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TRAINING THE MAID
by Nina DeRosa
Published
by Nina DeRosa on Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Nina DeRosa
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When the maid accidentally breaks a piece of fine china while doing the dishes, she fears it is the end of her career and that she will be thrown out of the house. However, the handsome young man she works for has a very different plan! The maid will need some new training for her job, though… discipline training in the wine cellar.
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It was Friday afternoon, and I had only one more pile of dishes to get through before the weekend was mine, or at least that’s what I thought! Fate had other ideas, apparently. But first, I’m getting ahead of myself. You don’t even know me yet!
My name is Irene, and I’m the cleaning girl at the old Hastings manor up on the hill. Well, not so much girl as lady I suppose, but “cleaning lady” sounds so awfully frumpy, don’t you agree? I’m only twenty-five! Anyway, the lady of the house, Mrs. Hastings, is too old and senile to do things for herself anymore – not that she ever did in the first place, what with that fortune of hers and all – so she hired me to take care of the place. I do the dishes, the sweeping, dusting… you know, that whole lot. The gardener takes care of the outside, but the inside is mine to care for. When my job is done, I’ve got my room, my mates down in the village, and of course whatever I want to watch on the telly just so long as I don’t bother anyone.
So anyway, I was working my way through that pile of dishes – her ladyship had guests the night before, you see – and I sort of bobbed off and wasn’t much paying attention. I’m walking the last plate to the china cabinet as I dry it, and there it goes! It fell straight down through my soapy fingers and shattered into heaven knows how many pieces on the ground – one of her best pieces of china, too!
Well shit. I was just trying to take it to the cabinet, and it slipped, I swear. I didn’t mean to break it.
I started sweeping it up, hoping maybe nobody would notice, and that’s when this whole story started, when fated decided it had more in store for me today. I heard the son’s deep voice, him clearing his throat in particular, and I looked up. Too late for me; he caught me in the act, and I could feel my face turning red with embarrassment already.
“Broke another one? One of the good ones this time at that?” he snapped at me. My God he was furious, and let me tell you something, Mark is scary when he gets angry. He’s a young man, maybe about thirty, but he dotes on his mother in her old age and more or less runs the place. Pays my salary too, at that.
I was so embarrassed that it took me a minute to figure out my words, and he cut me off when I tried to apologize.
“So… not only do you not get the chores done in a timely manner,” he said, “but you break both the dishes and the rules as well?”
This puzzled me, because while he was right about the dishes certainly – I can’t deny that I was clumsy – but the rules? I don’t think I broke anything.
“The rules? What did I break?”
“You are out of uniform, Irene,” he snapped back at me.
“Wait, you really expected me to wear that outfit? I thought it was a joke,” I answered, and truly I did think it a joke. When I came into her ladyship’s employ, she gave me a black maid’s uniform with a white apron, and truly those haven’t been in fashion for a good fifty years!
“You knew the rules. You are on duty in this house, out of uniform, and on top of that you’re back-talking your employer?” he said, practically spitting the last part. If not for his temper, Mark could have been an attractive man, I thought. He was built nicely, but holy shit did he need a temper adjustment. With him in such a bad mood over the plate, I became defensive and more or less begged for mercy… or tried to.
“Please don’t fire me! I really need-“
“Yes yes, you need the job. I’m not firing you. Besides, my mum still needs the place cared for, and I don’t much fancy hunting for new help right now.”
He turned away, looking at me out of the corner of his eye as if waiting to see if I reacted, and then he turned back to me and continued, “But… you also need to be disciplined. I will not have such shoddy servants in this house. Go and change into your uniform, Irene, and meet me back here in fifteen minutes.”
“Don’t you dare be late,” he added in a nasty tone, and then he turned and left the kitchen.
So, what was I to do? I went back to my room to get that silly uniform, of course! It was warmer in my little room than in the rest of the house, thanks to the electric fireplace Mrs. Hastings gave me for Christmas last year and thanks also to how small the room was. I took the dress, apron, and its white crinoline out of the closet.
I have a bad manner of day-dreaming, and when I got myself undressed down to my bra and panties, well, frankly I admired myself in the mirror for a few minutes. Here I am, a slender, twenty-five year old blonde with – pardon my bragging – a really bitching rack and fantastic legs, and I’m single? Working as a cleaning girl? There is no justice. Where all the good guys buggered off to, I have no idea.
I slipped the white crinoline underskirt down to my hips and then pulled on the ridiculous black dress over the top of it. The skirt poofed out around my legs, and it was barely knee-length even if it lay flat. It would have been a fantastically sexy Halloween costume, but for cleaning a house, it was a complete and utter cock-up. Nothing I could do, though, if Mark demanded it. I sighed and tied the silly apron around my waist. I did make one act of rebellion, though: I left off the ridiculous white bonnet. Fuck that thing – Mark could not pay me enough to wear that silly hat.
The cold air of the rest of the house blew over my legs as I returned to the kitchen, and between the cold breeze and the high skirt, I felt exposed, almost as if my ass was showing, even though it completely wasn’t.
“Goodbye, mother,” said Mark from off in the front foyer. Her ladyship was off to the bridge club for the afternoon, and her driver promised her back in the early evening. The front door clicked, and I could hear his footsteps coming closer, making hollow thuds across the hardwood floor.
I stood patiently – obediently even – in the kitchen, my hands clasped in front of me, and I waited silently as he came in and closed the kitchen door behind him. I was suddenly nervous to be left alone with him. The gardener was off for his winter vacation, and her ladyship was out for the day. It was just the two of us alone in the house.
“You are on time. That is certainly a good start on your discipline training.”
He walked around me in a circle, and even though he was checking my uniform, I felt as if I was naked and on display as his eyes traced their way up and down my body. I caught sight of his eyes, where they were looking, and truly I was on display. He was looking not at my uniform, but at how my body looked in my uniform. He checked out my cleavage in the low front cut of the dress, the curve of my shoulder, and my legs in particular.
“You will wear your uniform from now on when you are on duty. You may of course remove it when you are off duty or when it is the weekend, and you may remove it if you are sent out to run errands. During your workdays, you will obey the rules of your employment, and you will do what I tell you. Understood?”
“Yes sir.”
“To reiterate: this is not negotiable. You are paid to serve my mother, and as I run the house in her advanced age, you are paid to serve me. While you are on duty, you will do what I tell you. Am I understood?”
“Yes sir,” I repeated, and I kept my head up and my back straight. I felt like I had to be professional, but his mood seemed a little strange. He was either angry or jovial usually, but this was something… different.