Chapter 1

Greetings and salutations, to the readers of this, the gleanings from my journal. I write it in my dotage, and the minutiae within the journal itself are too tedious to present without editing. I welcome your attention to this attempt to pull secrets out of the dark closets, and into the light of day, where they may be examined, and judgments made.

I am Wadsworth, butler of Farnsworth Manor, and your narrator for this little while. I fulfill that role eagerly, for reasons that shall soon become evident. Suffice it, for the present, to say that I was witness to the life and times of the mistress of the manor, and that having no place in her machinations other than to be her ear and the instrument by which she caused certain situations to develop, my frustration has led me to record events that scandalized me, but may entertain you. I claim from this very beginning that everything I did was because I was ordered to do so. I know that is poor excuse for my role in the events I shall describe, but it is the only excuse I have.

A warning here. As you shall learn, bye and bye, my probity may come into question. That is another reason I expose the turpitude and iniquitous nature of Her Ladyship Penelope Farnsworth, Countess of Haversham. She stole from me my decency, the good reputation I had worked for more than three score years to manufacture with good deeds, honesty and trustworthiness. You shall begin to doubt me as I tell this tale. What you shall not doubt is that I fell from grace, and became a most despicable, low sort of being. But what I am now does not affect the veracity of the history I now expose. I may not be worthy of your trust, but everything I will pen here is true.

I say I witnessed the life of the mistress, but I should be more precise than that. Mistress Penelope, or Penny as she required certain of her lessers to address her, was the second mistress of Farnsworth Manor, as she was the second wife of His Lordship Malcolm Farnsworth, the Earl of Haversham. That was his official, noble title, though it was rarely used. He had but rare contact with the king, who took little notice of us. He was known to us as simply "His Lordship." His Lordship's first wife was always a stickler about her nobility. She never allowed even the minor familiarity of letting us call her Milady. She graced the halls of the manor for most of my life, but then died of an ague. She was childless when she left us, which is why His Lordship required another wife.

I shall never forget the day Lady Penelope first arrived at the manor. Not only my life, but the lives of countless others were changed irrevocably by this wild bitch ... this haunting woman ... this epitome of the softer sex. She was a lubricious woman, who would inveigle almost all in the manor with her licentious ways.

She subsequently forbade me ever to utter a single word of what I was to see (and come to know.) But she neglected to include writing in her proscription, and so here I am, uttering nary a word, while exposing the siren's wanton and lustful ways. There lies in her depraved, debauched and libertine behavior a lesson to be learned about the downfalls of surrendering to the desires of the flesh.

As I said, forgetfulness is not among my options, as they pertain to The Lady Penelope. Her arrival by coach was, itself, an event, for it was both noisy and highly anticipated by the staff, of which I was the leader.

Nigel, who among several functions served as footman, had been sent to accompany the new lady, who was to be delivered by her father's coach to her new husband's home. He was, of course, first to arrive, having run ahead to announce her imminent arrival so all would be ready when that event came to fruition.

Nigel was, in fact, the first evidence that our world at the manor was about to be upturned, though I was not wise enough to recognize the redness of his face, and his sweaty brow as evidence at all. He had, after all, run all the way to her father's estate, and back as well.

But I should have noticed. He was a stout young man as strong as a bull, who succeeded to his position upon the death of his father, the footman before him. I have seen Nigel lift one corner of the freight wagon and hold it aloft, while the wheel was changed by two other men. I blame my laxity on the fact that the coachman thundered toward us at a gallop, as though highwaymen were in pursuit, though no danger was observed.

I was only later to learn that the new mistress exhibited her sexual deviancy that very first day, on the way to us. She had the coachman stop, so she could "rest her shaken bones" as she put it. She then issued Nigel his first formal order from his new mistress, which was to shake her bones in a different manner as she lay beneath him, bare legs kicking in the air.

His symptoms were the result of those efforts, and not the running beside the carriage.

The coachman was another clue, for he sat, stiff and red, having peeked at the lustful joining of a lady and her lesser, upon the blanket she made him install in the very road in the forest. Of course, being of another household, he said not a word, and waited only until her luggage was off loaded before he turned and returned home at a more sedate pace.

"I do so love a good gallop," were the first words delivered by the new Lady of the manor, as she shamelessly displayed a bare ankle while stepping down from the coach.

Then, to our utter confusion, she patted Nigel on the shoulder and said, "Thank you so much, Nigel. You shall have to accompany me on many rides through the lovely forests in this district."

I welcomed her to the manor, of course. It was my duty, and I had yet to learn of her scurrilous ways. His Lordship was, as usual, still abed from having imbibed too much wine the night before, at one of his incessant card parties, which various other lords and dandies seemed to foist upon him. Truly, he lost enough wealth at such parties to support these men handsomely. That he was not up and about to welcome his own wife was explained by the fact that, while we knew she was coming, we knew not when.

My new lady took my arm, in a most forward fashion as she stepped out of the coach.

"And you must be Wibbley," she said.

"Wadsworth, My Lady," I demurred.

"Wadsworth ... of course," she said. "You must be a fine butler, Wadsworth. Malcolm speaks highly of you."

"Lord Malcom," I gently corrected.

"And you're quite long in the tooth, now aren't you?" She laughed aloud, as a commoner would.

I was aghast, of course. But duty is sometimes a penance, and so I stiffened my resolve, and blamed her gaffe on the rigors of the journey. Little did I know her ... rigors ... had already been addressed by the footman. I was well aware that Nigel's physical attributes delivered to him a certain lonesome nature. His manly member was apparently both long and thick when aroused, and he developed a reputation which usually denied him the company of the girls who lived around the manor. Of course he knew better than to pursue any of the girls on the staff. I would not stand for that. So Nigel suffered in silence, for the most part, unable to find a woman who would accept his prodigious proportions more than once.

Such would not be a problem with our new mistress. Of course I was, as yet, unaware of her carnal desires, or of the fact that she would reduce poor Nigel to a whimpering husk of a man, on occasion. But his story can wait.

I instructed Nigel and Jack, the groom, to deal with her luggage, and then bade her enter her new home. The staff was all lined up properly, in their best uniforms. They didn't gawk, but looked straight ahead as was expected. She stopped, and stared each one in the eyes, something that had an unseemly feel to it, in my humble opinion. She also spoke to each. To the maids, she said, "We shall see, we shall see," though what was to be seen was left unsaid. To the cook she said, "I love to eat."

Last were the two Lady's Maids, Jenny and Sally, both of whom were pink-cheeked and a-flutter. The previous Lady of the manor had been a dour and humorless woman, as befits the wife of an Earl, and their lives had been colorless at best. It had been muttered that the woman died of bad temper, though the doctor pronounced it a killing fever.

Suffice it to say that the appearance of an admittedly comely young woman in the manor was a delight to her ladies in waiting, and they immediately hustled her up to her rooms, to relieve her of her travel attire, and offer her a bath. At the first step of the staircase, she turned and addressed the assemblage.

"I'm certain we shall live wonderful lives. I look forward to it." She turned her eyes on me. "Wadsworth, please give us thirty minutes and then attend me in my rooms."

I bowed, and as I returned to the upright position, she was already climbing the staircase.

At exactly the thirtieth minute, I knocked discreetly on Her Ladyship's boudoir door and entered. Of course no reply was necessary, as I had already been instructed to seek her out within.

You are allowed to imagine my distress, therefore, when I found her still in her bath, chatting animatedly with the two women who should have been serving her.

"Ahem," I said, giving voice to my irritation with Jenny and Sally for the abrogation of their duties.

The two maids squealed, in proper astonishment at my presence, thus requiring that my future lecture to them now include the fact that a Lady's Maid does not squeal.

The Lady Penelope, however, completely destroyed all thought of propriety by standing, which displayed her undeniably abundant charms to my tired old eyes. Well ... perhaps formerly tired old eyes would be the better choice of words.

Her Ladyship was of three and twenty years, and this was her first marriage. That alone would have made her arrival a subject of much discussion. Even more puzzling was that she was an exceedingly beautiful young thing. In my three score and five years, I had seen many comely wenches. And, in my younger days, I had availed myself of more than one saucy maid's charms. The new mistress, however, put them all to shame. I will let slip the bonds of propriety for a moment, and describe her as a woman, leaving aside her nobility.

She stood midway between five and six feet, standing barefoot in the bath. Her figure, dripping water and suds as it was, had the shape of an hour glass, having swollen, firm glands above, with teats perfectly prepared for a baby's mouth to attach. Those teats were shockingly pink, and were dividing the suds on her chest as the bubbles slid slowly down, like a river being disturbed by twin, immovable rocks in the stream. Below a slim waist were hips swollen as if there had, indeed, been babies passed between them. And yet, this being her first marriage, that could not have been so. Her legs were shapely and lacking in the heavy rolls of insulation most women carried about in those days. In fact, I wondered at such a lack of fatty tissues about her body, that she wasn't shivering violently already as her body was exposed to the air.

"My Lady!" gasped an astonished Jenny. Jenny was the daughter of the local blacksmith, and had been elevated far beyond her proper place by the previous mistress. "You're naked!" she added, as if that fact might not be self evident.

"Wadsworth has seen many a naked lass before this," said Her Ladyship, calmly. She smiled. "Besides, at his advanced age, there is likely very little he could do about it. Isn't that right, Wadsworth?"

My proper duty was to obey and support my Lady, and so I bowed. It also helped conceal the fact that she was quite wrong. Luckily, bowing allowed me to move my cock into the upright position, where it would lie comfortably against my belly, and its tumescent condition would not announce her error.

"Towels!" she demanded. I shot a glance of absolute rage at the two girls, who recognized it and scurried to resume their duties. Her Ladyship stood as they dried her, dragging soft cloths all about that lovely, smooth looking, pink ... naked ... skin.

Let me make an observation here, rather than later, for it will serve you well as the story unfolds. This very incident illustrates how Her Ladyship Penelope Farnsworth had the peculiar ability to somehow palliate the most outrageous and completely immoral things, and make them appear to be completely normal and acceptable. Countless times would she cause people to act in ways they would never have done without her urging. People did things around Lady Farnsworth that they knew were scandalous and yet ... somehow ... she made them feel like they had done no wrong whatsoever. She even did this to me, as you shall soon see.

"Wadsworth," she addressed me, as they continued. "My husband has announced his intentions to get me with child as soon as possible. He wishes me to produce an heir."

"As befits the estate," I said, bowing again.

"I suppose I must," she said, sounding petulant. "However, I am not looking forward with animation to being the only woman in this house who is reduced to waddling around with a grossly distended belly."

I wondered if she expected me to vocalize that I felt sorry for her. What was the point of this? She had her duty, as did we all.

"Therefore, I want you to ensure that none of the women in this house avail themselves of silphium or laserwort to avoid impregnation. Nor shall any pessaries or concoctions be used. It should go without saying that animal bladders will not be worn by any menfolk during sexual congress. Is that clear?"

I was astonished. I was flabbergasted, in the first place by the fact that this woman not only knew of such things, but was willing to speak of them aloud. True, the Church frowned on the use of attempts to foil the natural result of coitus, but the Church was far away. Second, I was dumbfounded that she would believe I had the sway with the staff to order such things, and expect to be obeyed. Finally I was astounded by the implication that if this prohibition actually took place, the house would soon be swarming with yowling infants.

But I knew my place.

"Perfectly clear, My Lady," I said, bowing.

She was, by then, dry, but still she stood in perfect nudity, unashamed, glorious, making an old man think of things long past in his life. My glance fell upon the two ladies in waiting. Sally, the miller's daughter, looked quite content, but then I'd always known she was a bit slow. Jenny, on the other hand, I knew to be able to actually read. Her cheeks were tinged brightly with pink, and I knew she was thinking of some boy ... some boy who had, perhaps, seen her in the same perfect nudity as her mistress currently was.

I wondered if she'd be the first to experience a pause in her menses.

Having been dismissed, I returned to my duties. I did make a short detour to my rooms, where I exposed my manhood, exulting somewhat in the ability to stroke it again. It had been some time since it was stiff in that manner. But stroke it is all I did, in fond memory. I doubted it would spurt any more, even if I tried to make it so. So I put the thing away and went to check on the condition of the manor.

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Penelope, Mistress of the Manor

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