Rogeringham

As we lay entwined afterwards, it was as if Helena sought to burrow inside me, she pressed herself so close.

"I fear that I shall be fit for nothing tomorrow," she laughed. "I can say quite truthfully that I have never been fucked like that, ever!" Her smile filled her face, her eyes laughed with pleasure.

I leaned over and kissed her lips, "Should we do more?" I asked. "We can if you wish?"

Helena pushed against my chest, laughing. "I do not know which is worse - that you are prepared to leave me bed-ridden, or that you could do it to me."

"Anything you wish, I would do it for you." I told her. "Anything at all."

"I know," Helena said, and her kiss was tender and loving. "And I thank you for it. But there is no need for you to leave me prostrated just yet."

And so saying, my mother rose from our dis-arrayed bed and drew on her dressing gown. Even as she did, I saw the discomfort in her hips as she walked. Turning towards me Helena saw the concern for her in my eyes, but dismissing it with a smile and a coquettish tilt of her hip, she left and went to her own room.

I sat down by the fire, I found myself possessed of a strong feeling of contentment. I looked at the tot of rum that I had poured and decided that tonight, at least I did not need it. When I did sleep, it was deep and undisturbed until morning.

7. Moving to the country

I was surprised to find that my sisters took the news of our move to the country very well. Surprisingly well, in fact.

I had expected the departure from London - the Ton, as they call it, to the country to be greeted by dismay, after all, although it wasn't the Season there were still parties and dinners to be attended. But the house suddenly exploded in an excited chattering frenzy as outfits were selected and trunks were packed.

To avoid the worst of the preparations, I retreated to my study out of the way. And it was there that Hermione tracked me down.

I had not had a chance to talk with her since I spoke with her suitor, Mr Barthomley, and I assumed that she sought to rectify that.

This was, in fact, the case. Hermione wanted to know what I thought of him.

Hermione looks sweet and innocent, that is her stock in trade. Oh, for sure, she is definitely a Rogeringham, there is no mistaking that. She has my father's dark hair but the slim form of our mother and her eyes. Of all of my sisters you would look at Hermione and assume that butter would not melt in her mouth. She does not even try, but with her large eyes, and long hair which she rarely wears up, she has a positively angelic air about her. It has been that way since she was a small child.

However, as I discovered recently, Hermione is not all she appears to be. 'There is steel in that one' Charlotte had said, and talking to her it appeared that way. She was certainly astute, as she began with a question.

"You have misgivings about James?" She asked brightly.

"I will be completely honest with you - yes I do."

"Yet you have given permission for him to see me more?"

I nodded. "I take it that that is acceptable to you?"

It was her turn to nod.

"Will you explain something to me, Hermione?" She nodded again and I asked, "What do you see in him?"

Hermione smiled her radiant smile. "He is sweet, William. Oh, he is a twit, as you would put it, and he is pompous, but he has a sweet heart, and even with the obstacles that were put in his way, he continued his courtship of me."

It couldn't have been easy for the young man, especially with our father, "You genuinely like him?"

Hermione nodded once more.

"I see no reason then, why I should stand in your way. Be warned though, Hermione, there are few people on this earth that I bear as much affection for, as I do you. He only has to take one step out of line and I shall ..."

"Please William?" My youngest sister came and sat beside me and hugged me, "Do him no harm until I have had my chance ..."

I grunted my assent. "If you insist."

Hermione giggled and kissed my cheek. I find it hard to be out of sorts with her. Although I was still uncertain of the young man, Mr James Barthomley Esq would live - at least for a while.

With so many of us travelling, and because I wanted Helena to go ahead and start preparing for the Winter Ball, my mother would travel first in our landau with most of the girls. Barclay would follow along with them riding in a van with the staff that were going and all of the luggage. Charlotte and I would follow a day or so later in our brougham. Normally I would have ridden the distance from London to Buckinghamshire, but this time I chose to travel with Charlotte.

At one point Margaret complained that she and her twin could ride with me and that the landau would thus be less crowded.

"The plan has been made." I said firmly, using my 'tone of command' voice, "The four of you will travel with your mother, Charlotte and I shall be in the brougham."

For a moment I expected resistance, but despite a sullen cast to her mouth, Margaret said "Yes, William."

I kept my surprise to myself, and watched them into the coach. I wanted to wrap my mother in my arms and kiss her a tender goodbye. Instead, I settled for a peck upon her cheek and I waved them off.

Supper that night was just Charlotte and myself, and the dining room seemed huge compared to what it was normally. I sat in my now normal place at the head of the table and my sister sat beside on my right-hand side.

"So, brother." She asked after the soup dishes had been removed. "Why AM I the favoured one?"

I smiled at the question. "Mother went ahead to start planning for a winter ball, and faced with the incessant quizzing from the twins and Hermione or Caroline's meaningful silences, I chose you."

She laughed. "Ah! I am the lesser of the evils?"

"If you wish."

"Very well then. If you wish to have peace and quiet on the journey, I promise I will behave if you answer me a question tonight."

I looked at her, and cautiously nodded my assent. Henry supervised a new, younger footman as he served our main course, medallions of pork with potatoes and late vegetables.

"You do realise that I am only four years younger than you? To all intents and purposes, I am a grown woman?"

I nodded again, it was true, although I still tended to think of them as girls, all of them including Hermione were grown women, something, I realised, I was having problems acknowledging.

"So, in all our conversations about your experiences in the Peninsular, why is there so much you avoid talking about? We were always honest with each other as children, in fact we swore always to tell each other the truth, are we still children to you?"

I wiped my mouth on a napkin. "Forgive me, dear sister. There is much that is sordid and unpleasant and just plain ugly in the world outside of these walls. I merely sought to ..."

"Shield us? Protect us?" There was no heat in her questioning and she took my hand in hers. "That's always something that I have loved about you, William, you always look out for us. Father tried to do the same, I think, but instead he ended up jailing us here. Locking us away from the world, isolating us, because ... because ... who knows why?"

"Come now, you're not totally isolated." I reminded her. "You yourself told me that there were dances, and men who would come calling."

"I did," Charlotte admitted.

The young footman cleared the plates away. I did not care for a dessert dish, neither did Charlotte, so we went to sit in the parlour.

"There are many ways a person can feel isolated," Charlotte told me, "Not simply by being locked away in a remote tower."

"This is also true," I nodded, "But I suppose, if I am doing anything, it is preserving my vision of my beautiful and loving sisters, the slightly vexing young ladies, that I grew up with.

"And yet, as much as I want to do that, I know that some of you will want to go out from here into the world," I waved at the windows which fronted onto the street. "And I worry that you are not yet ready for that."

Charlotte was looking at me with a mixture of surprise and admiration, but also a hint of mischief, as she asked, "And what are you going to do to prepare your sisters for the world?"

I had to laugh, "Frankly Charlotte. I don't know. If you were part of a draught of new recruits, I would put you through your drills, and so discover what is missing in your knowledge; after that I would organise appropriate training for you all."

"Well!" Charlotte smiled, "Then it is a good thing that we are the sisters of a duke and not 'a draught of recruits', that all sounds awful."

"How very genteel you are, sister." I laughed. She nodded gracefully.

"How then shall we achieve this?" She asked. "Hopefully something more suitable than marching and drilling."

"I have ideas - the first of which is to discover what it is each of you really wants from the future. That is the key. Do you wish to find a husband? Or are you still considering the role of a kept wife in a harem?"

Charlotte waved the question away, as if to suggest that she had not yet decided which way she would go.

"Once that goal is clearly fixed," I went on, "We move towards it."

"I must admit William, you surprise me. That you care so much for us, unlike many men, who just dispose of sisters and daughters as they think fit without considering what the women think - that is no surprise, that is the you I have come to love," she said, "You have always thought of us before yourself. But that you are also prepared to ignore what is considered normal in this and do what you think is right by us, then that only makes me love you more, brother."

We spent that evening reminiscing about our childhood over a glass or two of a fairly decent madeira from my father's cellars - my cellars now. We talked about the people we had played with growing up, our tutors, and Nanny Quinn, who despite her ferocious bark, would happily - devotedly, sit with us all night if we were ill.

After that, the talk turned to past suitors, I talked about young ladies I had been interested in, and Charlotte about boys that she had liked.

It had turned nine o'clock and I was considering retiring for the night as I planned to depart for Rogeringham Hall early the next morning.

"Charlotte?" I asked, after some thought. "You asked me earlier about truthfulness - so I have a question, and I understand if you do not wish to answer ..."

"Am I a virgin?" She asked me.

"Well, yes, are you?"

"I'd ask you why you wish to know, but I know you have your reasons. I have no maidenhead. That was broken when I was younger, riding in the park at Rogeringham. But I have not yet slept with a man.

"I suppose it would be pointless to ask you the same question, William."

"But I shall still answer and say my virginity is long gone."

"And yet," she said thoughtfully, "There is no wife not even a fiancée. Is it true then, what we always wondered?"

"What was that?" I asked as innocently as I could.

"Mama?" she said simply.

"I don't know what you mean," I told her.

"Ahhhh - I think you do," she laughed. "The slow smouldering looks, the envy with which you watched father ... oh and the serenade the other night!"

"What of it?"

"We have often discussed it between us," she confided. "Oh, to be certain, we know you love all of us, but equally we know that you save a special place in your heart for mama."

"And if I did? What of it? It's not like anything would ever come of it ..."

"To be truthful with you William, why not? Mama is an attractive woman, and she has retained her looks well. And why should she not have pleasure after years of being married to father?"

"So, you're saying - if I have an interest in my mother - my step-mother, I should do something about it?" I asked innocently. "But what of the age difference?"

Charlotte waved it away, "What I am saying brother, is that she deserves pleasure too. We all do."

"Wait! You speak of pleasure, Charlotte, how are you aware of such things? Did you not say that you had not yet slept with a man?"

"Oh! Did I?" She said ingenuously. "Surely there are many pleasures to be enjoyed. And many of them do not include sleeping with a man.

"Heavens! Is that the time!" She said unexpectedly, "I should be away to bed, you did say that you wish to depart early, did you not?"

8. An interesting journey with my sister Charlotte

The next morning, I passed my small bag up to Henry, who would ride with us, seated up with Hopley the coachman. Charlotte handed her travelling bag to him and then mounted the coach.

Soon we were heading west on the road to Buckinghamshire out of London via the Chilterns.

A long morning's drive would bring us to Amersham. At first Charlotte and I sat quietly, I tried to read, but it was so long since I last made this particular journey that I found myself engrossed in watching the changes in the towns as we passed.

Then as Charlotte was extracting a book from the small bag that she had brought inside with her, something fell out of it.

What rolled across the floor, ending against my foot, surprised me, it was some eight inches long, of pale polished ivory, and I could probably have just encircled it with my thumb and middle finger. I knew what it was immediately, and there was no reason at all why my sister might not own one. I had just not expected to see one here and at this moment.

"It is not what it looks like!" She said with a rush as she tried to stop me when I leaned forwards to pick it up off the floor of the carriage.

"Actually," I said, looking at it in my hand with a barely supressed smile, "It appears to be precisely what it looks like."

"Very well!" She said huffily, as she took it from me "It is what it is, and it is mine! Is that an issue?"

"Not for me." I told her.

"I suppose that you have seen one before?"

"Oh yes!" I laughed. "Smaller ones than that and bigger too."

"Bigger?"

I held my hands some sixteen inches apart, and then circled both of my thumbs and forefingers together, to show the circumference. Charlotte's eyes widened in surprise.

"No!!" She breathed.

"Aye!" I assured her. "A godemiche, of carved ebony wood, heavy and anatomically correct too, with pills attached."

"Of wood?"

"Yes, as smooth as your fair cheek, my love, polished smooth and then oiled."

"You touched it?"

I nodded, "And used it on its owner."

Charlotte's eyes were wide, to begin with, they expanded even further at that. "She took that size?"

"With no issue."

Charlotte said nothing at this, merely putting the dil doule away in her bag, but I could see the conflict in her face. She wanted to quiz me more, but such a conversation with her brother would have been too unseemly. So, she settled for re-placing her bag safely so that it would not fall down again.

As she went to sit back down, a particularly deep pot-hole in the road jolted the brougham and pitched my sister almost onto my lap. For a moment we just looked at each other. I am sure she felt my cock lying along my thigh inside my tight breeches. I moved to assist her to regain her place next to me, but she stopped my hand.

Instead, Charlotte re-positioned herself on my thigh - and my prick - and arranged herself so that she sat on my knee, leaning in and across my lap. Even with her travelling coat, I felt her tight bottom, as she ended sitting on my hand. It was an instant of great moment. Sitting on my lap, as it were, she looked into my eyes and with her slightly impish smile asked about the ebony godemiche.

Our brougham was made some thirty years ago. Unlike more modern vehicles, when the hoods are up it is a dark cave, with just the windows of the doors available for light. When the coach is in motion with the sound of the wheels on the road and the horses, it is necessary to shout at the top of one's voice for the driver to hear an instruction, but at least there is little chance of being over-looked or over-heard inside. We would have fair notice if the carriage were to stop, so we were quite private.

I was torn. I had never actually thought through my plan to prepare my sisters for the outside world. I just had this vague idea that I would - somehow. I would use my worldly knowledge to help them - somehow. But 'somehow' was as far as I had gotten the plan. Now here I was with my sister about to engage in a frank, sexual conversation, with her seated in an intimate position, talking about my own lewd behaviour.

And she hung upon every word.

I surprised myself by seeing the possibilities of engaging my sister, sexually. I felt that that Charlotte was attracted to me, I felt the same for her, so why not, I asked myself? My conflict came from my growing relationship with her mother. Did I want to jeopardise that? I decided that I would see where it went.

I left my hand where it was, and reasoning that I might have to save her falling again, placed my other arm across her lap. She leaned in against me. It wasn't really that intimate, we both wore far too many layers, but I was enjoying the closeness.

It was obvious that Charlotte was still thinking about what I had told her, because next she asked "Would you tell me, brother, how it was that you encountered this monstrous ebony device?"

"Not long after I began my career in the army, when I was with the 45^th in Jamaica, some of my fellow officers and I were visiting a brothel in Kingstown. And while we were drinking and consorting with the girls, the madame instructed one of them, a lithe black girl, to dance and entertain us.

"We cleared a space for her and one of the men who worked there played a guitar, and she began a sort of twisting turning dance. It was slow and sensuous, and well suited to her slim, and muscular figure. She had very long legs, I remember, and would swing them high up in the air, while gyrating her hips." Charlotte hung on each and every word.

"As she danced, she slowly removed her clothes - what there was of them, until she was naked before us."

"And was she pretty, this girl?"

"Pretty? I think not, her features were too strong and she had a hard set to her face. But her bubbies bounced and jiggled nicely as she danced. One of the first things that I noticed was that she had no hair upon her body there ..."

Charlotte gasped. "No hair?"

"Shaven." I told her, "Smooth as a baby, I found out later."

"And what about this thing," she said, "This godemiche then?"

"She took a rest for a moment and at that point a servant brought the mighty weapon to her. It seems that this was some sort of party-piece of hers.

"I will admit that seeing it caused me to feel a little inadequate. It was everything I described. Fully sixteen inches in length, carved out of ebony, polished to a shine and oiled, with coconut oil. It had a pair of pills carved at one end and a bulbous head at the other."

My sister was devouring this story, enjoying every moment of it, and I could feel her moving against my thigh.

"My fellow officers began to wager that she could not possibly take such a device. Major Raine who was our senior, decided that as I was the youngest that I should referee the wager. 'Ensign Rogeringham!' He said, 'You are excused the wager and will scrutinise the woman's efforts.'"

"By scrutinise, you mean ...?" Charlotte asked.

"I was to make sure that she did what she was supposed to and make sure that the godemiche was fully seated inside her.

"The dancer sat herself on a ratty old chaise. It was well-used, threadbare in places and stained with God-knows-what, but the madame of the brothel had dressed it up using scarves, so it looked far more glamorous than it actually was. Still, it enabled the girl to lay her naked body back on it and draw her right leg up, bent at the knee, toes downward, her smooth mound glistening with sweat in the warmth of the Kingstown evening.