Joy V. Sheridan writes

Charity Amour

CHAPTER FIFTEEN part  

Charity tried to rise from the couch, but she couldn’t raise herself more than a few inches. Something was restraining her. Through the foggy clouds which dipped behind the momentary clear pools of pristine consciousness, she realised that she was strapped down. Her exertions seemed to exhaust her and after a few minutes she abandoned the useless task. She couldn’t quite make out why it should be necessary to be free from her bindings. What did it matter? The more she thought on it, the more convinced she became that she should not bother. She felt strangely blissful, totally relaxed for seeming aeons of time, then elevated, for she did not have a care in the world whilst she remained confined to the couch. And it was peaceful. So unimaginably peaceful. No violent shiftings from left to right. No, it was stable and level where she was now. Best to relax, close her eyes once more, watch the inner panorama of colour as they drifted past.

Charity, of course, had been drugged. Though such was the subtle infusion she had been administered, she felt a soporific approach to her predicament: those more relevant, pertinent and latterly points, she could recall. Outside, she was mindful of the birds as they flew about the windows and warbled their songs of sheer ecstasy. Could it have it have been approaching midwinter some short space ago? It did not seem that way now. 

She must, she considered, be in a place of enchantment. Yes: that was it! She flicked her eyes open. If she were in Heaven, and here painful memories knifed their way into her heart, she should surely see dearest Mama and – as she groped for continuity, had not dearest Papa also flown that way thither? Truly, it was all too taxing to think about. Perhaps she was not in true Heaven after all. Just somewhere which was closer than most places on Earth to such an elevated plateau?

She started slightly as she heard an unfamiliar sound. The door was opening. She thought that she should force herself to try a little bit harder, lift herself, so that she might see who now approached her.

“Ah, bon ma chérie! You are waking up. At last!” The woman’s voice preceded her before she appeared hazily before Charity’s vision. She smelt of some rich, sweet perfume: the stuff of her sumptuous brocaded gown rustling. She bent and looked keenly into Charity’s face. Charity forced herself to focus. 

The woman wore heavy make-up which somehow added to her charm, for she was exceedingly ravishing in appearance. The woman’s cool, long fingers touched Charity’s face, then she made to loosen the straps which had cuffed Charity’s restlessness.

 

“Now, my petite chérie, shall I undo these things? I am so sorry that we had to resort to using them, but,” she searched for words, a look of distraction upon her features, “... we couldn’t be sure you would sleep soundly. Maybe, you might have rolled around and fallen to the floor, thereby hurting yourself... Or perhaps, you may have taken the notion into your pretty little head to roam around and goodness knows, we couldn’t have that, could we!”  

She spoke in a soft, cooing sort of voice, which encouraged Charity to agree with her sentences. Charity had a vague feeling that she had heard the woman’s voice before, but truly, she had been so exhausted with her journeyings recently that she didn’t even know how or when she had arrived at this beatific retreat, nor how long she had been sleeping here. 

“I expect that you should like to bathe now that you are awake? To have some fresh clothes...” “Don’t I have some fresh clothes? I thought ....that man... Mr... Mellors, gave me some?” “Tush, Child! Those rags are fit only for poor washer-women! Humm ...” Her hands waved back any more remarks Charity might have been thinking of making. “You are a little larger than I am myself. Let me see now, amongst my girls, who is your size?” She pressed her fingers in a half crescent to her perfectly shaped oval chin. “Yes! I have it! Claude-Marie is about your size, and Justine. Yes, I am convinced. There should be no trouble in outfitting you, my dear, sweet, adorable Charity! Until such times as we can get the dressmaker in to make you some gowns of your own. Gowns suitable for this house of course!” 

Charity looked uncomprehendingly towards the woman. She gave a knowing, bemused smile towards Charity. “I think you are somewhat puzzled eh chérie? But – how rude, inconsiderate of me. You do not even know my name, whereas I... I know several things about you. Including the stir you were creating upon the London stage, eh, Mam’selle Hélène? Perhaps, in time, you can sing for us? Yes, that would be very, very nice: I have not had a nightingale in my chamber before!”

Her eyes flew over the curves of Charity’s swan-like throat, down to the upturned luscious fruit which were her breasts. “Let me introduce myself! I am mostly known as ‘Madame’ or ‘Madame d’Esprit’ here - but my intimate friends call me ‘Natalie’; would you like to call me Natalie?”

Charity, suddenly very coy, shook her head up and down in servile acquiescence. The woman was perfectly mesmerising. 

She pushed herself up from her former resting position and made to form a question. Madame de Esprit interrupted her. 

“Ah, I daresay that you wonder where you are, eh chérie? Let me answer that for you. You are now within the walls of my house and the name of my house is Le Château des Amourettes.” 

She tapped a manicured nail against her cheek: “But this means nothing, yet, to you, my innocent! You shall see in time. Now, Miss Charity Cottrell, your friend, Lord Fitzroy Rispian, has requested that I take very, very good care of you here. So, I shall endeavour to do just that. Mayhap you are hungry, thirsty? Would you like some refreshments? We have many delicacies here. Come now, you shall try some. I shall see to it before I summon the girls to fetch your bathwater.” 

She let her hand reach forward and began stroking the tender whiteness of Charity’s neck. Then the caressing fingers slipped, coming to rest upon the young woman’s bosom. “Ma chérie, you look - alas - so dusty I do believe that a complete ablution shall make a new femme out of you.”

Charity felt the woman’s fingertips sneak down under the edge of her gown. Which gown, admittedly, she had never seen before. Someone must have placed it about her whilst she was asleep. 

The cool, confident fingers tweaked Charity’s right nipple. 

Madame Natalie meanwhile was possessed of a swooning smile, which slanted like a cat sensing cream across her elegantly beautiful features. She sighed, stood up and moved away, murmuring something Charity could not understand, under her breath. 

The rainbow mistiness seemed to be wanting to make a return to gain Charity’s attention. After all, did - she tried the words uneasily upon her tongue - the name ‘Château des Amourettes’ mean anything to her? 

The woman had mentioned Lord Rispian. At that name, Charity had felt as though a cold, deadly serpent had entwined itself about her heart. But surely, he could wish her no real harm if he had had her placed here? No; for ... it was all too exhausting, too confusing, to dwell upon for too long. How long had she been in this place? She really could not remember and strange to say, it did not really bother her anymore. 

Madame Natalie had left the room soundlessly. Not that Charity had been particularly aware of this. She had been content to relax again, resting her blonde head once again on the reassurance of the tasseled, sausage-shaped bolster beneath her. Madame Natalie returned. She carried in her hands a small silver tray. 

It contained plates with unusual-looking pastries and confections. It also held a covered silver jug and some glasses. 

Madame placed the tray on a low table and lifted the lid of the jug. Charity was fascinated to see steam rising from the lidded container. 

“A special warming concoction of herbs and spices which I have prepared and brewed myself. You would like some? Not,” she glanced towards the window, “that one could truly suppose we are experiencing winter time!” 

Charity had nodded her head, affirming that she would sup of the drink. Charity noticed a charmingly slight accent to Madame’s near perfect English. The young girl gazed at her. Madame Natalie d’Esprit looked to be a very fine lady: the elaborate coiffure of her hairstyle formed into glossy ringlets which dropped over her bared shoulders. Her make-up, though heavy, had been applied with a consummate skill and her pale blue eyes were perfectly complimented by thick, dark lashes - her large, sensually-shaped mouth had been crimsoned, and she showed a small pink tongue as she poured the hot liquid into the glasses. She showed, too, the perfection of small, sharp but well-moulded white teeth. 

“Take this, ma petite amie. I am sure that you shall find the taste, and the effect, most agreeable. Take some of the food also, for I have prepared the tray for you to relish. Presently, you shall have your hot water. I have asked the servants to prepare it. Then, we shall visit Claude-Marie’s chamber and also Justine’s, to find some apparel for you. Is this agreeable, ma chérie?" Charity nodded her head, for she was confused as to which part of the question Madame Natalie had alluded to. “You shall enjoy yourself whilst you are at the Château des Amourettes, my dear. We are a giving, hospitable and friendly household.” 

Charity felt a flush of gratitude towards her kind and beautiful protectress’s solicitous words and actions. She needed someone to be kind to her. Why, had she not worked hard and steadfastly for...oh, who was it, something to do with the theatre and music ...? Her mind drifted away again. She swallowed a mouthful of the draught. It was deeply aromatic and tasted like honey. She smiled appreciatively in Madame’s direction. "You like my drink?" "It is like nectar, Madame Natalie, like nectar." Charity had felt shy about using the woman’s name. "Drink up then and you shall have a refill.” 

Charity did as she was bid, marvelling anew, once she saw the gems which glittered on Madame's long, sensitive and slender fingers. 

What an exquisite woman she was, thought Charity, who after all, during all the time she was in Lord Seyton Clover's care and tutelage, had never actually been introduced into High Society. How did Madame maintain herself? Perchance she was an heiress? Yes, thought Charity: that is most probably the answer: for she certainly appeared to be very wealthy. Madame looked up, as though divining her thoughts. She spoke, a twinkling note of laughter creeping into her accent. "I am no rich woman who has all this by dint of pedigree or through inheritance. No. No. We are all hard workers here, in this maison, Cherie; and I am the hardest worker of them all! That is how; I, and no one else, own the Château des Amourettes! We work hard but perhaps take more pleasure in our work than do most people who are pressed into servicing others!” 

Charity considered for a moment what she meant, but the drink was so relaxing, such a balm, she couldn’t be bothered to probe with any more questions of this hostess who was so very, very kind to her. 

Charity began to giggle, uncontrollably. Everything in the whole, wide, impossible, improbable world was simply ludicrous. Madame chuckled lowly, soon joining in her mirth, so that both women were laughing hysterically, holding their sides with laughter. 

With a theatrical flourish, Charity raised high her wrists, where the recent bindings still left bracelet marks. She shook with laughter still. Madame had, by this time, inched beside Charity on the couch, and, making a facetiously condoling face, she bent forward, groping towards one of Charity’s discoloured wrists. 

She began to - with elaborate gestures of tongue and lips - kiss the inside, licking tenderly, then nibbling gently at the tiny veins that formed the pulse-knot. She extended her range, so that soon she was up the arm and onto Charity’s throat.

Gently she forced the girl to lie beneath her on the couch, her lips reaching to find Charity's own. Madame was having a pronouncedly strange effect on Charity. She swooned deeper onto the cushions, her head capped by the edge of the firm bolster, her eyes closed. 

She let the delicious sensations she was experiencing waft over her. ‘How fortunate, she laughed to herself, to have found such a loving and good friend as this devastatingly handsome French woman!’ 

Madame’s lips were now searching along the edge of her bodice, the woman’s elegant, long fingers seeking to locate and then lift the heavy fruit of her undulating and pulsing breasts from the confines of the constricting fabric. She placed a protuberant pink nipple into her mouth and began to suck upon it. Taking time to surface for air, she said jokingly affectionate: “Now we are beginning to become intimate friends, amie, and one might almost call us bosom buddies!” With these words she returned to her earthy task. 

Charity was numb to any but the sensations this divine woman was inducing in her. She let her legs be spread apart, for she could feel Madame Natalie’s knee provoking such a movement.

Madame had placed Charity’s hands upon the straining brocade covering her own breasts. She worked Charity’s fingers, with an expert flourish, for a few minutes on the expensively-clad flesh.

Madame dived back to her own preoccupations and greedily she hung on to the massive, firm, young breasts. Madame began to croon softly to herself, snaking her own leg up and down inside Charity’s. Charity began to wriggle, and Madame, as an experienced mistress in the pleasures of Amour, shifted her lips from the unbelievable mounds of the girl’s bosom and onto her moist, partly opened mouth. Charity was sedated and urgent with some passion she had never experienced before, but which, mayhap, for a long time, she had craved. 

Madame Natalie’s lips were covering her own now with ardent, strong kisses, her tongue firm and moist, poking and probing into Charity's open orifice. Charity smelt the sweet perfume come racing from Madame's body: she drank the scents in, in large gulps. Madame Natalie was breathing hard and fast. Charity was spiralling in ecstatic pleasure, drinking in the tongue, the lips, the hands returning now to her bucking breasts, the smell of Madame Natalie d’Esprit. 

Madame relaxed her kissing to give more observant and physical manipulations to Charity’s bosom. With a loud sigh, she brought the magnificent breasts between as much of her outspread fingers as would carry their weight, then, with a deft movement, she was licking, caressing and sucking upon their ample luxuriance. 

She was sucking hard, rapturously, with much experience and that same aplomb she had exercised prior: the fingers slender, working the fruits so heavy and ripe. Madame was wallowing in the size and quality of that which she had between her sharp white teeth, her lips all but drooling her own heightened pleasure about the nipple’s taut profiles. 

Once again, she forced Charity’s legs open and lay upon her. Charity moaned lowly, her eyes still closed, her own hands seeking to find some portion of her paramour’s anatomy. She felt her hands push hard into Madame’s shoulders as she felt the stirrings between her own thighs, the likes of which she had never experienced in her life before. 

Madame was tugging at the gown now, trying to raise it. Next, she was running her manicured fingernails from the right knee right up the length of the thigh. Her lips joined the pilgrimage. She separated the gown from the limbs. She was beginning to pant now. Closer her lips travelled up the aisle, towards the feminine altarplace. Charity felt shivers of pleasure run up and down her body. A loud rapping on the door awoke them from their dream and, like two sleepwalkers, both Madame Natalie and Charity shook their heads, whilst straightening out their vestments and assuming normal sitting positions upon the couch.

“Entrez s’il vous plaît.” Madame’s voice was a fraction too highly pitched but otherwise she appeared to be nonplussed by this untimely intrusion into her privacy. Two statuesque serving women, each dressed in a costume of some dull gold stuff, brought in a tub and began the task of conveying copious amounts of hot water into the chamber. Conducted in also were fine soaps, oils, perfumes and warmed towels. 

Soon Charity, under Madame Natalie’s supervision of course, was stripped of her vestments. Madame’s appreciative and practised eye took in, with wondrous gratitude, the sumptuous body as it was lathered, pampered, petted and washed. 

“Diana, get a robe de chambre, for Ma’m’selle Charity, s’il vous plaît. Fetch one of mine. It will be quicker!” 

Within a few minutes the servant had reappeared, ready to help to fold Charity into a wrapper stitched with silver thread, the wool of its inner portion, soft and warming to her naked flesh.

“Now my lovely amie, if you will care to follow me to the girls' boudoirs, we shall see what fancy things may take your eye.” Charity padded softly along after Madame d’Esprit, her unshod feet luxuriating in the thick pile of the carpet under foot. 

Small brackets of candles, hung with crystal droplets, sprayed flower-like along the walls. The murmur of water cascading hinted at hidden or obscured waterfalls. She noticed Madame Natalie pull at a curl as they passed a large, ornately-framed mirror. Charity drifted along, like a puppy-dog eager to follow in her mistress’s footsteps. This was most assuredly, a different world she now moved through! They reached a pair of doors, placed one opposite to the other. Madame de Esprit rapped hurriedly, impatiently, on both. There was no reply from either. She ushered Charity into one chamber. 

“This is Claude-Marie’s place,” she murmured lowly. The furnishings and decor of this room all but took Charity's breath away. It was magnificent in magnolia velvets and rich burgundy brocades, small clusters of white and red flowers bloomed - unseasonably, magically - about the place, contained in what looked to be golden chalices. An enormous circular-shaped bed was bedecked with cupids and garlands streaming down - again in those same shades - to the floor. 

A huge mirror all but covered one wall. Along another there was a row of closed doors. Madame Natalie indicated that Charity open them. 

“Take anything you fancy,” she cried, meanwhile her own eyes following greedily, the contours of Charity’s figure; the small, rounded but neat buttocks: she was a veritable peach! Oh! What fun she would have with this one!