Spilt Milk

by Sarah Steel

  Up in her attic bedroom, with no warmth other than a single blanket, it was chilly. Tuppence wriggled and snuggled down into her narrow bed. Soon it would be time to rise, light the candle and don her maid's uniform. The four sisters who resided at The Birches insisted that their maid was neat and trim at all times - punishing Tuppence promptly for a wrinkled black stocking, stained apron or crooked lace cap.

  A second train - an express - thundered by in the distance beyond Spinsters' Spinney. Tuppence knew that it would be a troop rain, carrying the finest of the Shropshire Rifles away to fight the Boers. There would be sturdy young men in khaki and gallant officers in scarlet, black and gold. Tuppence eased her thighs apart and fingered her hot slit. Gallant officers, she murmured dreamily, with waxed moustaches and sinewy thighs sheathed in black breeches. Surrendering to her waking dream, she thumbed the outer lips apart and fingertip-teased the inner fleshfolds, deliberately strumming their wet warmth.

  Still tipsy from the mug of stolen sherry last night, Tuppence ignored the small voice in her head urging her to rise, dress and go down to the kitchen to stoke the fires and boil the kettle for early morning tea. Silencing the voice of conscience and stern duty, she ground her buttocks into her bed and surrendered her nakedness up into the fierce embrace of a brown-eyed officer, imagining his hard mouth upon her parted lips and that the hands cupping and squeezing her breasts were not hers but his. Her nipples thickened within her slit-wet fingers. The feral tang of her own arousal perfumed her nostrils, maddening and exciting her.

  As her fluttering belly tightened, she drew her knees up to her breasts and scrabbled for a thin crease of her blanket. Knuckling the fold into her cleft, she rasped the prickling fabric against the sensitive ribbon of velvety flesh between her cheeks, grunting softly as her inner thighs grew shiny with the scald of her excitement. Inching the blanket fold a fraction forward, Tuppence closed her eyes and punished herself with her knuckles, kneading the fabric into her hot hole. Bright lights flashed behind her eyes, the scarlet and gold more brilliant than that of the imagined officer's crisp uniform.

  The door to her attic bedroom opened abruptly and a tall, stern-faced young lady - no more than five years older than Tuppence's twenty - strode across to the foot of the young maid's bed.

  'Get up at once, you lazy girl. It's gone cock crow.'

  Tuppence opened her eyes in alarm and shrank down behind her blanket, blushing deeply with shame. The muscles deep inside her were loosening and just about to melt, the rapidly spreading ripples of joy signalling her climax.

  'Did you not hear me, girl? Up, this instant.'

  'Sorry, Miss Emily,' Tuppence mumbled. 'I was asleep.' Tuppence clamped her cheeks and thighs together tightly to contain her urgent delight.

  'Asleep? Nonsense, girl. And I can smell sherry. I can distinctly smell sherry.' Miss Emily, her firm breasts bulging within her tightly bound silk kimono, snatched up a white mug from a small bedside cabinet. Sniffing it suspiciously, she gasped in outrage. 'I thought so. Stealing sherry again. Up. Out of that bed,' she commanded, unfastening her kimono and rolling up her right sleeve. 'I'm going to punish you.'

  Tuppence clutched the blanket with both hands and drew it up to her chin. Miss Emily's eyes narrowed. Like a heron spearing a trout, her fist flashed down and taloned Tuppence by the wrist. Inclining her head so that her golden curls tumbled freely, Miss Emily sniffed the maid's wet knuckles.

  'So,' she whispered, 'not only do I smell sherry, I smell the taint of wickedness, the very perfume of sin.'

  'No, Miss, please, Miss—'

  'Idle hands tempt the devil, Tuppence. Did you not learn that lesson at Sunday school? Idle hands must be punished. Hold them up.'

  'But Miss—'

  'At once, girl. No, stay as you are,' Miss Emily ordered, briskly dragging the blanket down to the shivering maid's belly. 'Hold your hands out, palms up, for the strap.'

  The strap, sixteen inches of supple hide from the local tannery, was affixed to a nail on the back of the bedroom door - just like the strap hanging from every maid's attic bedroom door throughout the land. Miss Emily snatched it down, snapped it twice savagely and returned to the cowering maid's bedside.

  'Idle hands tempt the devil, girl,' Miss Emily hissed, whipping the strap down across the upturned palms.

  Tuppence squealed, but was too terrified to flinch or withdraw her hands from the fierce lash: to do so would have exposed her quivering breasts to the harsh kiss of the hide. Miss Emily administered four blistering strokes to each pink palm, then snatched up the blanket and tossed it aside. Tuppence attempted to cover her nakedness with her throbbing hands.

  'Hands away, girl,' Miss Emily barked. 'I am now going to punish the devil.'

  Tuppence whimpered as she struggled to obey Miss Emily's instruction to ease herself up from the mattress. With her thighs parted, Tuppence offered herself up for the leather. Both mistress and maid gazed down at the dark snatch of wet pubic curls. The devil.

  'Open your legs wider, you little whore.'

  Timorously, and burning with shame, Tuppence thrust her hips and thighs up and forced them wider apart: not for pleasure, this time, but for pain. The strap cracked down six times in rapid succession. Twice against the soft flesh of each inner thigh and then twice - searingly - across her pubic mound.

  'Stop snivelling, girl. Get washed, dressed and downstairs,' Miss Emily ordered, fingering the wet tip of the strap where it had kissed the maid's splayed labia. 'My sisters and I await our early morning tea.'

  'Another financial scandal in the City,' Miss Edwina remarked, rustling her copy of The Times. 'Thank goodness we put our capital into Treasury Bonds.'

  Tuppence served the austere spinster with kippers and retreated to the sideboard, where jars of quince and Seville marmalade required her attention.

  'News from Paris,' Miss Edwina continued after a forkful of buttered kipper. 'Oscar Wilde arrived on the boat train the day before yesterday, after being released from Reading gaol.'

  Miss Edwina, the oldest of the four spinster sisters residing at The Birches, made it her custom to inform and educate the breakfast table every morning with snippets from The Times. Her sisters sat in silence, taking in the random paragraphs with their cold ham, poached eggs and thinly sliced bread and butter.

  'The Boers are in disarray,' the oldest sister announced with every evidence of relish - then launched into a colourful account of a young chap called Churchill who had covered himself with glory.

  Heads bowed, Miss Edwina's three sisters busied themselves with their breakfasts. Tuppence, still sore from the strap, squeezed the cold flannel between her thighs and sighed softly. Bringing a second silver teapot to the table, she wondered what Miss Emily had thought as she had plied the strap earlier that morning. The cruel leather had licked the maid's pubis harshly, unleashing Tuppence's pent-up orgasm almost immediately. What the naughty maid's nimble fingers had begun beneath the blanket the strap's lash had brought to fruition. Tuppence had moaned and climaxed openly as the leather burned her thighs: jerking her hips and slamming her buttocks into the mattress shamelessly. Tuppence could not quite remember, but she could have sworn that she had seen her stern mistress kiss, then surreptitiously lick, the leather.

  'More milk, I think,' Miss Victoria commanded.

  'One moment, my dear,' Miss Edwina intervened, holding her hand up imperiously. Without turning to address Tuppence directly, she continued in a solemn tone. 'I am informed that fortified spirits were purloined from the pantry, last night. Sherry, no less.'

  The matter was discussed briefly and it was the opinion of the breakfast table that such an outrage merited punishment. Tuppence fiddled with the hem of her white apron nervously. She had hoped that Miss Emily would have forgotten her other misdemeanours, but the younger sister had not overlooked the matter of the stolen sherry - and had placed the matter into her sister's capable hands.

  'Across my knee, Tuppence,' Miss Edwina ordered, letting The Times sli
ther down to the carpet as she spread her thighs apart to receive the bending maid.

  The three other sisters wiped their lips delicately with white napkins and craned across the table to witness the baring of the maid's delightfully pert bottom. Tuppence's soft cheeks wobbled deliciously as Miss Edwina caressed them firmly with her flattened palm. Shrinking from the dominant touch of the spanking hand at her peaches, Tuppence clenched her buttocks tightly in fearful expectation.

  The spanking was brisk but blistering. Sixteen harsh cracks of very firm palm rang out, sweeping down mercilessly across the softness of the maid's perfectly poised cheeks. The punished buttocks blushed instantly, the deep pink quickly turning to an angrier shade of crimson.

  Tuppence wriggled and squealed, then squirmed and sobbed, but Miss Edwina was an accomplished chastiser and administered the discipline with consummate skill. Pinning Tuppence firmly at the neck, she spanked the bare-bottomed maid until every inch of the rounded cheeks burned bright with the scarlet of pain. After the last of the searing blows had echoed around the silent breakfast table, the three watching sisters rose up and gathered around to inspect the punished bottom, Miss Emily dimpling both reddened crowns of Tuppence's hot bottom with her straightened forefinger as she prodded the ravished rump.

  A little later, Tuppence took the small pan and bristle brush to the white lawn tablecloth to sweep away the breakfast crumbs. Stooping to retrieve the napkins for the laundry, she noticed that one of them was quite damp. Raising it up to her nose, she sniffed the starched linen inquisitively. It had been used against wet lips - not to wipe away marmalade, Tuppence flushed as she realised her discovery, but to wipe away the excitement oozing from lips lower down, an excitement caused by witnessing the bare-bottomed spanking of the naughty maid. Tuppence grinned. It would be Miss Elizabeth's napkin. Miss Elizabeth, who always seemed to get more pleasure in watching than actually dispensing strict discipline. Tuppence gathered up the napkin in her fist, shuddering as the wet patch kissed her palm.

  Inching her naked thighs back over the edge of the cold porcelain, Tuppence guided her hot bottom below the brass tap at the scullery sink. Pawing blindly behind her, Tuppence's fingers found the tap and twisted. The icy sluice brought instant balm and soothing relief to her spanked and scalded cheeks. Towelling her cool buttocks dry, she pulled up her cami-knickers and adjusted her trim uniform, taking pains to retie her apron neatly.

  Pausing to feast upon ripe greengages - plucked earlier from the hot house and destined as delicacies for the fierce sisters' dinner table - Tuppence relished the juices of the fleshy fruit running down over her chin.

  Still burning with shame after her bare-bottomed spanking, she tiptoed down the stone steps into the dark cellar and selected a pint bottle of champagne. Back up in the scullery, she paused, straining to hear the sound of an approaching predatory sister. All was quiet. Tuppence uncorked the champagne, using a tea towel to muffle the 'pop', then quaffed the stolen pleasure quickly. Dizzy and slightly astounded at her own audacity - the discovery of her crime would surely mean nothing less than a strict, slow caning - Tuppence hid the empty champagne bottle and collected a zinc bucket and scrubbing brush.

  'I trust you have been diligent in your duties, Tuppence. Have you done the passage thoroughly, girl?' Miss Victoria demanded, standing in the open doorway, her hands on her hips, her elbows angled.

  Tuppence, kneeling on the flagstone floor, looked up anxiously. 'I dread the possibility of mice,' Miss Victoria observed. 'Mice will only flourish where there is dirt. Dirt will only flourish where there is a lazy maid.'

  Easing back so that her buttocks sank down onto her heels, Tuppence surveyed the stone floor of the narrow passage she had just scrubbed.

  'Well, girl? Have you been thorough?'

  'Oh, yes, Miss Victoria,' Tuppence murmured, rising up from the floor and picking up her bucket and scrubbing brush.

  'We shall see,' the severely cropped ash-blonde replied doubtfully, and managing to weave a thread of menace into her tone.

  Tuppence shivered. Miss Victoria was always hounding her in her daily chores, and punishing her ruthlessly when all was not strictly as it should be. Tuppence watched, her heart thumping rapidly, as Miss Victoria strode down along the passage towards the pantry, her tightly laced brogues echoing on the hard stone floor. Pausing at a basket brimming with apples, the narrow-waisted young woman bent and lifted the wicker basket up by the handles. A large Sweet Susan - a local variety of Shropshire pippin, spilt out from the basket and rolled along the floor. It came to rest at the maid's feet, presenting Tuppence with its ripe redness - just as she had presented her spanked bottom for inspection at the breakfast table that morning.

  'Just as I suspected,' Miss Victoria snarled. 'Come here, you wretched girl.'

  Tuppence approached, her throat tightening with apprehension.

  'See?' the angry woman hissed triumphantly. 'I sprinkled borax under the apple basket. A diligent maid would have lifted the basket and scrubbed. Only a lazy maid would fail to do this. You are a lazy maid, Tuppence. And what happens to lazy maids?'

  Tuppence remained silent and gazed down at the floor.

  'Well, girl? Speak up?'

  'Lazy maids are punished, Miss Victoria.'

  'Precisely, Tuppence. They are punished. Lift up your dress.' Tuppence obeyed, dreading the impending pain that would soon be visiting her bared bottom. Miss Victoria, she knew, had a partiality for whippy bamboo.

  'No: bare-bottomed, girl. I want you bare-bottomed for the wood.'

  The wood. Tuppence imagined the thin yellow cane and shivered.

  'Hurry up,' Miss Victoria snapped waspishly.

  Tuppence stepped out of her cami-knickers and shivered again.

  'Bend over.'

  As the maid obeyed the command of her mistress, the carriage clock in the hall struck ten. The tinkling Cambridge chimes filled the air with a pleasing music. Behind tightly closed eyes, Tuppence knew that the song of the swishing bamboo would fill the air with notes of suffering.

  'This apple is bruised,' Miss Victoria announced, scrutinising the Sweet Susan that she had retrieved from the stone floor. 'It is no longer fit for the table but I shall find a good use for it. Waste not, want not,' she added, piously observing the virtue of thrift. 'Part your legs for me, girl. No, a little wider, if you please.'

  The maid's trembling thighs parted, allowing Miss Victoria a glimpse of the pubic bush and labia as the stern spinster gazed down at the upturned buttocks she proposed to beat.

  Tuppence gasped aloud and struggled to steady herself as she felt the firm apple being thrust up between her thighs - and grunted as she felt the polished skin of the Sweet Susan pressed against her own secret flesh.

  'Kneel,' Miss Victoria instructed, slapping Tuppence's left buttock sharply.

  Tuppence sank down, wincing as her knees kissed the stone floor in submissive obedience.

  'Be careful to hold that apple in place as you scrub the entire passage floor once again, girl. Should it fall from where I have lodged it, you will feel the sharpness of my cane.'

  Clamping her thighs tightly, Tuppence shuffled backwards to her bucket and scrubbing brush. Reaching out behind her, she grasped the square of soft hessian sacking and dragged it to her knees.

  'No, girl,' Miss Victoria barked, returning down the passage with a length of yellow bamboo gripped in her right hand. 'No pad for your knees. You will scrub without the sacking. Penitence is not meant to be comfortable,' she whispered, tracing the swollen curve of the maid's left buttock. 'Now scrub.'

  Tuppence bowed down to her work, painfully hampered by the Sweet Susan held between her upper thighs. She scrubbed furiously, eager to win the cruel spinster's clemency. As her bare bottom swayed with the scrubbing, the cane flickered and rose up, erect and alert in the tightened grip of her punisher.

  The zinc bucket scraped noisily on the flagstones as Tuppence reached out to drag it towards her. As she dipped her brush into the water, the b
ucket tilted. Tuppence strained to catch and steady it, and the apple fell from her warmth down onto the wet stone floor. Miss Victoria trapped the rolling Sweet Susan with the tip of her cane, then lashed the upturned buttocks of the kneeling laid. Tuppence squealed aloud as the thin cane kissed her defenceless cheeks, bequeathing a scarlet stripe across their soft, rounded globes.

  'Silence when being whipped,' the spinster snarled, dominating the bare bottom she had just caned with the tip of the cruel bamboo. The satin flesh of the left cheek dimpled beneath the imperious rod. Tuppence sank her head down. Her hair tumbled, fringing her tearful eyes. She whimpered softly as she felt the apple being returned to the warmth between her thighs.

  'Continue with your task, girl,' Miss Victoria commanded, taking up a stance directly behind the kneeling maid and playing the supple bamboo in between Tuppence's slightly parted cheeks so that the cane rasped at her yawning cleft.

  Driven by a sense of delicious dread as the cane-tip worried her wet sphincter, Tuppence scrubbed frantically. Miss Victoria probed the rosebud of the anal whorl. The apple dropped to the floor as the bare-bottomed maid spasmed and shuddered. Miss Victoria lashed the proffered cheeks instantly. For Tuppence, the passage seemed to stretch out into a painful eternity.

  The cruel young spinster had to replace the apple - and reward the naked cheeks with a punishing stroke - five times before the flagstone floor was scrubbed to her satisfaction.

  'Give me the brush,' she instructed.

  Tuppence surrendered the thickly bristled brush.

  'In future, girl,' the tormentress whispered, dragging the narrow tip of the scrubbing brush down along the tormented maid's dark cleft, 'I trust you will be diligent in all your duties.'

  Tuppence dipped her tummy and jerked her head back in a reflex of exquisite anguish as the bristles raked her sensitive flesh. 'Get up and get dressed, and let that be a lesson you never forget,' Miss Victoria hissed, tossing the brush into the bucket.