0 comments/ 2849 views/ 2 favorites Another Regency Romance Ch. 01 By: potsherd This is my personal homage to Georgette Heyer, the doyenne of romantic comedy writing. Of course, my take on the Regency period is very different from hers, but she has written very astutely and sympathetically about the equivocal position of secretaries, stewards, housekeepers and governesses in noble households, and I have unashamedly taken a leaf from her book. Alas I have not her wit and humour nor her gift for wonderful, sparkling dialogue, but I comfort myself that she was halfway through her career as a writer before those gifts fully manifested themselves. Another Regency Romance Ch. 02 2. Amelia's tale. I am known to family and friends as Amelia, Millie to my brother and sisters, but I was born The Honourable Augusta, Caroline, Amelia, Courteney Fox, eldest daughter of Edward Fox, third Baron Holland, and the Lady Caroline Courteney. Our home is Seagrave House, in Leicestershire, not the biggest or grandest of our family homes (that would be Caversham Priory), but the homeliest and most comfortable. My mother treasures her comfort above all, which is a surprisingly good characteristic in a parent. My family have always gone to London for the season, usually leaving us younger children in Leicestershire. In the winter we go out with the Quorn, and my father has been joint master of foxhounds for most of my life. We used to have the kennels here, which meant a score of lovely, lollopy puppies for us children to play with. Then the kennels were moved to Mountsorrel and now, at the other end of the spectrum, we have favourite old foxhounds with names like Bellman and Toddy to live out their declining years on our hearthrug. My father has always been a country landowner, taking his seat in the House of Lords when agricultural issues like the Corn Laws came up, and voting loyally in the Whig interest. He was, however, capable of independence, and on one issue I remember, he went against many of his Whig cronies and supported Lord Byron's impassioned and eloquent defence of the luddites. A hopeless cause, but a brave one. Mama was proud of him; her family scandalised. Father's political hero was his cousin, Charles James Fox, the radical who loved and admired Napoleon and saw the aristocracy principally as a tool to check the power of the Crown. Although father is a quiet, gentle, rather studious man, he holds the same strong radical convictions as his cousin, and, in a more restrained way, as befitted her sex, my mother had been reared in, and holds to, the same principles. In Father's view, when Fox died ten years ago, the Whigs lost their soul, and he has seethed with resentment under the hand of the Tories ever since. Since Waterloo settled the issue of Europe last June, father has chafed to get into active politics, and join with his cronies, the Greys, the Lambs and the Russells, and firebrands like Sir Francis Burdett, to take up the cudgels. He dreams of a wholesale reform of parliament, a check on corruption and jobbery, and, when the time is right, Catholic emancipation. It is for this reason that he has taken on a private secretary, and started a voluminous political correspondence. So one rainy day, the chariot of the gods descended and out stepped George M'Crimmond. The servants swiftly and unobtrusively unloaded his luggage, and, after we had welcomed him, the housekeeper, Mrs Ferguson conducted him into the house, and showed him to his room. With my sisters, huddled under the large umbrella held by John Footman, I looked on as my parents greeted him, and I suddenly realised that I had never until that moment, seen a handsome man. I was, of course, about to have my first London season, and in the past year I had attended dances at the Leicester Assembly Rooms, where I met and danced with the scions of the county families. Of course I knew many of them from the hunting field, and from earlier children's parties, and to me they seemed utterly plain and utterly prosaic. It is simple, the formula for male beauty. Light sandy hair, with a tendency to curl when wet. Sandy eyelashes framing wide blue-grey eyes. A high brow with the eye-sockets deep set, high cheekbones, a long thin nose, thin red lips above a square jaw. A complexion composed of reds and whites, red cheeks prominent on a white face. A tall slim frame with wide, thin shoulders; the head set on a neck like a pillar in a Norman crypt. Give him a light tenor voice with just the suspicion of a Scotch burr, and you have a pattern. All you have to do is make multiple copies of George M'Crimmond. What a tragedy for me that I would never have the opportunity to make even one such copy. Nothing of this shewed on my face I am sure. My face was a blank, polite mask. Our brother Edward, now at Eton, has a wild, wicked sense of humour that has entertained his sisters from the cradle. He has a lightning wit, and says the most comical things in a dry, understated way. Unfortunately one of his favourite pranks is to try to make us laugh at inopportune moments, with unfortunate results for us. When he is caught out, he is sent to his tutor for a birching, something he shrugs off as a triviality. When he makes us burst out with the giggles in church, or on a public occasion, we feel mama's ebony hairbrush on our legs. He has taught us a valuable lesson in self-control. Thanks to Edward, I was able to wear the mask as I fell headlong in love. Stupidly, I never doubted that everyone would find him as handsome, as lovable as I did. A day or two later, I walked into the small saloon where my mother held court, and my sisters and I did our needlework and read together. Lydia and Doria, were giggling over the fashion plates in the Repository of Arts and La Belle Assemblee. They had come to a set of plates of gentlemen's fashions, and the stiff, artificial poses of the subjects evidently amused them. "Look at this one, Millie; do! He's as stiff and Friday-faced as poor Mr. M'Crimmond." "But at least he's handsome, not all skin and bone with the face of a crusader on a battered old tomb." "Hush, the pair of you," I cried. How can you talk of him so? Supposing Mama, or Mrs. Ferguson (the housekeeper) were to hear you. You know everything she hears gets back to Mama." I was forced to suppress the desire to slap their silly faces for the cruel things they were saying. But the very last thing I could allow was anything that might expose my pathetic infatuation to them. ***** Mr M'Crimmond had been with us for three or four weeks, and I had scarcely exchanged a word with him. He was a shy man with us girls, and a trifle tongue-tied. As I was to discover, this shyness did not extend to the whole of the female sex. One morning after breakfast I saw him slip unobtrusively up to the second floor, where our old schoolroom was located, and where he had his small apartment. I was seized with curiosity to see where he was going in the middle of the morning, and even more curious when I saw mother's French maid, Emilie slip upstairs shortly afterwards. She, at least, had no business to take her up there. I had always envied Emilie, ever since my mother brought her back from London to be her dresser. She is always immaculately turned out, her hair in a chignon smooth as satin, her black maid's costume looking like haute couture. Her lovely smooth hands and long slender fingers always come to my notice when mine are inky or I've just broken a nail. She looks to be in her late twenties, but she ages so well that she could be five or ten years older. So I was inquisitive, I wanted to see if her movements had anything to do with Mr M'Crimmond. Indeed they did. As I reached the head of the stairs and peered round I could see him standing at the door of his chamber as she floated towards him. He took her in his arms and kissed her long and deeply. I stood frozen to the spot. Then she did something so unexpected that I just stared and stared. She reached down to the front of the slim, tight trowsers that the young men wear nowadays for daytime in preference to knee-breeches. She undid the two buttons and lowered the flap. His manhood, freed from his shirt-tails, sprang up and stood out from his belly. I had, of course, seen my brother's organ in our childhood, but this white pillar with its glistening purple-red bulbous head resembled nothing so much as a stallion's yard when he is mounting a mare. Then she did something so astonishing that I could not have guessed it in my most lurid dreams. She knelt before him like a devotee at the altar of a god, and took the head and part of the stem into her mouth. He looked like a man in pain. He screwed up his face, breathing stertorously, and reached out to place both hands on the sides of her face to direct her. At first he stood still, but gradually he began to thrust with his hips, and push his member deeper into her mouth. She showed no discomfort, but sucked rhythmically. After a couple of minutes, she stopped, pulled her mouth off his organ and began to lick greedily up and down, swirling her head around the purple crown. He gasped out his pleasure in creditable, colloquial french. "Oh ma foie, Emilie, Cherie, c'est ca, Oh c'est ci bon". "She is enjoying this as much as he is", I thought to myself, as she smiled up at him and returned to bobbing her head up and down more urgently, engulfing more and more of his proud flesh as if to encourage him. I could tell that the couple were reaching a climax, and, sure enough, he gasped out a squeal, and let out a huge, panting breath. I slipped away, back to my room, and flung myself onto my bed. I did not weep or cry. Suddenly my heart was full of hope. If he could do that with her, might he not be brought to do it, or something of the sort, with me? I knew full well that I could not do anything that jeopardised my precious maidenhead, but, clearly, there were other options. Even at that point, emotions heated to bubbling over, I knew in my heart that any connection I could make with Mr. M'Crimmond could not be the life-long love of the fairy tales. I was acceptably pretty, and my father would ensure that I was very well dowered. A season, maybe two, and I should be making the sort of marriage my mother and sisters dreamed of for me; a marriage within the narrow, privileged class I was born into. When that time comes I would strive to make my husband as happy as I could contrive and give him children that I at least could love and cherish. Then, later in the same day, Mama told me that Mr. M'Crimmond had kindly agreed to help remedy the deplorable state of my ciphering... Parts 3 and 4 follow within a few days. If you have been; thanks for reading. Another Regency Romance Ch. 03 3. George's second tale The morning following that first little episode, when Miss Amelia caressed my thigh, she was due to come for her lesson alone. My emotions were hopelessly tangled; an admixture of dread that she should carry this behaviour forward, and a longing for her to do something more. Having spent so much time with her, and even more in thinking about her, she was coming to seem less like some creature from faerie, or a princess from an Arthurian romance, and more like a person of flesh and bone and volatile emotions. Like any teacher had I started out thinking in a narrowly focussed way about her strengths and weaknesses, and how to build on the strengths that became more manifest every morning. But soon I was thinking about her glossy nutbrown hair, her shy smile, her shining eyes, her joy at every compliment, her pride in small successes and her dejection at setbacks. I could feel that she liked me, and I was certain that I liked her, but the huge difference in rank between us, meant that these feelings had to be kept within the strict boundaries of a tutorial relationship. Then came that moment when our relationship changed utterly. The next day was Sunday, and, as usual, I went to church for Matins, in the coach along with the family, rather than along with the upper servants, as I had expected when I arrived. This courtesy, extended to me as a "gentleman", was probably in recognition of my education rather than my birth. I found myself sitting alongside Miss Fox, and had the thrill of sharing my prayer-book with her. I sang out lustily, especially when my favourite Advent hymn O Come, O come Emanuel made an appearance in the morning service, rather than, as is more usual, at Evensong. I took Communion, and privately asked my Creator for forgiveness for my impure deeds and thoughts. I felt gratitude that this was the Church of England, and not the Church of Rome, and that I would not have to confess my sins to the pasty-looking, pop-eyed young curate who was casting admiring glances at my companion. I spent the remainder of the day at rest, as befits the Sabbath. I found a broken run of the Journal of Agriculture in the library, and flitted from article to article. I was totally enthralled by a weather diary that gave such remarkable details as the time of the dawn chorus on each day of the year (1797 I seem to recall), including which species of bird was the first to sing. What a wonderful piece of unpretentious but devoted scholarship - and the article was not even signed! I love Evensong, and chanting the Nunc Dimittis and the Magnificat as our ancestors have done since the Reformation, never fails to move me. The family did not attend evening service, so I walked the two miles to the little Thirteenth century church, and got a lift back from a passing farmer and his sweet smiling wife in their gig. Monday morning and Miss Amelia came alone for her lesson. We worked quietly, estimating square roots by successive approximation, and then employing the formula for exactness. She now has a clear appreciation of the value of approximation: "It is perfectly true, as you day Mr. M'Crimmond, the more one knows, the better ones guesses become. How off that I'd never thought of that before." She laughed merrily and I smiled with her. Then, blushing prettily, she took up my left hand from the table, and kissed it in the centre of the palm, and replaced it on the table. I was flattered and frightened at the same time. I had to remonstrate with her: "Miss Amelia, you must be more careful. If your Mama were to come in now, she could not but see that something was going on." To my shame, I was asking her to be discreet and, a little mendacious. I was not asking her not to take such liberties, because I simply could not bear to do so. By now I was as intoxicated by her as she evidently was by me. It is surprising how quickly our physical contact intensified, and how soon we became too insulated in our own self-conceit to worry about proprieties. We would kiss and fondle each other whilst alone, and even when her sisters were present, Miss Amelia's hand would sometimes steal towards my virile member and trace its outline through my clothing, or take my hand and place it under her petticoats so that I could feel the moist heat of her body. In retrospect it is painfully clear that it was only a matter of time, before something catastrophic occurred. If her sisters noticed anything, they were too wary to reveal anything, partly for love of their sister, and, I suspect, partly for fear of being accused of colluding. Miss Fox's maidservant, a very respectable girl, the daughter of one of the tenant farmers, whose concerns reached the point at which she took advantage of a Sunday afternoon with her family, to ask her mother's advice. The first I knew of it was on Monday morning. We were having a lesson in the library, and a footman came in and delivered a message that her Mama wished to see Miss Fox. She rose to her feet and tripped off, suspecting nothing. An hour later I had the most painful interview of my life with her father. He reproached me bitterly for my behaviour, and told me to go to my room and pack: "You have betrayed our trust in the most despicable way. The damage you could have done is incalculable, my daughter's chastity is her most precious possession, and, from what have heard, it was only a matter of time before she was irrevocably spoiled. I don't think I have ever experienced so total a betrayal of trust. "You will leave here today, and you must realise that I could never give you any recommendation for a post in a gentleman's house. You have proved yourself quite unworthy. Now get out of my sight." Another Regency Romance Ch. 04 Part 4. Amelia's second tale.