‘A pleasant name for the daughter of a squire!’ Elethrine retorted.
‘Silence!’ her father roared. ‘Do as you are told or I shall call for Nurse Anaka and a cane!’
Elethrine bowed her head meekly although her blood was boiling inside. From long experience she knew that the Baron was as good as his word and that if she resisted she would end up bent over the table with her skirts up and her purity girdle off for a dozen stinging strokes of Nurse Anaka’s cane. The nurse had little sympathy with tantrums and might even pull her victim’s pantalettes open and inflict the caning on the bare bottom. With her buttocks on show the humiliation would then be worse than the pain, yet she would still be announced as Ethrine. The difference would be that she would have a fresh set of smarting cane stripes on her bottom to remind her of her disobedience.
It was pointless to double an already intense shame, and so she curtsied politely to her father and left the room, breaking into a run as soon as the heavy doors had clanged shut behind her. Her blood was boiling in her veins and she mounted the steps to her tower full of determination to take her temper out on someone.
‘Aisla!’ she yelled as she reached the doorway of her maid’s room. ‘draw my bath and fetch Nurse Anaka for my key.’
‘Yes Mistress,’ she heard as she carried on up the steep, spiral stairs.
In her room she glanced out of the window that looked out across the countryside of Korismund, fiddling with the laces of her dress rather than wait for Aisla to help her. To north and south stood the high grey ramparts of the mountain range known as the Spine, a natural barrier that separated the Kingdom of Mund from barbaric Aegmund. Korismund Keep stood in the pass which it had been built to defend, perched on an outlying crag high above the dense woods that covered the lower slopes of the mountains. To the east she could see fields and orchards, the village that shared its name with the keep and the road leading out across the broad, mountain ringed bowl that was the Barony. She could see no sign of an approaching party of horsemen, yet knew that her preparations would take longer than the Princess and her guard would need to cover the distance from the furthest visible point of the road.
‘Aisla!’ she called back over her shoulder as she struggled with the complicated set of laces that held her bodice shut.
There was no response, increasing Elethrine’s fury despite the knowledge that her maid would be fetching Nurse Anaka. A moment later she heard the lower door close and footsteps on the stairs.
Elethrine grabbed her hairbrush, intent on taking her anger out on her maid’s bottom even if a dozen Princesses were approaching the castle. She began to smack the brush meaningfully on her palm as the door handle turned, knowing the shock Aisla would get on discovering she was to be spanked for nothing.
‘Now…,’ she began, only to discover not Aisla, but Nurse Anaka coming through the door.
Elethrine hastily returned the hairbrush to the table and greeted her nurse with a smile. Nurse Anaka - Aisla’s mother and a big, strapping woman with a no nonsense look about her - gave Elethrine a single curious glance, curtsied briefly and came into the room.
‘Aisla is drawing your bath,’ the nurse stated. ‘I will help you undress.’
‘Thank you, and please hurry,’ Elethrine replied.
‘Hurry does not become a Demoiselle,’ Anaka remarked.
‘True,’ Elethrine admitted as the nurse took over the process of unlacing her bodice, ‘but the Princess Talithea will be here for her betrothal within the hour and I should greet her.’
‘Nonetheless, Pommette,’ Anaka continued, using Elethrine’s pet name as she always did when her charge was letting her enthusiasm run away with her, ‘you must be properly presented.’
‘Indeed,’ Elethrine agreed, ‘which is why we must hurry. Now, while Aisla bathes me, you must lay out my dress in the deep blue Jhai velvet, chemise, corset and under-dress in the royal blue silk, silk petticoats of lake blue, blue-grey and powder blue, white silk drawers and my new coral pink pantalettes. Stockings of…’
‘But Pommette,’ Nurse Anaka interrupted, ‘nobody will know what colour you petticoats are, much less your drawers and certainly not your pantalettes!’
‘I will know,’ Elethrine replied, ‘and don’t call me Pommette in company. I’m not a child and it’s an embarrassing pet name.’
‘It’s a pretty name,’ Anaka replied defensively as she undid the key-buckle on Elethrine’s chemise.
Elethrine sighed as her breasts burst free of restraint, drawing a mild noise of rebuke from her nurse. The chemise and bodice held them tight against her chest, giving her figure a smooth line of which she was proud. Nevertheless, it was always bliss to have her chemise undone to let them return to their natural shape, and also to have her nipples pop out as the cool air touched them.
‘You can be such a wanton girl,’ Anaka said mildly.
Elethrine didn’t reply, quite aware of the strength of her body’s responses, and simultaneously pleased and ashamed. Nurse Anaka took no notice, instead turning to one of her favourite topics, the decline in the old traditions of the kingdom.
‘I don’t really hold with this betrothal business,’ she began with a phrase that Elethrine had heard perhaps a dozen times since the news that there was to be a formal agreement to marry between Prince Kavisterion and the Princess Talithea. ‘In my day he’d have had to carry her off and ravish her like everyone else.’
‘Theiron and Ateron are nearly a thousand leagues apart,’ Elethrine pointed out.
‘All the better,’ she continued, ‘think of the glory of having a Prince ride a thousand leagues for your sake.’
‘Two thousand leagues, by the time he’d got back,’ Elethrine said. ‘The marriage also makes an important alliance
‘That’s true,’ she admitted, ‘but still, I always think ravishment is so much more romantic. Who knows, some day some bold thane may come and take you in your bed, risking everything for your beauty and the chance to become Baron Consort.’
‘Ha!’ Elethrine laughed. ‘There is no thane in Mund so stupid. First he would have to break into the keep, then get the key to my purity girdle from your apartment and risk facing Uroth in single combat. Should he survive - which I doubt - he would have to defeat a guard or two, batter down my door, ravish me, descend the height of twelve men to the blockyard and escape with me across his shoulders. Name me the idiot who would so much as consider the feat?’
‘I don’t know. Still, it’s a nice thought,’ Anaka responded.
‘Indeed,’ Elethrine admitted, ‘but it is also most unlikely. No, I shall consider the suits that are put to me and hold a jousting contest or something modern.’
Nurse Anaka tutted disapprovingly and went back to the task of loosening Elethrine’s clothes.
With the dress and corset off, it took Nurse Anaka’s practised fingers only minutes to strip Elethrine for her bath. As always the sensation of having her purity girdle removed was more blissful even than the unlacing of her bodice. Scampering naked down the stairs to her bath also produced a deliciously naughty feeling of freedom very different indeed to the shame of having her bottom exposed for punishment.
In the room below Aisla had Elethrine’s bath ready, a great oval tub filled with steaming, lily scented water. Aisla stood by it, as naked as Elethrine herself as she would be using the water once her Mistress had finished. The sight of Aisla nude set off the same, dirty, guilty thoughts Elethrine had had before, and she climbed quickly into the bath to hide the flush that rose automatically to her face and chest.
In the bath it was worse, with Aisla’s bare breasts swinging naked inches in front of Elethrine’s face as the maid soaped and scrubbed. They were big for such a slim girl and kept touching Elethrine’s arms and her own breasts, once even her face as Aisla leant across to reach for a fresh vial of scented bath oil. Minutes before Elethrine had intended to spank Aisla, but as the maid bathed her the urge to punish was rapidly being replaced by the urge to caress.
Elethrine shut her eyes, trying to think about something other than the soft, full breasts that were pressing against her upper arm or the dainty, gentle fingers that were working soap into her belly. It was no good, Aisla’s fingers were going lower, one hand soaping the subtly rounded undertuck of her tummy, then working the lather into the curls between her thighs.
‘Could you lift your bottom a little please Mistress?’ Aisla asked.
Elethrine responded, trying desperately to keep control of herself as Aisla’s hands slid down between her thighs and under her bottom. One hand began to rub at Elethrine’s tuppenny, the other at the sensitive skin of her bottom. Elethrine moaned, lost to pleasure as Aisla’s fingers slipped between the lips of her tuppenny and found the little, hard bud in the middle. Aisla giggled, one long finger slipping between the cheeks of Elethrine’s bottom, finding her anus and poking a little way into the tight ring.
‘Don’t stop!’ Elethrine sighed.
‘Now, now Mistress,’ Aisla chided gently. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve bathed you. It doesn’t do to get so excited.’
‘I don’t care,’ Elethrine breathed, ‘just carry on rubbing like that.’
Aisla made a little tutting noise and made as if to take her hands away.
‘Please!’ Elethrine begged hotly.
‘I’d better do it for you then,’ Aisla replied, ‘but be quick, if mother came down…’
Elethrine moaned again, abandoning herself utterly to whatever was going to happen. Aisla increased the urgency of her rubbing and slid the finger that had been cleaning Elethrine’s bottom ring deep inside the hole. An exquisite feeling began to build up as Aisla’s mouth found hers and they began to kiss, lightly at first and then with their tongues twinned together. Aisla’s breasts pressed against Elethrine’s chest, their nipples hard in mutual pleasure. The muscles of her bottom and thighs began to move of their own accord, wriggling against Aisla’s hand and squirming on the finger that was up her bottom. The feeling was become unbearable, as if she was about to burst.
‘Girls!’ a shocked voice rang out from the doorway, shattering Elethrine’s blissful state.
Aisla jumped back, leaving Elethrine with a view of Nurse Anaka standing in the doorway with an expression of absolute outrage on her face.
‘We… I… we…,’ Aisla stammered.
‘Strumpets! Dirty, wanton little strumpets!’ Nurse Anaka declared. ‘Out of the bath Elethrine! Over the bench, both of you!’
‘Not naked!’ Elethrine retorted, horrified by the sheer indignity of what her nurse was demanding.
‘You’ll get your formal caning later, in proper style,’ Anaka stormed. ‘For now, over the bench with both of you, you wanton little sluts, and if you’re in your birthday suits, then you should have thought of the consequences before allowing your filthy lust to get the better of you.’
‘But…’ Elethrine began, determined not to suffer the terrible indignity of a naked beating. ‘Nurse Anaka, beat Aisla nude if you must, but my father would never permit me to suffer a punishment suitable only for a peasant girl.’
Nurse Anaka paused, her face red with fury. Aisla was already bent over the low wooden bench with her bottom raised for punishment. Her tuppenny and anus were on full show in a nest of dark ginger curls, a position that Elethrine was determined not to be put in. The bench normally served as a seat for Elethrine while she was dried, but was also ideal for girls to be beaten over. Nurse Anaka looked at her daughter, who gave back a look of utter misery and contrition. For a moment the big woman seemed to waver, then her expression hardened.
‘No,’ she said brusquely, ‘you need a sharp lesson Demoiselle Elethrine Korismund, and being beaten like any common peasant girl may just teach it to you. Should you object, we may happily take the matter before your father, otherwise get over the bench next to Aisla. I shall use a strap on your naughty behind and no more need be said. Well?’
‘I shall not!’ Elethrine stormed.
‘I think you shall,’ the nurse replied, ‘otherwise I shall recommend that you be taken out to the blockyard this afternoon. Once there I shall strip your haughty little bottom, whip it well and leave you there for the afternoon. What is more, I shall get a clerk to write your crime out and have it pinned to your upturned skirts. Then how much will your precious dignity be worth?’
‘Father would never permit it,’ Elethrine began determinedly, only to stop at the thought that her father might very well permit such a degrading punishment if he were told that she had allowed her base lust to carry her away enough to make love to her maid.
‘And think,’ Nurse Anaka continued, ‘the Princess Talithea visits at any moment. Think how it would feel if the first she saw of you was your blushing red bottom. Now what’s it to be?’
‘Very well, Nurse Anaka,’ Elethrine said, suddenly feeling very crestfallen, ‘you may beat me naked.’
The tears were starting in her eyes as she got out of the bath and padded reluctantly across the floor. Aisla looked back at her, the maid’s big green eyes full of sympathy. Elethrine tried to smile but felt her mouth curl down at the edges into what she knew was a singularly pathetic and hang-dog expression. She sank slowly to her knees and bent forward, going down over the bench into the same rude position as her maid, bum up and cheeks open, hairy tuppenny and pink bottom ring showing to the woman who was about to beat her.
Nurse Anaka left the room, leaving the two girls with their bums up and ready, not daring to move. Elethrine heard the door to Aisla’s room open and then close, and a moment later Nurse Anaka returned, holding the broad leather strap that was normally reserved for Aisla’s bottom. Elethrine shut her eyes tight, trying not to whimper and make a display of herself. There was a whistle and then the smack of leather on girl flesh and a squeal from Aisla. Elethrine winced, fought the urge to get up and run and then yelled out loud as the strap came down hard across her naked bottom.
‘Ow, Nurse!’ she protested an instant before the sound of Aisla’s second smack and the resulting squeal rang out.
Elethrine squealed again as the strap once more struck her bottom, the tears starting in her eyes as the pain and shame of being strapped with a belt in the nude became too much for her. Aisla was crying too, a snivelling, sobbing sound suddenly broken by a yelp as the strap hit her. As Elethrine braced herself for the next smack she heard a distant trumpet, sounding from well outside the walls of the keep. The beating stopped abruptly, leaving Elethrine profoundly thankful for what presumably heralded the approach of the Princess’s retinue.
‘We will finish this later,’ Nurse Anaka announced, slightly out of breath from the exertion of taking the strap to the two girls. ‘For now we must hurry.’
Both girls got up, hurriedly wiping their tears and rubbing briefly at smarting bottoms before running upstairs. Elethrine stood patiently as she was dressed, trying to ignore the fact that the ignominious beating had done nothing to lessen the hot, urgent feeling in her tuppenny. In fact it was worse, as if adopting such a rude pose and then having her buttocks smacked up to a rosy pink glow was no different than being touched more tenderly. From the swelling of her tuppenny after previous beatings she knew that it happened, but it was now stronger by far.
A second trumpet fanfare announced the arrival of the party at the gates as Elethrine was being laced into her corsets. Glancing towards the south window of her room, she saw the men on the walls start to work the mechanism that controlled the portcullis.
‘Hurry!’ she urged, as she stepped into her dress while Aisla was still working frantically at the corset laces.
Neither woman answered, but both increased the pace of their work, so that they had Elethrine’s bodice half-done by the time a third fanfare announced that the Princess was actually within the walls of the keep.
‘You must greet her in the Maiden Garden,’ Anaka said as she began to pull Elethrine’s hair into a jewelled net.
‘I know that!’ Elethrine snapped, forgetfu
l of what had just been done to her in the panic of the moment. ‘Aisla, put some clothes on, quickly!’
Aisla scurried away, Elethrine getting a last glimpse of her bare white back and pink bottom as she left. Slipping her feet into shoes as Anaka finished her hair, she tried to calm her breathing, knowing that she was far from the cool, decorous young Demoiselle that she wished to appear before the Princess.
Finally she was ready, with the wet parts of her hair artfully concealed in curls and tucks and no more than a mildly uncomfortable damp feeling between her legs. Aisla greeted her at the door, her simple dove-grey dress chosen to complement Elethrine’s magnificent gown of rich blue velvet.
Together they walked to the rear door of the Maiden Garden, a tiny walled garden exclusively for the use of highborn women. Normally it was a peaceful, private haven for Elethrine, somewhere she could go to be alone as her mother seldom used it and neither Aisla nor Anaka could enter without her or her mother’s permission. Protocol, however, demanded that she greet the Princess there, which seemed to Elethrine something of an invasion of her privacy.
To her relief the garden was empty, but no sooner had she arranged herself on an iron bench in a posture that suggested she had been there all along than the main door opened and a page ushered a girl of much her own age into the garden.
Elethrine rose and curtsied formally, taking in the appearance of the Princess as she did so. Talithea was slim waisted, full at chest and hip and perhaps half a hand breadth shorter than Elethrine. Her hair was almost white and was bound into a complicated system of plaits and coils that framed an oval face with features of exceptionally delicacy. A scattering of freckles across the bridge of her tiny, upturned nose softened a look that would otherwise have been too formal, the whole creating a beauty not far short of Elethrine’s opinion of her own looks. Her dress was a deep crimson and even richer than Elethrine’s, while slippers of golden leather peeped from under the hem.
Maiden Page 2
