💋 Mills & Swoon Daily #2 The Caged Bird and the Stable Boy #romance #flashfiction

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💋 Mills & Swoon Daily #2

The Caged Bird and the Stable Boy

Lady Isolde Ravenshaw entered the stables. She was a reluctant horsewoman but had made the effort because of him.

Thomas the stable boy was not, strictly speaking, a boy. 

At twenty-two he was marked with the attributes of maleness and beauty that were worthy of an Adonis. His muscular forearms and chiselled torso glowed in sun-browned competence. 

Once she had seen him swimming on a hot summer afternoon having taken a wrong turn in the grounds of the estate. She had watched longingly, his naked body as it basked in sun and water in a simple celebration of movement, nakedness, and life itself.

One did not normally encounter such thrilling attributes at London soirées. Isolde had had enough of pot-bellies and bad breath to last a life time. Thomas had flicked a switch and she understood passion and desire at last.

“Morning, my lady”
he said with a sideways smile.

He had seen her watching him but hadn't let on. He enjoyed being watched by a beautiful and socially untouchable woman.

“Careful of your shoes in here,” he murmured.
“Floor’s still damp from the morning’s rain.”

“I have other shoes,” she said lightly.
“I do not have another of you.”

He turned at that, startled into a grin.
The horses snorted softly in their stalls,
as if deeply invested in the developments of the afternoon.

She watched Thomas hang up a bridle,
his shirt sleeves rolled, hay dust caught in dark unkempt hair.
On the workbench beside him lay a scrap of parchment,
ink still glistening in a ray of sun.

“What are you sketching?” she asked.

He moved too quickly, trying to cover it with his hand.
“Nothing. Just… notes.”

Her curiosity sharpened.
"Do you truly think I shall faint at your… notes?”

Slowly, he lifted his hand.

It was a map.
Not of any gentleman’s lands she recognised,
but of the estate grounds as only someone who lived amongst them would see:
hidden footpaths, fallen walls, the place where the river narrowed,
and, in one corner, a small cross inked with unusual care.

“What is this?” she asked, fingertip hovering over the cross.

He swallowed.
“That, my lady, is where the fence breaks. Should someone... wish for freedom and adventure,
they could slip out unseen"

His eyes flicked up, testing her.

Isolde felt a slow, wicked warmth pour through her.
“And if I were the sort?”

He hesitated, then stepped closer, voice low. The were almost touching, a separation of propriety was paper thin. She could feel his breath, now, almost panting, on her cheek as he looked down upon her, making love to her with his wanton gaze.

“Then I’d meet you there.
At dusk.
With a lamp and two sound horses.
And I’d show you the rest of the map.”

She looked back down at the parchment.
Beyond the fence,
he’d drawn all the places a lady of her station was not supposed to know existed:
the ruined folly; the secluded glade;
a little scribbled note by the river bend that simply read Perfect for swimming.

“You’ve quite the talent for cartography,” she murmured.

“I know these grounds better than the Lord himself,” he said.
“Been escaping them since I was a lad.”

“And now you offer escape to me.”
She met his gaze fully.
“Why?”

His jaw tightened.
“Because I’ve watched you walk that terrace every day like a bird pretending its cage is a choice.
And because”—here his voice dipped—
“I’d like to see what you’re like when nobody else is watching.”

There it was.
The treasonous invitation she hadn’t known she’d been waiting for.

Isolde folded the map carefully,
tucking it into the bodice of her gown with deliberate slowness.

“At dusk then,” she said.
“If you’re brave enough to free a caged bird.”

As she turned to go, he added,

“Follow the map exactly.
And if you get lost—”

“I shall call your name,” she cut in, glancing over her shoulder.
“And trust that you will find me.”

The horses snorted again, as if in approval of the clandestine plot.

That evening, when the sky went molten-gold over the fields,
a figure in a dark riding cloak slipped through the broken fence
and found a lantern already waiting on the other side.

Thomas lifted it, the light catching his smile.
“Welcome to the rest of the map, my lady,” he said.
“Shall we redraw your borders tonight?”

She held out her gloved hand.
“For thirty years,” she replied,
“men have told me where I may and may not go.
I think it’s time someone let me choose my own routes.”

He took her hand, steady and sure.

Behind them, the great house loomed, full of strict corridors and polite rooms.
Before them, the night opened like a secret promise,
and the Countess Ravenshaw stepped into it
with the stable boy at her side,
following a map she now realised she’d been searching for all her life. 

Finally, happiness and thrill would collide in the bodies of those who dared.

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A Tart Affair in the Riviera A Mills and Swoon short by Sarnia

 

The French Riviera was unseasonably warm and offensively smug.
Lady Honoria Bellweather had arrived with three trunks of silk, one cousin (mildly forgettable), and a vague desire not to get arrested....this time.



She had not, at any point, intended to seduce a Hungarian count. That simply happened.

Count Miklós Várady was, in her defence, tall, unreasonably bronzed, and cursed with the kind of accent that made even his hat sound suggestive. He was also in possession of a pastry yacht.

“Do you mean a yacht for pastries or a pastry in the shape of a yacht?” she’d asked, suspicious.

“Both,” he had replied, with a smirk that had probably unbuttoned dozens of corsets across Eastern Europe.

The trouble began, naturally, with a tart. Not Honoria this time (though the local bishop would argue otherwise), but an actual lemon tart served during the Ambassadors’ Gala at Villa Les Oiseaux, a soirée so exclusive even the waiters required breeding.

One minute, the tart sat proudly atop a silver salver, lemon curd glistening like a debutante’s tears. Awaiting it's fate to be sliced, divided, and conquered. The next, it was gone.

Not sliced. Gone. Not a crumb, not a whiff of tangy lemon...gone.

An uproar ensued. A Spanish diplomat fainted. A baroness accused her husband of "culinary sabotage." Honoria, somewhat tipsy on crème de violette, leaned toward the count and said, “You haven’t hidden it in your trousers, have you?”

“No,” he said, scandalised. “This is tailored.”

Later that evening, as diplomats sulked and waiters were interrogated with unkind cheeses in the pantry, Honoria took matters into her own gloved hands. She cornered Miklós near the ornamental fish pond and whispered, “You stole that tart, didn’t you?”

He smiled enigmatically. “What would you do if I had?”

“I would be forced,” she said, removing one glove with delicate menace, “to punish you.”

“Ah,” he murmured, stepping closer. “You are English.”

The affair escalated rapidly.

By morning, Honoria was declared “missing” by her cousin, who had been too busy making eyes at a Sardinian botanist to notice her disappearance.

She was, in fact, on the pastry yacht, anchored discreetly off the coast, half-naked and thoroughly unrepentant.

“So where is the tart?” she asked, wrapped in a silk robe of questionable origin.

Miklós reached beneath the settee and produced it: flawless, unspoiled, perched on its little gold doily.

“I couldn’t allow anyone else to eat it,” he said.

“Because?”

“Because it was named after you.”

Naturally, there was fallout.

The British consul received a formal complaint involving patisserie theft, indecency, and a diplomatic insult involving a suggestive napkin fold. I saw it, and yes, it was falic, one couldn't argue.

"If you have never had a pastry eaten from your lower regions you haven't lived," Honoria explained to the horrified ladies at the Sunday cricket match. It wasn't her fault, there was gin and a very good loocking waiter.

Honoria, once returned to shore (and clothed), blamed sunstroke and a misinterpretation of Hungarian dessert etiquette.

Miklós vanished shortly after, last seen boarding a steamer bound for Tangier with a violin case and a twinkle of mischief.

He left Honoria one thing: the tart, now immortalised in oil on canvas, delivered to Bellweather Hall under the name:

Portrait of a Lady in Lemon.

The End

© 2025 Sarnia de la Mare for Mills and Swoon

The Dilemma of the Disappearing Derrière A Mills and Swoon short by Sarnia

                                       

 The Dilemma of the Disappearing Derrière  A Mills and Swoon short by Sarnia          

It began, as these things so often did, with a bottom.

Not Honoria’s, which was widely agreed to be both pert and philosophically unassailable, but the alabaster posterior of the Duke of Bellington, recently immortalised in marble by one Miss Lavinia Crimble—sculptress, troublemaker, and owner of the most expensive collection of scandal in Sussex.



The statue, titled Man in Repose, had been commissioned for the gardens at Brimwell Abbey, and depicted His Grace reclining against an improbably convenient vine, entirely nude save for a suggestion of toga and an expression that suggested deep thought or mild constipation.

Lady Honoria, attending the unveiling for the champagne and a chance to ogle the nobility in daylight, leaned toward her companion and whispered, “Well, someone’s been chiselling more than the truth.”

Her companion, the Honourable Benedict Prym (debutante-snubbing bachelor, collector of obscure beetles, and renowned for once seducing an heiress with nothing but a butter knife and a minor chord), did not laugh.

He was looking at the statue’s rear, which, unlike the rest of it, had been… partially removed.

Not broken. Removed. As though by expert hands and inappropriate curiosity.

“Who steals a duke’s arse?” Honoria murmured.

“Someone with ambition,” Benedict replied wryly.

Later that evening, as the Duke thundered about breaches of dignity and Lavinia Crimble sobbed into a lace doily about “the sanctity of form,” Honoria did what any sensible woman with a fan and a fondness for intrigue would do: she went snooping.

Her inquiries took her to the servants’ quarters, where she was offered a sherry and an unsolicited view of the butler’s left breast; to the sculpture tent, where Lavinia was found passed out atop a bust of Queen Caroline; and finally to the tool shed, where Benedict was already waiting, holding a lantern and looking suspiciously competent.

“You,” she said, stepping inside. “Of course.”

“I might say the same to you.”

“Did you do it?”

He blinked. “Do I look like a man who abducts buttocks?”

“You look like a man who gets bored before dessert.”

He ignored this. “The piece is symbolic.”

“Of what? The fragility of dignity?”

“Of legacy,” he said, stepping closer. “What we leave behind. Or, in this case, what gets taken.”

Honoria stared at him, aware of the close air, the faint smell of turpentine, and the odd fact that someone had left a half-eaten crumpet on the workbench. Benedict leaned in, his hand brushing hers—perhaps by accident, perhaps by plot.

“The question,” he murmured, “is not who stole the posterior, but why.”

There was a beat of silence.

“I was really hoping for a kiss,” Honoria said. “You’re ruining the moment with amateur philosophy.”

"Kissing is for grandmothers and children, grown-ups make love."  

And then, bliss. Or at least, heat. Mouths met. A little too many teeth for Honoria's liking which she put down to Eton and the boys practicing on each other.

The lantern wobbled. Somewhere, something wooden creaked in protest. Honoria’s fan fell to the floor like a wounded dove. And, in the background, the sound of distant shrieking as the Dowager tripped over the missing sculpture part, which had been hidden, poorly, behind a geranium.

In the commotion of the accident all lost sight and care for the half buttock which disappeared into to oblivion of forgotten drunken celebrations.

By morning, the theft was hushed up.

The Duke’s dignity was reassembled with a hand file and discreetly repositioned to avoid viewers coming up the rear.

Lavinia claimed artistic intent.

And Honoria… well, she didn’t marry Benedict either. He left to document horned beetles in Madagascar and sent her a telegram every Christmas that simply read: Still thinking about that shed. Last news reached England that he had found love with a girl from Bath who had protruding teeth. A match made in heaven, surely.

She kept the fan, of course. A lasting memory of another near escape with an old Etonian. Behind a velvet curtain in her library, another keepsake, a marble half-buttock that she swore was just “a bookend with character.”

THE END.

© 2025 Sarnia de la Mare