Chapter 11
Lady Gloria Mayne glanced impatiently at her platinum wristwatch. Seven-fifty. Where was Paul? He was usually so punctual.
She went to the cottage entry, looked out, along the grass fringed path. Not a sign of Paul West. Frowning, Lady Gloria went out, banging the door.
She walked quickly toward the river, calling the gamekeeper's name repeatedly. Only bird calls and the sighing of the wind in the reeds answered her.
Becoming more and more annoyed, then alarmed and agitated when West failed to respond, she quickened her steps. Eventually, having covered most of the distance involved in Paul's usual evening patrol, she paused by the broken bridge. She was really worried now. It was after eight o'clock. Then, seeing the extent of damage to the bridge, she thought it possible Paul might have gone the longer way round, by the canal, and she hurried in that direction.
As she emerged from the trees near the sluice gates she heard a car approaching along the narrow path leading to the village. It hurtled out of the gloom, swerving erratically, and almost ran her down. Lady Gloria leaped back. Bloody teenage idiots! She watched the car disappear into the woods further along.
Unable to locate Paul, she slowly retraced her steps to the cottage, entered, and flopped exhausted on the sofa. The place was as she had left it. She frowned. If Paul was with another woman she would— She heard a sound, got up quickly and ran to the door. Nothing. Only the rising wind stirring the trees.
Lady Gloria waited another half hour. Then, frustrated and angry, and desperately anxious, she stamped from the lodge and started the long walk home. Her husband was attending a political meeting in London and the servants had been given the evening off. The big house was quiet and depressing.
Lady Gloria watched television, mixed herself a cocktail, munched roasted nuts. She kept eyeing the clock, expecting Paul to telephone, praying that nothing was seriously wrong, that he had not been involved in an accident.
The phone did not ring. She sat there until long after midnight. Lord Mayne was obviously staying overnight in Westminster. Eventually, Lady Gloria went to bed. Unable to sleep, tossing and turning, she got up, made coffee, read for an hour, played a stack of classical phonograph records.
Finally, she got dressed and made her way back along the moonlit path to the gamekeeper's lodge. The place was deserted. Nobody had been there in her absence.
Completely puzzled, Lady Gloria again returned home. It was quite alien to Paul West's usual behavior pattern. Normally he was altogether reliable, and fixed in a set routine from which she had never known him to vary. What then could have happened to him? He was hardly the type to fall in the river and drown, and so far as Lady Gloria knew he never touched liquor. If he had been hurt somehow and was lying in one of the innumerable gullies on the estate he would have fired his shotgun—a series of shots representing the emergency signal generally accepted by outdoor men everywhere and which any villager in the vicinity would recognize. A horrible thought crossed Lady Gloria's mind. Suppose Paul was unable to fire the gun? He always carried it on his patrol, but what if he was dead? Maybe struck down by a vicious poacher?
She tried to dismiss the morbid possibility. Paul was more than the equal of any two men in the village or anywhere in the district. He must be all right. But where was he?
Baffled, Lady Gloria undressed and got into bed. Surprisingly, considering her state of mind, she slept, but awoke in the early hours with a splitting headache. She took some pills, had a warm shower, and felt better. She ate breakfast, just buttered toast and half a grapefruit, and coffee with cream, then got dressed. By seven-thirty, wearing a frilly lace blouse and fawn colored cord pants, riding boots, and soft felt hat canted over one eye, she was again striding resolutely along the misty path toward West's cottage.
This time, as she emerged from a clump of elms and the lodge came into view, she saw smoke wisping from the stone chimney. She kept walking, relief quickening her steps, and kept whacking the riding crop she carried against the high leg of her boot—an indication of her nervous tension.
She was in a strained, apprehensive mood when she turned in at the white-painted gate and approached the cottage door. She made very little noise. She grasped the door handle, and was about to push the door open when, acting on a sudden impulse, she moved on past the small porch and paused outside the latticed window. Putting her face close against the glass, she peered into the spacious room through a wide gap in the drapes.
What she saw caused' the breath to blast explosively from her lungs and brought her full, ripe lips together until they compressed into a thin, bloodless gash. Disbelief was reflected in her large, wide-staring eyes.
Paul West stood with his broad back to a blazing log fire. He was completely unclothed. On her knees in front of him, also quite naked, her wide, splayed bottom indented by her heels, both hands clasping the gamekeeper's heat reddened buttocks, was a dark haired woman with a truly magnificent figure, a large, imposing female who was a total stranger to Lady Gloria Mayne. But what concerned Lady Gloria most, and caused a distinct shock to travel from the pit of her stomach into her genital organs, was what the woman was doing. She was avidly sucking Paul's stiff penis, deeply engrossed in the intimate act, dragging her enormously distended lips up and down the monstrous phallus and taking several inches of fat prick into her mouth each time she bore down.
West, one hand cupped behind the woman's head, the other preventing his penis from escaping the hot, wet cavern, kept pulling her face toward his groin, endeavoring to achieve greater penetration but often defeating his own purpose through virtual suffocation. He was smirking, gloating down, watching the lewd ritual and mouthing words Lady Gloria could not hear but assumed were crude forms of encouragement.
Wounded pride and outraged vanity combined with disillusionment banished anxiety and flooded Lady Gloria's mind with savage fury. For a while she just gaped, too shocked and stunned to move, incredulous. Then she darted to the door, flung it open, stormed into the lounge and commenced lashing Miss Garfield with the riding crop, raising crimson weals on her bare back and shoulders, striking blindly, viciously.
Startled and cruelly hurt, Prunella cowered away, arms raised to protect her face and bosom. The whip slashed across her elevated bottom and left a series of red ridges, cut into cringing flesh again as she shrank back against the wall, uttering harsh cries, writhing.
Lady Gloria turned on Paul West like a raging tigress. The riding crop slashed down on his jutting penis, missed the wet stalk by a fraction as he avoided the demented blow with a feat of contortion that would have done credit to a circus acrobat. He grappled with the infuriated blonde and finally succeeded in wrenching the whip from her grasp, receiving a cutting welt across his neck in the process. Cursing, he threw the whip into a corner and pushed Lady Gloria violently down onto a wide lounge chair.
"Simmer down, you bloody lunatic!" he shouted.
"Damn you!" she raged. "You dirty, cheating bastard! How could you? After all we've been to each other? Oh, Paul! PAUL! Why, for God's sake? Ill kill that smirking bitch!"
She bounced from the chair. The expression on her face was murderous, her slim fingers hooked like claws. West slammed her back against the upholstery.
Reaction came then, a flood of tears. Some of the tension left Lady Gloria's voluptuous body. She clutched West fiercely round the knees, hugged his legs, kissed the whip marks on his chest and belly, then kissed his penis and pressed her face passionately into the soft, spongy mass of his genitals, sobbing hysterically.
"Damn you, Paul!" she repeated. "You've no right to do this to me, no reason. You're mine. MINE! Send her away, whoever she is. Please! Don't let her come between us, Paul. Please, darling! PLEASE!"
West tried to pull away but she held on grimly.
"For God's sake!" he protested. "Get a grip on yourself, Gloria. You're acting like a hysterical kid. All right, so you've caught me with another woman. I didn't plan this—it was wholly unintentional. It just happened. I can explain."
"Explain, you swine!"
"I never wanted to hurt you," he continued patiently. "Look, it's been a lot of fun, Gloria, really wonderful. But now it's over, finished. You've got to understand."
"Over! Over! Just like that? Oh, I understand all right. You deceived me. You're everything people say about you—a lousy whoremonger. I thought you loved me. But you're just like the rest. I've given you everything. EVERYTHING! Now I find you here, like this, with that fat cow. You bastard! We had a date, remember? I waited for you, looked all over for you, walked miles, worried all night. And all the time you were with her—"
"All right," West admitted. "But you don't know the circumstances."
"I'm not interested."
"Maybe not. But you don't own me either. I've never pretended with you, Gloria. I always said if I ever met someone I really felt I could—"
"Yes. Oh, my darling, I know. But I never dreamed it would happen. Paul! You can't mean it. It can't be over. All those glorious months together. I'm right for you, darling! You can't leave me. Oh, why are you torturing me like this? And what's she got that I haven't?"
She raised her head, glared resentfully at Miss Garfield.
"I'm still young," she blurted. "Attractive. What more can I give you than I already have? I love you, Paul. Don't you understand? I love you! If you leave me 111 do something desperate. I mean it. I'll kill myself!"
Clinging to him, tearful, trembling, she presented a pathetic spectacle. But the young gamekeeper was unmoved. He had made his decision long before he reached the cottage. Paul West was no fool. He knew the flaws in Lady Gloria's character, and realized the depth and warmth underlying Prunella Garfield's tempestuous exterior, the sincerity in her passionate nature. Lady Gloria was a vain, shallow creature, a good screw but too possessive, too demanding, too ready to remind him of his lowly position. There was no sort of a future with her. West had no illusions about Lady Gloria Mayne. She was utterly spoiled and self-centered. While he was the big thing in her life she would keep tossing him crumbs, but the moment she tired of him he would be out on his ass. He knew her sort. His previous employment had terminated abruptly for the same reasons.
In any case, he had made his choice, knew the moment he thrashed his prick into Miss Garfield which was the better proposition. He frowned at her persistence.
"Do what you damn-well like," he said callously. "But do it some place else. I was prepared to be reasonable, to offer explanations, let you down lightly. This has been building up for some time. Now you can go to hell."
Lady Gloria held on grimly as if she had not heard a word he had said. Prunella Garfield stood near the fire, white-faced, wincing, one hand on her breasts, the other covering her vagina, instinctively modest gestures.
West firmly disengaged Lady Gloria s fingers, forced her to sit back in the chair. Anger was again superseding sorrow and self-pity, the tears already drying on the blonde's cheeks. Suddenly the vicious streak in her nature took command and her emotions were predominantly vindictive.
She flung off West's restraining hand and surged to her feet, rushed at Miss Garfield, bore her backward, almost into the fire, and, pinning Prunella against the wall, grabbed a double fistful of glossy, black hair and tugged with agonizing force. Gasping, squalling hoarse protest, Miss Garfield retaliated spiritedly, slapping the blonde's flushed face repeatedly and, when Lady Gloria refused to relax her punishing hold, punched her in the stomach. But Lady Gloria would not let go, and Prunella screeched with pain as some of her lustrous hair was torn out by the roots.
Pummeling and clutching desperately, she wrestled the blonde to the floor and, seizing her fragrant curls, applied the same cruel leverage as the frantic aristocrat relentlessly maintained. One savage hold countered the other. Clawing and kicking, the two venomously agitated females thrashed about, rolling over and over, banging against furniture and upsetting vases and ornaments, toppling chairs.
A tall reading-lamp went over with a resounding crash.
Glass shattered, littered the carpet. Flimsy material tore as Prunella grabbed at Lady Gloria's blouse and jerked maliciously, exposing pale flesh. Miss Garfield uttered a croaking gasp of triumph, then cried out sharply and recoiled from the impact of a hard palm across her heaving buttocks. A knee gouged into her soft belly, rammed lower, thrusting at her vagina. Her wildly waving legs overturned a small table, sending a red telephone jangling to the floor.
The knee connected, drove into Prunella's pelvis arid squashed the lips of her cunt inward, splaying the hairy vulva. Sickened by the dangerous blow, Miss Garfield flopped, momentarily overcome. A hand groped into the throbbing cleft, grabbing lewdly, squeezing, fiercely punishing. Impeccably manicured fingers plucked at the tufted pubic hair. A gouging thumb nail raked into her anus.
Pain expedited Miss Garfield's recovery. She brought her knee up sharply, inserted it between Lady Gloria's widely parted thighs, and gave her some of the quim-jangling treatment. Lady Gloria did not like that. She relished it even less when Prunella, gaining a temporary advantage, got astride the blonde's waist, sat on her, and began slapping her breasts about, cuffing the luscious globes from side to side, tearing at the already ragged blouse until it gaped open to Lady Gloria's navel and exposed her tingling bosoms completely.
Prunella would have transferred her attentions to the blonde's cord pants then, and was intent on ripping them also when Lady Gloria bucked her off and, after a brief tussle, reversed their positions. She pinned Miss Garfield's arms against the floor, kneeling on her wrists. Breasts heaving, glaring through a trailing curtain of damp hair, the blonde gloated, smirking maliciously.
Deliberately vindictive, she pinched Prunella's large nipples between forefingers and thumbs, pulled at them savagely.
"Now, you fucking, cocksucking whore!" she panted. "Ill show you what I really think of you."
Lady Gloria strained, farted, chuckled lecherously. She looked down at her crotch where the seam of her cord pants was split for several inches. Deliberately she tore the gap wider, opened it until the whole of her pouting vagina was revealed, then thrust her pelvis forward and brought the gaping, fleshy folds close to Miss Garfield's flushed, sweating face.
"You were keen enough to suck his prick," she hissed angrily. "Now lick my cunt, you bloody tramp. Lick it, you bitch, or 111 pull your flabby tits right out by the roots."
"That's enough!" West' shouted. He gripped Lady Gloria's shoulders and tried to remove her from Prunella, but the blonde resisted strenuously. Frustrated in her obscene objective, she clutched Miss Garfield's hair, and as the cursing gamekeeper wrenched at her forced a squirting flow of urine, laughing demoniacally when urine splashed Prunella's chin and breasts, and puddled in the hollow of her throat.
The steaming rivulets soaked into the carpet, dribbling down the insides of Lady Gloria's thighs as West dragged her off the choking, spluttering teacher and finally separated the combatants by sheer, superior strength.
He flung Lady Gloria on the sofa, sent Miss Garfield sprawling on a thick, white rug.
"Cut it out, you destructive, vindictive bitches!" he shouted. "Before I knock some sense into both your heads. And you, you bloody misfit, get out. We're finished. This really puts the lid on it, Gloria."
Prunella Garfield remained propped up against the wall, bosom heaving, her breath spasmodically fluttering wisps of straggly hair hanging down over her eyes. Lady Gloria, exhausted and trembling, sobbed. Her legs were spread white apart. Pale, smoothly rounded flesh and the dusky cleft of her wet vagina showed through the long split gaping right down the center seam of the mutilated, urine-saturated cord pants.
Prunella's left breast bore a series of raw scratches caused by dragging finger nails. Panting, she cradled her sore head in her hands.
Lady Gloria Mayne was calmer now, white and drawn, still furious but controlled. She stood up, and attempted to draw the torn blouse together to conceal her blemished breasts, but the covering was totally inadequate. She tossed her head defiantly.
"All right," she said. "I'll go. But you'll be sorry, Paul. Ill make you regret treating me like this. No common lout of a gamekeeper can make a fool of me. I've got friends who'll-"
"Get out," West repeated. Lady Gloria ignored him. She sneered, regarded Miss Garfield contemptuously, puckered her lips and spat, spattering saliva on Prunella's white skin. The sharp impact of the teacher's palm slapping Lady Gloria's face resounded through the room. The blonde staggered, uttered a resentful cry. She held her reddened cheek.
"You fat, ugly sow!" she hissed venomously. "How long do you think you can hold him? If /can't keep the bastard what chance do you have? You fool! I've given him everything, money, expensive gifts, clothes. I even furnished this cottage especially for him. I've given him more than—"
"Everything except the most important item, perhaps," Prunella interrupted. "Have you given him genuine love and respect? "
"Love, you stupid whore! What do you know about love? I remember now where I've seen you before. I knew there was something familiar about your silly, bovine face. You're one of the teachers up at the college. The one I've heard some of the students talk about. My God! And this hulking apology for a man with a stallion's prick that gives him the idea he's God Almighty—he prefers you to me—?"
She sneered again, pushed hair from her eyes.
"Wait till I see Sir Giles at the next meeting of the college governors. You'll pay for this. Ill see that the Sunday newspapers get to know about you and this rotten swine. I'll-"
"GET OUT!" Paul West bellowed. He made a threatening gesture that caused a tremor to pass along the wrinkled length of his slack, dangling penis.
Lady Gloria flinched. She moved quickly to the door, dragged a chair out of her way and darted through the opening as Miss Garfield threw a vase at her. The porcelain shattered against the swinging, vibrating door.