Teena Thyme by Jennifer Jane Pope Page A

grinned, standing upright again, 'but they're there to remind you.' Angelina regarded her with total distaste, for the maid was making no attempt to disguise the satisfaction she was getting from being able to treat her so disdainfully.
    'Be careful you don't end your own days in chains, Meg Watson,' she warned. 'Boots have a habit of changing feet, given time enough.'
    'Well, don't you go worrying your empty head about time, missy,' Meg laughed. 'You'll have plenty enough time to enjoy your new fetters and finery, though it won't be satins and silks for much longer. The master is even now preparing a new nest for you - somewhere where you won't be able to cause anyone any trouble, too.'
    'Down below in his accursed cellars, no doubt,' Angelina snapped. 'Well, as I've already told him, you can all do your worst. You cannot cause me any further pain and humiliation than you have already.' Meg gave out a small snort and her top lip curled back.
    'You think not, eh?' she said. 'Well, you just wait, my hoity-toity madam. You just wait and see.'
     
    How long I was unconscious I had no idea (I've since realised it was almost certainly only milliseconds, or else it was a hundred and thirty years, or both, depending upon which way you look at these things), but the moment I opened my eyes again I knew something was very wrong.
    For a start, I knew that people just don't come out of a faint all at once. First you get that groggy feeling that you're coming to the surface, then you get a groggy feeling that follows awakening, then perhaps there's some nausea, disorientation, blurred vision. Then there's usually some residual grogginess.
    Tick none of the above in my case. No grogginess whatsoever.
    One moment I was passing out, the next I was wide-awake again. Wide-awake and lying on a bed, except it wasn't my bed - Amelia's bed, whatever. This was a huge bed, high, wide and most definitely handsome, with ornately carved posts at each corner and a heavy canopy over the top. A four-poster if ever I saw one, which I was just doing!
    I looked down at myself next and saw that I was dressed in a deep red gown, similar in style to the one I had struggled into earlier, but definitely not the same one. I could feel the pressure of a corset underneath everything, but what a corset and definitely yet again not the one I had laced myself into. It was tighter - much, much tighter - and my waistline seemed to have disappeared somewhere.
    As soon as I tried to move my head I felt the hair, brushing my cheeks, my neck, my bare shoulders. I raised a hand to touch it and it was then I realised I couldn't use my fingers or thumbs individually.
    'What the—?' Hell's teeth and little jumping tiggers, some stupid fool had sewn all the fingers together, which meant that my fingers, inside them, were now all but completely useless. I discovered the ankle fetters the moment I tried to swing my legs over the side of the bed, which was just as well, for if I'd tried to take even half a normal step without realising, I'd have been pitched headlong.
    Really frightened now I sat up, though 'up' was a relative position, for the corset prevented me from bending my waist very far and the best I could manage was to prop myself halfway, supported by my elbows. In that position I paused, looking desperately about me, my bosom rising and falling in time with my rapid breathing. Even there, something was wrong, but it took me several seconds to realise what it was.
    'You're not my boobs,' I said to them, stupidly. 'I may not have overmuch up top, but mine are bigger than that. Were bigger than that,' I corrected myself, without even thinking about it. I paused, closed my eyes and took as deep a breath as that damned vice of a corset permitted. It wasn't very deep. I took another breath and opened my eyes again, raising one hand for closer inspection.
    'You're not my hand, either,' I muttered, and it wasn't. My hands aren't large, but these hands were much smaller, the