Page 64 of Mistletoe Mistake
She rolled her eyes at me, trying to look annoyed, but the smile on her lips betrayed her. Taking my hand in hers, she led me into the next room, which was actually just a small antechamber between the bedroom we'd just been in and a formal sitting room. On one of the side walls, there was a narrow door, and after looking around to ensure that no one could see us, Gemma opened the door and ushered me through, following close behind.
The door led to a small passageway, only wide enough for one person to pass through at a time. “Go straight ahead,” Gemma whispered from behind me. “Third door on the left.”
Following her instructions, I opened the third door and found myself faced with a narrow spiral staircase.
“These were the servant's passages.” The whispered explanation came from behind me again. “Just step down for a second, and I'll lead the way.”
I took a step down as she'd requested so she could squeeze past, and followed behind her as she climbed the stairs to the next floor. A couple of steps above me on the narrow stairs, the sight of her ass at my eye level made me even more impatient. When we reached the next landing, we were met with another narrow passage, and Gemma passed two more doors on the left before stopping.
Placing a finger on her lips to keep me quiet, she very slowly opened the door, peering gingerly around it once the gap was wide enough. With a sigh of relief, she threw it open widely and stepped inside.
I followed her into a much smaller and more modern-looking bedroom than those we had just been visiting. Besides the door we had entered through, the room had two additional doors, one on either side of us as we entered, but both were closed. Gemma moved over to them quickly and locked them both while I closed the door behind me, noticing that it had no lock on it. I supposed her ancestors hadn't considered it necessary to lock the doors to the servants.
“Okay, we shouldn't be disturbed here,” Gemma said, speaking at a normal volume again. “This is part of the family's private quarters, and neither my father nor brother are here right now.”
“It doesn't concern you at all how easy it was for us to get in here? Anyone on that tour could have done the same thing.”
“Anything really worth stealing is in the rooms that are on the tour,” she replied with a shrug. “Since the house is opened such a short time each year, my father never felt it necessary to spend a lot of money on security measures.”
That seemed short-sighted to me, but there were other things I would rather be focusing on. “So, why did you choose this room to bring us to?”
Gemma grinned and took my hand again, pulling me over to the windows on the far side of the room. The parkland stretched far into the distance, rows of ancient trees opening to fields where deer roamed and, close to the house, formal gardens were laid out. Despite it being early December, plenty of flowers were still in bloom.
“This is my favourite view," she explained, looking out over it with a nostalgic gleam in her eyes. "I always wanted to sleep in this room when we would come to stay here.”
I could see why, but I wanted to hear more about it from her. “What did you think about when you stayed here, looking out at the view?”
She seemed a little surprised by the question, but as she thought it over, a soft smile lit up her face. “I used to imagine what it would have been like for the other women of my family who lived here in the past. I would make up stories about their lives, their romances and their adventures. I had a story to go with just about every person you saw on the walls downstairs.”
I could definitely work with that. “Did you have a favourite story that you invented?”
As I hoped, Gemma's eyes twinkled mischievously. “I was particularly fond of my backstory for Lady Margaret Redvers. In real life, she eventually married the Duke of Norwich who was nearly forty years older than her, but in my story, she first had a passionate love affair with a tall, handsome stablehand. Sadly, they were parted when she had to be married; star-crossed lovers and so on. Just the kind of thing a teenage girl finds hopelessly romantic.”
She couldn't have set me up any better. I already knew Gemma was up for a little role play, and I couldn't think of a better place to do it than where she'd spent her time imagining those kinds of things.
Leaving the window, I moved around the room to see what my options were for props. Gemma watched me for a minute before her curiosity got the better of her. “Are you looking for something in particular?”
“Something thin and hard,” I told her, opening the doors to the wardrobe.
“Like the fire poker?” she asked innocently, pointing to the heavy iron instruments by the fireplace.
“No, not quite that hard.” As always, I didn't want to actually hurt her. I had been picturing something like a riding crop, but perhaps unsurprisingly, I couldn’t see anything that quite fit the bill. It was a shame we didn't have access to some of the things we bought at the shop the night before.
As I cast one last look around the room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized two things: first, I was wearing a belt, which would probably work just fine for what I had in mind, and second, the mirror’s position would add an extra dimension to our fun.
“Never mind,” I told Gemma, turning back to her with anticipation. “I've got everything I need.”
“To do what?” she asked, still not having a clue what was in my head.
"To let Lady Margaret and her stablehand have some fun before the wedding."
~Gemma~
My lips parted in surprise at Cole's words and the confident, determined glint in his eyes. I hadn't had any inkling that when he asked me about my teenaged daydreams, he was actually fishing for information he could turn into a role play for us. My eyes immediately drifted to the bed where I had spent many summer nights on my own, imagining the very scenario he had just offered to act out with me. I had pictured myself as the unfortunate Lady Margaret, engaged to a man old enough to be her grandfather, and I had imagined how she would stand at the window, watching the stablehand working with the horses, how their eyes would meet, their attraction undeniable. Looks would turn to touches, and finally, he would take her innocence one night in the stable.
That part of the fantasy would have to stay a fantasy, since we couldn't exactly go out to the stables with all the visitors hanging around, but the second part of my imaginings, when the stablehand found a way to sneak into Lady Margaret's room at night through the servant's passage... that, we could definitely work with.
My pulse raced, my body already feeling nearly weak with desire at the idea of combining several of the things I'd loved doing with Cole over the last few days. First, it had the role play element and second, just like at the restaurant and the theatre, we ran the risk of being caught. Even though we were in private and this was technically my family's house, we definitely weren't supposed to be there in that room. And third, he had just told me he was looking for something hard, something that I could now only suppose he wanted to use as part of our play. As I remembered how he’d spanked me the other night during our game, the memory set off an even stronger throbbing pulse between my legs.
