Chapter 11

Sylvie noticed the clouds gathering above her and began to walk a bit faster. She was pleased to see that the unusually early warm weather that year had made the cherry blossoms begin to bloom by the river, and she enjoyed their lovely sight and smell as she strolled homeward. She and Tim had bought a very elegant town house not far from the river. It was one of several that formed an exclusive neighborhood of Washington notables.

They spent most of their time going between their Washington house and the family meeting place, the large sprawling manor outside of Grandville, the state capitol that was Tim's hometown. Sylvie liked the Washington house best because it was her house... whereas at the family house she was likely to find herself in the company of Tim's two younger brothers, Ron and Erick, who, having been raised there, gravitated to the spot whenever possible. In addition, it was much too close to her mother-in- law's place in the city of Grandville for comfort. The elderly lady was always "popping by" for one reason or another, and often invited herself to stay, much to Sylvie's chagrin.

Now, however, there was little for Sylvie to worry about; and the terrible time she had had with Erick, Tim's youngest brother, and later with Ron, the brainy middle brother, seemed far away. It didn't seem as though it could have happened to her at all, and Sylvie was grateful that the old mental scars had healed so well. As the day got darker and darker, however, Sylvie couldn't help feeling a slight tremor. It had been so bright, so clear, only moments before, and now everywhere she looked there was an ominous glow that was almost frightening.

She shuddered and scurried on, her high-heels clicking on the pavement and her lightweight dress fluttering pale and pink as her hips swayed and her soft smooth breasts bounced with each step. The wind began to whip her long blonde hair about on her head and suddenly there were large splotches of rain splattering down on her. She hadn't even bothered to wear a coat! The house was still several blacks away and Sylvie wondered where she might take shelter. A flash of light and a booming sound of thunder rolling in the distance told her that it would be unwise to stand beneath a tree. Lightning crackled sharply somewhere in the distance and after a few seconds another loud peal of thunder made her break into a run.

Then Sylvie was aware of someone calling her name. At first she wasn't sure, but then she knew it was so. "Mrs. Cassidy... Mrs. Cassidy!"

A dark car rolled up beside her, and a man leaned over and held the door open for her.

"GET IN!" he called. "DON'T CATCH COLD, MRS. CASSIDY!"

The voice was terribly familiar, and Sylvie hesitated. It was Frank... her husband's former valet! At first she thought she would not get into the car beside him, and then there was another peal of thunder and she told herself that the past was all over and she had no reason to shy away from Frank. What she had done, she had done under the influence of a powerful drug. Erick Cassidy, her younger brother-in-law, was the one who had instructed Ella, her maid, to give it to her, telling her that it was medicine.

Trying not to think about all that, she hurried into the car and closed the door behind her. She must act natural, Sylvie told herself, although being wet to the skin had caused her to feel more vulnerable than she had in years--as though by seeing Frank again she had brought back those terrible moments she had endured in Grandville.

"Why Frank!" she said. "What a wonderful surprise... and you've come just in the nick of time! I would have been wetter still in a few moments!"

Frank smiled at-her in his familiar servile way. He had been a servant of the old school, the kind that no longer exists except in a few fortunate English homes. He had served the Cassidy family for many years, and had even continued to serve after the incident in Sylvie's dressing room. Then he had given notice, explaining that his health was failing and that he would like to use his hard earned wages to make the rest of his days as comfortable as possible.

Tim had added a goodly sum of money to the wages owed to Frank, and had seen to it that Frank got a comfortable apartment in a pleasant neighborhood in Washington. They had thought they would hear no more from him, but now here he was.

"Glad to be of service, Mrs. Cassidy, you know that!" he said softly. The car was moving slowly along, and Sylvie peered out through the rain.

"I think you turn at the next corner, Frank!" she reminded the elderly man.

"Only too glad to be of service," he repeated, and Sylvie wondered for a second if his mind was going. She thought with alarm of the night when she had rung for him... it was after taking the "medicine". She had lain nakedly writhing on the floor of her dressing room when he entered. Sylvie flushed a deep red at the thought now, and at the idea of how she must have looked. Then she remembered the candle... the gilded candle that she had been desperately trying to ensconce within the tightness of her straining, tingling vagina.

"Oh, help me, Frank," she had cried to him. "HELP ME!"

"How are you, Mrs. Cassidy?" Frank inquired now, and Sylvie wrenched herself back to the present. Why was he making a left turn instead of a right?

"Why, I'm just fine, Frank, and the Senator is well too. You're looking quite well yourself. Enjoying your retirement?" She did her best to make small talk, but she could hear her voice trembling. Perhaps it was the drenched state of her clothing. She felt a definite chill! She had to get home right away!

"I must get home swiftly, Frank!" she declared. "I think you may have made a wrong turn..."

"Oh, Mrs. Cassidy, I was so hoping to show you my apartment. You know, the Senator has seen it, but you never have. I've made quite a few improvements... I have my own workshop, you know, and nothing gives me more pleasure than to..."

So that was it... he was taking her to his apartment! Sylvie tried to think of what she should do. She had learned that it was important to maintain a semblance of dignity, even in the most difficult situations, and now she counted on Frank's long training as a valet and her own instinctive calling toward being a true "lady". She must maintain that relationship, no matter what. But she was frightened as the car gathered speed, and she turned to see Frank's lips set in that same smile, his gray hair slicked back in a different way, a new, more debonair way.

Come, now, she told herself. He's just an old man... he lives all alone... probably lonely, needs company. He's proud of his house and wants to show it of, that's all!

"I'd... I'd love to see it, Frank!" she lied. "I hope it's nice and warm... I'm soaked clear through!"

"Oh yes... you'll dry out there!" Frank promised, nodding his head in a strange manner.

The rain poured down across the windshield of the car. Sylvie noted that the car was brand new and showed very little use. She speculated upon the amount of money that her husband Tim had added to his valet's pension, and surmised that it was probably a great deal. Frank ought to be very satisfied, she thought. There's no reason for me to worry! But what Sylvie wanted more than anything, as the car driven by the silent and enigmatic retired valet sped toward the northwest, was to be safe and warm at home. The nervous young blonde clutched and unclutched her fingers, clasping them tightly together upon her leather pocketbook which she held in her lap. Already, she was wishing that she had stayed in bed that morning instead of going out to enjoy the bright sunshine. All that sunshine was gone now, and a dark fear was spreading inside her which was augmented by the thunderstorm that surrounded the small compact car and its strangely determined driver.

Frank could feel Sylvie's nervousness beside him, and he wanted to tell her that there was really nothing to be nervous about. But somehow he didn't know how to couch the words. She would just have to wait until they arrived at his apartment. It wouldn't be long now. It was still difficult for the older man to converse easily with any of the Cassidys after so many years in their service, so many years of "Yes, Ma'am" and "No, Sir" and "Will mat be all, Sir?"

Frank thought about the early days when he had been hired by old man Jenson Cassidy and his wife Thelma. The three boys had been mere children then, and things had been considerably different. Different, that is, from the way they were later on when Frank--an aging though still effective worker--became young Mr. Tim's valet. He had seen Tim through his bachelor days and watched the comings and going of hundreds of comely young women, and then he had been with him during the first few years of his marriage to Sylvie. Frank knew, as did all the servants in the big house in Grandville, that strictly speaking Sylvie was not of the same caliber as the Cassidys. He had even heard Mrs. Thelma Cassidy refer to her daughter-in-law as a "shopkeeper's daughter from the sticks." Nevertheless, with her elegant looks and manners and that natural poise of hers, Sylvie had managed to hold her own. There were a few minor exceptions, of course, and Frank smiled to himself now as he recalled that night when Sylvie's voice had spoken so harshly into the intercom. Frank could not recall the exact words, but she had said something like "HELP... YOU'VE! GOT TO COME HELP ME!"

"Here we are, Mrs. Cassidy!" Frank said, pulling up in front of a small three-story apartment building. There were similar houses on either side of it, and sloping lawns ran down to the sidewalk, divided by descending concrete steps.

Wet and cold as she was, Sylvie did not want to enter that building. Yet, she knew that she would. She had very little to say in the matter. Frank hurried around the front of the car and opened the door for her. Then he produced an umbrella and, taking her gently by the elbow, escorted her up the concrete steps to the front door of the small apartment building. For a moment he fumbled with his keys, and then they were entering the warm interior of the building.

"Here we are... it's right here!" he said, a tone of excitement entering his voice.

Once more Sylvie reminded herself that the Cassidys at least owed Frank a little bit of interest in his life after he had been with them for so long. After all, servants were people, too... not to be dismissed with a nod and a thank you and some money as though they had no real lives of their own. She felt a little better as she entered the apartment. It was quite large inside, and although sparsely furnished it gave the appearance of being very comfortable. A wall-to-wall rug covered the living room floor, and an old-fashioned sofa looked like a good spot for her to sit. But first she gravitated toward a radiator that was giving off steam heat in a corner of the room.

"Yes, that's right, Mrs. Cassidy, warm yourself. Shall I make some tea?"

"Tea would be lovely, Frank!" Sylvie replied, her teeth chattering as she backed up against the radiator and looked around her and Frank disappeared into what she assumed was the kitchen. Through an open door at the end of the living room she could see a large double bed, and upon its white chenille spread lay what appeared to be some kind of tools. She remembered that Frank had told her he had some kind of workshop, and she wondered what kind of things he made. Then she saw for the first time that the end tables on either side of the sofa were covered with framed photographs. She went over to see the pictures and was startled when she saw that each frame contained a photograph of a member of the Cassidy family. They were all taken from newspapers and magazines, but had been cleverly cropped so that they looked like real pictures. Everyone was there; a smiling and waving Thelma Cassidy, looking half her seventy-odd years, wiry and spry as a young girl in her flowing veils and stylishly cut dress... an old picture of Jenson Cassidy, the enterprising oil magnate who had been dead for many years now--the picture showed him shaking with President Teddy Roosevelt, and Sylvie was shocked to think of how long ago it had been taken... then there was Tim, her husband, and Sylvie's heart skipped a beat to see a young and innocent- looking boy, probably still in prep school, years before their marriage, when she herself had probably been in grade school. Frank had known her husband then, and even before that, and Sylvie realized that she had rarely, if ever, thought of this fact. Why, Frank was more of a Cassidy than she was, really!

There were also pictures of Ron graduating from Yale, already looking sternly serious and determined, and of Erick sitting on the zebra-striped seats of that famous nightclub in New York with some gorgeous debutante. Then Sylvie saw a photo of herself! It was by far the largest and the most recent, but she had not seen it at first because it was half hidden behind the lamp. She recognized the photograph as the one from the cover of Weekly Magazine. One of the best she'd ever taken, it showed her perfectly balanced patrician features, her broad smile and shining white teeth and her flowing blonde hair, framed before a background of the Capital Building in Washington. It had been taken several years before, and Sylvie recalled looking at it carefully that night... the fatal night when she had taken the fake medicine! Frank must have cut it out then, she thought with alarm. Homey sounds of clinking china were coming from the direction of the kitchen.

Hurriedly, Sylvie replaced the picture so that it was behind the lamp. She remembered that the caption had read: "SYLVIE CASSIDY the popular D.A.'s wife/On her way to Washington?"

Well, here she was in Washington, and her husband had already been reselected to the Senate. She knew that his brother Ron was already hard at work so that Tim would get his party's nomination at the convention, and Tim himself never ceased to remind her that she must never do or say anything that would reflect poorly upon a prospective First Lady. She must act as though she had already attained that exalted height, and that way there would be no problems.

But at this moment Sylvie felt very far from being a First Lady. In fact, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was not. Some of her old insecurity that she had known in the early days returned to her as she thought anxiously that perhaps she would not make a good President's wife after all. She had been doing just fine so far, true, and there wasn't a Washington hostess who did not vie for her presence at the numerous teas and parties that took place in and around Washington. She and her senator husband were always invited to the most prestigious embassy parties as well, and Sylvie was famous for her clothes and her exquisite good looks. A tall, willowy blonde, there was little that she could wear that did not become her; and her figure, she knew, was the envy of all the women who were acquainted with her. People sensed the deep sensual bond between her and the handsome Senator, and it made them one of the most popular couples in Washington. Her husband's brother and expert campaign manager, Ron, had put it crudely to her long ago, and Sylvie had to admit that he'd been correct.

"The people want to elect a senator who looks like he's getting laid. And you're our ticket to ride!"

Sylvie sat uncomfortably upon the sofa. Her dress was still damp, although she felt quite a bit warmer than before. She wished that she had something to put around her, for she feared that the already thin material of her dress had become so translucent with moisture that the round brown tips of her bare nipples beneath were showing. What am I doing here anyway? she asked herself. I should have insisted that Frank take me right home! She repeated to herself her husband's words when she had worried about the aging valet's reaction to that devastating evening in her dressing room.

"I trust Frank implicitly, Sylvie. I'm sure he only thought he was doing the right thing. He was following your orders, even though they were bizarre. He was responding above and beyond the call of duty. I'm sure he looks upon it that way. Don't forget, he was trained long ago in England to respond to the most unusual of circumstances with dignity and calm. You and I will try to forget about what happened. Certainly Frank already has!"

"Here we are, Mrs. Cassidy!" Frank said, entering the room with a tray. The piping hot tea steamed from the pot as he set it down on the low coffee table in front of Sylvie, and she could not help looking forward to its warmth.

"As I recall, you take two lumps and a little bit of milk. Is that correct?" Frank smiled down at her, and Sylvie blushed.

"Yes," she replied, lowering her eyes. "Yes, thank you, Frank!" The man's memory was obviously quite excellent!

The hot tea tasted delicious, and Sylvie sat back, just a bit more at ease than before. She tried, however, to keep her arms in front of her, just in case her nipples showed too clearly. There were times when she wished she still wore a brassiere, and this was one of them. Some people just didn't understand that the times were changing.

"Well, Frank," she said, breaking into the long silence that threatened to become uneasy. "What a cozy place you have here. I really like it. Tell me, how do you spend your time, now that you have so much of it?"

"Oh, I keep quite busy." Frank had taken a seat opposite Sylvie in a straight-backed chair that he pulled up to the coffee table. He drank his own tea with relish. "I work on my little gadgets... and then there's the book."

"The book? What book?" Sylvie asked. Suddenly everything inside her was listening, waiting for what the gray-haired man's answer would be.

"Why, the book about the Cassidys, of course!" he replied easily, as though she should have known all along. "I see where everyone's writing books these days, and in my youth I used to fancy myself a writer. That was before I went to training school, of course!" he added with a twinkle in his dark brown eyes. Sylvie was silent. She couldn't think of a thing to say. It was all she could do to keep her hands from trembling on her teacup.

"Oh yes, I keep busy! I have a very modern tape recorder that I use to dictate into. It's the best way, I understand. Oh yes, I have a lot of memories already down on tape."

"I... I see..." Sylvie stammered.

Frank was thinking about how well his book was going. The Cassidys had been his life, and he knew more about them than about anything on earth. It would be splendid to have that fact acknowledged. He would become a celebrity in his own right.

"There's already a columnist fellow who says he'd be interested in helping me get the book published," Frank said quietly. He was watching young Sylvie Cassidy carefully. "Perhaps you'd like to hear some of the tapes?" he inquired.

Outside a siren was screaming, and a fire truck clattered past. Sylvie felt that sirens were wailing inside her head, that any second the terrible throbbing would burst from her temples.

"Yes... yes, I would like that," she said. A part of her knew that the danger was near, that it was in fact present, but another part of her dared to hope that there was nothing to worry about. Frank got up and started into the bedroom, motioning her to follow.

"This is my workroom back here," he said.

On legs that wobbled and trembled, Sylvie followed her husband's former valet into the room.

"There's something I'd like to ask your advice about, anyway, Mrs. Cassidy," Frank said. "Won't you sit down on that chair there?" He pointed to a chair that was placed between the bed and in impressive bank of taping equipment that sat upon a long table against the wall.

Sylvie sat down. There was a deadness inside her, a numb spot that she sometimes had before she was going to be sick. I must not get sick now, she told herself. I must remain calm.

Frank reached into a cabinet and withdrew a reel of tape. He congratulated himself once more and was thankful for the twist of fortune that had brought the tape into his hands. He fondled it carefully, thinking back to that night. Frank's dormant penis began to pulse with life as he remembered Sylvie Cassidy's silkenly naked body. She had pulled him to her.

"Frank, you've got a cock in there... You've got a good hard cock!" She had to have it inside her, no longer satisfied by his own efforts to help flier get the gilded candle into the tightly clasping orifice of her golden-fringed pussy. Pushing him down on the soft rug of her dressing room, her mind crazed by the drug Erick had sent to her id the guise of medicine, Sylvie hod mounted his rigid and startled cock.

Frank seemed to feel that incredible sensation still, and he wondered how much of it Sylvie Cassidy remembered. His long cock throbbed excitedly as he recalled the tightness and the strength of Sylvie's yearning cunt, wrapping itself around his upthrusting penis as she bounced up and down on it. She had commanded him to thrust the candle into the tight nether hole of her anus, and he had tried his best to do so, while withstanding her forceful attack.

He could not deny that it had been pleasurable to serve Mrs. Cassidy in that manner, and when young Mr. Ron had entered, he too had felt the same way. Sylvie had been pressed between the two of them, her brother-in-law Ron and himself, at one point, and Frank had found her stretched and throbbing rectum a willing receptacle for his lustfully hard cock. He remembered how much Sylvie had seemed to like having the two ramming, worming penises inside her at once, and it was then that Frank had ejaculated far into his employer's wife's buttock-cushioned anus, in the most powerful orgasm that he had ever known. When the youngest brother, Erick, came in, Frank was already getting hard again, and he was hoping that he might be called upon one more time to satisfy the outlandish craving that consumed Sylvie Cassidy's deeply tanned, honey-and-gold nakedness.

It was not to be, however, and Frank had thought it best to leave swiftly via the service door when Sylvie's husband, the senator-to-be, came in and found them all lustfully writhing with his lewdly drugged wife.

The entire story might have ended there, Prank thought now as he fondled the tape, had he not chanced to pass the open library door downstairs on his way to the back of the house. Something made him go in, and there he found the minute tape recorder on the floor.

His father before him had often told him that a man's chance often came but once in a lifetime, and if he is lucky enough to see it he must grab at it while he can. It had been a simple matter to borrow Morrison, the chauffeur's, taping equipment and to make a copy of the contents of the recording in his own small room then and there. He had done so and slipped the little recorder back exactly where he'd found it, and no one had ever been the wiser. Until now, at least.

Frank did not know what had made him do it. Perhaps the untoward events in which he had so recently indulged had changed his thinking so that he was able to foresee that the little tape recorder might contain something of value to him. He had not dreamed that it would be a tape of Sylvie and Erick, her husband's youngest brother, making furious and ecstatic love. It had been quite a bonus for the elderly valet to play this tape back to himself while the others were still upstairs working out their lusts. He had enjoyed hearing Mrs. Cassidy's groans of desire, and Frank thought how much company the little tape had been to him all these years. Why, prior to that evening he had been certain that his youth was gone. He rarely thought of such things. As a younger man, he had known many young girls, but none of them had matched Mrs. Cassidy in either beauty or in sensual intensity!

He slipped the tape onto his machine now, aware that Sylvie Cassidy was watching his every move.