Damsels in Distress

by Amanita Virosa

  ‘Oh, Mr Brooke, I don’t know,’ she heard Charity say.

  ‘You are a very pretty girl, Charity,’ Brooke drawled salaciously.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Brooke, but sir, please don’t do that.’

  ‘A pretty girl like you could go far, you know.’

  Then Faith could not hear any more. The voices became lower, and then when she heard them again the tone of the exchange had changed.

  ‘Oh, Mr Brooke, oh sir,’ she heard Charity gasp.

  ‘That’s it, you little minx, in it goes, dear girl.’

  ‘But Mr Brooke, sir, it’s ever so big.’

  ‘What lovely bubbies you have, my dear. You enjoyed showing them to all the world, didn’t you, you shameless little hussy?’

  ‘Ah, please sir, don’t bite them so… ouch, Mr Brooke, sir!’

  After that the words turned to grunts and cries and squeals that could have been of pain but might have been delight. Tears ran down Faith’s cheeks as she listened, immobile and in ever increasing discomfort. Then at last she heard a shuddering sigh that must have been Charity’s climax, followed by a few male grunts.

  Faith strained her ears hoping to hear something that might mean she was about to be released. The wicker was increasingly uncomfortable and pained the soft flesh of her body on every side. Her arms and legs cramped from being forced into one position, and all she could see was random specks of light that stole in from gaps in the weaving of the wickerwork. She could see nothing that might help her discover what was happening beyond her tiny prison. Where had Mr Brooke and Charity gone? She could not endure this for much longer. What was going on?

  At last she gasped a sob of relief as the leather straps where loosened, and sweet relief, the basket lid opened. Peering down at her was Charity, with a most shamefaced expression on her cute face. Still naked, there was grass seeds stuck in her stockings and more wisps of hair had escaped from her maid’s cap. She smiled down at her contorted friend and extended a hand to help her.

  It was not easy getting out of the basket. Apart from her compressed position, Faith found her legs and arms had gone to sleep and would not work properly, but with Charity’s help she eventually managed to climb out, albeit unsteadily.

  Mr Brooke was watching with an amused expression on his ruddy face, which hardened when Faith glanced at him.

  ‘Right girls, get this all packed and cleared away,’ he ordered, his butler demeanour once again restored. ‘Quickly now, the company will be back soon. Come along, get to work now. You cannot expect to spend the whole day enjoying yourselves.’

  ‘And what are you two still doing in your birthday suits?’ Master Marmaduke cocked a quizzical eye at Faith and Charity.

  ‘Um, we didn’t…’ Faith mumbled, blushing furiously and glancing at Brooke, who stood detached and aloof to one side.

  ‘I do declare your maids seem to run around naked for most of the day, Marmaduke!’ Angelica’s haughty laugh set the seal on Faith’s embarrassment.

  ‘Well, get dressed at once, you silly creatures,’ he ordered. ‘Then take all this,’ he indicated the picnic paraphernalia, ‘back to the house. I suppose we had better wait for the others.’

  ‘I wonder what they can be up to.’ Angelica laughed again, as with huge relief Faith buttoned up her camisole and helped Charity back into her corset. The dressing took some time, and it was obvious that Angelica was getting impatient.

  ‘Oh, where have Belinda and Eustace got to?’ she pouted. ‘It really is too much to be endured. For heaven’s sake, what are those wicked maids doing now. It seems to be taking forever for them to dress. We should have given them a dozen strokes apiece.’

  Faith felt her stomach tighten and exchanged an anxious glance with Charity as they buttoned up their dresses.

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure that would have been fair, Angelica.’ Master Marmaduke’s tone and demeanour were relaxed, and finishing adjusting her apron, Faith helped Charity to straighten her little cap.

  ‘But it would, Marmaduke,’ she squealed like a spoilt brat, her voice getting shriller with each passing syllable, ‘it would! I did especially want some cherries, and these two incompetent strumpets have ruined the whole afternoon.’

  Marmaduke waved at Eustace and Belinda, who he’d spotted stealing out of a shady coppice on the edge of the meadow. ‘Never mind, Angelica,’ he said, and Faith watched, dumbfounded, as he produced a brown paper bag from his blazer pocket and offered it to the pink-gowned, pouting lady. ‘Why not have one of these?’

  ‘W-what is that?’ Angelica demanded. ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Don’t you know, my dear?’ he mused, clearly pleased with himself. ‘That’s funny, because I found them secreted beneath the rug, just were you were sitting for the picnic.’ He smiled, plucked a juicy cherry from the bag, and popped it into his mouth. ‘Mm, you should have one, they really are very good.’

  Angelica stood frozen to the spot, pink spots spreading from the dimpled centres of her porcelain cheeks.

  ‘Cherries?’ Eustace’s booming voice rang out. ‘What ho. Where did you find them, old chap?’

  ‘It seems Angelica had them all the time,’ Marmaduke divulged. ‘Now I don’t regret the fact that we gave these two little minxes a good caning; I am quite sure it did them no harm whatsoever. I do, however, resent my fiancé lying and stealing in order to get my staff in trouble.

  ‘I – I – I…’ Angelica stammered hopelessly, standing rigid, looking as if, for once in her spoiled life; she did not know what to do. ‘I’m sorry, Marmy,’ she whined at last. ‘It was just a little bit of fun.’

  Marmaduke bent and picked up one of the discarded willow wands and flexed it idly, with a thoughtful expression. ‘I suppose the real question is, what would your papa do in such circumstances?’

  Apples and Pairs

  ‘Look!’ Sally Jones squealed excitedly, peeking around the sheet she’d just hung up to dry. ‘There they go; off shooting again, I expect. Oh Rose, just look at that Joe Drake. Look at the shoulders on him. What I wouldn’t give for an hour in the hay barn with him!’

  ‘Sally, what are you saying?’ Rose Maynard said in outraged tones as she hefted the laundry basket over to the next bit of line. All the same, she had a good look as well as the two men strode across the lawns towards fields in front of Corving Woods.

  ‘He is splendid though, isn’t he?’ Sally said dreamily.

  ‘Yes, yes I suppose he is,’ Rose acknowledged, but her gaze was not fixed on the young gamekeeper’s form, but that of his companion. She gave a heartfelt sigh. Sally was a lovely girl, plumply curvaceous with a creamy complexion and corn-gold hair, and Rose had seen Joe stare hungrily over at her young companion more than once when he delivered game to the kitchens. Sally had a real chance with him; there was no doubt about that.

  She watched the men, quite distant figures now, as they climbed a stile, Joe passing the guns over to Mr Caversham as the dogs milled excitedly around them.

  The squire was a different matter altogether, and Rose returned to the laundry with a sigh. He was so handsome, so indifferent and aloof, so far above her station in life that she knew she could entertain no hopes at all in that direction.

  Rose had been at the hall for almost a year now, yet she had not thought much about Mr Caversham until that day the previous week when the hunt set off from the hall. Ordered to serve drinks to the mounted throng, it fell to Rose to hand the master his stirrup cup. He looked down at her from Thor, his massive chestnut hunter and, just for a moment, she found herself impaled by his imperious gaze.

  ‘Stop dreaming you two!’ Mrs Bunyan’s sharp voice cut through Rose’s reverie, and the girls quickly got on with hanging up the linen. ‘Bone idle, like all young girls these days,’ the miserable woman grumbled. ‘In my young day the least hint of slacking would earn lazy chits like you two a damned good leat
hering. A few cuts of the birch or belt would soon buck your ideas up, depend upon it.’ The housekeeper glared at them, her long black skirts and hair, worn in a tight grey bun, always seemed to belong to another altogether harsher age. The glint in her slate-grey eyes left Rose in no doubt how bitterly Mrs Bunyan regretted the fact that times had changed, and that a housekeeper’s powers to punish under-servants had waned. Still, the girls waited until her stiff black back had vanished before breaking into fits of giggles. The housekeeper might no longer have the authority to order them a flogging, but she could still make life quite difficult enough for lowly housemaids.

  ‘Phew, I’m glad that old termagant can’t give us a whipping.’ Sally was grinning, but she kept her voice low. ‘Did you see her eyes? She really would love to have us thrashed.’

  ‘According to cook, this place used to be known for it,’ said Rose, who had been at the hall some months longer than her companion. ‘They used to send girls over to the stables to be dealt with by the grooms. There was even supposed to be a special room there for public floggings.’ She shivered as a vision of rough hands and leather tack came unbidden into her mind.

  ‘Well,’ Sally leant forward conspiratorially and spoke in a hoarse whisper, cheeks pink with excitement, ‘I don’t know about the grooms, but there is a gamekeeper I wouldn’t mind being sent to. Have you seen the size of his belt?’

  ‘Sally!’ But Rose’s remonstrance was half-hearted. She was thinking of the squire, Roland Caversham, and the way he had looked down at her from his mount as he tapped his riding-crop impatiently against his thigh.

  ‘He’s going to do it! He says he’s going to do it!’ Sally rushed into Rose’s little room, face flushed with excitement.

  ‘Sally, slow down,’ Rose said, continuing to brush out her long brown hair. ‘Who is going to do it, and what is he going to do?’ She was used to Sally’s fits of excitement and waited patiently until the blonde girl had calmed down enough to explain what she was all agitated about.

  ‘Joe, of course, he caught me stealing pears from the tree by his cottage after church.’

  ‘I wondered where you disappeared to. But I thought you don’t like pears.’

  ‘I don’t, silly.’ Sally took the hairbrush from Rose and started brushing her hair for her. ‘He took ages to come home and catch me, too. I had to hide several lots in the hedge before I could get him to surprise me in the act.’

  Rose opened her mouth in sheer astonishment at her friend’s effrontery, but Sally just carried on excitedly. ‘He said he’d report me but I begged him not to. I said if he liked he might punish me himself and looked all coy at him. He got all red when I said maybe I needed a good spanking.’

  ‘Sally!’

  ‘When he went all red I got a little bit worried. I thought he might be going to tell Mrs Bunyan on me.’ Sally’s voice was hoarse now with remembered anxiety. ‘But then he says he doesn’t think a spanking will do it for a wicked little chit like me, and that I’m going to have to have the belt instead.’ Sally giggled, but it was a very nervous laugh. Rose could hear the trepidation in her friend’s voice and realised that she was not the only one wondering if Sally had gone a bit too far.

  ‘Rose,’ the pretty blonde stopped brushing and blinked down at her, face full of anxiety as she chewed her finger pensively, ‘do you suppose a belting will hurt an awful lot?’

  What on earth do you think you’re doing, Rosy?’ she asked herself as she scurried through the kitchen garden, furtive as a fox. You are as mad as that young Sally!

  The gardeners had all gone home at five, but she was still afraid she might be spotted. Sally had disappeared after tea, her usual robust appetite seeming to have evaporated, the blonde picking listlessly at her food for once, before making her excuses. Rose had known where she was going, of course, for Sally was quite unable to talk about anything else all day.

  So, instead of following her young friend, Rose waited a while before slipping out herself, and even then she took a different, more circuitous route, cutting behind the big yew hedge which screened her from the house, before entering the walled kitchen garden.

  Why Joe had summoned Sally to the fruit store neither of the girls knew, but it struck Rose, as she scurried along the pathway, screened by the gooseberry cages, that it was a long way from the main house or other habitation. With a nervous thrill in her stomach she realised that Joe was no fool. No one would be around to hear the crack of leather on soft bottom flesh at this time of night. No one would hear a girl cry out for mercy or hear her squeals of pain.

  No one but Rose, at least.

  She told herself that she had to continue on her mission. She had to ensure that Sally was all right. Joe was such a hulking brute of a young man, who knew what he might be capable of? And Rose would not admit, even to herself, that the choking excitement that filled her chest might not be entirely due to concern for her friend’s welfare, or anxiety about being caught spying by the gamekeeper.

  She hardly dared breathe as she edged open the door to the fruit store. Part of her was really scared of Joe and she had no intention of tasting the brute’s belt herself. Her mouth was very dry and she found it difficult to swallow as she stole through the first storeroom, with its rows of apples laid out on wooden trestle tables.

  The storerooms were long and narrow and ran into one another. The first two were gloomy and had only fruit in them, but as Rose reached the door to the third room she could see that the gaslights had been lit and the sound of voices made her stop. The connecting door was partly open, but she hardly dared to peek through as the voices sounded very close. Then she noticed the window. It was small and contained nine little dusty panes, set to the side of the door behind the end of one of the long tables.

  ‘You’re late!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Joe. I couldn’t get away.’

  ‘It’s Mr Drake to you, you saucy little trollop.’

  ‘Sorry, um, Mr Drake.’

  Heart hammering in her breast Rose carefully moved the cooking apples from the table directly in front of the little window. It took a while as she only dare move them a couple at a time, and it was with difficulty that she found spaces for them on the crowded bench. The sweet, sharp, apple smell mingled with the slightly dusty odour of the storeroom. The place was almost preternaturally still and she wished that Joe had chosen somewhere with a bit more background noise to mask the rustling of her dress, and the soft clunks of the big cookers as she placed them on the wooden surface.

  ‘You know what you’re here for, don’t you, my girl?’

  At least the silence of the storerooms meant that Rose could hear everything from next-door. Joe’s voice sounded oddly hoarse. Was he nervous? It sounded like it, although Rose would not have liked to put it to the test.

  ‘Um, yes, Mr Drake, I do know what I’m here for.’

  ‘I’m going to give you a good old-fashioned leathering, girl. I’m going to send you to bed tonight with a well tanned behind. Understand me?’

  ‘Y- yes, Mr Drake.

  There was a note of real fear in Sally’s responses, and Rose knew her friend was starting to regret her rashness. She clambered carefully onto the table, but there was too much dust smearing the panes to see anything but vague shapes, so she dug her handkerchief out from her sleeve and dabbed at one. That was a little better, but her view was still obscured, so she moistened a clean part of the cloth with spit and cleared a spot a little bigger than her eye. Then putting her face right up to the window, she was rewarded by an almost perfect view of the gas lit scene beyond.

  The third storeroom was reserved for late harvested varieties, and so the long trestle tables were still devoid of fruit, and there was not a lot of space running between them.

  In the narrow alley Sally shifted from foot to foot, hanging her head and kneading her fingers, looking quite unlike her usual chirpy self. Joe Drake, by con
trast, looked relaxed, leaning back casually against one of the tables as he perused the girl. If there was tension in his voice it did not show in his posture. That rotten beast, thought Rose with a little surge of anger, really was enjoying himself!

  ‘Well, girlie,’ he grunted, ‘are you ready for a taste of this?’ He leered at the trembling girl, patting his broad brown leather belt. Rose almost willed her friend to refuse; it was not too late to turn and run, was it?

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Even in the sepulchral quiet of the storehouse Sally’s whispered reply was so soft that Rose could barely make it out.

  ‘Good.’ Joe sprang up and Rose felt a surge of panic as she saw Sally flinch away, but the gamekeeper did not touch her. Instead he spun and lifted the tabletop he’d been leaning against off its trestles. The thing was about ten feet long and made of three thick planks, each one a good foot wide, yet he lifted it as if it were nothing more than a kitchen tray.

  Rose could not quite suppress a little gasp of astonishment, but fortunately the sound was covered by the noise made as he leant the tabletop against one wall. Then the young man took one of the solid wooden trestles, and pulled it nearer to the centre of the room. The tabletop on the other side quickly joined its fellow, and the trestle stood isolated in the golden gaslight, ominously awaiting its new role.

  ‘I like plenty of space to work in, don’t you?’ The man gave Sally a wicked grin as he unbuckled his broad belt, and Rose watched, horrified yet enthralled, as he drew the thing out of its belt loops, the dark, well oiled leather gleaming in the soft light. Joe Drake doubled the strap, a good two inches wide and looking like very heavy leather.

  Crack! Without warning he brought the belt down against the tabletop that leant against the wall. The retort sounded like a pistol going off in the silence of the storeroom, and Sally gave a startled squeal of terror. Rose failed to suppress a worried gasp herself, but neither of the pair looked her way.