The Education of Annalise

by Laetitia

  The women, convinced now that they were lost, began to troop past their husbands toward the stairs that led to the floor above. Annalise and Mandy were already crying, but the others weren’t particularly dry-eyed either. With many furtive looks back the five women progressed slowly from the room.

  The men watched them sternly and said nothing until they were well out of hearing.

  "They looked terrified!" Ben said as he poured himself a glass of expensive Irish whiskey. "I almost feel sorry for them."

  "Well I don’t!" Chris came over to fill a glass as well. "If those dresses are even half as revealing as the Times implied...they’ll deserve everything they’re going to get."

  "Well gentlemen, shall we proceed to the south lawn and prepare for the display?" Justin asked.

  * * * * *

  If the ladies hadn’t had the good offices of their personal maids, they could have never been successful in getting attired. As it was, they were trembling and crying so much that it took great restraint on the part of the maids not to ask what was amiss. None of them asked, but it was a near thing.

  Finally dressed in their "party dresses" the ladies came down the steps and out the door in a quivering mass, nervously supporting each other...looking almost as poignant as the martyrs of old. They crossed to where their husbands were sprawled in lawn chairs set in a semi-circle facing west. Kaitland tripped when the significance of their chair placement penetrated her fear-frozen brain.

  They intended to see how translucent their dresses had been. Three large watering cans full to the brim were waiting in front of the chairs.

  "Ladies," Justin drawled, "will you do the honors?"

  He gestured toward the cans, but neither he, nor any of the other husbands rose from their chairs to greet the women. This singular lack of courtesy was almost more chilling than what they all knew was coming.

  With a heavy sigh, Kait picked up one of the cans. "Come on. We may as well get this over with." She began to sprinkle Annalise’s dress until it damply clung to her tempting figure.

  "Uuhm...Justin, that can’t be right," Ben said. "It says right here that, ‘Ladies were parading around with soaked dresses that clung to their most personal parts’. Now the upper part is right, but I’m fairly certain that their dresses couldn’t cling to their ‘personal parts’ if they still had their under drawers on."

  "Good point Ben." Chris jumped in. "So ladies, did you divest yourselves of your under drawers before they dampened you down?" Five flushed faces gave him an instant answer.

  "Off with them my dears," Jeff ordered almost jovially."It’s not as if you’d have been allowed to keep them on for long in any case."

  "Jeff!"

  "Oh please Justin..."

  "Darren, don’t humiliate me like this."

  "Chris! This isn’t funny!"

  The women all began babbling at once, until one strident voice over-rode the rest.

  "I WON’T!!" Kaitland’s eyes grew round with shock as if she couldn’t believe she’d just spat that defiant sentence from her lips.

  Ben rose slowly and advanced on her. Kaitland, her hands covering her mouth lest any other damning phrases escape, backed away, but Ben was too swift for her and he captured her hands and held her still.

  "What did you say, my dear?"

  "I...I don’t think it’s decent to ask us to...to..."

  "To recreate what all the men at the garden party saw? Is that what you were going to say?"

  Kait winced at the undeniable truth of the accusation, but a demon was riding her hard. "I’ll take them off in the privacy of our bedroom..." she began.

  Ben dragged her close into his chest and said softly for her ears alone, "You will take them off...here and now, or I will take them off for you and publically warm your butt for you. Do you understand?"

  Kait stared at her husband’s implacable face, trying to see if she could find any hint of mercy...there was none. Ben was controlling his temper, but just barely. He dropped her hands as if he didn’t quite trust himself to touch her at the moment.

  Kait turned her back and hoisted her skirt so she could untie the tabs. She let her under drawers fall in a soft puddle around her ankles. The other four women followed suit and soon the lush green grass was littered with fallen, lace trimmed, under drawers.

  "Now dampen your dresses!" Justin barked out the order startling his own wife as well as

  the other ladies.

  The women jumped to comply and soon all five women were standing in the cooly waning day dripping on the lawn. They shuffled self-consciously into to a ragged line and stood before their husbands, all of them folding their hands decorously in front of them as if it would somehow provide some cover. It was a useless gesture. The sun shining behind them left very little to the imagination and all the ladies quailed as they read the result of the effect on their husband’s faces.

  "Alright then," Darren said tightly, "Let us see you stroll a bit..."

  Amanda stamped her foot in frustration. "Darren! This has gone far enough!

  We know we may have shown poor judgement..."

  "May have?" Chris shouted.

  "Poor judgement?" Jeff sputtered.

  "Of all the hare-brained, irresponsible..." Ben began.

  "It was mostly my fault," Annalise admitted bravely. "I asked Caro for the invitation..."

  "But only because we begged you to," Mandy pointed out.

  "But we had no idea they would make us...make us..." poor Jess couldn’t finish the thought.

  "But the other ladies didn’t seem to mind..." Kait added.

  "We didn’t want them to think we were country bumpkins you see?" Becca hated the wheedling tone that had crept into her voice.

  "Enough!" Justin snapped out. Annalise didn’t think she could be more frightened, but she was wrong. The look in Justin’s eyes made her tremble, and the ensuing silence was deafening.

  "The time for talking is done. Don’t you agree gentlemen?" Justin looked at his friends and waited for their nods of agreement before he spoke again.

  "You ladies may retire to your rooms and await your husbands...unless any of you have a different venue in mind?" He cocked a questioning brow.

  "Sounds good to me!" Ben glared at Kait. "Go!" he ordered sharply. Kait began to dash back to the house when Ben called her back. "Pick up those under drawers!" Kait hastened to do as she was bid, then began running again.

  "And stay in your wet dress, Kaitland. When I come up there I want to see you standing in the corner," he shouted after her.

  The other women just stood there awaiting instructions from their husbands.

  They were all trembling, either from the fear or cold...it didn’t matter much.

  They wrapped their arms around themselves trying to warm up a little.

  "Ma....may we go too?" Annalise asked tremulously.

  As if she hadn’t spoken, Justin asked Ben, "Why do you want to keep her in her dress?"

  "I found out, purely by accident, that a spanking hurts far worse on a cold wet bottom. I want to make sure she feels this one." Ben smiled and accepted one of the thin cheroots that Justin was handing to the men.

  Finally, Justin turned and pinned Annalise with a glacial stare. "That’s sounds like something we need to try, don’t you think Lise?"

  Lise could feel hot tears well up in her eyes. "I...I’d just as soon not," she answered honestly. The men laughed heartily at her answer.

  "I’m sure you would just as soon not," Justin said with a smile, then the smile disappeared.

  "Like I’d just as soon not have strange men ogling my wife." He grabbed her arm, spun her around and smacked her soundly.

  "Yeeeouch!" Kait jumped away as far as she could, but he still held her arm and swung her back into place beneath the crook of his arm to receive another strong smack.

  "Like I’d just as soon not have our name spread all over the Times because of your lewd behavior..." SMACK! ....and your lewd friends....SMACK!

&nb
sp; By now Lise was howling and kicking, oblivious to her audience. "OOOOH!

  Justin stop! It stings like a thousand bees..."

  It was just as well that Lise couldn’t see Jess, Mandy and Becca. They were gaping in morbid fascination as Lise squirmed and pleaded. All three had gone deathly pale as they watched what they knew was going to be a preview of their own distress.

  Justin loosened his grip on Lise’s waist. "Go up stairs and wait for me," he snarled around the cheroot he still had clamped between his strong white teeth.

  While Lise was stooping to retrieve her drawers, the other women looked to their husbands. They wanted nothing so much as to not make them any more angry.

  "Off with all of you! And don’t you dare go in and bother Kait while she’s waiting. You hear me?"

  "Uh huh! No, no, we won’t!" Mandy answered for all of them as they scampered toward the house.

  The men settled back into their lawn chairs to finish their smokes. If the girls had been frightened before, they would’ve been terrified to hear their husbands compare notes and give pointers about the relative merits of different utensils.

  "Jess swears to me that my hand hurts worse than anything, but I’m not sure she’s not saying that because she knows that if I use a hairbrush...it’ll be a longer spanking."

  "Yeah, Becca knows she’s in real trouble when I take out the strap. I think that will be my ‘weapon of choice’ tonight."

  "What on earth possessed them?" Darren asked no one in particular. "I hate that I have to punish Mandy. She’s been so good since our training session. I guess I just hoped the ‘training’ would’ve lasted longer."

  "What do you use on Mandy?" Ben asked.

  "Oh I have a heavy wooden ruler that gets her attention fairly quickly," Darren answered."What do you use?"

  "Normally, just my hand...hard and often, but I think tonight I’m going to add

  ‘six of the best’ with a whippy little cane to drive my point home. Kait has got to learn not to keep running head long into trouble."

  The men fell silent as they waited for Justin to add to the discussion, but he seemed content to draw deeply on his cheroot and blow the smoke in billowing clouds that circled around his head.

  "Well old man!" Ben said. "What’s your plan of attack?"

  Justin let out an exaggerated sigh. "Haven’t I taught you fellows enough?" he said, and then laughed. His laughter at their curiosity was a genuine release of tension. He hated that he had to punish Lise. He loved her even more now than he did when they married...but damn the woman! How had she managed in a few short days alone to get involved in a debacle of such proportions that she made the Times?

  Ben dropped the stub of his cheroot and ground it under his heel. "Seriously, Justin. Do you have any words of wisdom to impart before we ascend?"

  "Make them feel it!" Justin said with some heat.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  The sound of sniffling and barely controlled sobs greeted the men as they reached the top landing. They silently saluted each other as if they were going to war. Doors opened....the sound of crying oozed out... and then was cut off as the hardwood doors closed with an ominous click.

  The low-pitched murmurs were punctuated here and there with an explosive outburst of male righteous indignation now and again, but for the most part the sound was like a well-modulated sea...flowing...cresting...almost soothing in its quiet rhythm. When the first crack of a hand meeting bare quivering flesh exploded into the hallway, it was accompanied with an answering shriek from Kaitland...or was it Becca? It was impossible to distinguish after a while whose fanny was reverberating from which swat.

  The primitive staccato of point....SMACK!... and counter-point...Owwwwch!

  occurred over and over again until it was hard to distinguish one from another.

  The only thing that was certain to even the closest listener, was that there was no predictable beat. Smacks would land... three rapidly peppering Jess’ bottom and she’d scream after each swat ...her pitch ever-rising like a soprano doing scales...whereas, down the hall a heavy-handed wallop would land on Kaitland’s rear and be punctuated with a screeched obscenity...which was followed by a barrage of sharp slappy reminders to watch her mouth...unless she wanted this to go on longer than originally planned.

  After a cacophonist barrage of some length, the large swell of the sound of open-handed swats on bare bottoms began to fade. Sniffles and hiccoughing sobs, were replaced by determined male voices, once again voicing their displeasure.

  "You are an intelligent woman, Annalise. I can not believe you allowed yourself to be talked into something like this..."

  "What did you think was going to happen when you went to a party thrown by that notoriously loose-moraled woman?"

  "You obviously didn’t stop to think of the consequences!"

  "To have continued on, when you knew what they were about...false pride Becca...you know better!"

  "Is that how you make your decisions? Based on whether or not you’ll get caught?"

  Then there was silence as implements were fetched, sometimes accompanied by female outburst of: "Oh please not that! I’ll never be bad again! Please..."

  Down at the far end of the hall, Justin Burke was readjusting Annalise across his knee. He had allowed her to change from her soggy dress and into a night rail after the initial "warm up".

  He had in his hand a round-ended paddle that had seen to the instruction of Burke brides so far back...no one remembered not having it. It was fashioned rather crudely of oak and its face was broad enough to cover any but the broadest behinds. Wielded with a practiced flip of the wrist, its impact was effective and emphatic. Justin rested the face of the paddle on his wife’s already glowing posterior.

  "I am displeased with you on several levels, Lise..." SMACK!..."First, because you knew I wouldn’t want you to have anything to do with Caroline Lamb...SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!...and yet you asked for an invitation!"

  SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

  Lise was stoic for the first three swats, then her bottom felt like it burst into flames. She kicked and screamed. She tried to roll herself off his lap...but all that accomplished was another barrage of smacks. She was going to die! She knew it! He was going to beat her bottom until it burst like a sausage!

  "You will never again choose to do something which you know I will disapprove of. Is that understood?" SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

  SMACK! SMACK!

  Just next door, Ben was punctuating the same lesson with his hard heavy hand.

  He was starting to get quite proficient at varying the tempo and force, so that Kait could never anticipate where and how hard she was going to be spanked next.

  "This has got to be one of the most idiotic things you’ve ever pulled!"

  SMACK!....."I’d bet my diamond studs, that it was you who talked Annalise into wangling that invitation!" SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

  "Oh please! Please! I Yeeeeouch!....Damn it! Ben"...SMACK! SMACK!

  SMACK! SMACK! "Owwwwww!"

  "Am I right?" SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

  "Yes! Yes! It was my idea. I was just so bored!"

  Ben lifted Kait off his lap. He walked over to the door and retrieved the cane that he had propped up against the door jamb. Kaitland saw it as he took a practice "swish" and almost fainted dead away.

  She did crumble to the floor, crying and staring at Ben like she had never seen him before.

  "Please...please Ben. Don’t use that on me! I’m sorry...I’m so very sorry..."

  "So am I my love. Now stand up and brace yourself bending over the bed."

  Ben patted a mound of pillows he’d stacked on the bed to raise her bottom high.

  Kaitland couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, but Ben acted like it was normal to lift his wife from the floor and drape her across the bed. Kait tried to stand, but Ben braced her by pressing down on the small of her back.

  "I’m going to give you six stripes. If you g
et out of position, or try to put your hand back...I’ll start over. Do you understand?"

  "Oh Ben...please don’t....Yeeouch!"

  The first stripe crossed the two round mounds of her bottom. She wanted to jump away. She wanted to fly! The best she could manage was to stomp her feet. She really, really didn’t want him to start over again.

  "That’s one." Ben said as impersonally as if he were counting boards.

  Now Kait knew what to listen for. There was a slight whistle as the cane sliced through the air before it sliced through her butt. CRACK! Another stripe landed, criss-crossing the first one but searing virgin territory as well.