TEENA

(Cover illustration will appear as soon as it is available)

The best thing about being a writer is that every now and then a particular character comes along with whom you instantly fall in love and Teena Spigwell-Thyme definitely falls into that category for me. Quite where she came from, I couldn't really say, though she's probably a combination of several people I've known over the years and is one of those girls with whom men are instantly infatuated, whilst at the same time are half terrified of her!

Of course, Teena isn't really scarey at all, though her sense of humour and her ability to call a spade a spade would certainly be conversation stoppers in certain more genteel society circles, so inflicting her onto the early Victorians, as I've done in this first book, is probably almost as cruel as some of the things certain of them inflict on her.

Be warned, lads, you'll either love Teena or you'll hate her - there are no half measures with this gal and you'd need a pretty understanding mother if you were ever planning to take our lass home to meet her. Teena is "girl with attitude" personified - take her on at your peril!

The following is a very long extract from the beginning of the first Teena novel, which is entitled, simply Teena and should serve as both an introduction and a warning as to what you can expect when you finally get around to reading the entire book.

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TEENA

by

Jennifer Jane Pope

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Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to be able to bring you an assortment of heroines (and even some heroes) in a variety of predicaments, worlds and ages. During that period, I've received letters and e-mails, expressing your reactions and comments to all my characters and storylines, so I like to think I now have a pretty good idea of your favourites and I'd like to thank you all for taking the time and trouble to give me such valuable feedback.

I should now like to introduce you to my latest heroine, a young lady, born in the nineteen fifties, growing up as a child in the so-called "Swinging Sixties" and finally reaching adulthood in the even more outlandish mid-seventies, at which point she first begins her adventures. However, if you think that this tale is set amidst the glam-rock days of Gary Glitter, David Bowie and The Sweet, then think again!

Because, when Teena is bequeathed the estate of a great-great-great aunt she never even knew she had, she inherits far more than a country cottage and several trunks full of early Victorian clothes. There is also a locket, a small gold keepsake containing the miniature portraits of a man and woman. Who they might be, Teena has no idea, but something tells her that they, too, are long dead ancestors and so she decides to wear the locket and set about trying to trace something of her family tree.

However, before she can try for even the first branch, things start to happen and Teena finds herself whisked back in time, where she awakes to find herself trapped in the body of poor Angelina and at the mercy of the truly awful Sir Gregory Hacklebury, who is intent on seizing Angelina's own inheritance, whatever it takes.

This is an age when women had few, if any, rights; women were simply regarded as chattels, the possessions of their fathers and then their husbands. It had always been so and very few females were possessed of the temerity of spirit to challenge that status quo.

However, Teena is no shrinking Victorian heroine and to her, Status Quo means head-banging, loud music and attitude, which she has aplenty. On the other hand, this is hardly an age that is likely to welcome a "girl with attitude" and Teena has to learn even more lessons than she is able to teach and endure hardships and abuse the like of which she can scarcely believe.

How will Teena get on, do we think? Well, if you've read any of my earlier books, you'll probably be quite confident that she'll pull through in the end, but then what is the end? Where is the end? Even more important, when is the end?

So, come join me and let us meet our gal, the amazing Teena Thyme and her even more startling adventures through the centuries, which begin here, quite shortly now, around about Christmas, 1974. Elvis was still alive, the Beatles were still fresh in the memory, Mr Bowie and his Ziggy Stardust dominated our screens and radios and even Madonna was still quite young, though whether or not she was still like the virgin of whom she sang, only she will know.

But then, none of that is at all relevant to our story, as you are about to discover ...

Prologue - Part One

The two maidservants uttered not a single word between them, neither did they pay the slightest heed to Angelina's screams of protest and she quickly fell as silent as they and ceased the pointless strugglings.

Held firmly between them, she now allowed them to lead, rather than to drag her, as they had initially done. Along the top passageway they went, until they came to the spiral stairway used by the servants. The way here was too narrow for them to pass three abreast, but the older woman, Meg, descended first, though all the time maintaining her vice-like grip on Angelina's slender wrist, whilst Polly followed behind, one hand grasping Angelina in the same manner, the other entwined in her now dishevelled hair, as a warning to the hapless girl not to try to pull free.

They passed beyond the ground floor, descending further, until they emerged at the end of another passage, which Angelina knew ran along through the length of the extensive cellars. They passed several open rooms, each one stacked with an assortment of crates, barrels and sacks, apart from the wine cellar itself, which was racked from floor to ceiling, the racks themselves laden with dark bottles.

Beyond the main wine store, they stopped at another door, which Meg kicked open without ceremony. Inside, a single lantern burned with a guttering flame, casting the palest of lights amidst the gloom, so that only when they had fully entered the room was Angelina able to make out the racking which extended the length of the farther wall.

Breathing heavily, she peered into the shadows and realised that this room had also, at one time, been used for storing wine, though the racks now stood empty and seemed to be covered by a fine layer of dust, other than one section in the centre, which appeared to have been recently swept clean. And there, hanging from the horizontal batten which ran along about a foot above head height, Angelina saw how they had prepared for her.

Two stout lengths of rope had been tied to this batten, short pieces of hemp, to the free ends of which had somehow been fastened two even shorter leather straps, the one end of which was tapered, like a belt, the other end terminating in a heavy buckle.

The two maids drew her towards this part of the rack and now, as Angelina understood the purpose of these embellishments, she renewed her struggles, though she knew that by now it was too late. One at a time, her arms were pulled up and the straps buckled tightly about her wrists, so that she was forced to stand facing the obsolete wine rack, with her arms held wide above her head.

`No, please!' she wailed. `Please, this is too cruel. Oh, won't someone help me?' Her pleas fell upon stony ground, however and the two women turned away again. In the doorway, Meg paused and looked back and Angelina, craning her neck to meet her gaze over her shoulder, saw the look of sheer contempt that passed across the serving woman's face.

`Meg, please,' she whispered. `Why do you treat me this way?' At last, the maid broke her silence.

`Master's orders, miss,' she said, curtly. `And the master expects his orders to be carried out. Maybe if you'd remembered this, you wouldn't be where you are now, eh? Next time, maybe you'll think twice, before you flounce your pert little arse and swirl your silken skirts in temper.'

`But you can't know what he was suggesting!' Angelina protested. `I can only thank the good Lord that I am not yet married to that beast and when I tell my aunt what has transpired here this day, the wedding will never take place!'

Meg's features twisted into a curious grimace and she leaned nonchalantly against the door frame, a pose she would never have dared adopt above stairs.

`Is that so?' she said, her tone as mocking as her posture. `So the little madame thinks herself too good to marry our master, does she? Well, time will tell, missy and I think maybe you'll be singing a different song come the morning.'

Prologue - Part Two

When you've got a dad who's mildly dyslexic and who is also prone to downing several pints of "best" at the slightest excuse, it's not a particularly good idea to let him go off, unchaperoned, to register your birth, but then how many four day old girl babies get a say in such things, eh?

Come to think of it, how many females get a say in anything much anyway, but then that's a different story and you don't want to get me going on that one, believe me. Women's lib? Equal rights? Don't make me laugh, please. See, there I go and you never said a word, did you?

Okay, so let's get around to the important things, the reason you decided you might find my story interesting enough to shell out whatever your local bookshop is charging you for this stunning piece of literacy.

My name is Teena Thyme. Well, to be honest, it's actually Teena Felicity (how the hell Dad managed to spell that one right and not manage something as simple as Tina, I'll never know) Spigwell-Thyme, but would you want to admit to a handle like that? No, thought not; so Teena Thyme it is and now I'll tell you a little bit about me.

I'm forty five now (at least, I am at the time of writing this, but then time, as you'll see, is a peculiarly elastic concept) but I don't look a day over (say) twenty seven. Okay, okay, twenty nine, but in a poor light and if I've had a decent night's sleep, I've been known to pass for twenty five. Neat trick, eh? Forty five, going on twenty five.

How's it done, you may ask? Of course, you may not ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway and it's all very simple and at the same time a bit confusing, but then that sums up life in general and I'm taking no responsibility for that, believe me. We'll just concentrate on the facts ("The facts, lady, just the facts.") no matter how unbelievable or inexplicable you may find them. Believe me, even I can't fully explain the thing and I was there.

And there. And there.

Ad infinitum.

Ad nauseum, if you prefer.

Ever heard that expression: "It's only a matter of time"? Covers a mass of situations, a multitude of sins, doesn't it? I often wonder who first coined that one, back there in the mists of .... time. If only they knew!

You see, I'm a time traveller.

Oh, for heaven's sake, sit down and give me a chance to explain and no, I'm not drunk - that was Dad's department. And, before you ask, no, I'm not from the distant future and neither am I one of Merlin's naughty little acolytes who just happened to peek into a spell book that he left unguarded on his bedside table.

Yes, there was a Merlin and yes, he did have a bedside table. Why not? The poor old bugger had to sleep sometime and everyone knows that if you don't have a bedside table you end up kicking all manner of stuff over the rug when you stumble out of bed, bleary-eyed, in the wee small hours and even wizards and sorcerers need to take a pee after a particularly heavy session on the wine and mead.

But again, I digress.

I, Teena Thyme, was born in 1956 - December, to be precise - in a small hospital, not very far from a place called Hayling Island, which is in Hampshire, England and I promise I won't be offended if you haven't heard of it. Go there between October and April and the entire place looks like it's shut. Go there the rest of the year and you can spend hours in a traffic queue, trying to get on or off the place via its one and only road bridge link with the mainland.

There used to be a railway bridge, too, back in the days when I was a little girl, but they scrapped that, along with the railway proper, sometime back in the late sixties, if my memory serves me right (which it often doesn't). Apparently, they now have a sort of railway there again, but as I tend to spend most of my time not just in somewhat more interesting places, but in more interesting times, I really couldn't give a flying fuck, if you'll pardon the unladylike expression.

Actually, although my present day friends might refer to me as a bit of a tomboy (what a quaint expression that is!) I do know how to be a real lady - and why not? After all, to date I've been a lady in, let's see now, a total of nineteen different centuries and girls, I tell you this now, you don't know how lucky you are to have been put on this earth after the demise of corsets, not to mention witchcraft trials, bashing your washing on rocks by river banks and Attila the Hun.

No, belay that, as Captain Hornblower was wont to say. Attila wasn't that bad a guy and if his mother had really understood him then history might have read a whole lot different today. But what an artiste with a whip!

There you go, I'm off the track again - but then so was that Hayling Island railway engine for several years! - and you really don't want to listen to all this stuff without I take you right back to the beginning, do you? So, back to the beginning we shall go; back to the beginning of my adventures, anyway - after all, who wants to go back to the real beginning, whenever that was? Attila and his whip I could handle, but a few thousand bloody great dinosaurs, or even a few hundred sweaty great cavemen, well that's a different story.

Cavemen? Shit, their idea of foreplay makes even Australians seem like gentlemen and I should know, because I had Ned Kelly come close to shagging my lights out. Okay, I know - that's yet another story and yes, I promise I'll tell it to you one day.

But first ...

(Oh rats, I didn't explain, did I? The reason I look nearly twenty years younger than I really am, that is. Well, it's quite simple: whenever I spend time in a different era, that time doesn't seem to count towards the ageing process and when I return to the present, even if I've been away for months, not an extra wrinkle is to be seen.

Actually, you're right, that's not really simple at all, but if you think I'm going to try to explain that further, you've got another think coming. I mean, do you think I understand it? Don't be silly. Girls aren't supposed to be any good at that sort of thing, are they? Ask good old Albert, he'll tell you. It's got something to do with relativity, he reckons.

Oh sorry, I forgot, you can't ask him, can you? He's been dead for years in this time zone.)

1. Fortune Favours

I suppose I ought to begin by telling you a bit more about myself. Don't worry, there's plenty of juicy stuff still to come, sex and drugs and rock and roll - apart from the drugs, that is - but I did say I'd start at the beginning and it will help you understand a bit about me and how everything that's happened to me over the past quarter of a century and more has come about, so be patient. Please? Pretty please?

You already know my name and the fact that I was born in December, 1956, which momentous event actually took place a few miles from the house where I grew up, which was - and still is - in an area known as Sandy Point, on Hayling Island. It was quite a nice area then, before the developers got busy sticking little shoe box houses onto every bit of land they could find, but it was nothing really remarkable and though some people might have considered the area to be "posh", we certainly weren't especially well off.

Dad worked as an engineer for the sewage people; that didn't mean he spent his days up to his neck in muck and pellets - his job was to tell less fortunate men where and when to hit things with hammers, what size hammer to use and, when all else failed, to get out the oxyacetylene stuff. He earned quite good money, but, like I said, nothing exceptional, so Mum also worked, albeit part time, teaching in the local infants school.

I came along quite late in both their lives. Mum was forty two, Dad forty seven and I suppose I was actually a bit of a surprise, in that they'd given up the idea that they could ever have a family some two or three years before. So, when I arrived, precisely one week before Christmas, cute and blonde and full of wind as most babies are and, apparently, not resembling Winston Churchill at all, I was a sort of gift, the way they saw it and they had this idea that I should be named to reflect the season.

Mum thought of Noele. Dad fixed on Christina (probably spelt Christeena in his way of things). My granny, Felicity, who was by then somewhere in her seventies, didn't agree with either of them, but then that was nothing unusual, so I later learned. They considered Mary (for obvious reasons), Josephina (oh, please, no!) and even Gabriella. Quite how they ended up with what they did, no one was ever able to explain lucidly and then, as I've already said, Dad went and misspelled it anyway, so ever since I've been Teena, with the Felicity bit tagged in there to appease a basically unappeasable granny.

I grew up and my hair stayed blonde - and no cracks, please. I did okay at school, was good at English and History, rubbish at needlework and played netball and hockey, eventually representing the county in the former, where my unusual height - I'm five feet eleven and a bit (in this time zone, anyway) - more than compensated for any lack of skill I might have suffered and, in any case, I was quite good.

Our full name was Spigworth-Thyme, as I've already mentioned, and we still used the full monicker then, though none of us really knew anything much about our family tree. Dad's dad had been killed in a bombing raid at the beginning of the war and another German bomb had put paid to most of the local records soon after, but in any case, we weren't too fussed about our lineage, so we didn't have a clue about any of the things our ancestors were responsible for.

It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me, to say the least, when, upon reaching my eighteenth birthday late in 1974, I received a letter from a firm of solicitors based in nearby Chichester, asking me to present myself at their offices at my earliest convenience, together with proof of who I was, where I would learn something to my advantage.

Oh-ho! The old mercenary antennae started to twitch immediately. I knew that phrase, "something to your advantage", from books and films and it meant someone had left me something. It wasn't Granny Fliss, because she was still very much alive and kicking, even though she was by now well into her nineties and it wasn't anyone from Mum's side of the family, as she had frequently told me that she had been one of eight kids, born in the East End of London, where they had been "poor as church mice" and where, in 1944, when the Blitz was supposed to have been finished, a lone German bomber had crashed into the family home, killing all within.

Mum escaped because she was off working as a Land Girl, my uncle Jim was away in the navy, chasing Japanese aircraft carriers somewhere in the Pacific and my uncle Tom was giving Jerry hell in Italy, so they were the only surviving family members. Sadly, Tom then died just as his unit got off the beach on D-Day and Jim, who decided to stay in the navy after the war, died of something he caught off a Japanese lady of easy virtue, sometime in 1949, so I never knew either of them.

Hands trembling with excitement, I dialled the number on the elegantly headed notepaper and asked for Mister Swann, he of Swann, Upping and Ditchford (I promise you those names are genuine!), the partner who had signed the letter.

`I'm sorry, madame,' the arch female voice on the other end replied, in a tone that had about as much regret as I've got testicles, `but Mr George Swann is away for the Christmas and Mr Graham Swann is off with the flu at the moment. Which one was it you needed to speak to?'

Did it matter which one, I asked myself? If neither of them was there, what bloody difference did it make anyway? However, I held my impatience and my temper in check and explained the purpose of my call.

`Oh, that will be Mr George,' the girl said. `Would you like me to make you an appointment?' I heard a rustling of paper in the background, accompanied by a slightly off-key, hummed rendition of Peter Sarsted's Where Do You Go To My Lovely. I drummed my fingers - not in time - on the telephone table in our hallway.

`January the fifth, three thirty?' It was meant to sound like a question, but she said it in a way that left me in no doubt that it was almost a take-it-or-leave-it thing. Leave it and the next offer would probably be somewhere in February.

I took it.

Angelina twisted against her bondage, in a vain attempt to ease the growing strain on her arms, but there was no real hope of relief, for the maids had stretched her tall in order to shackle her wrists and whoever had determined the lengths of the cords which held the leather straps had apparently intended that she should be forced onto tiptoe, so that her feet arched even more than the delicate shoes required.

Tears trickling down her exquisitely powdered cheeks, she tossed her head in anger and frustration, the now tangled mane of blonde curls sweeping about her bare shoulders with a mocking whisper. She groaned, biting her lip savagely and then the groan turned to a whimper of fear, as she heard the scuttling sounds from somewhere behind her in the shadows. She threw back her head and screamed with all her might.

`Gregory! Help! Gregory!' The sound echoed around the blank stone walls and out through the open door of the corridor beyond, but as her screams died away there came no answering shout, no sound of booted feet upon the paved floor beyond.

`Infamy!' she muttered, between clenched teeth. `Oh, such cruel infamy, but you shall pay for this, Sir Gregory Hacklebury, or my name is not Angelina Thyme!'

Chichester in January. Much the same as it is all the rest of the year round, though there are less tourists, the culture vultures who descend on cathedrals and Roman ruins and suchlike. Also, it tends to be colder in January, though not always.

I'd taken the bus up to Havant, on the mainland and then the train, passing through the small stations that were mostly little more than halt stops and then walked my way up to North Street, carefully avoiding the puddles where the paving stones had sunk somewhat, though my new platform soled boots would have kept my feet at least two inches above the waterline. They also drew a few looks from the more conservative shoppers who were on the streets that morning.

I should explain a bit about Chichester here, just so you get the picture. Chichester is classed as a city, because it has that dirty great old cathedral. It also has a lot of pretty well off people, middle class and above, most of whom tend to be just a bit snobby. They had Refuse Operatives instead of binmen long before the rest of us did, but whereas they might have got ahead of the game on that one, in other matters the residents of Chichester lagged well behind.

They still do, as a matter of fact and the Chichester branch of MacDonald's is the only one in the world, as far as I know, that doesn't have an illuminated logo and sign outside, because the local authority thinks that illuminated signs lower the tone. Don't believe me? Well, next time you're in the area, go take a look for yourself. Chichester is very old and so, I suspect, are the people who run it.

Swann, Upping and Ditchford. Obviously Mr Graham Swann hadn't yet served his half century apprenticeship that would one day entitle him to be part of a Swann, Swann, Upping and Ditchford, or maybe they were just saving money on gold leaf and sign writing, working on the premise the Mr George would die (solicitors never retire) and therefore there would only be one Swann to worry about anyway.

Their offices were situated in a very old, converted house, tucked away in one of the myriad lanes that form a maze for the unwary who stray from the four main, compass-point named streets that form the centre of Chichester. Former front parlour, small desk, vapid looking girl behind a desk marked "Reception". I got rather a bland one - reception, that is - but then I suspect that the reincarnation of Angie Bowie greeted all prospective clients in much the same disinterested and heavily mascara'd fashion.

Take a seat.

Wait.

Upstairs. Second door on the left.

The corpse of Mr George Swann. No, the corpse moved.

Mr George Swann rose from behind his desk, like Dracula arising from his coffin. He smiled. No fangs, at least. He held out a white and skeletal hand. I shook it and it felt cold, like ice.

`Miss Spigwell-Thyme?' he greeted me. Well, his voice was warm, at least. `Do please take a seat.' He came around the desk and ushered me into an ancient, leather backed chair, the leather cracked and worn, the seat dented by God knows how many generations of backsides.

I passed over my birth certificate, the passport I'd sent off for but never used when a sudden bout of flu put paid to my intended holiday in Spain the previous summer. I handed him the envelope with my school reports in, my parents' wedding certificate and two gas bills addressed to my Dad at the house at Sandy Point. Mr George Swann extracted a pair of half moon glasses from his jacket pocket, perched them on his Gothic nose and peered.

And peered some more. He was pretty thorough with his peering, was Mr George Swann and I found myself wondering, somewhat irreverently, whether he ought to have been a Peer of the Realm. Well, you think funny things when you're just sitting there, looking and feeling like a stuffed daisy.

`Well, everything seems to be in order, Miss Spigwell-Thyme.'

`Please,' I said, `do call me Teena.'

`With two "e's",' he said, smiling at me over the top of my latest school report. So, he was human after all. I nodded.

`My Dad,' I said, shrugging, by way of explanation.

`Ah,' he said and I could see he understood completely. He lowered my report and placed it back with the rest of my identification kit, which he then pushed gently back across the desk towards me. He sat back, twined his long fingers together and smiled at me.

`I expect you're impatient to learn the reason for my asking you to come here?' he began. Stupid question. I smiled back and nodded. He reached down, opened a drawer and took out a manilla folder that was not just bulky, but untidily stuffed. he laid it on the leather top between us and I peered at the upside down writing on the cover, but it was a waste of time. The handwriting was so scrawly that I'd have struggled to decipher it even the right way up.

`Miss Amelia Jane Spigwell,' he said. He folded back the cover, revealing a top sheet of paper covered with scrawl identical to that I'd already seen. `Miss Amelia Jane Spigwell, born in Lavant, West Sussex, eighteenth of December, in the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and seventy one. Died March first, nineteen hundred and seventy four. Last year,' he added.

`Last year,' I agreed. `And?'

`And you've never heard of her, I presume?'

`Never.' I shook my head. `Who was she? A distant relation, I suppose?' Not that distant, I thought to myself, not if she'd lived in Lavant all her life. Call it a dozen or so miles, at a guess? But of course, we weren't talking distances measured in miles.

`She would have been, let's see now and make sure I've got this right ...' He wrinkled his already wrinkled forehead into several more lines and I could almost hear the antique cogs meshing. `Yes, Amelia would have been your great-great-great aunt. On your father's side, of course.'

Of course. Well, someone had to be on his side, apart from me, that is.

`Of course,' I said. Mum's family name was Hooper, in case you were wondering.

`Amelia Spigworth never married,' Mr Swann said. `She was apparently once engaged to a young army officer, but according to her diaries, he was killed in the Boer War, at the beginning of this century, that is.'

`First or Second Boer War?' I asked. He looked surprised, but then, as I said, I was good at history in school. He peered back down again and I guessed that he did a lot of peering, as he had it off to a fine art now.

`Nineteen hundred and one,' he said. I nodded.

`Second,' I said, smugly, hoping to God I was right, but guessing that he wouldn't know the difference anyway. Some historians reckoned that even the Boers didn't. They just liked fighting the English and what they called "kaffirs" and had a bad attitude for good measure. Back in early 1975, don't forget, South Africa still had apartheid and we "nice" white people didn't like them for it, even though less than one in twenty of us had ever heard of Nelson Mandela at the time.

`Yes, that's right,' he said, but I suspected he was guessing. Unless, of course, he'd actually been there in person; he certainly looked old enough. he coughed and cleared his throat. `Anyway,' he continued, `as I was saying, Amelia Spigworth never married and, when she died, by the terms of her will her estate was to go to her oldest surviving female relative.'

`Me?' It came out like a squeak.

`You,' Mr Swann confirmed, with another nod.

`Are you sure?' Stupid Teena, of course he was sure, otherwise he wouldn't have sent for you. Any doubts were quickly dispelled.

`We've searched all the relevant records,' he continued, `and though there are a few gaps here and there, the law only requires that we search what exists to be searched and that we also advertise in the proper quarters for any other possible claimants, which we did last year.

`None,' he said, with suitable gravity, `have been forthcoming. There was a Nigel Spigworth from Cumberland, but if he ever did have any connection with our Spigworths, then it would have to date from well before Amelia's birth, so it wouldn't count.'

`I thought you said eldest surviving female relative?' I demanded. I don't miss much, as you'll see. Mr Swann nodded. He nodded as efficiently and neatly as he peered.

`Yes,' he said. `Nigel Spigworth has a daughter, Hayley.'

`Ah.'

`But don't worry,' Mr Swann assured me, smiling again. `As I say, any claim in that direction couldn't possibly hold up, so you, Miss, er, Teena - with two "e's" - are the rightful heir, or heiress, perhaps I should say, to the entire estate of Amelia Jane Spigworth.'

`Wow!' I said and let out a long breath. I hesitated. `And?'

`And you'd like to know how much,' he said, reading my mind. Not that it took much reading, I suppose. After all, anyone would have been wondering the same thing, wouldn't they? He did some more peering, some more nodding and then peered again.

`There's a cottage,' he said.

`Lavant?' I guessed. He shook his head, which made a change from all the nodding.

`Rowlands Castle,' he said. This time I nodded.

`Nice,' I said. `Pretty area.' Pretty expensive, too, or at least it was in those days.

`The cottage is called Rose Lea,' he continued. `That's Lea spelt with an "a", nothing to do with Gypsy Rose Lee. It has three bedrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Oh yes, and a quarter of an acre of garden.'

`Full of roses?'

`Quite possibly.' He peered over his half moons and smiled at me and I could tell that he liked me. Actually, it might just have been my short skirt and the several acres of black tight clad thigh I was displaying when I first entered his room. My legs have that effect on men - unless they're gay, of course.

`There are also shares in several companies,' he went on, `plus you now own the freehold on four other cottages, though there are sitting tenants in all of those. Ah, and you also own a one third share of The Ploughman's Respite. It's a public house, I believe, on the road between Rowlands Castle and Havant.'

Double wow! A pub! I love pubs. I mean, not that I was an alcoholic or anything, but I was prepared to practise and learn. Mr Swann did yet more peering and finally laid his sheet of paper down.

`All in all,' he summarised, `the current valuation of your inheritance, including the money on deposit in various bank accounts and allowing for death duties, etcetera, etcetera ...' He paused, possibly to allow me to admire his Yul Brynner impression. `... the current valuation, which isn't strictly current, as it takes no count of interest accrued on deposits since it was calculated three weeks ago, is a grand total of four hundred and eighty nine thousand pounds and seventy three pence.'

My previous self control, kept together mostly by my slightly obtuse sense of humour and my ability to treat most things as if they aren't really happening to me anyway, collapsed. And I collapsed with it.

`Wh-what?' I managed to gasp, eventually. `How much?' He repeated the figure and I held my hand to my head, as if it might fall off at any moment. My head, that is, not my hand.

A moment here, for explanation and expansion. Nearly half a million quid - pounds to you overseas readers - a lot of money. A real lot of money. Not many eighteen year olds get that sort of thing thrown into their lap - not unless their surname happens to be Getty, Ginsburgh, or Mohammed El Something-or-other. But wait. There's more.

This was nineteen seventy five we're talking about. Nearly half a million pounds in the mid seventies would equate to something like three million in today's money, give or take the odd hundred thousand here and there! I felt my stomach contract, go cold, turn a slow somersault and then try to vacate my body through a part of it that no lady should ever mention in polite company. And, as I already said, I know all about being a lady.

I also know all about not being a lady, too and who says you're polite company anyway? So, all right, I nearly soiled my new knickers and, if it hadn't been for the timely intervention of Mr Swann, who's obvious previous experiences of traumatised females had led him to secrete a bottle of brandy and a glass within easy reach, I think I would have passed out.

A generous double measure of Hennessy Cognac coursed its velvet way down my frozen throat and then I heard myself let out a long, low groan. No, not of pain; it was just a reaction and, a moment later, it was all I could do to stop myself from jumping up on Mr Swann's two hundred year old desk, platform soled boots and all and dancing around, screaming: "I'm rich! I'm rich!"

Very unladylike.

She heard him approaching from afar, the sound of his heavy, measured stride reverberating along the passageway and, when he paused before entering, it was all Angelina could do to prevent herself from trying to look round. Her small jaw set firm, she closed her eyes and kept herself pressed tightly against the wooden rack.

`You seem very quiet now, my little spitfire,' he drawled and there was no mistaking the mockery in his voice. `The benefits of a spell of solitude, no doubt.'

Angelina made no reply, neither did she open her eyes, but she could picture him clearly in her mind: the languid posture, the broad shoulders, with the tightly cut jacket emphasising every muscle, the close fitting breeches and, probably, his favourite riding boots. His face, however, suddenly refused to form itself clearly in her head.

She could see the shock of black hair plainly enough, with the unruly curl that perpetually flopped across his brow, but below that his features seemed to swim in a mist, so that even his square and arrogant jaw seemed to be dissolving into a constantly shifting mist.

`Still nothing to say?' he said and she heard his boots sound twice upon the floor, as he moved further into the room. Angelina swallowed hard and clenched her teeth. `I see,' he said again. `Then perhaps a proper and fullsome lesson is in order.

`Madame,' he continued, taking yet another step closer to her, `your reticence and feigned innocence have become very tiresome to me and the prospect of the dowry offered by your guardian cannot compensate for the icy aspect that you have continued to present.

`God knows that I have tried everything and have been patience personified, but your pretended saintliness has finally cracked my resolve. You shall be my wife and you will learn that I am the master in this house. And do not for one moment think that your guardian will come to your aid in this matter.

`Indeed, I think - nay, I know, madame - that Lord Pickering will be only too relieved to be shot of you as a responsibility. His fortunes, of late, have suffered and the merest hint from myself that I would accept a smaller dowry to take you off his hands would be more than enough to stifle whatever might remain of his scruples.'

`You think that money is the answer to everything,' Angelina snapped, unable to maintain her silence any longer. `Well, sir, I tell you this. There is not enough gold in the world to buy what you expect from me. I would rather rot in Hell.'

`Boldly said,' Hacklebury chuckled, `but perhaps you would not be so willing if you truly knew what Hell was. Mayhap I shall give you a glimpse, albeit of a hell that is of this world. I think,' he continued, his voice suddenly sounding unnaturally hard, `that I should have done so these many weeks past.'

Mum went one better than me, when I broke the news to her and Dad, later that day. She fainted, but then she was sitting in that big old armchair of hers, so she didn't come to any harm and, following Mr Swann's example, I had a small bottle of something reviving in my handbag.

`Ugh!' she said, sitting up and pushing the glass back towards me. `That's Corvoisier.'

`They were out of Hennessy,' I said.

`I'm not,' Dad said. The years hadn't slowed him any in one direction, I have to say that for him.

Two double Hennessy cognac's later:

`Teen, you're rich!' Dad said. Not slow, my Dad. You can see where I get it from.

`Very rich,' Mum said. She had gone very quiet, even though the colour had come back to her cheeks.

`I'm still getting used to the idea,' I admitted. I paused, thinking. `Will you both come over with me and see this cottage?' I asked, eventually. `Dad?' Dad still drove regularly, though his battered Wolseley saloon had of late been wearing far worse than he was. He nodded.

`Of course,' he said. `I'll drive us all over tomorrow, if you like.'

`And I'll buy us all lunch at my new pub,' I said. `Well, my third of it, anyway. We'll have to stop at the bank in Havant, though,' I added. `I need to give them my signature and then I can draw some money out.'

Oh, that sounded good. I was warming to the idea of being an heiress. Me, an heiress - and with a part share in a pub. Ye gods, I was every man's dream girl and blonde into the bargain.

Suddenly, I started laughing and I couldn't stop, not for ages, not until the tears were running down my cheeks and dripping all over the front of my new top and soaking it through to my new bra, the one that matched the new knickers that nearly met an untimely end in Mr Swann's office.

Okay, okay! I only said I've had plenty of practice at being a lady. I never claimed I was ever any good at it!

2.

Silk ripped easily in his hands and Angelina gasped as her body was jerked backwards under the onslaught, but his attack upon her beautiful dress was remorseless and he did not stop until it lay in a ruined pool about her feet, leaving her standing clad just in her corset and chemise, with her stocking clad legs exposed to his view, complete with the rosette garters she had received from Philip Lothwell only the day before.

Hacklebury's keen eye missed nothing and suddenly Angelina felt something hard press into her thigh, just where the garter held her left stocking. She started and looked down before she could stop herself and a small gasp forced its way past her lips, as she saw the whip handle.

`And where might these have come from, my lady?' Hacklebury demanded. `I'll wager you never brought these pretty fripperies with you when you came here!' Angelina swallowed and took a breath as deep as the strictures of her corset would permit.

`Sir,' she replied, as steadily as she could, `no gentleman would ever comment upon a lady's personal things in this way, but then I think you have already proven that you are no true gentleman, despite your title and all your wealth.'

`And you, my sweet little Angelina, are no lady, of that I am sure. Cuckolding me in my own house and with that idiot boy Lothwell, indeed. Rest easy, madame, that I shall deal with him, too, in good time. Would that he were here now, to bear witness to your punishment, but the scoundrel has gone up to London.

`However,' Hacklebury continued, with an air of relish and anticipation that brought a new edge to his voice, `there will be plenty of opportunity for me to demonstrate the error of his ways and you two lovebirds can bear witness mutually.'

Angelina screwed her eyes tight shut and shook her head in barely controlled anger, but she had little time to consider hacklebury's threat, for even as he finished speaking, she heard the slapping sound as he paid his whip out across the stone floor and, a moment later, there came the most dreadful hiss and a line of fire exploded across her shoulders.

Instantly, she opened her mouth to scream, but so terrible was the pain that all that emerged was a strangled gasp, followed by a terrible groan, as she was hurled against the racking and then rebounded in her agony, so that now she swung with almost all her weight hanging from her already tortured wrists, her feet kicking wildly in an attempt to regain some purchase on the ground.

He allowed her several seconds, perhaps half a minute, to regain her balance as best she could and then the awful hissing heralded a second bolt of fiery agony. This time, Angelina felt her feet slip from under her straight away and the dull red mist quickly turned purple and descended into a peaceful blackness, but the respite was only temporary. Almost immediately, her senses returned to her and with them the pain. She heard herself wailing, as if from a great distance and then, as her vision began to clear again, her eyes immediately became filled with tears, for Hacklebury grasped her roughly by her trailing hair and yanked her head back mercilessly.

`There are four more still to come, madame,' he hissed, his breath hot in her ear. `Four more - and you will feel every one of them, even if I have to wait here for an hour for you to recover in between each lash.'

`Bastard!' Angelina shrieked, no longer caring for decorum. `You evil ... bastard!' He shook her head roughly and merely laughed.

`I see you are already learning new ways,' he guffawed. `Not so much the prim little virgin now, are we? Well, my dear, by the time I have finished with you, you will crawl to me on your knees and beg me to take you in every and any conceivable way.'

`Never!' she cried. `Never, never! Do what you want with me, I'll not go on my knees to you, nor to any other man yet born.' Again, he laughed.

`Oh, I shall do as I want with you, lady, have no fear of that. Only Pickering knows you are here, after all, and he is now in Austria, so my sources tell me. Austria is a goodly long way distant and many a mishap could befall the unwary traveller between there and here.

`Besides, as I stated earlier, Pickering cares nothing for you as such. You are simply a liability and the sooner he can pay someone the dowry left in your father's will, the sooner you will cease to be a financial embarrassment.'

`Liar!' Angelina croaked. `Lord Pickering is my great uncle. I am family to him.'

`Of course you are,' Hacklebury sneered. `Family that has cost him many thousands of pounds over these past ten years. Family that has a small fortune in trust, which your husband will get on the day of your marriage, yet not a penny of which has the poor old fool been able to touch during all this time.'

`He shall be repaid, he knows that,' Angelina asserted. `I am determined to make that the first condition of any marriage I might make and any husband to be shall sign a promisory to that effect, before ever I shall exchange vows with him. My uncle is a good man, a decent man.'

`Of course he is,' Hacklebury agreed, lightly. `But he is also now a relatively poor man; a poor man who stands to receive several thousand pounds just as soon as you are safely married. Good man or not, the clock runs against him now and he would see you wed to almost anyone. Even me,' he added, with a deep chuckle.

And then the fearful hissing rent the air again, the tongue of fire lapped hungrily across Angelina's shoulders once more and this time, mercifully, the dark velvet rose up to claim her into its blissfully unconscious embrace.

For those of you who don't know the area around Rowlands Castle (and why should you, unless you live around here?) it's nice. Very nice. Very nice and very English, with woods, fields, cottages, sheep grazing and tractors blocking every other back road and lane. And there are plenty of pubs, most of which, back in 1975, hadn't yet been ruined by the big brewery chains and their go-getter marketing oiks.

I'm a traditional girl, me. Fair enough, back then I was as happy as the next of my peers to experiment with chunky platform shoes, short skirts, lurid make-up and tight tops in eye-searing colours. Some of the girls were just as bad, too!

No, seriously, and I mean that. I was brought up fairly conservatively and we lived near enough to the countryside for me to appreciate its virtues without having to trek miles for a packet of cigarettes or a refill for my lipstick. Muck the towns about by all means (a shudder here runs through the denizens of Chichester, no doubt) but leave the countryside alone. I like the sight of little lambs gambolling on hillsides, the thought of cows being left to graze and chew the cud contentedly, shepherds watching their flocks by night and gamekeepers shooting over the heads of poachers in darkened woods. Or not shooting over their heads, as the case may be. Go and vandalise things that deserve corporate vandalising, I say, but then corporate vandals have existed since time immemorial, even before the real vandals gave their name to it, as I can personally attest now, so why should the late twentieth century escape?

But escape is just what Rose Lea cottage had managed to do, as I saw immediately when we drew up in Dad's protesting Wolseley the following afternoon. It even had a thatched roof, for heaven's sake!

`It's pretty!' Mum gasped.

`Roof'll cost a fortune in maintainance,' Dad muttered, but I could see that even he was impressed. `Has it got electricity, do you know?'

It had. And gas. And running water. And a connection to the main sewer. Well, it wasn't more than a hundred yards from the main village itself and Great (several times over) Aunt Amelia had been wealthy enough to make sure that all the mod cons were added, as and when they became available.

`Jesus!' Dad exclaimed, as we stepped over the threshold, straight into a scene from Dickens. `That dresser must be worth a few hundred quid!'

`Two thousand,' I said. Mr Swann had given me the valuer's inventory the previous afternoon and certain items had lodged themselves very firmly in my mind.

`Jesus!' Dad repeated.

`Beautiful wood,' Mum muttered, running her hands over it. `And what gorgeous jugs. Victorian?' She looked at me questioningly. I nodded.

`Early period,' I said. And worth about five hundred pounds as a pair, even back then, according to the expert.

All in all, we three agreed, it was a very nice cottage. Very traditional, structurally sound and with a very pleasant, welcoming feel to it. True, the garden - it was more the size of a small field - was running a bit wild, even though it was still mid winter, but then a few pounds from Amelia's bequest would pay for "a man" to come and see to that and then to come around periodically to keep it in check, once the growing season started again.

`You've done well, Teen,' Dad said, through a mouthful of rump steak at the Ploughman's Refuge a little later. `You should get a good price for the cottage. All in all, you're well set up for life now.'

`I'm not selling Rose Lea,' I said, firmly. Two pairs of eyebrows rose as one. `No,' I said, `I think I'm supposed to keep it.'

`Does it say so in the old lady's will?' Dad asked.

`Nope,' I replied. `Everything is mine to do with as I see fit, but that's not the point. Maybe I'll sell the place eventually, but not yet. Amelia Jane lived in the place for seventy odd years and apparently it was in her family for years before that. I'm her only surviving female relative, so I think I ought to live there, too, at least for a few years.'

`You're proposing to leave home?' Dad looked devastated. Mum gave me the sort of look that only mothers and their daughters know how to interpret.

`Well, sort of,' I replied, carefully. `I mean, I'll still have my room at home, won't I? And I can come back. Once a week, at least. Maybe more.'

`What about getting to school in the mornings?' Dad asked. I was in the final throes of my A-level years.

`School is no further from Rose Lea than it is from where we live at the moment,' I pointed out. `In fact, it's probably a mile or so closer and the bus service can't be any worse.' Actually, it was worse, but by the time I discovered that, it didn't really seem to matter any more.

And so, after a fashion, I moved. Bags, baggage and platform shoes, I moved into my very own little chocolate box cottage and, having suitably aired it first, slept my first night under a thatched roof. It was not to be my last and there were to be many more thatched roofs, in many more towns and villages, in many very different times, but all that, as I settled down under my feather-filled eiderdown, was still very much in the future.

No, correction. It was actually in the past, but then the past was to become my future, though I little suspected it as I drifted off to sleep, to the accompaniment of a distant owl hooting somewhere outside in the night. At least, I hoped it was outside. I snuggled deeper beneath my covers and eventually drifted off to sleep, queen of my very own little castle and mistress of all I surveyed. Hah!

They left her in her bedroom for four days, uninterrupted except for twice daily visits from one or other of the two maids, to refresh her water jug, leave some slices of meat and bread and to apply a salve to Angelina's ravaged back.

Late on the second day, she managed to haul herself from the bed, where she had lain face down since the two women had returned her here, and stagger across to the long mirror on the wall, where she twisted herself about to examine her wounds. To her surprise, the skin did not appear to have been cut through, though the area across and between her shoulders was dark red, with an even darker purplish hue spreading throughout.

Still clad only in her underthings, Angelina stumbled back to the bed, took a long draught of the stale tasting water and forced herself to eat one of the smaller slivers of meat, though her stomach wanted to rebel at every mouthful and the thought of eating anything provided by him made her want to vomit. Despite her pain and humiliation, however, Angelina still managed to retain that core of reality that told her that she must eat in order to retain what remained of her strength, for she would surely need it now.

Feeling slightly stronger now, though still far from steady on her feet, she stood up again and crossed the room to the door and was not at all surprised to find that it was locked. Wincing, as even the slightest change in the tensions upon her flesh sent tiny fingers of acid fire coursing through her entire body, Angelina made her way to the window. Once again, she found that the casements were securely fastened and could not be opened, although the distance to the ground from here had to be easily thirty five feet and a body would have to be crazy to even think about jumping.

Crazy - or mad, perhaps. She grimaced, ruefully. Dear Gregory perhaps thought her desperate enough to try to end it all, did he, accept death, rather than a fate worse than death?

`You don't know me, Gregory Hacklebury,' she hissed, blinking back the tears that had suddenly sprung up in her eyes. `You don't know me even the slightest little bit, you pig. I'd sooner kill you first, than kill myself and by everything that is dear to me, I swear I shall revenge myself on you for this, even if it takes me forever!'

Slowly, she turned away from the window and the vista that included the perfectly manicured lawns, the carefully trimmed hedges and bushes and the mock Greek statues that peered out from almost every patch of greenery. She moved stiffly to the dresser, where she opened the top drawer and began to rummage carefully through the layers of silk and satin. At last, her fingers closed on what they sought and she withdrew the soft leather pouch with reverence, opening it to reveal the gold locket.

She eased the delicate catch, opened the two halves and gazed at the portraits that now faced each other. The one on the left showed a man, perhaps in his early thirties, his keen eyes gazing outwards, from beneath a carefully groomed head of dark hair, his slightly longish nose straight an aristocratic, above a firm mouth that Angelina always imagined was on the verge of softening into a broad smile, the smile she remembered so well from her now seemingly distant childhood.

The eyes were blue, matching her own and they seemed to be turned slightly to the left - the right as she looked upon them - so that they could just take in the image in the other half of the locket. The woman there looked young, scarcely older than Angelina herself now, and her features were almost ghostly white, reflecting the fashions of the day when the artist had captured them. The hair was elaborate, intricate, and without doubt a wig, Angelina knew, but the green eyes seemed to twinkle as mischievously as they had ever done and the full, pouting lips appeared to be struggling to contain some amusement.

`Help me, Poppa, Mama,' Angelina whispered. `Help me to be strong - as strong as you two were when your greatest perils beset you. And I swear to both of you, I shall not fail you, whatever trials I am subjected to - if only God will see fit to give me the strength ...'

I still had several days before the new school term started: plenty of time to make myself cosy in my new home and take stock of some of the things that came with it. Rose Lea was a mass of nooks and crannies, every alcove a cupboard, or set of shelves, every horizontal surface covered with nick-knacks of every description.

Great Aunt Amelia's (I'll leave out the interim "greats" from here on) valuable jewellery was still in a deposit box in one of her three banks, but there were still treasures galore here, even if their value was more intrinsically historic than monetary. I won't bore you with the details here, save to say that if you were a collector of antiquities and novelties, I'd have needed a crowbar to get you out of that cottage.

I found two boxes of clothes - they actually were trunks, rather than boxes - in the smallest bedroom. Mostly, the contents were quaint and old fashioned, dresses from the twenties and thirties, mostly now looking a bit faded and singularly sad, probably unworn and neglected for at least forty years. I did find one dress, carefully wrapped in sheets of tissue paper, that had survived better than most. It was blood red, velvet and right out of the "Flapper" age.

How I would have loved to try it on, but the moment I held it up against myself, I realised it was far too small. Not that I'm big, you understand. Tall, maybe, but not particularly big, but Great Aunt Amelia had obviously been quite a tiny person and her former glory was at least three sizes too small to accommodate my hips, I was certain. I carefully rewrapped it and placed it in an empty drawer in the chest beneath the window, determined that I'd find a suitable home for it eventually. It was far too good to throw out.

Third day and it dawned bright and sunny, if a little chilly, so I ventured out to explore my garden. The clouds began to gather immediately and I was soon venturing back inside again, beating the sudden squall of sleet by seconds.

`Rats!' I said, to the empty parlour. I sat down on the Edwardian chaise and gazed into the flickering flames in the hearth. Out in the back parlour was a huge, mahogany cased valve radio, but there was no television and, worse still, no telephone. How's a girl supposed to exist without a telephone? It was just so uncivilised.

`Never mind, Teena,' I said, standing up and walking over to the door that lead out to the back rooms, `the man said you'd get your telephone inside two weeks.' How the hell had Great Auntie managed without a phone? I'd looked everywhere and there was no sign of there ever having been one in the place before, even though the telephone lines ran past the front gate, suspended from their towering poles.

I managed to tune the antique radio in to my favourite station and was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality. It was only mono, true, but then stereo radio broadcasting had only just about got started in England anyway, so I didn't miss what I'd never really had and I set about preparing a few vegetables out in the kitchen, with the connecting door wedged open, so that I could sing along with all the hits.

One vegetable casserole went into the rather utilitarian gas cooker. The oven control numbers had been long worn away, if they'd ever been on the knob in the first place, so I guessed, erring on the side of caution and wandered back through to the front room, where I gazed out through the leaded windows at the rain that had now taken over from the earlier sleet. Ho hum.

How I hadn't seen the loft hatch before, I don't know. It was actually in the ceiling of the second bedroom, in a corner where the pale winter daylight didn't quite penetrate, but it was visible enough. I stood below it, pondering. There couldn't be much of interest up there, surely, I reasoned. After all, there was no window through the thatch, so it would be pitch black up there.

On the other hand, what else did I have to while away a bit of time? And, empty or not, dark or not, it was part of my new domain, whatever it was.

A ladder. I needed a ladder, or a big pair of steps. Tall as I was and low as the first floor ceilings were in Rose Lea, that hatch was annoyingly just out of reach. I paused, thinking and then remembered the overgrown shed, about twenty yards from the back door. If there was a ladder to be had, it would be there, I reasoned.

I reasoned correctly. It was there. In fact, they were there - two ladders and a pair of steps and, although they were a bit ancient looking, they all seemed sound enough. I did a quick guesstimation and decided upon the shorter ladder. It was longer than the step ladder, but lighter and short enough for me to manouvre up the stairs inside.

A torch. Aha. The kitchen cabinet. I remembered seeing the chunky old flashlight there earlier, but did the batteries still have anything in them? They did. Hallelujah! And almost new, to judge from the powerful beam the thing threw out. Up the stairs I went again, up the ladder, pushed against the hatch with my one free hand and lifted it easily, bringing down only a slight cloud of pale dust.

Pausing long enough to sneeze just the once, I ascended further and peered over the edge, raising the flashlight and aiming it into the darkened depths of the roof space. A floor! yes, a floor: boards, neatly nailed, a bit dusty, but solid looking. Gingerly, I pulled myself up and sat with my legs still dangling down into the bedroom below and once again used the flashlight to good effect.

Oh-ho! What was this I saw? More trunks; similar to the ones down in the small bedroom, but possibly a bit older and there were more of them. I counted. Six in all, plus a suitcase that was so ancient looking that I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find that Noah had taken it with him on the Ark.

`Well, well,' I said, to the empty space. `More treasures to explore.' I climbed right up, until I was standing on the floor itself and found I could do so without stooping, so long as I kept somewhere near the middle and away from the sloping eaves. I hesitated again, listening carefully. Not that I hate mice, well, not exactly, but anything that scuttles in the dark tends to make me twitch a bit and, as I've subsequently learned, it pays to be wary of anything that scuttles in the dark, particularly the things with only two legs.

But that can wait for the moment, which was more than I could do back then. I approached the nearest trunk, which also appeared to be the largest, set the torch down so that it's light shone towards my quarry and reached for the lid, my pulse quickening. After all, I'd already realised, the dust up here showed that I was the first person to venture thus far in a good few years, so anything I found now was a bonus. Nothing in any of these trunks would be on the inventory, so who knew what surprises I was about to find?

Well, I didn't, for one, that's for certain, but the surprises that were to follow from my latest discovery were nothing I could possibly have imagined, not even in my wildest dreams!

Early on the morning of the fifth day, the two maids appeared together and Angelina knew that her enforced solitude and the welcome respite that it had brought, were over. She struggled over and pulled herself up into a sitting position, the bed covers drawn protectively over her knees and held tightly to her bosom, for she had now divested herself of her original underwear and wore only a thin shift to bed.

`Time to have you up and out of there, missy,' Meg announced, brusquely. `Master reckons you've had plenty of time to reflect and now it's time you started to learn how to behave properly around here.'

`I care little for what your master thinks,' Angelina replied, defiantly, `and furthermore, whilst he may be your master, he is certainly no master of mine and I shall tell him so in no uncertain terms!'

`Well, is that so?' meg said. She placed her hands on her hips, threw back her head and laughed out loud. `Well, I do believe I've heard everything now,' she continued, suddenly reverting to her normal stern composure. `You listen to me, girlie and you listen good.

`I may be just a servant and you may think yourself to be high and mighty and better'n the likes of me, but you're as much a chattel of Sir Gregory as me and Polly here is. Way I heard tell, your ma and pa died a good few years ago - out in India, wasn't it? - and now there's just you and you're a burden on the poor old fool who's had to bring you up since.

`The master made a contract with his Lordship and that contract ain't gonna be broke, no matter what you say or do, so you'd better get used to that. In fact, you oughta count yourself lucky, getting yourself a fine man like Sir Gregory for a husband and you nothing but a slip of a thing. Huh, you ain't even got titties worth a fumble and a man likes a woman to have a decent pair of udders, I can tell you.'

Angelina stared at the maid, open mouthed at her sheer impertinence, despite everything that had already happened. And, in that same moment, she realised the truth, saw through the disdain and the unbecoming arrogance. Sir Gregory Hacklebury was bedding this coarse creature, maidservant or not and Meg was not going to stand idly by and see her favoured position eroded by the presence of his intended wife, whoever she might have been.

`Up now, missy,' Meg ordered. `Up now, cause we have to get you dressed and the master has given precise instructions on that matter.'

`And if I refuse?' Angelina pouted, stubbornly. Meg's dark eyes flashed.

`It'll happen, all the same,' she retorted. She turned to her companion. `Polly, go along to the yellow room and wheel the lacing frame in here. I think her ladyship needs a demonstration and the frame will settle her nonsense at the same time.' As the younger maid put down the small bundle she had been holding and turned back towards the door, Meg grinned, maliciously.

`I was hoping you might still have a streak of rebelliousness in you,' she said, softly. `Now I see you have and that's going to make this all the more enjoyable - for me, anyway!'

Clothes!

Clothes, clothes and more clothes. Oh, how I love clothes, especially new ones. Well, these clothes weren't new, far from it - quite the opposite, in fact. At a guess, the newest item in that first trunk had to be at least sixty or seventy years old and most of the garments were much older even than that. Like I said, I know my history, so I knew a trunk load of Victorian costumes when I saw it. And, although these things were old in terms of when they were first made, they were actually like new and the colours, so far as I could tell by the light of my torch, seemed as strong and as vibrant as they must have been when they were first worn.

Not only that, I realised, as I held the first dress up, but these things had not belonged to Great Aunt Amelia, not unless she had shrunk considerably over the years. No, whoever had worn these things had been much bigger - and taller - someone much nearer my own size. Someone exactly my size, in fact.

`Triple wow!' I breathed. `Dress up time!' My Mum always reckoned I was a frustrated actress and, apart from a couple of roles in school drama productions, she was right. I was frustrated and I did like the way I could become a totally different character on stage. Costumes and make-up. 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, my heart pounding away like Ringo Starr on steroids. 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 tee 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 had carried through, made my choices and then quickly removed my bra, pants and the rather threadbare socks I had 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 more or less in proportion. My hips are on the wide side, it's true, so I also have a bum that's reasonably well padded, but nothing more than that and as for my boobs, well, let's just say I've got them. They're not big, but then they're not small, either, unlike my school friend Sandra's, which have been described as a couple of poached eggs. Actually, her tiny boobs stood her in good stead eventually. She became a very famous model a year or so after that, but that, as with so many other things, is another story and not relevant to mine.

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 half way. I gathered the ends carefully and gave them an experimental tug. Immediately, the corset began to close around me and, after two or three more tugs, I found I could let go with my left hand and nothing tried to slip down.

`Excellent,' I said to myself. `Could have been made for me.' Except it looked like the original owner had probably been a fair bit slimmer around the middle, for there was still quite a large gap between the two halves at the front. Unless ...

No, surely not? Of course not. There was no way I could lace the thing that tightly, not without risking terminal asphyxiation, anyway. However, I was game to go as far as was comfortable - relatively speaking, that is - so I renewed my assault on the laces, this time with both hands.

The lacing frame was a quite simple contruction, but it had been designed and built for strength and durability and the small wheels on its base made transporting it from room to room a simple matter, even for a slightlky built female and Polly was certainly not that.

As she pushed it into the bedroom, Angelina saw that it comprised a plain base, constructed from several lengths of planking braced together, from which, at either end, rose a tubular metal pole, some seven or eight feet in height. Closer inspection showed that these poles were, in fact, each comprised of two sections, the upper of which telescoped into the lower, with corresponding holes in each, together with a locking pin, enabling the overall height of the horizontal bar which hung between the two uprights to be adjusted up and down.

A few inches in from either end of this horizontal bar, which was perhaps five feet in length, dangled a leather cuff, both now hanging open and waiting, Angelina realised, for her wrists. Gamely, she managed to swing her legs out of bed and stood up, facing her would-be tormentresses with as much dignity as she could muster.

`That ... that beastly medieval torture instrument will not be necessary,' she said, stiffly. `You may do with me as you will and I shall not struggle. As you say, I am but a slip of a girl, so to do so would be totally futile, I can see.' Meg paused, regarded Angelina steadily and for a few seconds it appeared that she might accede to this request, but then a look of sheer darkness clouded across her eyes and the smile that spread upon her face was sheer malice.

`I think not, milady airs-and-graces,' she hissed. `Whilst it would give me great delight to give you a sound hiding anyway, I think you will make a pretty sight, squirming up on this frame, so up you shall go and no further arguments. Now, will you remove that shift, or shall we tear it from you afterwards?'

Angelina felt her stomach knotting itself into a tight fist, but she retained sufficient resolve not to grant the insolent maid yet another victory.

`I am perfectly capable of removing my own garments,' she replied, testily. She opened her mouth again, instinctively meaning to ask both maids to turn their backs, but just in the nick of time she realised that this would be a sign of weakness and just what the spiteful Meg, in particular, would be expecting. Instead, keeping her gaze all the while on the older maid, Angelina drew the shift off her shoulders and allowed it to slip down her body, stepping delicately out of its folds and confronting the women proudly, aware that already her nipples had hardened themselves into two small cones and had deepened in colour, so that they stood out starkly against the pale alabaster of her small, firm breasts.

`See, Polly?' Meg said, gleefully. `Two unripe little apples. Her teats are nigh on as big as the rest of her titties. Why, if it weren't for that little cunny I see winking at us, I'd swear she was a boy in skirts.' Despite herself, Angelina felt her cheeks beginning to burn, but she refused so much as to blink and now stepped slowly forward. At the side of the frame she paused and then, without further hesitation, she stepped up onto the timber staging and held her arms out straight before her.

`Come, then,' she said quietly, to the two maids, who had momentarily, it seemed, been transfixed by her unexpected show of calm acceptance. `String me up on your devilish contraption and do your worst with me.'

As I said before, I was pretty good at English and History, but the sciences, including physics, had never been my strong suit, so my knowledge of leverage and gears was - and still is - pretty basic. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me just what sort of results could be achieved from a traditional corset, where the arrangement of laces transfers even a fairly modest effort into quite a breathtaking force - quite literally.

Bit by bit, the two halves of the amazing garment began to close in on each other and I quickly mastered the technique, going back over the two end sections to produce extra slack in the laces and then working my way back towards the centre each time, so that I quickly had quite a lot of excess lace ends dangling from my hands. Then, eventually, there was only the narrowest strip of satin-clad me visible between the two sections.

By this time, I was starting to feel more than a bit breathless and, as I paused to consider, I realised that I was also becoming just a little light-headed and my heart was pounding furiously, in an effort to replace the oxygen that obviously wasn't getting through to those parts of me that needed it.

I took a deep breath, or at least, I tried to. It was absolutely impossible, the vicious boning trying to crush my ribs for my efforts. I let out a little grunt and tried again, this time concentrating on my upper lungs, the way I had read that ladies in the past had managed to breathe whilst constrained so mercilessly. It had sounded so simple, when printed on the page, but this was no historical novel and it took me several minutes to get the hang of it, whilst all the time I leaned against the wall for support.

At last, however, my pulse settled down to a mild canter and my head cleared again and yes, at that point I should have tied the laces off and considered it a good first try. In fact, if I'd had any sense, I'd have loosened the damned corset, or maybe even removed it altogether. However, a combination of misplaced bravado and my innate hatred of being beaten by anything, let alone a mere piece of bloody clothing, led me into realms that would have been better avoided, at least for a while.

I stared down at myself, fascinated by the changes the corset had already wrought to my figure. I'd always been proud of my figure: slim, without being skinny, my height giving me a certain advantage over shorter people, male and female alike, with only my slightly rounded bottom giving me any cause for complaint. What I now saw, however, was something that looked quite different.

My boobs - not large by any standards, but certainly large enough to content those boyfriends I'd let close enough to them - had now been lifted much higher and the half cups at the top of the corset seemed to be presenting them for display, or offering them for - well, I needn't draw you a picture here, I'm sure.

`Blimey!' I gasped, nearly sending myself cross-eyed with the effort of focussing. `Nell bloody Gwynne!' I started laughing and immediately wished I hadn't, for the whalebone stays immediately reminded me that such a foundation was no laughing matter. I regained my composure and looked further down.

Was that my waist? Ye gods and little swimming things, where had it gone? That wasn't a waist, it was some sort of pipe stem, surely? And where had those hips sprung from? My bum might have been a bit prominent, but I'd never had hips that generous, surely?

Of course, it was all a bit of an optical illusion, I quickly realised. Compressing my waist had simply made the rest of me look much larger in proportion and I didn't even dare try to look at the rear view just yet! I could imagine my poor bottom must now look huge, but then I also knew that men throughout all the ages have been attracted to prominent female buttocks just as frequently as they've been aroused by a prominent bosom. Well, I reflected, with my usual ability to seize upon the gruesome obvious, in this thing I was up to satisfying both fetishes.

And then, me being me, I just couldn't resist it, could I? I just had to see if I could lace the damned thing all the way and make those two halves meet at the front, the way they were originally intended to. Why? Why did I do it? Don't ask me, but all I can say is that I've never been able to resist a challenge and I can't see that ever changing. Not now.

I grabbed hold of the laces again and once more renewed my efforts ...

3.

No sooner were Angelina's wrists buckled into the hanging straps than the two maids began to raise the crossbar, replacing the locking pins in the telescoping uprights only when her toes were left barely touching the wooden planking beneath her. The strain on her shoulders was even worse than it had been when they had strapped her to the disused wine rack in the cellars, but Teena was determined not to let them see her discomfort.

However, by the time Meg had wrapped the gleaming black corset about her - her tender flesh was not this time to be afforded the protection offered by a chemise, it appeared - and begun the process of tight lacing, the pain was becoming quite acute and Angelina was forced to bite into her lip to prevent herself from crying out.

Remorselessly, the powerful maid continued with her work, whilst Polly now came around to take up a position in front of Angelina and grasp her about the waist, countering the force being exerted at her back and enabling Meg to haul on the laces with renewed vigour.

`We'll at least make you look like a woman, missy!' she rasped, through clenched teeth. `Master had this corset specially made in London for you and I know he's been dying to see you in it. I hope you remember to thank him properly, when you see him again.' She laughed, harshly, and Polly snickered.

`You should see her titties now, Meg,' she exclaimed. `My, but they're looking like a proper pair of little dumplings! I almost feel jealous, I do.'

Angelina stared down at Polly's own generous cleavage and wondered whether it had taken a corset to produce that deep valley and the swelling mounds that threatened to spill over her bodice. Then she peered down at herself and was quite astonished at the transformation. Polly had exaggerated grossly, that was plain to see, but her bosom was certainly being pushed upwards and outwards in a way it had never been before.

`We'll have a little rest now,' Meg announced. Angelina felt her knot the laces in the small of her back and heard the creaking of timber as the maid stepped down off the raised platform. `Go fetch the smelling salts from the yellow room and look in the closet there, too. You'll find a bottle of something tucked behind the boots and shoes and a couple of glasses on the dresser. Bring those, too. All this effort is making me feel quite thirsty.'

As Polly scuttled off to do her bidding, Meg walked slowly around to stand before the hapless Angelina, who saw that she was indeed quite red in the face from her exertions.

`There's a good two inches still to go, in case you're wondering,' Meg sneered, with evident relish. Angelina felt her heart sink even further than it had fallen already. Two more inches! It was not possible. She craned her neck and stared down at her waist, or at what appeared to be left of it, for it was already narrower than it had ever been, even in her tightest corset.

`You will kill me,' she hissed. `If you make this thing any tighter, I will surely die from lack of air.' Meg simply grinned at this.

`Oh, don't you go worrying your silly head about such things,' she laughed. `No one here intends you to die. We'll manage the two inches, I promise you and you'll still get air enough, though not enough to try running again, that's for sure.' She stepped back a pace and tilted her head slightly to one side, as if she were appreciating a work of art.

`And I reckon,' she continued, after a few seconds of this, `that once you've worn this corset awhile, we can get you into an even tighter one. Eventually, I reckon we could get your waist down to a twelve inch, like the French ladies used to do, before the peasants started cutting their heads off a few years back now.'

She stepped forward again and, before Angelina had time to react, thrust her right hand between her thighs, probing for the warm opening. Angelina let out a sharp cry of protest.

`Stop that!' she shrilled. `What manner of woman are you? Have you no sense of decency?' Meg kept her hand there, pressing, cupping, but her fingers making no attempt to force an entry.

`Oh, don't you worry your silly little head, missy,' she crooned. `I'll not damage your precious maidenhead. That's the master's privilege, that is, thoguh I'll be there to watch him break you in, you can be sure of that. Afterwards, though, well that's a different matter, ain't it?'

`You vile creature!' Angelina wailed. `Truly you are an abomination!'

`Aye, maybe I am at that,' Meg agreed, casually shrugging. `But then I'm not the one dangling helpless here, am I? And I'm not the one stupid enough to call names to someone who's in a position to do something about it!'

Her hand slipped out from between Angelina's thighs and swung round in an arc so swiftly that Angelina had no chance to even tense herself for the slap, which met her left cheek with a terrible report, as loud as a pistol shot in the confines of the room. Angelina's head jerked back and instantly a myriad tiny stars began to explode across her vision and a terrible resonance echoed inside her head.

`You'll watch your mouth from now on, lady,' she heard Meg say, as if from a great distance now. `Any more of your cheek and I have just the thing to still that nasty little tongue of yours. You'll meet the pear soon enough anyway, of course, but you just keep this up and it'll be sooner still!'

It took me a good fifteen minutes to finally get the front of the corset to close and I was huffing and puffing like a mad thing long before it was finished, but at last I made it and there was a curious feeling of achievement when I finally knotted the laces in a bow and leaned back against the wall again.

I saw that I was now left with quite a length of trailing laces, however and spent the next few minutes, whilst I struggled to regulate my breathing pattern to this even greater constriction, wondering what I should do with them. There were scissors on the dressing table and I could, of course, have simply cut off the excess, but then, as I quickly realised, when I finally removed the corset, the remaining laces would not be anywhere near long enough to use again. In the end, I solved the problem by wrapping the spare ends about my now astonishly narrow waist and tying them off again.

`Why on earth am I putting myself through all this torture?' I gasped to the empty room, but of course there was no answer and I doubt whether there would have been, even if there had been someone else there with me. Why indeed? The truth was, I really had no idea, though since then I have had a few thoughts on the matter, none of which makes any sense. Mind you, none of what's happened to me in the intervening years can be said to do that either.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed to sort out a pair of stockings presented me with a far greater problem than I had bargained for. The corset was not only tight, but it stretched down my torso so far that it was now all but impossible for me to bend at the waist, so I was forced to perch myself on the very lip of the mattress, leaning backwards and with my legs stuck out at a very ungainly angle. Eventually, practice and familiarity would allow me to sit with a lot more dignity, but of course I didn't know that then.

If selecting which stockings to wear - there were four pairs, all in various shades, all pure silk and all very delicate both to the touch and to look at - was one problem, actually putting them on was a much greater one. It was far from easy and even with my natural athleticism and pliability, I really struggled and was glad there was no one there to witness my very ungainly efforts.

Eventually, however, I succeeded. The stockings, a smoky grey colour and reaching to my mid thigh, felt absolutely sensual, the thin silk caressing my soft skin in a way I had never thought to experience and I felt little shudders tiptoe-ing their way up and down my spine as I reached for the garters. These were something else again.

Unlike their modern counterparts, which you can usually buy easily enough from any lingerie shop or department worth its name (or else send off for mail order, from the dozens of companies now vying for your trade in this field) these were not elasticated. The main reason for this, I presumed, was that they hadn't got around to inventing elastic back when these were made and although I couldn't put an exact date on its invention, good at history or not, I was pretty sure that it had been much later.

However, in most other ways, they looked exactly like you'd expect a garter to look - frilly ruffs of lace, threaded through with thin, contrasting ribbons; in this case the lace was red, the ribbons black, echoing the colours of the corset. They were kept in place by the simple expedient of tying the trailing ribbon ends into bows, but it was necessary to tie them quite tightly, compressing the thigh muscles quite a lot. I suspected that varicose veins might have been far more prevalent in 1840 than they were in 1974 and that, if I was right in this supposition, I knew the culprits.

For all their frivolous and undeniably sexy appearance, the garters were actually hidden by the drawers, once I managed to wriggle my way into them. These were also red, with black piping, made of more sheer silk and evidently intended to be worn with the corset I had chosen, but what a palaver it was getting them on.

Firstly, I drew them up to my waist, over the corset, obviously and then carefully drew the ribbon tie tighter, anxious that it might tear, for it was not only old, but had never been intended to endure the sort of strain imposed on the corset laces. However, I needn't have worried. Despite the years that had passed, the trunk from which I had taken everything had obviously been pretty much airtight and the ribbon felt quite new in my hands.

To call these drawers voluminous wouldn't have been at all accurate, for they were actually quite close fitting, even if the legs did reach half way down each of my thighs and, as I have already pointed out, covered and hid the garters. Here again were two more ribbon ties, with which the leg openings could be tightened as required and I couldn't help but smile at the way in which I seemed now to be sealing myself into my chosen outfit.

Because of the rigmarole involved in putting on and taking off such a garment, the designer had been required to add another feature, presumably in order to save on little accidents and this he or she had done, and in the most basic way imaginable. The crotch of these drawers had simply been slit open and kept together afterwards by three more sets of ribbon ties which, once they were unfastened and the fabric of the drawers held apart, would permit the wearer to perform what I grinningly thought of as her "usual offices".

I stood up and practised walking back and forth across the old carpet, my stockinged feet padding soundlessly. It felt really strange, the corset having the effect of making the two halves of my body - upper and lower - seem like separate entities and my top half felt like it was floating around, supported by some invisible giant hand. Meantime, the silk of my drawers swished and hissed against the silk of my stocking tops in the most intimately suggestive way and I shivered with pleasure as it whispered to my every step.

Maybe I should have stopped there. After all, I was still battling for breath, no matter how much I might have liked to think I had acclimatised myself to the corset's grip and my face, I knew without looking, was glowing bright red, especially my cheeks. But then, what else was there to do that evening? I had no television yet and the choice of radio programmes was hardly exciting at the weekend.

Shoes.

It made sense to finish sorting out my footwear, especially when I looked at the dress and the voluminous petticoats that were intended to go under its incredible skirt. Once I had that little lot in place, it would be goodbye feet, see you again later - and that wouldn't be the biggest of my problems. Giggling to myself, I started for the door, intending to go downstairs to the toilet and then stopped.

There was a stone floor to cross down there and these stockings were flimsy, to say the least. Risking their delicacy on such an unsympathetic surface would be criminal. Whatever these things had cost way back when, I knew enough to know that a pair of genuine silk stockings in 1975, always presuming you could find somewhere that still sold genuine silk stockings, cost an arm and a leg. Not literally, of course, otherwise it would have been a waste of time buying a pair in the first place.

So, shoes it was and I'd brought two pairs through to consider, one of which could not really be described as shoes at all. Rather, they were like ankle boots, made from very soft, thin leather, black as the night and fastening all the way up each side by means of tiny buttons. I turned one of them over and over in my hands and then, beautiful as they were, I realised with regret that I would have to discard them for now. Without a buttonhook, there was no way I was ever going to manage them.

I glanced upwards, at the ceiling. Hopefully, I thought, as I took up one of the other shoes, there would be a buttonhook in one of those other trunks. If not, I resolved, I would go into Chichester or Portsmouth first thing Monday morning. Surely there were still shops where I could buy one? I was determined to wear those boots soon, in a way that only someone with my sometimes inexplicable fads for certain clothing items could ever hope to understand.

The shoes I could wear were hardly less beautiful. They were made from little panels of black and red leather and fastened across the instep with buckles that had taken some long dead silversmith many hours of loving toil, though they could not have been made from pure silver, for the metal was not that soft. The heels were quite chunky, but also sculpted and something I had read not so long before came back to me. Louis Quinze. Yes, that was what they were called and they had been fashionable in ladies' footwear for many years longer than any fashion fad ever held unbroken sway during our own century.

The heels were also quite high compared to most period illustrations I had seen before, but, to a girl who had spent the past six months clumping around in shoes and boots with four inch platform soles and eight and nine inch heels, they presented no difficulty at all and their almost total lack of weight made me quickly forget I was even wearing them.

`Right then,' I said to the shoes, once I'd promenaded to and fro in them a few times. `Take me to the loo, whilst I'm still in a position to use it!'

Even with the application of the smelling salts, Angelina was close to fainting several times before Meg eventually finished the final lacing of her corset and she hung by her wrists, almost oblivious to the next stage of her preparation.

Handling her now as if she were no more than a dangling carcass, the two maids quickly set about drawing long silk stockings up her legs, fastening them with tightly knotted garters and then pulling a pair of black silk drawers into place. On her feet they placed ankle length boots, boots that were as black as the corset and stockings and which they needed to button in place with a great deal of patience.

The Louis Quinze heels of these boots were far higher than anything Angelina had ever worn before, forcing her instep into a cruelly arched position, but at least, she reflected, through the haze of semi-consciousness, at least now some of her weight was supported other than by her wrists, which by now had passed beyond the stage of pain and were feeling quite numb.

`Let her down, Polly,' Meg instructed, `but keep a hold on her. She looks barely capable of standing now, so we'd better get her over to the bed again. Once her gloves are in place, I think we can safely leave her to come to her senses. Without the hook, she won't be able to remove anything, so if we give her an hour, we can slip down to the kitchen and have ourselves a well-earned cup of tea.'

I hadn't needed the toilet that urgently, but I felt better afterwards, knowing that I wouldn't suddenly be faced with the problem of a protesting bladder whilst I was trapped inside all that extra silk and lace. How my unknown ancestors had coped back then, I couldn't even begin to imagine, though now I thought of it, I could vaguely remember a couple of almost laughable illustrations I had once seen in a reference book in the school library.

Still, that was then and this was now and, laughable or not, I didn't have recourse to either of those particular alternatives. Once the dress and gloves were on, it was a case of grin and bear it, so the bottle of wine that still awaited me down in the front parlour would need to be treated with respectful restraint.

It took me less time than I'd expected to get into the rest of my chosen outfit, though the row of hooks and eyes at the back would have troubled a less supple person than myself. I carefully arranged the puffed sleeves, so that they neatly covered half of each shoulder and left what I considered would have been just the right amount of shoulder flesh showing and then I took up the gloves.

Like the boots, they really needed a buttonhook to close the wrist openings, but I persevered with my fingers alone and finally, after much muttering and a fair few very unladylike curses, I had them both fastened in place and the soft velvet smoothed up my arms as if it were a second skin. Gingerly, I raised my arms, finding that I could now bend them at the elbow only with quite a degree of difficulty and then only to about half the extent I could before. Not very practical, these Victorian designers, I thought to myself, but then Victorian ladies weren't supposed to be practical. Just decorative.

Decorative and demure - neither of which description would normally have been applied to yours truly, at least, not by anyone who really knew me!

`Demure? A lady? Our Teena?' I could just hear the voices. `No, never in a thousand years. Not our Teena!'

Wrong, as it happened. On both counts.

Slowly, Angelina began to recover her senses, but what she saw and what she felt did little to ease her sorely tried spirits. Her breathing now seemed to be easier, if still very shallow and rapid, but her body still felt as if it had been cut in two and, to make matters worse, a strange numbness seemed to have set in, so that both her legs and her arms felt curiously heavy.

With a great effort, she managed to sit, although not completely upright, for the corset made it impossible for her to bend sufficiently at the waist for that. However, by persistent effort and by using her hands and heels to push against the bed covers, she finally was able to lay back against the head of the bed, where the piled up pillows offered support for her back that she now realised it no longer required.

For a few moments, she considered trying to divest herself of the imprisoning outfit, but quickly she decided against the futility of this course. For one thing, she knew, the maids would return before too much longer and the consequences of such a rebellious act could be nothing but unpleasant for her and for another, she now saw, that particular option was probably not open to her in the first place.

With the laces of the corset behind her and now securely knotted, there was no way she could reach them and until they were eased there was not the slightest hope that anyone, let alone herself, would be able to unfasten the front busk hooks. Boots and gloves almost certainly required a hook in order to free them and whilst, under normal circumstances, both might just have yielded to a determined assault by sufficiently dextrous fingers, the gloves themselves had been cunningly designed to reduce the wearer's dexterity considerably.

Angelina raised her right hand and peered closely at it. The stitching had been effected in such a way that its presence - and thus its effect - was well hidden from the casual observer, but there it most certainly was and its effectiveness could not be questioned, especially not by anyone wearing these gloves. Each finger had been neatly and surreptitiously stitched to its neighbour and the thumb likewise attached to the forfinger, so that not a single digit could move or flex individually and the hand was therefore neatly reduced to the status of a cumbersome mitt. In these gloves, she reflected, grimly, she had been rendered as helpless as a young child and even the most basic tasks would now be beyond her capabilities.

Grimly, Angelina eased her booted feet off the edge of the bed and swung her legs down to the floor. Panting for breath at even this limited exertion, she paused for a few seconds and then, using her otherwise useless hands for leverage, she pushed herself up, swayed forwards for one precarious moment and then, with a truncated sigh of relief, managed to balance herself in a standing position.

Placing her hands at her sides, she closed her eyes and uttered a silent prayer and then, her eyelids fluttering open again, she took her first step forward. The feeling was completely alien. Perched on the ridiculously high heels, the corset seemingly pushing her body upwards, Angelina felt almost as if she were floating, as if some power other than her own was both holding her upright and propelling her across the room and she was only too well aware of the way in which her hips and buttocks now swayed and rotated with every mincing step.

Long before she reached the mirror, the sight that greeted her in the glass stopped her dead in her tracks. For long seconds she remained there, motionless as a statue, but a statue the like of which she had never seen before. The effect of her new ensemble and the semi-dishabillé nature of it were together quite remarkable and, but for the reflection of her face, Angelina would never have believed that the bizarre figure could have been herself.

The tiny waist, the long legs now made to appear even longer by the steepling heels of the boots, her hips and breasts made to seem impossibly more prominent and even her rump, when she turned sideways to view herself in rpofile, jutted out in a way that was grossly provocative. There was, she decided, only one word to describe her new appearance and it was not a word that she would willingly let pass her lips.

`My God!' she whispered, eyes wide. `Oh my God, what am I reduced to? What is to become of me now?'

4.

I stood in front of the long wardrobe mirror and turned slowly around, admiring my new self and trying not to pay any attention to what was still the old me, from the neck upwards. The feathered blonde hair and slightly over the top eye makeup really didn't fit in with the early Victorian period, but then, I mused, it wasn't that much removed from what had been fashionable just a generation at most earlier.

`Maybe a wig,' I muttered, nodding to my other age self. `Why not, eh? I mean, we can afford to waste a few quid on our whims now, can't we? But what to do with the face, I wonder?' I moved closer, squinting slightly, which did nothing to improve the effect.

`White foundation,' I decided, at last. `Very pale look and then bright red lips. I'll need to check my books to be sure.' But for the moment, I decided, I had come as far as I could and the dress itself was truly something to behold.

It was again all silk and lace, royal blue, with white and black trimmings, the bodice tailored so that it clung to even my now skinny waist and the skirts billowing out to form a contrast as complete as any imaginable. Every step, every move, even a sudden breath, was accompanied by a soft symphony of whispering and rustling and, as I turned towards the door, it was as though a gentle winds was stirring in hidden trees.

`A glass of wine, my Lady Thyme?' I said aloud, my voice pitched half an octave above normal. `And perhaps we could take a turn on the terrace before dinner?' I giggled, stupidly, but I really did feel completely different dressed as I now was.

`Thank you, Duchess,' I replied to myself, in something nearer my normal tone, although with every vowel and consonant enunciated with unaccustomed care. `You are so very kind.' I pronounced that last as "kaned" and once again could not suppress a snigger. Ah well, I thought, as I turned the doorhandle, the worn brass slippery in my gloved hands, little things please empty minds.

What I would be like after a whole bottle of wine, I didn't even want to think about. So, maybe only half a bottle. After all, I reasoned, with unaccustomed caution, I still had to get myself out of this little lot before bedtime. I couldn't imagine even thinking about sleeping in this corset, let alone actually attempting it!

`You look most fetching in your new corset, my dear.' Gregory Hacklebury stood in the bedroom doorway, leering at Angelina with undisguised lust. In one hand, he held a half empty brandy goblet, in the other a slim cigar smouldered away unheeded. Angelina, perched back on the edge of the bed, recoiled from him in horror, but he made no move towards her, preferring to savour her discomfiture from a distance.

`Yes, indeed,' he continued, his languid drawl plainly brought on partially by the alcohol he had consumed, `a very attractive sight indeed. I shall take great pleasure in taking my conjugal rights, when the time comes.'

`Except that I shall never marry you!' Angelina hissed. `No matter what you may do to me, I shall never consent.'

`I expected as much from you,' Hacklebury nodded, apparently unconcerned by this assertion. `However, it matters not. As far as the outside world is concerned, you and I are to be married in two days time. Your presence at the ceremony will not be necessary and neither will you ever be in the position to deny that it was you that plighted your troth to me.' He laughed and hiccoughed at the same time and a trickle of spittle ran down his chin. Angelina stared at him in horror.

`What do you mean?' she demanded. `You cannot marry a person unless they give their consent in person.'

`Of course not,' he agreed, recovering some of his composure and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. `But then, it will be a private ceremony, in the family chapel, here on the estate. The bride will be demure and veiled, as is the new custom, the witnesses will be trusted servants. As for the priest, well, it is surprising what the promise of a hundred guineas can persuade a stipendary parson to turn a blind eye to.'

`You fiend!' Angelina gasped, as the full import of what he was proposing sank in. `You would use an imposter and bribe a man of God! Are there no depths to which you will not sink?' A crooked smile spread across his flushed features.

`Frankly, my dear,' he replied, easily, `I don't think there can be. If there are, be assured I have yet to find them, at least. No, my dear, you and I will be married, as far as the law is concerned and your inheritance will pass to me as per the law, too.'

`And what will you do with me?' Angelina asked, querelously. `Will I perhaps meet with an unfortunate accident and leave you as the grieving widower?'

`The idea has merit, I must admit,' Hacklebury sniggered, `but I see little point in killing such a pretty little bird. No, I have no intention of killing you, but you will have no further contact outside of these grounds. Perhaps we shall tell the world that you have fallen very ill and are convalescing.'

`It will be a long convalescence, then!' Angelina snapped. `People will ask questions, my guardian for one.'

`Your guardian is a drunken old sot, Angelina,' Hacklebury said, pushing himself away from the door post and standing upright. `When I repay him his dues from your estate, he will need little persuasion to take himself off to warmer climes and probably drink himself into the grave before the year is out. No one else will be at all interested in you after that. Save myself, of course.'

`You are the most vile man I have ever encountered,' Angelina said, bolder now that there seemed little more to be lost. Stiffly, she rose to her feet and stood facing him, her useless hands planted firmly on her hips. `Well, sir,' she said, tilting her chin defiantly, `you may do your worst, for I am scarce in a position to prevent you, but you will never have more than a cold fish for your nuptial supper, that I can safely swear.'

`We shall see,' Hacklebury replied. He took a step forward, stumbled and thrust out a hand to recover his balance, grasping the edge of the dresser, which was conveniently within arm's reach. In that same moment, his eye fell upon the locket, which Angelina, to her horror, saw that she had not hidden away again.

`Ha!' he cried. `What have we here?' Despite his inebriated condition and the hindrance of having to retain his grasp on glass and cigar, he quickly had the thing opened and, as he peered closer in order to focus his eyes on the two miniatures within, his entire face began to change,

`Perfect!' he said, holding the locket up by its chain, like a trophy. `The very thing. My bride shall wear this to the chapel, so you shall at least have some representation at the wedding!' Angelina's spirits sank and she knew that she was close to tears, but she steadfastly refused to let Hacklebury see this.

`Take it!' she said. `Take that and everything else I possess, as you surely will, but you will never have my spirit, sir. That alone, above all things, shall remain inviolate.'

`Brave words, Angelina,' he retorted, pocketing the locket with some difficulty. `Brave words indeed, but we shall see if you remain as brave after a few weeks of your new education. That new corset is only the start of things, my soft little butterfly. I haven't even started to show you the alternatives yet. You may gainsay me now, but in a few weeks from now you will come crawling to me, begging my forgiveness and willing to do anything I ask of you.'

Down in the back parlour, the wine was waiting for me and so was the radio, though it took some careful navigation to descend, as the passages and stairway were very narrow and the latter quite steep. My skirts, seemingly determined to develop a life of their own, billowed all about me, so that I could not see to place my feet, so it was a case of slowly does it and cling tightly to the bannister on the way down.

However, I finally made it without mishap, poured my first glass and turned on the radio. To my delight, there was a programme on the classical station that was just perfect for the mood of the moment - Victorian chamber music. For the next five minutes I left my wine to one side and sought out the box of candles I had seen under the kitchen sink earlier. Amelia had managed to collect several nice decorative candlestick holders over the years and there was even a small candelabra in the cupboard and very soon I was able to switch off the electric lights and survey my domain by a much softer and more appropriate light.

Trying my best to be elegant, I moved slowly back and forth between the two parlours, glass now back in my hand, savouring the music, the atmosphere, the amazing feel of my costume; everything felt just so right, peaceful and detatched, a million miles away from the normal hurly burly of life. Or maybe just a century or so away.

I can't remember what prompted me to pull open the top drawer of the dresser. Perhaps I was searching for more candles, ready to replace the ones I was now burning, perhaps I was just playing the role of lady of the house, I couldn't say now, not after all these years. However, open it I did, it stuck half way, I tugged harder and suddenly it flew out, the weight tearing it from my grasp and the contents scattering across the floor.

`Bugger!' I exclaimed, which was hardly Victorian and certainly not ladylike. I stared down at the mess in dismay: old bills, a spectacle case, several pens, some old keys, a penknife, several coiled up pieces of string - all the usual clutter that never quite gets sorted out in that sort of drawer. I placed my wine glass safely out of harm's way and, with some difficulty, bent down to try to clear up the debris.

And at that point, as I turned my head slightly, I caught the glimmer of something shining, way back there in the gaping hole that the errant drawer had just vacated. Carefully, I reached in and, hampered by the fact that I was still wearing the gloves, felt around until my fingers closed on something smooth and round. Gingerly, I withdrew it and found myself looking at what had obviously been the pendant part of a gold locket and chain.

I straightened up and took it closer to the candelabra. Yes, no mistaking it, it was most certainly gold, for the surface was worn and scratched as only real gold can be. I wondered how many years it had lain back there hidden, trapped on a narrow ledge of batten, hidden from prying eyes by that drawer that nobody ever used for anything of real importance.

Fumbling awkwardly, I managed to slip the catch and the two halves came open in my hands. Two faces greeted me, two pairs of eyes looked up at me.

`Well, hello there,' I said, quietly. `Nice to meet you both. I'm Teena Thyme, Lady of this manor. Now, I wonder who you two are - or were, should I say?'

I looked at the woman first. She seemed to have been quite pretty, in that slightly full-faced way peculiar to Georgian and early Victorian ladies. Her face was very pale - powder, no doubt - and her elegantly coiffeured hair would almost certainly have been a wig, but her eyes were gentle and I suspected that she must have been a very nice person.

The man also seemed to radiate a nice aura. He was dark haired, with quite thin features and a slightly over-long nose, but I could see that he would have been considered handsome in his day. I could just see the high collar of his jacket and the lacy cravat that seemed to have been tied just a fraction too tightly and I had a feeling, looking at the way in which his eyes seemed to twinkle, that he had not really taken his portrait sittings as seriously as the pose suggested he might.

I closed the locket again and turned it over in my hands a few times. I could make out a definite indentation inside the loop through which the missing chain must have passed and, as I examined it closer, I saw that it was an irregular oval shape, rather than the circle one might have expected. Enter Sherlock Teena.

`Someone yanked this off the chain,' I said to myself. `Either that, or it got caught up on something and the strain distorted the link before it finally broke.'

The inscription on the back of the locket was so worn that I almost missed it and at first I thought maybe I was mistaken, that it was just some deeper scratches, but no, when I held it up closer, I could definitely make out letters. It was an ornate and very old fashioned script, I saw, but what did it say?

`A.I.,' I read. `Nope, not "I",' I corrected myself. `That's a "T". So, A.T., whatever that means.' I blinked and looked closer still, my nose now nearly touching the warm metal surface. `18 December, MDCCCXX,' I now read. 1820.

`A.T., 18th December 1820. A wedding date? Birthday? Well, it was certainly my birthday, though not the 1820 bit. That was more than a hundred and thirty years out.

Perhaps, I thought, there might be further clues inside, maybe tucked away behind the two tiny portraits, but here and now wasn't the time to investigate further. It would require daylight and steady hands, unencumbered by gloves and alcohol and even then there was a risk of causing damage, which I most certainly wanted to avoid.

`Thyme,' I whispered, suddenly. `The T stands for Thyme.' Don't ask me how I knew that, but I just did and I knew it with an overwhelming certainty that took me quite by surprise. Somebody whose first name had begun with the letter A and whose last name was Thyme. Another ancestor. A relic of a Thyme in the house of a Spigworth.

Intriguing. But how could I find out more? The births and deaths records would be useless, thanks to Herr Goerring and his merry airmen, as I already knew, but maybe there would be other records somewhere. Maybe either the Spigworth's or the Thymes had been important enough to appear in old parish documents, or even under land registry records. I resolved to make further enquiries, maybe even travel up to London and scour the main public records. After all, I could afford to go wherever I wanted now and a few days off from school work wasn't going to hurt any.

But first, though, there was the locket itself. I bent down and looked under the drawer space again, though I didn't really expect to see the chain there. Something told me that the two had parted company a good while before the locket had found its last resting place. However, upstairs in my jewellery box I had the gold chain that mum and dad had bought me for my sixteenth birthday.

Locket clutched firmly in hand, I renegotiated the steep stairs and went into the bedroom. My jewellery box lay in the top drawer of the dresser and sure enough, there on top of my various cheap bits and pieces of Woolworth's junk, lay the chain. Awkwardly, because of the gloves still, I threaded it through the looop in the locket, held it up to my neck and, after a couple of abortive attempts, managed to clip the fastener in place.

`There you are!' I announced to my reflection, in a satisfied tone. `Just perfect. Back where you belong, around the neck of a Thyme female.' I raised my right hand and gently fingered the soft curves of the gold and felt a warm feeling spread through me. Yes, I was right, the locket belonged there all right. I raised my eyes to the mirror again and suddenly all the warmth vanished, to be replaced by a numbing chill that started at the back of my neck and spread upwards and downwards like a tide of ice.

`What the - ?' I began, but then my tongue seemed to thicken and my heart seemed to stop in mid beat and, as the black curtain came sweeping up towards me, the last thing I remembered, in the two or three seconds before I finally passed out, was the face that stared back at me from the ancient glass. Blonde hair, pale skin, large blue eyes. Just like me, except it wasn't just like me at all.

The hair was longer, curlier, thicker, they eyes wider and larger, the cheekbones higher and more sharply defined. There was something familiar there all right, but it wasn't my face. It wasn't my face at all!

5.

The dress the maids brought for her was of deep red satin, with even darker red inserts, the bodice cut low to leave her elevated breasts visible almost to her nipples, and tailored so that it followed every contour of her newly reduced waistline to perfection. The skirts were full and kept out by several layers of stiffened petticoats beneath, the whole of which fell to within an inch of the floor, so that only the very tips of her booted toes were still visible.

Satisfied that this was the case, Meg ordered Polly to gather up the folds of fabric and hold them clear, whilst she stooped down and carefully locked a pair of delicate ankle fetters in place, fetters that were joined together by just a handful of links, so that now Angelina could take paces of no more than a few inches at a time.

`Not that you'll get the chance to run anywhere, missy,' Meg grinned, standing upright again, `but they're there to remind you.' Angelina regarded her with total distaste, for the maid was making no attempt to disguise the satisfaction she was getting from being able to treat her so disdainfully.

`Be careful you don't end your own days in chains, Meg Watson,' she warned. `Boots have a habit of changing feet, given time enough.'

`Well, don't you go worrying your empty head about time, missy,' Meg laughed. `You'll have plenty enough time to enjoy your new fetters and finery, though it won't be satins and silks for much longer. The master is even now preparing a new nest for you - somewhere where you won't be able to cause anyone any trouble, too.'

`Down below in his accursed cellars, no doubt,' Angelina snapped. `Well, as I've already told him, you can all do your worst. You cannot cause me any further pain and humiliation more than you have already done.' Meg gave out a small snort and her top lip curled back.

`You think not, eh?' she said. `Well, you just wait, my hoity-toity madam. You just wait and see.'

How long I was unconscious I had no idea (I've since realised it was almost certainly only milliseconds, or else it was a hundred and thirty years, or both, depending upon which way you look at these things), but the moment I opened my eyes again, I knew something was very wrong.

For a start, I knew that people just don't come out of a faint all at once. First you get that groggy feeling that you're coming to the surface, then you get a groggy feeling that follows awakening, then perhaps there's some nausea, disorientation, blurred vision. Then there's usually some residual grogginess.

Tick none of the above in my case. No grogginess whatsoever.

One moment I was passing out, the next I was wide awake again. Wide awake and laying on a bed, except it wasn't my bed - Amelia's bed, whatever. This was a huge bed, high, wide and most definitely handsome, with ornately carved posts at each corner and a heavy canopy over the top. A four poster if ever I saw one, which I was just doing!

I looked down at myself next and saw that I was dressed in a deep red gown, similar in style to the one I had struggled into earlier, but definitely not the same one. I could feel the pressure of a corset underneath everything, but what a corset and definitely yet again not the one I had laced myself into. It was tighter, much, much tighter and half my waistline seemed to have disappeared somewhere.

As soon as I tried to move my head, I felt the hair, brushing my cheeks, the sides of my neck, my bare shoulders. I raised a hand to touch it and it was then I realised I couldn't use my fingers or thumbs individually.

`What the -?' Hell's teeth and little jumping tiggers, some stupid fool had sewn all the fingers together, which meant that my fingers, inside them, were now all but completely useless. I discovered the ankle fetters the moment I tried to swing my legs over the side of the bed, which was just as well, for if I'd tried to take even half a normal step without realising, I'd have been pitched headlong.

Really frightened now, I sat myself up, though "up" was a relative position, for the corset prevented me from bending my waist very far and the best I could manage was to prop myself halfway, supported by my elbows. In that position I paused, looking desperately about me, my bosom rising and falling in time with my rapid breathing. Even there, something was wrong, but it took me several seconds to realise what it was.

`You're not my boobs,' I said to them, stupidly. `I may not have had much up top, but mine are bigger than that. Were bigger than that,' I corrected myself, without even thinking about it. I paused, closed my eyes and took as deep a breath as that damned vice of a corset permitted. It wasn't very deep. I took another breath and opened my eyes again, raising one hand for closer inspection.

`You're not my hand, either,' I muttered, and it wasn't. My hands aren't large, but I do have extraordinarily long fingers, which used to make catching and controlling a netball an easy challenge. These hands were much smaller, the dainty fingers nowhere near as long in proportion.

I swung both legs around together and lowered my feet down to the carpeted floor and then extended my legs out straight and gathered up the layers of skirt and petticoats, affording myself a closer inspection of what I was now expected to stand on. Surprise, surprise - not my feet, either. Being tall, I have quite long feet for a girl and getting shoes in my size decent shoes, that is - has always been a bit of a performance, whereas these feet were, well, dainty was the word that sprang to mind. Tiny, slender and cramped into the most impossibly high heeled boots I had ever seen.

`The ankle chain's a bit of a waste,' I muttered. `Standing up in these shoes is going to be hard enough, let alone walking anywhere!' I let the billowing material fall back again and sat there, silently pondering and it was at that moment that the bedroom door swung open and a freckle faced maidservant, dressed in just the sort of uniform you'd expect to see on a Victorian maid, entered. She had reddish blonde hair and pale hazel coloured eyes and was quite pretty - pretty, but nonetheless quite squarely built and surprisingly tall, even allowing for the heels on her shoes.

`Ah, I see you're already awake, Miss Angelina,' she said. Observant girl, I thought to myself. Well spotted. I had opened my mouth to make some sort of snappy reply, to ask this ginger amazon what the flaming Norah was going on here, when I suddenly realised what she had called me. My hand flew instinctively to my throat, but the locket was no longer there. I hesitated, but I had to ask the question.

`What's your name?' I demanded. She looked at me a bit stupidly, I thought, but the answer came quickly enough, never the less.

`Polly, of course miss,' she said. `Same as it's always been. You're not trying to tell me you've forgotten that, are you?' Her expression became darker. `You ain't trying some new trick, are you?' she said. `I shouldn't, not if I was you. Meg's just looking for any excuse to flog your arse, in case you hadn't realised.'

`Meg?' The name meant nothing to me, of course. Polly looked even more confused than I felt. `No matter,' I amended, hastily. `Yes, of course you're Polly.' An idea was already beginning to form itself in my mind, an idea that was just too preposterous to even contemplate, but I had to ask the next question.

`You called me Angelina just then,' I reminded her. She nodded, without hesitation, so I plunged on in. `So, Polly, do you happen to know my last name?' The perplexed look deepened in her pale eyes, which were now taking on a green tint.

`Of course I do, miss,' she asserted. `I'm not the brightest sixpence in the bag, same as my mum always used to tell me, but I'm not that stupid.'

`Well then,' I persisted, `what is it? My last name, that is? And what year is this?'

`Why, it's Thyme, of course. Angelina Thyme.' She paused, wrinkling her forehead. `And this is eighteen hundred and thirty nine. December, in case you'd forgotten.'

That did it for me. Angelina Thyme - A.T. - and December eighteenth, 1820 was my - her - date of birth. And this was eighteen thirty nine. I was nineteen. I was Angelina Thyme. I was about a hundred and thirty four years in the wrong place and I was also, if those ankle chains were anything to go by, a prisoner here.

I fainted.

It's a peculiar thing, shock, and even more peculiar is the way it affects different people in different ways and even the same people in different ways and never with any sort of logic involved.

I mean, when old man Swann told me I was well on my way to being a millionairess, which has to be classed in the "good" column of the shocks inventory, I'd very nearly lost it on the spot, as you know. A few days later - or a hundred and thirty years earlier, whichever way you want to look at it - I come round in someone else's body to find I'm a prisoner in a supposedly long gone era and what happens?

For several minutes I act almost as if it's the most natural thing in the world, a sort of curiosity, maybe, but so what? Instead of panicking straight off and screaming the place down like a demented banshee, I take the time to examine myself, note all the little idiosyncracies, including the fact that someone had wasted a perfectly good set of ankle chains on someone who would have trouble walking anyway and greet the arrival of a perfect stranger with at least a modicum of dignity.

And then, of course, everything hit me at once and the initial shock, which must have numbed me into a temporary innuredness, gave way to the real shock and my poor old brain went into overload and tripped all the safety circuits.

I met the sinister Meg not long after I came back around again and I met her even more sinister employer, Sir Gregory Hacklebury, a little while after that and I didn't need to get all the background and history to know that I was in deep trouble. For a start, although Gregory was handsome enough in his way, it didn't need a genius to figure out that he was "not a nice person to know", as my gran was fond of saying about certain people of whom she didn't approve.

I could tell there was something about him that was actually evil, even before he opened his mouth and certainly before I began to understand my/Angelina's relationship towards him. Forget the chains and tight corset stuff, it was in the eyes, that certain something you see staring out of the faces of newpaper photographs of mass murderers and rapists. It made me shudder just to look at those eyes.

The senior maid, Meg, was only marginally better and it was plain as the nose on her rather square face that she hated Angelina with a burning intensity that could only have come from one thing. Maidservant or not, Meg Watson was madly in love with the vile Gregory and that had also gone further than just the hopeful stage and puppy dog eyes. Without a shadow of a doubt, our Meg and our Greg were shagging the daylights out of each other behind the scenes.

Things were not looking too promising, to understate the situation by several leagues. Whatever had been going on here before I arrived, Angelina Thyme had been in a pretty desperate situation and whilst I knew I wasn't really her, there was no getting away from the fact that the real Angie - in spirit form at least - had done some sort of cosmic runner and I was the patsy who was currently inhabiting her uncomfortably garbed, if somewhat pretty, body and there was absolutely no point in trying to explain the truth to this triumberate, even if Meg and Gregory were considerably brighter than the dim-witted Polly.

After all, what was I to say and what was their reaction likely to be?

`Sorry about this, Sir Greg, but my name's really Teena. I might be a Thyme, but I'm not the Thyme of your life, nor even the Thyme of your century and I just happened to have dropped into this body by mistake.' I could see that going down well - not. On top of anything else that might be going on here, I would simply be giving them all the ammunition they needed to whisk poor old Angie's body off to the nearest loony bin - Bedlam, I seemed to remember they called one of them - and with me still trapped inside it. Not a favoured option.

So, even though my head was still reeling from all this, I decided I'd have to play along, at least for the time being, but that was much harder than you might imagine. For a start, I knew nothing whatsoever about Angelina, aside from her date of birth and the fact that she was almost certainly an ancestor of mine. Where were her parents? What was she doing here? Why was she being kept chained and confined in this truly vicious corset and crazy shoes?

There was only one way to find out and that was to bide my time. Bide my time, act a bit vague and try to pick it up as I went along. And hope to the powers of time that had brought me here that I came up with a way to get me, or Angelina, or both of us, out of this right royal mess, before things got any worse than they already were and I suspected it might not be too long before that started to happen.

Time was the culprit and time was the key. I needed to buy myself some time and delay them as long as possible, whilst I meantime started to collect together a bit of data that might help throw a light or two on all this. How could I buy that time?

There was only one immediate way I could think of. Unsteadily, I rose to my feet, shuffled awkwardly around to face Meg, who had brought in a tray containing a jug of water and two slices of plain bread, threw my uselessly gloved right hand up to my forehead and, with a carefully staged whimper of alarm, threw a mock faint. No Victorian maiden ever swooned as convincingly as I did right them, but I did make sure that I fell backwards and sideways across the bed. carpet or no carpet, that floor looked hard.

`Very interesting,' Hacklebury said. He picked up the soft leather and held it to the window, grinning as the afternoon sunlight reflected off the dark brown surface of the curious garment. `Made for a Turk, you say?'

The little man sitting on the long settle nodded, removed his spectacles and proceeded to polish them vigorously on his coat sleeve.

`Yes, indeed Sir Gregory,' he said. `I have made several for the same gentleman already and several more for the gentleman who was kind enough to recommend my work to him.'

`Your workmanship is indeed excellent,' Hacklebury observed. He turned and carefully laid the garment down on the table again. `And what do you say it's called, sir?' The tailor smiled, replaced his spectacles and ran a nervous hand over his balding pate.

`A confinement suit, sir,' he replied. `The wearer is laced into it, as you can see and is thereby protected from the worst elements in whatever place you choose to confine her. Depending upon the degree of cold likely to be encountered, the suit can be made from thicker hide, of course.'

`Of course,' Hacklebury agreed. `Perhaps two or three different versions, interchangable in keeping with the changing seasons?'

`As you wish, Sir Gregory.' The strange tailor coughed and cleared his throat. `I presume then,' he said, `that you are thinking of utilising a facility that would not be heated as such? Or are you considering an open air confinement, only if you are -'

`No, not outdoors,' Hacklebury interrupted. `Not as such, anyway, but I need the subject to be kept well away from any chance of being seen by the public. I have a suitable place in mind, somewhere where she can be almost forgotten, until or unless I have further need of her.'

`I see,' the little man nodded. `Well, in that case, the hood extension will be quite valuable. As you can see, it disguises the identity of the wearer totally and there is also a facility for closing the mouth over, thus preventing speech.'

`Yes, I had noticed,' Hacklebury smirked. He paused, reached down to touch the soft hide again and appeared to reach a decision. `Very well, Pottinger,' he said, `we'll have six of these suits in total. Lightweight, medium weight and heavy weight, two in each. The light weight ones are the most urgent, but we could do with at least one of the medium weights as soon as possible, in case the weather should suddenly change, you understand?'

`Indeed.' Mr Pottinger stood up and walked across to join Hacklebury beside his creation. `If you can furnish me with the exact measurements, I can have the three items to you by the end of the week. Will you be enclosing her corsetted, or uncorsetted, may I ask?'

`Ah, corsetted, of course!' Hacklebury exclaimed, without hesitation. `Can't have the wench losing her figure or becoming slovenly. May have to produce her again and besides, she'll still have her uses. I see the suit provides for such, too.' Pottinger smiled faintly.

`Yes indeed, Sir Gregory,' he tittered. `We do try to think of all eventualities.'

There's an old saying: Least said, soonest mended. I decided to adopt that as my watchword and kept my mouth shut as much as possible, not least because I was afraid that my way of speaking might arouse their suspicions. At school we had read Shaw and Oscar Wilde and I'd acted in Lady Windemere, so I had a rough idea of how I was supposed to sound, but as the means to record speech never arrived on the scene until a few years after the period I now found myself in, there was no way of being sure, so mum was the best word, for now at least.

My swooning act worked fairly well, at least to begin with, for the two maids lifted me squarely onto the bed and, though they then stuffed a bottle of something evil-smelling under my nose and I coughed and spluttered and had tears streaming from my eyes, that was all they bothered with for a while, apart from Polly occasionally materialising to dab my forehead with a cold, wet cloth. I didn't push it too far and decided to lay there with my eyes open for most of the time, but in response to their occasional verbal promptings I just looked vaguely up at them and remained silent.

From snippets I overheard of the muttered conversations - between Meg and Gregory and Meg and Polly, as the high and mighty Greg never seemed able to bring himself to address the ginger haired younger maid directly - I gathered that they had decided that my present condition was due to the extreme tightness of my corset. Apparently, poor Angelina had been laced into it for the first time only a few hours before I drew the short straw to take on the actual long term suffering.

Well, their diagnosis suited me fine. The longer they left me undisturbed, the better and further snatches of conversations began to give me at least an outline of the situation, if not the entire picture, but then, outline or picture, it wasn't pretty either way.

Angelina's parents had apparently been killed by bandits whilst travelling in India, some years previously, when Angie herself had been a little girl. They had been fairly wealthy, I guessed, and that wealth had been left to Angie in trust. Or rather, it had been left to whichever man she ended up being married off to, because that was the way things worked back then. Or back now, as it was for me.

And that was where dear Gregory came in.

Angie had a guardian, some lord or other, but the lord had only a title and not much else, so he was quite willing to go along with Greg's scheming, just so long as he got a share of the action, no matter how small it was in comparison to the whole thing. He turns a blind eye, Gregory marries Angelina, Gregory gets her monmey, his lordship gets himself a pension to go off and get drunk on. End of story.

Except for one thing. Poor Angelina had evidently loathed Gregory on sight, something we shared in common, apart from our family name. Even then, it might have worked and he might just have worked his way around her, but that wasn't our Greg's way. No sir. Neither was he a patient man in other ways and, unable to contain his lust til the wedding night, he'd thrust himself upon Angie in her bed one night and tried to force her into a game of Hide Mr Porky. He'd got more than he bargained for, including sore balls, a set of teeth marks in one shoulder, some deep scratches all down one side and a pair of thighs that remained more firmly shut together than the gates of Mafeking when the Boers came a-calling some sixty years in the then future.

For her pains - and I could still feel some of them - poor Angelina had been trussed up in one of the cellars and given a flogging that, though it had been perhaps a bit tame by, say, the navy standards of the time, was nevertheless terrible by the stanbdards of anything she had known before and her punishment was continued in the shape and form of the very corset that was now threatening to give me a split personality.

Even worse, Angie's brave resistance and subsequent suffering were really only delaying the inevitable, as Meg was only too willing to keep reminding me. The wedding had been set for later that very week and then my unwanted groom was going to take great delight in finishing what he had previously not quite managed to start and Meg, as she assured me, was going to be on hand to make sure that the maidenhead that Angelina had cherished until now and which had now been given over into my unsolicited keeping became history with the least amount of fuss and, undoubtedly, with the least amount of consideration for its rightful owner.

In short, Gregory Hacklebury intended to rape me and Meg was going to hold or tie me down to make sure his wedding tackle didn't end up on the wrong end of a swift knee again. Well, I reasoned, that wasn't as bad for me as it might have been for poor old Angie. I'd lost my own virginity in Copsey's Woods at the ripe old age of sixteen years and three days and though it hadn't moved the earth for me, I have to say it wasn't as bad as women in Angelina's day were wont to crack on.

Of course, I'd still have to go through the physical bit all over again, but then I could and would adopt the female maxim of the day and lie back and think of England. After all, this wasn't really my body and, whilst I felt sorry for my temporarily absent ancestor, I'm afraid it was a case of "not my problem", as far as I was concerned. I was more interested in getting back to my own body in my own time and whatever I left behind here would have been sorted, sifted dead and long buried come nineteen seventy five.

Always assuming I ever made it back to my own time and body, of course. Up until this moment I had been assuming that I would somehow retrace my unexpected leap through time, but now, as I lay there considering the options and alternatives, an awful thought occurred to me. What if I ended up stuck here as Angelina for ever? After all, I had nothing to suggest that the process was reversible, did I?

No, I couldn't let myself think like that. All I had to do was make the best of things until it happened. Marry Greg, shag Greg, try to be nice to Greg, stab Greg in the guts if I ever got the chance ... no, not that. Even if I did whizz back to the present before the wheels of justice turned full circle, I couldn't leave Angie to dangle on the end of a hangman's rope, which she surely would do if I killed Greg, whatever the provocation. Women tended to get a rough deal in this century and there would be a big crowd to watch pretty Angelina Thyme dance the Tyburn Jig, I knew.

So, I'd play along with Greg and keep him sweet and who knew, maybe I'd even get out of this corset and into something a little less punitive? Good idea - that is until I realised just what it was that had finally caused Angelina to turn wildcat on him. Meg let it slip - or rather, she didn't so much let it slip as paint it in big bright letters a couple of feet high. Master Greg wasn't so much interested in my tight little front of house purse as he was in the rear doorway, to put it as euphemistically and politely as possible.

And if that doesn't paint the picture big enough for you, let me put it more bluntly. In simple terms, Gregory Hacklebury was more interested in buggering me than he was in simply having normal sex with me and whilst I'm quite happy to be a bit adventurous these days, back then, both in nineteen seventy five and in eighteen thirty nine, I wasn't at all keen on that idea.

Okay, I reasoned with myself, so you don't like the thought of it, but then, nothing's changed. It's not your body still, is it? No, I told myself, it isn't, but it's still me inside it, so no way. Now you're being hypocritical, I argued. You were quite happy for him to have his wicked way the other way, but now ...

Who says I was happy with it, I retorted, indignantly. I just said I could bring myself to tolerate it, just to ease the other problems. So? Tolerate this then. No, I can't let him do this to her body.

You'd have let him do the other.

Yes, well, but ...

The argument was quickly forgotten and, if I was still entertaining any ideas that I could have any say in the fate of my temporary body, I was quickly disillusioned and given a very painful insight into just what sort of vicious, depraved creatures my captors really were ...

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And that, possums, is as much as you get here, but I hope it's been enough to whet your appetites for when the finished book is released in July. Full details of publication, cover, prices, etc will be announced here as soon as I have them, of course. meantime, if you have any comments or reactions, feel free to mail me with them.

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