The Mistress of Sternwood Grange

by Arabella Knight

  Mandy knew at once what she never could have imagined. She knew the truth of Aunt Clare’s enterprise: Sternwood Grange was an erotic playpen for the rich. An exclusive palace of pleasures where the wealthy could indulge their darkest desires.

  In the mirrored panel above the mantelpiece, Mandy saw the angel wrapping a thin leather harness around her naked hips and buttocks. The gloved fingers tightened the short straps. Grinding the heels of her polished boots into the carpet, the angel turned and bent down briefly, presenting her buttocks to Mandy’s gaze. Mandy licked her lips as the bare bottom bulged, the cheeks seemingly threatening to burst the crisscrossed strapping. The taut leather harness rendered the cleft between the cheeks a severe flesh-crease. Rising up to face Mandy once more, the angel produced an eight-inch ivory dildo, kissed its blunt snout fleetingly, then jammed it into a socket in the harness at her pubis. The gloved fingers slowly twisted the dildo, tightening it, before slowly stroking its gleaming length. Lady Davinia whimpered. Mandy saw the black boot pinion the whipped buttocks imperiously, crushing the swollen cheeks down in a display of utter dominance. The angel’s fingers continued to skim along the shaft. As they were withdrawn, the ivory phallus sprang up, alert and erect. Mandy swallowed, and used both hands to steady herself against the oak.

  Crack, snap. The crop seared down across the buttocks still flattened by the controlling boot. Lady Davinia screamed softly into her satin cushion.

  ‘Head up,’ the angel snarled.

  Still writhing after the fierce stroke of crop across flesh, the nude tossed her chestnut curls. A leather glove descended and taloned a fistful of the shining hair. ‘I said head up, bitch. I need reins to ride you, don’t I?’

  Straddling her naked mount, the angel squeezed her polished boots against the hot buttocks. With her left hand still clutching the chestnut mane, and her right hand gripping the crop, the angel guided her splayed thighs down on to the helpless woman below. Thrusting her hips forward, the rider pressed the tip of the dildo into the exposed nape of the aristocratic neck. Lady Davinia shivered. Easing back, her riding boots shuffling carefully, the angel swept her hips and thighs slowly, raking the length of smooth ivory down along Lady Davinia’s spine. Mandy heard the satin-smothered moan, and tensed as she watched the bound, naked feet twitching frantically in their strict bondage. The angel paused, the tip of the dildo now dimpling the reddened cheek of the left buttock. Slowly, a heartbeat at a time, the probing snout centimetred towards the rosebud sphincter winking wetly between the parted, whipped buttocks.

  The chatter of an approaching helicopter, and the chorus of scattered rooks startled from the elms, broke the spell holding Mandy in its thrall. She blinked. Steadying herself, she put her hand down, accidentally forcing her palm on to the upturned plug on the carpet. The flash of pain cleared her brain.

  ‘What are you doing?’ hissed Miss Partridge, treading the purple carpet silently as she approached.

  Mandy, kneeling on one knee, looked up, the plug in her hand. She blushed.

  ‘You’ve been spying, haven’t you? Listening at the door.’

  In the silence after the roar of the helicopter, Mandy could hear her heart hammering. A squeal came from behind the oak doors – where the angel was riding the nude.

  ‘I trod on the lead. The plug came out.’

  ‘Stand up,’ the housekeeper hissed, now towering over Mandy.

  Another sound – one of anguished ecstasy – echoed from behind the doors. Mandy tried to ignore the image burning in her brain: the leather boots controlling the imprisoned thighs, the glove-held hair, the red jacket from which perspiring breasts spilled and bounced. The soft whisper of flesh riding flesh.

  ‘Lift up your skirt. Quickly,’ Miss Partridge demanded.

  Mandy dropped the plug and obeyed. The housekeeper knelt down and inspected Mandy’s cotton panties. Mandy tried to suppress the image of the angel astride her naked mount, the length of ivory dildo disappearing a fraction at a time with every hip-thrust as the crop cracked down. Just as Miss Partridge pulled the panties down to examine Mandy’s labia, the maid bubbled her wet excitement. Mandy shivered with both fear and shame as she heard Miss Partridge sniffing at the heavy tang of arousal.

  ‘Wet,’ the housekeeper pronounced. ‘You’ve been spying. Pull your panties up and get downstairs at once. I’ll see you in my office when our resident has departed.’

  The helicopter coughed, roared and rose up into the sky above Sternwood Grange. Banking steeply, it veered towards London, its shadow skimming the Suffolk treetops below. Mandy heard its departure from the housekeeper’s office. Having seen the resident off, Miss Partridge would be returning any second now. The door opened. Mandy froze – relaxing a little as Sophie looked in.

  ‘What –’

  ‘She caught me. I was listening at the door. I didn’t mean –’

  ‘She caught you spying? You’ll get six, at least. Come upstairs to my room when it’s over –’

  Sophie disappeared abruptly at the sound of approaching footsteps. Unlike the silent tread upon the purple carpet nine minutes ago, Mandy heard the housekeeper’s measured steps across the flagstone floor.

  Miss Partridge closed the frosted-glass door behind her firmly, turning the key in the lock. Mandy wiped her wet palms into the apron at her thighs.

  ‘I’m extremely busy this morning and extremely angry. I have little to say to you other than to express my deep disappointment at your wilful disobedience. I believe that actions speak louder than words. Bend over.’

  Mandy’s blue eyes widened in alarm. Miss Partridge narrowed hers.

  ‘No, leave your panties alone. Touch your toes, girl,’ the housekeeper murmured, selecting a bamboo cane from a choice of seven stacked in the corner by a filing cabinet.

  ‘Right over. Feet together for the first three strokes, then apart for the next three, understand?’

  Mandy whispered her obedience. She shuddered as she felt the tip of the yellow wood flick the hem of her pleated skirt up over her hips, and clenched her buttocks as Miss Partridge thumbed her panties down. Using the cane tip against the exposed cheeks, Miss Partridge judged the distance. Mandy closed her eyes tightly.

  ‘Your first taste of discipline?’ the housekeeper asked, her tone almost politely conversational.

  ‘N–no,’ whispered Mandy thickly, dreading yet adoring the dominant tap of the cane against her bare cheeks.

  ‘Nor the last, I’m sure,’ Miss Partridge observed.

  Swish. Mandy’s eyes opened wide as the flash of crimson exploded in her brain. The supple bamboo had sliced down, lashing her bottom harshly. Swish. The second stroke, crisply stinging, seared her defenceless buttocks. Her fingers splayed in a reflex of anguish. Swish. The third cut of the cane sliced down with an evil whistle, leaving a reddening line of pain across the punished cheeks.

  ‘Feet apart. Hands behind your knees,’ Miss Partridge instructed.

  Mandy almost stumbled forward as she struggled to obey, hampered by the tight stretch of her panties just above her knees. The punisher steadied the bending girl with a tap of the yellow bamboo. Head down, with her bottom presented perfectly for punishment, Mandy hoped that the pungent perfume from her wet slit would go undetected. Both her buttocks and her face burned with shame and pain. The tip of the cane quivered as it lightly grazed the outer cheek of her naked bottom.

  ‘Naughty girl,’ the housekeeper murmured, her tone stern but not angry. The bamboo traced the curve of the buttock down to the crease of the thigh. Sweeping inwards, it paused at the glistening fig. Mandy steadied herself against the swoon that threatened to engulf her. The punishment was sweet, the dominance delicious. Sophie’s words haunted her. When Miss Partridge dispensed discipline, she owned your bottom utterly. Mandy surrendered to the truth of these words – and, inching up on her toes a fraction, submitted her bare buttocks to the cane.

  Swish. Swish. A merciless double swipe of supple wood swept down across the upturned cheeks. Mandy sq
uealed and grasped her legs tightly as if squeezing out the pain. A dreadful pause ensued. Miss Partridge had lost the button from the cuff she had undone in preparation for the punishment. Scanning the flagstone floor, she pounced, retrieved her stray button and pocketed it. A silent scream welled up inside Mandy’s throat. Her bare bottom blazed beneath an invisible flame of pain. The housekeeper had accidentally brushed against the bare buttocks with her thigh when scooping up the button, grazing the swell of their hot curves with the fabric of her skirt. Mandy moaned at the fleeting touch: so unexpectedly delicious, so disturbingly delightful. Confused, her mind in sudden chaos, the bending girl struggled to deny the dark joy dictated by the Judas wood. In her tumult of emotions, she forgot about the sixth stroke.

  Swish – Miss Partridge hadn’t. The thin cane sliced down, planting a kiss of savage affection across the scalded cheeks. Mandy’s left leg shook uncontrollably despite her gripping hand.

  One. Two. Three. The tip of the cane, now wet and stained with the lust-juice from her slit, tapped her bottom as it counted the six red lines. Satisfied, Miss Partridge took a linen hankie out of her pocket, first drying the tip of the cane and then applying it to the labial lips peeping between Mandy’s thighs. Mandy gasped aloud at the intimacy, and the dominance, of the touch of cool linen against her hot, silken flesh. Miss Partridge pocketed the hankie and replaced the cane in the corner of her office. Pacing back to the bare-bottomed girl she had just chastised, she cupped the ravished cheeks and slowly squeezed. Mandy cried out – a shrill squeal of tormented delight. Shutting her eyes tightly, almost as if unwilling to witness her own actions, she thrust her captive cheeks up into the controlling hands that held them, squeezed them, possessed them. She thrilled to their firm control just as she would when a tight silk brassiere imprisoned her bulging breasts.

  Silence filled the room. Mandy sensed that Miss Partridge was savouring her moment of supreme sovereignty. Her punisher would be gazing down at the punished bottom, examining the blushing cheeks intimately. Surrendering completely to these delicious sensations of submission, Mandy wept freely from her slit.

  Miss Partridge squeezed harder, then swept her thumbs upwards, widening the captive cleft. Mandy tensed, clenching her cheeks tightly, fearful of what she desired. Miss Partridge spanked the left buttock sharply.

  ‘Back to your duties, girl. I hope I don’t have to punish you – too frequently.’ Once again, the tone was excitingly ambiguous, a stern warmth blending with the sweet severity.

  Mandy stood up, her head spinning. Tugging her panties up, she winced as they hugged her hot bottom, and blushed as they grew damp at her pubis. Her heart was beating wildly and her caned buttocks burned, but deep down inside her a strange sensation blossomed. Tugging her panties up into her flesh, she tried to name the nameless feeling of this new, unexpectedly pleasurable, aching anguish.

  ‘You got six. I said you would,’ Sophie murmured, tracing each reddening line across Mandy’s bottom with her fingertip. ‘I only got four.’

  Mandy cuddled into Sophie’s embrace. Staring into the mirror, she counted the four scarlet stripes across the other maid’s bare bottom. They were upstairs, their uniforms abandoned across Sophie’s bed.

  ‘We haven’t much time. It’s always so busy at lunch. This’ll make it better. Give me your bottom.’

  Mandy turned, offering her buttocks to Sophie. The naked platinum blonde knelt, her face inches away from the punished buttocks before her.

  ‘Mmm,’ Mandy sighed, parting her thighs slightly and pushing her bottom back into the healing touch of cold cream-dripping fingers busy at her flesh. ‘That’s wonderful.’

  Sophie dipped her fingers into the pot of cream once more and applied them to the proffered cheeks. With slow, circular sweeps, she soothed the ravished flesh. ‘Nearly done,’ she whispered, lightly stroking her fingertip down along the cleft. Mandy moaned, clamping her thighs together.

  Sophie kissed the flesh before her. ‘More?’ she teased, murmuring the word directly into Mandy’s warmth.

  ‘Yes,’ Mandy gasped. ‘Yes,’ she added urgently, surrendering completely to her implaccable, inner desires wakened by the cane.

  Sophie paused, her cream-anointed finger at the base of Mandy’s spine. Slowly, deliberately, she dragged it down, forcing it between the quivering cheeks. The lubricated fingertip slid down along the flesh, sensing no resistance. Mandy planted her feet apart and surrendered her bottom to the devilish delight, her excitement sharpened by the knowledge of her wickedness, her forbidden sins of Sapphic pleasure. The fingertip came to rest against the rosebud of her anal whorl. For a brief moment, her heart ceased beating, the throbbing pulse at her throat stopped still. Gently, then with an increasing touch of dominance, the fingertip probed. Mandy’s brain kaleidoscoped with a riot of spinning images: the angel’s dildo penetrating Lady Davinia as the rider’s black leather boots squeezed the whipped bottom; the touch of the housekeeper’s skirt against her own ravished cheeks; the inquisitive touch of the cane tip at her weeping fig; Sophie’s face at her bottom, so close, so very close.

  ‘Not now,’ Sophie sighed, withdrawing her finger. ‘It’s late. Erica will be on the prowl.’

  ‘Please …’ mewed Mandy, inching her bottom back to regain and reclaim the finger.

  In seconds, Sophie had dressed and gone, zipping up her pleated black maid’s skirt as she vanished through the door.

  Mandy stood still, naked in the sunbeams. Her hot slit pulsed as a rush of understanding and self-knowledge swept over her. Alone in the bedroom, she listened to her heartbeat in the silence of the room. Approaching Sophie’s bed, she knelt down, pressing her belly into the corner of the mattress. Between her thighs, her fig split wide open, fully ripened by the blaze of her kindled heat. The wet labia kissed the mattress as Mandy crushed them into its soft solidity. Gripping the edges with both fists and thighs, she rode the corner of the mattress with increasing fury, dragging her clitoris and slit repeatedly down against its rough graze.

  A renewed riot of images tumbled behind her tightly shut eyes: burning images of submission, punishment, domination and sweet surrender. The voyeuristic glimpses of the angel dominantly mounting the naked aristocrat, Miss Partridge thumbing the cleft between the cheeks she had just striped with the bamboo cane, Sophie’s probing fingertip at her anal whorl.

  Sophie. Mandy murmured the name slowly, allowing the vowels to fill her mouth like too big a bite of fudge cake. Sophie. The stray wisps of Sophie’s platinum blonde hair. The soft glow in Sophie’s violet eyes. Mandy thrust her hot wet flesh savagely against the mattress in a frenzy of lust. Sophie’s lips kissing her bottom – Mandy started to climax – Sophie’s dripping finger – the climax gripped her inner muscles in its fist of velvet steel – Sophie’s finger probing, probing – Mandy’s knuckles whitened as they gripped the mattress – Sophie’s probing finger sliding into her tight warmth – Mandy screamed aloud and came. She came violently, hammering her hips into the mattress and crying out aloud: Sophie’s name upon her parted lips.

  The sunbeams turned from gold to crimson, and then from crimson into black as Mandy, ravished by her orgasm, trembled on the very brink of consciousness, never before having experienced such violent delights or such savage joy. Buckling under her climax, she shuddered and gasped as it raked her naked body mercilessly.

  Both the heat and the silence of the late afternoon bore down oppressively on the four maids as they toiled in the kitchens under the ever vigilant gaze, and hovering wooden spoon, of Erica. High tea was a pleasurable ritual that all the residents took seriously. Eggs were carefully boiled and shelled, cress washed and diced, crabs dressed, six types of cakes sliced and plated and no less than seven blends of tea brewed in pots of Georgian silver. Scones were split, their fluffy crumbs exposed to receive clotted cream and fragrant raspberry jam.

  There was a loud crash: the kitchen reverberated to the sound of a stone jar smashing down on the flagstones. Erica pounced, her wooden spoon
erect and alert. The guilty maid fingered her apron nervously.

  ‘Big deal,’ Sophie said, cutting a large chocolate cake carefully. ‘It’s only a pot of jam.’

  Mandy, catching the delicate aroma of framboise from the scarlet ooze treacling from the splintered shards, knew better.

  ‘You stupid girl,’ Erica hissed. ‘You’ll find that a costly mistake.’

  ‘French conserve. Eight pounds a jar,’ Mandy whispered.

  Sophie whistled and nodded, throwing a sympathetic look at the miserable maid, already down on her knees and scrubbing at the stone floor.

  ‘Five pounds deduction,’ Erica snapped, ‘from each of your wages. As for you, girl, it’s the Gibbet.’

  ‘It’s only jam,’ the unlucky maid wailed.

  ‘Only jam?’ echoed Miss Partridge, entering the kitchen. ‘That is a singularly expensive conserve supplied exclusively from France.’

  ‘The Gibbet?’ Erica prompted eagerly.

  ‘Yes,’ the housekeeper confirmed. ‘These wretched maids must be taught a lesson.’

  Miss Partridge withdrew to her office and an expectant silence settled over the kitchen.

  ‘Strip,’ Erica commanded, tapping the palm of her hand impatiently with her wooden spoon.

  The maid, a dark-eyed little minx called Sonia, peeled off her uniform and stood, naked and fearful, her head bowed, her hands cupped inwards to hide her pubic fuzz.

  ‘Arms up,’ Erica barked, propelling the naked girl across the flagstones to the Gibbet, the wooden spoon speaking twice across the maid’s bare bottom.

  Sonia stood beneath the leather cuffs suspended by the chain from the ceiling. Erica threaded Sonia’s hands and wrists through the cuffs and, having secured her victim, yanked at the chain above. Sonia’s arms arrowed upwards, suspending her naked body. Mandy stole a furtive peep over her shoulder. She saw the naked girl’s tiny toes whitening as they scrabbled on the cold flagstones below.