LADY ANN'S DISGRACE: Chapter One - Parts One to Three

To get you back up to speed before posting new story episodes for Lady Ann, here is everything that I've previously posted in one handy location. 

It's the story of what happens in the first two books in brief, followed by the first three episodes of the new book. 

What has Gone on Before

Being the story in brief that is more intricately told in the novels Lady Ann’s Holiday and Lady Ann’s Folly.

Lady Ann’s Holiday

In the spring of 1908, in the Yorkshire village of Griply, Lady Ann Neville, eldest daughter of the Earl, Lord Howard Neville and his wife Elizabeth, found herself being forced to visit London to be paired up with yet another unsuitable suitor. Ann didn’t want to go but as fortune would have it, she obtained the means to avoid the trip when she happened upon a pendant with the mystical power to switch two people’s bodies.

Ann made the dubious decision to trade places with Burt Harper, the dim-witted stable hand who tended her horse. Burt was sent off to London in her place feeling very bewildered and Ann remained in Yorkshire with a note giving her two weeks holiday from Burt’s job and plenty of money to spend.

Burt had long been in love with Ann from afar and he willingly went on with the charade, doing his best to fit in and pretend to be the real Ann. This came easier than he had expected as the pendant continued to work its magic long after the swap. Burt took on more and more of Ann’s ways and mode of speech until there was little to distinguish him from the original lady. He, or rather she, even started thinking of herself as Ann.

Meanwhile in the country, Ann found herself in the opposite position. The more that time passed, the more she found herself acting like a Yorkshire clod. Her accent became base and lowborn and even her intelligence and education slipped away. Soon she had lost all her refinement, carousing with the other peasants and frittering her money away. Her self-image began to shift as well until she, or rather he, saw himself as a lower class oike and identified fully as being Burt.

The new Ann in London met the man the original Ann had been intended for, but rather than pushing him away, this new Ann found herself falling in love. When the original planned two weeks were up, the new Ann decided to extend her stay in the capital so that she could pursue this new courtship, despite feeling guilty about trapping the former Ann in her place.

And in Yorkshire, the new Burt really was trapped. He was forced to work as a stable hand, shovelling dung and grooming the horses as well as numerous other pitiful labouring tasks. Worse, his personality continued to shift and he became fawning and obsequious to his betters, rushing round eager to please them. He even started taking on memories of his new life and, in desperation at his predicament, even started fantasising that he might remain that way – such was the hopelessness of his position.

In desperation, Burt made a gambit to retrieve the pendant from Ann’s bedroom, but was caught in the act by Hattie, Ann’s sister. Exposed, Burt was dragged down to the village square by the Earl and flogged then thrown in gaol. He was put on trial and put at risk of many years imprisonment.

In London, the new Ann’s courtship ended with a proposal of marriage and Ann eagerly accepted. Lord Richard Hurley, her suitor, seemed the ideal husband, but almost immediately he showed signs of being cold and distant now that he had obtained her promise.

Burt’s trial began with dire portents of Burt’s future, but at the last minute, the Earl decided to have him released on advice, via telephone, from the new Ann who was soon to return home. This required a substantial bribe to the magistrate, but though Howard Neville achieved his goal and Burt’s release, it got him in trouble.

Chastised by a local MP and very embarrassed, Howard laid the blame at Hattie’s door, chastising her severely. She, after all, was the one who had accused Burt in the first place. Howard made his daughter’s life miserable, leaving her fuming and wishing she could get back at him.

With Burt released, he gratefully accepted the return to his life as a servant. Even that was better than prison. When Ann returned finally it was in doubt whether he would even accept a return to his former life. Both Ann and Burt deliberated over whether to swap back. Ann had grown accustomed to being a titled lady and Burt was so obsequious now he was willing to do anything to ingratiate himself with his beautiful mistress.

In the end, after some conflict in which Burt professed his love for her, Burt and Ann reached an accord. The former Ann would remain a man and a commoner, ill-educated and dim, while the former Burt would hold onto the life of a cultured lady.

But Ann had been exposed to more of Richard’s coldness and she missed the promiscuity of her old life. As Lady Ann’s Holiday came to a close she was left questioning her decision and fantasising about a different switch – not to become Burt again, but to swap places with Mavis, Burt busty, bar-wench girlfriend. She didn’t want to stay that way forever but she longed to have her wicked way with the virile man and she had inherited the original Ann’s rather reckless behaviour.

Lady Ann’s Folly

With her reckless plan in mind, Lady Ann invited Mavis up to Griply Hall’s nearby holiday cottage. There, she persuaded the girl to a secret short-term trade. Ann became Mavis and spent a lovely couple of hours getting her pleasure from Burt who remained unaware of this new swap.

Things didn’t continue to go as smoothly though because Ann’s mischievous sister, Hattie, discovered Mavis in the holiday cottage and found out the truth. She allowed Mavis to take her sister’s place in the manor and when Ann returned she found herself trapped in the body of a common serving girl.

Richard planned to take his fiancée with him to Nockton Vale to meet his mother and, eager to make the most of her opportunity, Mavis pushed for a rapid departure. Ann tried to prevent the body thief from leaving on the train but was unable to. Mavis escaped in Lady Ann’s body, leaving the former Ann in hers and forced to take on the life of a humble barmaid.

The new Ann and former Mavis arrived in Nockton Vale in the East Midlands and set out to secure her new position, but Lillian, her future mother-in-law seems even colder than her son and more conniving. It seems that Mavis may have a challenge ahead of her if she wants to maintain any kind of power in her potential marriage to Lord Hurley.

Hattie had meanwhile taken possession of the magical pendant and she had plans of her own to take revenge on her parents. The Earl had blamed her for the debacle surrounding Burt’s trial and her mother had supported him. Hattie’s uncle’s family were visiting and they had just employed a new maid named Nellie. These events presented her with some ideas.

Hattie hatched a complicated plan and then set herself the task of carrying it out. By the time she was finished, her father, Howard, was trapped in the body of the new maid, Nellie. Elizabeth, his wife, was stuck as a four year old boy called Reggie, her nephew and son of the domineering Uncle Patrick. Nellie was temporarily using Hattie’s own body and Hattie had taken the place of her father.

Now a pitiful maid, Howard was forced to do his new duties. Hattie had made the body swap while he slept so he had no idea how it had happened. This left him questioning reality and wondering if he had really been a man before, especially as his voice and character started to become more like a servile wench. When he tried to challenge the new Earl, really his daughter in disguise, he was chastised severely and locked in the cellar.

Hattie’s plan had also made her mother be none the wiser to her true identity. Now stuck as a four year old boy, Elizabeth found herself being spanked whenever she tried to explain what had happened to her new parents. Like her former husband, she was forced to keep her head down and pretend that she really was Reggie, just to avoid being punished again!

While that was going on, Reggie had assumed her former place as lady of the manor, but his immaturity posed Hattie a problem and risked exposing her plan to everyone. To resolve this, Hattie made him write a hundred times that he was really the Countess and should behave appropriately. This caused the acceleration of the mental changes and helped him quickly assume many of the manure feminine qualities of the true Elizabeth.

Meanwhile in the stables, Burt was questioning his decision to remain a servant but he decided he had to make the best of it and his entire happiness hinged on his future with Mavis. He begins planning a wedding proposal but when conflict comes between them it makes him question even more the decision he has made in remaining a man.

At the centre of this ever more complicated tangle stands Hattie. She has achieved all her goals but in order to do that she has been forced to take on the identity of her father, the Lord Howard Neville, a man in his late fifties with a bald head and a thick silver moustache. She saw it only as a means to an end but in fact she has come to enjoy the sense of authority she has gained. Being a man is strange but becoming her father has allowed her to start seeing things as he would. The true Earl was a domineering misogynist and with the pendant’s mental changes ticking on, Hattie is seeing life more and more as he would, accepting the inferiority of women and seeing men as the more important sex. She still plans to change back into her own body in twenty four hours but it remains to be seen how much another full day as her father will affect her state of mind. Maybe she will take on his personality a little too much...

But that isn’t the development that threatens to change the course of this tale for everyone. It is the lowly Nellie, now in the body of Lady Hattie, who may prove to be a catalyst to new and shocking developments, for she seems determined to keep her new social position as a titled lady, and she knows where the pendant is hidden!

Griply Valley

Yorkshire

England

1908

Chapter One

1

Lord Howard Neville had always been, to his mind, a fairly perfect specimen of manhood. As the Earl of Griply, a wealthy, titled gentleman, he had possessed all the attributes he could have wished. At fifty seven years of age, this towering well-built man had crafted a life and persona for himself that satisfied every aspiration he had. He was over six feet tall with a proud jutting chin and a stern brow, a thick, silver handlebar moustache and a bald head. With his irascible egocentric character, he dominated every situation he found himself in, perfectly secure in his position and his power, his physicality and, most of all, his masculinity.

But when he opened his eyes from sleep and realised he was still trapped in the cellar of his home, he remembered again how utterly all these qualities had been stripped away.

He wasn’t the lord of the manor anymore. He wasn’t even a man. He was a pitiful wench; a serving girl; the lowly maid-of-all-work. He was still Nellie Barrow.

He raised his skinny arms and hands up where he could see them and moaned. There was almost no light coming from the steep and narrow stair leading up to the house and precious little coming from the tiny windows at the top of the walls at ground level, dirty and obscured as they were by foliage. The arms seemed so weak, so unlike the steely limbs he should have been seeing. The fingers were so tiny.

He felt his body: the thin legs inside the dress (dress!) he had been forced to wear, the round tummy, the oddly shaped breasts. Touching the maid uniform he was trapped in made him want to weep but the idea of that was just as horrifying. He covered his face in his hands and muttered, “Why me? Oh Lor’, why me?”

But even that chilled him further. He could hear the difference in the way he talked now. Even his dialect was being stripped from him. Straight from sleep, without any kind of forethought, his choice of words, the simpering lower class inflexion: they were those of the common maid he had been turned into. Gone were his brash, confident tones and hard well-bred consonants and the weak ignorant sounds stripped him even further of his confidence.

He recalled the terrible events of the previous day: the humiliation of waking up to find himself transformed into the body of one of his own housemaids; being forced to act out the part as though he truly belonged in it despite all his efforts to stand up to the higher servants who were now his “superiors.” And the worst: finally confronting the imposter who had taken his place as the Earl and learning just how complete his doppelganger’s disguise was as he faced the full ire and retribution he would have meted out himself for such impertinence.

He couldn’t believe that this could have happened to him, with still no clue as to how. He couldn’t believe that the fake Earl had been so real. He couldn’t believe the butler, Powell, had made him spend the night down here in the cellar. But more than anything else, he couldn’t believe that he had stayed here, trapped and punished like a snivelling simpleton, even though the door hadn’t been locked. He could have left at any time in the night but he had been too afraid. He had gone on following their terrible ruling out of fear.

Why hadn’t he left in the night? Why hadn’t he gone back to at least his maid’s room in the attic? Why hadn’t he gone up to the first floor and demanded the imposter Earl get out of his bed and give him his life back?

But the answer was obvious.

He was afraid? He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t acting like himself. All that confidence and surety that he could solve any problem for himself had been stripped from him. He wasn’t Lord Howard Neville – not at the moment. He was only Nellie Barrow. And Nellie Barrow couldn’t risk the enmity of the butler, and most certainly not the Earl. Nellie Barrow wouldn’t dare confront anyone, let alone a powerful aristocratic man. Nellie Barrow would be too petrified to go against a direct order to remain in the cellar.

“I’m Nellie Barrow now,” he whimpered forlornly. “I’m Nellie Barrow and there ain’t two ways about it.”

There was a scrape and a rattle from the top of the cellar steps. Howard flinched back into the folds of his maid’s uniform, terribly worried as the door up there opened a crack then pushed open fully. More light spilled down the tatty wooden steps but he couldn’t see who was there. He was terrified it would be the fake Earl but instead the voice of the butler came down, lanced with chill authority.

“Nellie, get yourself up these steps now before I have a mind to lock you down there for good.”

Howard jerked up to his feet and hastened to follow his instructions, rushing up the narrow staircase. Powell stood at the apex glaring down at him and he wilted still further under those merciless eyes.

“Well?” snapped Powell. “What have you got to say for yourself girl?”

Howard stammered. This was the moment when he could stand up for himself; try to explain the truth of this magical exchange or at least attempt to rebuild some of his pride and self confidence. Instead he said, “I’m so sorry Mr Powell. I done wrong. I shouldn’t’a talked to the Earl. I should have done as I was told.”

Powell glared coldly and Howard wilted further.

“I’m so sorry sir. I’m sorry. I should have known my place,” he said, hating himself for saying those things but truly unable to do any different.

“Have you learned your lesson?” asked Powell.

“Yes sir. Certainly. I have,” stammered Howard, eager to please him; to be allowed egress from the cold dankness and be given a chance to remain in Griply Hall long enough to find some way to change back to being himself,

“Then get upstairs and make yourself presentable,” snapped Powell, “and be quick about it. There are chores to be done and the family will be awake soon.”

“Yes sir. Thank you sir,” gushed Howard, rushing past him and heading for the servant’s staircase. “I’m sorry sir. I won’t let you down.”

But inside his throbbing head, Howard knew he had let himself down. He was losing track of everything that made him who he was. If he wasn’t careful he was going to end up living the life of this maid willingly and subserviently.

2

The woman who had been Lady Ann Neville just a few days before opened her eyes and looked up at the dirty bare roof of the hat barn. It was the chill that had woken her, playing across her bare legs and arms that splayed from under the single blanket she and Burt shared.

She didn’t shift. Burt was lying on his side against her, his huge muscular limbs wrapped round her. He was still deeply asleep and snoring gently. Ann turned at the neck to regard his innocent slumbering face and thought about the tangle their lives had become; how confusing it all was now and how unexpected all of this had been.

Only a month or so earlier she had been Burt, dim-witted and simple, just going about her duties as a stablehand, making love with Mavis, the slutty barmaid from the village; admiring the beautiful Lady Ann from afar. In those days her desires had been simple because her intellect was. She had know little doubt or worry, just shovelling the dung, cleaning the stables, grooming the horses. And the nights with Mavis were enough pleasure to mark out the endless drudge, to keep her content. Or content enough. She had known she could never really be with Lady Ann but she still enjoyed her life to a point.

Things had started to go wrong when Lady Ann took her, as Burt, and made them change places.

Suddenly she’d been Lady Ann herself, hurled into a new world of London socialising and trips to the theatre. And no matter how quickly she became used to the whirl and the beauty, the gentility expected of her, she was never truly secure on her feet. Even when she found love and betrayed the new Burt, planning to trap him in his new life as a servant, she had seen cracks in her contentment almost immediately. Richard Hurley, her fiancé as Ann, was not the kind and loving man he had implied he would be.

She had fought for her life as Ann and kept it but it hadn’t made her happy enough and now she’d ruined everything.

Changing places a second time, this time with Mavis herself, had left Ann trapped more fully than ever before. She had been stuck as a commoner as Burt but without anything to compare it to it had just been her life. Becoming Ann had, after a period of acclimatisation, been mostly joyous. Now that she was Mavis she had all the comparisons she needed to comprehend her folly and how low she had sunk.

She had been a lady of the manor! Why couldn’t she have just accepted that and lived that way? She could have broken off the engagement with Lord Hurley – she realised that now. She needn’t have married him. She could have been happy.

And now look at her: curled up on the floor of a hay barn with an dirty, uncouth, country simpleton; nothing but a serving girl at the local watering house with little to no prospect of ever getting her real body back.

And what was her real body now even? Who was she? She still felt, on the whole, like Ann trapped as Mavis, but she knew it wouldn’t be long now before her sense of identity started to shift more fully toward being Mavis for real. Already her voice was mostly that of a Yorkshire clodhopper. She knew the education she had inherited as Ann had been stripped away.

“Is this me now?” she whispered.

Beside her Burt stirred, making a low buzzing in the back of his throat and smacking his lips together. He shifted his arm, gently rubbing her naked stomach under the blanket and giving her a graze of a thrill.

There was nothing left whatsoever in him of the original Lady Ann. That he had been a gentile lady was completely eradicated from him body and soul. He was only the simple man that she had once been now, and more perhaps. She sensed that his own changes had turned him into a simpler creature than even she had been once. All she knew for certain was that this Burt; the only Burt now; loved her and wanted to look after her. He was passionate and kind and doggedly loyal. And he was a titan under the blanket. He was everything she had fantasised about as Ann and everything she fantasised about now.

She let out a brief and shallow sigh.

There was no getting out of this new life of hers. That seemed certain.

Mavis. Barmaid. Lover of Burt. Lower class wench.

And maybe the only way forward was to reconcile with that; explore it; test out each facet of her new role and accept it for what it was.

She had wanted to be loved by a kind and passionate man. She had wanted to be with Burt. She had achieved that, even though she was now trapped in the fantasy.

She snuggled up against him and he mumbled something unintelligible but affectionate. Ann smiled. But a frown passed over her face because she realised there was something sad about all this, if she really was trapped.

Because surely she could never tell Burt about her true identity. He would never understand. He might even be hurt and angry.

It was a shame. She wanted to be open with him. But she was sure she couldn’t.

No. Burt must never find that out; that his Ann was now only a common servant girl. He must never come to understand the disgrace that she now felt to be brought so low and kept there.

3

Lady Harriet Neville, youngest daughter of the Earl and Ann’s sister, gave a gruff, guttural snort and opened her eyes, smacking her lips several times. She had been snoring deeply and the sound of it had woken her up. She brought her hands up to her face and rubbed her eyes and grizzled cheeks. She slowly sat up, scratching the smooth skin of her bald head and absently smoothing down the crescent of silver hair that circled from one ear to the other. She went on making most unladylike smacking sounds with her lips and then smoothed her bushy moustache down, wondering what she should do today. 

Then she stopped and her eyes went wide. 

She whipped her hands up in front of her face, the massive, manly hands, of her father: lined with age, the backs laced with wisps of silver hair. She felt her face; the hard cragginess of it; the thick moustache, the bushy eyebrows and finally her bald pate and crown.

"Good God," she muttered in her father's dusky voice. 

For that first full minute upon waking she had forgotten the body-swapping hijinks she had perpetrated over the last couple of days - but waking up as a man and her own father had not reminded her! Her every sensation upon waking, from the uncouth, guttural noises to the hairy body and hairless head had done nothing to jerk her into a sense of wrongness. She had already grown so used to this new form. 

"Goodness gracious me," she said, but hearing those strange words enunciated in a perfect simulacrum of her father's accent and word choice was deeply chilling. 

She recalled her actions just before dropping off to sleep the night before: underscoring her new identity just as she had forced her little nephew Reggie to do the day before to make him act more like the Countess now that he was spending an extended time in her body. 

What had she said...? 

"My name is Howard Bartholomew Neville, the Earl, Lord Neville. I am a fifty six year old man who owns the better part of this valley.”

"I am Howard Neville. I am a bombastic and confident man who looks down on women and bullies all those around him.”

"I am Lord Howard Neville. I have a wife named Elizabeth and two daughters named Ann and Harriet.” 

“I am Howard Neville, the Earl of Griply Hall. I am a haughty misogynist who looks down on everyone about him; an arrogant and overconfident aristocrat.”

It had seemed only a playful game at the time but with each phrase she had felt the odd tickling sensation at the back of her skull that she was now coming to associate with the effect of the magic working on her, turning her more and more into her father, not just in physical form but in mental attributes and character. 

"My name is Howard Bartholomew Neville, the Earl, Lord Neville." 

Those words alone were chilling enough – that she could actually alter her own sense of self until she saw herself more as man than lady – until she became in her own eyes, a middle-aged man who owned the better part of the valley. 

God, what would that be like? How terrible would it be to assume that identity? To become the man in charge of the estate and all its... all its holdings...? 

"Hmmm." Hattie rubbed her chin thoughtfully and then gave one of her father's chuckles. 

Actually the idea of owning all that land and having everyone in the valley defer to her authority sounded kind of wonderful. It had been fabulous to Lord herself around the house yesterday but there was a whole valley out there of peasants who lived to bow to her newfound authority. It would be so delightful to bask in the adoration and servility from her many subjects. 

And for now they really were her subjects. "After all, I am the Earl," she said, receiving a tingle at the top of her neck. 

But that tingle brought her back to her senses. Enjoyable though this experiment was, she had to maintain a firm control. She had a feeling that the more like her father she became, the more inclined she would be to want to be like him and the less inclined she would feel to return to feminine ways. She was of course slowly becoming a bombastic and confident man who looked down on women and bullied all those around him. That man – that end goal – would not want to sully himself with female traits and would certainly not want to become his own daughter. Hattie was sure of that. 

With the perspective she had already gained she recognised the contrasting virtues of the masculine and feminine life. It was already obvious to her that women were inferior to men in many ways. 

It was actually a shame that she couldn't pick and choose from her father's attributes. She had no particular desire to look down on women (it wasn't their fault that their lives were filled with such pointless trivialities or that they were so weak), but it would be a delight to possess such a high level of confidence that she could be described as bombastic! 

To imagine striding around possessing that irascible sense of purpose and self-importance – and for it to be a physical fact based on her manly body! She relished that and she longed to practice again while she had the chance – perhaps today getting out of the house and interacting with the peasants whose lives she currently owned. That would be spiffing! 

It was the last iteration she was most unsure of: the one cementing her has the husband and father of Elizabeth and the girls. That was not a part of her father's identity she had any wish to absorb. Though... Was it already influencing her, just from that single spoken statement? Had the changes crackled on while she snored in her father's bed, wearing not just his pyjamas but his entire manly body; resting within his masculine brain? 

Elizabeth... and the girls. Surely she should have visualised them as her mother and sister; as herself. 

And there was something else she noticed now. Reggie. She had thought of him as her nephew just moments earlier – not as her cousin. 

"By Jove," she whispered. 

She threw back the covers and put her legs out of the bed. 

Reggie, in the Countess's body, was already up and about. Hattie had the room to herself. She put her hands on her muscular, meaty thighs and stared down at them. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing table mirror and walked tentatively across, seeing her huge masculine frame come more fully into view. 

She was gigantic and not feminine in the least. There wasn't the slightest hint of her true gender in the way she stood or the expression on her face. The words that came from her were not the words of a twenty yer old woman. 

"Am I him already?" she muttered, but the answer seemed obvious. The colour drained from her cheeks and the dome of her white forehead. "Am I... myself? Am I Howard Neville?" 

But no. Surely not. Not by a long way. The real Howard Neville would not be filled with such conflicted emotions. He was in total control. He didn't simper like a silly woman as she was doing now. That proved she was still herself really; still Hattie; and that meant there was still time to see this through. It was, after all, only one more full day she would be spending like this. The return to her own form would take place overnight tonight, once again while everyone was asleep. 

It made her sad that it was going to be cut short so soon, despite the clear dangers. That was all the more reason to take full advantage of her position of authority while she had it. 

Yes. She resolved to make the most of being her father today – to really enjoy every superior aspect of his life and his importance. 

Hattie put her big hands on her cheeks and ran them up over her bald head, then she smiled at herself. 

"I'm Lord Howard Neville," she declared. "I am the most powerful man in the region." 

Her smile turned into a grin. Saying that made her doubts drop clear away. She even considered doing it again and begger the consequences. 

Yes. She puffed up her chest. "I am Howard Bartholemew Neville. I am the Earl of Griply Hall, husband to Elizabeth and father to Ann and Harriet. My brother Patrick is staying at the moment with my niece and nephew." 

His breathing was heavier than normal. He stared at his reflection, feeling the effects of what he'd said tickle at his brain stem. He felt giddy and a little scared, but he pushed that silliness aside. The longer he remained as a man the clearer it became that emotions were the province of weak-minded, simpering females and not worth wasting time on. He was certainly not going to allow himself to be tossed by their whims when he became his daughter again. He was going to act far more like a man!