Chapter #79The Women of Kensington by: Seuzz   There's plenty of faces to go around, more than you've agents, in fact. Some of the roles can be filled out with golems, but you can help relieve some of the burden by taking one of the faces for your own. But it would strange of Hal to vanish completely, so you will keep his face active even when you're not using it.
"One of the girls," you say aloud.
"One of the girls what?" Jacob asks.
"Keep her for me. The older one would fit best. I think Lenke's for you, though."
"I guess it could be worse," Jacob replies, eyeing Lenke Crayson carefully. The woman's eyes go very wide, and you can well guess what she's worried about. Her actual fate of course will be much less harrowing but much more final.
"Right," you tell Jacob, and clap him on the shoulder. "Let's get the stuff from the van."
* * * * *
Lenke Crayson is actually heavier than she looks, because she is more muscular. The woman must do a shitload of exercises, for she's firm and tight everywhere with muscles, especially around the butt and thighs. You don't bother to unbind and ungag her until after you've cracked her open to extract her anima and her essentia, which leaves her a dazed heap that can be shifted to the side while you deal with Frank.
You give him a copy of her essentia along with her imago so that he can manipulate her as well as imitate her, and you put a copy of Jacob Darrow onto what's left of Lenke so that Hal's friend and partner won't disappear. It's more straightforward dealing with the manservant, Charles. You draw off his essentia and replace it with some of Lenke's so that he will be even more cowed and cooperative than he was before.
"What can you tell me?" you ask Frank after you've got Charles restored and calmed down. He's costuming himself out as Lenke in a poison-green skirt and jacket, so it as her that he answers.
"What do you want to know?" The hard expression on his hatchet-like face is a poor choice, for it accents the signs of work Lenke has had to done to stave off signs of her fortieth birthday. (Whether she's approaching it or dragging it behind her, you diplomatically refrain from asking him.)
"How deep are they into Fane?"
"Deep enough she knows what's going on. Not so deep that she has any idea where the bottom is. Matthew's just fool enough to follow her in."
You grin. "She wears the trousers, eh? So it wouldn't raise any eyebrows if he brought his work home for his trouble and strife to look over?"
Your partner glowers. "She already does. She does everything, and she's behind on her afternoon's work already, thanks to us. At I'll have some time to catch up. The girls should be home soon, but Matthew won't be home till eight, probably."
"Ah, the girls." You rub your hands. "Both been seen about with lads, there anything serious between either of them and some of them?"
She rolls her eyes. "Like they tell me anything. Why?"
"Just thinking that Portia might be the sort of girl to come over all zealous for the class struggle and take a fancy to chap who already is."
And you snort at the bedroom you're sitting in. It's done all over in creams and butterscotch, which is alright as far as that goes. But the four-poster, though comparatively subdued, is tasteful enough that even you can tell it is worth thousands of pounds, and the cabinetry is plainly handcrafted, as is the wardrobe. The gauzy drapes on the windows, if sold, could keep Hal in noodles and instant curry for years. "Whose room this?" you ask.
"It's a spare, so if you'd like to stay with us—"
"I'd sooner sleep in an honest ditch." And yet, when you plop onto the bed you can't help running your fingers over the hand-stitched quilts. "But I'll be staying with you part-time anyway. The plan I think will be to give me Portia's face, and put mine on her so we can switch back and forth."
"Hal would look funny in her company." Lenke's expression is stony.
"Not if she's my bird." You lay back on the bed with an impudent grin. "That's why I think she's going to come over all of a sudden with class consciousness. I can be very persuasive."
Lenke looks momentarily horrified, but with a swallow admits that it would be one way to explain a connection between Hal and the Craysons.
* * * * *
Nerissa Crayson, the eighteen-year-old daughter, gets home before Joe can get in from Cambridge, so you disassemble her and lay her aside for him. He's in a bad mood from the drive, but calms down once he sees the house and the face you've got for him. "Cute," he says. "She got a boyfriend? Can I have him too?" You shrug, as there is no theoretical limit to the number of golems he can have, and direct Joe to disrobe.
"Callum, I think," he says after he's up off the operating table and has a chance to examine his new identity in the mirror. He pouts a little, and shifts from side to side as he weights his boobs in the palms of his hands and examines his butt with a critical stare. "He's got such a nice smile. I wish he weren't so shy. Not like Harry, Harry's not shy at all. Maybe I should take Harry, too, just so there won't be any trouble—"
"Joe, love, I said you could have whoever you want, but I'm not bloody paying for the whole West End."
She clucks her tongue. "I don't know what Portia's going to see in you," she says, for of course you've told Joe about your upcoming plan.
You've now seen the photographs of the Crayton girls, and you have admit it's going to be a stretch to make a Portia-Hal friendship believable. You and Nerissa would look more natural together, for judging by her clothes she has a funky, bohemian style.
Physically, Joe's new girl is a slight, almost elfin thing. She has good hips and legs, and her arms are graceful. But she has small boobs, which are not only the shape but also the size of small pears. She has big eyes, though, and a button nose over a small mouth, and a fetching way of looking up at you from under her brows. Her hair is a mousy brown, parted in the middle, that falls in gentle waves to her elbows. You lean back against the door frame, almost reconsidering your choice, as she dresses in low-slung jeans, a black t-shirt, and black, high-heeled leather boots that probably cost as much as Jacob's van. Over this ensemble she drapes an ankle-length, striped cloth duster that looks like it was snagged off an awning.
"Portia's going to be late," she says as she takes out some cherry lip-gloss and starts applying it. Her expression is hooded and insolent. "So if you're looking for a girl to have fun with, it's either me or Mumsy."
He's not serious, of course. Or maybe he is. Because when you put your arm around her waist and draw her in to your mouth, she kisses you back with no evident reluctance. She's not impressed, though, or maybe Joe likes the tease, for he says, "Get Portia to show you how to do it right before you try that again." She presses you aside to exit her bedroom.
"I don't have a lot of practice, Joe," you shout after her.
"Yes, I could tell," she says without looking back as she descends the stairs.
* * * * *
Joe is right that Portia would be late, and you're just undressing the unconscious girl on the operating table in the library when the front door opens and the man of the house walks in. But Charles is ready for him, and after taking his coat and dropping it on the floor he smoothly reaches around to press a mask into the master's face. "Just lay him out in the foyer, your Grace" you tell him as you unbuckle Portia's leather tunic and with a grunt roll her over onto her face. The servant, though under Joe's control, obeys.
Portia is a bigger girl than Nerissa, but that only means she's bigger in all the ways that count. She is probably only half an inch taller, but she's got her mother's hard, toned buttocks and thighs; calves that suggest long sessions at a riding academy; and great, rosy melons that would look good on a professional pornography site. Unlike Nerissa, who evidently prefers a more "natural" look, Portia is tanned all over, obviously from a salon with perhaps with a little help from a spray bottle as well, and she wears lots of foundation and blush and eye shadow. She is also a blonde, and her hair falls in flat sheets on either side of her face to her elbows. Looking at it and fingering it, you have the sense that, once in character, you are going to be spending lots and lots of time brushing it out.
Her clothes are black and gold: knee-high black leather boots and a black, one-piece leather tunic that just drops just far enough to cover her butt. It buttons up the side in enormous gold buckles, so that the whole things practically screams "fetish". It's surely just a style, though, for her rings and bracelets are very conventional.
Once you've got her undressed, you pull her anima and essentia out, then pull her to the side so you can deal with Matthew Crayton by swapping out his essentia for his wife's and removing his anima: Lenke, who has been watching with a smug smirk, then pulls her confused husband upstairs to give him some programming. Then Joe helps you finish up with Portia.
* * * * *
"God!" you grumble as you tighten the tunic so you can buckle it. "I'm going to be so late for Ian's party. And how am I going to be able to explain him?" You roll your eyes at the Hal-golem, who grins back weakly at you. But Portia has some friends—girl and boy—that would be a better match for him.
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