Free Mistress of Night and Dawn by Vina Jackson

carefully dipped a toe and tested that the heat was just on the right edge of warm and invigorating and her two legs willingly followed. Oriole closed her eyes and, with a shudder and an intake of breath, waited for the maids to pour the cleansing water over her shoulders and let it flow across the hills and valleys of her body.
    As the two expert sets of hands proceeded to soap and massage the flow of water into her bare flesh, Oriole opened her eyes and saw the Matron examining her, in judgement, appraising the firmness of her nudity and the pleasing harmony of her curves, lines and pallor.
    There was a shuffle, a movement behind, her and she heard another set of steps entering the chamber. She instinctively wanted to look round to see who it might be, but the Matron’s stern gaze drilled into her eyes, forbidding any attempt at movement. The stranger entered and she felt a hand cup her buttocks and then draw a line from the tip of her shoulders all the way down to the thin alley that parted her cheeks. Like a merchant assessing his merchandise. It must be a man’s hand. He coughed approvingly and turned her to face him as the maids wiped the final layer of soap away. It was her uncle, the man who had been appointed her custodian after her selection.
    Oriole was shocked and briefly panicked, wanting to shield her breasts and sex from his view, but she knew that the regulations prohibited her from concealing any part of her nudity. She felt her face redden and a knot in her stomach clench.
    Her uncle now stood next to the Matron, both of them watching her intently, silently, an ambiguous smile spreading across his thin lips. He wore his best wig and his military uniform, with the medals from the Spanish campaign.
    The servants proceeded to dry her and she stood frozen under the steady, impersonal examination. Satisfied by her appearance, both her current guardians suddenly walked out, leaving her in the care of the busy maids who now proceeded to powder her body from neck to bottom, until she stood like a porcelain statue, her feet still loosely gripped by the now lukewarm water at the bottom of the copper tub.
    A nudge to her shoulder indicated she should exit the bath and return to the bedroom where she was instructed to sit on a damask-print chair, still bare-bottomed, and another set of servants, their faces partly obscured by black domino masks, proceeded to brush her hair upwards until it looked like an almighty explosion of blond curls standing like a throne above her delicate features, puffed up with the help of lotions and cream into a bee’s nest of regal splendour, not unlike how the Queen, Marie-Antoinette, had appeared on that one occasion her parents had taken her to court a few years ago and she had set eyes on the monarch from half a room away.
    The maids seemed to work in shifts, fine-tuning her appearance throughout the morning, layering her naked body with further white, fragrant powders until the fierce coats of snow felt like another skin, an evanescent form of clothing. She was fed rosewater syrup, but no actual food, and then they proceeded to rouge the tips of her breasts, and, after plucking her eyebrows into a perfect accent, the women then moved down to her sex and carefully shaped and trimmed the hair there.
    Oriole abandoned herself to their ministrations, her mind wandering idly as she tried to distract herself, not thinking of the night that lay ahead, banishing the occasional stab of pain seizing her with every successive pluck in that delicate area of her intimacy.
    She was handed a cup of aromatic tea and ordered to drink it.
    ‘This will help you sleep,’ she was told. Something she now craved for after the hours of cleansing and preparations, her whole body now painted, shaped, every single nerve attuned, expectant, vibrating somehow.
    The beverage had a curious taste, Oriole realised, as she was gently carried to the bed and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
    At the back of her mind,