Teena Thyme by Jennifer Jane Pope Read Free Book Online

Hide behind the mask. Put on the motley, or whatever.
    I scrambled back down the ladder and dragged the bed across the room, placing it as nearly underneath the open hatch as I could, without fouling the ladder. The bed was unmade and stripped bare, but there was still a mattress and it was clean. Perfect. Up I went again and very soon it was raining clothes down onto that bed: dresses, shoes, boots, stockings, underclothes, corsets...
    Corsets! Wow, and what corsets they were! Black, red, white, frothy and frilly, boned, laced - someone had definitely had a penchant for this sort of thing and someone had definitely spent a lot of money satisfying it. Whether the two someones were one and the same person, or whether they were two entirely separate someones, I had no idea. Furthermore, I didn't really care. I emptied the first trunk, working like a demented windmill, decided against moving on to the other trunks, on the basis that the bed below had now disappeared beneath an avalanche of silks, satins, velvets and lace, and descended to have a closer look at my new treasures.
    I sorted through everything carefully and carried my favourite items through into the main bedroom, grinning like a Cheshire cat. This was going to be great fun.
    'Oh, Mr Darcy!' Okay, these things were from a later period, but you get the idea. Besides, I was much too tall to make a decent Elizabeth Bennett. However, a grand Victorian duchess, that was a different matter.
    I quickly stripped off my jeans and T-shirt, both of which were now smeared with dust streaks and much in need of a spell in the washing machine that I didn't yet have here at the cottage. Never mind, I told myself, they can wait. Besides, what girl in her right mind worries about a pair of old jeans when she can have something like this instead?
    I picked up the first dress, held it up against myself and looked into the dressing table mirror. No, if I was going to do this I was going to do it properly. I rummaged through the underclothing I'd carried through, made my choices and then quickly removed my bra, pants and the rather threadbare socks I'd been wearing under my jeans.
    Now, I have a pretty good figure, or so I've been told. I'm a fair bit taller than average for a female, but everything else is in proportion.
    There was a sort of shift thing; a chemise, creamy satin, which I knew had to go on first. Taking a deep breath I raised it over my head and lowered it again, wriggling my arms through the shoulder straps and smoothing out the fabric as it fell about me. It sent a shiver up and down my spine and I almost...
    No, we won't go there - not just yet, anyway.
    But it did feel wonderful and I found it hard to believe that this delicate and flimsy confection had probably been made over a century before and almost as probably not worn since much after that time. I shivered again and picked up the red corset, with its black piping and black lace trimmings top and bottom. It was surprisingly heavy for something that looked so frivolous and I quickly realised that the boning and sturdy seaming that had been so cunningly concealed by the seamstress were largely responsible for this unexpected weight.
    I had chosen the red corset particularly because the laces were at the front and the fastenings at the rear and it fitted loosely enough to begin with for me to swivel the thing around and tackle the steel hooks and eyes in front, easing them back around to my spine when I had finished with them. I wriggled my hips, adjusting the 'sit' of the thing and positioning the half cups beneath my boobs and then, still holding it in place with my left hand, reached for the dangling laces with my right.
    There were actually two sets of laces. One started from the top, lacing downwards, the other from the bottom, lacing upwards, the ends of both sets meeting somewhere halfway. I gathered the ends carefully and gave them an experimental tug. Immediately the corset began to close around me and,