by Fiona Wilde
Chapter Eighteen
“You look stunning tonight.” Clay smiled down at Karen as he pulled up a chair beside her in the dining hall, his eyes filled with appreciation. She returned his smile warmly, pleased that he had noticed.
The hall was buzzing with conversation as couples and families filed in. Women signed up for rotating serving duty. Once every three months, Karen was told, she would have to assist with the serving. Like everything else at Heartfield, it seemed to be a fair and efficient system of sharing work.
“So how was your day?” Karen asked as they took their plates and headed to the long tables filled with covered dishes.
“Tiring,” he said. “We almost got the roof done on the new tractor shed. My muscles are in knots.”
Karen thought about how nice it would be if she could spend the whole evening unknotting those muscles. Looking into his eyes, she told him so, and Clay looked at her appreciatively before leaning over to kiss her on the forehead.
“In time,” he said. “In time.”
Karen turned her attention to the buffet so Clay wouldn’t see her look of disappointment. She pointed out the taco casserole to him, and it soothed her a bit to see him heap a large helping of it onto his plate.
After they returned to the table, Karen was able to get a better idea of what it would be like being married to a man everyone considered the group leader. Even as they ate, other members came up to speak with Clay about some matter or another. Would he come over and look at their crops and tell them if they needed to add something to the soil? Would he consider adding their daughter’s quilts to the Heartfield craft catalog? Would he serve as godfather to the child they were expecting?
Karen listened to the conversations with pride, but also with a bit of frustration. Did these people not realize that in a few hours he would return her to the Wickham’s cabin? Did they not understand that she’d not seen him all afternoon, and she wanted time to talk to him? They seemed oblivious, and Karen tried not to be too judgmental. The community was used to having ready access to the man who had brought it into existence; who was she to change that?
“You OK?” Clay turned to her now and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m just listening in.”
“You’ll be doing more than listening in soon enough,” he said. “Before you know it, they’ll be badgering you as much as they badger me, given that you’ll be seen as having a direct line. Think you can handle that?”
Karen wanted to say she’d be glad to if she would really have that direct line, preferably uninterrupted. But instead she just smiled and nodded and then spent the rest of the dinner eyeing the clock and wishing the dinner would move along faster. It seemed like days before dessert came out and like years before Clay had finished the two slices of pecan pie he’d taken from the table.
“You ready?” he asked as he rose from the table.
“Sure, if you are,” Karen said, trying not to look as impatient as she felt. On the way out they were stopped by three more people, forcing her to draw on her reserves of politeness as the wife of the last man who detained them stood making small talk with her by the doorway.
“Finally,” Clay said as they walked out the door, and then he turned to her. “So, what do you want to do now?”
“Go somewhere alone, where I can have you all to myself,” she replied.
Clay smiled understandingly and took Karen’s hand. “What about the tack room at the stable? That should be pretty quiet, and there’s a couch for us to sit on.”
“Sounds perfect,” Karen said.
A few minutes later they were alone in the pine-paneled room surrounded by saddle racks. The pleasant scents of leather and horse sweat hung in the air around them.
“You really do look beautiful tonight, Karen,” Clay said as he sat down on the couch, pulling her down to sit beside him.
“I picked everything I have on with you in mind,” she said, winding her arms around his neck.
“Everything?” he asked.
“Everything,” she said, leaning in to kiss him on the mouth. “Would you like to see?”
“I’ll see soon enough,” he said. “I can hardly wait till our wedding night.”
Karen’s heart was pounding as she stood, certain now of what she must do.
“Who says you have to wait?” she asked, and stepped backwards, pulling the dress over her head and tossing it on the couch where she’d been sitting.
Karen kept fit and knew herself to be one of those rare women who looked as good out of her clothes as she did in them. She knew she cut an impressive figure in her lacy black underwear, with her breasts swelling provocatively from the bra while the skimpy black panties hugged the shapely curves of her hips and bottom.
Clay’s reaction, however, was far less than what she’d hoped for.
Reaching over, he picked up her discarded garment and stood, holding it out to her. “Put your dress back on,” he said quietly. His voice held no judgment or anger, but it wouldn’t have hurt Karen any more if it did.
She looked at the dress still in his hand, and then up to his face as she forced herself to speak. “Don’t you want me, Clay?” she asked.
He laughed ironically. “Of course I do, Karen. You know that. But not until the proper time.”
Karen snatched the dress from his hand. “And I suppose that’s for you to determine, right?”
He stood silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “In accordance with the rules.”
Karen threw up her hands. “Does everything have to be about the community rules, Clay?” she asked. “Can’t couples and individuals make rules for themselves? Or are you so loyal to everyone else that you’re prepared to be disloyal to me?”
“Whoa,” he said, pointing his finger at her. “That’s not fair. This isn’t about loyalty. This is about order, about setting an example.”
“Fuck order, Clay! Fuck example!” Karen could feel herself losing her temper but could not bring herself to stop. “Not everyone here follows the rules. Not everyone had to. Some of them were intimate before marriage. I know because they told me!”
“You discussed our personal life with other members of the community?” he asked incredulously.
“No,” she shot back tearfully, pulling the dress over her head. Suddenly Karen felt embarrassed being unclothed in front of him, as if she’d done something unseemly or dirty. “Someone I was talking to volunteered the information, not that it matters. Who are you, Clay? Are you God that you can’t be discussed?”
“Karen…” His voice was growing impatient, but anger and hurt were driving her now and she couldn’t bring herself to stop.
“Are you so above the other people here that your judgment and decisions aren’t to be questioned? Are you so full of yourself that you actually think people would care if you made love to the woman you claim to care about?”
“It’s not like that,” he said angrily. “You know it’s not.”
“I don’t know that,” she said and moved to push past him, but Clay caught her.
“Calm down. I’ll not have you walk out like this.”
“Why?” she shot back, her eyes flashing with anger. “Are you afraid someone will see and realize that maybe you don’t have everything in control?”
“That’s enough.” His voice was heavy with warning, which Karen ignored.
“Don’t tell me what is and isn’t enough,” she said. “There’s morality and then there’s rigidity, Clay, and I won’t be told what to do by a man who believes he’s so special that his every move is being judged by those around him.”
“I don’t believe that!” Clay replied.
“The hell you don’t!” she shot back. “Now let me the fuck go!”
“Don’t use that kind of language with me, young lady,” he said.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she hissed. “Because I’m not just going to blindly obey you, Clay.”
“Obviously,” he said
, but while his tone was agreeable, Karen found herself dragged back to the couch. On his way, Clay snatched a riding crop from a nearby wall hook. Karen continued to struggle as he pulled her across his lap, realizing now that she had pushed him too far.
“Clay, no, wait. Please, I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late for that,” he said grimly. “If you want to show your butt, that’s fine with me. Just don’t be surprised when it gets beaten.”
Clay wrapped a strong arm around her waist, and Karen shrieked with fear and anger as she felt him raise the hem of her dress to expose her panty-clad bottom. From the corner of her eye she could see the riding bat in his hand, the thick leather slapper sticking out from the end.
“No, Clay!” she cried, but he ignored her.
“Karen, if you had concerns or issues with how things were or weren’t progressing, you should have talked to me about it. But the way you’ve gone about this was petulant, manipulative and wrong. So in case you’re wondering why you’re being spanked, that’s the reason.”
Karen was prepared to launch into another litany of excuses, but Clay gave her no time. There was also no warning as he began to spank her rapidly with the riding crop, the leather strip snapping against her skin with a painful regularity that soon had her crying and kicking her feet.
“Stop, Clay, stop!” she cried, trying to cover herself with her hand. But Clay wouldn’t let her and restrained her wrists at the small of her back as he concentrated his disciplinary efforts on the exposed skin that peeked out from the high-cut legs of her panties. Half of Karen’s bottom was exposed, and she wailed pitifully as he peppered the bare white skin with welts from the crop.
Karen’s breath was coming in rapid gasps now as she sought to inhale between cries of pain. But still Clay punished her, changing his hold now to grip her back around the waist. He pulled her up a bit, raising her bottom to a terribly vulnerable position and Karen could only sob brokenly as he dropped the crop and delivered the last portion of her spanking with his wide, work-hardened palm. That hand slamming down on the stinging surface of her bottom only added to Karen’s discomfort and her body went limp as she felt herself submit and yield to the pain she knew she could not avoid. Clay was slapping her bottom with determination now, laying a deep red layer of pain over the blotchy welts he’d already created with the now discarded riding crop.
After Clay stopped, he rested a hand on her bottom and looked down. He could feel the heat coming off the skin, and felt the welts rising under his fingers. He knew he’d been hard on Karen, but wanted her to understand that he was not to be manipulated. He hated it that a good evening had been spoiled. But as he’d told Jake earlier, while it wasn’t easy to spank someone you loved it was necessary to keep order.
“Get up now,” he said, and gently helped Karen to her feet. “I love you, Karen,” he said. “And I’m sorry if you think my desire to wait comes from anything other than principle. But from now on, if you want to express yourself, don’t do it through manipulation. It doesn’t work with me, and it will only get you punished. Understood?”
Karen nodded, not knowing what else to do. She was suddenly very tired and turned wordlessly to walk to a small sink in the corner of the room. Silently, she washed and dried her face before turning back to Clay.
He looked down at her as she moved to the door, and took her arm in his.
“Hey,” he said. “I know this isn’t easy. Are you sure you want this lifestyle?”
Karen looked up at him. “I want you, Clay,” she replied. “I want you. I know the lifestyle is part of that, but it isn’t all. My only concern now is that only one of us realizes that.”
***
Karen told Ann Marie what happened the next morning. She knew Clay would not approve, but part of her didn’t care. For while the pain of the spanking had diminished somewhat, the frustration of how he’s shut her down without discussion still hurt. She could better understand now how Ann Marie had felt when Jake had refused to talk further about visiting with her family.
The two women felt an increasing solidarity with each other, and secretly made plans for their trip to visit Ann Marie’s parents on the day of the soap-making workshop at the agricultural center. Only Karen still had reservations, although they had nothing to do with any agreement with the men. As a former police officer, she had a sense for how things could go wrong, and she did share Clay and Jake’s mistrust of Melissa Fales. If they were going to go, someone else needed to be in the loop in case something went wrong.
Karen shared her concerns with Ann Marie, and for some time the two women sat in silence trying to figure out who could be trusted with their secret. It would have to be someone who would be sympathetic, someone who was willing to risk angering her husband should the truth inadvertently come out.
They were sitting at Lynette’s kitchen table discussing it when she walked in, her arms stacked with wash from the line.
“Here, let me help you get that,” Karen said, and she and Ann Marie rushed to assist with the burden. As they did, their eyes met over the stack of laundry; both women were sharing the same thought - that the answer to their problem had just walked in the door.
“Lynette,” Ann Marie began, “We need to talk to you.”
Lynette, who was sorting laundry, glanced up. “About what?” Then she stopped upon seeing how serious the other two women’s faces were. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
Karen shook her head. “No. But Ann Marie and I are about to do something sort of risky and we need to tell someone before we do.”
Lynette sat down. “Define ‘risky.’”
Ann Marie shot Karen a nervous look. “Well, ‘risky’ as in ‘forbidden.’ By our men.”
“Oh my,” Lynette said. “What is it?”
Ann Marie explained what she wanted to do, and Karen watched carefully as the other woman listened and nodded. She knew even before Ann Marie finished her story that Lynette would agree to help them. After all, she’d expressed understanding of Karen’s situation the night before. Karen was sure she would sympathize with a woman who’d come here from the outside and who wanted to tie up lose ends she’d left hanging from her former life.
“Are you sure it’s going to be safe?” Lynette’s baby had begun to cry and she picked it up now as she asked the question.
“I’ll have Karen with me,” Ann Marie said confidently, and Karen wished she felt as confident as her friend did. “Everything will be fine.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because, on the slim outside chance something did happen, someone from the community needs to know where we are.” Ann Marie paused. “Someone we trust who will only tell if they absolutely have to.”
Lynette looked down at the nursing infant and then back up at the two women. “You know if Randy found out I knew what you were up to and didn’t tell him he’d tan my hide.”
“We do realize it’s a risk,” Karen said. “And you don’t have to do it. We wouldn’t even be mad if you threatened to tell, but we don’t think you’ll do that. I’m sure you know as well as we do that the men sometimes…”
“…don’t see things our way.” Lynette finished. “I agree. It’s not easy, and being told to pray doesn’t always cut it. On the other hand, I want you both to understand this really isn’t how we should handle these things. Sometimes I think the men and women of this community should sit down and discuss the way decisions are made. I mean, none of us want to abandon the Heartfield way of male leadership, it could be more accommodating of our feelings, you know?”
Karen and Ann Marie nodded. They did indeed know, and it felt good to have someone else confirm evidence of a problem they’d both been experiencing.
“So what time are you leaving?” Lynette asked.
“Day after tomorrow,” Karen said. “We have the workshop in the morning and then we’re going to go over to pay a visit to the Fales. We’ll be back by late afternoon and no one will be the wiser.”
“And hopefully by then I will have restored my relationship with my parents,” Ann Marie said optimistically. She looked at the other two women. “I can’t begin to tell either of you how much this means to me,” she said. “Really.”
“Don’t mention it,” Karen said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Lynette agreed. “We women have to stick together. Heartfield is about family, but the way we live means the females here have a bond and an understanding that other women in the outside world could never share or understand. That makes us sisters in a way.”
“Yeah, it kind of does, doesn’t it?” asked Ann Marie with a smile. Karen found herself smiling, too, and feeling far better about being part of the community than she had the night before.
Chapter Nineteen
They woke up to rain on Wednesday morning. As Clay shared coffee with Karen in Lynette’s kitchen, he looked out the window and scowled.
“It’s supposed to do this all day,” he said. “Maybe you and Ann Marie should cancel.”
“No!” Karen said suddenly and Clay looked at her with a puzzled expression.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize how important it was for you to learn to make soap.”
Karen stood and walked over to the sink. She gave a quick glance to Lynette as she passed.
“Well it is, Clay,” she said. “The sooner I can learn some skills the sooner I can make more of a contribution.”
“That’s my girl.” Clay turned and walked over to kiss her, making Karen feel slightly guilty. “Since your insisting on going, I do want you to take this. My phone number is the only one plugged into it. All you have to do to reach me is hit the send button.”
He handed her a cell phone and Karen took it gratefully. Heartfield tried to live with as little technology as possible. There was only two computers on the compound – one in the library and the other in the main office. For years they’d done without cell phones, but after Jake’s arrest decided to keep some on hand for when members were traveling.
