The Courting

by Bella Bryce

  “So?” Alice retorted. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’ve made it my business,” he replied.

  Alice frowned and tried again to wriggle off of his lap. “Let me go!” she said, more loudly.

  “I think perhaps a lesson in manners would do you well,” Colin said. “You’re a girl who likes being punished, so I don’t think you’ll find this differs from the way your father deals with you.”

  “My father is a good man, who only punishes me when I’ve earned it. This isn’t what you think it is, Colin.”

  “I think it’s exactly what it looks like. And you’re not allowed to call me by my name.”

  “Bloody let me go,” Alice said, pushing against his chest. She didn’t like the way the conversation was going.

  “Stop it,” Colin said, and gave a sharp slap to her bare thigh. “I’m not going to hurt you. Is that what you think, that I’m going to hurt you?”

  Alice’s eyes searched his. “I don’t know what to think about this.”

  “I’m going to spank you. You’ve been terribly misbehaved,” Colin said, and kept a firm grasp on Alice as he forced her from a sitting position on his lap to lying over his knees. He pulled up her dress and stared at her ruffled bloomer shorts, knowing if he pulled them down he couldn’t uncross that boundary. Alice waited, feeling his hesitation.

  “I don’t care if everyone says you’re a child. You’re not, you’re eighteen years old and you like this, I know you do. You just don’t know it yet. This is what it’s like to be spanked by a man who wants to court you,” he said, and then quickly yanked her bloomers down as if it took all of his nerve to do so.

  Alice closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Colin pulled his hand back and laid a loud, stinging slap to Alice’s bottom. She whimpered. Colin was not her father and he was not her uncle – and they were the only two men she was accustomed to being disciplined by. She knew their smacks, the weight of their hands and usually for how long it would last. But Colin was a stranger and his smacks were foreign. He seemed irritated when Alice didn’t cry and only increased his force as a result. Alice remained tight-lipped through most of it, but eventually she broke down into tears. Colin finished smacking her bottom, which was terribly red by the time he finished, and pulled the girl up by her arm. She was crying helplessly, her eyes cast down on the floor in shame and utter humiliation.

  “I hate you,” Alice said, shaking her head. “I hate you,” as tears fell down her face.

  Colin’s face became stone cold. “No you don’t. You just think you do. If your father would let you be your rightful age, we would court and then you’d see.”

  “I will never court you or date you or anything with you,” Alice said, glaring at him as she wiped her tears.

  “I have wanted to be with a girl like you since I can remember, Alice. Everything about you is what I’ve been looking for and you need someone like me to keep you in line. I’m wealthy, like your father. I can take care of you. It’s time you grow up and leave Waldorf.”

  “You are nothing like my father. I wouldn’t dream of leaving Waldorf and certainly not with you, even if you were the last man in England.”

  Colin’s eyes hardened and he pulled Alice close to him. “Stop being stupid, Alice. You want this,” he said, shaking her.

  “How can I? I’m ten! Don’t you get it? I don’t know anything about what you’re trying to do. If you think this is one way of getting me to understand the adult side of whatever this is, it’s not working! And you’ve just twisted any opportunity you would have had to help me get to that place, because this is disgusting.”

  Colin’s face was confused and utterly shocked. He let go of Alice’s arm and exhaled, putting his hands on his hips as he looked at the floor.

  “I am not ready to grow up. I’m not ready for all this. My father was right – I need to be a child right now. The idea of being intimate with a man at the moment frightens me. If you weren’t so bloody arrogant, you would have realised that.”

  He couldn’t believe Alice’s words. Colin Maxwell was so sure he’d read the signs, her submissive, demure nature, the way Brayden dressed her, her cheeky behaviour and comments toward him – he was sure it was her way of leading him on. And he was wrong. Completely against what he thought, he got it utterly wrong. Alice, indeed, was being the age she was expected to be and nothing more. She didn’t like him; she didn’t want to court him. Colin shook his head and looked up at her. Alice looked at her bedroom door and then back at him.

  “I thought,” Colin started, having lost a bit of his authority when he realised his grave mistake.

  “You thought wrong.”

  Colin covered his mouth with one hand and wiped it across his lips. He certainly had. “Alice,” he started.

  “No. This is how it’s going to go, Maxwell; you will leave in thirty seconds without another word, grateful that I am going to forgive your idiotic behaviour. My father’s last birthday ball was utterly devastating, I refuse to let him feel that way about this one – which I assure you – if he found out about this, is exactly how he would feel. Just leave now. I don’t want you near me ever again. If you so much as show up at another function and try to speak to me, I will tell everyone what you just did.”

  Colin suddenly felt exposed and cleared his throat. He gave Alice a small nod and quickly left her room without another word.

  Chapter Eleven

  “It’s even more stunning than the mock ups,” Bennett remarked solemnly.

  Brayden swallowed a sip of brandy and looked at Bennett, unsure what he was referring to until he saw Bennett staring at his wrist.

  “My father’s friend was the designer. Do you remember that trip to Zurich? They were meeting with the designer. I knew about the watch a year before they gave it to you.”

  Brayden looked down at it and then up at him, completely touched and utterly unaware.

  “It looks good on you,” Bennett said, and gave Brayden a pat on his arm.

  Brayden offered a small smile. “I’d waited long enough open it. This evening seemed right.”

  “Do you know what else seems right?” Bennett asked, taking a brandy from the tray offered to him. “A dance with Anabelle Greyson.”

  Ana stood chatting to two wait staff discretely, not far from where they were. Brayden exhaled an amused breath and shook his head. “Bennett,” he warned.

  “Maxwell’s leaving rather suddenly,” Bennett commented, immediately going off topic as he observed Colin enter the ballroom. Colin spoke briefly to Alexander, and then nodded toward Bennett and Brayden before leaving.

  “Silly boy never learned anything in the Headmaster’s study, clearly. I’m quite sure we were ruthlessly reminded to always say hello and goodbye properly to our hosts,” Bennett said, as he and Brayden nodded back at Colin in acknowledgement of his departure.

  “I certainly was,” Brayden commented. “If not at school, at home.”

  “Back to business,” Bennett said, turning to Brayden again.

  Brayden shook his head and put one hand in his tuxedo trousers. “Where is Elisabeth?”

  “Chatting to my father.”

  “Not anymore, she’s with your mother,” Brayden said, when he spotted them.

  Bennett did a double take when he realised Elisabeth was holding a glass of champagne in her hands. “Excuse me,” he said, and gave Brayden his brandy. “We’ll continue the Anabelle discussion later,” he added.

  Brayden was slightly amused as he watched Bennett approach Elisabeth and his mother. Bennett took the champagne from Elisabeth’s hands and handed it to his mother with authority, before leading Elisabeth straight out of the ballroom. Evelyn glanced over at Brayden utterly confused.

  “I told you no champagne, young lady,” Bennett said, not even trying to hide his corrective tone as he briskly escorted her out of the ballroom, down the corridor, through the foyer and into the quiet of the sitting room.

  “I
know, Bennett, but your mother is very convincing. She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Elisabeth justified, as he closed the doors and led her to the nearest sofa.

  “First of all, I am fully aware of my mother’s antics and I’ve spoken to my father. Let’s hope he takes my advice. Secondly, do not use my first name when I’m telling you off. There is nothing more to say than simply over you go,” he said, as all 6 feet 6 inches of his tall frame sat on the sofa and pulled a very petite Elisabeth in her ball gown directly over his lap.

  “Oh, don’t please,” Elisabeth whined.

  “Bite your tongue, my girl. You disobeyed me. I said you are not to drink unless I give you permission and since I’ve met you, I’ve never given you permission. I even reminded you before the guests arrived,” Bennett said, as he looked down at her ball gown. “What is this ridiculous design?” he asked, pulling up various layers of the dress.

  “It was your design, Sir,” Elisabeth replied flatly.

  “That’ll do. You’ll be crying in a moment,” he said, as he finally managed to pull her ball gown up and over her back and yank down her tights and red satin knickers. Bennett ignored the latter fact and immediately began smacking her. He gave her twenty hard slaps with his right hand and carried on to thirty.

  “If you were my wife, at this moment the driver would be taking us home. I suggest you pick up on all this, otherwise over the years to come you’ll learn the hard way.”

  Elisabeth sniffed and wiped her eyes, mostly concerned about her mascara. She’d tried very hard not to cry at all, although Bennett’s force when he punished was by far greater than her attempts to hold back. Despite the unpleasant stinging of Bennett’s discipline, she was strangely aroused by getting smacked across his knee in the sitting room when a ballroom full of guests was just down the corridor.

  “Go and face the wall there, hands at your sides,” he said, as he stood up.

  Elisabeth immediately obeyed and knowing that at any moment guests could wander in made her feel a little mischievous. She was fully aware that even if guests had wandered in during her punishment, Bennett wouldn’t have taken notice; he would have just carried on.

  Bennett watched Elisabeth stand facing the wall knowing full well that underneath her gorgeous red ball gown was an equally gorgeous display of red.

  “You’re not to disobey me, Elisabeth,” he said, when he approached her from behind.

  “Yes, Sir. Your mother—” she started.

  “Needs a jolly good thrashing, but my father doesn’t have the nerve. I, however, am a different man and I will thrash you for misbehaviour. She might get away with luring you into having a glass of champagne, but you will not use her as an excuse for accepting it.”

  Elisabeth exhaled; it wasn’t quite fair in her opinion. “Yes, Sir.”

  “My mother is your elder, but I am the man you are courting and it is I who has the final say. Not her.”

  He watched Elisabeth face the wall and began to think back on his wording when he said that if she were his wife at that moment and how it seemed such a distant thing. Bennett could easily propose to Elisabeth there and then – he had the ring. He had gone to Tiffany’s and picked one out the weekend she moved out of Barton-Court House; he was just waiting for the right time.

  “Right,” Bennett said, then put his hands on Elisabeth’s shoulders and turned her to face him. “This is the first and last time I will ever kiss you like this after being seriously disciplined. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Elisabeth said, as he held her face in his hands.

  “Good,” he said quietly, and kissed her on the lips. They pulled away and looked at each other.

  “Be a good girl or I will bring you upstairs and put you to bed,” he said.

  Elisabeth blatantly blushed and decided she wasn’t finished. She rested her hands on his blazer and stood on her toes as she reached his lips again and applied more pressure to their kiss.

  Bennett stopped after a moment and pulled away. “I said be a good girl,” he whispered.

  Elisabeth smiled. She needed to appreciate such kisses because Bennett didn’t kiss her on the lips every time they saw each other, although he rarely thought of anything else. If he wasn’t thinking of kissing Elisabeth, he was thinking of spanking her.

  “What part of carriages at midnight don’t people understand?” Evelyn Fowler asked through a smile on her face as she glanced around the ballroom at the guests who were still dancing and chatting.

  Brayden chuckled.

  “Now Brayden, darling,” she started, as she turned to face him fully. “Aunty Evelyn wants to know if there is anything going on with the lady in the corner of the room with the endless glances in your direction.”

  Brayden gave a discrete look at Ana before turning to Evelyn. “She’s the event coordinator,” he clarified.

  “You’re precious, I know who Anabelle Greyson is, darling.”

  Brayden wasn’t accustomed to being called names like ‘precious’ although Evelyn Fowler adored Brayden to a degree that only she really understood. It helped that she’d watched him grow up, board at school with her sons and she had been best friends with his late mother.

  “Now, what we must do is create a diversion whereby—” she started, although Brayden shook his head and laughed. “What?” she asked.

  “Aunty Evelyn, I appreciate your enthusiasm for my seemingly hopeless state of bachelorhood but you mustn’t be concerned,” he said, all with a real smile on his face.

  “Darling, I’m not concerned, I’m excited. Don’t confuse the two,” she said, as though she were getting back into planning mode.

  “Not this evening,” Brayden said, raising his eyebrows at Evelyn. It was the first time he’d ever really used any kind of deliberate tone toward her. She was his elder and his surrogate aunt and he always enjoyed having her attention, especially since his mother wasn’t around to put her hand on his cheek and say maternal things anymore.

  Evelyn looked over at Ana and then back at Brayden. “All right, darling, but you have until half past to say something and then I just might,” she warned, before excusing herself.

  Brayden smiled as Evelyn walked away and then turned to look at the emptying ballroom. She was right; people didn’t like to leave a party on time. They didn’t always like to show up on time, either. But he was pleased for the enthusiasm and decided that it was indeed the right decision he’d made to reinstate his birthday ball. In any case, Brayden had done it for Alice, not for himself.

  He turned from the ballroom and walked down the corridor, then left through a set of French doors and crossed the dark, abandoned conservatory to the back wall of French doors running over one hundred feet. The conservatory temperature was comfortable and the heat poured into the night air as he stepped onto the back stone staircase facing the formal gardens. He left the door slightly open to keep him warm as he looked out across the shadows of hedges, shrubbery and the tall garden walls. His breath visibly floated in the air and then promptly disappeared. He thought, hoped, it might snow. Waldorf Manor was another whole level of gorgeous when snow laid.

  Brayden looked at his watch and noted the time, 12:23 am. Three years ago, at his twenty-sixth birthday ball, he’d already known for two hours that his parents were gone. He’d taken the small beautifully wrapped gift and locked it in his desk drawer as though keeping the gift from his parents secure would do the same for them. Brayden had realised, through Alice’s pressure in talking about why he stopped having birthday balls, which had been a yearly tradition for half a decade before then, that he needed to get to the root of it all. This evening proved it – it was a fantastic party and despite it being the anniversary of Oliver and Kathryn James’ horrific deaths, he could smile. He was twenty-nine, he had Alice, he was Elisabeth’s uncle and would most probably be Bennett’s best man sooner than later. Life had been very, very changed from what he thought it would end up being.

  People often idealised Christmas as the mark
ing of the year, but Brayden’s check-in with himself occurred on his birthday in recent years. That was the time when he reflected. Christmas wasn’t far away and with the unhealthy repression of dealing with his parents’ death finally beginning to get behind him, he could fully enjoy the holiday as it should be enjoyed. Especially since he had someone else to think about. His thoughts stayed on Alice only for a moment and then floated to Ana and their brief exchange before the ball.

  She’d given slight indication in her expression, posture and choice of words that she’d rather enjoyed that interaction. Brayden wouldn’t have ever seriously considered really pursuing her simply because it was plain she responded well to his comments, although Bennett’s persistency and Evelyn’s prying was enough to put Ana back on his mind. He could trust Bennett and Evelyn, and it seemed rather timely that he and Ana also had a rather solid conversation which had left him feeling the more serious side of smitten, but he put that down to her being the only female his age he’d spoken to in several months. Brayden otherwise spent all of his time with his daughter.

  Alice was precisely the reason he didn’t feel comfortable pursuing Ana. Children were not the centre of the universe in his opinion and if he’d have married Ana first and they had Alice together, it would be different. But Alice came along first and it wouldn’t be fair to elevate Ana in his life unless Alice was comfortable with it, especially considering the girl would have a significant amount of further adjustment to contend with. She was eighteen, after all, regressed to ten years old and how would that play out if he began to court a woman and marry her?

  In his mind, nothing should change. He had no reason to believe anything would. Brayden certainly wouldn’t enter into a relationship without ensuring that the woman he was pursuing was fully aware that she would have to accept Alice exactly as she was and all that Brayden had built around them both. She would be expected to slide into place as a maternal figure and once they were married, she would become Alice’s proper mother. If Brayden were able to fall in love and such a woman existed, it would be ideal. Of course, he certainly didn’t expect it to happen and that was the chance he took when he adopted Alice.