The Tribulations of Tobias Read online

  The Tribulations of Tobias

  By L.E. Thomas

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2020 L.E. Thomas

  ISBN 9781646566242

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  The Tribulations of Tobias

  By L.E. Thomas

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Introduction

  It can hardly have escaped the notice of men of a righteous and upstanding persuasion that we live in an age of moral decrepitude. Life has now acquired the habit of mimicking the fictions conjured from lewd minds, like those of the malcontent Cleland, while the mere existence of such a publication as Harris’s List must in all right-thinking Englishmen inspire nothing but revulsion—such laxity may be de rigueur, among the French, but should we not be made of sterner purpose?

  An ill-informed reader might object that such fashions for degeneracy are confined to certain social circles. The majority of people, such a reader might suggest, are inclined to preserve the proprieties and shun fleshly deeds. Yet one need not penetrate far beneath the surface for this hopeful view to be dashed to lifelessness on the rock of reality. How can one expect everyman to abjure the work of idle hands when some of our clergy pay closer attention to the overflowing bodices of the ladies of the parish than they do to the words of the Good Book.

  It is with a disconsolate heart that one draws the inevitable conclusion that this incontinence is now a widespread spiritual malaise, to be found among highborn and lowborn alike. The present volume presents just one such example of how these loose morals have come to infest even those whose foremost calling should be the promotion of virtue in their Xtian flock.

  Herein, the reader is confronted with the wayward habits of a clerical member who would sooner secure a firm grip on a fair maiden’s curvaceous portions than labor ceaselessly to secure the virtue of any one of his parishioners, the Reverend Tobias Whitmore, of the parish of St Margaret’s in Stratton-over-Wye. One would think that a man versed in Divinity would comprehend the necessity of, at the earliest opportunity, procuring a wife who might serve as an example to the parish of modesty, austerity, and the ability to perform her wifely and procreative duties while distracting herself with meditations on 1 Timothy.

  Instead the wretched clergyman is not only incapable of controlling his baser urges, he has no inclination to do so. The volume chronicles in great detail the fornications of this errant clergyman, following his debaucheries with a fine eye for the kinds of deviations that can only originate in some deep corruption of the soul. The disreputable Reverend’s breeches are removed with such regularity the reader might wonder why he concerns himself to button them at all.

  If the reader feels that the fair authoress brings excessive descriptive powers to bear in the narration, it must be said in her defense that delicate euphemisms would be insufficiently expressive of the full scale of the obscene activities under discussion, activities which contradict the pristine rectitude one expects of clergymen. Tobias Whitmore may be just one Reverend among many, but there is good reason to assume that the ecclesiastical rot goes much further than just this one bad apple. The authoress is to be fully commended for alerting the public to the lewd hearts hiding in plain sight in pulpits the length and breadth of the land.

  —Richard Longnob, Gentleman

  The Society for the Propagation of Moral Uplift in Public and Ecclesiastical Affairs, the Godly Parish of St Wilmot-without-Sheath, Lower Clittering.

  Chapter 1

  …shire, South West England, 1775

  The Reverend Tobias Whitmore was perplexed.

  Not that this was a particularly unusual state of affairs for him, he mused, as his relatively short life seemed to be lived in a condition of relative confusion.

  As the youngest son of a minor branch of a noble family with pretensions to faded gentility, he was always destined for the church from birth. This had nothing to do with his scholarly or religious inclinations, merely the state of his family’s finances. Bluntly, there was no money to afford any of the sons the leisurely life of a country gentleman, let alone for the last in line, so some sort of socially respectable means of livelihood was essential.

  His oldest brother, Edward, would inherit the house and lands, and so spend his lifetime in a state of worry, trying to maintain the upkeep of the property on a deeply curtailed budget. Tobias did not envy his position for one moment.

  His next brother, Tom, was destined for the army, which suited his energetic nature. Tobias was very grateful he’d been born third, as he would have been even more perplexed on the battlefield than he was in the pulpit.

  However, he pondered, he’d been less befuddled at his last post, as a curate in a busy parish in the manufacturing town of Birmingham. There was no time for bewilderment being second in command to a dedicated vicar and his hardworking wife. He’d just been told what to do and had to get on with it.

  Then fate, in the shape of his redoubtable mama, had intervened. She may not have been able to gift her children with wealth and status but she used every one of her well-connected relatives as far as humanly possible to further her aspirations for her boys.

  Rather than have a son, to her mind, stuck in his worthy urban parish among the poor, she’d had a word with her second cousin twice removed who was married to a Canon. This timely interference was to give Tobias a much-needed leg up the ecclesiastical ladder in case his career stalled before it had started.

  So, Tobias had found himself quite without warning, removed to a country district as curate in charge, strictly on a short-term basis, while waiting for the retirement of a vicar in a nearby town. Once this occurred, he could reach the initial promotion that his mama had inveigled for him. Her master plan was that, with his own parish to minister over, he could begin to establish himself as someone in small-town society.

  That was apparently all mapped out for his future. However, in the meantime, he was completely bewildered at the rapid and drastic change in his life. He felt as though he had been plucked from a gray winter in the middle of a gray town dealing with a gray populace on a worthy treadmill of timetabled duties.

  All of a sudden, he was in the depths of the sleepy countryside bursting with ebullient spring life. The sun was shining, buds were bursting, the birds were singing
, the sap was rising and he had very little to occupy his time.

  If that were not perplexing enough, then the female population of Lesser Witteringly added to his befuddlement. As a not unbecoming young man, brought among them as a temporary measure, it was no wonder that he got a certain amount of attention from the local gentry.

  But the ladies, in particular, seemed to view him as a novel diversion, and it didn’t help that he found them all oh, so distracting.

  Even in the depths of his libidinous daze, he realized that they were toying with him by design. It was all done subtly and within the mode of country fashions, but there seemed to be far more embonpoint on display than was normal. He felt this especially keenly, as an active young man with not enough to do. Try as he might to avert his eyes, he could not help but notice.

  Of course, the womenfolk marked his inadvertent attentions and upped the ante, so he became even more diverted by the glories of their curvaceous forms. It seemed that wherever his gaze turned in the warm spring sunshine, there were bosoms.

  There were the slight but noticeable curves of young matrons that seem to be thrust up particularly for his regard. These glories vied with the plump cushions of women with burgeoning families, and then there were the deeply corseted billows belonging to knowing ladies of maturity.

  The range was dazzling: round, pointed, pear-shaped, slight and full. They all seemed to be on deliberate, delectable display.

  Not even regularly shaking hands with the bishop in the privacy of his cottage on a nightly and morning basis seemed to help with his glazed response to the charms of the ladies and their bouncing, trussed up, overflowing bodices.

  His eyes were transfixed and he couldn’t help himself to stop looking, which only encouraged them. He felt like a helpless mouse being teased by a bevy of naughty, merciless kittens. Even in his perplexed state, he could sense they were ganging up on him, giggling at him behind his back and encouraging each other to further wayward mischief.

  * * * *

  One Sunday during the morning service, Tobias had proof that more plotting for his discomfort was in play.

  The delicious Mistress Harbury sat modestly in one of the front pews next to her elderly husband. She looked as fresh and wholesome as a ripe peach. Tobias admired her pretty face beneath the chip straw hat and was mightily relieved she had a fine, woven shawl about her comely shoulders to stave off the chill from the old stones of the church.

  On signal, he went up to give the reading from Genesis, and as he started, to his utter discombobulation, Madam Harbury slipped the shawl from her shoulders.

  Her Sunday dress was all that it should be, patterned cambric, girdled under the bust, but her neckcloth was not so circumspect. Although it crossed modestly at the base of her throat it was made of the finest, gauzy muslin.

  As if on cue, once exposed to the icy temperature, her full rosebuds began to arise inevitably. They poked insolently and pinkly against the fabric and gave the impression she was not covered up at all.

  Tobias gaped, gulped and began:

  “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every breas—beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”

  He did not dare look at Mistress Harbury and just concentrated on keeping his voice from going up two full octaves. He was deeply thankful unto God that the ancient pulpit reached to above his waist level.

  Once he had finished the reading, he descended from the pulpit on shaky legs. Sitting down, he mused that bosoms were bad enough for his composure, but near-naked nipples made his mind go blank.

  As he stood to greet the parishioners as they exited the church porch, his heart lurched as the Harburys came nearer. He shook Mister Harbury’s hand and having exchanged a few words with him, the couple went to walk on. Mistress Harbury glanced back at him briefly.

  Under the brim of her hat, her bright eyes were alive with lascivious calculation. As his heart sank, his nether regions twitched in anticipation for what the ladies had plotted for him next.

  This delightfully tortuous suspense did not last too long. The next afternoon shortly after midday, Mistress Harbury arrived, accompanied by another young married lady, Mrs. Ransome, whose spouse was a middle-aged, red-faced squire. As it was such a beautiful late-spring day, they asked the curate to take a walk with them, to explain the finer points of the Sunday sermon.

  He had no parish duties to attend to and thought no harm could come of accompanying two ladies, compared with the danger of being alone with one. He gladly accepted their invitation, privately relieved that today, Mistress Harbury’s shawl was firmly tied around her shoulders.

  However, as they walked along the riverside and engaged in conversation, as they were all of an age, he gradually became Tobias to the ladies and they became Jane and Sally to him. Unsurprisingly, the finer points of the sermon remained resolutely undiscussed.

  After walking for some little while, they reached a shady grove, and by mutual agreement sat on the grassy bank to rest. With a lovely girl sitting demurely on either side of him, Tobias was thinking what a pleasant interlude this was.

  Then, with a calculating look, Jane suddenly asked him if his duties extended to counseling in marriage. Tobias gulped.

  “Well,” he began cautiously, “as a yet unmarried man, I don’t think I am in the position to…”

  He trailed off as Jane released the knot which held her shawl together and revealed that she wore no covering kerchief at all.

  Her bared breasts rose, firm and glorious from the confines of her garment, topped with mouth-wateringly pink peaks.

  Not to be outdone, on his other side, there was a rustling of fabric as Sally’s hands delved into her dress, and Tobias watched, spellbound, as one, then two plump bosoms slid over the neckline of her gown with a triumphant plop.

  Once revealed for his delectation, it seemed churlish not to salute each perfect pair with kisses and caresses. Before he could think straight, the girls’ dresses had ridden up to their hips and both pairs of hands were on his breeches buttons.

  Then there was a dazzling moment when both ladies seemed to be squabbling over who would mount their ready prize first. Jane seemed to win the argument, and he got the glorious view of her delectable form, skirts up to her waist, breasts quivering as she slid slowly down his aching pole.

  All of a sudden, that vista disappeared as Sally took her frustrations into her own hands and mounted his face, her skirts covering him.

  Despite his impeded vision, his hands were free to caress bare skin and each glorious bosom, as both ladies bounced up and down with increasing ardor. Nothing had prepared him for the glory of this escapade, which up to this point had consisted of occasional fumblings with a randy laundress in his university days.

  Sally gave a delicious whimper as her rounded thighs clamped against his cheeks and she gasped and gushed for him delightfully. At the same time, Jane rode him hard and tensed on his swollen tool with a sharp cry of pleasure.

  This combination nearly sent him over the edge and so there was a hurried uncoupling and both pairs of feminine hands stroked him to his own furiously spurting release.

  For a moment, he thought he had been struck blind with bliss. Then Sally removed her skirt from his face and he blinked in the bright sunshine.

  After such intense enjoyment, there were grateful kisses and caresses for each lady, anointing each sumptuous peak, enjoying the spectacle of their beautiful bodies, thighs parted, juicy lips on show, all revealed in their full feminine glory.

  Jane was the first to break the rapturous spell of bucolic cupidity.

  “Time is a-ticking. We’d best make a move,” she said firmly.

  Tobias looked at her sadly as she pulled her dress down, covering up those long, elegant legs.

  Then she added with a glint, “You’re due at Nellie Brownlee’s before teatime so you’ll need your ener
gy.”

  He gawked at both girls and they giggled naughtily.

  Mrs. Brownlee was a well-upholstered widow of middle years who lived just outside the village. Although her charms may not have had the youthful freshness of Sally and Jane’s, they were certainly capacious. Tobias imagined those full beauties bared to his greedy gaze and overflowing his grasping hands. His languor suddenly departed.

  “You’re going to have your work cut out this summer,” Jane said, throwing her shawl over her shoulders and securing it firmly.

  “Make hay while the sun shines,” Sally added demurely, tucking her breasts back into her bodice.

  They pulled him to his feet laughingly and they tidied each other, buttoning up and brushing down their clothes. The happy threesome began to walk back along the peaceful riverbank, while the birds sang all around them.

  As they strolled along, Tobias gallantly with a lovely lass on each arm, he thought that this might not be exactly God’s service; but servicing the ladies of Lesser Witteringly certainly was a heavenly prospect.

  Chapter 2

  Tobias let out a heartfelt sigh. Having taken over the parish of St. Margaret’s in the prosperous market town of Stratton-over-Wye a year previously, he ought to be happy with his lot, he reasoned to himself.

  He had been welcomed as a new broom (not altogether unexpectedly, since the previous incumbent had been so elderly, his actual death made little difference to his activities) and had rather disconcerted himself by his efficiency. He had tailored his sermons to his patron’s tastes, allowed the ladies of the parish to carry on doing what they did while giving a vague impression of authority and unexpectedly persuaded the comfortably wealthy to give a bit more generously to the poor of the town. He even had a curate of his own to give instructions to.

  With such a full life, he should be content, he thought a little guiltily. But those golden memories of that sun-filled summer and all the delightful, if somewhat sapping, ladies of Lesser Witteringly kept returning to his mind. He glanced down at the half-written letter to his mama, full of spurious excuses that her razor-sharp glance would dismiss in seconds, and sighed again.