Chapter 5

"'Drea Taylor, who is that exquisite thing you're sponsoring for the cotillion!?" Sarah Conklin gushed. "She is utterly fabulous! Do you know what she gave me last night as a hostess gift? My God," the woman interrupted herself, "I think it's the first hostess gift I've ever received! Where was she educated? If you know, please tell me! I'll ship that spoiled little bitch of a daughter of mine out to it in an instant." Then she related how Kelly had given her an exquisite cloisonné snuff box that was an utterly perfect addition to her collection.

Andy smiled to herself listening to Sarah. It was largely due to Sandy Harris. In addition to buying finishing items for the decoration of the penthouse, Sandy had been an incredibly effective buyer of hostess gifts. They were for Kelly to present to the women giving the various debutante parties to which she had been invited.

Under questioning from Sandy, Andy found that she knew far more about the hostesses than she realized. For example, when she remembered that Sarah had a collection of snuff boxes, Sandy had made a couple of phone calls, located the establishment that had the best reputation in that specialized field of collecting and called it. To Andy's surprise — but not to Sandy's — they knew Sarah well, knew her collection, but most important, knew what item she would most like to have.

After several hours of questioning, Andy breathed a sigh of relief, rose from her chair and stretched. "Is that the end of the third degree?" she asked with a grin.

Then she shook her head slowly and added, "Sandy, now I can see why you're so effective as a trial lawyer. You don't miss much, do you? You got a ton of information out of me that I didn't even realize I knew!" Sandy had just grinned.

Andy's attention had drifted while Sarah continued to talk. Then Andy realized she had just made a remark that alerted her. "I'm sorry, Sarah," she said. "Would you please repeat that?"

When the woman did, Andy's heart sank. She learned that in the intervening ten years since her own deb days, social consciousness had come to society. It was no longer enough to have a party. Now there had to be some social significance to it. The result was that every party was run as a fund-raiser of some sort. Sarah's, it turned out, raised money for the homeless. With her heart in her mouth Andy asked, "How did my niece do?"

"You mean you don't know?" the woman said. "Oh, maybe you were asleep when she got home." Andy had been up waiting for Kelly but the girl had said nothing to her.

Sarah continued, "We had a Bridge tournament. Each couple put $500 into the pot. Kelly and Kevin were the big winners — they won the first prize of $2,500." While Sarah continued talking, Andy wondered where the initial money had come from. Not only did Kelly not have $500, she didn't think she even had five! Sarah talked for another five minutes and then they hung up after promising to get together for lunch soon. Andy was sitting in the library with her bare feet on the desk.

As she hung up the phone the door opened and Kelly came in. She stretched sinuously, yawned and then came around the desk to give Andy a kiss. When she did, Andy was reminded again how much she had come to love this beautiful girl. When they eased apart, Andy pinched one of Kelly's asscheeks hard.

Yelping in pain, Kelly gently rubbed the injured spot and looked at Andy with a pout. "What did you do that for, Mom?" she asked plaintively.

"That was for holding out on me last night, young lady," Andy replied. "I just learned about the Bridge tournament and I want to know where you got the entry fee?"

"This is yours, Mom," Kelly said giving a stack of currency to Andy. It was $1,000. She then said, "Mom, we owe our salvation to Sarge! I knew he was an Army Ranger but I never knew that, among other things, he was an intelligence specialist. Anyway, we had gone up to the Conklin's apartment, got acquainted, and had dinner. As we were finishing, I was told that there was someone at the door to see me. It was Sarge.

"While we were eating he had been talking to some of the other chauffeurs and learned about the Bridge game." She grinned and said, "He knew what we were going to do before we did. Anyway, there were people standing around so you know what he did?" Andy just shook her head. "He said, 'Miss Kelly, you left your money in the car. I thought you might need it.' Mom, it was $500 — and it was his own money. He knows I never even have five cents, and he didn't want Kevin and me to be embarrassed."

"What did you do then?" Andy asked.

"I told Kevin that we were going to play Bridge to win! We had to, in order to have the money to give back to Sarge. Anyway, we did."

"Kelly Carmichael, exactly what did you do?" Andy asked suspiciously.

"Mom, playing against you and Dad all the time — you two are real sharks — we've gotten pretty good. When we learned what the arrangement was — there were three prizes: $2,500, $1,000 and $500 — we knew we had to finish no worse than second. Anyway, we let it all hang out."

When Andy asked for an explanation of her last comment, Kelly explained, "The format was Rubber Bridge where you play four hands at each table. Anyway, I guess we got lucky at our first table. The other couple wasn't very good and Kev and I got good cards. We destroyed them: We took two 700 rubbers with four hands that included two bid slams. The second slam was on the fourth hand. It was a grand slam, vulnerable, doubled and redoubled. I think we got enough points in the first four hands to win for the night, but we just kept rolling. We were pretty sure we were miles ahead, but since no scores are posted, we couldn't be certain."

"Then what?" Andy asked.

"We gave Sarge $1,000, I gave you $1,000 and we're keeping the last $500 as our bank. I gather that these fund-raisers have become a way of life on the debutante circuit."

Andy accepted the money and put it in a small box with other money that Kelly had given her from time to time.

To Kelly's embarrassment, every night there was a deb party, she went through the same routine with Andy. First, she insisted on taking a shower with her, then giving her a bath, followed by a sensuous massage. Often, Andy would take the opportunity to eat Kelly's delicious cunt while she lay on the massage table. Although Kelly didn't know it, Andy was doing most of the same things she had done on Maui for Judy Jeffries.

After covering the girl with a light blanket and letting her take a short nap, Andy carefully fixed her hair — although her gamine hairstyle required very little fixing — and then went with her to her room to dress her. Andy insisted on doing that herself, too. She delighted in smoothing the lovely fabrics over Kelly's perfect young body. After applying the tiniest amount of lipstick, Kelly was ready. Every one of the outfits Ginger had picked out for her was unique and exquisite.

Andy smiled to herself realizing that Ginger had done something else, too: Almost all of the outfits she had selected were styled in a way that anyone with a less-than-perfect body could not possibly wear them. Although they were conservatively styled, they were also so simple in their cut that they would reveal any bodily imperfection.

Normally, just before putting on Kelly's bikini, Andy would pinch her, spank her lightly, or just caress one of her buns. After the third episode Kelly asked, "Mom, why do you do this all the time? I can get washed and dressed by myself."

"Of course you can, my darling," Andy replied softly. "I do it because I love it! I can't tell you how happy and proud you make me feel." Her voice dropped to just above a whisper and she concluded, "And it's because I love you so damned much."

Remembering her conversation with Ginger and Sandy she said, "Kelly, please try not to hate me when you learn the truth. I know it's only a matter of time because many of the people in the social circle in which you're now moving know all about me. They know what a terrible person I really am."

Kelly was startled and looked at Andy in alarm. When she did, she saw tears in the corners of Andy's eyes.

"Mom, that's impossible," she said softly. Then, echoing Sandy's words, she added, "I have to love you, Mistress Andy, in the same way I have to breathe. I will do anything for you, Mother. Anything!"

Remembering Sandy's words about a heart transplant, Andy shuddered. Looking into Kelly's eyes she could believe it. Then she took the girl into her arms and kissed her with all the love she could convey.

One night, a week before the cotillion, Kelly was giggling when she came home from a party. Andy had heard the sound of her passionate goodnight kiss. When she came into the library where Andy was reading, she was holding up the front of her dress. Andy raised an eyebrow and asked what she was doing. "Kev wanted to caress my tits, Mom, and I didn't want him to stretch the dress." With that she carefully took it off and laid it on the sofa.

"Why the giggling, Hon?" Andy asked. "Was Kev tickling you when you were bare?"

"No, Mom," Kelly replied. "I was thinking about tonight's party at the Knight's. It got pretty funny." When Andy asked what was funny, Kelly replied, "I guess I don't like them very much."

She went on to say that the evening's entertainment was a cross between a carnival and a Las Vegas night. There were both gambling and skill games. "The biggest prize was at a dart game. In the corner of the board there was a $10,000 prize. To win it you had to stick the dart in the envelope. Mr. Knight kept saying that the prize was his personal donation, in contrast to most of the rest of the games where a portion of the entry fees was used for the prize structure. Anyway, although people were winning other prizes on the board, no one was making any progress with the big one."

Kelly's eyes gleamed as she remembered. Darts were three for twenty dollars — if someone wanted to take a lot of turns it would get very expensive. She told how she had been watching the game when one of the guys hit the big-money envelope posted in the corner. He thought he had won, but then his dart fell off the board. At that point Kelly studied the prize target very carefully while shifting her vantage point. Then she noticed that the reflection of the light on the prize seemed to change as she changed her position.

"Mom," she said, "I got the idea that he had done something to make it impossible for anyone to win. It almost looked like there was a dome or something over it."

"What did you do?" Andy asked, fascinated by the story.

Kelly just shrugged and said, "I paid my twenty dollars. Then I picked up the three heaviest darts I could find. Normally I throw a dart with a light touch ... throwing hard just spoils your aim. This time, though, I really ripped it."