This story is a rewrite of "Miss High Heels", a well known classic story. I understand that no-one knows who wrote "Miss High Heels" and hence I am to give due credit for the major parts of this story. My own efforts were to remove some passages I found too physically violent and to add things to my taste. If the author of "Miss High Heels" objects to my tinkering then I will of course remove the story, or if requested give due credit to the original author.

 

The Bride of Bowmanor

by Helen Highwater

 

The story of a rich but girlish young gentleman under the control of his pretty step sister and her aunt: written by himself at his step sister's order, with an account of his punishments, the dresses he is made to wear, his final subjection and his curious fate.

 

************ Chapter One

Dressed as a young lady for my stepsister's dinner-party. Phoebe's long satin gloves. My parentage and boyhood. I am left under the guardianship of a girl. How "Dennis" was transformed into "Miss Denise."

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Phoebe the maid, though she was as big and strong as a grenadier, had the deft, neat hands of a French woman. She threaded a pink satin ribbon amongst the shining curls of my coiffure, buttoned the last button of my very long satin evening gloves, and dusted lightly with a powder-puff my white bosom and shoulders. Then she tucked a tiny lace handkerchief in my bodice and said:

"There, now you are ready, Miss Denise. Stand up!"

"Miss Denise indeed!" and "Stand up!" The insolence of it! I remained seated.

"Ah!" said Phoebe with a malicious smile," you don't like being ordered about by poor servants, do you? You are the young master of Bowmanor, the wealthy aristocrat, the great landlord, Mr. Dennis Evelyn Highwater," and she uttered my name with amused contempt.

"Bah! - I do not trouble my head about your position-you are in your own house-it is true, but you are under the control of your beautiful step-sister who very properly stripped you of your foolish trousers two years ago to punish 1 you for your impertinence. You are over eighteen years old - I admit it, but for two years you have been mincing in petticoats in a girls' school. You are a young gentleman, are you? Nobody would believe it. Your hair reaches down below your waist. You have the figure, the face, the soft limbs, the hands and feet and the breasts of a girl."

I was dreadfully ashamed at Phoebe's outburst. I could not deny a word of it.

"You are a very important person, I suppose," she went on jeering at me, "with a great career in Parliament to come to you! Heavens how you used to plague my ears with your boastfulness! It may all be true. What I am concerned with is that you should he beautifully dressed for the dinner-party which your stepsister Miss Deverel is giving on her twenty-third birthday. Stand up at once, or I will lace you into a corset two inches tighter than the one you are wearing now."

"Oh Phoebe," I cried, "I can hardly breathe in this one."

 

I was alarmed. Her tone was so menacing. She was much stronger than I was. She could carry out her threat if she chose. I stood up. I had a special reason for being obedient tonight.

"That's better, Miss Denise," she said.

I was dressed in an exquisite décolleté' frock of white transparent chiffon glittering with silver embroideries over an underdress of soft white satin. The bodice was cut very low, the sleeves being merely shoulder straps of flashing silver bugles, and my tight unwrinkled white satin gloves reached up to my shoulders. A sash of white satin encircled my small waist and was tied in an enormous bow looped through a huge diamond buckle on my left hip, whence the broad streamers fringed with silver floated down to my feet. A bunch of pink roses was pinned on the right of my bodice at the waist. The sheath skirt moulded my legs in its gleaming satin and chiffon, outlining the girlish curves of my figure and was caught tightly in at the ankles by a scarf of tulle passed through a big sparkling diamond buckle in front of the dress and tied in a great bow behind. My legs were quite bound by these dainty fetters of satin and tulle. The skirt was hemmed with tulle and was bordered with a festoon of tiny pink roses, and on the left side a row of flat diamond buttons sparkled up to the knee. The skirt had a long train of white satin, lined with pleats of tulle, which rustled deliciously at each movement. Phoebe arranged the train in a gleaming swirl about my feet, and stood up.

"Now Miss Denise, those smartly-gloved hands behind your back!"

"Behind my back! Like a child!"

"Don't argue. Behind your back with them at once, palm to palm, the fingers pointing down."

I obeyed. How humiliating it was! "Now lift up this pretty face."

She took my chin and tilted back my head.

"I must say, Miss Denise, your governesses have done wonders for you at your school. You always were a pretty girl of course, but you are quite lovely now."

I blushed - was it altogether from shame, or was there not some thrill of pleasure and of girlish vanity in the blush? Oh my two years at a girls' school had left their influence upon my disposition.

"Now put the high heels of your satin slippers together under your frock." She looked down to the billowy satin and tulle of my skirt.

"Have you done it? Are the toes daintily turned out?"

"Yes Phoebe."

"I'll make sure."

She stooped and thrusting her hand under my dress, felt my feet. The blushes deepened on my face, and let me be frank - a soft wave of voluptuous delight swept over me. I am to write the truth here, at the order of my guardian and step-sister Miss Helen Deverel, and she knows me so well that I could not hope to deceive her. Therefore I am frank about it. The thought that here was I dressed with all the dainty luxury of a very fashionable girl, standing obediently with my hands behind me at the bidding of a maid, while she adjusted my satin-slippered feet in the attitude of a school-girl troubled my passions. There was something sensuously bizarre in the contrast, which fascinated me. Besides, apart from the queer mental impression produced in me, the actual touch of Phoebe's hands on my insteps and ankles gave me a delicious physical sensation. F or she was wearing long white satin gloves. I asked her why, and she glanced at me shrewdly.

"Miss Priscilla's orders," she answered, "No one is to touch you, or dress you without long satin gloves on their hands. But why do you ask, Miss Denise?"

I was confused.

"Did the feel of the gloves on your silk stockings please you? Answer at once."

"Yes Phoebe," I replied shyly. Phoebe nodded her head.

"Miss Priscilla is a very wise lady. Now stand without moving until she comes to inspect you."

Miss Priscilla, then, that old maid whom I had once been fool enough to despise, had foreseen that the touch of the satin-gloves would make its sensuous appeal to me. She had deliberately intended that it should. Why? My old fear returned to me - a fear that she and Miss Helen Deverel her niece were in a plot together to nullify me, to make me of no importance, perhaps by some enervating system to reduce me to perpetual subjection. If so I had reason to shiver; they were so clever, they had shown such insight into my character and failings. On the other hand there was the promise of Miss Helen Deverel given to me in the most emphatic way two years ago that the day after I returned from the girls' school I should be allowed to resume the dress of my sex, if the head schoolmistress sent me home with a good report. Well I had returned this afternoon with an excellent report. Tonight I was to be Miss Denise Highwater, a cousin of Evelyn's. But tomorrow I was to resume my liberty. I was to be once more the master of Bowmanor.

I was turning over these doubts in my mind when Phoebe interrupted my reflections.

"You have moved your feet, Miss Denise", she said sternly. "In that tight pretty satin frock, every tremor of your limbs is visible."

"I wasn't thinking Phoebe," I said humbly, "I am sorry." Phoebe was appeased by the humility of my voice.

"I will forgive you this once," she said. "There's no doubt Miss Denise that you ought to be kept in girls' clothes all your life." "All my life I" I exclaimed horrified.

"You are so much easier to manage," she replied. What a selfish argument!

All she thought of was her comfort, not one consideration did she give to me, my position, and the career which awaited me. No! As a youth, I should give her orders. Under discipline and dressed as a girl I received them from her. That was all she cared about.

I was careful not to move again, and Phoebe busied herself in putting away the schoolgirl's dress, which I had laid aside to appear as a grown up young lady in a décolleté' gown with a long train.

While I am waiting thus for Miss Priscilla, let me explain briefly the circumstances, which brought about my present position.

My father, George Evelyn Highwater, who was probably the wealthiest commoner in England, had inherited the great estate of Bowmanor in Hampshire, a house in Park Lane and a large fortune, which by skilful business he had greatly increased. He married late in life and I, his only child, was born when he was fifty-two. I was baptised Dennis Evelyn, and the second name, which is given to girls as well as to boys, I always resented. I resented it all the more, because in complexion, features, limbs, and figure I was, alas, as the taunts of my school friends assured me, more like a girl than a boy. My father lost his wife, my mother, when I was twelve and a year later married a second time whence came all my troubles. He married a middle- aged widow Mrs. Deverel, who had a daughter Miss Helen, a girl just four years older than myself. She was a beautiful girl with dark hair, a pale sweet face and a slim figure. She had the most winning manners and at once set herself to charm everybody. She succeeded with everybody except me.

I resented my father's marriage and the intrusion of these new people into our house. I would not call the new Mrs. Highwater, "mother," nor Miss Helen "sister." Mrs. Highwater was considerate and Miss Helen Highwater ( as she now was ) laid herself out to please me, but I distrusted them both. I always had a fear that they meant to take my place in my father's affections and oust me from my inheritance.

I remember particularly one day when I was home for the holidays. I was thirteen at the time, Miss Helen seventeen; she stopped me as I went out of the drawing room, and as she came in, she laid her little hand upon my arm and said wistfully:

"Evelyn, can't we be good friends? I am so unhappy that you dislike me. "The name Evelyn irritated me. I looked at her ironically and replied

"I suppose that you really want to marry me, to get hold of my fortune, don't you?"

It was a foolish answer. If it had not been uttered I might not be standing now in the fashionable ball-dress of a wealthy young lady, waiting the moment when I should take my place at her birthday dinner party, a living tribute to her domination from the Louis Quinze heels of my smart satin-slippers to the pink ribbon in my curls. For to that foolish answer I attribute the beginnings of her hatred and resentment. She turned away deeply wounded and never made advances to me again.

That same year in the autumn my stepmother died and the shock of her death prostrated my father. He was then sixty-five. He had a great affection for Miss Helen and a great faith in her capacity; and at her suggestion, Miss Priscilla Deverel, an Aunt of hers, was introduced into the household to act as companion to Miss Helen and to assist her in the management of the house. Miss Priscilla was really a remarkable woman. She was a fully qualified doctor and had amongst lady-doctors a great medical reputation. She gave up her practice to join us. But to me at this time she seemed merely a harmless, slightly ridiculous old maid. She was forty-seven or so when she came to Bowmanor, a wrinkled thin ungainly woman, who dressed very badly, was very patient and submissive, and whom I treated with the utmost disregard. I did not resent her presence in the house, as I did Miss Helen's. For I looked upon her as of no importance whatever.

The first time I had any doubt about her was a year later when I was ill with a cold: I was then between fourteen and fifteen, and Miss Helen brought her to my bedroom. At first I would not allow her to examine my chest, but Miss Helen threatened to tell my father of my refusal and to send for a doctor from London. That for a special reason I dreaded. I let Miss Priscilla open my nightgown and I saw at once - for my pride was on the lookout - a flash of wonder on her face. I flushed scarlet. I had a secret, which I had always tried to conceal. My bosom was much too developed for a boy's and developing as I grew. I had not merely the nipples of a boy, but small white globes of girl's breasts, which threatened to become prominent. Miss Priscilla examined them carefully. Then she turned to Miss Helen and exchanged with her a significant look. When she looked again at me a slow smile of triumph was spreading over her face. It seemed to say: "I have got you," and when she went out of the room I thought with some discomfort of the impertinences, which I had showered upon her. However, I soon took courage. She could do me no harm, I thought. What a fool I was!

The next term an episode occurred of which it is difficult for me to write. But I must refer to it, because it affected my future tremendously. I was, as I have confessed, girlish to look at although I took my part in the games of the school and my appearance brought upon me a great deal of chaff and ridicule. It also brought upon me the attentions of the bigger boys in the Sixth Form. One of them, a youth of nineteen called Guy Repton, pestered me. One afternoon I struck him, and gave him a black eye. He attacked me, a master caught us struggling. Guy Repton was expelled in disgrace, and my father was asked to take me away. The head master wrote to my father as follows:

"Dennis is not to blame for the scandal at all, but he looks so much like a pretty girl that I think him unsuited for a boys' school."

Accordingly I returned home, and nobody knew what to do with me. I could not go to another school. I was too young for the University. I stayed at home for six months. My father was already sickening with his last illness. There was no one to control me; and no doubt I bullied the servants, was tyrannical and threatening to the tenants, was rude to Miss Helen and contemptuous of Miss Priscilla. Miss Priscilla had a precise old-maidish neatness, which it was a pleasure to me to offend. To stamp about the drawing-room in noisy muddy boots, to fling myself on delicately upholstered sofas in dirty hunting clothes - these things I delighted to do because I saw how much they shocked her and offended Miss Helen. Finally Miss Helen made a suggestion to my father that I should be sent round the world with a tutor for a year. My father was delighted with the idea. He was very ambitious for me.

"There is no reason, my boy, why you should make money. I have done that. You must make a famous name. Marry and begin a great family which shall be associated the history of the country."

Oh, how well I remember him saying that! Miss Helen and Miss Priscilla were both at his bedside at the time, and both looking at me with a quizzing enigmatical smile, which I did not understand.

"You must go into Parliament, become a Cabinet Minister, perhaps Prime Minister. Therefore go round the world Dennis and improve your mind."

I went, grateful to Miss Helen, but after I had started I began to wonder whether Miss Helen had not some ulterior purpose. Whether she had not removed me from my father's neighbourhood in order to oust me by slanders from his affections and rob me of my inheritance. I wrote to him therefore warning him against Miss Helen and Miss Priscilla.

"They are both of them designing women, I am sure. They wish to intrigue me out of my proper position as your son."

It was an unfortunate letter, for it came into Miss Helen's hands ultimately. But at the same time it had its influence on my father. For a couple of months later, I received a telegram announcing my father's death and that he had bequeathed the whole of his immense fortune to me, with a request that I should make Miss Helen such an allowance as I thought sufficient for her and Miss Priscilla. There was however a thorn in that as in every rose. I was not to come into my inheritance until I was twenty-five, and until that time Miss Helen was appointed my guardian. I resented extremely the idea of being subject to Miss Helen who certainly disliked me and at this time was only twenty years old herself. However I reflected that I had the whip hand of her. F or she would be absolutely dependant upon me and my money for her meals. I returned to London where I found a letter from Miss Helen asking me to go and see Mr. Willowes the solicitor. Now Mr. Willowes was a friend of Miss Helen's and she had removed the entire affairs of the family from our old solicitor, who had looked after them for twenty years, into this new man's hands. I went to see him in a haughty mood of displeasure.

"I don't approve of the change," I said foolishly, "and I shall restore the business into the hands of our old solicitor when I come of age."

Mr. Willowes, a young sardonic looking man, twirled his moustache with an ironical smile.

"It is very kind of you to give me warning. Meanwhile here is your first-class railway ticket to Bowmanor. I have paid off your tutor. Miss Deverel expects you this afternoon and if you will take a word of advice, young gentleman, you will change your tone with her. You are sixteen and a half. She has complete control of you for the next eight years and I rather think that she has had enough of your ill manners. Good morning."

Wild with rage I was shown out of the office. I had hardly any money. I had to go down to Bowmanor, and at once Miss Helen threw off the mask. I arrived late, and I noticed that all the footmen and men-servants had been dismissed. There were only the women now and new women-servants in addition, all big and handsome and strong.

"You have just time to dress for dinner," said Phoebe, "if you will hurry." "I shall be late," I replied. "How is it that there are no valets?" "You must ask Miss Helen."

I had my bath and coming back into my bedroom I found Phoebe still there.

"What are you doing here? You can go," I said and I saw to my surprise that she was holding up a dainty corset of white satin. .

"First I must lace you into this, Master Evelyn," she said impudently.

"How dare you? What impertinence!" I began and I saw her move to the bell. "What are you going to do?" I cried.

"Ring the bell for some of the other servants if you are going to be silly. I have definite orders from Miss Helen to lace you into a corset and smarten you up."

I remembered with a sinking heart Mr. Willowes' advice. I couldn't have a struggle with a lot of women-servants. It was a question I must settle privately with Miss Helen. A minute's conversation would settle the matter and put a stop to the repetition of any such nonsense. I allowed Phoebe to lace me up in a woman's corset. What a strange luxurious sensation it was! An enervating, captivating sensation against which I felt the need to struggle. I had a feeling now of being really in a woman's power. The delicate thing, all lace and satin outside, but relentless as steel in its grip, seemed to me an epitome and a symbol of women. The rest of this story will show that my intuition was correct. My hair I had carelessly allowed to grow long. Phoebe curled it. I noticed that my new dress trousers had a line of little effeminate black satin buttons running for a few inches from the hem upwards on the outside of each leg. They were short too and exposed my ankles which were clad in very fine black silk stockings fixed up to my corset instead of in socks and my shoes were patent-leather girls' pumps with neat flat bows and the straight American heels, higher of course than those which men wear. But I thought I could easily hide these. Miss Helen was already at table when I went down with five or six of her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Kivers, old General Carstairs, a regular degenerate, and some others.

"Ah here's the androgyne!" Miss Helen cried as I entered the room. "Come and sit down! How do you like your corset and your bright little shoes?"

The company tried not to laugh. I was so confused that I wished the floor would open and swallow me up. I ate my dinner not knowing where to look.

"We have just been discussing your future, Evelyn dear," said Miss Helen. "I prefer not to discuss my future with acquaintances," I replied haughtily. "There's no reason why you should," said Miss Helen, "for we have settled it with a unanimous vote. You are too young still for College. For reasons of which you are aware, you cannot be safely sent to a boys' school."

I grew scarlet.

"And you are too overbearing and untidy and impossible to remain at home with a tutor. There is only one thing left for you, dear, and that's a girls' school."

I started up in a rage. "This is really too much."

"Come with me," said Miss Helen, with a look on her face which frightened me. She had absolute control of me for eight years. She took me up to my bedroom.

"I am quite serious about this Evelyn," she said in a gentle voice. "It is the only thing to be done. I don't know whether you are aware that I can, if I think you 'fit for your position, let you come of age when you are twenty-one. If you behave very obediently as a girl for two years at the girls' school to which I am going to send you, I may perhaps shorten your minority."

It was a strong inducement. Besides, she need not have offered any inducement. She had the right to do with me what she liked. I saw no escape.

"Of course if I go as a girl to a girls' school for two years, I shall be allowed to dress as a man at the end."

"If your school-mistress reports favourably. I don't want to seem unkind."

I had to consent. During the next few days, I was busy with Miss Helen's dressmakers, Miss Helen's milliner, Miss Helen's bootmakers, Miss Helen's corsetiere, though of course they were now also mine. In ten days a governess fetched me. I went by train in the summer uniform of the school - a pretty pink frock of ninon, ankle length, a big white straw hat, long brown satin gloves, and patent leather button boots with very high heels.

At the school I had a bedroom to myself, no one knew or found out that I was not a girl. I went through the most rigid system imaginable all designed to make me completely girlish in mind and body. Hair was removed from every part of my body, except my head, by electric needles and depilatories. My schooling consisted only of subjects, which would be suitable for a young lady. The pianoforte, dancing, French conversation, hair care and beauty, but not for example science, or history. Even during my lessons I was often punished, and especially in my early times at school would have to attempt French conversation with Madame, standing facing into the comer with my heels together, toes turned out, and hands behind my back, palms together.

At the orders of my Aunt, the Doctor, I was bathed every night, bathed by the maid, not allowed to bath myself, in a foul smelling liquid which I soon discovered was the urine of pregnant mares. This I was not allowed to wash off, but had to go to bed, in my night corset, smelling of it. I was also anointed in the mornings after an ordinary, bubbly, sweet smelling bath with a cream which I believe came from the same source and with this the maid paid particular attention to my breasts and bottom.

On one of the periodic visits by my Aunt to check on my progress I dared to ask her why I was so bathed and anointed and she said that this would help my development. I had to remember that I was a very weak and sickly child and that it was extremely kind of my step sister Miss Helen to go to the great expense of keeping a stable of mares, several of which had to be kept pregnant at any time, in order to provide the raw material for the bath and the ointments.

 

I was constantly reminded of my weak and sickly state and was never allowed to carry any object, which weighed more than a pound, or to walk more than fifty yards for fear of retarding my development or inducing a collapse. Maids and servants constantly carried things for me, even my school books, and a carriage was constantly at hand if I needed to move between buildings in the school. Indeed after a few years of this treatment I had to admit that I could not do these things for myself as my arms and legs were too weak and I had to rely on the constant attention of the maids and other servants.

 

Despite the medical attentions of my Aunt my breasts grew, unfortunately, much larger. On one of her visits my Aunt suggested that we might be able to reduce their size if we could remove some of the milk from them. At her suggestion every day thereafter the maid attached to my breasts a pump, which she would operate, which would suck at them, each in turn. For several months nothing issued from them and the only result was to make my breasts sore and inflamed. But after some time milk did start to come, a little only at first and then in greater and greater quantities. Soon, such was the quantity of milk that my Aunt decreed that it was a shame to waste it, and a baby from the village was brought each day, morning and night, and was allowed to suck me dry. Unfortunately this did not seem to reduce the size of my breasts as my Aunt had hoped but seemed rather to increase their size. Also I now only had to be within hearing of a crying baby, and my breasts would start to issue milk. If the baby were not put to my breasts then the front of my fine silk dresses would soon be drenched with the milk, oozing, and sometimes squirting, from my engorged nipples.

 

Every morning and every evening I was massaged for an hour to reduce my waist and develop my bust, and soften my limbs. Exercises with the same object were carefully supervised though all other exercise was forbidden. I wore facemasks for my complexion, was never allowed to go out in sunshine, not even with a parasol, and wore gloves at all times to whiten my hands. My skin was carefully tended, my hair treated with lotions and so successfully that it grew extraordinarily thickly and in two years hung down below my waist. I was never allowed to see myself in a mirror, for fear, I suppose, lest I should revolt against the system. But of course I was none the less aware that curves were coming where before there had been angles, that the muscles were all vanishing from my legs and arms, which were naturally round, that my breasts were developing into the pretty white round delicately-veined apples of a girl.

I was now back at home, waiting for Miss Priscilla to inspect the result. I was in a bedroom, which had been altogether refurnished in mauve. Over a thick carpet a covering of mauve satin had been tightly stretched, delicious to feel under one's feet. The room was a girl's bedroom; the dressing table covered with feminine bottles of perfume and lotion, jewelled powder boxes, gold-backed brushes. Why, I asked myself, had Miss Helen gone to this trouble, since I was to be a youth again tomorrow? A beautiful little marble- tiled bathroom led from it on one side, and a dainty boudoir on the other. The bed was an exquisite thing in the shape of a swan. It was altogether a lovely suite of rooms - for a girl.

"I shall not sleep here tomorrow, "I said to myself, and then the door opened and Miss Priscilla entered carrying a number of leather jewel-cases in her hands.

  

  

  

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