Memoir of a Lady Pt. 05: Rising Up

Fortescue was a good-to-medium bet, as it turned out. The problem with relying on others is precisely that -- you end up being limited by their limitations. One day it will change; it must. I don't care what Bob Salisbury says, you can't govern a country any more on the basis of inherited wealth. The franchise has already expanded to include large sections of the working classes, so on what basis women like me can't vote or stand for parliament when some hobbledehoy man can, fuck knows! Sheer prejudice. But I knew I should never see the day, and that was why Forty became husband number four.

Walpole's Gothick folly was very pretty, but whoever built the thing robbed him blind. One day major repairs will be needed, but I got what I needed by building a new wing and called it, in honour of my first two husbands, the Waldegrave wing. With a splendid ball-room. a dining room, a billiard room and new stables, it gave me room to entertain on site, so I could get the people who would make Forty's career out here for the increasingly fashionable "week-end" as people took to calling it. It worked, because I am good at it. But I could only be as good as Forty was. He'll hardly be the first, or the last man wined and dined into high office. To make things easier, I told him to use his position as a Director of the Railway Company, to have a train station built down the road -- so much easier for the modern politician -- and that helped matters too.

I recall with satisfaction the first grand dinner to celebrate the opening of the Waldegrave wing. The entire Liberal Cabinet turned up, and Gladstone, who was actually a terrific snob, came and honoured us all with one of his shorter speeches - it lasted just over an hour! If only he'd known the number of "fallen women" at that dinner, he'd have been a busy beaver -- as it was, it was our beavers which were busy.

One of my great rules was that something as silly as political animosities should not get in the way of enjoying yourself. Men get hot under the collar (as well as elsewhere) and it did them good to lay their rivalries at the door -- as well as laying the wives of their political opponents. My darling Kate, Salisbury as was, Kate Derby as she had become, was there with Edward. Dizzy, a great admirer of Horace Walpole, graced us with his presence. Watching Gladstone try to make small talk was, at the best of times, amusing, but on this occasion it was, Kate agreed, as good as any West End show.

I felt for Dizzy when we retired while the gentlemen took their brandy and cigars and did whatever they did when we "retired" to the withdrawing room. Is it just that my mind works that way, or did none of them see the irony of sticking a large phallic object in their mouths just as we left? I could see Dizzy would rather have joined us - but being a man had its drawbacks sometimes.

As we split into our groupings, the Sapphic sisterhood clustered around Kate and myself, with one or two others who, intrigued by what they had heard, wanted to know more. Those who were determined to know nothing, gathered round Mrs Gladstone, who would have been the most tedious person in the world had her husband not already claimed that dubious distinction.

We had perfected our own version of the usual post-prandial ritual whereby guests who were staying, would linger a while after the men joined us, signalling thereby their willingness to go down "cock lane". Kate and I would sit, sipping our brandy and water, and anyone wishing to explore "cunny row" would join us. As the men and women paired off, Kate and I would arrange liaisons for our ladies who munched (as we called it). It was known that Kate and I were an item, so we would retire last.

Just was we were readying ourselves, I saw Forty retire with Lady Hartington -- whatever he may have lacked in political skills, he could choose his fillies with skill. Molly Hartington liked to listen, but saw no reason to limit her appetites to one sex, or indeed, as Forty told me once, to one man. It's women like her who made England what she is today.

After that wedding night, Kate and I came to an arrangement. The following morning we had discussed what had happened. She had always been the passive recipient, submissive to my desires; but that night she had been a tigress. She admitted that she had long wanted to take the dominant part, but that as I was so obviously at home in that role, she had been content to play the submissive. As she cuddled up to me, I told her I had enjoyed it.

"Well," she had quipped, "with my small titties and slender hips, it isn't as though I were not well-suited to play the man. You" - and I felt her smile - "could never be mistaken for one".

With that, she gave my titties a good squeeze and, climbing onto me, pressed into me, sliding her thigh between mine as we pressed out wetness together. We both loved the friction from our pubic thatches, and that delicious feeling as our juices conjoined excited us both. In that position we could play with each other's titties, and like so many women with small ones, Kate's nipples made up in sensitivity for what size had denied her. As we rubbed more frantically, pressing hard, I allowed my teeth to graze her thick, dark pink engorged nipple. The moan she gave told me all I needed to know, and with the corroborating evidence of the slickness of her cunny, encouraged me to apply more pressure. As I did that, beginning just to bite a little harder, I pulled tightly on her other nipple, rolling it between my thumb and index finger, pulling it out as I rubbed energetically against her open cunny. She began to moan. "No, no Frances, I want ... ". Whatever it was my darling wife wanted, she got what I wanted her to have - a mind-numbing orgasm which made her putty in my hands. This mannish behaviour by her had its place, but she needed reminding who was in charge. What's a girl to do? Assert herself, of course.

Week-ends at Turnberry Pike were supplemented by dinners at Grosvenor Gardens, and I made sure that the men who had influence in the Liberal Party were regular guests. For a party so heavily in debt to what was called the "Nonconformist conscience", with a leader who so often invoked "God Almighty", it might be surprising to learn that the leadership was composed of lascivious old men in search of cunny. Week-ends at Turnberry always provided plenty of that. And so it was that dear Forty began his political rise, first as a parliamentary under-secretary, then as a junior minister, and finally, in 1872, he became Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonial Department. He knew sweet fuck all about colonies, but they, that is the Civil Service, told him what to do, and being an idle bugger, he did it. Everyone declared him a capital fellow and a first-rate minister. He said "yes" whenever the permanent under-secretary suggested something sensible, held his own at the Cabinet table, and did well on the floor of the House. That he was swiving the wife of his boss was by the way, though useful, as it gave Lord Hartington, or "Harty-Tarty" as he was universally known, a good excuse to fuck anything wearing a skirt. He was short-sighted, as well as randy, so effeminate Scotsmen needed to take care in his presence.

Forty was duly grateful. I kept him well-supplied with the readies (I upped his allowance to £7000 a year, which was more than the Prime Minister got) and turned the most Nelsonian of eyes to his many affairs. In return? Well, I got to influence what went on in the Cabinet. The lazy bastard did the minimum of work, but was very happy to press the views I had expressed at the Cabinet table. It got him the entirely undeserved reputation as a shrewd operator. I never did let his civil servants know that the reason he never came up with any mad ideas was that I squashed them. My darling Kate suggested that I'd do a better job than him, which was stating the bleeding obvious - but what's a girl to do?

It was with some surprise that on the Thursday night which marked the parliamentary recess for the summer, Forty came into my chamber and asked for a favour. My darling Kate was off up north with her bore of a husband, Edward, the fifteenth earl of Derby, and I was at the loosest of ends.

"And what, Forty, can I do for the Minister for affairs?" He rather liked my nickname for him, which was why I used it.

"Molly has an unusual request, but I thought I'd run it past you my darling, before they arrive tomorrow afternoon."

The "Molly" in question was his Mistress, Lady Hartington, and she and Harty-Tarty were coming for a week-end of tupping, browsing and sluicing. It would be a select gathering of the men with influence, including the Granvilles and the Forsters. Gladstone, I was pleased to say, could not make it as he had urgent business telling God what he should be doing. We all knew that an election was in the offing, and the Grand Old Man, as the press called Gladstone, would no doubt rely on his charisma to win the day, but the rest of us realised there was actually some hard work to be done. In between swiving and supping, we'd bend our minds to the task ahead of us. They all appreciated my shrewdness, and they appreciated my money even more, so for once, I got a real say at the table. What, then, could Molly Hartington want?

Whatever it was, it made Forty hesitate.

"Molly has a peculiar desire which she has satisfied with men of the lower orders, but she has a burning desire to try it with one of her own class."

That was the way to get my interest. Firstly, being acknowledged as an aristo in my own right by the wife of one of the most prominent peers in the Empire, and secondly, a piece of perversity of a rare sort.

"Spit it out Forty, what does your tart want?"

Bless him, I swear he blushed. After all he knew of me, he still thought me a delicate enough soul to be concerned about my reaction.

"She'd like to fuck me in front of you and make you watch!"

"Would she now?"

I was genuinely intrigued.

"Does she know of our arrangements?"

"Do you mean does she know we don't fuck? No, she doesn't, that's our business, no one else's."

Typical man, he wouldn't want the world to realise that the one cunny he was not getting was his wife's.

"So, as far as she's concerned, she'll be seducing my husband in front of me? What's the appeal?"

"You are a woman my darling," he protested. Clever chap, he'd noticed. "I thought you might know?"

"I am a sapphist, and I have no idea what goes on in the heads of women who fuck men. But I can guess."

He looked at me expectantly

"And ...?"

"Power, my dear, power. We women get so little of it, and I can see that she would get her jollies from showing another woman that she is more sexually attractive than they are. Given her husband's habits, I can see why a girl might want that."

"You are extraordinary, my darling", he gushed. Of course he gushed, he wanted it. He looked at me quizzically.

"And so ...?"

"I can see an advantage, and power works in different ways for different women, so yes, my dear, tell your tart she can do her worst, with me watching."

"You are more like a Mistress than a wife," he said, unconsciously echoing my first husband JJ.

It would, I thought, be something to tell my darling Kate about when she arrived back from the far north-west.