Mr. Wooster likes to undress in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of his bedroom.

I assist him with the details. The untying of his bow-tie. The unbuttoning of his dinner jacket. The removal of his shoes. Then I make myself scarce. I glide to and from menial, night-time tasks, catching glimpses of his emerging vulnerable form in the periphery of my vision.

I hear snatches of idle reflection reverberate from his room. He talks half to me, half to himself.

'Bally rum business, this, Jeeves.'

'Yes, Sir?'

'Women.'

'Women, Sir?'

'Women, Jeeves. Specifically, their inexplicable and bally mystifying fondness for the Wooster Person. I always assumed that in order for an engagement to go ahead, things should be in the nature of a... a reciprocity. If that's the word I'm looking for. The beazles in my intimate circle, however, seem to hold little stock by such criteria.'

'I would tend to agree, Sir. It is a most unfortunate and infuriating state of affairs.'

As his verbal meanderings peter out, I pour him a nightcap and proceed to his bedroom, where I find him in bare feet and heliotrope pyjamas, staring at the turned-down bed like an uncertain diver on the high board. I press the brandy and soda into his hands and hold up the edge of the covers, and watch the look of relief and purpose wash over his face, as though to say, 'Ah. I understand. They're bedclothes, and I must climb under them,' before he slides between the sheets.

In this manner, most of our evenings pass without significant incident.

Last night, however, was anomalous and disconcerting.

It had passed three in the morning before Mr. Wooster returned, and despite his nocturnal disposition, I must admit that worry had been gnawing at the edges of my consciousness for the past half an hour. I had made some attempt to occupy my mind with Spinoza, however, I found myself more than usually distracted by a vague sense of concern for my master's wellbeing. I know not why. He had left just before ten to attend Mr. Finknottle's birthday celebrations at the Drones Club, and he seldom returns from such occasions before four am.

It was something of a relief, therefore, to hear the prolonged, staccato rattle of his key in the lock, followed by a low sigh of defeat and the dull thud of his body against the other side of the door. I laid my book on the side table and crossed to the door, turning the inside latch and opening it slowly. He swung inwards with the door, his limp form supported by the wood, and then lurched forward into the flat, steadying himself with one hand on the wall and the other on my elbow. I tried my best to remain stoically and impassively in place.

'I say,' he said, blinking and peering at me with an unsteady gaze. 'Jeeves. What're you still doing up?'

I closed the door behind him and watched his slow, unsteady progress down the hallway.

'I did retire, Sir,' I said, 'but found that sleep eluded me.' I picked up the white scarf that had fallen from around his shoulders and hung it carefully on the hat stand. 'I trust you had an enjoyable evening?'

'Not sure,' he said. 'Might've done. Came away early. Wasn't feeling too...' he groped around for a word as he extended a hand to grasp the bedroom doorframe, '...Good.'

I came up behind him and helped him to remove his coat, holding it patiently as he wriggled his arms from the sleeves with great drama and effort. I hung it over the scarf on the coat stand and returned to his side.

'I'm sorry to hear that, Sir,' I said. 'Do you plan to retire, now?'

'I should retire, Jeeves,' he said, his voice undulating meaningfully, as though he were reciting Shakespeare. 'I should retire. You should retire. We should all retire.'

'I do believe that's wise, Sir,' I said, stepping into the darkened bedroom after him and reaching for the light switch. His hand came down upon mine.

'Leave it,' he requested, and then let out a sudden and almost amusing hiccup, followed by a small burp and a deep intake of breath. 'Couldn't stand light, at the moment.'

'Very good, Sir,' I said, moving to turn down the bedclothes.

When I turned back to him, he was standing in front of the full-length mirror, swaying only slightly in place, his chin high, like a child waiting for praise.

He was, in fact, waiting for me to undress him.

I crossed to him carefully in the dim light.

'Sir,' I requested, 'If you would turn ninety-degrees to your right, I will undo your bowtie.'

His expression remained earnest, and he continued to stare into the reflected image of his own eyes. He neither responded, nor moved as I'd asked.

I considered placing a hand upon his shoulder to turn him, but could not bring myself to do so.

Instead, I stepped behind him, and brought my hands up and over his shoulders to undo the tie. I am very slightly taller than him, and could easily look over his shoulder at our reflections to guide my movements.

I loosened the knot, working firmly and gently with my forefingers, middle fingers and thumbs, and drew the two halves of the tie apart.

'Thank you, Jeeves,' he said, as soon as it had loosened. 'You're a good man.'

I let the undone bow tie fall to lie against his shirt and moved my hands down to undo the shirt buttons.

My arms around him seemed to make him suddenly claustrophobic, and he suddenly struggled to free his own arms from the circle of mine, jabbing his elbows out and knocking my arms aside. Then, just as suddenly and insistently, he brought his arms back down outside of mine, trapping my elbows against his ribcage, my forearms sticking out towards the mirror, my wrists limp like a marionette.

'Thank you, Jeeves,' he repeated. 'You're a good man.'

A strange, oppressive atmosphere began to descend over the two of us.

I, then, began to feel trapped. Not only by Mr Wooster's arms holding mine tightly to his sides, but also by our doubles in the mirror before us, peering at us with their dark hollows of eyes, eerie and intimidating in their stance and proximity.

I gently moved my elbows until I had a little space and leverage, and then began once more to undo his shirt buttons. I could see very little in the dim light, though when I looked straight into the mirror before us, I could feel his reflected gaze upon mine, curious, grateful, muddled, but somehow still purposeful. Ardent.

When I reached his bottom shirt button, he brought his hands down over mine. The backs of his hot, damp palms shocked my dry knuckles. I felt quite unusually as though he was touching a far more significant and private part of me, like my face, my stomach or the small of my back. I drew in a sharp breath, though he didn't seem to notice it.

This, I believe, was the moment when everything shifted and changed. Rearranged itself slightly, like a dealer shuffling cards before he deals the next game. It was a game I didn't recognise. I was unsure of the complex set of rules.

'Just... I think...' said Mr. Wooster, and his voice was otherworldly, '...I wonder...' and he brought my right hand down to the front of his trousers, dragging the tips of my fingers over the buttons there.

I drew in a sharp breath, and felt my own hands grow as hot as his.

I felt, not as though I were dreaming, improbable as the circumstance was. I felt more as though I were under the influence of ether. Caught in one of those strange, frightening moments on the surgeon's table, just before you slip under, when you become paralysed, and for the fraction of a second before you lose consciousness, you picture the surgeon's knife and the clean, weeping split of our own flesh and decide that you don't want to be operated upon, after all. Yet it is too late to do anything about it.

'Don't you ever... wonder,' he said, '...Jeeves.' He kept his hand upon mine, soft, but insistent. 'Don't you?'

I remained silent.

I could feel the hidden heat of him beneath his trousers. It was an alien sensation. When I breathed in, I felt my chest touch his back, and the part of my chest that had touched it, too, grew hot.

I have only been intoxicated twice in my life. In the first instance, I was sixteen, and working as a page boy at a school for young ladies. A fellow page boy on the staff stole a bottle of whiskey from the stable hand. I knew that it had been stolen, but shared it with him one night, in our quarters, after our duties for the day were complete. I vomited all night into our cracked chamber pot, as much from the shame of the theft as from the shock of the hard liquor. The second instance was three months ago, during my annual leave in Spain. On the third night, I found myself unable to relax, and to quiet my galloping thoughts I drank four small glasses of a local liqueur in the bedroom of my hotel. I became very much aware that I was intoxicated, and immeasurably glad that no one could see me.

Now that feeling – slightly elated, sick, at once trapped and free – stole over me again. This time, however, I was in Mr. Wooster's presence. He could see me. I could see him looking at me.

'I sometimes wonder,' he said, his voice as dreamy and reflective as it usually was of during his evening ritual of undressing. 'I sometimes wonder if you... do the same things I do.'

'I'm not sure I quite understand you, Sir,' I said. My voice was not quite my own.

'I'm not sure I quite understand you, Jeeves,' he replied, still cupping my hand, still holding my gaze, but now turning his head ever so slightly towards mine, so that the hair on the right side of his head tickled against my ear. It smelled of brilliantine and the soft cotton bristles of his hairbrush. 'Do you do the same things I do?' He shifted his feet apart slightly. 'Do you do... what I think you must do?'

'What do you think I must do, Sir?' I asked. I felt unable to do anything but repeat his own phrases back at him.

'At night...' he elaborated, '...When you're all alone, in that room, with your books.'

The 's' of 'books' was horribly slurred and drawn-out, and set my teeth on edge like nails on a chalkboard. I felt myself shuddering slightly with the supreme effort to remain still in his grip.

'And your brain...' he went on. 'Do you...' He suddenly and quite forcefully squeezed my hand. 'Open the buttons, man,' he said.

Lord help me, I did.

When all four of them were undone, he took my hand again and tucked it inside, using it to push aside his underclothes and press my fingers around his hot, hard length.

'Do you pull yourself off, Jeeves?' he asked, the words released from him with this irreversible physical action.

I let out a little sound at that, involuntary and surprised, at once embarrassed, indignant and another hot, almost scalding emotion I couldn't quite identify.

'Do you wrap your hand around your cock?' he asked, as he wrapped my hand around his. 'Do you lie with your legs spread and your head back in your pillow and your hand pumping your cock...' He dragged my hand along his length, squeezing it more tightly, beginning to move his hips in a steady rhythm, remarkably sure and controlled for one as obviously intoxicated as he was. I could feel the sock of skin shift liquidly over his hardness, and when my knuckles brushed the tip of him, I could feel moisture seep from the head.

I moved forward ever so slightly, perhaps accidentally, perhaps intentionally. The front of my trousers came into contact with his buttocks.

'Do you...' I saw now, as I peered into the mirror, that his eyes were closed, and his mouth was slightly open, exposing his tongue, which was glistening wetly, the tip resting on his bottom lip in between his words, '...Do you think about cooks and servant girls and waitresses? Do you think about ties and hats, tailcoats and the seams of trousers? Do you think about Spinoza? Do you think about Aunt Agatha? Do you think about...' here he faltered, bending his knees slightly and then straightening them, letting me feel the crease of his buttocks all along my length, which I noted, with some detachment and vague sense of discomfort, was hard. Harder than I had ever known it to be. 'Do you think about the Young Master? Do you ever think about what I might be doing? And that I might be thinking about you, whilst I'm doing it?'

At that he turned his face back into my neck and buried his nose there, breathing rapidly and deeply, as he sped the movements of my hand to an impossibly blinding pace, jerking his hips relentlessly until he let out a violent breath, moist and vocal, into the hollow of my neck and spent himself onto the mirror, painting the glass with long white ribbons of himself.

'Sir,' I said, unable to think of anything else to say. 'Sir.'

He drew my hand from his trousers.

'Sir,' I said again, as he turned in my arms and sank to his knees, dragging me down with him, his hands on my shoulders. My knees hit the floor with a dull thud, and I felt a shock of pain dance up to my thighs. For a moment he moved his own face so close to mine I could feel his breath against my dry lips, and I thought he intended to kiss me. Then he pushed me back onto the floor in such a rough manner that my head hit the carpet quite hard, knocking me sick for a moment, as I felt him claw at the clasp of my trousers. I felt helpless and anaesthetised as he drew out my member, taking it into his warm hands and, a second later, into his hot, animated mouth. He pulled and sucked, working his tongue around and around me, hollowing his cheeks, dragging his lips along me, singing low in the back of his throat and setting my whole body trembling. I could feel acutely that he had never done such a thing before. His gusto was that of someone trying an exotic food for the first time and finding they enjoy it.

I had never experienced anything like it.

He moved his head up and down, working me like a lever around a fulcrum, pulling back to mouth my circumcised head, making me shiver and gasp, then forcing his mouth down upon me to the root, so that I wanted to snap inwards on myself like a sprung hinge, or curl up like a shocked anemone. He tightened the ring of his lips, and I brought my hands up to push him away or pull him closer to me – he snatched my hands in his and tugged them forcefully down to the floor, pressing my fists against the carpet until I could feel the loops of fabric leave their tattoo on my skin.

'Sir,' I said again, fearing that I sounded repetitive, impotent and unintelligent.

He pulled back, kneeling between my legs, and the shock of his mouth leaving me was almost as great as had been the first contact.

'Jeeves,' he said, his mouth red and wet. 'I've got your cock in my mouth.' Although, indeed, he hadn't at that moment. The strange inaccuracy of the statement should have been amusing, but it was not. In the least. There was a thin string of saliva running from his bottom lip to his chin, which made my stomach clench with a ripple of disgust. I was relieved when he swiped at it with the back of his hand, his arm limp and heavy. Then he stopped to undo his cuffs. My heart hammered in my chest as I watched him become suddenly engrossed in this minute activity, raising his right wrist to his eye and fiddling with the cuff link as though it were the most important thing in the world at that very moment.

'Sir...' I said, 'What in the world are you...'

He ignored me. I looked past him, at the strings of mess on the mirror, and at once found the courage to sit up. I snatched his hands in mine, tugging them towards me, and feeling for the cuff links. I have undone his cuff links innumerable times, though now, I found my hands were shaking, and I began to struggle, the small opal stones slithering out of my grip with the sweat on my fingertips. Mr. Wooster introduced his hand into the effort, and together we tore at the cuff until it fell apart, the cuff link skittering off under the bed. We moved to the other cuff, undoing it with just as much clumsiness and desperation, and then he rolled his sleeves up past his elbows, leaving his forearms glistening from the sweat spread by his palms.

I was still in my full valet's uniform.

Before my thundering heart could slow, he had slid back down onto his stomach, his legs bent at the knee, his shins parallel with the mirror and his shoes knocking against the soiled glass. He took me back into his mouth. I shifted so that my shoulders pressed back against the bed, the small of my back aching, but the dull throb overridden by the intense sensations in my lap.

I threw my arms forward and took handfuls of his hair, mortified at the liberty, but completely and utterly unable not to. I clenched my fists, feeling the hair grow damp in my hands, pulling and pushing his head into the rhythm that suited me, keeping him moving, keeping his mouth on me, keeping him from sitting up and taking it away again.

I knew the very second before I was going to spend. I cared not – nor did I even give thought to – whether I would do it in his mouth or not, and kept my hands in his hair, holding him down on me, as I felt my release drawn out of me and down his throat. I am certain that I did not speak or make a noise, though I was aware that throughout my breaths were rapid, panting, shallow and fevered. He did not splutter or pull back in shock. He simply swallowed, his mouth relaxing, a small liquid 'click' sounding at the back of his throat, his tongue convulsing, pressing me against his soft palate.

I grew lightheaded. I released his hair. I became intimately conscious of the feel of his spongey tongue pulsing against the underside of my softening length.

When he drew away from me, a fresh string of saliva snapped down onto his chin. He did not wipe this one away. I considered doing it for him, though it felt somehow too intimate.

He stood up first, dragging himself onto the bed and falling backwards on top of the covers, turning to bury his head in a pillow. I gathered myself and stood slowly, feeling my knees click, tucking myself away and fastening the front of my trousers. I brought a hand to the back of my head to smooth my ruffled hair.

I felt at once exposed, as though I were onstage before an audience. But when I looked at Mr. Wooster, his eyes were closed and his breathing was steady. He was asleep.

I did not finish undressing him. Nor did I pull the covers over him.

I did fetch a damp cloth and clean the mess from the mirror, very thoroughly.

Then I retired to my own bedchamber.

We have not spoken of this incident in the day since. At eleven o clock, I brought his breakfast, and he ate it quite cheerily, no trace of awkwardness in his demeanour. At one, he went out to lunch, and at two he returned, partook of a brandy and soda and sat at the piano to belt out three of his new favourite songs. At six I prepared his dinner, and between each mouthful he chattered to me amiably about the antics of his Drones club companions.

Now he sits on his chaise lounge, reading the final chapter of his latest mystery novel.

I hang on tenterhooks. Walk on eggshells. I wonder why, and how, and whether it might ever happen again.

I try not to think of what happened, even as I grope for the answer to any of these questions.

After I have helped him to bed – the routine as expected and mundane as it ever was – I shut myself up in my room, with my books, and my brain. I undress and get under the sheets without pyjamas. Lying on my back, in the dark, in the quiet, I pull myself off. I do not think of cooks or serving girls or waitresses. I do not think of ties and hats, tailcoats and the seams of trousers. I do not think of Spinoza, or Aunt Agatha. I do not think of the Young Master. I do not think of anything.