't rather than
wouldn't
communicate with me.

You're on your own, Teena my girl
. How long this time, I wondered, trying to remember exactly how long the experience had lasted the first time. It had seemed like an eternity while I was going through it, but it had probably only been a few days, while back in the year nineteen seventy-five it had only been a few minutes. My eyes narrowed as I thought of Anne-Marie and Andrea. Presumably, I would have passed out in front of them and they would be doing their best to revive me, Andrea possibly thinking I had fainted as a result of her efforts with her otherwise carefully disguised manhood.

I felt guilty as sin when I thought about how little persuasion it had taken for me to fit in with my odd new friends' weird sexual proclivities, and because straps and chains hadn't really been needed in order for Anne-Marie to reduce me to a kneeling little slave with my tongue licking eagerly at her dripping pussy. I stared down at myself as best I could, and a shiver of something ran up my spine. I tried not to admit to what had caused it, but deep inside me I damn well knew the truth.

The games I had played with Anne-Marie and Andrea were just that, games. They had been exciting, but this now was no game and these chains, though not actually any more real than Anne-Marie's, had been locked onto me with an intent approaching permanence. No, this was no dalliance or role-playing but a game that was being enacted in deadly earnest, and this bondage was both thorough and cruel, designed to reduce me to the level of a helpless plaything with a status scarcely above that of any four legged stable inmate...

And that thought excited me, I realised with horror!

As the leather corset began to dry out, its laces started shrinking and tightening even more despite the fact that Angelina had been convinced the last round of tightening, following her dunking into the pond, had constricted her waist as far as was humanly possible.

The two younger maids had earlier bound her wrists with another length of lace, although this they had used dry and not allowed to become wet afterwards. However, the various turns were tight enough and cinched through so that Angelina knew there was no chance of her slipping out of this simple bondage. Now she was helpless to try and ease her newest torture even had her fingers been able to deal with the knots that held the corset closed. All she could do was stand and try to stare back at the three women with an air of defiance, a posture and attitude made increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible, as the unforgiving garment drew tighter and tighter about her.

Finally, with a gasp and a small squeal, she sank to her knees. 'Mercy!' she cried, blinking away tears of pain and humiliation. 'Mercy, I beg of you, before you kill me!'

Meg stepped forward, stooped over her and seized her hair, hauling her head up so Angelina was forced to look into her sneering face. 'Oh, you'll not die, you simpering child,' she said quietly. 'You may faint, and you'll fight for every breath, but you'll not die, not for a long while yet, I promise you.'

Angelina groaned, her eyes wide and her nostrils dilated as the air hissed in and out of her protesting lungs. 'And then what?' she begged to know, the words now little more than a series of sobs. 'What is it you want of me?'

'Want? Of you? Ha!' Meg released her vicious grip and allowed the blonde head to drop forward again. 'I want nothing of you, little missy,' she said in a tone of dismissive contempt. 'The master did want certain things, but you have made it obvious you cannot, or will not, provide them, more fool you, and now it is simply a case of teaching you how to behave.' She turned to the other maids. 'Go, both of you,' she ordered. 'Get back to the house and prepare the horse. I'll bring this creature with me shortly.'

The two maids scuttled off in a swirl of skirts and petticoats, leaving Meg alone with Angelina. The older woman now crouched down beside her captive and raised her chin in one hand. 'I'll have everything I want, miss cold fish,' she hissed. 'I already have most of it, in fact, and when you are no longer of any use or value, I shall have it completely.'

'You want Gregory for yourself?' Angelina whimpered.

Meg laughed. 'I already have him, in truth, and now I also have you, and by his order, whilst it makes my flesh creep to think of him with his proud cock in such a tight and unresponsive pussy as yours, by God I shall turn you into his whore as well as his wife.'

'But why? Surely that will go against your hopes if I were to do all the wicked things I know he wants of me?'

'Then you do not know men, little girl,' Meg retorted. 'When you are finally ready and are begging him for it, lapping his cock and balls at every tip and turn and squirming like a three penny slut at his feet, what appeal do you think you will have for him then? You, with your tiny titties and skinny shanks, do you think a man like that will choose you over what I offer him? Ah, I know he can never marry me nor give me his name in any way, but have him I shall in every other fashion.'

'And then you will kill me, I suppose?' Angelina fought to get the words out as the pressure around her diaphragm continued to intensify.

Meg patted her cheek. 'Perhaps, in time,' she conceded, 'but first I'll have you as my little lap dog, madam. You'll crawl to me as you would crawl to him and offer me that tart little tongue as readily as I will accept it where it belongs, down here!' She jerked a finger towards her skirts. 'Yes, down here, my little bitch, your little tongue will lap my pussy to prepare it for your very own husband, and then you will watch as he rogers a real woman.'

'You're mad!' Angelina groaned, her eyes widening in even greater horror. 'I... I thought Gregory was mad enough, but... but you... you are completely... insane!' The last word emerged as a strangled squeal and faded into a sigh as she toppled forward, fainting into merciful oblivion.

Memories or dreams? Dreams or memories?
Her
memories or
my
dreams? As I opened my eyes to find myself once again staring at the blank stone walls of my confinement, I knew I had already begun to understand and accept the truth.

Wherever Angelina's own personality now was, little snippets of her memories were beginning to filter through to me. It started happening the last time I had come back, and now... still like a half remembered dream after waking but clearer, much clearer than before. Or was it, had it been, simply my imagination?

I turned slowly, studying each of the walls in turn trying to use their very blankness to focus and concentrate my mind. The scene by the pond had been real, of that I was all but certain, and now as I narrowed my eyes I found I could almost relive it, the vice-like pressure of that awful corset, the sharp pains against my spine as the steadily shrinking laces cut into my flesh... no, not
my
flesh,
her
flesh.

I shook my head, blinking fiercely. Her flesh, my flesh, what did it matter? This was her body, but now it was my body again. And for how long?

A terrible thought struck me and my teeth dug deeper into the leather gag. How long before the murderous bitch finally tired of her game and killed her helpless victim? And what if that helpless victim just still happened to be me at the time? Would I die in, and with, this body? Reason told me that I ought not to; that if I was Angelina when the time came I would simply be whisked back to my own time and body. But reason had played no part in this so far, so why should it begin to now or any time in the future?

I shuddered and the sound of my heart pounding grew louder still in my head, so loud I did not hear the footsteps approaching from beyond the stable door...

To say that the jailer Hacklebury had appointed for me was a big man would not be doing his size justice in any way, shape or form; Erik was huge. I would have found his height and bulk intimidating even in my real body, so imagine how much more terrifying and powerful he seemed to me trapped in Angelina's tiny five-foot frame.

There was something about him that said 'Viking' to me and indeed, I quickly discovered that he was Scandinavian, though I was never totally certain which of those northern countries he actually came from, perhaps it was a mixture of more than one. He spoke very clear English and so was able to communicate his instructions and requirements, if one did not count the peculiar backwards way he had of constructing his sentences, which after a surprisingly short time I came to cope with quite easily. Blond and bulky with muscles, Erik was also more than passably good looking, to the point of even being handsome to women who go for that certain ruggedness. And the fact that he was soft- spoken and prone to smiling a lot sometimes almost made me forget what he was there for, almost but not quite, for he was as ruthlessly efficient in the execution of his duties as he was casual in his handling of me.

Today, it seemed, was to be no different...

'Forward please, and over the rail to be bending.' Erik pointed to the crude trestle arrangement that stood in the centre of the stable cell adjacent to the one in which I was generally kept. Obediently, I shuffled towards it and lowered the upper half of my body over the waist-high horizontal rail. My nemesis quickly moved in and buckled the thick strap across the small of my back, preventing me from rising again until it was released. My arms were now quickly folded behind my back and secured there by means of heavy leather cuffs, and then my ankles were dragged wider apart and similarly fettered. Yet Erik had only just begun.

Behind me, I heard a rattling sound as he sorted through an assortment of bamboo and rattan canes lining a rack in the corner. It seemed that little, if anything, had changed during my short respite back in the twentieth century. I was to be beaten on a regular basis and, even though my buttocks had the questionable luxury of the tight leather for protection, I knew it was still going to hurt, especially when Erik began to trickle water onto my thin and tightly stretched hide. I felt his massive hands massaging the liquid in, and then bit into my gag in frustration when I felt his caresses fire off those all too familiar little crackerjacks of desire deep inside me.
Damn this body!
I thought.