OOC: Ambrosine is nineteen. I was framing that the city might consider twenty-one to be ‘adulthood’ though, so she’s still somehow an ‘innocent girl’ - and, as a good aspiring merchant-class girl, certainly a virgin and entirely sexually inexperienced.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Ambrosine</span><br/><br/>I smiled, and curtseyed demurely as a young lady should, when Lady Catherine greeted me. “I’m sure your father has explained our arrangement, yes?”<br/><br/>He hadn’t, not<span style="font-style: italic">really</span>. I  mean, there’d been a lot about his partnership with Lady Catherine when he’d been working to secure it, and of course we’d all worked hard to help him… but nothing about my part in it - and recently, he’d been quiet. Somber, even. He probably hadn’t wanted to raise my hopes, in case this fostering he’d arranged for me hadn’t come off. So I smiled, and nodded.<br/><br/>“To clarify the terms,” Lady Catherine explained, “you will be working off his debt as a guest in my house.” I nodded. That was okay. Of course father... our whole family... owed Lady Catherine a great debt for diening to deal with the likes of us… and she couldn’t mean a<span style="font-style: italic">real</span>debt, surely? Father had such a<span style="font-style: italic">good</span>head for business. I’d heard him say it across the dining table, so many times… “I plan to make you a guest of honor tonight as well,” Lady Catherine continued - and it<span style="font-style: italic">immediately</span>made me feel better.<br/><br/>“I’m… to be your handmaiden, then?” I asked, eyes shining. It would be perfect, just perfect. We’d take tea with guests together, and my very presence would guard her honor. We’d shop together for gems and gowns and the most gorgeous slaves. I’d help her with her hair, dress her from her smallthings to her finery, the fasteners and fixings that<span style="font-style: italic">required</span>aid… I was a very good maidenly girl, hardly looking at men, for all my sisters found it difficult - and when I looked at other girls, it was only jealousy that made my heart pound. Or admiration, in Lady Catherine’s case. The racing of my heart told me I admired her a very great deal. “Milady,” I blurted, an utter an embarrassing afterthought, and blushed. “I’m to be your handmaiden,<span style="font-style: italic">Milady</span>?” I asked. “That would be just perfect,” I whispered.<br/><br/>“For your first task,” Lady Catherine instructed, “I’d like you to take this jug of water and washcloth and wash our friend here, as well as yourself.” Objections - to my Lady! - warred in my mind. But she’s a slave. But isn’t she dangerous. But she’s filthy. But this is a new dress. “So, strip down, and take care of that task for me,” Lady Catherine smiled, and I could see her gleaming teeth as she ran right over any protest I might’ve made. “I can remind you of the details of the arrangement as you get started.”<br/><br/>“But… there are men here,” I said, as I raised my hands, stretched to reach the back of my neck. The motion… displayed… me, to her. Presented the fullness of my breasts. I was glad I’d blossomed, and been blessed there. “If they see, I won’t be able to get married. What man would want a girl who has been seen?”<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">If father couldn’t marry me off…</span>I thought,<span style="font-style: italic">I’d have to remain Lady Catherine’s handmaiden. Forever.</span>The<span style="font-style: italic">snick</span>of my dress unfastening was deafeningly loud, in the quiet room. There was no maidservant, here, to unfasten it. I wriggled, squirming and tugging my way out of it, till it lay crumpled and forlorn at my feet.<br/><br/>Slowly I knelt, took up the washcloth, approached the slavegirl - she<span style="font-style: italic">smelt</span>- and began to wash the filth from her face and hair. Beneath the dust and dirt, she was surprisingly pretty, more silver than grey, and I felt a flash of envy. So exotic. So<span style="font-style: italic">svelte</span>.