I had not long to wait before finding out. Angela Cleves made her intentions known in no uncertain way the moment she had the opportunity. The prolonged incident occurred after my mother and father had left for the evening to attend a ball given by the Queen for her consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The Marquis had been in a generous mood that entire day and, at noon, he had informed the staff at Hagen House that they could have the night for themselves.
The only individual who had not joined in the exodus had been Angela Cleves. I should have been suspicious that she had not taken advantage of the opportunity for an evening's personal pleasure, but the thought simply never crossed my mind. I was in the library working on an assignment given me by Harwell, James's tutor and mine, when the ornately carved door opened and-there was Angela, her red curls piled pyramidally atop her head, her breasts pronounced against her shirtwaist, her faintly slanted gray eyes alive with mocking merriment. “Yes, Miss Cleves?” I was most distinctly annoyed at having been interrupted. “My dear Lady Clarissa-” she began formally. “I'm still a child,” I said tartly. “There's no need for formal address. I find you in poor taste.” “I'm terribly sorry, Clarissa. I do apologize.” The scorn in the voice of her apology put me fairly into a fury. “What is it that you wish, Miss Cleves?” In my tension I stood up at the library table and slammed shut the books I had before me. “I took the liberty of having the maids bring water for our baths tonight before they left. I suggest you take advantage of it before it cools-in my quarters. I will assist you, of course.” “I need no assistance,” I said levelly. “As your governess, Clarissa, permit me to be the judge of that.” “Suppose I do not permit you, Miss Cleves,” I said coldly. “Then,” she said bluntly, “I will have to advise the Marquis of your behavior with your brother in your bedroom on that famous evening.” “Your stratagems are rather crude.” “But workable,” she said lightly. “Shall I expect you in my rooms shortly?”
“Yes, Miss Cleves.” “By the by,” the redhead said over her shoulder as she quit the library, “your brother James is waiting there too.” I must give a full, clinical report. This Era, this Victorian Era, is full of dissembling and hypocrisy. I pride myself so far on my candor… What I did not care for in the situation with Angela was the plain and simple truth that she was blackmailing a ten-year-old girl-no matter how precocious and sophisticated I was-and a twelve-year-old boy-and there was no male more advanced than he was for his age. Somehow, therefore, Angela Cleves had to be brought to book. For the moment I did not know how, but I promised myself that this would be a major undertaking, and that my co-conspirator would be, of course, my brother James. In the meantime, however, I had no recourse but to do Angela Cleves' bidding. For me to say that in doing so was unremitting misery, I should have to lie. No, much of my association with our governess was pure bliss, unmitigated pleasure, a fantastic trip to the sublime-especially so during an Era when the Establishment officially looked upon sex with loathing and disgust, aside from such figures as Sir Richard Burton who, during the intervals between his explorations translated the whole of the Arabian Nights, but which I was only able to read in expurgated version at that time. Now, when I must buy my lovers, I can read the unbowdlerized edition, but the erotic impact, I fear, is minimal.
Then, the impact of the Arabian Nights, even in its scissored version, was maximal, and I fantasied opening my legs and permitting an army of men to book passage-whom I would then transport… But I am anticipating my story. Let me return to Angela. Unlike many another English family of the blood, my mother and father never for a moment believed in stinting on attire and ambience either with their children or those most directly concerned with them, such as the tutor or governess. Accordingly, Oliver Harwell and his like during his tenure had a most comfortable small suite, and Angela Cleves, and others of her tribe, were similarly ensconced. When I entered Miss Cleves' well-appointed precincts, I was struck by the fact that the gaslights were low in the bedroom while, beyond, in the bathroom, they burned with a feverish brilliance. Almost as if to say, what was to be done in burning clarity might even be better done in the shadows. I can't say that Cleves was champing at the bit while waiting for me, nor did it seem to me that my brother was unduly aroused. On the contrary, they seemed to be having a perfectly composed exchange. It appeared that Cleves was an amateur naturalist much taken by the observation of birds. “Did you know that?”
James asked of me. “I had no idea.” My reply had been reserved.
How Angela Cleves could be brought to book and got rid of, would be the riddle of the century if it turned out James would not join forces with me. But he shall-he must! We could not tolerate a blackmailer in our bosom-she must be rooted out. But the rooting out of Angela would have to be put off at least for this evening, and probably for some time to come. There was nothing either James or I could do for the moment except to comply as graciously as possible with Cleves' wishes. Of course, the nature of her wishes were such, too, that we could hardly turn away from the pleasures of the sensual. “I would suggest,” Miss Cleves said, her faintly slanted gray eyes betraying a kind of curling amusement, “that since we are presently not involved in observing the winged creatures of our land, and that because hot water does tend to cool, we presently undress for the bath. As you know, since I'm rather forward-looking, I do not allow false modesty, especially under these circumstances when discretion is the better part of valor, to stand in our way.” Ah, indeed. Who could forget Miss Cleves? And, without further ado, the redheaded voluptuary began to divest herself. James and I had no recourse but to follow suit. James was shortly bare of all but his skin. I had to smile, and Angela Cleves' lips trembled in repressed humor, as for the moment we regarded my estimable brother standing there in the integument with which he had originally been brought into this curious world. His face was a very model of serenity and composure, but-alas-the youth was elsewhere betrayed. For, in its tremor dancing a little jig, between his thighs there shook his as yet unmonstrous catapulter. In the parlance of my imagination, my brother's member was at half mast and at the mercy, one might have said, of a mild seismographic effect. It was a sweet member, I thought, and one which I would have liked, tenderly, to kiss-in a most sisterly fashion! But I was never to experience that with James, and to this day it distresses me to think of the taboo that had me desist from kissing my brother's phallus and bringing it within my pulsant harbor, while I nevertheless permitted my fingers to have my way with him-in what way may the hand be less guilty than the vaginal and oral orifices?
In any case, it was obvious that James was already responding to the spirit of the occasion. The many highlights on the lustrous, curling black hair of his groin seemed to indicate, too, that there already might have been something of a discharge that had burnished the hair. The heavy throbbing that had commenced in the region of my own genitalia led me to believe there might shortly be a similar effect on my black curls which, for my age, were a profusion. It took Angela Cleves and myself considerably longer to denude ourselves because of the multiple nature of our undergarments. I do know that, finally, I made quite a picture-Miss Cleves had had the foresight of having had a full-length dress mirror installed in her bedroom, and I found myself staring at the raven-tressed lass who had developed rather in advance of the full decade she had been on the earth. All the concavities and convexities were present save for the abundant teats-they were not yet so except for the marvelous gifts of my nipples, whose sharpness and protrusion I could match with almost anyone's… “The bath,” I heard myself murmuring. “Oh, the bath,” I muttered, knowing that James was staring at me as I felt myself, felt the sticky wetness even as I watched myself do it in the mirror, felt an even heavier throbbing as I saw Angela Cleves, petticoat after petticoat, ruffle after ruffle, laciness after laciness, at last reveal herself and shake loose the red hair piled atop her head, shaking it loose so that it fell to her waist, her incredibly slim waist that flared into the harp of luxuriant womanhood. She lifted both her arms and took our hands, James's and mine, and led us, as if we were sacrifices-and by that point we were willing enough!-into the bathroom where the gaslight was high, was a feverish brilliance, where the sheer milkiness of my skin and that of my brother's could be clearly seen, contrasting with the ebon of our hair, and where, too, the beauty that was Angela's could be gazed at to the heart's content.
There was the wave upon wave of titian hair, there was the faintly slanted gray of her eyes in the piquant face in its slightly off-center pixie triangle, and there were her breasts-high, long, pointed, swollen, their nipples protruding further than mine. I started to sweat. James could not contain himself. With a hoarse cry he advanced upon Angela and with both hands seized one of her breasts and took long, slow sucks upon it. Angela threw back her head and laughed. James did not for a moment pause. I stood there transfixed. As James continued to have at her teat, Angela seized his now rigid cock and gently brushed it against the dense reddish fleece adorning her Mount of Venus-brushed it against and then jabbed it at herself almost as if she were triumphally planting a standard on the mountaintop. James groaned. My knees trembled. And thus Angela brought us to the bath whose steep sides we proceeded to climb over-there was a picture: three bobbing posteriors mounting the ornate tub which, large though it was, nevertheless forced us into rather close quarters. But by that point none of us minded in the least. Laughing immoderately, shrieking, squealing, a-chatter with chuckle and gasp, we took turns soaping each other and ourselves, James by that stage so hypersensitive that, as Angela ran the soap along his male regalia, the breath caught in his throat, his face suddenly paled, he leaned back against the side of the tub, his prick high and quaking and catapulting forth great gushes of thick white juice. An expression of savagery overtook Angela's face and she engorged all of James's organ in her mouth, her throat working convulsively as she pulled and swallowed… pulled and swallowed.
Seeing she was thus engaged, I took courage in hand and thrust one, two and then three fingers into her turgid vulva obscured by the soapy waters. Her gray eyes bulged. As far as she possibly could within the confines of the bathtub-and she was on her knees in the soap-bubbled water as she laved at and sucked my brother's reamer-she spread her freckled thighs for me. I knelt before this redheaded beauty and dug. Dug viciously. With all the suppressed cruelty of a ten-year-old who had been surrounded with convention and taboo. With the cant and the sham of the times that permitted the adult male of the species to enjoy bloodletting by watching bare-knuckled prizefighters maul themselves half to death… I was a child of the times. The times that had other children work in factories fourteen hours a day. I was incomparably more fortunate. And what, pray, what was I doing now? I shall tell you, in all candor. I was the Lady Clarissa, punishing my inferior, Miss Angela Cleves. Therefore, dear reader, I dug at Angela's vulva. At her vagina. Now she was thrashing in the bathwater. She had released my brother, who now watched us incredulously. She looked at me with terror and hatred, but was powerless. The bliss had her helpless. Spittle formed at the corners of her mouth-I had found that special, ultrasensitive protuberance of the female, the clitoris, and I was stroking it, jerking at it, pushing it, squeezing it with all the cunning at my command.
Angela's breathing was stertorous. James continued to watch us, his own machine a-dangle and hopping from time to time like a little bird on the end of a leash. Our governess gazed at me with venomous rage, which her ecstasies kept at bay. It was not that she was not being erotically satisfied, but that she felt her ignominious secondary position-and to a ten-year-old girl at that! Admittedly, a ten-year-old far in advance of her chronological age, but vastly the junior of Cleves. But Cleves was a female of extraordinary spirit. She had no intention of remaining in a secondary position. Her breasts jiggling from the effort, she took a purchase on the rim of the bathtub and by main force pulled herself upright-even as I never missed a stroke. I grinned wickedly at her discomfiture-I was relishing every second. But Angela Cleves shook her head and, with a steely grip, seized my hand-although, like some mechanical thing, her hips, that had been thrusting at my fingers before, continued to thrust. She took a deep breath. “Children,” she said. “Yes, dear governess,” James and I mockingly chanted in unison. “We will dry ourselves and proceed to the bedroom.”
“Yes, dear governess.” Once we were back in the bedroom I did a superb piece of acting. If I may say so, this was probably the first instance of the showing of my histrionic abilities. The motivation? Very simple. Although I was a child, I was nevertheless a Lady, the daughter of a Marquis, and I wished to prove to Cleves that I was quite capable of maintaining my superior position. What I did was the following-nothing complicated but, as it turned out, highly effective. James, alert to every shading of my moods, waited, intuiting that I had the situation well in hand and that we would take the play away from the redhead on the ground that the pleasures of the aristocratic blood took precedence over those of the working class.
I sat on the bed, daintily picked up a stocking, raised one leg high into the air and fell back, as though I were about to roll on my stocking from that stance, thus taking the first step toward absenting myself from Miss Cleves' quarters. With a strangled whimper of lust, the voluptuous redheaded woman advanced upon me in all her seductive nudity-she had stared for a moment at my position on the bed, with one leg altitudinously elevated, and what that had revealed of my outer and inner ramparts pinkly pouting among the black foliage.
“You little beast,” she hurled at me. “I will teach you to mock me-even in my presence!” She had no idea of what was to transpire. She did not notice, for instance, that the fine club of my brother had once again become poised. Simulating alarm, I raised the other leg, crooking it at the knee, and dropped the stocking.
“Oh, la,” said I, “whatever have I done?” Cleves' words were quite lost and unintelligible as she dropped to her knees-I had made certain to comport myself at the edge of the bed-and buried herself headfirst in my ebon coppice, her tongue darting furiously. I felt a huge victory-Cleves had genuflected. She was practically prostrate before me. I raised myself to my elbows and then sat up, a liquid fire engulfing my vitals because of the knowing lavings of my governess. I caressed the back of her neck and several times rudely pushed at her head so that she might search me out more thoroughly.
Then I nodded at James and he winked. I dropped once again to my elbows and, very slowly, began pushing myself away from the edge of the four-poster-pushing myself toward the center of the fresh sheets.
As I did so, Cleves never for a moment relinquished either her labializing of my rima pudendi or her rapid tongue inserts between the labia majora pudendi and the labia minora pudendi, laving the clitoris and foraging into the vagina (my dear reader, please to keep in mind that, while at the time of the instance described above I had no idea whatever of the proper names for the anatomy in question, I did learn them later in my frigid period to understand myself better, an account of which you will find later in my narrative). I tell you quite frankly, I would have surrendered then and there to the Clevesian ministrations and forgotten my noble blood entirely had it not been for my loyalty to my brother who had contrived to whisper to me, while the busy redhead was nibbling at my clitoris-which almost drove me mad-that if I got Cleves onto the bed, he, James would be in a position once and for all to have done with his virginity. So be it, I told myself. Now the redhead and I were roughly in the center of the four-poster. As she had at me with her little pointed tongue, her rump was high in the air. Her hands tortured my nipples.
My own breathing was shallow. I shut my eyes. I began to buck.
Then, suddenly, my genital system felt as if it had been stove in-Angela's teeth had cut into the tissues because the woman had been lunged at from the rear. I whined. Actually, the pain was short-lived because of the overriding zest that soon claimed me. It had been James, of course, who had come upon Angela from behind. As the head of his penis established contact with the tip of her womb, Miss Angela Cleves uttered an unearthly cry. Momentarily she raised her secretion-smeared face and twisted her head to cry to James, “You dirty little monster!” I supposed she was paying some sort of lip service to whatever remained of her conscience, because once again she applied her physiognomic lips to my vaginal ones, and once again I was flying a sortie of rapture while my brother plumbed Cleves from the rear-then I heard her groaning at my slit. He was being quite cruel to her but she deserved every shred for blackmailing us. He hung on to her breasts-literally hung on them-while he glided in and out of her, plunged in and out of her. She made pitiful nasal sounds which I intercepted and broke by shoving her face into my luxuriance and wrapping my thighs around her neck. I came. James came.
But Angela had not conquered. On the contrary-she had not reached her climax. Her sweaty and lubricated face pleaded with us to finish her off. James was adamant. I was adamant. We grinned, my brother and I. “Masturbate,” we said in unison. “We will do you the pleasure of observing.” The redhead had no other recourse. She asked us to leave. We shook our heads. “Blackmail invites blackmail,” James said. Shivering-the fire had gone down in the grate-the girl parted her cleft and, her jaw gone slack, manipulated herself. James and I then were newly excited. “You take one,” I said, “and I'll take the other.” “Agreed,” James said. And we chewed at Angela's nipples as she fingered the node in the female that so resembles the male's prick. Finally she gave a great humping. Stupor was on her face. She uttered high piercing cries, and a series of tremors giddied and eddied all over her body. Unwilling, now, to let her go, I continued to savage her nipples while James mouthed her pubic region. Again Angela convulsed, flopping about like a fish on a hot plate. “Let me alone now,” she said in a low voice when her flop-about had subsided.
“I beg you, let me-” James slapped her face. She shut up.
Yes, I thought. This was our revenge for Angela having threatened to inform on us to our parents. This was bringing her to book. She would become our sexual slavey. So the revenge turned out to be very simple. And when she was satiated, she would leave and we would never see her again. But now we had her where we wanted her… James held his shriveled instrument out to her. “Harden it,” he said.
“We don't have very much time now,” Angela said. “The Marquis and Marchioness will be-” “Harden it,” James said pitilessly.
“Quickly, Angela.” Her head hanging, abased, our governess knelt before my brother and flicked her fingers across his rod and redeemer.
She grazed her fingertips along the base of his still modest column- still modest when erect-until it essayed little pumping motions. Then she brushed her nipples across it and then it positively gave a heave, its rocketlike shape quite startling but capable, of course, of fireworks. “James,” she said. “Yes?” “James,” she said again, piteously. “What is it, Miss Cleves?” “I quite realize I'm your senior by a number of years, but would you consider staying with me a few more hours-because on second thought I don't believe your mother and father will look in on us.” “Holy faggots of Christ,” James cursed, “I should hope not. Nevertheless, Cleves, there will be other occasions so that I think it best to break off for the moment.” Angela's face burned. “Just another hour,” she pleaded. “I am terribly tense and overactivated and need thoroughgoing satisfactions.” “I am not your man,” James said decisively. “I am grateful that, because of you, I am no longer a virgin. But I am not your paramour. I'm a very gifted and avant-garde boy, and therefore I will inform you as to our next rendezvous, my sister Clarissa to be included as well.” “Children are terribly cruel,” she said.
“Only as a result of their governesses,” I said. She shook her head. “I cannot stay here. I shall have to ask my contract to be nullified.” She spoke in very low tones, as if the words were simply for her ears alone. James and I had dressed and we were standing by the door. “Good night, Miss Cleves,” James said. She did not reply. Nor did she say a word when I wished her the same. We left her squatting naked in the middle of the four-poster bed, for all the world in the dim gaslight some burnished, holy statuette from some lost land, her red hair tumbling disheveled about her face and shoulders… I tarried a few minutes in James's suite. “Do you think we did right, James, in using her?” He leaned back in a leather armchair in his elegant way. “Of course we did. She had no right threatening to tell tales to Mother and Dad.” “Perhaps,” I said, “she did evil because she's our last governess. She's our introduction into the world.” “Yes,” he said, “what fragments we see of it.” I sighed. “What is it, Clarissa?” “It's hard to say, James. After sex, even though, technically, I'm still a virgin-I feel sad. As if I've given everything away. Don't you feel that way at all, James? After all, you're no longer a virgin.”
“Well, I rather feel as if we're going through the last of our childhood, Clarissa-and that we should make the most of Angela Cleves.” “You don't believe she'll try to break her contract?”
“I doubt if she'll make any such effort. I think she feels she's got the perfect picture here, you know-lewd lad and lass join their governess in secret sex rites.” “Well, she is a beauty. Those teats… ah… I can't wait till I get my hands on them again.”
“Her love amphora is marvellous too,” James said. “It's snug and slippery and steamy…” “Did you notice her armpits, James? Her red hair grows thick as furze there-she's terribly exciting. I shall dare to nestle my nose under her arms the next time…” He looked at me fondly. “You are a funny lass, Clarissa-I'd rather have you than any other sister in the world.” “Done!” I cried joyously, and I kissed him on the nose. “Don't you wish summer were here and we'd be in Cornwall again?” “If Cleves comes along, I daresay we'll have a good time of it. I'd like to frighten her with our maze and then take her then and there in the center of it, just while she's terror-stricken… I demurred. “We needn't be cruel, James.”
“Children are defined by cruelty, Clarissa. It is the only way we can get along with adults.” “Naughty, naughty, James-you're guilty of generalizing!” “Well, dammit, I feel as if I ought to be guilty of something.” I laughed thrillingly. James put on a quirky smile. “Well,” I said, “don't do any damage to yourself out of guilt -I'd be rather proud of that magic cone you have hanging there between your legs!”