The Mistress of Sternwood Grange

by Arabella Knight

  Aunt Clare. Amanda resumed her interrupted sleep. Aunt Clare. The rhythm of the train repeated the name, insinuating it into Amanda’s dreams. She had not seen Aunt Clare since her eighteenth birthday. What a day to remember. Aunt Clare had taught Amanda at her knee – and across it – passing on her shrewd business acumen. She had sold the shares her aunt had given her for her seventeenth just before her eighteenth, the cash going on an extravagant caprice from Hyper Hyper for just under a thousand pounds. Asked for an explanation, Amanda had lied. Aunt Clare had been cross, very, very, cross. I’m too big to be spanked, thank goodness, and she’s too old to do it, Amanda had thought. As the stern sermon had come to a crisp conclusion, her aunt had taken the birthday blonde up from the drawing room to a bedroom above. A surprise, Amanda had thought gleefully. Upstairs, Aunt Clare’s hand had pressed the bell.

  ‘I am going to punish you,’ Aunt Clare had declared.

  Amanda laughed in reply. ‘You’re too old,’ she had mocked, repeating her earlier thoughts. ‘And I’m too big–’

  ‘For your boots, young lady. Come in.’

  Answering her aunt’s command, the new housekeeper stepped into the bedroom. ‘Madam?’

  A beautiful young woman with large brown eyes. In her early thirties, she proved too strong for the younger girl to resist. Amanda was stretched across the bed, and her bottom was bared and prepared for punishment. Using the belt of the dress that had caused all the problems – crafted from supple pale-yellow leather – the athletic housekeeper had lashed Amanda as instructed.

  ‘Eighteen strokes,’ Aunt Clare had ordered. ‘One for each vain, foolish year.’

  Cracking loudly and snapping harshly, the leather barked down across her reddening bottom. The hide proved painfully pliant, the young housekeeper deceptively strong.

  ‘Again,’ Aunt Clare had thundered, stretching out her hand to pin her squealing niece down by her shoulder into the duvet. ‘Again.’

  ‘No –’ Amanda sat bolt upright.

  ‘Ticket please, miss,’ a uniformed man said, shaking Amanda’s shoulder firmly to wake the sleeping blonde. ‘Thank you, miss. Change at Ipswich.’

  Amanda drew several lingering glances as she waited for the queue at the coffee stall to shorten. The train to Saxmundham rattled in just as she asked for a large unsugared black. She made her train with seconds to spare. The summer countryside had not changed. It was exactly as Amanda remembered it when visiting her aunt. Deeply wooded acres opening out into large grain fields, the pale gold of June splashed with the scarlet of poppies.

  She alighted at Saxmundham and almost made the mistake of giving her late aunt’s address to the taximan.

  ‘Sternwood Grange,’ she remembered, just in time.

  ‘You sure?’ he replied, the country vowels slow and almost slurred.

  Amanda, conscious of her tarty appearance, flushed.

  ‘Cost you. It’s over fifteen miles away.’ He eyed her shrewdly. ‘Well off the beaten track.’ He got out of his taxi to take her bag, his frown showing his reluctance.

  She got in, showing him a couple of tenners.

  Sternwood Grange was tucked away in the heart of a densely wooded estate. Standing in two acres of neglected grounds, it was an early-Elizabethan pile which successive generations had both added to and improved. It boasted lawns which rabbits had commandeered for themselves, an overgrown terrace, a dilapidated tennis court and an overall air of faded grandeur. No gardener had plied a trowel or pushed a mower here for at least six years, probably from the time my aunt acquired the place, Amanda thought as she walked the last hundred yards from the taxi up the weed-choked drive to the front door.

  A neatly uniformed, heavily breasted maid looked surprised to find Amanda on the doorstep. Reluctantly, she showed Amanda into the spacious hall. Amanda noted the lavish furnishings, ranging from gilded baroque to exquisite late Adam. The maid took her downstairs and disappeared into the housekeeper’s office, once the preserve of butlers who used it for their pantry.

  ‘Yes?’ the housekeeper inquired briskly, dismissing the maid and appraising Amanda’s tarty clothes.

  Amanda’s heart stood still for a few seconds, then pounded rapidly against her ribs. It was Aunt Clare’s housekeeper – the new one – the one who had been instructed to lash Amanda’s birthday bottom with the supple leather belt.

  ‘Well?’ the housekeeper insisted crisply.

  She won’t remember me. We only met once – memorably – and then she saw more of my bottom than my face, Amanda calculated, grateful for her disguise. Tears, she suddenly thought, might help. She let them flow, managing to sob gently. The housekeeper thawed and took the weeping visitor into her office. Strong tea was supplied from a blue and white pot. Sipping slowly, Amanda allowed herself to recover her poise.

  ‘You are in trouble?’ the housekeeper asked gently, her brown eyes softening as they drank in the young girl’s beauty.

  Amanda took a deep breath and told her prepared tale.

  ‘And who was it you said told you of Sternwood Grange?’

  Amanda hadn’t. ‘Foxie, a girl I know. That was her working name.’ Amanda decided to take a risk. She remembered the curious item about staff recruitment mentioned in the agency’s report. ‘She said some solicitor fixed it up for her.’

  The housekeeper repressed a knowing smile. Amanda sensed that the risk had paid off.

  After answering a few more questions which she had carefully anticipated, Amanda knew she was home and dry.

  ‘You may stay here on a trial basis for three weeks. The work is hard and the rules are very strict. And must be obeyed. And we will have to do something about those clothes, of course.’

  Miss Partridge, the housekeeper, briefly outlined what Amanda’s duties as a maid would entail, warning her that the residents’ privacy must be observed at all times. Amanda was forbidden to approach or disturb them, or even go upstairs near their quarters, until given permission.

  ‘Who knows? If you work hard and obey the rules, we might promote you from maid to angel.’

  ‘Angel?’

  ‘They started out, like you, as maids, but progressed. They are devoted to the personal needs of our residents.’

  ‘You do pamper them,’ Amanda observed.

  ‘They pay,’ was the brief reply.

  After an early supper of poached eggs, Amanda was shown to her room up in the rambling attic. They used the back staircase, bypassing the main house entirely.

  ‘Who owns Sternwood Grange? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Amanda added hastily, not wishing to appear too inquisitive.

  Miss Partridge said rather vaguely that it was in trust.

  ‘I will see you first thing in the morning, Mandy,’ the housekeeper said, drawing the curtains together and switching on the dim light.

  ‘Thank you,’ Amanda replied, appalled at her dismal room. ‘What –’

  ‘No more questions for tonight, Mandy,’ Miss Partridge interrupted. ‘I’ve still got lots to do. The residents can be very demanding and the maids, I fear, are not always up to scratch. I hope you prove to be both willing and obedient.’

  ‘Oh, I will.’

  ‘There are a few simple but absolute rules the maids must observe. The only one you must obey tonight is not to leave your room. Understand?’

  Amanda nodded.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  The door closed, leaving Amanda feeling forlorn in her drab surroundings. She sat down on her narrow bed and reflected. The food was good, if sparse – she was going to miss raiding her fridge for wine and treats – and she was going to get a pert maid’s uniform, a secret fantasy she had never dared to indulge. She giggled naughtily. Most of all, a chance to work out the true worth of her legacy. This place must be worth a fortune, she must get to work at once. How many residents were there? How long did they stay? How much did they pay?

  Time for bed. Tomorrow promised to be a busy day. No longer Amanda Silk, sophisticated business consultant, bubblin
g blonde girl about town – she was Mandy, Mandy the maid.

  Naked, she slipped into bed. The late sunset fingered her bedroom with pinkish-gold light. She hugged her breasts happily at both the nightingale in the violet sky outside and at the success of her subterfuge which had launched her campaign.

  Spank. Spank. Spank.

  Mandy sat up in her narrow bed, propping herself on her elbows.

  Spank. Spank. A smothered squeal followed, and was followed in turn by the sound of a bare bottom suffering two more crisp spanks. The punishment was being administered next door. Probably two maids quarrelling. Spank. Spank. Mandy strained to listen. Punishment? Or fierce love play? The squeals of protest suggested punishment. The plaster wall was thin. Through it, she heard the stern tones of the chastiser admonishing the chastised. The words were obscured by the wall between them but Mandy recognised the strictness in the timbre. A pause. A muffled sob. Spank. Spank.

  Thrilling to the sounds of flesh upon flesh, the curved palm cracking down across rounded cheeks, Mandy kicked down her top sheet and parted her thighs. In the dying rays of the setting sun which bathed her skin in a lemon light, she prised her sticky labia apart and gently but firmly slid two straightened fingers into her tight slit, using the tip of her thumb to tease out and torment her clitoris. Spank. Spank. The bare buttocks next door were certainly getting it hot and strong. It was, it sounded to the eavesdropping nude, a ferocious punishment. Spank. Spank. The girl’s bottom must surely be ablaze by now. Squeezing her buttocks together, Mandy worked her fingers and thumb with cunning expertise. Spank. Spank. Closing her eyes, she imagined the naked bottom deepening from scalding pink to searing crimson. Spank. Spank. Faster and faster, she pleasured her wet flesh until with a suppressed gasp she arched up, her buttocks clear of her bed, and came. Squashing her breasts, punishing her erect nipples with sticky fingers, she orgasmed heavily. Lowering her hips, she ground her bottom into the bed, causing the headboard to rock and bump against the wall.

  Her bedroom door opened and swung wide. Mandy jumped and whipped round, horrified at the intrusion. Staring with unfocused eyes, her face flushed, she grunted thickly. Miss Partridge filled the doorway, rolling down the sleeve of her spanking arm and buttoning the cuff deftly.

  ‘I am so glad to find you in bed,’ the housekeeper said softly. ‘I thought I heard a noise.’

  Mandy, appalled at being discovered naked and in orgasm, scrabbled for her sheet and drew it over her belly and breasts.

  ‘Had you disobeyed me, I would have had to give you the same as I gave the girl next door. Understand?’

  Mandy nodded meekly.

  ‘The rules here at Sternwood Grange must be strictly obeyed. I see,’ the brown-eyed housekeeper said in a softer voice, perusing Mandy candidly, ‘that you have just been amusing yourself. An innocent diversion, no doubt but –’ her voice hardened’– if the sheet is stained, you will find two pounds deducted from your wages to cover the costs of the laundry bill. Goodnight.’

  Two

  Two turtle doves murmuring at her window woke Mandy just as a hand tapped on her door. Stung by the memory of Miss Partridge’s brusque intrusion last night – and blushing furiously at being discovered naked and enjoying her climax – Mandy appreciated the courtesy of the tapping at her door.

  ‘Mandy. Wake up,’ a voice whispered urgently.

  ‘Come in.’

  It was the maid who had opened the front door on her arrival at Sternwood Grange, a large cup of coffee balanced in her hand. ‘Better drink this up, then I’ll get you into your uniform. We’re late.’

  Dropping the sheet from her bosom, Mandy stretched out to take the large cup. The maid’s eyes widened as she glimpsed Mandy’s breasts: as ripely firm, if not as heavily fleshed, as her own. Mandy perused the maid. She was dressed in a green silk mini-kimono. Mandy knew from the clinging silk that the girl was naked underneath. The maid gave her name and smiled.

  ‘Thanks, Sophie,’ Mandy said sleepily. She was still drowsy from the deep sleep induced by the heavy country air.

  Sophie padded across to the window. Stretching up, she parted the curtains, scattering the turtle doves. Sunshine streamed in. Mandy blinked. Focusing in the sudden light, she saw the reddened buttocks as the hem of the mini-kimono inched up briefly to reveal the swell of the cheeks. It was Sophie, she realised, who was being spanked last night.

  ‘Finished?’ Sophie encouraged.

  Mandy drained the cup. It was freshly ground arabica. Dark, delicious and expensive.

  ‘Come on,’ Sophie said, taking the cup.

  Next door, in Sophie’s room, Mandy watched as the maid rinsed the cup out and hid it under her bed. Puzzled, she said nothing as she took her turn at the sink to splash her face. Cupping the cold water up to rinse away her sleep, she shivered as it spilled down on to her breasts. Sophie came to the rescue, patting the nipples gently with a soft towel. At the touch of the towel, Mandy remembered that she was naked. Turning to dry her eyes, she saw the mini-kimono being abandoned. Sophie was naked too.

  ‘Panties, no bra. Regulations,’ Sophie said, sheathing her spanked bottom in tight cotton after throwing a pair to Mandy.

  Miss Partridge entered the room without knocking. The large brown eyes raked the pantied girls. ‘Hurry along, the pair of you. It is already –’ She paused, sniffing the air. ‘Have you been drinking coffee?’ she demanded, looking directly at Sophie.

  ‘No, Miss Partridge.’ Sophie blushed, twiddling with her elastic waistband nervously.

  ‘I can distinctly smell coffee. Good coffee. Stolen, no doubt. Give me the cup, girl.’

  ‘There isn’t –’

  ‘At once.’

  Sophie’s bottom bulged within the white panties as she bent down to retrieve the cup. Taking it, the housekeeper sniffed.

  ‘Arabica. You should, if you must, stick to instant, Sophie. I will deduct five pounds from your wages and see you in my office at ten sharp. Four strokes.’

  Sophie bowed her head.

  ‘Now hurry up and get downstairs. Your duties await you.’

  Miss Partridge went. Mandy broke the solemn silence. ‘You were spanked last night, weren’t you?’

  ‘Orange juice.’ Sophie grinned. ‘I pinched some orange juice. Mind you,’ she giggled, ‘I laced it with champagne. A girl’s got to have her buck’s fizz.’

  ‘Four strokes,’ Mandy murmured. ‘Does that mean –’

  ‘The cane.’

  ‘But you gave the coffee to me. It doesn’t seem fair.’ Approaching the mischievous maid, Mandy hugged her affectionately.

  ‘She just likes my bottom,’ Sophie laughed. ‘Can’t leave it alone. Come on, get dressed.’ She carefully passed Mandy a blouse. ‘Silk.’

  Mandy’s head jerked up, almost betraying her.

  ‘Silk,’ Sophie repeated. ‘The blouse.’

  Mandy blushed, angry with herself at the slip that could have exposed her.

  ‘Hell to launder,’ said Sophie.

  Mandy’s blush deepened, remembering the wet stain on her sheet last night.

  ‘No bra?’

  ‘Nope,’ Sophie affirmed, buttoning down her blouse over her heavy breasts. Mandy was three buttons behind, delayed slightly by the sight of the dark nipples probing Sophie’s silk. She sighed as her own breasts kissed the cool silk, her nipples peaking and tightening as she buttoned it firmly over the swell of her bosom. Her brain whirled with urgent questions. How often did the brown-eyed housekeeper punish the maids? How? Spanking, strap or whippy bamboo cane? When would it be Mandy’s turn to bare her cheeks, bend over and surrender her bottom to the impending pain?

  ‘She’ll get you before sunset,’ Sophie said drily.

  Mandy looked up, startled by the accuracy of the other maid’s mind-reading prowess.

  ‘I wasn’t –’

  ‘Yes, you were. When will it be my turn, you were wondering. Don’t worry. It can be divine,’ Sophie whispered, busy with her cuffs. ‘When you go across Miss P
artridge’s knee, your bottom is hers, utterly and absolutely. Know what I mean?’

  Mandy busied herself with her cuffs, avoiding Sophie’s searching gaze.

  ‘Cute, eh?’ Sophie grinned, offering Mandy a black velvet pleated skirt. ‘There’s a starched apron to go with it.’

  They wrapped their thighs with the dark velvet skirts and zipped them up in unison.

  ‘Quick, come on.’

  ‘No stockings?’ Mandy asked.

  ‘White ankle socks and white pumps downstairs in the maids’ room. Here, I’ll do that.’

  Mandy was struggling with her apron. Turning, she offered the linen tabs to Sophie. Feeling the heavy breasts crushing into her, Mandy inched back a deliberate fraction, colliding her buttocks into Sophie’s thighs. The light touch of the other girl’s fingers around her hips as the apron was deftly tied and expertly adjusted sent tiny spiders of delight scurrying down her spine.

  ‘You’ll do for me.’ The words came on sweet breath into her ear. Mandy closed her eyes and trembled, almost fainting with sudden delight as Sophie’s lips brushed the nape of her neck. Lick me, Mandy thought, her hunger for Sophie’s mouth upon her bare flesh growing ravenous. Lick me. Let me feel your wet tongue.

  Smack. Mandy opened her big blue eyes wide.

  ‘Time to go,’ Sophie said in a husky voice, lowering Mandy’s pleated skirt down over the buttock she had just slapped. ‘We’ll really catch it from Erica if we are late.’

  * * *

  Erica, the senior maid who deputised for Miss Partridge – and who was permitted to punish the maids beneath her – was a slender thirty-year-old with cropped blonde hair and ever vigilant eyes. She nodded silently to Mandy and grasped the new maid’s hands firmly.

  ‘Nails?’

  They were clean and passed her close scrutiny.

  ‘And don’t let me see you in a soiled uniform, lipstick or make-up.’

  Mandy, chastened, stood smartly to attention as Erica detailed her tasks for the morning.