Following a Dare

Sandra didn't really get scared about what they were doing until this moment. The whole dare had seemed so surreal that she'd never quite grasped that she was going to do it. Now, she was minutes away from revealing her naked form to all the field workers at the estate. Even though she was masked, she couldn't see how they would fail to recognize her.

She wanted to blame her cousin Irene, riding naked and masked in front of her, for the situation she was in. It was Irene's idea to perform this outrageous stunt. But Sandra knew that blaming Irene was unfair, since this was just an escalation of the naughty stunts the two had engaged in since a few months after Irene and her father had moved into Fanival Hall, shortly after Sandra's parents, the Baron and Baroness of Fanival, had been killed in a train crash. Sandra had to admit that she'd been just as willing to propose increasingly daring and naughty dares as Irene had been. The few times they'd been caught by Irene's father or the servants, Sandra had been willing to take the blame, since it wasn't her father imposing the punishment, and Sandra's uncle could only be so hard on her given that he would be beholden to her when she inherited the estate.

Sandra had always thought of Irene as more of a sister and confidant than a cousin. Irene's father was the younger brother of Sandra's own father, the Baron, and had taken residence near Fanival Estate at the urging of, and with the financial support of, Sandra's father. Sandra's uncle had never really made a success of life. Sandra's father had always felt protective towards his only sibling, and easily forgot the small debts he had had to pay off that Sandra's uncle accumulated at the gaming tables.

In shock at her parents' deaths, Sandra had welcomed Irene and her father's move into the Hall, where Irene's father as the executor of the will had proceeded to manage the estate pending Sandra's coming into her inheritance as the late Baron's only offspring at age twenty-five. That inheritance would slowly devolve to her in stages in the meantime, "subject to good behavior" as her father's will had stipulated.

Sandra and Irene had agreed that they couldn't ride their own horses for this dare, so Irene had arranged to borrow a pair of horses from some friend of her father. Being naked on the back of an unfamiliar horse just added to Sandra's trepidation, but she wasn't going to back out. She and Irene always carried out their dares once agreed upon.

Bringing the horses into the estate's stables, they had removed their clothing and saddled up, daringly astride the horses rather than sidesaddle. Irene had explained that riding astride would provide a sexual thrill and be more secure. Sandra thought that it was also an added bit of concealment, since no baron's daughter and niece would dare the scandal of riding thus. Irene had hidden clothing in the woods they would ride to, and they would go from there to take back the borrowed horses and retrieve their own.

Irene took off out of the stable yard at a fast trot, and Sandra followed suit. It wasn't until they were nearing the fields where the estates workers were busy harvesting, that it struck Sandra that she couldn't lose sight of Irene, since Sandra didn't know where their spare clothes were hidden. It also struck her that the stakes were high in this dare, since getting caught would hardly be considered the "good behavior" necessary on her part to advance her control over her father's estate.

It didn't strike her that, should she fail to inherit, the barony and estate would devolve to her uncle. But it should have.