The Devil's Surrogate Page 7

  'If you're so certain, Bressingham,' she was saying, 'and if Lord Wormley is offering even money on you, surely you can do better with your own odds?'

  'Six to four,' Wormley suggested. The knot of guests was drawing in closer now, eager to see the outcome of this contest.

  Isobel looked at the paunchy lord with obvious contempt. 'Six to four?' she echoed. 'Pah! Have you no sense of chivalry? Lay me three to one and I'll maybe give it some serious consideration.'

  'I'd lay her anytime,' Matilda heard one of the other men nearest to the bird-girls mutter to his companion, but he was far enough away that Isobel could not hear his jibe.

  'Two to one,' Wormley offered.

  'And I'll lay you five to two myself,' Bressingham announced, 'but that's a private wager between the two of us. Wormley has the rights to the main book, and I'd not presume.'

  'Five hundred guineas at five to two, you say?' Isobel's eyes narrowed and the corners of her mouth twitched. 'One hour only? I stay free of you for one hour, and I wear a marking so the other hunters know I'm to be prey only to you?'

  'Agreed,' Bressingham replied.

  Lord Wormley nodded. 'Agreed, so long as Grayling has no objections.'

  'Indeed, I haven't.' The masked figure had appeared unnoticed from a glass-panelled door opening directly onto the lawn from the library. Behind him followed a second similarly attired figure, but there was no mistaking Grayling, even beneath his disguise. 'No objections whatsoever,' he added, 'and I'll lay a hundred guineas on you myself, Isobel.'

  'But she must be garbed and treated exactly as the other birds,' Bressingham insisted. 'The full costume, if you please, down to the very last detail.'

  To Matilda, the two dildos inside her suddenly seemed to grow to twice their actual size and she felt a chill of incredulity course through her. Did this silly spoiled brat know exactly what she was being manoeuvred into agreeing to? Would she yet draw back from the brink, or would pride...?

  'Agreed!' Isobel declared. She turned to the cluster of bird slaves. 'I'm afraid you poor things will have to wait around a little longer. Sir Roderick, I presume you have a maid who will help me prepare?'

  Thomas Handiwell had said to Hart, 'I fear this will be a wasted effort,' and now, as they were confronted by the grim-faced men who stood beyond the towering iron gates marking the boundary of the Grayling estate, he could see he was to be proved correct in his assumption.

  At this stage the perimeter wall was built of stone and brick, a massive, impossible to scale edifice that rose maybe twenty feet on either side of the solid gateposts with their stone lions glaring down upon the road. Just within stood a small blockhouse that afforded shelter to the four men who guarded the gate, four armed men who could presumably call upon reinforcements if they thought their outpost was under serious threat. Only one of them appeared to be armed, and that with only a pistol tucked into his belt, but Handiwell felt certain there would be other weaponry at hand if required, and that they would seize it long before any serious attempt could be made to force open the heavy gates.

  It was the pistol carrier who came up to the thick bars as they approached. No, he replied in response to Handiwell's opening question, Sir Roderick was not receiving visitors this day. No, he would not take a message up to the house, but if the gentlemen cared to leave a written note, he would see to it that it was passed to Sir Roderick, and he felt certain a messenger would be sent if the gentleman was prepared to grant them an interview. And no, he knew nothing about banditry, abduction, or highwaymen, and the presence of armed men elsewhere in the woods was none of his business, although he knew Sir Roderick had grown tired of poachers taking his game.

  'No man goes to such length to protect a few deer and pheasants,' Handiwell muttered when they had wheeled their horses around and begun the long trot back towards the main road. 'And Grayling must have something akin to a small army in there.'

  'I'd say he has quite a private force,' Hart agreed. 'Certainly my small band would appear to be heavily outnumbered, and even if they do agree to send more men up from Portsmouth, well, if Grayling has a mind, it would take quite a battle to force a way in there.'

  'I think Riley had it right, though the cheek of the Irish blackguard annoys me at times. A full frontal assault is not the way, at least not at this time. Without proof that it was Grayling's men shooting at us then the fellow is quite within his rights to protect his own property, and I cannot see any magistrate granting us a warrant.'

  'Then we must pray that your two Irishmen succeed where we cannot,' Handiwell said, 'though it pains me to think we must trust all to a couple of ex-poachers and a young boy who'll probably end up in the colonies, or swinging from a rope for poaching himself!'

  Ross seemed totally unhurried and completely unworried by Sarah's obvious discomfort. He drew a pipe from a pocket in his jacket that he filled with deliberate precision and then lit, walking about the chamber puffing deeply and filling the air with acrid tobacco fumes. At first Sarah tried to follow him with her eyes, but she soon gave up on this and returned to staring directly in front of her, trying to ignore the persistent pressure of the leather-covered shaft upon which she sat, and the dull throbbing now emanating from her groin.

  'A shame they needed Titty Kitty for other sport,' he mused as he stepped back into her line of sight. 'She's got a hungry little mouth and an active tongue I should have liked to see lapping away at your pussy for a while. Well, maybe tomorrow. I doubt she'll be available before that, unless she's caught by that old fellow from Plymouth who looks as if just the hunt would cripple him, let alone a good fuck afterwards.

  'Now then,' he went on, lowering the pipe and staring straight at her, 'I think maybe we should do something for those pretty bubbies. I have just the thing here somewhere, if you'll excuse me for a moment. Don't you go away.' Laughing to himself, he moved across to the bench where Sarah heard him rummaging through its contents, until a soft exclamation indicated he had found whatever it was he was looking for. It turned out to be what she recognised from illustrations as a cat-o'-nine-tails, although it seemed much smaller than she had imagined, and the leather thongs looked much shorter and lighter.

  Ross brandished it before her, smiling. 'This is what we call a tit whip, slave. A fraction the size of the real thing - though we do use the real thing on a girl's tits if she deserves it, so I should make sure I behaved myself if I were you - and just right for a pair of lovely bubbies like yours. See?' He flicked his wrist and sent the tendrils snaking across Sarah's right breast.

  The thongs barely made a sound as they fell across her taut flesh, but a wave of fire shot through her that made her writhe against her bondage as the painful heat seared her entire being. Another flick of his wrist, and this time the whip fell across her left breast, at least two of the leather strands catching her nipple and causing an explosive sensation that was at once pain and desire.

  'I can see my little toy is going to have exactly the desired effect today,' he said, and flicked his wrist two times in succession.

  Despite the gag, Sarah heard a plaintive mewling gurgle she knew could only have come from her own throat. She knew also, as the fire began rising inside her, that if it were not for the gag she would surely cry out for him to stop this new torture and fill her instead with the weapon she could see bulging against his tight leather breeches. Anything, she thought wildly as she closed her eyes and wriggled and gasped beneath the next pair of assaults, anything had to be better than enduring this unfulfilled agony much longer!

  And then it seemed that even Ross realised she could take no more, that she was hovering over a precipice whose brink, once crossed, might mean the end of her very sanity, because the steady whipping stopped.

  She opened her eyes, and as she tried to focus, she saw that he was already standing naked before her, poised between her widespread knees, his manhood rearing up as eager for her as she was for it. She felt his hard smoothness pressing against a portal already wide open and
inviting, its wet lips offering no resistance to entry. Indeed, her inner tunnel seemed to reach out and draw the throbbing phallus into her. Yet another cry echoed inside her head, and Sarah neither knew nor cared if it had sounded out loud or if it was just the disembodied echo of her absolute surrender.

  'There!' she heard him gasp, and suddenly she was being filled as fully in the front as she was in the rear, and this living invader seemed to merge with the leather one, which felt as if it had sprung to life inside her. With all her strength she pulled against her bondage, eager to claim him and desperate to cling to him, but the thick leather was unyielding, pinning her wide like a trapped butterfly as his victorious spear began its pumping and thrusting dance of conquest.

  Isobel de Lednay could barely suppress a grin of triumph as she followed the maidservant along the wide corridor and down the stairs into the cellar. Bressingham was a fool, and an arrogant one at that, and soon she would enjoy taking his money from him, of that she had no doubt.

  She knew the Grayling estate quite well, having played here as a child with Ellen, and she had also seen two of these curious hunts before, so she knew well enough that although eventual capture was inevitable, the more resourceful quarry - whether dressed as birds, or deer or rabbits - managed to evade it for the better part of two hours, let alone one hour, and these were simple slave wenches probably terrified out of their wits and not thinking clearly, if they were capable of thinking at all.

  Besides, the fact that they had endured hardships in their lives did not necessarily make them better fitted for running. Isobel had four brothers, two older and two younger, and she had learned to run and ride with them almost from the day she had first been able to walk. As an adult she was expected to follow more decorous pursuits, but she was confident she could still move fast enough to outwit a drunken dullard like Bressingham, in fact, she had just done exactly that.

  She was also curious to know what it felt like to be set loose in one of those bizarre costumes, which were quite revealing and yet which showed little more than she would willingly display above her bodice at any social gathering. And did not the ladies of the French court bare their breasts as a matter of fashion?

  Oh, yes, she told herself as she and her escort entered a room with a low ceiling at the end of the subterranean passageway, this should be quite good fun, and there'll be a handsome payoff at the end of it to boot!

  James Calthorpe raised his head slowly above the top of the hedge, and peered across the deserted graveyard in the direction of the church.

  Behind him, stooping low, Hannah Pennywise growled with frustration. 'What do you see?' she demanded.

  James looked back down at the top of her head. 'Nothing,' he whispered, 'nothing at all. The church looks as if it's empty, and there is no one amongst the tombstones, at least no one I can see from here, but they could well be watching from the windows, and one man up in the bell tower could see the countryside for miles in all directions... ah, yes!' he hissed as he caught the first sign of movement. 'Yes, there is someone up there. I see only a shadow, but there is movement for sure. Yes, there he is again. A sentry for sure.' He ducked and slid down the few feet of embankment at the foot of the hedge. 'There's no way we can get close in daylight,' he affirmed. 'If what I heard is true and he now has more men with him, then I fear even with darkness as our ally any attempt to break in there would be doomed to failure.'

  'Then I must pay the villain what he demands,' Hannah muttered.

  'But what if he takes your gold and then kills you?' James said. 'He needn't even kill you outright. He could as easily buy testimony against you as Wickstanner must have done against Matilda.'

  'Not if he thinks there's more where this came from.' Hannah held up the small leather pouch and jingled the contents.

  'And is there?'

  The old woman snorted. 'Oh, aye, aye, there's more, but whether it's enough for the likes of him, especially if he thinks he doesn't have the lot, who's to say?'

  'Then you cannot allow yourself to fall into his clutches,' James declared. 'I'll go to him with an offer, half the gold now and the other half when he releases Matilda, and he can send an emissary to confirm we have the rest of the money.'

  'A good idea,' Hannah agreed, 'but not you. Not you, nor me, for if he seizes either of us, then our numbers are cut in two at a stroke. No, we must find another to take the message and the gold, though not half, not to begin with. We'll send one fifth of what he first asked for, to show our good intent, and I think I know just who to despatch on such an errand. We'll send him during the funeral.'

  'Yes, even Crawley would think twice before doing anything untoward before the entire village,' James agreed. 'Perhaps we should ask my father to take the message. His standing is such that—'

  'No, not if Crawley already knows of your association with my Matilda,' Hannah cut him short. 'He might not dare to actually try to seize your father, but it would be better not to take the chance. No, I have a far better messenger in mind. Now, come lad,' she urged, turning stiffly, 'give me your arm until we're out of this lane. The ground here is so bad that I fear for my ankles and knees, and if I don't get some liniment onto them afore long, they'll surely seize up completely.'

  'But this is preposterous!' Isobel stood defiantly, her cheeks blazing under the bird mask, as she sought in vain to cover her naked sex with wings designed not to come completely around in front of her body due to the tightness of the feathered jerkin between the shoulders, and its stiffness in the elbow joints. The maid who had dressed her stood waiting quietly, leaving things now to Grayling, whom she had summoned upon the red-haired noblewoman's insistence.

  'But you agreed to the terms, my dear Isobel,' Grayling purred. 'You agreed you would be prepared exactly as the other girls have been.'

  Isobel glared back at him, and then down at the strap with its attached tail and at the two dildos lying on the floor between them. 'But there was no way I could know about... about those!' she cried. 'That stupid girl there even tried to push them inside me, and oh... oh, Roderick, you know I had no idea, and you can make just one small allowance for an old friend. I can make it worth your while later after supper.' She tried to give him an encouraging smile, but the mask hid most of her features so it was largely a wasted effort.

  'I count two allowances,' Grayling smirked, bending to scoop up the offending items. He appeared to examine them as if seeing them for the first time. 'Besides,' he added, 'whatever I say, Wormley will declare your wager lost, which will annoy those people with money riding on you, and Bressingham will certainly call foul.'

  'But he need not know!' Isobel protested. 'He surely won't expect to examine me in such—'

  'Probably not,' Grayling interrupted her, 'but he'll surely ask me to, and I'll have to give my word as a gentleman.'

  'Pah, some gentleman you are, Roderick!'

  'Perhaps it would be better if I did this for you?' Grayling suggested. 'I seem to remember a time not so very long ago...' He smiled.

  Isobel held her defiant pose, but she knew when she was beaten, and she also knew Roderick was taking a certain amount of pleasure from her humiliation. He would certainly not let her off the hook, which would mean loss of face for her in front of all their friends, especially those who would lose their money if she did not carry the bet through. 'Very well,' she said finally, 'you do it, but first you can get on your knees and kiss me down there, as you've done willingly enough before. And then you can get some spittle on those beastly things, for I'll not have them in me dry, not unless you want to rip me in two, you awful beast, Roddy Grayling!'

  On the inside of the fence, the woods seemed as quiet and deserted as on the outside. Paddy had sawn through the selected paling with deliberate care, although to Toby, crouched watching and listening a good fifty yards further along the boundary, each saw cut had seemed abnormally loud, and he had been sure that at any moment the Grayling keepers must come bursting through the trees.

  'You've not
been this far in lately, I suppose?' Paddy whispered as Toby padded up alongside him. 'It might be just as well if you went back now then.'

  Toby shook his head firmly. 'No,' he said, 'I'm staying with you. I'm the only one who knows what Miss Harriet looks like, don't forget, and anyway, who says I ain't been in here lately.'

  'You mean you have?'

  Toby nodded, smirking. 'That fence was intended to keep out the likes of you and Mister Kelly here. Someone my size can find several places where the rails are far enough apart not to need no sawing. Don't you worry, sergeant sir, I knows my way around these woods well enough, at least to within a distance of the house, and I also knows where the keepers patrol usually.' He pointed off to the right. 'There's a pathway runs from one end to the other just down there a-ways. It's wide, wide enough that Lady Ellen sometimes takes a trap ride along it, or at least she used to. The keepers use it to ride their horses; saves them doing too much on foot, see.'

  'Makes sense.' Paddy nodded. 'So, which way is the house from here, left or right?'

  'Just to the left,' Toby said, 'but it's a good couple of miles and the undergrowth is a bit too thick if we try to go in a straight line. Best way is to find that main path and then head off into the trees a bit and follow it for about a mile that way.' He waved an arm to indicate a direction further to the left. 'Round about there another path goes off towards the house. It's a bit winding, but we can follow a straighter line through the trees as they ain't anywhere near as thick there.'

  'What about the keepers?'

  Toby shook his head. 'Can't be sure,' he replied. 'Usually they stay out near the fence, waiting to catch anyone trying to get in, but there ain't so many of them this time of day as most poachers work at night.'