The Mistress of Sternwood Grange

by Arabella Knight

  ‘You know that you must not disturb the residents?’

  Mandy nodded.

  ‘Get to work,’ Erica ordered, leaving to supervise the two maids busy at the Agas in the other, larger kitchen, cooking the residents’ breakfasts.

  Sophie and Mandy prepared the trays. Like an undercover auditor, Mandy made a mental note of everything, estimating costs, outgoings and turnover. She was amazed to see solid-silver wine buckets, brimming with ice and bearing vintage champagne, going upstairs. From the box of empty bottles from last night’s dinner, she knew that the residents were not claret-shy, the stained labels revealing a penchant for the Bordeaux grands crus. The cellar must be cavernous. Nine trays were set, soon to be laden with tempting delicacies. Other maids, mere fleeting shadows in the corner of Mandy’s eye, skipped in and out to whisk them upstairs.

  ‘They only go as far as the locked doors,’ Sophie explained. ‘The angels take over from there.’

  The basement kitchens were vast. Apart from the large, low-ceilinged areas, there was a pantry, a cold room, two larders and a still room. Mandy was confused and stuck close to Sophie. In the middle kitchen, where exposed beams spoke of their Elizabethan origins, the equipment was hi-tech, state of the art. As good and as expensive as any behind the scenes in a top London restaurant like L’Escargot or Le Pont de la Tour.

  ‘Some of the maids went to finishing school. Cordon bleu trained.’

  Mandy had wondered at the provenance of the Bradenham ham in sherry sauce, quenelles of sole, quails eggs and fois gras blinis flowing from the inner kitchen.

  ‘We don’t fare so well,’ Sophie whispered grimly, avoiding Erica’s unblinking eye.

  Three large cream-coloured American fridgidaires were lined up against the whitewashed wall of the smaller of the three connected kitchens.

  ‘More champagne?’ Mandy asked, nodding at them.

  ‘Orchids. Orchids and roses,’ Sophie replied. ‘Take a look.’ Opening the doors, she gave Mandy a glimpse of a perfumed profusion of fresh flowers stacked up neatly inside.

  ‘But the gardens are neglected –’

  ‘All this –’ Sophie swept her hands around, encompassing delicious foods, wines and flowers ‘–comes at night, when we are asleep. The vans bring it all down from London, twice a week. I’ve heard them unloading and loading.’

  ‘Loading?’

  ‘Laundry, and the rubbish bags. Sternwood Grange has no real contact with the outside world. We don’t even get to use the phone. It’s locked away.’

  Mandy felt a pang – not of fear or dismay – just a sudden pang of doubt. Had she been foolish to rush headlong into this enterprise, like a fly darting into a sticky web? She tugged at the lobe of her left ear.

  ‘Don’t daydream, girl. Get busy,’ Erica rasped, tapping her open palm with a wooden spoon.

  The first of the breakfast trays had started to return. Sophie and Mandy washed up, handling the Sèvres porcelain carefully, arms elbow deep in the prickling suds. Peering closer at what she thought to be a coat of arms as it emerged beneath a smear of sherry sauce, Mandy discerned a crop of sprouting bamboo canes. The pale-gold wands swayed with supple grace, pliant and pliable and ripe for harvest.

  ‘Sugar canes. West Indies? Or a Far Eastern connection. Malaya perhaps?’ Mandy asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ was all Sophie said in enigmatic reply. Adding, ‘Though many find the bamboo to be the sweetest wood of all.’

  As she dried each plate, cup and saucer, and stacked them with a layer of soft tissue in between, Mandy revised her audit, adding a nought to her initial figure of the potential value of Sternwood Grange.

  ‘Breakfast,’ one of the maids called.

  After the delicacies consumed upstairs, Mandy was disappointed to sit down at the scrubbed pine table to weak tea, an apple and cold buttered toast.

  ‘Stop talking,’ Erica snapped at Mandy, who was trying to get acquainted with the other maids. ‘Eat up. There’s work to be done.’

  Two angels came down and collected their breakfasts from the bottom oven of the Aga. Mandy envied their haddock. Her own repast was as meagre as it was brief.

  ‘I want the entire kitchen floor swept, scrubbed and disinfected. An old place like this is bound to have mice. After that,’ Erica continued, ‘prepare the vegetables. Sophie, peas and asparagus. And you’d better do some broccoli too. You –’ she addressed Mandy ‘– get those flowers into their vases, polish the wine glasses – they’re Milan crystal, mind – and then prepare the lunch trays. Eight will suffice. One of the residents is departing by helicopter at eleven.’

  ‘That means we have to keep away from the windows,’ Sophie interpreted. Don’t forget, we maids are not supposed to see the quality until we’ve been promoted to being angels.’

  What windows, Mandy thought ruefully, gazing at the expanse of whitewashed walls around her.

  Down in the kitchens, the heat grew stiflingly oppressive. Mandy worked hard, losing track of time. Once, her mind wandered back to Notting Hill, her Mickey Mouse clock and her life of pampered ease. The arteries of London would be pumping traffic along less sluggishly now, after the early-morning rush hour. Back in her flat, Amanda Silk would be phoning Daphne’s in South Ken, reserving a table for a networking lunch of laptops, lobster and Marlboro Lights. Here in deepest Suffolk, Mandy was drudging – but securing her fortune. A glimpse into the huge wine cellar had added yet another nought to the rapidly revised estimate of Sternwood Grange’s assets. Her duties gave her full access to the kitchens and storerooms. There, she had glimpsed the dressed crabs, the entrecôte steaks, the venison, the sea bass and the white truffles in virgin oil. In another room – raided by Sophie for the delicious arabica coffee – she sniffed in the dizzying aromas of vanilla, walnuts, nutmeg, expensive teas and robust coffee.

  One item puzzled her. A black chain, the links no bigger than a fifty-pence piece, hung down by the door. Leather cuffs were attached to the chain.

  ‘Jacobean game hooks,’ Sophie explained. ‘See, the hare was threaded through, there, and hung. All game was served very high then.’

  ‘An old curio, and original piece,’ Mandy said, automatically pricing it at two thousand at Christies.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Sophie said, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘It is still used, only it’s called the Gibbet now.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Don’t ask –’

  ‘You, girl. Mandy, isn’t it?’ Erica called.

  Mandy looked up.

  ‘Don’t just stand there gossiping. If you’ve finished, give Sophie a hand. She has an appointment with Miss Partridge at ten.’

  Erica stalked off. Mandy turned to Sophie, whose fingers struggled nervously with the pea pods. Neither of them spoke, their thoughts of the punishment to come preoccupying them deeply. Mandy wondered what it would be like, being caned across the bottom by the brown-eyed Miss Partridge. Sophie merely wondered why she liked being caned across the bottom by the brown-eyed Miss Partridge.

  ‘I’m supposed to be hoovering the Long Gallery this morning. I’ll never get it done.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Mandy said, remembering that Sophie had earned her coming stripes sneaking a stolen cup of coffee to her earlier that morning. ‘Of course I will,’ she promised, dismissing Sophie’s look of gratitude.

  ‘No, don’t do that, Mandy –’ Sophie gasped.

  Mandy crammed a handful of freshly shelled peas into her mouth.

  Swish, swipe. The wooden spoon cracked across her bottom harshly. Mandy squealed, and the stolen peas flew out of her mouth.

  ‘Don’t let me catch you stealing ever again,’ Erica snarled, appearing out of thin air. ‘And I’m going to deduct four pounds out of your wages to cover anything else you’ve had this morning.’

  ‘That’s not fair –’

  ‘Hands on the table, girl,’ barked Erica.

  Mandy, stubborn and proud, refused.

  ‘Do it,’ hissed Sophie.

&n
bsp; Mandy turned to face the table, bent down and placed her hands before her on the scrubbed pine. She flinched as, kneeling down behind her, Erica flipped the hem of Mandy’s skirt up over her hips. Mandy flinched again as she felt her panties being peeled down and a firm hand cupping her left buttock. Erica placed her hand, palm inwards, just at the crease between the upper thigh and the swell of the captive cheek. She squeezed, the buttock bulged. Crack. Crack. Crack. Mandy’s white pumps drummed the fragstone floor as the wooden spoon ravished her naked flesh.

  Pulling up the panties and rearranging the pleated skirt, Erica rose and told the girls to get on with their duties. ‘You’re here to work. Work hard and obey. Understand?’

  Mandy was on the brink of an angry response when Sophie, patting a stray wisp of her platinum-blonde hair, smoothly intervened.

  ‘She understands. It’s her first day. Mandy will learn.’ Sophie placed a protective arm around the new maid. ‘Come along.’

  Mandy followed Sophie up the flight of stone steps leading from the kitchens into the sunlight above.

  ‘Be careful of Erica. That wooden spoon never sleeps. And she’s a vixen with the strap.’

  ‘Strap?’ protested Mandy hotly.

  ‘We get it at least once a week. Always some excuse –’

  ‘No way –’

  ‘Oh?’ The platinum blonde’s violet eyes flashed. ‘And what makes you so different?’ Sophie challenged, turning to confront Mandy as they reached the top of the stairs. ‘You’re just another maid. A girl in trouble like the rest of us here. London is too hot for you so you’re keeping your head down. And it’s a fifteen-mile walk to anywhere,’ she warned, adding with perfect logic, ‘but like the rest of us you’ve nowhere else to go or you wouldn’t be at Sternwood Grange.’

  Mandy made no further protest as Sophie spelt out the rules, the rigours, and the dangers to a maid’s bare bottom that governed their life at Sternwood Grange. As Mandy listened, she thought of Aunt Clare and her true purpose here. She must, she knew, continue to play the part of a young woman in hot water, grateful to be given refuge. Drawing Sophie gently to her, she kissed her protectress.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Mmm,’ Sophie murmured, reluctant to peel her lips away from Mandy’s warm mouth. ‘Just be more careful. Adapt. Adapt and conform, or your poor bottom will suffer.’

  They ascended an Adam staircase, drenched in sunlight pouring through a magnificent oval window.

  ‘I’ll take you to the Long Gallery.’

  It was sixty, perhaps seventy feet long and ten feet wide.

  ‘King Charles spent a Christmas here. The Cavalier troops quartered hereabouts in the worst of the winter. They used to hold races along the Long Gallery. Naked wenches would compete for a prize of Seville oranges, a cup of malmsey …’

  Or a coveted place in a royalist’s bed. Mandy closed her eyes and imagined the flickering candlelight, the bellowing laughter, the flushed faces – and the naked wenches, their tiny feet scampering the length of the polished floor. Bare breasted, eyes sparkling, they would race before their king. Fierce wagers, purses of gold, would be exchanged. Fanny, from the kitchens, fleet of foot, would be put against Susie, the spritely little minx who served the wine. Studded gauntlets would cup and squeeze the ripe breasts of the winner, and a gold sovereign would be thrust between her upper thighs. Lazy Susie, who had stumbled and lost pace, would be spanked by Lord Percy, the guttering candlelight winking on her hot reddened rump.

  ‘The Roundheads were dug in the following Christmas,’ Sophie continued. ‘No more fun or Yuletide festivities. Grim lot, the Roundheads.’

  Mandy pictured the scene. Fanny from the kitchens, now in drab black and grey, kneeling on the flagstones for communal prayers. Susie, now toiling in the dairy, being slowly whipped for dipping her finger into a jug of cream.

  ‘Don’t disturb the residents and don’t go near their doors,’ Sophie warned, wheeling out the hoover before returning to the kitchens downstairs.

  The Long Gallery divided the East Wing from the West. The dark polished floor was covered with several thousand pounds’ worth – Mandy automatically put a price on everything she saw – of six-foot wide purple carpet. Both sides of the Long Gallery were punctuated by large double doors, six to her left and six to her right. Behind the firmly closed doors, massively hewn from oak, the residents were cosseted in expensive splendour. Was Sternwood Grange an idyllic rural retreat? A rest home, providing escape from the pressures and problems of the public glare? Mandy wondered about her late aunt’s enterprise as she propelled the whispering hoover along, playing the looped flex out as she ate up the vast stretch of purple. The rubber lead tapped against her thigh below the hem of her pleated skirt like the touch of a crop applied to a pony in dressage. The hoover glided in silence, passing the huge double doors; to her left, the East Wing and, to her right, the West. Suddenly, the machine stopped abruptly. Only the loss of the tiny red light told her that the motor had died. She had trodden on the lead, yanking out the plug thirty feet away. Retracing her steps, she passed the first of the stout double doors. A prolonged moan greeted her ears as she bent down to reinsert the plug. The moan was followed by a sharp shriek.

  Fascinated, Mandy inched towards the doors on tiptoe. Silence. Had she been mistaken? She thought that the moan, low and sweet, had held a note of carnal suffering. The shriek had been a protest against sudden pain. Kneeling at the keyhole, she pressed up against the doors. Inside, she glimpsed a sumptuously furnished room. Down on the satin cushions strewn across the richly patterned carpet, a kneeling naked woman was burying her face into the leather of a saddle.

  ‘Lick,’ a stern voice commanded. ‘Faster.’

  The naked young woman obeyed. Mandy saw the pink tongue sparkle as it lapped at the polished leather, staining the light tan a darker shade of brown.

  ‘Kiss. Kiss the leather.’ Swish, swipe. The instruction was delivered with a searing lash of a riding crop across the upturned buttocks. The whipped woman smothered her moan as, hugging the saddle to her bulging breasts, she crushed her parted lips on to the hide.

  Mandy’s nipples thickened in response. She squashed her bosom into the ancient oak. In the room, the young woman lay face down, spread-eagled across the satin cushions. No, not exactly spread-eagled. Mandy saw that her ankles were bound together.

  ‘Turn over.’

  The rounded cheeks, reddening under the kiss of the crop, sank into the cushion beneath them as the woman obeyed. Mandy raked her avidly from head to toe. The loose tangle of matted chestnut curls sticking to the perspiring face, the delicate, aristocratic features, the small, apple-like breasts, the swell at the hips and the long, tanned legs.

  Two black velvet riding hats tumbled to the carpet at her side.

  ‘Put them on,’ snapped the voice of the unseen tormentress.

  Placing a riding hat over each of her apple breasts, filling the velvet void within with her firm flesh, the nude gripped them, rotating them as she ground them harshly into her bosom.

  ‘Harder, bitch.’

  The tip of the crop brushed the woman’s lips. She craned her neck up, lunging to snap and bite at it. The crop flicked down, settling under her chin. Slowly, with absolute dominance, the crop forced the nude’s head backwards and upwards.

  ‘Up.’ Crack, snap. As the naked buttocks swung around, offering themselves submissively to the crop, the crop greeted them with a withering slice, striping the punished cheeks and adding yet another thin red line. The girl squealed as she struggled up, hampered by her bound feet.

  ‘No, kneel. On all fours.’ The tip of the crop pressed the turmoil of chestnut curls down.

  Was this a resident? Mandy’s tongue felt swollen and too big for her dry mouth. Her aching nipples tormented her. Her hot slit wept.

  ‘I believe you ride hard at hounds, Lady Davinia,’ the unseen speaker taunted.

  Lady Davinia, the superbly buttocked beauty, nodded. Mandy watched the che
stnut curls rippling.

  ‘Speak up, bitch. Louder.’

  The naked aristocrat peeled her lips away from the satin cushion. ‘Yes,’ she confessed, her voice a thickened whisper.

  ‘We’re going for a little canter this fine morning –’ Crack, snap. The crop whistled down across the bare bottom. ‘– but I shall be up in the saddle.’

  Mandy’s slit tingled and burned at the words. She forced her hand between her thighs, palming her pubis to ease the surge of excitement. Through the keyhole, she strained to steal a glimpse of the dominatrix but, as her line of vision swept towards the unseen speaker, she was dazzled by the sunshine. Blinking, she closed her eye, squeezing a tear out and wiping it with her crisp apron. She had been denied, so far, any clue to the tormentress – apart from brief glimpses of the red-sleeved arm swiftly delivering the cutting strokes of the crop.

  Crack, snap. Lady Davinia moaned, drawing Mandy back to the keyhole. She spied the dark chestnut-hued pubic fuzz peeping between the splayed thighs as Lady Davinia dipped her tummy and jerked her bottom up eagerly for the crop.

  In the room, on an unseen mantelpiece, a carriage clock struck. The Cambridge chimes tinkled the hour. Gazing at the striped bottom, Mandy suddenly remembered Sophie. Sophie was due to be caned at ten. Had the carriage clock struck ten? Or was it only nine? Mandy had lost all sense of time. Swivelling back, and sinking her bottom on to her heels, she peered through the keyhole towards the sound of the clock. Yes. There it was. She could just make it out. It was ten. Sophie’s suffering, she knew, was under way behind the frosted-glass door of the housekeeper’s office. Mandy smothered her cry of surprise.

  Behind the clock, there was a mirrored panel. In the glass, she saw the face of one of the angels who had come down to the kitchens earlier to collect her breakfast. The angel, silhouetted in a haze of golden sunshine, was dressed for the hunt. Almost, but not entirely. A black velvet riding hat perched on her head. An unbuttoned red hunting jacket allowed her breasts to spill out. Shiny black leather boots hugged her lower legs. The angel was, otherwise, quite naked – except for dark leather gloves and the crop quivering in her right hand.