Cara Entailed - Chapter 2

Cara Entailed

Book One - Summer of Obligation

Chapter Two: The First Application

Day 1 - The Long Border

By eleven she had learnt the four rules of the dress.

Don't raise your arms. Don't bend from the waist. Don't sit on anything low. Don't hurry. Hurrying moves your shoulders, and everything moves with them.

So, she went about like a woman carrying a full cup and spent most of the morning angry about it.

Then came the fifth instruction, delivered without explanation.

'Walk the south border. Both ways. Hands behind your head, fingers laced. Keep them there until you're told otherwise.'

The long border ran down the south side of the garden, maybe two hundred feet. The summer sky was hard blue, except for a few thin clouds. Bees were all over the lavender and the white phlox. A blackbird kept singing from somewhere in the yew and the air smelled of warm box and freshly cut grass.

Three men were working in the border. One of them looked about sixty. He had a radio on a brick beside him, turned down low. Radio 2. Some phone-in about caravans.

They saw her from a long way off.

She walked with her hands locked behind her head, elbows out, chest forward. The position pulled the dress even shorter. The thin cotton sat high on her thighs and stayed there. Gravel dug into her bare feet. A light breeze moved the birch leaves and kept lifting the hem.

Nobody stopped working, which was somehow worse. Hands kept going, heads stayed down, and they only looked up sideways, the way men do when they don't want to be caught at it. The one with the radio said, 'Morning, miss.'

'Morning.'

Behind her the path rose gently toward the house. Warm gusts came down it, carrying the smell of roses from the far bed.

The first proper gust caught the hem.

It lifted and stayed lifted - a full, deliberate second - and the air hit everything at once.

From the small of her back down she was completely bare. The full curve of her arse showed pale gold in the light, smooth and round, the cleft between her cheeks open. Her long thighs were the same colour. With her hands locked behind her head she couldn't do anything about it.

She kept walking while bees drifted past her bare legs. The blackbird went on singing.

When she risked a look back, two of the men had gone completely still. The third was studying the soil between his boots for some reason. From that distance they could see the clean-shaven skin, the bare shape of her, the dress giving them everything from the waist down.

She reached the end, turned, and had to come back past all three.

Now the wind was behind her. It kept getting under the thin cotton in short little flaps, lifting the hem higher every few steps. Warm air moved between her thighs, across the soft bare lips of her cunt, along the lower curve of her arse. She could feel herself getting wet and there was nothing she could do about it. She thought the lavender smelled stronger on the way back.

By the time she passed the man with the radio the second time, her face was burning, and the insides of her thighs were slick.

The phone-in had moved on to awnings.

She reached the low wall by the sundial and sat down, still with her hands locked behind her head. The dress was bunched up around her waist. Her bare arse met the warm stone and the patch of moss growing on it. She felt the damp give under her skin and knew straight away it was a mistake. Her knees stayed tight together. She felt ridiculous. And furious, mostly at herself.

Nell found her at half past twelve.

'You'll want to get up, miss.'

Cara looked at her. She still didn't lower her arms.

'The moss,' Nell said, nodding at the wall. 'It's wet.'

Cara stood up. The backs of her thighs and the lower curve of her arse were marked with green. Nell clicked her tongue once, pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket, and wiped her down with quick, practical strokes - the way you'd clean a child who'd sat in the wrong place. Cara stood there with her hands still locked behind her head and let her do it.

Neither of them said anything about it.

'There's lunch, miss. Kitchen.'

'Not the dining room?'

'Not for you today.'

Only then did Nell say, 'You can put your arms down now.'

Day 1 - The Kitchen

Lunch was just soup for her - and good soup, at that.

The instruction this time was simple.

'One knee on the chair. Keep it there until you finish.'

Cara looked at Mrs Dunnet.

'Is this in the Order?'

'It's an instruction from the house.'

'Section twelve only allows corrective posture during formal meals. This is the kitchen. This is soup. This is not formal.'

Mrs Dunnet didn't answer. She simply waited.

Cara put her right knee up on the wooden seat. The position opened her legs and pushed the thin cotton higher on that side. From behind, and from the doorway, anyone could see the full outer curve of her bare thigh, the smooth skin higher up, and the soft shape between her legs - enough to know she was completely bare, not enough to see everything.

She started eating.

Mrs Dunnet left.

Two minutes later one of the under-gardeners came in for a glass of water, looked once, muttered an apology, and left again.

A minute after that the daily woman from the village appeared with a question about the linen that could easily have waited. She asked it while looking just past Cara's shoulder, then left quickly.

Rory came in at one.

Wet boots, a smear of something green on his forearm. He stopped in the doorway. His eyes went to the raised knee, the high hem, the bare thigh, then to her face.

'Hi.'

'Hi.'

Four seconds of nothing.

'Can I ask what you've been doing or is that...?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?'

'It says I'm not to discuss the content of my Order. It doesn't say I can't tell you where I was. I don't know where the line is, and I've got no way to ask.'

'Ask her.'

'She doesn't answer questions in the afternoons.'

Cara kept her knee exactly where it was.

'Actually,' she said, louder, 'while someone is listening - I'd like it noted that I'm complying under protest. The posture is not supported by section twelve, and I've had no written amendment.'

Honoria's voice came from the passage, perfectly calm.

'Your protest is noted, Miss Whitlock. The instruction stands. Continue.'

Cara finished the soup exactly as she'd been told.

Day 2 - The Morning Room

The appeal took ninety minutes, and she enjoyed every one of them.

There was paper, as promised. Cream, watermarked, in a leather box, a fountain pen that didn't work and a biro that did. She sat on the floor with her back against the bookcase - the only place the dress didn't matter much - though even there it rode up when she crossed her legs and left the backs of her thighs on the cold boards.

She wrote:

APPEAL AGAINST ENTRY. Made under paragraph 19 of the Fourth Schedule, within time.

At about 07:00 on Day 1, Mrs Dunnet said 'sit down, please.' I sat. I got two days for sitting without invitation.

The difference between an instruction and an invitation is not something anyone could work out on the spot, especially when the person in charge says 'please.'

If you can't understand the rule, you can't follow it. That makes it void.

I am not saying the rule is wrong. I am saying that on this occasion doing what I was told and breaking the rule were the same action.

I don't mind being caught. I mind being caught by a trick.

She read it twice, took the word 'trick' out, put it back in, and signed it.

Then she wrote a second one on a fresh sheet:

APPEAL AGAINST ENTRY. The entry is unfair, and you know it is. You have been dead seven months, and you are still setting people up.

She folded that one small and put it in her shoe - the only place the house had not made a rule about - and took the proper one to the tray in the hall.

Day 2 - The Ruling

It came at six the next morning, before the Order, in a flatter voice. A woman reading off a page.

'Appeal of Miss Whitlock, dated the second day. Allowed in part.'

Cara sat straight up. The sheet fell to her waist and the cold hit her nipples at once.

'The appellant is right that the words could have been taken as an invitation. Mrs Dunnet is told to be clearer. One day remitted.'

'One?'

'The appellant is wrong that she could not have obeyed. She could have asked. She didn't ask because she didn't want to look unsure in front of a housekeeper on her first morning. That's vanity, and vanity is not a defence. One day stands.'

'That is..'

'The appeal was well written. Paragraph four especially. I'd have left out the word 'trick'.'

'It's a good word.'

'It's an accurate word. It isn't a persuasive one. You're not writing to please yourself.' A short pause. 'Your Order of the Day.'

She had won one day out of two and was so pleased with herself that she was halfway through breakfast before she realised she'd been graded.

Day 3 - The Application

The form was on the sideboard on Wednesday morning, face up, where the black book usually sat. Properly printed on card by a printer in Alnwick, Vale crest at the top, grey boxes ruled out. Somewhere in the last four years a ninety-nine-year-old woman had sat down with a stationer and ordered this exact thing.

APPLICATION FOR DISCRETIONARY PASS

Applicant: D. Marsh

Capacity: Estate Manager

In respect of: Miss C. Whitlock

Terms: two hours. Attendance only. No handling. Dress and effects as issued by the house.

Bond posted: £25,000

Held in escrow for the ninety days. If she finishes the full term, the money goes to her. If she doesn't, it goes back to him.

Countersignature of the other participant: R. Nevin

There it was, bottom right, in the grey box. He wrote his R like a 12. He'd done it since school. She'd seen it on eight birthday cards and one mortgage application.

Attendance only. Two hours.

He was going to hand over £25,000 to stand in a room.

Mrs Dunnet came in with the coffee.

'You may sit down, Miss Whitlock. That is an invitation.'

Cara did not sit down.

'When did he sign this?'

'I couldn't say.'

'You could. You carried it to him.'

Mrs Dunnet poured.

'Monday evening.'

Monday evening was the evening she'd stood on a towel and let a woman measure the inside of her thigh and then ran a bath and got in it. So, while she was doing that, one floor down, someone had handed Rory Nevin a printed card and a pen.

'He can refuse.'

'He can.'

'And if he does?'

'It lapses. No bond.' Mrs Dunnet set the pot down. 'And no days off, because there's no remission on a staff pass. It costs him nothing to refuse, Miss Whitlock. That's the part I'd think about.'

'I'd like to appeal.'

'Against what?'

'I don't know yet. Give me an hour.'

There was no appeal, and she knew it before she got to the morning room.

Paragraph nineteen only covered entries. An application wasn't an entry. She sat on the floor with the leather box beside her and the biro in her mouth and read the whole thing twice, looking for a way out. There wasn't one. A woman who bothered to put in an appeals process was not the kind who left doors open by accident.

She could refuse. One word, any hour, and it ended for both of them and the lot went to Gideon Vale.

She sat on the floor for forty minutes.

Then she found Rory in the gun room.

'I saw the form.'

'I can't talk about it.'

'You can talk about your own signature.'

'I've read it eleven times. It's in my Order. Not the signing. The not discussing.'

He was cleaning something.

'Did you want to?'

He put the cloth down.

'That's the question, is it.'

'That's the question.'

'Then no,' he said. 'And I'm not going to tell you what I did want, because I've been up since four thinking about it and I don't like the answer, and I don't know what to do with it.'

It was the most honest thing anyone said to her in the whole ninety days. And it was only day three.

Day 4 - 12:40 - The Front Door

'The Vales are coming to lunch,' Honoria said at six. 'They gave notice on Monday. They are entitled to give it, I am not entitled to refuse it, and neither are you.'

'Right.'

'You will receive them at the door.'

'Mrs Dunnet receives people at the door.'

'Mrs Dunnet is my housekeeper. You are the presumptive heir of this house, and in this house the heir receives her family at the door. You will use their names, show them into the drawing room, offer them a drink, and then stand where you're put. Mrs Dunnet will take the coats.'

'In this.'

'In what you are given each morning. I'm not saying that again for ninety days, so take it as said.'

A further instruction came at half past twelve.

'Hands behind your head, Cara. Fingers laced. Keep them there.'

They came at twenty to one, ten minutes early. She understood the ten minutes the second she heard the car.

Nell had put her at the door at half past and left her there. There is nothing to do at a door when your hands are locked behind your head and the wind keeps treating the dress like it's optional.

The position pushed her chest forward and took the last bit of length the hem had left. Every few seconds the thin cotton lifted off the backs of her thighs. Twice it went high enough for the cold to reach the bare cleft of her arse and the soft skin between her legs. She stood there and let it. There was nothing else she could do.

Gideon got out first.

'Cara.' Big smile. Then he saw the position and stopped on the second step. His eyes dropped - the moving hem, the long bare thighs, the pale flash the wind kept giving him - and came back up with a smile that didn't quite land.

'What a filthy wind. Is it always like this?'

'I've been here four days. So far it's winning.'

'Of course. Forgive me.' He looked again, slower. The bodice, the two clear points in it, her hands useless behind her head. 'You look extremely cold.'

'I am extremely cold. The house has its own opinion.'

'I can see that.' He handed his coat to Mrs Dunnet without looking at her. 'The dress is very much the house's style.'

'I'm aware. It doesn't leave much room for disagreement.'

'Well.' He went past her into the hall.

Petra came up slower and stopped one step below, so they were eye to eye. She didn't hand over her coat.

'How are you?'

'Radiant. As you can see.'

'You don't have to say fine.'

'I wasn't going to. I'm standing on a doorstep with my hands behind my head while the wind does a full inspection. 'Fine' would be ambitious.'

Petra's mouth tightened.

'She did this to my mother. Not this. A version of it. Nineteen sixty-eight. My mother was twenty-three. She never spoke about it. She left this house on foot in November and walked to the village.'

She finally gave Cara the coat. It was heavy.

'I'm not being kind to you. I want you to know that, so later you don't think you were being stupid.'

'Understood. Kindness was never on the menu.'

Petra's eyes went down once - thighs, restless hem, the way the cold had tightened her skin - and back up.

'It's a beautiful dress. It does exactly what it was made to do.'

'That's the problem,' Cara said. 'It does it whether I agree or not.'

Hugo came last at a half-run, got one look at her standing there with her hands behind her head and the wind doing whatever it liked, went scarlet, said 'sorry' twice for no reason, and fled past her into the hall.

Cara stayed exactly where she'd been put until someone told her she could show them into the drawing room.

Day 4 - Lunch

The entry came at ten past one, between the soup and the lamb, Mrs Dunnet standing at the sideboard with the book open.

'Miss Whitlock left the drawing room without saying where she was going.'

'I went for the ice.'

'Yes.'

'Because Mr Vale asked for ice.'

'Yes.'

'So, I was to announce that I am going to the kitchen for ice, and wait, and be told I may go to the kitchen for ice. In front of him.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Dunnet.

'Three days,' said Honoria.

Gideon Vale did not look up from his soup, and that was when Cara understood he had been hearing that voice in this room since he was a boy.

'I'd like to remit it.'

The room went quiet in a new way.

'Paragraph twenty-two. A participant may apply to remit days by accepting correction. I'm applying.'

'You've read paragraph twenty-two?'

'I've read all of it. A hundred and sixty-one pages, four days, and I don't sleep.'

'And you understand what you're applying for.'

'I understand it's three days.'

'That is not what I asked you.'

Petra had put her spoon down. Hugo was scarlet. Rory, four places along, had been looking at the cloth for about a minute.

'I understand what I'm applying for.'

'Then apply properly.'

Two seconds while she worked out what that meant. Longer while she decided to do it.

'I'd like to remit three days by accepting correction. Please.'

'Granted. Mrs Dunnet, the corner, through lunch. Miss Whitlock - face the wall. Feet apart. On your toes. Hem up. Hold it until you're told to turn.'

Nell showed her, going pink, in about six words. Wider. Wider than that. Up on the balls of your feet. Hem in both hands, all the way to the waist.

Cara stepped into the corner, went up onto her toes, and pulled the thin cotton up until it was bunched tight around her waist.

Everything below it was bare to the room.

From behind they could see the full curve of her arse - smooth, pale gold under the dining-room light - and the deep cleft between her cheeks. The stance kept her thighs slightly open, so the soft bare skin between them showed, and when she shifted her weight the outer edges of her cunt flashed pink against the gold of her thighs.

The plaster was about eight inches from her face. A hairline crack ran down and to the left. She stared at it.

Cutlery. A glass. Somebody clearing their throat.

Her calves started burning almost at once. She locked her knees and refused to let them shake.

'How's your mother, Cara?' Gideon asked, pleasantly. 'I heard she'd moved to Devon.'

'Dorset,' she said to the wall.

'Dorset. Of course.'

'She's well. She's got a thing about swans.'

'A thing about swans.'

'She feeds them. She's been asked not to.'

A small laugh moved along the table. Cara heard a room deciding to behave normally and thought: no. Not that.

'Mr Vale.'

'Gideon.'

'Mr Vale. Procedural question, while I'm here.'

'By all means.'

'Twenty-two says correction can be done in front of people who are lawfully in the house. It says nothing about people who've given notice under thirty-one. Are you here as family or as an inspector? It makes a difference.'

'Does it,' said Gideon.

'It might. Thirty-one gives you the right to watch the programme. It doesn't give you the right to sit through a correction, because a correction isn't the programme - it's a remedy under it. They're in different parts of the schedule. So, either I'm being corrected in front of someone who has no standing, or you gave notice specifically for today and I want that on the record.'

Nobody spoke for a moment.

'It's a fair question,' said Mr Finch, who hadn't said anything since the soup.

'Thank you.'

'It's also wrong. Thirty-one, subparagraph two. Observation covers all aspects of compliance, including remedies. I drafted it in 2021. I remember because she made me change it three times.'

'Ah,' said Cara, to the wall.

'You were close.'

'Was I.'

'Not very.'

She almost smiled at the plaster.

Ten minutes in, Honoria spoke again.

'Turn around, Cara. Slowly. Keep the hem where it is. Stay on your toes.'

She turned.

She pivoted on the balls of her feet with the fabric still bunched at her waist until she faced the table. Now there was nowhere to look except at the five people who had just spent ten minutes looking at her back.

Legs locked straight. Calves tight. Thighs held slightly apart. For the first time the room saw her fully from the front: completely bare, outer lips a warm rose-pink and already a little open from the stance. A small gold ring through each lip. Higher up, under the hood, a curved gold bar sat against the tip of her clit.

It was the first time any of them had seen all three.

Hugo looked once and went back to his plate like it needed studying.

Rory had turned his chair. He was watching her straight on.

Gideon set his napkin down carefully.

'I see she's had a little work done,' he said, the way someone might mention earrings. 'The gold's rather nice. Suits her colouring. The hood's a neat touch.'

Heat rushed up her throat and into her face.

She held his eyes and didn't close her thighs.

'Three days,' she said. 'I'm still waiting to hear whether they count.'

'They count,' said Honoria. 'Mr Finch is correct. Continue.'

So, she stood facing them for the rest of it.

Twenty-five minutes, then pudding, then another quarter of an hour over coffee because nobody suggested moving. Her arms burned. Her toes ached. The muscles in her thighs jumped once and she forced them still. Nobody told her to lower the hem.

Petra said something about the roof.

Hugo left the room twice.

At some point Rory's chair shifted a fraction closer. She didn't look at him.

'That will do,' said Honoria at five to two.

Cara let the dress fall. Her hands didn't work properly for a second. Coming down off her toes stung all the way up both calves.

Petra was looking straight at her. She didn't look away and she didn't smile. She just gave her the smallest nod Cara had ever received from anyone.

'Three days remitted,' said Mrs Dunnet, writing.

'Ninety,' said Cara.

'Ninety,' Mrs Dunnet agreed.

She pushed her hair back with both hands, which lifted the hem again, and she let it. 'Would anyone like more coffee? I'm told I may offer.'

Day 4 - After

Gideon found her in the hall at half past two getting his coat off the peg, which meant reaching up with him three feet behind her.

The hem went with her arms. She knew exactly what he had. She kept her arms up anyway and took her time about the coat.

'You know you can stop,' he said. 'Any hour. One word.'

'I'm aware.'

'She'd have told you that the first night. She was very particular about people knowing.' He took the coat. His eyes went once to where the dress was still settling. 'I've never understood why she thought that made it better.'

'It doesn't make it better.'

'No.'

'It makes it mine.'

Gideon Vale put his coat on, did up two of the buttons, and looked at her without saying anything else for a moment.

'That's what she used to say.'

The second card was on the sideboard the next morning.

Same crest. Same grey boxes.

APPLICATION FOR DISCRETIONARY PASS

Applicant: G. Vale

Capacity: beneficiary under the will

In respect of: Miss C. Whitlock

Terms: six hours. Handling and restraint. Applicant's guests allowed. No marks.

Dress and effects: provided by the applicant

Remission: four days Countersignature of the other participant:

Underneath, in Mrs Dunnet's handwriting:

Referred to Mr Nevin, this day, 06:40.

The signature line was empty.

END