The Earl Maid

By Susannah Donim

Rob is a shy and reserved young man, but an unexpected inheritance suddenly makes him the centre of attention. His wife helps him find a way of hiding in plain sight.

Chapter 2

The Earl and Countess move into their new home, but Rob is still too shy and tongue-tied to be comfortable. Then Susie suggests a new game to relax him, using the old clothes they find in the attic.

When we arrived at the Hall on Saturday morning, Martha answered the door.

“Good morning, My Lord, My Lady, My Lady,” she said, smiling.

She was wearing a traditional housemaid’s uniform, a below-the-knee black dress with rounded white collar and cuffs, and a bib apron with frills on the hem and shoulder straps. On her head she wore a neat white crochet cap, not much more than a headband. I assumed my father had insisted on the uniform, which was distinctly old-fashioned. She was just taking hold of her skirt to go into a curtsey when my mother stepped forward and threw her arms around her.

“Oh it’s so good to see you again, Martha,” she said.

“You only saw her on Monday, Mum,” I said. “Let the poor woman breathe.”

“It’s just that it’s so nice to be back,” my mother explained. “Martha and I were great friends when I lived here, but Perry banned us from ever getting together again after he threw us out. He didn’t want her passing me information about his activities. Presumably he was afraid it would give me ammunition for divorce proceedings, maybe even getting around the pre-nup.”

“It’s true, My Lord,” Martha said to me. “He said if I ever met up with Her Ladyship, it would mean instant dismissal.”

“It was always lovely to receive your letters though,” Mum said. “You understood why I couldn’t write back, didn’t you?”

“Of course, Ma’am. His Lordship knew your handwriting and I could never be sure he wouldn’t see the incoming post before I could get to it.”

They both smiled, a little sadly.

“So are you still living in?” Mum asked. “You used to have a little room at the back on the second floor, didn’t you?”

“Not anymore, no, Ma’am,” Martha said. “I got engaged a few months ago, and I moved in with my fiancé. We have a little cottage in the village.” She smiled, embarrassed.

“Oh congratulations!” my mother said. Susie and I joined in.

“But it’s lovely to have you back here, My Lady,” Martha said. “Would you all like to follow me? Mr Smythe is waiting for you in the library.”

My mother followed confidently. She knew the way well. No doubt some redecoration had been done in twenty years, but the basic layout of the Hall couldn’t have changed. Susie followed wonderingly, goggle-eyed at the mansion of which she was now the undisputed mistress. For me, there was an eerie sense of déjà vu. I had been four years old when I was last here, but I remembered pedalling my toy racing car along the corridor from the entrance hall to the library on the ground floor of the East wing. I wondered what had happened to the little car. There was no room in Granny’s house for most of my baby toys.

I had never been allowed in my father’s library, so the huge book-lined room was new to me as well as Susie. My mother saw us gawking at the rows and rows of shelves and endless leather-bound volumes.

“Your father never read any of them, by the way,” she said wryly.

“Quite a few first editions too,” said Smythe. He was sitting at a big conference table in the centre of the room, surrounded by papers and box files, as he had been at the reading of the will. “Worth a fortune, I’d say, though I don’t think they’ve ever been valued.”

He got up and made his way over to us.

“Welcome to your new home, Lord Marsham,” he said to me, smiling.

We shook hands. Apparently no one bows or scrapes to an Earl these days, which came as a huge relief to me. He turned to the ladies.

“And welcome to Your Ladyships too, of course. May I suggest an order of business for this morning?”

Martha was edging to the door.

“Yes of course,” said my mother, “but I’d like Martha to stay, please. I think we’ll be relying on her a lot for the next few days.”

“No problem, Ma’am.”

Martha poured us all cups of coffee and we took our seats around the table.

“To summarise, the Hall and the Estate are all in good repair,” Smythe began, crunching a chocolate digestive. “Mr Johnson has made sure of that. There’s no mortgage on any of the properties and your father didn’t leave much in the way of debts. He really didn’t trust bankers. In fact, it was something of an obsession with him.”

“Quite right,” said my mother approvingly.

“But…?” I asked. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“He was exaggerating when he said he’d spent all the money, but not by much.” Smythe noticed Martha looking concerned. “Don’t worry; I’m fairly sure that there will be enough to pay out the legacies for you and the others, Martha.” He turned back to us. “But after Inheritance Tax, I’m afraid there won’t be much ready cash left. If there are any unexpected expenses, you may have to consider selling some things.”

“Surely an Estate this size must be raking it in?” asked Susie.

“Well, yes, obviously there’s a good income from the Estate’s tenants. There are three full-sized farms, several smallholdings and a number of houses and cottages. But much of that income tends to be swallowed up by property maintenance and development. Mr Johnson had been urging the old Earl to undertake various upgrading projects – new infrastructure such as drainage, irrigation channels, wind farms and solar panels, and additional modern housing out at the east end of the village. All excellent ideas I’m sure, highly profitable in the long run, and necessary to keep the Estate viable in the twenty-first century, but such projects invariably need bank loans to cover the up-front costs.”

“And Perry hated banks,” Mum said.

“Precisely,” said Smythe. “Mr Johnson was able to make good business cases for all his proposals, but the necessary loans would be contingent on the Estate putting in its share of the funding…”

“And my father spent all the cash,” I said.

“Yes. I’m afraid you would be hard pressed to raise enough to get any of the development work going now.”

“And without that modernisation, we can’t increase the income from the Estate’s assets,” said Susie.

I was glad my wife, the Countess, had a good grasp of these matters. I hadn’t a clue.

“Well, you could sell off the land near the village to private developers, I suppose,” Smythe suggested.

“Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t want to be the Earl who hacked pieces off a five-hundred-year-old Estate, if it can possibly be avoided.”

Everyone agreed. We fell silent.

“There’s no immediate hurry to decide,” Smythe said brightly. “You can’t sell anything till after Probate anyway. But if you really need money now, I can probably authorise an advance against your inheritance, and I’m sure your bank will increase your credit limit when they learn of your new circumstances. Now we have a lot to get through…”

He rubbed his hands together. He was in his element.

“First of all, here are all the keys to the house.” He indicated two enormous bunches of keys. “There is a third identical bunch in the safe. Regarding the paperwork, I’ve divided what you need to know into three headings: the house, the Estate, and the finances…”

* * *

The paperwork took most of the morning. At lunchtime, Bill Johnson came in to join us. We all sat down in the huge kitchen to a buffet prepared by the excellent Martha. With my mother’s encouragement she and Bill entertained us with horror stories of my father and his various mistresses. They had both been on the staff of the Estate for more than twenty years. My mother hired Martha straight from school, just after she learned she was pregnant with me, and knowing that she would need help. At first Smythe tried to look disapproving at the disrespectful anecdotes, but he was soon joining in.

When we’d finished eating and chatting, Martha took her leave. She explained, apologetically, that she only worked mornings now, unless she was needed for some special event. This gave her time to keep the ground floor and second floors clean, but she was sorry that she couldn’t manage the unused top floors as well.

After lunch Smythe and my mother got stuck into the pile of ‘disputed items’, which took up two ground floor Reception rooms. Meanwhile, Bill drove Susie and me round the Estate in his Land Rover Discovery.

“Your holdings include a mixture of agricultural land, commercial buildings, and rental accommodation of various sizes – mainly flats and small family houses,” Bill said, as we went past a row of smartly decorated cottages with beautifully presented gardens. He waved whenever we saw a tenant outside.

“A lot of my time is spent discussing maintenance, repairs and upgrades to buildings,” he went on. “As the Landlord, you’re responsible for a reasonable level of upkeep, but we’re always happy to discuss extensions and such like with the tenants, so long as they’ll add value to the property. If we fund an improvement, we will put the rent up proportionately. If the tenant pays for the work, we don’t do that, but we still need to make sure the design is appropriate for the building and that the work is carried out professionally.”

After a forty-minute drive round, Bill took us back to the Hall. We went in through the back gate, which was at the end of a private road from the Home Farm. He pulled into the courtyard at the rear of the building, parking in what had probably once been stables, now converted into a long low garage with room for six cars. He carefully tucked his Land Rover in next to a nearly new BMW 7 series.

“I had no idea the Estate was so big,” I said, getting out and stretching my legs. Susie agreed.

“I have an Ordnance Survey map on the wall of my office,” Bill said. “I can show you the whole layout.”

I saw Eleanor’s – now our – Audi A3 convertible parked against the far wall. I hoped she hadn’t sabotaged it out of spite. Next to it was a Dacia Duster 4x4 off roader. Presumably my father had used this when he needed to drive across fields on Estate business. It was clean; it looked like it hadn’t been out in a while. The pride of the collection was a twenty-year-old classic Bentley. It was under a dust sheet which Bill whisked off to show me. It looked fabulous, and fabulously expensive.

Bill led the way to the back entrance to the main building and his office.

“Is any part of the Estate open to visitors?” Susie asked.

“There’s a farm shop up on the main road by the South entrance,” Bill said. “All the farms and smallholdings sell their produce there. And there are a number of public footpaths and bridleways. But the Earl – beg pardon, the previous Earl – never wanted to open the Hall to visitors, if that’s what you mean.”

“Something to think about if we’re really hard up,” Susie said.

“Might as well sell the whole thing to the National Trust if we’re going to do that,” I sniffed.

“Actually, I think your father investigated that, My Lord,” said Bill, “but they weren’t interested. The architecture isn’t particularly significant and the building isn’t old enough. It’s only late Victorian. The original was early Tudor but it was destroyed by a fire in the 1880s.”

He unlocked a back door opposite the garage. We went into the huge kitchen first and made ourselves coffee. Then Bill led us into his office, a tidy little room on the ground floor of the Hall next to the kitchen. There were two desks, each with an ancient computer. An even older printer lurked on a side table.

As soon as we were sitting down, I asked a question that had been on my mind since we arrived.

“What security measures do we have here at the Hall? Mr Smythe mentioned that there are some quite valuable pieces here – paintings, first editions, jewellery, pottery, and so on.”

“Not to mention those cars out back,” added Susie.

Bill nodded. “We have a fairly standard security system,” he said. “It’s ten years old and could probably do with updating, though it has been tested and maintained annually. The outside doors are heavy duty and steel reinforced. They all have two sliding bolts as well as Yale locks. All accessible windows have deadlocks and impact resistant glass.”

“Sounds like we’ll be living in a fortress,” Susie said.

“There was an attempted burglary a few years ago,” Bill said. “They did some damage but they didn’t get away with anything. So the old Earl made some improvements. All doors and windows are alarmed. There are four zones: the first and second floors in each wing – that is, the family living quarters; the garage; and then the rest of the main building. The garage is on a separate system. Whenever you go out, you should alarm all four zones, and when the last member of the household goes to bed at night, they should set the alarms for everywhere except the second floor living areas. When the alarm is tripped, you have one minute to switch it off before it starts making a very loud clanging noise and a call is automatically made to the local police station. I’ll show you where the control panels are and give you the codes.”

“What about outside?” I asked. “CCTV? Motion-activated floodlights?”

“No and no. As I said, it’s an old system.”

“What about the front gate?” It was a tall wrought-iron affair with nasty-looking spikes at the top; virtually unclimbable, I’d have thought. “It was wide open when we arrived this morning.”

“That was just so you and Mr Smythe could get in easily,” said Bill. “It’s normally kept closed. It has an electric lock which opens automatically if the driver has a compatible RFID card. All your vehicles have built-in transponders. There’s a keypad for a visitor to type in the entry code if they have it, and an intercom so they can call the house if they don’t. If you want to let them in, you can open either the pedestrian gate or the main gate from here. They both open automatically when approached from the inside to let people out. Oh, there’s also a card reader on the gate like on hotel room doors. So you can give someone a card but disable it later if you don’t want them to be able to get in anymore.” He chuckled. “The old Earl broke up with several girlfriends that way.”

“Charming!” said Susie. “Your Dad seems to have been a delightful person,” she said to me. “They couldn’t have made a mistake with that paternity test, could they?”

“What about the perimeter fence?” I asked. “Could someone just climb over if we don’t open the gate for them?”

“Not easily. There are tall, dense hedges and/or barbed wire all around the Estate.” He paused. “May I ask: are you expecting trouble, My Lord?”

“No, no, not specifically. It’s just that Eleanor and her brother were obviously very upset by the will, and then by being evicted. I suppose they might try something.”

“I understand,” he said. “Between ourselves, sir, we were all glad to see the back of the Beckett family. Your father wasn’t the only spendthrift here.”

I smiled. I liked Bill’s candour. We turned to discuss his role as Estate Manager.

“There is quite a lot to do. I have a secretary who helps me with the filing,” he explained. He indicated two steel cabinets. “She comes in two mornings a week. Like the others, I’ve been expecting to retire soon, so I’ve made a list of everything I do for the Estate. The files are under much the same headings.”

He handed me a sheet of paper. I sat down in the secretary’s chair and skimmed the list, Susie peering over my shoulder. Before I got bored I saw:

• Oversee the development of the Estate, to make sure it’s being effectively run to meet the Landlord’s objectives;

• Organise repairs and maintenance;

• Keep up to date with legislation and regulations that affect the Estate;

• Deal with contracts for all services;

• Manage buildings and renovations projects;

• Carry out financial planning for a project and control the budget;

• Plan, commission and manage the work of contractors, such as building services engineers, gardeners, tree surgeons;

• Redevelop sites as required, e.g. in preparation for a new use;

• Communications to inform and engage the local community;

• Work with the tenants to keep them up to date on developments or potential issues;

• Carry out marketing activities (e.g. Social media communication to build a positive image for the Estate, improving public perception and encouraging community engagement).

“Wow, that sounds like a lot of work!” said Susie.

“Yeah, I hope you’re not expecting to retire any time soon, Bill,” I added. “I thought I might take on management of the Estate myself, but this is pretty terrifying.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad once you get used to it,” said Bill. “I have no formal qualifications. I learned on the job. I’m sure you can too, sir. We get Mr Smythe to do all the contracts, but they’re pretty standard.”

“Well, you’ve a job here for as long as you want it. In the meantime, how about I shadow you through everything you do for a while, whenever I can get time off school? Then maybe when you retire, I could retain you on a consultancy contract?”

“I’m sure that will be fine,” he said, smiling. “Thank you.”

And so it was agreed.

We went back into the house. Smythe had left and my mother was working her way through what looked like a roomful – two rooms full – of junk.

“Most of it’s junk,” Mum confirmed, “but Perry gave me that necklace and the matching earrings for our first anniversary. When we were still speaking to each other,” she added sadly. “I was angry and upset when we left and I didn’t think to take them with me, but it still steams me that that woman has been wearing them for the last fifteen years!”

“They’re lovely,” said Susie. “They look expensive.”

“I think they were, but Perry was old-fashioned. He didn’t think it was proper for the recipient of a gift to know how much it was worth.”

“It might be a good idea to have them valued,” I suggested. “In fact, if you’re planning to let Eleanor have anything else in here, we should get a professional opinion on a few more pieces – like those vases, and the crystal on the sideboard over there, and that cutlery set…”

“You’re right,” my mother said. “Perhaps Mr Smythe can recommend someone.”

* * *

I gave in my notice at the school. It was a little risky if the Estate turned out to be poorer than anyone expected, but I would leave in two months, at the end of the summer term. I wouldn’t miss the little horrors and the adolescent prototype thugs in the least. Susie wanted to ‘carry on soliciting’ (as she put it) at least until she was fully qualified. She would make a decision about her career then. We could probably manage on her salary, if push came to shove. In the meantime, she had appropriated the Audi A3, as the Dowager Countess hadn’t passed her test yet. Susie loved screaming to and from the office, dodging tractors and annoying cyclists.

I started driving lessons. We got ‘L’ plates for the Duster and Susie took me out every day. There were lots of private lanes round the Estate where I could build up my confidence before being exposed to the public roads.

All our spare time was spent learning about our new home and the responsibilities that went with it. I concentrated on the Estate, to prepare myself for when the excellent Bill decided to leave. He took me round all our tenants, introducing me as the new Earl. People seemed glad to see me, and were very hospitable, but I was uncomfortable with all the attention. Suddenly becoming a member of the nobility hadn’t made me any less shy.

Susie worked to understand our finances, supported by Smythe, Bill again, and Martha. She spent nearly a month of late nights and washed-out weekends; hundreds of e-mails; and many lunch hours meeting bankers, accountants, and inevitably the worthy (if pompous) Mr Smythe. Finally she convened a Sunday evening meeting of all us new nobles (i.e. me, Mum and herself).

“I think I know where we’ll stand after Probate. I’ve run all the numbers,” she said, pouring us each a glass of decent claret from my father’s – that is, my – wine cellar. “The Estate more or less breaks even; that is, the income from the tenants balances the running costs. It generates a small surplus during the summer months, but that’s wiped out by heating expenses during the winter. The biggest cost is the Hall itself, of course. It’s recently been refurbished but it will still be very expensive to run. The insurance premiums are massive too.”

“What about ready money?” I asked. “Was Smythe right? Is there anything left?”

“Yes, but as you know, the Executor must first pay off all debts before the beneficiaries can access any of the Estate’s assets. What made it simpler to calculate was your father’s hatred of bankers and his reluctance to borrow. Unfortunately, he also seemed to be determined to spend everything he had, rather than let his heirs get their hands on it. After paying the legacies to Martha and the others, I reckon we’ll have just under fifty thousand in ready cash or easily accessed deposit accounts – cash ISAs and so on.”

“Fifty grand?” gasped my mother. “That’s a fortune!”

“Not really,” said Susie. “It would only take a couple of unexpected bills on a house this size to wipe it out. Everything’s OK at the moment, but it’s an old building. Who knows when it might need a new roof, or a boiler? What if the cellars flood? We can’t afford to draw down on that reserve for our day-to-day living costs.”

“Is it enough to pay our share of one of Bill’s modernisation projects?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” she said. “I looked at his proposals. The numbers were in the hundreds of thousands.”

“OK, I get it,” I said. “We need to keep as much as possible as an emergency fund, so we may have to find new sources of income to live on. I’m not having the Dowager Countess going out cleaning again.”

Mum grabbed my hand and gave me a grateful smile.

“That’s right,” Susie said. “After you leave at the end of term, we’ll only have my salary. And we both have student loans, don’t forget.”

“What about pensions?”

“Your father didn’t have any.”

“Nor do I,” my mother said glumly. “I could never afford to pay into one.”

“I suppose I could withdraw my notice; try and get my job back…”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Susie said. “Firstly, you hate it; secondly, Bill really wants to retire, and if you take over, we’ll save his salary. You won’t have the time to run the Estate if you’re back at the school.”

“Yes, I really enjoyed going round with Bill, apart from the – you know – meeting people part.”

“Should we start thinking about selling stuff off?” Mum suggested. “Jewellery, those First Editions, maybe even land?”

“As a last resort, yes,” Suzie said, “but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. We would need Smythe’s permission to sell anything before Probate anyway. He’d probably agree, but then the cash from the sale would be subject to Inheritance Tax. Of course, if we wait till after Probate, it could be liable to Capital Gains Tax.”

“Would that be better?” I asked.

“Hard to say. Most antiques would be classed as ‘tangible moveable property’, or ‘chattels’, and any gains arising will be exempt from Capital Gains Tax as long as the sale proceeds are £6,000 or less, but some of the things we could sell would be worth much more than that.”

“We should get rid of the Bentley as soon as possible,” said my mother firmly. “I hate it. It stinks of privilege.”

“Agreed,” I said. “And why do we need it? We’ve got the Beemer 7 series for when we need a posh car.”

“You’re probably right,” Suzie smiled. “Private cars are exempt from CGT unless they’ve been used for business. I’m not sure how much the Bentley would be worth. An ordinary model of that age may be worth only about ten grand, but if it’s one of the classics, it could raise as much as a hundred thousand.”

We paused to think about what Suzie had said.

“We don’t have to do anything immediately,” I said eventually. The others nodded. “But we should all think about ways we can use this place to raise money…”

It helped that my mother had no difficulty renting out her little house. I insisted that all the income went into her bank account, and she insisted that in that case she wouldn’t take any money from the Estate by way of maintenance. Rent free accommodation was more than enough for her, she said.

* * *

So now we had to get used to our new lives. Apart from our accommodation, not much changed for us at first. That their Maths teacher had become a member of the aristocracy was a nine-day wonder to the kids in my classes. It certainly didn’t improve their behaviour (or their algebra).

There were five weeks to go to the end of the summer term, which for me mostly meant exams and marking. I also took my driving test and amazed the ladies in my family by passing first time. Susie immediately claimed the credit for being such a good teacher. My mother agreed. We opened a bottle of champagne as I ceremonially tore the ‘L’ plates off the Duster.

The new Countess awarded the trophies at the school Sports Day. Susie dressed in a very ‘county’ twinset and pearls, with an absurd floral hat. She was still gorgeous, but she looked quite a lot older, more mature, as I delighted in informing her. She insisted her outfit was ‘ironic’.

There was also a School Play at the end of term. I had foolishly mentioned in the Staff Room that I had done some ‘Am Dram’ at Cambridge, so I was roped into being the Assistant Director, which meant I did most of the work. We put on Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular, although the headmaster thought it was a bit risqué. A couple of the kids displayed quite a knack for comic timing. It meant I actually enjoyed my last month at the school.

Meanwhile Susie carried on soliciting at Wainwrights. But it wasn’t long before the news of the changing of the guard at Hadleigh Hall filtered out among the local community. The demise of the disobliging and antisocial old Earl, and the arrival of an unknown new one, accompanied by a beautiful and charismatic Countess, generated a lot of local interest. Invitations started to pour in to open this and present that.

At which point I began to hate being the Earl. I was too shy to be a public figure. I went along to a few events, totally tongue-tied, serving no purpose except to deter smarmy male members of the county set from trying it on with the beautiful young Countess.

It wasn’t long before I started sending my regrets. Susie sympathised but she had taken to her new life like a duck to water. When she went to speak at the Young Conservative Association dinner dance, or launch the first boat at the Yacht Club Regatta, I sat at home, worried that her resistance to rich, plausible scoundrels might be weakening.

Eventually, in bed one late night after her return from another posh shindig, I shared my concerns.

“Don’t be silly,” she laughed. “Those braying idiots are nothing to me – except when their fathers are clients of Wainwrights, of course, in which case I’ll dance with them and pretend I can stand their company.”

“Still, maybe I should come to more of these dos…”

“Why? You hate those things! Don’t you trust me?” She laughed at my wretched expression. “Look, I have nothing in common with those horse-faced idiots.”

“I just wish I had their confidence…”

“Hush! I love the strong, silent type.”

She clambered further up the bed, threw her arms round my neck and plonked her head on my shoulder. I put my arm round her. Nothing more was said.

* * *

Susie was soon in demand, opening fêtes, judging fruit and vegetable shows, and giving the prizes at Speech Days. She also quickly built up a network of useful contacts. Best of all, the Partners at her firm recognised her potential value to them. They gave her time off to do Countess-type things. Then when she passed her exams with flying colours, she was quickly made an Associate Partner. It meant she would get a space for the Audi in the underground car park in the basement of their office building.

“Can’t have a Countess as a junior clerk,” smirked Old Mr Wainwright, her boss, who was clearly an unapologetic snob.

He was probably afraid she would leave and take his best clients with her.

* * *

Eventually the summer term ended and I was free – free and unemployed. One bright Friday morning, while Mum was out shopping with Esme (who insisted on calling her ‘My Lady’), and Susie was beavering away at whatever it is an Associate Partner does in a solicitor’s office, I wandered round the huge building that I now owned. I began to feel the stupidity of the whole experience. We would never occupy more than half of this ridiculous, anachronistic edifice, not unless we had a ridiculous number of children.

The house was built in a ‘U’ shape, the ground floor within the ‘U’ being a ‘Great Hall’. It was a sizeable open space with distinct possibilities. We could hold dances here, or exhibitions, or… something. There were serving hatches through to the kitchen along the back wall, but it looked as if they hadn’t been opened for quite a while. The edges and hinges had been painted over. The main reception rooms on the ground floor were down the sides of the open space with the kitchen (and Bill’s office) behind it at the back.

We mostly lived in the big drawing room at the front of the East wing. The walls were painted a brilliant white, making it the most modern and cheerful room in the whole building. At one end there was a decent-sized dining table with six chairs. This was a much more practical place in which to take our meals than either the Great Hall or on benches at the long table in the kitchen (originally for the staff). At the other end of the drawing room was a modern three-piece suite, grouped around a home cinema with a sixty-five inch Ultra HD screen fixed to the wall, and a five speaker surround sound system.

Under the TV screen there was a beautiful old fireplace with antique coal scuttle, tongs and poker. It was all fully functional but since my father had put central heating in all the main living areas twenty years earlier, the fireplace and all its tools were strictly ornamental. The mantlepiece above was painted white to match the walls. There was a very cool carriage clock which was probably worth quite a few bob, and various other objets which my father and Eleanor had apparently considered d’art. We thought they were hideous but we hadn’t gotten round to dumping them.

The wings either side of the Great Hall were independent with separate staircases for members of the household at the front and for the servants at the back. Mum took the East wing. She was afraid the West wing would remind her of her time with my father. There was no connection between the wings above the ground floor. Each wing had three bedrooms on the second level and three more above them at the top of the building. There was a communal bathroom on each floor and the largest bedroom had an en suite. I did a quick calculation. Two bathrooms on each floor in each wing, making eight in all. Wait – there was a bathroom in each wing on the ground floor too. That’s ten – seven more than the total number of permanent residents of the house. So queuing up for a bathroom would be a thing of the past. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of plumbing that could go wrong.

I made my way up to the top floor of the West Wing, our side of the house. I didn’t think Susie had been up to this floor yet in either wing. I had only been up there briefly before and had quickly been put off further exploration by the amount of clutter. I made a mental note to call a house clearance company. Though maybe Susie would like to browse through it all first…

* * *

When Mum got back from the shops she had exciting news. She was just winding up to tell me when Susie returned. She had brought some work home for the afternoon, so the three of us could have lunch together.

“Esme’s son and daughter-in-law in America have invited her to visit,” Mum began. “They’ve been trying to get her to go for years, but she didn’t like the idea of travelling all that way alone. Now that I’m free, she wants me to go with her. Her son has a big house, so there’s plenty of room. We won’t have to pay for a hotel.”

“Fantastic!” Susie said. “You must go. You’ll have a wonderful time.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “You deserve it, Mum. You haven’t had a proper holiday for years.”

“Are you sure we can afford it?” she said.

“Well, we’ll only have to cover your flights and some spending money, won’t we?” I said. “That’s a couple of thousand at most. We can probably pay for it on my new credit card. We must get you one too for your expenses. You have the rent from our old cottage and I’ll talk to Mr Smythe about releasing a little money from the Estate. He did say that would be possible. You should be better off than when you were relying on what my stingy father was giving you.”

“It would be nice,” she said wistfully. “Esme’s son lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He works at CNN. Their head office is there.”

“When does she want to go?” Susie asked. “It’ll be hot there in August.”

“We talked about mid-September.”

“Well, let’s start planning your trip then,” Susie said excitedly. “You’ll need lots of new outfits.”

“I don’t even have a passport…”

I left them to it, hoping that our fifty grand ‘emergency fund’ would survive the Dowager Countess’s trip to the New World.

* * *

Not long after my mother’s departure for the Colonies, Martha had an announcement to make. She was pregnant.

“To be honest, I thought I was too old,” she said. “I’m so sorry to be letting you down.”

“Good heavens, sweetie,” said Susie with a smile. “You don’t have to apologise for wanting a baby! It’s wonderful news!”

“It certainly is,” I agreed. “I hope you’ll consider us when you’re looking for godparents!”

We moved in for a three-way hug.

“Davey and I are planning to get married early in the New Year when we hope your father’s legacy will have come through, My Lord,” she said. “So I’d like to keep the pregnancy just between us for the moment, if that’s alright. I know it’s silly in this day and age, but some people are still a bit funny about women who get pregnant before they’re married.”

We assured her we understood and would keep her happy condition a secret for as long as she wanted.

“I should be able to stay on until you can find a new housekeeper,” Martha said. “I won’t have to leave for a good while yet, although I might not be able to get into my uniforms in another month or two!”

* * *

The weekend after Martha’s big announcement Susie and I finally managed to make a start on the third-floor bedrooms. We set ourselves a schedule: one room a day. If we were able to keep to that, we would get everything cleared in four weekends. So at half-past ten on the Saturday morning, armed with a vacuum cleaner, a dustpan, bin bags, and several brushes, we started up the stairs to the top of our wing.

“I thought you’d done some reconnaissance,” Susie grumbled as we arrived on the third floor. “The landing is full of junk too. That’s going to wreck our schedule.”

“I didn’t really notice,” I said. “I just walked past all this lot to look at the bedrooms.”

We made our way into the largest room. There were endless cardboard boxes, battered suitcases, tatty books and magazines, toys, board games, old vinyl records, dusty furniture, curtains, clothes and shoes. I was sad to find my little pedal car was there, broken beyond repair, presumably smashed by my overweight half-brother. There must have been several generations of Marsham family junk – none of which meant anything to the three of us. We had no loyalty to the Hadleigh legacy.

We started dividing everything into piles: ‘Keep’, ‘Dump’, and ‘Think About It’. Anything we thought my mother might like went into the last pile. Quite a lot of framed portraits – both photographs and paintings – went there. They were almost all complete strangers to me of course, although there were a few pictures of my father. At least I thought it must be him. The face was vaguely familiar and the dates on the backs were about right.

“Your Dad was very good-looking,” said Susie, who had come up to see what had caught my interest. “No wonder your Mum fell for him. Those photos of him when he was in his teens are very like you at the same age.”

“He was quite a bit bigger,” I sighed. “It’s a pity he wasn’t as good on the inside as he appears on the outside.”

“Well, his son is both,” she said affectionately, nuzzling my neck. “I’m a very lucky Countess.”

We decided to use the big bedroom as the repository for the ‘Think About It’ pile and the landing for the ‘Definitely Dump’. It took us the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon to process both, with a short lunch break. We had only a tiny ‘Keep’ pile, which we decided could go in the small back room, which was directly above Martha’s old bedroom. When we made our way in there, each of us with an armful of stuff, we found it was full of clothes. There were two wardrobes, one packed with men’s suits, the other with ladies’ dresses. From the styles, I guessed the oldest probably dated back to Edwardian times or even earlier. The most recent were from the nineteen-fifties.

“You know who’d like these?” I said. “LADS.”

“Good idea,” she said. “They want you to be a Patron, by the way. A letter came from the secretary this morning. I’m not sure he was aware that the new Earl was Juliet’s old Nurse.”

“Maybe someone at the school noticed I was involved in Am Dram. Anyway this lot could save them a fortune in costumes. Do you think Polly Whitmore will have room for them all somewhere?”

“Dunno, but some of these clothes are pretty old. They may be too delicate to be used in a play. Let’s have a closer look.” She reached for a very pretty pink and white dress. “Oh I must try this on!”

“Careful!” I said. “You might damage it.”

“So what? If the material has perished, it’s only fit for the dump anyway.”

She was stripping her top and jeans off. I took the dress from her and held it up to the light.

“When would a woman have worn something like this, do you think?”

“It’s a tea party dress; day wear; probably about 1900 to 1910. They usually wore vintage-style cotton, chiffon or lace. Typically they featured large puffy sleeves, a narrow waist and full hips with a flared skirt.”

“Wow!” I was impressed. “How did you know all that?”

“My Gran was really into fashion when she was young. She learned it all from her Gran and was keen to pass it all on to me. I once thought about going into fashion.”

“I did not know that.”

“Well, I grew out of it. I realised it would be too hit and miss for a career – like show business. The law may be boring but it’s steady work and it pays well.”

She was pulling open drawers from a tallboy chest next to the wardrobe. They were full of accessories: aprons, gloves, shoes, hats, parasols and shawls. Susie grabbed a particularly fearsome-looking white undergarment.

“I’m going to need your help getting this corset on. You can be my lady’s maid.”

I laughed and continued opening boxes.

“Why on earth would you want to wear one of those things?” I said. “Your figure doesn’t need any shaping. It’s perfect as it is.”

“Aw, thanks, babe,” she grinned. “But corsets are dead sexy – wait till you see me. Anyway, even I couldn’t get into one of these Edwardian dresses without a corset. Come and help me.”

“OK, coming.”

“Hey, talking of maids, look at what I found here – maid uniforms!”

“There used to be several maids here when I was little. Those must be theirs,” I said, reminiscing. “They were all very nice to me…”

I remembered tall ladies in long black dresses playing with me, pushing me on the swing in the back garden, pulling my little car around the corridors. I now knew they must have been Helga and Martha, and there might have been others.

“Come on then, strip off,” said Susie in an authoritative voice. “A maid should be in uniform when she’s helping her mistress get dressed.”

“No way! I don’t have a mistress; I’m a bloody Earl!”

“Earls can have mistresses. Your father certainly did. Come on, you can pretend. It’ll be fun!”

“Don’t be daft!”

“Think of it as an overall – our clothes are getting filthy up here. Anyway, your mother wasn’t too proud to be a cleaning lady. Who do you take after – her or your father?”

I laughed. She knew I was nothing like my father, but that didn’t mean I was like my mother.

“You even worked as a cleaning lady once, didn’t you?” she said slyly.

“Cleaning boy, you mean.”

“There’s no such thing. You were just a male cleaning lady.”

She was referring to the horrible time when Mum fell off her bike and broke her wrist. I had to help her with her cleaning job or she might have lost her clients. We were just lucky it was the school holidays so I was available. We went round the houses she had to clean together. She did what she could one-handed and I did everything else. I was thirteen. I quite enjoyed it, as long as I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I was even more self-conscious then.

Susie was the only one of my classmates I told when she asked me what I planned to do over the summer. I immediately wished I hadn’t told her. I was sure she would tell everyone else and I would be teased to within an inch of my life. But to my surprise, she kept it to herself. It was around then that she and I stopped pretending to hate each other.

“It was what you did that summer that made me realise you weren’t so bad after all,” she said. “Come on, put this dress on. Whoever it belonged to, she was a big woman. It should fit you.”

I sighed. “OK, but you’re going to be the maid tomorrow,” I said.

“Deal!” she said undoing the buttons of my shirt. “You can be the Countess.” I sneered. “No, you’ll have to be. Maids don’t help their masters get dressed, just their mistresses.”

“I’ll just stick with being the maid then. That clobber you’ll be wearing looks too complicated.”

“Fair enough. Now come along, Martha; I’ll help you get dressed, then you can help me.”

“Martha?”

“After our favourite maid. It’s a good name, isn’t it? And I can hardly call my maid ‘Robert’, can I?”

I finished undoing my shirt. While I was doing that, she reached to unzip my trousers.

“Whoa, you’re in a bit of hurry, aren’t you?”

“I just can’t wait to see you in this uniform. I’ll bet you look great!”

But I didn’t. She dropped the long black dress over my head. It reached down to my calves. It was all baggy and droopy and I looked stupid.

“Hmm,” she said.

“This dress is completely shapeless,” I said. “Help me get it off.”

“It’s not shapeless; you are. You need a padded bra, and maybe a girdle. Pity you don’t still have that shapewear you wore as Juliet’s Nurse. Come on, let’s go back to our bedroom. I’ve got some old things I’ve been meaning to throw away. They should work for you.”

She set off down the stairs.

“This is going a bit far, isn’t it?” I said, following grumpily. “I never promised to put on any women’s underwear. Anyway, that will take all day. We’ve still got lots to do.”

“Nonsense! Five minutes. Bring that old suitcase – it’s got aprons and caps and things.”

I carried the case down to our bedroom. Susie had upended a black binbag of things intended for the charity shop onto the bed, which was now covered in her old underwear. I spent an embarrassing and frustrating fifteen minutes struggling to get into her old bras and panties, but to Susie’s frustration nothing came close to fitting. She’d stretched it out but nothing like far enough. It was something of a relief that I would not be spending the rest of the afternoon in drag.

“Hang on,” she said, apparently in a moment of inspiration. “I’ve got another idea.

“So I’ll just wait here then, shall I?” I called to her retreating back. “In my underpants?”

“I think there are some vintage bloomers in the suitcase,” she called back. “You can put them on. They might keep your legs warmer.”

I didn’t know if she was serious. It wasn’t cold. But I had a look through the suitcase; there was a garment as she described. I shrugged and dropped my underpants. I stepped into the bloomers, half-expecting them to be too tight, but no. I managed to pull them up to my waist.

Susie returned with an armful of underwear. She stopped when she saw me and laughed.

“Very nice,” she said. “Antique cotton, or linen; possibly cotton lawn? Same period as my dress, I should think. Late Victorian or early Edwardian. There’s probably a drawstring to secure them at the waist. Yes, here it is.” She pulled it tight and fastened it in a bow. “There’s a flap at the back, by the way, with buttons, so you can… you know.”

“Yeah, well, when I need to go to the loo, I’ll take them off, thanks.”

“They have gorgeous broderie anglaise trim.”

“Terrific,” I said sarcastically. “Why are we doing this? I feel stupid already and I haven’t even got the dress on yet.”

“Because we can. Because it’s fun. Because we’ll never get the chance again if we give all these old clothes to LADS. Anyway, you like dressing up. You’ve been Lady Bracknell as well as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. I would have thought being Martha was right up your street.”

“Most of the parts I played in my Am Dram years were men, and it was just acting – which you insisted I did to cure my shyness – which it didn’t.”

“No, we’ll have to keep working on that, won’t we?”

She picked up a lacy white bra that was clearly much bigger than any of hers.

“OK, if we have to do this, can we get on with it?” I sighed.

“Come on then,” she said. “Put your arms through the straps. I’ll fasten it and find something to stuff it with.”

I obliged. Then a thought occurred to me.

“Hey, where did you find this lot anyway?”

“It’s old stuff of your mother’s. Don’t worry; it’s clean.”

“What? You’ve been raiding my Mum’s underwear, and you want me to wear it?”

“Don’t fuss. She bought all new lingerie for her trip. She was throwing this lot away. I got it from the other bag I was going to take to the charity shop. There – it fits you very well.”

She stood back in triumph. Then she started stuffing the bra with pairs of panties.

“And whose are those?” I asked testily.

“Mine, but don’t worry. They’re clean.” As though that was all I was concerned about. “Now let’s get this girdle on you. Then a little more padding will give my maid a nice curvy, feminine shape.”

Well there wasn’t much point in objecting now, so I let her have her way.

“Surely a woman wouldn’t wear a girdle over bloomers like these, would she?”

“No, no, bras and girdles didn’t come in till the 1930s, and you wouldn’t wear long knickers like these with a girdle anyway, but you need it to give you a proper female bum.”

Between us we eventually managed to pull the thing up over my bloomers. It had suspenders but I couldn’t get stockings on without taking the bloomers off, so they just dangled impotently. Then Susie started cramming more knickers – hers and Mum’s – down it until it was on the point of bursting. I felt like a cushion had been forced down my trousers, like a schoolboy anticipating a beating. I also thought my wife had too many knickers.

“You won’t believe how tight I’m going to tie your corset today, Madam,” I said. She just laughed.

“In 1905 a maid would wear a starched cotton petticoat under her dress, but I didn’t see one, so you can wear this old slip of your Mum’s.”

“Gee, thanks.”

I allowed her to drop the slip over my head and pulled it down to smooth everything out.

“Might as well add a little make-up as well,” she added, casually.

“Hold on a minute…”

“Ssh, Martha. Pucker up.”

She had smeared lipstick all over my mouth before I could stop her, swiftly following that with mascara.

“To make my pretty maid’s eyes pop,” she explained.

When I was fully underweared and made up to Madam’s satisfaction, she dropped the maid’s dress over me again and it definitely hung better. She tied a white half-apron around my waist. I even had a noticeably hourglass figure. I couldn’t move much because of the tight underwear, but at least I looked good.

“You’ll need to be careful not to let your ankles show as you move about, Martha dear,” Susie said, giggling. “Edwardian maids would never do that, and you’d be exposing your hairy legs. Now the finishing touch.”

She reached up and pulled a mob cap down over my head.

“This will keep the dust out of your hair,” she said. “These rooms are filthy. I don’t think a maid’s been up here for years – until now, I mean!”

“Very funny.”

She turned me toward the bedroom wardrobe mirror. If you ignored my five o’clock shadow and hairy hands, there were no other traces of masculinity. More importantly, I couldn’t see any sign of Robert Marsham, so I didn’t feel too embarrassed dressing as a maid. Surely no one would recognise me in this outfit, not that I was going to let anyone apart from Susie see me.

The Hall now had a second maid called Martha. I found my demeaning outfit strangely erotic…

“Right, Martha,” said the Countess. “You can dress me now.”

“Yes, My Lady.”

“You don’t have to call me that,” she laughed.

“Well you’re a lady, and you’re mine, so why not? You can think of it not as deference, but as a statement of ownership.”

“OK then,” she agreed. “I suppose I’d better get used to it, hadn’t I?”

As Martha, the lady’s maid, I first had to help my mistress into her underwear. This entailed quite a few layers and we had fun figuring out whether we had everything she needed and then how it all worked.

“Dresses in the early Edwardian period were much closer fitting than they had been for most of the nineteenth century,” Susie was saying. “So underwear had to become lighter and more fitted to the body, especially at the waist, to reduce the bulk under your dress.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

I wasn’t really listening. I was staring at myself in the wardrobe mirror. I couldn’t believe I looked so much like an actual Edwardian lady’s maid. My training in female movement was coming back to me. When Susie wasn’t looking, I tried a curtsey. Hmm, I needed practice.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” she said, tipping the contents of the suitcase onto the bedroom carpet. First, a pair of drawers – like yours, but mine will be silk, of course.”

“Of course.”

“This is a chemise, which you wear under your corset to protect your skin. Corsets can be rough and scratchy. Talking of which, here’s one.”

She had found a cream-coloured corset. The top was edged in a band of finely-made lace trim with two silk ribbons. It was cross-laced down the back with a tough-looking cord. Pulling that as tight as possible would be my job.

“Why would you want to squash yourself into a torture device like this?”

“You’d have to, to get into the dresses of the period. Anyway, it supports your boobs as well as shaping your body. This was before the invention of the bra, remember.”

“Well you’d never get me into one of those,” I scoffed. She grinned. “If I was a woman, I mean.”

“A serving maid like you would still have to wear a corset,” she said. “It would just be simpler and rougher, and it would usually do up with fasteners at the front, as you wouldn’t have a lady’s maid to lace you up properly. There’s bound to be a serving wench corset somewhere around. You can try one yourself next time.”

“What ‘next time’?”

But Susie wasn’t listening. She was rifling through the remaining items from the suitcase.

“Ah, this is a corset-cover. It protects the gown from the corset. I won’t bother with that. There are two petticoats here too; they add fullness to the skirt. I’ll make do with one, I think.”

“What’s that little lumpy thing, like a cushion on a string?” I asked, my interest aroused despite my misgivings.

“It’s a bustle pad. They were huge in the late Victorian era but were going out by the early 1900s. Some women wore them to round out their bum and hips.”

“Again, superfluous in your case. You’re very well-rounded.”

“Thanks… I think.” She wasn’t sure whether my comment was a compliment or an insult. “Come on! Help me get dressed, Martha.”

First was stockings. Susie remembered her Gran saying that you always put them on before the rest of the undergarments. Obviously Victorian stockings were never seen in public underneath all the layers of petticoats and skirts, but in private women loved fancy, colourful designs. The ones Susie chose were made of silk. They were grey with vertical black stripes and came up to just above her knees. There was no built-in elastic to hold them up, but we found a pair of frilly garters. She slipped them on and up her legs. By pulling their tops up above the garters, we managed to persuade the stockings to stay up. Her legs looked sexy as hell.

She giggled when she saw my mouth watering at the sight – metaphorically, of course. The garters were now pretty tight and I was afraid they might constrict her blood flow, but when I tried to slip them down a little, they wouldn’t hold the stockings up anymore. There seemed to be no way of clipping the stockings to the garters, so I was pretty sure they would soon slip down, but Susie wasn’t concerned.

The first layer of clothing was the silk bloomers. She stepped into them and turned round so that I could tie up the drawstring as she had mine. The frilly cuffs at the bottom of the legs came down to just below her stocking tops. Rather than having a buttoned flap at the back, her drawers were split to enable their wearer to use the facilities.

While I was fastening her bloomers, Susie had picked up the chemise. She handed it to me and turned her back again.

“A lady shouldn’t have to remove her own bra, Martha,” she giggled. “You’ve had lots of practice. Have at it.”

“Yes, M’Lady,” I said.

I unclipped her bra and felt a movement inside my own bloomers, despite the tight girdle. I hoped my mistress hadn’t seen. As her breasts came loose, she turned to face me again, and immediately saw the tenting in my skirt, which my apron did nothing to conceal.

“Martha!” she admonished. “That’s most improper for a maid! Get yourself under control this minute!”

“Yes, Ma’am. Sorry, Ma’am,” I said, completely unable to keep a sheepish grin from my lips. We were both enjoying the afternoon’s play enormously.

The chemise was like a light summer nightgown, a very simple pattern, knee-length, with a low square neck, tight sleeves and underarm gussets. It had a little embroidery round the neck and hem. Susie explained that the Victorians considered embroidered underwear to be indecent. After all, it’s never seen, so it should be plain. But people were starting to relax a little as the Edwardian era progressed. We mused happily over how times have changed. Susie has lots of sexy underwear and it was definitely intended to be seen.

Next came the dreaded corset. The lacy dress she had selected was less extravagant than clothes from earlier in the nineteenth century. It wouldn’t take a crinoline, for example; nor was there a protruding bustle; and nor was it as tight as a dress from the late 1870s. But it still needed a severe corset, which I took sadistic pleasure in lacing up as tightly as I could manage – just as I threatened.

Susie had to lean against the wall to stop herself from moving as I tugged on the cord. We had to pause a couple of times for her to get her breath back. Each time we checked to see if she was parcelled up tightly enough to get into the dress. All the effort and my cumbersome outfit were causing me to sweat too.

“I don’t understand,” she panted. “I thought I was slim…” Pant, pant. “Why can’t I get into this blasted gown?” Pant, pant. “And the petticoat still has to go under it. Come on, Martha! I’m sure a real Edwardian maid could do me up tighter than this!”

I rather doubted that, even though I was finding my underwear, dress, apron and especially frilly cap, emasculating.

“A woman of the time would have worn a tight corset every day since her early teens,” I suggested. “Wouldn’t that have trained her shape to fit these stupid narrow waists? Eighteen inches was the goal, wasn’t it? Very bad for the internal organs, I should think. Frankly, I’d be worried if you could get into the dress.”

“The waist on this one is twenty-two inches, I think,” she said. “Maybe twenty.”

“When did you measure it?”

“OK, I’m ready again,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Tighter!”

She leant against the wall again.

“Also, there’s modern nutrition,” I said, putting my knee up against her back. “Women today are taller, bigger… plumper…”

That just got me a filthy look. So I shut up.

Eventually I could do no more. It would need a tractor to get the blasted thing any tighter. Susie’s breathing was shallow now, as if she was only using the top of her lungs.

“This is ridiculous!” I said. “I’m going to undo this death-trap right now.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, panting even more heavily. “Let me try the dress again. Last chance.”

“What about the petticoat?”

“Ah! I don’t know…” She stopped to think. “If I put it on now, I won’t be able to step into the dress, and I can’t put the dress on over my head as my boobs are too big for the waist. I suppose that means I’ll have to put the dress on first and then work the petticoat up underneath it. I wonder how Edwardian women did it?”

So I held the beautiful, flimsy gown out for her. Susie put one hand on my shoulder and tried to step into it.

“Can you hold it a little lower, babe?” she panted. “The corset is stopping me lifting my leg any higher.”

I bent lower to comply. The basic dress was pink with white lace embellishments on the bodice and at the sleeves. The skirt was gathered at the waist and fell naturally over her hips and the various undergarments. It gave her an A-line silhouette that was almost bell-like. It had huge, puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves fitted tightly at the wrist and with small ruffles at the shoulder. There were no less than twelve tiny pearl buttons down the back which I found fiddly, my fingers being bigger and clumsier than those of most Edwardian maids.

“You won’t be able to get out of any of this by yourself, you know,” I said.

“That’s what I have a maid for,” she smiled. “You’ll be on duty for a while yet, Martha sweetie.”

Finally the petticoat; it was close-fitting down to knee level, then with a deep gathered flounce to the ankle, and a narrow ruffled extension to the floor. It was awkward to get on but manageable. Susie gathered up the skirt of her dress as high as she could and stepped into the petticoat, but after that she could do nothing to help me, tightly constrained as she was.

I slowly worked it up her body. It was a struggle getting it all the way up to her waist, so we eventually settled for having it rest just below, high on her hips. There was no elastic, of course. It had a drawstring which I tied off for her. It seemed secure enough, but there was about an inch of frilly petticoat spilling out below the hem of the dress. How on earth did Edwardian ladies put up with all this stuff? (Mind you, some of our modern fashions don’t look much more comfortable.)

“I need high heels, I think,” Susie said. “I didn’t see anything suitable up there or in the suitcase.”

“You probably couldn’t get your feet into an Edwardian lady’s shoe anyway,” I said, accurately but tactlessly.

“Yes, thank you, Martha,” she said, icily. “Fetch me a pair of black heels, please.”

Her tone made it clear that her maid had better jump to it, or she might be out on the street tomorrow without a reference. I jumped to it. I grabbed the nearest pair of black high-heeled shoes from the bottom of her wardrobe.

She lowered herself carefully onto the bed, gathered up her skirts, and raised one foot. She looked at me as if to say, “Well?”

I sighed and mopped my sweating brow on my apron. I lifted my own skirt and knelt at her feet. Helping my wife-stroke-mistress on with shoes, while kneeling in front of her dressed as her lady’s maid, was both utterly mortifying and sublimely erotic. She tried to maintain a stern demeanour but we were both helpless with laughter by the time I’d finished. I pulled her to her feet. She looked amazing, as I had known she would.

The dress was Edwardian rather than late Victorian, well after the time of Oscar Wilde, so it wasn’t really appropriate for me to say, “You look just like Lady Bracknell.”

“Damn your insolence, Martha!” she expostulated. “Lady Bracknell was an old bag!”

“Cheek!” I said back in protest. “I wasn’t an old bag. Everyone said I made a very handsome woman.”

“Well, yeah, you did,” she grinned, “but a handsome middle-aged woman. I see myself as her daughter, Gwendolen.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed. “Now I suppose you want me to do your hair?”

She passed me a hairbrush and an old-fashioned tortoiseshell comb she had found in the accessories suitcase. Soon I was brushing and arranging her hair, like a proper maid. While she was telling me what to do, she kept up a running commentary about hairstyles of the early 1900s.

“My great-great-grandmother used to wear her hair in a pompadour, which was the most fashionable hairstyle for Edwardian women. My Gran showed me pictures and taught me how to do it. My hair’s too short really; it was much longer when I was little. My maid needs to backcomb it and roll it to create the high, round shape.”

We decided not to bother with rollers but Susie showed me how to do backcombing. I wasn’t very good at it but she didn’t scold me for my feeble efforts, she just laughed. Eventually I managed to get her hair to fluff out a bit and between us we worked out how to hold it in place using the big tortoiseshell comb. When we’d finished I thought she looked like a perfect Edwardian lady, if you ignored the wayward tufts of hair that had managed to escape from the bloated beehive on top of her head, due to her maid’s incompetence.

I flopped down on our bed, exhausted.

“You look great,” I said, “like a proper Countess, but we’re way behind schedule now.”

“Oh, it’s too late to do any more today, and I’d have to take all this lot off… I mean, you’d have to undress me, Martha. Tell you what – let’s have an early dinner. As my maid you’ll be serving me of course.”

“Well, I’m not cooking, and you can open the door to the pizza delivery boy.”

We were now playing an exciting and erotic game of ‘mistress and maid’. I pottered in and out with food and drink all evening, while Susie reclined on the lounge sofa, like an Edwardian lady of leisure. But it was all in fun. She would never have demanded anything too demeaning of me, if only because she knew I would flatly refuse and the game would be over.

She called me ‘Martha’ all the time and taught me to curtsey whenever I approached her. As a result I experienced a continual, often painful, erection in my bloomers and Mum’s panty girdle (which I decided I would have to destroy afterwards).

It wasn’t all comfort and ease for Susie either, squeezed as she was into the tight corset. She could only manage a third of her pizza, and after two glasses of Merlot she had to make several trips to the bathroom, requiring my assistance each time.

At about half past nine the continual stimulation became too much for both of us, so we called it quits and rushed to the bedroom. I undressed my mistress in half the time it had taken me to dress her. She returned the favour just as quickly and our lovemaking was the longest and best either of us could remember. Susie decided that dressing-up games would be part of our repertoire from now on. I didn’t object too strongly.

There was no rush to donate our entire collection of historic costumes to LADS, was there? We held back a few of the costumes for ourselves. Some of the maid’s uniforms were too small for me but Susie could get into them, so we did our ongoing clearing of the top floor rooms dressed as two maids. I dispensed with the bloomers and wore thick black stockings to conceal my hairy legs. We told ourselves that our fancy dress kept the accumulated dirt and dust of decades off our own clothes.

“You realise this makes you the second Countess of Hadleigh in succession to work as a cleaner?” I laughed.

“What about you? You’re a third-generation cleaning lady. Not bad considering you’re actually a man!”

Unfortunately, we usually didn’t get a lot done before we’d turned each other on so much we had to stop for a little ‘relief’. Our original estimate of four weekends looked ridiculous now. Still, a good time was had by all.

I just didn’t realise what changes our silly, sexy, dressing-up games might lead to…