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Copyright jeanne_d_artois June 2010
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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Laundry Tale Seven: Bustling
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The main attraction of the former laundry room, which is my workroom as a potter, is Martha, the resident ghost. As a child I would sit on the scrubbed table and ask Martha to tell me a story. She always did. When I became an adult, she told me about incidents in the lives of people at the Hall. Each time I became a participant in the story and experienced the events exactly as that person had. This is part of the series of those adult stories. It can be read as a stand-alone story.
One of my regular customers came with an unusual request. She wanted me to produce a porcelain figurine from photographs of one of her Victorian ancestors. I had produced figurines before using standard moulds but I had never tried to produce a realistic likeness of a specific individual. I could reproduce photographs on plates and other pottery items. I had sketched likenesses on to plates before firing. I had moulded full size three-dimensional heads after considerable practice and several initial failures. I ought to be capable of moulding and painting a figurine. I just hadn't done one.
We discussed a possible price. The customer was willing to pay me a reasonable amount just to try. If I produced a successful figurine, she would want ten copies to distribute to her relations at Christmas. She would pay me at least one hundred pounds for each of them. A thousand pounds would be a very useful sum, covering my basic overheads for at least six months.
She had provided me with several copies of the photographs on paper and a CD of them. One photograph had been hand-coloured. Although it had faded, I could still work out the colours of the lady's skin, hair and clothes. In every photograph, she was wearing the extreme bustle fashionable in 1885. The dresses varied but the basic shape of the bustle hadn't.
That evening I sat down at my drafting desk with enlarged prints of the photos spread out. On my sketchpad I had doodled several views for a figurine about twelve inches high. I sat back in my chair, thinking.
I heard Martha's voice inside my head.
"She's got a big backside, hasn't she?"
"It was fashionable then," I replied. "Not for long. It soon looked ridiculous."
"I know. They were a pain for the maids to keep in shape. Ironing the dresses was fiddly work."
"I can appreciate that, Martha. What I can't see at the moment is how that dress would look in the round. I have several seated pictures from the front, one standing with her body slightly turned, and a couple of her facing straight at the camera. The bustle is obvious because it is wider than her waist but..."
"In your clothes box from The Hall you have a bustle from that era. Why not try it on your mannequin?"
"Why hadn't I thought of that?"
"That's why you need me. There is a silk petticoat and I think there are petticoats and a dress that goes over the bustle. Go and get them. I'll be here when you return."
I should have been suspicious. I suppose I was too tired to think straight. As a ghost, Martha can be with me anywhere. She doesn't have to wait for me. She is just a voice in my head even if a voice that can persuade me to experience an alternate reality.
Of course she was right. In my collection of historic clothing from The Hall there was a bustle of the right shape. Next to it was a thick black silk petticoat and two cotton ones, all with added material at the back to cover the bustle. Hanging up in the old wardrobe was a grey serge walking dress. The train was bunched on the floor of the wardrobe. It was very heavy. I draped it around my shoulders as I carried the bustle and petticoats back to my workroom.
"Blast!" I blurted as I realised that my mannequin wasn't in the workroom.
"You don't need it yet," Martha's voice said, "just try the bustle on yourself and I'll tell you a story about it. You are too tired to plan a figurine this evening."
As usual, she was right. I stripped to my bra and sensible cotton panties. Martha's expert advice helped me to fit the bustle correctly. Without her I wouldn't have been able to dress the mannequin.
The bustle felt odd. Wires sewn into two arcs of quilted padding shaped a silken hood at the top. The rest was a skeleton of tapes with three semicircular hoops. My backside fitted into the hood. Long tapes wound around my waist tied at my back. Tapes attached to the three hoops tied around my thighs and below my knees.
Once the bustle was secure I tried swinging it. It slipped to one side as if I had a large bum bag on a hip. I tied it tighter. My legs were restricted but the bustle stayed behind, where it should be. I wriggled into the black petticoat and the two outer cotton petticoats.
The dress was very heavy with a double layer in the skirt. The thick serge was silk lined. The bodice had a row of functional buttons from the low neck to the waist but laced at the back. I couldn't fasten it myself. Whoever had owned it must have needed a maid or female relation to dress and undress. Martha's ghostly fingers deftly laced the dress around me.
"Try walking," she suggested.
I stood up. I nearly overbalanced. The bustle pushed my chest forward, exaggerating my bust. I felt as if I had acquired a camel's hump behind me. Once I started walking I soon acquired the knack of arching my back to compensate for the bustle. I seemed to have grown a couple of cup sizes. The skirt's short train followed me but I was dragging a heavy weight. I had to brace my shoulders to take the strain.
"Now sit," Martha ordered. "Hitch the bustle up."
I perched on the edge of my chair. The bustle folded up behind me with a large bunch of the dress's material in the small of my back.
"Comfortable? Then I'll tell you a story about this dress's owner."
I wasn't really comfortable. As Martha began to tell her story I pulled at the skirt and wriggled.
"This dress belonged to Alison. She is one of your great-great aunts. She was wearing this dress when she became engaged to Stewart. He was a distant cousin who was visiting with his parents. He and Alison seemed to have similar tastes. One Sunday he returned, on his own and asked Alison if she would walk to church with him. She did, wearing this bustle and dress for the first time, and on the way back to The Hall Stewart proposed..."
As usual, when Martha started to tell a story about past people at The Hall I began to experience what the main female character felt. Perhaps it is because Martha's story seems to be right inside my head.
It was a glorious Spring day as we came from the church after morning service. My hand was resting lightly on Stewart's crooked arm. As we passed friends and neighbours Stewart would raise his hat and I would bob a light curtsey. Each time I was conscious of the drag of my heavy skirt and the unfamiliar movement of my bustle.
Stewart put his other hand over mine.
"Shall we take the footpath past the woods?"
"Why not?" I replied as lightly as I could although I couldn't stop a faint blush. I knew that Stewart had spent an hour with my father last weekend.
We passed through the kissing gate. I had to hitch my bustle up as I negotiated the gate. I couldn't make that into the elegant movement recommended by the Lady magazine. Stewart even had the effrontery to grin as I pushed my bustle back into place.
"Don't you think it's a silly fashion?" he asked.
"Heresy!" I protested. "All fashionable ladies are expected to dress like this."
"Perhaps, but maybe the fashionable ladies don't try to walk through footpath gates."
"Of course not. They are expected to glide elegantly through the superior parts of London or Paris. I don't think country footpaths are sufficiently eligible locations."
"Of course they are. This footpath is eminently eligible."
"For what is it eligible?" I asked.
"Wait until we turn the corner of the wood," Stewart replied.
Once past the wood the view was extensive across the fields. My father had installed a bench so that people could sit and enjoy the prospect.
"Please sit, Alison," Stewart asked.
I hitched up my bustle and perched on the edge of the bench. Despite the bare earth, Stewart dropped to his knees in front of me. His valet will not be amused when he tries to brush Stewart's trousers this evening. I knew what was coming.
"Alison? Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"
All the fashionable journals recommend some show of reticence before replying to a proposal but I couldn't stop a smile on my face.
Stewart added, before I could reply formally, "I have your father's permission..."
"I know you have."
"Well?"
I opened my arms to him. He shuffled forward. More mud for his poor valet. I hugged him and whispered "Yes, of course" in his ear as his head rested between my breasts. He tried to move. I hugged him tighter.
He gasped suddenly. I looked down. One of my buttons had slipped from its buttonhole and his nose was touching my bare skin. I liked that and squeezed his head against me. A button popped off and his face was deep between my breasts. He struggled. I held on. I liked having Stewart so close to me.
Unfortunately for him I had totally covered his mouth and nose with my soft flesh and my new fiancé couldn't breathe. His hands pushed against my shoulders to give himself room to gasp for breath. I slumped backwards. As I did, something snapped behind me.
I let out a startled "What?", released my hold on his head, and felt the back of my bunched skirt. My bustle had crumpled.
"Let me up, Stewart," I asked. "I think something's wrong with my dress."
Reluctantly he stood up and gave me his hands to help me from the bench. He looked disappointed.
"Never mind, new Fiancé Stewart," I said "I'll hug you like that again, many times, if that's what you want, but we need to check my dress. I've lost a button, one is undone, and my bustle feels wrong."
It was. My bustle was lopsided. I heaved at it through the layers of skirt and petticoat but I couldn't get it to sit straight.
"I can't go home like this!" I wailed. "I can cover up the lost button but how can I explain a wrecked bustle? People will think..."
"Not if we can mend it, Alison," Stewart said. "It must be a simple device."
"It might be," I retorted, "but as it's under my clothes I can't see how it can be fixed here, now."
"You could take it off and we could find out what's wrong."
"Take it off? How? It's tied to me in several places and buried under my skirt and petticoats..."
"You could let me see..."
"See! You may be my fiancé, Stewart, and have been for several minutes, but that is suggesting taking liberties that are reserved for a husband..."
"...and smothering me with your naked breasts isn't a liberty?"
I blushed.
"Very well, Stewart, but not here. We can be seen for miles."
"Just inside the wood there's the gazebo."
I knew the gazebo. So did Stewart. We had kissed there several times.
I picked up the loose button and put it in my reticule. I wanted to rearrange my gaping bodice as we walked to the gazebo. I couldn't because I needed both hands to lift the train of my skirt and petticoat that were dragging on the ground. Stewart was no help. He was too busy watching my chest for interesting glimpses.
The gazebo is built around an old tree trunk that supports the roof. Around the trunk is a circular bench. We walked around the trunk to where we would be concealed from any passers-by. Stewart helped me to stand on the bench with my face to the tree trunk and my rump facing him. He knelt behind me and lifted the back of my skirt up to my waiting hands. As he started to lift the black petticoat I felt it snag. So did he. He paused a slid a hand up inside. I jumped as his fingers brushed my naked leg.
"I can't see where it is caught, Alison. I'll try to ease it outwards."
Ease? As he pulled at my petticoat I nearly fell backwards. I had to let my skirt go and grab frantically at the tree trunk.
"Watch it!" I screeched. "You..."
"Sorry, Alison. I slipped."
Stewart's voice was muffled. I looked back and down. His head and shoulders were inside my skirt. Still holding the tree trunk I tried to lift my skirt off him. One-handed, all I did was dislodge the folds on the bustle and my skirt swamped Stewart. I saw the tips of his shoes before they vanished under the train of my skirt.
"What are you doing?" his muffled voice asked plaintively.
"Trying to get my skirt off you and failing," I replied.
"I can feel that. I'm stuck between your skirt and petticoat with my face rammed against your bustle. There's something sharp under my chin. I daren't do anything until I can get that point away. I can't see a thing and your skirt is too tightly wrapped for me to reach with my hands."
Stewart's voice was even more muffled than before. I felt a sense of power. He was trapped under my skirt with his face against my backside, even if it was my bustle instead of my own rump. Without my help he was stuck there.
"Keep still!" I ordered.
I used both hands to lift my skirt very carefully. As Stewart's head emerged he had his eyes tight shut. His face was sunk back to his ears in my black silk petticoat. I felt under his chin. There was a sharp point. I grabbed it through the silk and pushed it down.
"Stewart! You can lift your head now."
His face was flushed. With my free hand I ruffled his hair.
"Can you look where I'm holding and see what it is?"
"Only if I lift the petticoat, Alison."
"Then do it."
He lifted my petticoat until my hand was sunk deep in its folds.
"Got it!" he exclaimed. "It a wire, come out of a sort of pocket. I'll try to put it back."
He turned around, still holding that wire, until he was sitting down, facing outwards, trying to feed the wire back into its padding.
"You can let go now."
We should have worked out who was holding the petticoat. I wasn't. I had been holding the wire. He wasn't. He'd just pushed it out of the way to take over the wire from me.
Stewart disappeared again, this time under my black silk petticoat. I tried to catch it as it dropped. All I did was let go of the bunched skirt that slithered over the silk to conceal him again.
"Mmph!" Whatever Stewart was trying to say was lost. The back of my skirt was waggling frantically. I held the tree trunk tight.
"MMMPF!" Stewart was obviously in some difficulty. The back of his head pressed against my naked rump. My bustle was shaking violently.
I decided that his immediate need was greater than mine. I used both hands to drag up the layers of skirt and petticoat. I expected to see his head. I didn't. It was securely jammed in the hood of my bustle and neither he nor I could release it. I pulled at the bow on the tape holding the bustle to my thighs. That gave Stewart just enough space to pull his head down and out. He panted for breath.
"What happened?" I asked.
Stewart kept breathing heavily before he replied.
"As your dress slipped I tried to catch it. I let go of the wire but the weight of your skirt forced my head inside your bustle. I tried to shout. The padding filled my mouth and gagged me. Your skirt fell further; the bustle dropped lower and I was trapped. I was unable to breathe. Sitting down I couldn't get any leverage to lift you, nor could I get my hands up to pull off that damned bustle!"
"Stewart! Such language!"
"I'm sorry, Alison, but I was in real danger under there."
"You're safe now."
"Yes. And there's no way I'm going under your skirt again. I've nearly been smothered to death several times since you said 'yes' to me. I'm not sure I'll survive the next time."
"So what do we do now, Stewart?"
"Come down. I'll sit on the bench, and you..."
He pulled me face down across his knees and pulled my skirt and petticoats up. With my bustle completely exposed it took him only a few seconds to replace the errant wire. I was wriggling in a most unladylike position.
Then he slapped my naked rump. Not hard, but just enough to let me know he could, before he pulled my bustle into position, my petticoats and skirt down and stood me up.
I wanted to protest but his lips prevented my objection. We kissed again and again as he sat me on his lap in a more conventional manner. Eventually we stopped, both of us nearly as breathless as he had been when trapped in my bustle.
I used a couple of pins to replace the button on my bodice. He brushed ineffectually at his dusty knees. We were almost presentable when we arrived back at The Hall but both of us changed, as we would normally have done, before lunch.
My maid and Stewart's valet had to work on our clothes to make them presentable. My maid asked about the damage to the bustle.
"I caught it going through a gate," I answered. I don't think she believed me but she repaired it.
Our engagement was announced at that evening's dinner. Over the next few months I smothered Stewart many times. Somehow, whenever I was with him, I was wearing bodices that unbuttoned and his face met my breasts. He learned to salute them with his lips and tongue.
It wasn't until we were married that I used that bustle again on Stewart. Sometimes he ended up with his head hooded in a bustle, clamped tightly against me, his lips and tongue busy, but the bustle was usually in front of me.
The bustle was only behind me when I needed him to atone for some husbandly fault. For a minor fault, I would use the bustle to clamp his face between my rear cheeks. For a major transgression, I would secure his arms and legs with stockings, face him outwards, gag him with the padded roll, pull the bustle's hood down, secure the tapes really tight, and trap him under the black silk petticoat. Only if he had been really insufferable would I add my heavy serge walking dress and let him struggle to breathe.
Although I appreciated having Stewart as a gagged, bound and helpless prisoner at my mercy, I preferred him to take an active role as he became more expert with his lips and tongue. In our first months of marriage we had to make sure that our bedroom door was firmly shut or my excited screams might have startled the servants. Sometimes I had to gag myself to reduce the noise.
I kept my walking dress, petticoats and bustle for years after they became unfashionable. They were no longer worn in the day but only for bedroom role-playing. Even when our children had grown up and set up their own establishments I used to trap Stewart just to feel him kiss me down below and sometimes vainly struggle in his dark perfumed prison.
Martha's voice died away. I sat there, dressed in Alison's heavy dress, wishing that I could feel Stewart's lips down below just once more.
"You can, you know," Martha said. "Just think of Alison when you are in bed, nearly asleep, and you'll be Alison again with Stewart kneeling at your feet."
She helped me undress. The next day I brought the mannequin and fitted Alison's clothes. I had to try to see what Stewart's experience had been like. I slid myself under Alison's skirt and petticoats. There was still a faint trace of her perfume in the complete darkness. I wriggled around to the bustle.
"I wouldn't," Martha's voice sounded in my head. "Alison isn't here to let you out and that bustle would trap you just as effectively now as it trapped Stewart. Wait until you can find a man to trap for yourself. You will..."
I crawled out from under the skirt. I will find a man? When?
Copyright jeanne_d_artois June 2010
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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Laundry Tale Seven: Bustling
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The main attraction of the former laundry room, which is my workroom as a potter, is Martha, the resident ghost. As a child I would sit on the scrubbed table and ask Martha to tell me a story. She always did. When I became an adult, she told me about incidents in the lives of people at the Hall. Each time I became a participant in the story and experienced the events exactly as that person had. This is part of the series of those adult stories. It can be read as a stand-alone story.
One of my regular customers came with an unusual request. She wanted me to produce a porcelain figurine from photographs of one of her Victorian ancestors. I had produced figurines before using standard moulds but I had never tried to produce a realistic likeness of a specific individual. I could reproduce photographs on plates and other pottery items. I had sketched likenesses on to plates before firing. I had moulded full size three-dimensional heads after considerable practice and several initial failures. I ought to be capable of moulding and painting a figurine. I just hadn't done one.
We discussed a possible price. The customer was willing to pay me a reasonable amount just to try. If I produced a successful figurine, she would want ten copies to distribute to her relations at Christmas. She would pay me at least one hundred pounds for each of them. A thousand pounds would be a very useful sum, covering my basic overheads for at least six months.
She had provided me with several copies of the photographs on paper and a CD of them. One photograph had been hand-coloured. Although it had faded, I could still work out the colours of the lady's skin, hair and clothes. In every photograph, she was wearing the extreme bustle fashionable in 1885. The dresses varied but the basic shape of the bustle hadn't.
That evening I sat down at my drafting desk with enlarged prints of the photos spread out. On my sketchpad I had doodled several views for a figurine about twelve inches high. I sat back in my chair, thinking.
I heard Martha's voice inside my head.
"She's got a big backside, hasn't she?"
"It was fashionable then," I replied. "Not for long. It soon looked ridiculous."
"I know. They were a pain for the maids to keep in shape. Ironing the dresses was fiddly work."
"I can appreciate that, Martha. What I can't see at the moment is how that dress would look in the round. I have several seated pictures from the front, one standing with her body slightly turned, and a couple of her facing straight at the camera. The bustle is obvious because it is wider than her waist but..."
"In your clothes box from The Hall you have a bustle from that era. Why not try it on your mannequin?"
"Why hadn't I thought of that?"
"That's why you need me. There is a silk petticoat and I think there are petticoats and a dress that goes over the bustle. Go and get them. I'll be here when you return."
I should have been suspicious. I suppose I was too tired to think straight. As a ghost, Martha can be with me anywhere. She doesn't have to wait for me. She is just a voice in my head even if a voice that can persuade me to experience an alternate reality.
Of course she was right. In my collection of historic clothing from The Hall there was a bustle of the right shape. Next to it was a thick black silk petticoat and two cotton ones, all with added material at the back to cover the bustle. Hanging up in the old wardrobe was a grey serge walking dress. The train was bunched on the floor of the wardrobe. It was very heavy. I draped it around my shoulders as I carried the bustle and petticoats back to my workroom.
"Blast!" I blurted as I realised that my mannequin wasn't in the workroom.
"You don't need it yet," Martha's voice said, "just try the bustle on yourself and I'll tell you a story about it. You are too tired to plan a figurine this evening."
As usual, she was right. I stripped to my bra and sensible cotton panties. Martha's expert advice helped me to fit the bustle correctly. Without her I wouldn't have been able to dress the mannequin.
The bustle felt odd. Wires sewn into two arcs of quilted padding shaped a silken hood at the top. The rest was a skeleton of tapes with three semicircular hoops. My backside fitted into the hood. Long tapes wound around my waist tied at my back. Tapes attached to the three hoops tied around my thighs and below my knees.
Once the bustle was secure I tried swinging it. It slipped to one side as if I had a large bum bag on a hip. I tied it tighter. My legs were restricted but the bustle stayed behind, where it should be. I wriggled into the black petticoat and the two outer cotton petticoats.
The dress was very heavy with a double layer in the skirt. The thick serge was silk lined. The bodice had a row of functional buttons from the low neck to the waist but laced at the back. I couldn't fasten it myself. Whoever had owned it must have needed a maid or female relation to dress and undress. Martha's ghostly fingers deftly laced the dress around me.
"Try walking," she suggested.
I stood up. I nearly overbalanced. The bustle pushed my chest forward, exaggerating my bust. I felt as if I had acquired a camel's hump behind me. Once I started walking I soon acquired the knack of arching my back to compensate for the bustle. I seemed to have grown a couple of cup sizes. The skirt's short train followed me but I was dragging a heavy weight. I had to brace my shoulders to take the strain.
"Now sit," Martha ordered. "Hitch the bustle up."
I perched on the edge of my chair. The bustle folded up behind me with a large bunch of the dress's material in the small of my back.
"Comfortable? Then I'll tell you a story about this dress's owner."
I wasn't really comfortable. As Martha began to tell her story I pulled at the skirt and wriggled.
"This dress belonged to Alison. She is one of your great-great aunts. She was wearing this dress when she became engaged to Stewart. He was a distant cousin who was visiting with his parents. He and Alison seemed to have similar tastes. One Sunday he returned, on his own and asked Alison if she would walk to church with him. She did, wearing this bustle and dress for the first time, and on the way back to The Hall Stewart proposed..."
As usual, when Martha started to tell a story about past people at The Hall I began to experience what the main female character felt. Perhaps it is because Martha's story seems to be right inside my head.
It was a glorious Spring day as we came from the church after morning service. My hand was resting lightly on Stewart's crooked arm. As we passed friends and neighbours Stewart would raise his hat and I would bob a light curtsey. Each time I was conscious of the drag of my heavy skirt and the unfamiliar movement of my bustle.
Stewart put his other hand over mine.
"Shall we take the footpath past the woods?"
"Why not?" I replied as lightly as I could although I couldn't stop a faint blush. I knew that Stewart had spent an hour with my father last weekend.
We passed through the kissing gate. I had to hitch my bustle up as I negotiated the gate. I couldn't make that into the elegant movement recommended by the Lady magazine. Stewart even had the effrontery to grin as I pushed my bustle back into place.
"Don't you think it's a silly fashion?" he asked.
"Heresy!" I protested. "All fashionable ladies are expected to dress like this."
"Perhaps, but maybe the fashionable ladies don't try to walk through footpath gates."
"Of course not. They are expected to glide elegantly through the superior parts of London or Paris. I don't think country footpaths are sufficiently eligible locations."
"Of course they are. This footpath is eminently eligible."
"For what is it eligible?" I asked.
"Wait until we turn the corner of the wood," Stewart replied.
Once past the wood the view was extensive across the fields. My father had installed a bench so that people could sit and enjoy the prospect.
"Please sit, Alison," Stewart asked.
I hitched up my bustle and perched on the edge of the bench. Despite the bare earth, Stewart dropped to his knees in front of me. His valet will not be amused when he tries to brush Stewart's trousers this evening. I knew what was coming.
"Alison? Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"
All the fashionable journals recommend some show of reticence before replying to a proposal but I couldn't stop a smile on my face.
Stewart added, before I could reply formally, "I have your father's permission..."
"I know you have."
"Well?"
I opened my arms to him. He shuffled forward. More mud for his poor valet. I hugged him and whispered "Yes, of course" in his ear as his head rested between my breasts. He tried to move. I hugged him tighter.
He gasped suddenly. I looked down. One of my buttons had slipped from its buttonhole and his nose was touching my bare skin. I liked that and squeezed his head against me. A button popped off and his face was deep between my breasts. He struggled. I held on. I liked having Stewart so close to me.
Unfortunately for him I had totally covered his mouth and nose with my soft flesh and my new fiancé couldn't breathe. His hands pushed against my shoulders to give himself room to gasp for breath. I slumped backwards. As I did, something snapped behind me.
I let out a startled "What?", released my hold on his head, and felt the back of my bunched skirt. My bustle had crumpled.
"Let me up, Stewart," I asked. "I think something's wrong with my dress."
Reluctantly he stood up and gave me his hands to help me from the bench. He looked disappointed.
"Never mind, new Fiancé Stewart," I said "I'll hug you like that again, many times, if that's what you want, but we need to check my dress. I've lost a button, one is undone, and my bustle feels wrong."
It was. My bustle was lopsided. I heaved at it through the layers of skirt and petticoat but I couldn't get it to sit straight.
"I can't go home like this!" I wailed. "I can cover up the lost button but how can I explain a wrecked bustle? People will think..."
"Not if we can mend it, Alison," Stewart said. "It must be a simple device."
"It might be," I retorted, "but as it's under my clothes I can't see how it can be fixed here, now."
"You could take it off and we could find out what's wrong."
"Take it off? How? It's tied to me in several places and buried under my skirt and petticoats..."
"You could let me see..."
"See! You may be my fiancé, Stewart, and have been for several minutes, but that is suggesting taking liberties that are reserved for a husband..."
"...and smothering me with your naked breasts isn't a liberty?"
I blushed.
"Very well, Stewart, but not here. We can be seen for miles."
"Just inside the wood there's the gazebo."
I knew the gazebo. So did Stewart. We had kissed there several times.
I picked up the loose button and put it in my reticule. I wanted to rearrange my gaping bodice as we walked to the gazebo. I couldn't because I needed both hands to lift the train of my skirt and petticoat that were dragging on the ground. Stewart was no help. He was too busy watching my chest for interesting glimpses.
The gazebo is built around an old tree trunk that supports the roof. Around the trunk is a circular bench. We walked around the trunk to where we would be concealed from any passers-by. Stewart helped me to stand on the bench with my face to the tree trunk and my rump facing him. He knelt behind me and lifted the back of my skirt up to my waiting hands. As he started to lift the black petticoat I felt it snag. So did he. He paused a slid a hand up inside. I jumped as his fingers brushed my naked leg.
"I can't see where it is caught, Alison. I'll try to ease it outwards."
Ease? As he pulled at my petticoat I nearly fell backwards. I had to let my skirt go and grab frantically at the tree trunk.
"Watch it!" I screeched. "You..."
"Sorry, Alison. I slipped."
Stewart's voice was muffled. I looked back and down. His head and shoulders were inside my skirt. Still holding the tree trunk I tried to lift my skirt off him. One-handed, all I did was dislodge the folds on the bustle and my skirt swamped Stewart. I saw the tips of his shoes before they vanished under the train of my skirt.
"What are you doing?" his muffled voice asked plaintively.
"Trying to get my skirt off you and failing," I replied.
"I can feel that. I'm stuck between your skirt and petticoat with my face rammed against your bustle. There's something sharp under my chin. I daren't do anything until I can get that point away. I can't see a thing and your skirt is too tightly wrapped for me to reach with my hands."
Stewart's voice was even more muffled than before. I felt a sense of power. He was trapped under my skirt with his face against my backside, even if it was my bustle instead of my own rump. Without my help he was stuck there.
"Keep still!" I ordered.
I used both hands to lift my skirt very carefully. As Stewart's head emerged he had his eyes tight shut. His face was sunk back to his ears in my black silk petticoat. I felt under his chin. There was a sharp point. I grabbed it through the silk and pushed it down.
"Stewart! You can lift your head now."
His face was flushed. With my free hand I ruffled his hair.
"Can you look where I'm holding and see what it is?"
"Only if I lift the petticoat, Alison."
"Then do it."
He lifted my petticoat until my hand was sunk deep in its folds.
"Got it!" he exclaimed. "It a wire, come out of a sort of pocket. I'll try to put it back."
He turned around, still holding that wire, until he was sitting down, facing outwards, trying to feed the wire back into its padding.
"You can let go now."
We should have worked out who was holding the petticoat. I wasn't. I had been holding the wire. He wasn't. He'd just pushed it out of the way to take over the wire from me.
Stewart disappeared again, this time under my black silk petticoat. I tried to catch it as it dropped. All I did was let go of the bunched skirt that slithered over the silk to conceal him again.
"Mmph!" Whatever Stewart was trying to say was lost. The back of my skirt was waggling frantically. I held the tree trunk tight.
"MMMPF!" Stewart was obviously in some difficulty. The back of his head pressed against my naked rump. My bustle was shaking violently.
I decided that his immediate need was greater than mine. I used both hands to drag up the layers of skirt and petticoat. I expected to see his head. I didn't. It was securely jammed in the hood of my bustle and neither he nor I could release it. I pulled at the bow on the tape holding the bustle to my thighs. That gave Stewart just enough space to pull his head down and out. He panted for breath.
"What happened?" I asked.
Stewart kept breathing heavily before he replied.
"As your dress slipped I tried to catch it. I let go of the wire but the weight of your skirt forced my head inside your bustle. I tried to shout. The padding filled my mouth and gagged me. Your skirt fell further; the bustle dropped lower and I was trapped. I was unable to breathe. Sitting down I couldn't get any leverage to lift you, nor could I get my hands up to pull off that damned bustle!"
"Stewart! Such language!"
"I'm sorry, Alison, but I was in real danger under there."
"You're safe now."
"Yes. And there's no way I'm going under your skirt again. I've nearly been smothered to death several times since you said 'yes' to me. I'm not sure I'll survive the next time."
"So what do we do now, Stewart?"
"Come down. I'll sit on the bench, and you..."
He pulled me face down across his knees and pulled my skirt and petticoats up. With my bustle completely exposed it took him only a few seconds to replace the errant wire. I was wriggling in a most unladylike position.
Then he slapped my naked rump. Not hard, but just enough to let me know he could, before he pulled my bustle into position, my petticoats and skirt down and stood me up.
I wanted to protest but his lips prevented my objection. We kissed again and again as he sat me on his lap in a more conventional manner. Eventually we stopped, both of us nearly as breathless as he had been when trapped in my bustle.
I used a couple of pins to replace the button on my bodice. He brushed ineffectually at his dusty knees. We were almost presentable when we arrived back at The Hall but both of us changed, as we would normally have done, before lunch.
My maid and Stewart's valet had to work on our clothes to make them presentable. My maid asked about the damage to the bustle.
"I caught it going through a gate," I answered. I don't think she believed me but she repaired it.
Our engagement was announced at that evening's dinner. Over the next few months I smothered Stewart many times. Somehow, whenever I was with him, I was wearing bodices that unbuttoned and his face met my breasts. He learned to salute them with his lips and tongue.
It wasn't until we were married that I used that bustle again on Stewart. Sometimes he ended up with his head hooded in a bustle, clamped tightly against me, his lips and tongue busy, but the bustle was usually in front of me.
The bustle was only behind me when I needed him to atone for some husbandly fault. For a minor fault, I would use the bustle to clamp his face between my rear cheeks. For a major transgression, I would secure his arms and legs with stockings, face him outwards, gag him with the padded roll, pull the bustle's hood down, secure the tapes really tight, and trap him under the black silk petticoat. Only if he had been really insufferable would I add my heavy serge walking dress and let him struggle to breathe.
Although I appreciated having Stewart as a gagged, bound and helpless prisoner at my mercy, I preferred him to take an active role as he became more expert with his lips and tongue. In our first months of marriage we had to make sure that our bedroom door was firmly shut or my excited screams might have startled the servants. Sometimes I had to gag myself to reduce the noise.
I kept my walking dress, petticoats and bustle for years after they became unfashionable. They were no longer worn in the day but only for bedroom role-playing. Even when our children had grown up and set up their own establishments I used to trap Stewart just to feel him kiss me down below and sometimes vainly struggle in his dark perfumed prison.
Martha's voice died away. I sat there, dressed in Alison's heavy dress, wishing that I could feel Stewart's lips down below just once more.
"You can, you know," Martha said. "Just think of Alison when you are in bed, nearly asleep, and you'll be Alison again with Stewart kneeling at your feet."
She helped me undress. The next day I brought the mannequin and fitted Alison's clothes. I had to try to see what Stewart's experience had been like. I slid myself under Alison's skirt and petticoats. There was still a faint trace of her perfume in the complete darkness. I wriggled around to the bustle.
"I wouldn't," Martha's voice sounded in my head. "Alison isn't here to let you out and that bustle would trap you just as effectively now as it trapped Stewart. Wait until you can find a man to trap for yourself. You will..."
I crawled out from under the skirt. I will find a man? When?