It was as I lay naked on the small cot bed in the ante-room at the side of his office, that Phelps, straddling me and maneuvering my erection inside himself with his right hand, told me that he wished to be married.
It was, I think you'll agree, a most inappropriate time for a proposal. Or maybe it wasn't.
Was I meant to be flattered? I dont know. I was truly flabbergasted.
It was Phelps' deft and subtle squirming as he settled me inside him which made my refusal of his proposal so disjointed and peppered with small moans.
"What?!! ...look...we cant...uh....Dammit man! Uh ...oh...mmm...No its impossible! God's law...oh...can't...no" I spluttered back.
I have no idea why I brought the good lord and his commandments into it as we were in the throes of breaking one of his big ones at that precise moment.
It might be just 3 years until the 20th century burst upon us. And even with all the modern mores and attitudes that seemed to presage this bright new age of mankind, to the despair of such stolid folk, such as myself Grandfather, this was one habit that I could never see being acceptable.
"Not to you, you stupid ass" he replied, "to Rachel" as casually as if we were gossiping over tea and scones in a Devonshire tea house. Though his crude language alone would probably have had us thrown out. Never mind the nature of the coupling in which we were engaged.
This was as forward as the normally mildly spoken Phelps had ever been with me. Even when we had buckled to with more passion, Phelps was a soft moaner rather than a filthy talker.
And I felt relief, if sprinkled with just a tiny bit of disappointment and a soupçon of jealously, at the news that Phelps wouldn't be courting me.
"Oh Rachel...ohh..of course....wait a moment? Who the Devil is Rachel?...oh..oh...do that again!!"
I'm probably not as good as judge of character as I like to think I am. But before just a minute ago I would have staked every last farthing of my grandfather's considerable fortune, that soft spoken, fastidious, delicate, almost effeminate, Thomas Phelps was definitely not of the marrying kind.
But then, any witness to this unholy coupling would decidedly say the same about me.
And I had been engaged to my wonderful slut of a fiancée myself for years now?
"She's my fiancée, or at least I hope that she soon will be...oh twitch it again! That's it! Ooohhh.."
And we both dropped the subject of Rachel to finish off what we had come here to do.
We untangled a few minutes later after I had pulsed my issue into him and he had masturbated himself to a finish on my stomach and chest and then greedily lapped it up to kiss into my mouth.
The traditional dénouement to our tussles.
As he gave me a clean linen rag to wipe down my still slick appendage and took one himself to apply another to his hind end behind a neck high dressing screen in the corner of the small room - oddly modest after what we had both been occupied with just moments before - I decided to broach again the subject of Rachel.
"So, marriage, eh?" I tentatively said, "Lucky girl."
"You sound surpised?" he said peeping over the top of the screen.
"Well..." I gestured to the dishevelled sheets on the little cot bed.
He laughed and said, "I'm looking forward to your nuptials. Whenever that might be. I'll wager I'll be wed before you."
I couldn't answer as I'd already considered that.
We finished dressing in silence.
I was adjusting my tie and he was putting on his waistcoat. He stepped close and kissed me. We spent a minute or so in this employment before, with final tweaking and fiddling we had attired ourselves suitably.
He put his hand on the door knob and said, "I can't wait for you to meet Rachel, she's a delight."
"I'm sure she is," I replied, "She must have something about her to have cast her net on you."
And we stepped through the door into his office.
He kept the small cot in the ante-room on the pretence that he would work late in his office and would find it easier to sleep there rather than go through the expense and uncertainty of hailing a hansom in the wee small hours. Especially during the dark winter months.
But the reality was that it was there for us to...well, if I may be crude about it, fuck, in.
We have an unwritten rule that as soon as we step back through that ante-room door we are all business and proper decorum. We save our physical desires for the ante-room.
In Phelp's office itself, modest in size as it was, with his assistant at a small desk outside in yet another little chamber, one that led off a stairwell from the shop space below, we got down to the reason we pretended i was meant to be there for in the first place.
To check on my investment.
And when I say 'my' I mean of course, my grandfather's.
Though it was on my recommendation - and a thorough perusal of Phelp's business proposals by the old man's agents in London - before he gave his go ahead.
For him the investment was a lot smaller than his usual ones.
But for me, who didn't actually disturb my bank balance, the investment was in prestige.
I was desperate to impress my only remaining legitimate family member and benefactor. That had not been a particularly easy task in the past. And my record was patchy at best.
That was nobodys fault but mine, being of a lazy disposition and far too much given to the pleasures of the flesh.
Now, by pure luck, I had stumbled into a situation where I was in a position to exploit both my vices and my quest for approbation. More or less at the same time.
I regarded myself, whether it was strictly accurate or not, as a part owner, a silent partner, of an exclusive gentleman's millinery business. For that was indeed what it was, a milliners. Thomas Phelps Gentleman's Milliners.
What were you expecting?
Phelps unlocked a drawer in his desk and brought out a couple of red bound ledgers and opened them for my perusal.
I stood there hand propping my chin, nodding sagely, mumbling the odd 'Hmm' pretending that I was attentively following the narration of my lover and business partner (& former manservant, but I'll get to that presently) as he pointed out long confusing columns of neatly inscribed numbers.
"Last month was lucrative. You can see here that his month has started slower, that's probably to be expected but as soon as Ascot season opens I expect we'll see a substantial increase in sales..."
He may as well have been showing me sketches of ponies for all the understanding and interest I had of those maddening digits.
I thought I knew enough to notice that the numbers in black ink greatly outnumbered those in red. And that was a good thing, wasn't it?
Or was it t'other way round?
No matter, the important thing was that my grandfather's agents, who came quarterly to check these ledgers with rigour, had so far, given the old man glowing reports of Phelps' business acumen.
A fact that had made my visit back to Scotland the previous Christmas a much less tense affair than some of those in the past. So much more relaxed was it that on at least two occasions, as the whisky flowed during the estate's Hogmanay celebrations, I could have sworn I saw the old bugger smile.
I remarked as much to my Grandfather's estate factor, confidant, closest friend and, I suspected at the time and was later confirmed - illegitimate son, 'Uncle' John McKechnie, the next morning while the whole estate nursed hangovers and sat glumly and green at the gills over a communal breakfast in the house kitchen. All except for the old man, still snoring loudly in his chamber - and was told that I was mistaken and that that London fog was "gaeing laldy" with my eyes.
I tried as much as was possible, within the demands of my actual employment at the Foreign Office, to make my visits to Phelps a monthly affair. Oft while I might be abroad on the continent, nursemaiding some elderly traveller in need, or delivering some official document to one of our embassies or consuls.
But if I was stuck in the office at the FO building, I would slink away on some feeble pretext, or sometimes no pretext at all, leaving whatever clerical work that had been stupidly entrusted with in the more than capable hands of Walter, my office companion, who was more than happy to have the disruptive and distracting presence of my good self removed so he could do the work properly.
And off to St. James Street I would go. To make sure my investment was in ascgood hands ss my plunger would indubitably soon be.
It was the following month after a particularly satisfying copulation and while once again I feigned interest in Phelps summation of the past 4 weeks trade, that there was a soft knocking on the locked office door.
Phelps always locked both his office door and the ante-room door during our trysts just to be doubly sure.
He looked up irritably and said loudly, "What is it, John?"
A muffled voice replied, "There's a lady here to see you, sir. She says she's your..um..fiancée."
There was no mistaking the incredulity in the secretary's voice on the last sentence.
He, like al most everyone else, had a difficult time believing that the always immaculately groomed and almost effeminate Phelps would have a fiancée.
He had told me he had proposed a week previously and had been accepted, as we had disrobed in the ante-room just before we lunged at each other and gorged ourselves on one another's tackle.
Up Phelps shot up and hurried over to unlock the door. He opened it and ushered in a slim elegant exquisite creature in an expensive and stunning white outfit.
She walked boldly in as Phelps following slavishly behind announced,
"Archie Simnall, may I introduce Rachel Cherryhill, my fiancée."
She extended a silken clad arm which ended in an expensive silk glove covering long fingers.
"Mr Simnall!" a husky voice purred as I raised her long gloved hand to my lips and glanced up to see a pair of mischievous dark eyes looking down the arm at me.
"It is such a pleasure to at last make your aquaintance. Thomas has told me so so much about you and how good a friend you have been to him."
This gave me a start. Not too much, I thought. "Nothing bad, I hope" and a gave a small nervous laugh.
"Nothing but the highest praise, I assure you,"
Something i thought I heard in her breathy voice gave me pause, I immediately switched to French in which I was fluent, "Do I detect an accent Mademoiselle Cherryhill? "
She replied in the same language, "You are extremely perceptive, Monsieur Simnall. I fancied my English to be flawless. Yes, I am indeed French. Or at least half French. My father was English, my mother French."
"That accent", I said, "Let's me guess, Lyon?"
"No, not quite, Monsieur Simnall, Dijon. I was brought up outside Dijon. On my mother's family's estate. But I was educated here in England. My full name is Rachel Louise-Marie D'Alençon Cherryhill . It was very astute of you to notice."
She withdrew her hand and I raised my head to look at her properly.
She was very slim, slightly too slim for my tastes, but undeniably extremely attractive, desirable even.
She wore a white bodice cut to cling to her narrow boyish figure, overlaid with a white short cut jacket, puffed out at the shoulders, sleeves long enough to fit under those silken gloves. Underneath was a long white dress flowing to the ground. In her other hand she held a small closed parasol, completely for show and uneeded under that day's murky London sky. On her head a wide brimmed white velvet hat, crown adorned by a ring of blood red silken roses, standing out in contrast to her uniformly white outfit.
This was a very beautiful, if slight, girl.
But as enchanted as I was by her, something far back in the recesses of my mind jangled gently. Something did not sit right.
She returned my appraising stare and accompanied it with a small knowing smile.
It was bold and penetrative.
Was this unflinching gaze the source of my unease?
I wasn't sure.
I knew that stare though, I'd used it myself many times in evaluating a suitable partner for erotic adventure, whether female or male, it was a predatory gaze and Rachel was regarding me as prey.
I felt aroused and self conscious at the same time.
I felt a stirring tumescence in my loins and at the same time an uncomfortable awareness that I still held the stench and sweat of my encounter with her fiance barely 15 minutes before.
Phelps was glancing from one to the other during our exchange. Trying to follow our conversation with his scant knowledge of French.
Noticing this, she explained to him, while still keeping me transfixed with that lavicious stare, "Mr Simnell was clever enough to guess at my French background, Thomas. You were indeed correct about his intelligence."
"You're English is impeccable as you are beautiful Mademoiselle," laying it on thick you notice, "It was just a lucky guess, I assure you."
This was a bit much, you'll agree, what with poor Phelps watching just feet away.
The attraction between and his future wife and myself was as blatant as it was arousing. Surely he had noticed this? He wasn't a stupid or unperceptive man.
At long last she broke away from our eye to eye and turned her head, her long pale elegant neck, towards her husband to be, "Thomas, have you asked Mr Simnall..."
"Archie, please Mademoiselle, "
That smiling gaze turned back on me for a few seconds, with an intensity that make my knees go weak, then turned again to her fiance, that long neck enticing me to kiss it and lightly bite it in some vampiric delight...take a hold of yourself, Archie, for God's sake!!
"Have you asked M...Archie... to be your best man yet?"
"No, my Dear. But theres no need to now, is there? You have deftly taken care of that." he smiled.
They both turned expectantly towards me, awaiting my answer.
Before I replied, I was suddenly certain of two things, it was the sight of than long enticing neck that clinched it.
The first thing was that Rachel wanted to bed me as much, if not more, as I wanted to bed her .
In fact it also seemed certain that some time in the very near future, somehow, somewhere, that we would both fulfill our mutual desire.
And the second thing was that Rachel Louise-Marie D'Alençon Cherryhill was a man.
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