A Transgender Regency Romance - Constantine has been raised as a boy, can she adapt to her new status?

Debenham was in the middle of Suffolk County, a village really since Norman times, until one of Constantine's ancestors was granted an earldom and built his manor house there. The River Deben arose just outside the village, near the gentle rise where the manor stood.

The great house, Debenham Manor, stood three stories high, four in places, with a mostly above-ground basement and cellars dug into the rise behind it. It had eleven bedrooms for people of quality, including three suites suitable in case royalty came to call. Most of the ground floor was taken up by public rooms for entertaining and two sizable kitchens. The first and second floors above were mostly bedrooms, with the third floor, basement, and attic space for servants.

Stables, a chapel, a rectory, a gatehouse, a steward's house, and other outbuildings did not crowd around the larger building but were a convenient distance away. A little farther out were the barns and work buildings of the home farm that supplied meat, milk, vegetables, and grain to the household.

Dozens of miles away, in Kent, Malvoir Tower lay in ruins, the original holding of the DesChambeaux family. It's nearby rebuilt manor was not so grand as Debenham but pleasant. Currently, in use as a home for senior members of the family and semi-retired servants, Malvoir was seldom visited by the younger generations.

Far to the north, in Lanca'shire near the Scottish border, Freestark completed the family's significant holdings, a much smaller manor house, and another ruined tower. Currently leased out to Scottish relations, Freestark also served as a sometime hunting retreat.

A large townhouse in London served as residence for the Marquess and family when Parliament was in session, but life, as it was lived in 1817 for the DesChambeaux' took place in Debenham Manor.

*

They helped him undress with caring and regard for his feelings. But each item removed was whisked out of his sight, taken from the room by maids who were still carrying up buckets of hot water. The room became steamy, adding to the late September midday warmth. Constantine stripped slowly but continuously. If he dawdled, they simply moved in and began removing things without his help.

When he was down to his underclothes, he expressed his reluctance to continue with an audience. "Please leave, all of you," he said.

"No, dear," said his stepmother. "You've had your alone time, and now I'm afraid one of us will always be with you. For a while."

He gasped, offended. "But why?"

"For your safety," Genevieve said bluntly. "It is feared that in your distress and discomfort, you might do yourself an injury." She clapped her hands together lightly. "Now, off with those grimy underthings, you must have been wearing them for weeks. No shyness, child. We're all girls here, and even if you're built a bit different down there," she didn't name the place, "Nurse has seen you in your altogether, and so have your older sister and I."

She took a breath, making a face. "Miss Vivian is going to be your governess. She deserves to see what all the fuss has been about."

"M-my...." He couldn't say the word. "I don't need...."

"Yes, you do," Genevieve said firmly. "You especially. Miss Vivian has served in that capacity for your sister since Alexandra got out of grammar school, teaching her how to be a lady, and you are certainly going to be needing those lessons." She sniffed. "Good lord, how have you tolerated the smell?"

*

The maids had heard most of that, but then servants are like that. The good ones are invisible, and the poor ones can't be found. But both sorts hear and see everything. And if they don't, they make it up. The three carrying buckets of hot water up two flights of stairs were no different.

From experience, the servants knew how many buckets of hot water it would take to fill the bath, and each bucket had to be carried, two at a time, up two floors from the kitchen. It was onerous work, but there were no complaints from the maids.

They had employment, a place to live, clothes to wear, decent enough food to eat, and wages. Ten pounds a year for 'inbetweeners,' meaning they were assigned jobs anywhere in the household that they were needed, usually dirty and unpleasant tasks no one else wanted to do.

But unlike some other nobles, the Marquess gave even the lowest of his servants a half-day off each week. With a full day holiday once a quarter, it was almost like luxury. People who worked for the Malvoir household felt proud and superior to those who served lesser lords.

Still, servants will listen, and they will talk. The upper class train themselves not to pay close attention to the comings and goings of their servants. And the servants are trained by their own needs to regard the doings and sayings of their social betters as matters of great importance. On the whole, they were proud of their employers who were not only as good to them as the system allowed, they were also about the only source of entertainment available.

So the three maids, Molly, Peg, and Jane, tasked with filling the bath with hot water, heard and saw much more than any of the other five in the room realized or understood. The two upper servants, the governess and the nurse, were almost as unseeing of the lower staff as the nobility. But after hours and below stairs were the source of the best gossip.

And the maids talked among themselves. Perforce, they must speak when they were passing each other in the hallways because they could not linger at either end of the trip nor dawdle along the way.

"The poor boy," said Peg as she refilled her buckets.

"But is he?" asked Molly, setting out on her second trip.

The conversation continued when and as it could.

"I heard from that Dr. Pillbody's girl that they cut off his tallywhacker at that school," Molly told Jane as the younger, taller, stronger girl overtook her in the upper hallway.

"I don't think so; she's bleeding into her drawers like a proper girl," said Jane.

She amplified as they passed each other again. "Nurse says Connie was always a girl. Just the lord wanted a boy so badly when she was born."

"Hmph," said Peg. "He sure smells like a boy."

On their third trip each, none of them had much breath left for talking.

"Maybe we'll see it," gasped Molly.

"Which?" asked Peg.

"What Nurse says she has," a breath, "down there."

"Is it like what a boy has?"

Molly could only nod.

*

Constantine regarded his four captors without hope. He was as exhausted as the girls carrying the hot water into his room. Emotionally devastated, he offered no further resistance as Nurse and Miss Vivian cut his small-clothes off him with a pair of scissors. The garments were so soiled, it was considered they could not be saved, and neither of the noblewomen wanted to touch them.

"What have you got wrapped around your chest?" Genevieve asked when the two had removed his undershirt. She prodded the stiff cloth with a forefinger.

"It appears to be a panel of muslin, wound twice around and fastened with pins," said Miss Vivian. "You must have stuck yourself several times trying to secure it." She seemed equal parts amused and appalled.

Constantine only whimpered.

A careful snip with Nurse's scissors and the whole concealment unrolled. The small breasts revealed had been compressed and chafed until the area around them looked raw and red, where the edges of the muslin had almost cut into the flesh. And the smell intensified.

"Oh, Connie," said his sister, "what have you done to yourself?"

"This," said Genevieve, "is why we are taking drastic measures."

Another few snips and Constantine stood naked, his anomalies revealed. The construction of his parts between his legs had baffled the midwife when he was born and still presented a minor conundrum. Constantine squirmed, trying at the last to conceal his secrets, but it was too late.

Genevieve had seen before, a month ago when Dr. Pillbody had made his first exam. Nurse and Alex had also seen him naked when he was a baby and a small child. Only Miss Vivian had not confronted the evidence previously. She leaned close on direction from Genevieve.

"Take a look at the source of poor Constance's trials," said the stepmother. "It's not so strange or unusual as all that, I'm told. But enough to put her through twelve years in purgatory."

Nurse nodded. "She were two years old, the prettiest little thing, when it were decided that she must be a boy. Her mother had had a miscarriage, you see?"

What they all saw was something that looked like a tiny penis, hardly more than an inch or so long but three or more times larger than the clitoris of a normal girl. Scant blond pubic hairs, newly grown, concealed some of the other details.

"Can she pee out that thing?" asked Miss Vivian, crudely perhaps.

"No-oo," moaned Constantine.

"No," agreed Genevieve. "All the other openings and bits are just where they ought to have been. It's only that small, sad prop that supported the lie. Malvoir was an idiot to persuade himself to believe it. Anyone with a grain of sense can tell that she's a girl."

"No, I'm a boy," whimpered Constantine, and he would have collapsed if Nurse and Miss Vivian had not supported him.

"Who said you had a grain of sense?" Genevieve joked. "Let's get her into the tub and clean the stink off of her."

With help, Constantine staggered across the wooden floor to the tub where it sat on its enameled placemat. He raised his foot above his knee to step into the water. It was quite warm and entirely pleasant as he allowed himself to be lowered to a sitting position. The water was just on the edge of being too hot, amazing considering how far it had traveled. A mild groan escaped him because the cramp in his belly eased almost instantly as the warmth penetrated.

He looked up at Nurse, concerned. "But I'm bleeding," he said. "Won't the water get up inside me?"

"Tscha, child," said his old nanny. "Do you breathe in water when you duck your head under? It's not as easy as you think to get something up in there. And as for bleeding, there's not enough blood to matter, even if you have a heavy flow. No one has instructed you in these things, but Miss Vivian will set you straight." Nurse wet a cloth and used soap to scrub, starting with his hands.

"I'm going to work on her hair first," said Miss Vivian. Using a separate basin of hot water and several cloths, the governess first wet the erstwhile boy's head and neck all over, then worked into the hair chips shaved off one of the new-fangled shampoo bars. It had a pleasant odor, like lime and flowers.

As she worked, Miss Vivian spoke about Constantine's current condition. "What you see as blood, is really only bloody waste from inside you. It's the lining of your baby-bed cleansing itself. This will happen every month, perhaps until you are forty or even older. Well, every month unless you get pregnant."

"P-p-p—!" Constantine sputtered. "How could that happen?"

The ladies laughed.

"The usual way," Miss Vivian explained, "is that your husband sticks his cock into your cunny and plants his seed. If you are at the right time in your month, about a fortnight after your last period began, give or take three or four days, you will be fertile and may become pregnant."

Nurse added, "Then nine months later, you have a new baby. A miracle, some say."

"A great pain and bother, say some others," Genevieve put in, to general chuckles.

All of the explanations horrified Constantine. "I'm a boy! Boys don't have husbands or cunnies, and they don't get pregnant! They don't have b-b-babies."

"Perhaps we should just drown her," Miss Vivian remarked. And so saying, she got above Constantine's head and pushed down on his shoulders, causing the water to come up above his face and even the crown of his head. But only for a moment.

As the water cascaded off and the shampoo burned his eyes a bit, Constantine gasped and sputtered while the ladies laughed again. "Just joking, chick," Miss Vivian assured him. She kissed the top of his head then used a bit of the water from the basin to rinse his hair more thoroughly. After, she began cleaning his ears.

"Ow," he protested.

"Sorry," she said insincerely. "If you don't want me giving you baths, you will have to keep yourself clean."

"She's a tyrant," said Alex, giggling.

"I love you too," said the governess. "You're now my senior chick and must take your sister under your wing, you know. If her ears need scrubbing in the future, your behind may need warming."

"You said I was getting too big to paddle," the girl protested. "I'm sixteen!"

"Getting too big is not too big, yet," said Miss Vivian with a twinkle. "And I haven't paddled you since you were twelve, but we don't want to set a bad example for Constance here."

Alex leaned in to confide in Constantine. "Paddling hurts, you don't want Miss Vivian angry with you."

Constantine looked at his sister. "I'm not afraid of a paddling," he scoffed.

"She hits hard," said Alex.

Constantine amplified. "I was whipped at Harrow, twice for fighting, once for not keeping my room tidy, and twice more for falling behind in my studies. And I was beaten by the Boys' Court for talking back to a Senior boy. You have to stand there and let them hit you, or it will go twice as hard for you. Paddling with someone's hand or even a flat stick is nothing."

The women stopped moving or speaking, just staring at him.

Genevieve finally spoke. "You say whipped. Did they use a whip?"

He nodded. "It's called a pizzle. It's made from a bull's cock; it's stretched and dried and tanned till it's about three feet long and as big around as your finger. It hurts like the devil, but it won't cut your skin. Being whipped with the pizzle is called, ‘having a conversation,’ you see. Because it’s milder than really getting whipped.”

The room was silent except for a quiet sniffling. "You have to not cry out; it shows you're brave. Boys have to be brave." Constantine broke off a sob in the middle. "The last time I was whipped, in February, it was for fighting again. But I had to fight, the other boy called me a catamite and struck me first. If I hadn't fought, then a catamite was what I would be."

"What's a catamite?" asked Alexandra, her eyes as large as saucers.

"A sodomist's plaything," said Genevieve. "They whipped you in February?"

"Yes," said Constantine. "That's when it all went in the bottle. The Second Master, he did the whipping, and he misplaced a stroke. I got five, and one of them hit me in the kidney. I was pissing blood the next day, and when the physician examined me—I didn't want him to!—he found out. I'm—I'm not a complete boy."

Constantine's face screwed up painfully, and he burst into a heartbreaking wail with wracking sobs and tears. "I know I'm a girl. I've always known, I've always known. But I had to be a boy because that's what father wanted. He wanted me to be a boy, and he wouldn't love me if I were a girl."

"Malvoir, you son of a bitch," said his stepmother.