The Mistress of Sternwood Grange

by Arabella Knight

  ‘Sonia will be in the Gibbet for two hours. Each of you will lose money,’ Erica informed the rest of the assembled maids, ‘due to her stupidity. Two strokes each.’

  ‘What does she mean?’ Mandy whispered.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Sophie replied.

  The maids were ordered to line up.

  ‘Quickly,’ Erica rasped. ‘With one maid short you’ll have extra work to do this afternoon. Remember that, and your loss of earnings, as you stripe her.’

  Mandy gazed at the suspended maid. Sonia spindled slowly, presenting her breasts, belly and pubis, then turning to reveal her hip, thigh – and, finally, her ripe peach buttocks. Mandy’s nipples thickened and peaked as she gazed at the plump swell of the pink cheeks. Sonia’s bottom was undoubtedly both spankable and biteable – but now it was to be beaten. Mandy, at the end of the queue, realised she was part of a punishment squad.

  The maids stepped up briskly, accepted the wooden spoon from Erica and cracked it down twice across the vulnerable cheeks. The suspended girl’s naked bottom was perfectly poised and presented for punishment. Mandy’s heart fluttered. She closed her eyes. Swish, swipe. Swish, swipe. The little minx squealed and jerked, rattling the chain above her. Mandy blinked and looked up. The punished maid’s fingers splayed out in their cuffed bondage, signalling her suffering. Swish, swipe. Swish, swipe. Sonia squealed again, almost drowning out the dry rattle of the chain. Sophie’s turn came. She stepped up, accepted the wooden spoon and gripped the handle tightly. Sonia’s toes curled in anguish as her naked feet paddled the flagstones. Up in their leather cuffs, the maid’s wrists writhed. Swish, swipe. The spoon swept across the reddening cheeks. Swish, swipe.

  It was Mandy’s turn. She accepted the spoon with a trembling hand and took the short step forward that brought her within striking distance of the suffering maid’s buttocks.

  * * *

  ‘Your first time? Never punished before?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean –’

  ‘Nice?’ Sophie teased.

  Mandy blushed in her confusion. Yes. It had been nice. It had been wonderful. She remembered how the pliant flesh had absorbed the swishing spoon. Sonia’s soft cheeks had flattened under the first stroke, and shuddered beneath the second. The wooden spoon had made a satisfying ‘splat’ across the cheeks, blazing their pink sheen with a fiery crimson.

  Mandy tossed her head back and enjoyed the stream of warm water. They were sharing the shower together. Two naked girls forced into the intimacy of the confined space. Bosoms collided, nipples grazed and peaked. Wet slippery thighs conspired to entwine. They kissed, slowly and deeply, Mandy felt the force of Sophie’s pubic mound pressing into her own. They kissed again, flickering the tips of their tongues into each other’s open mouths. Mandy took Sophie’s lower lip between her teeth, her slit on fire as Sophie’s tongue found the roof of her mouth. They embraced, hugging each other’s wet nakedness. Sophie’s fingers came to rest against Mandy’s labia. Palm inwards, she opened the tingling flesh lips as her thumb prised up the clitoris.

  ‘So? Which would you rather be? The spanker, or the spanked?’

  ‘I don’t …’ Mandy hesitated. ‘The spanker. No. I mean …’

  ‘Both?’ Sophie whispered.

  ‘Both,’ murmured Mandy huskily, recognising the truth as she spoke it. ‘Mmm,’ she whispered. ‘Both.’

  Giggling, Sophie spun round, squashing her face and breasts into the tiles. Jerking her buttocks up as she braced herself on arched feet, she waggled her bottom and pleaded to be soaped. Mandy palmed the soap, conjuring up a luxurious lather, and spread the creaming suds over each rounded cheek. Sophie gurgled her delight and spread her wet thighs wide. Mandy’s throat tightened as she saw the cleft yawn invitingly. Emboldened, she skimmed her fingertip along the ribbon of velvet deep between the buttocks. Sophie cried aloud, and begged for more, urging Mandy to be firmer, much firmer, with her bare bottom.

  Mandy knelt, the shower drumming down on her face and shoulders, and gripped the hips, drawing the bare wet bottom closer to her parted lips. In the rain of water, her white teeth sparkled.

  ‘Shush. Someone’s coming.’

  Mandy rose, chastened by Sophie’s whispered warning.

  They heard the echo of two pairs of approaching footsteps. Shivering, they huddled together. The plastic curtain of the first shower rustled as it was dragged open. The footsteps neared. Another shower curtain scraped the rail as unseen hands flung it wide open. Mandy pressed her body into Sophie’s. Who could it be? Two angels, perspiring after pleasuring the residents? Two naughty maids, coming to shower after a long day’s toil? Erica and Miss Partridge, prowling for bare bottoms to punish?

  ‘Excellent,’ they heard a voice rasp. ‘That almost completes my tour of inspection. We’ll examine the maids’ rooms next.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find everything in order,’ Miss Partridge replied. ‘Go ahead, Miss Flaxstone, I’ll catch you up. I’ll just turn this tap off in here.’

  Miss Flaxstone. Mandy’s brain froze. She did not hear the curtain of their shower being dragged back. She did not hear the gasp of surprise, or see the flash of jealous anger in the housekeeper’s wide eyes. All she heard was her heart hammering furiously as her wet bosom crushed against Sophie’s soft breasts.

  Three

  Mandy, still wet and naked from her interrupted shower, sat on her bed, her buttocks pressed into the duvet, her towel abandoned at her feet. Her hand tugged at her ear as she tried to marshall her thoughts. Celia Flaxstone was here at Sternwood Grange. On a tour of inspection, as if she owned it all. Mandy recalled her encounter in Bird Cage Walk, and how the shrewd, grey-eyed solicitor had successfully managed to deflect all of Mandy’s questions. Suspecting her late aunt’s legal adviser of nothing more than financial sharp practice, the sudden presence of Celia Flaxstone here at Sternwood Grange threw Mandy’s brain into a whirl.

  Mechanically, she brushed away a droplet that had gathered into a jewel at her nipple. Her cornflower-blue eyes widened a fraction as her palm grazed the swollen, pink bud. The sensation brought Mandy back from her confused speculations to the present moment. A present moment full of the promise of imminent pain. Straining to catch the sound of approaching footsteps, Mandy shivered as she remembered the housekeeper’s fiercely whispered words. ‘Go to your rooms, you wicked girls,’ Partridge had hissed. ‘I will deal with you both when I have seen the mistress back to her room.’

  The mistress. Despite the threat of the promised punishment, the words burned brightly in Mandy’s brain. Celia Flaxstone, the formidable woman with the athletic body and razor-sharp mind, was mistress of Sternwood Grange. Mandy sensed that she was no longer in danger of just losing a few thousand pounds – she had probably already lost her entire inheritance.

  She would fight, she resolved, gripping the duvet with whitening knuckles. She would fight every inch of the way. Shrugging off the haunting image of the receptionist being competently whipped, Mandy swallowed and closed her eyes. Sternwood Grange was rightfully hers, she vowed, and she would become its mistress.

  Footsteps approached along the landing, heralding the approach of Partridge. Suddenly, Mandy was a naked young woman once more. Gone was her bold resolve. She shivered as the door handle rattled at the housekeeper’s firm touch.

  ‘You nearly caused me a great deal of trouble, you wicked girl,’ Partridge snapped, closing the bedroom door behind her. ‘Silence,’ she barked, raising her hand to quell Mandy’s protest. ‘If the mistress had caught you neglecting your tasks she would have thought me incapable of doing my duty. And I am fully capable of doing my duty, which is to supervise and punish the maids. Bend over.’

  Mandy peeled her hands away from her breasts and turned to face the bed. She stretched her arms out and bent down.

  ‘No. Right across the bed. Arms out straight.’

  Mandy’s breasts, then her belly, kissed the silk.

  ‘Feet together, girl,’ Partridge ordered, unbuckling th
e leather belt that hugged her slender waist.

  Mandy’s toes scrabbled into the floor as she positioned herself in preparation for the punishing strokes. They came in a fierce rain of pain: a swift onslaught of eight lashes, in rapid succession and with startling severity. Eight times the cruel leather belt whipped down to scald her upturned cheeks. Eight times, Mandy’s hands clutched the duvet as she smothered her gasps of anguish. Beneath the single lightbulb, which cast a dull, yellow glare, the taut flesh of the naked buttocks blazed after the fury of the leather. Mandy buried her face in the duvet, muffling her squeals.

  The punishment ceased; the leather belt dangled limply against the housekeeper’s thigh. Planting her feet apart, and leaning over to scrutinise the striped bottom, Partridge shouldered her belt and studied the hot cheeks. After a full two minutes, Mandy felt the outstretched finger of her punisher press down dominantly on her bottom, circling then dimpling the scarlet domes of her buttocks.

  ‘The mistress will be gone by noon tomorrow. Be on your best behaviour, girl –’

  Once more, the belt whistled down, snapping across the bare bottom.

  ‘Attend to your duties –’

  The leather punctuated the stern warning with a final snapping crack across the punished flesh.

  ‘And do not betray the kindness I have shown you. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mandy whispered thickly, mouthing her words into the silk duvet.

  ‘Make sure you are down and at work early in the morning. And be spick and span. The mistress will want to inspect all the maids.’

  Partridge left as abruptly as she had arrived, closing the door firmly and leaving Mandy alone across the bed of pain with a reddened, sore bottom – and fresh anxieties. Celia Flaxstone was departing at noon. That was good. It would at least leave Mandy with the scope to review her position here at Sternwood Grange. Celia Flaxstone was going to inspect the maids in the morning. That was bad, very bad indeed. How close, how intimate, would the inspection of the maids be? And would Mandy be recognised? If so, what would become of her once she was in the thrall of the grey-haired solicitor, here in this isolated corner of forgotten Suffolk.

  Mandy sat on the bed, her hot bottom cooled by the silk duvet. Drawing her knees up to her chin in contemplation, she purred with pleasure at her squashed breasts, and at the ooze of wet excitement silvering her slit. After all, she comforted herself, her only meeting with the solicitor had been a brief affair. Ten minutes, no more. Mandy tried to reassure herself. And, in that office, Amanda Silk was a confident blonde: not Mandy the maid with the dark, bobbed hair who Celia Flaxstone would be examining before breakfast. Despite these thoughts, Mandy remained frightened and anxious. Sitting on her bed, naked and still smarting from the leather belt’s bite, she felt vulnerable and alone.

  Friendless, because she could not share her secret with anyone here in Sternwood Grange. Friendless. Her thoughts quickly turned to Sophie in the next room. Mandy smiled: by now, Partridge would have arranged the platinum blonde across the unmade bed and the unfurled leather belt would be hovering above the bare bottom. Grinning mischievously, Mandy skipped across the room to the wall and pressed her naked body up against it, positioning her ear to the cool plaster. Sophie’s violet eyes would be clouding with delicious dread, Mandy thought, as she squirmed beneath the potent length of leather. She pressed her head against the wall. Silence greeted her eager ear.

  No, not silence, exactly. Mandy frowned. From the next room, instead of the harsh snapping of supple hide across smooth, pink cheeks, she caught the sweeter sound of Lully’s Les Amants Magnifiques. The sensual music wove an invisible web in the heavy air of the warm summer night. As Mandy rubbed her sore bottom, delicately palming each scalded cheek, she felt a rush of affection for Partridge. Despite the whipping, and other stern discipline the housekeeper had dispensed, Partridge was a decent type. She had been loyal to Mandy’s late aunt, and had taken Mandy in when told the tale of woe. Yes, Partridge was OK. Warm-hearted, generous – and those large, brown eyes. So deliciously dominant and so expertly in control when punishing a young female’s bare bottom.

  Lulled into this brief reverie, Mandy lost her concentration at the plaster wall. She slipped slightly, but steadied herself by cushioning her breasts into the cool surface. Her nipples rose up in peaked protest as they were crushed beneath her. The old wall had a rough patch where her nipples kissed into it. Her sensitive flesh grazed against the roughness. Mandy smothered her gasp. Blinking away the brief spasm of pleasure-pain from her widened eyes, Mandy stretched up on tiptoe to listen: eager for the expected sounds of punishment. No crisp snap of leather across smooth cheeks greeted her, but she could just detect two voices in muted murmuring, and the sweet notes of the music, beyond the plaster wall. A jealous pang surged up inside her. Partridge was not punishing Sophie, she was pleasuring her. Or being pleasured by the platinum blonde?

  Mandy remembered the housekeeper’s angry eyes as the shower curtain had been dragged aside. They had, she suddenly thought, blazed with something fiercer than anger when discovering the two naked girls entwined. Sophie, Mandy swallowed with difficulty as the truth dawned, was Partridge’s favourite maid. They were together, next door. Naked? Was Partridge feeding greedily from the firm young flesh of the writhing blonde? Her full lips sucking and feasting at Sophie’s neck, shoulders and bare bosom. Mandy moaned as she denied the image of the housekeeper’s mouth buried in Sophie’s quivering breast. Or was Sophie, blonde head bowed, kneeling, her shining face pressed between the housekeeper’s splayed thighs? Were those violet eyes flickering up in timid adoration into the housekeeper’s stern gaze as, her chin wedged in the fragrant wet warmth, Sophie’s lapping tongue busied itself in the parted, sticky fig.

  Stumbling back to her bed across which she had been briskly lashed by Partridge some minutes ago, Mandy stretched her nakedness belly down into the duvet. Closing her eyes, she gripped the pillow with clenched fingers. The imagined snapshots of the couple in the next room were replaced by slowly developing images in the red light of her jealous anger. In her fevered imaginings, Mandy saw Partridge palming Sophie’s captive breasts, cupping then weighing their swollen warmth, squeezing the bunched flesh with dominant tenderness, before anointing each peaked nipple with her parted lips. Kissing and sucking the hard peaks until Sophie squealed with raw pleasure. Then the dark flesh of the flickering tongue-tip would emerge to ravish and enflame the swollen, subjugated bosom.

  Mandy tried to bleach the tormenting image out of her mind – but it grew more powerful, more maddening. She writhed on her bed, crushing her breasts into the duvet, as fresh images flashed across her mind. She saw Sophie’s wide mouth stretch wider then form a silent oval of delight as, down at her firm belly, the housekeeper’s wet tongue flattened against her flesh. Then, further down below, gently licking the wisps of pubic fuzz. So vivid were her tormenting imaginings, Mandy even heard the soft rustle as the tongue probed the glistening crease. Then the tongue tip flickered once more, stretched and gleaming, to probe the sticky petals of the labia.

  Clamping her thighs together and clenching the cheeks of her recently whipped bottom, Mandy softly drummed the duvet with fists of fury. She tasted the sharp tang of envy at the thought of Partridge tonguing and tasting Sophie’s secret flesh, and winced at the bitter thought of the brown-eyed housekeeper pleasuring her favourite maid.

  Sophie should be punished. She should be suffering sweet pain, Mandy thought. Yes, Partridge should be pinning the naked blonde across her thighs, one firm hand at the maid’s neck, the other curled across the swell of the bare bottom. Yes. Mandy squeezed her thighs together tightly, wriggling down into the duvet as she conjured up the imminent spanking. Partridge spanking Sophie’s bare bottom searingly and searchingly, the ruthless hand sweeping down to scald the defenceless cheeks. Cheeks ablaze now as they deepened from pink to a burning crimson. Mandy relished the imagined crack of the hard palm against the smoothness of the maid’s naked cheeks. Yes. Tha
t was better, much better.

  Satisfied, and with her wet slit pulsing pleasurably, Mandy curled up and drifted off to sleep. But it was a restless sleep, troubled by unbidden dreams. In her dreams, Mandy watched as the spanking continued, and gloated at Sophie’s sore bottom as it bucked and bounced in a vain attempt to escape the fierce chastisement. Then the brown eyes of the housekeeper narrowed. She paused, her hot palm resting silently across the hotter cheeks. In her sleep, Mandy moaned. No. Not that. That should not be happening, she whimpered. Frozen and helpless in her dreamscape, Mandy was forced to witness the housekeeper inching her heavy breasts down on to the bottom of the maid she had just spanked so severely. No, whimpered Mandy, burning with a surge of jealous rage as she saw, but could not stop, Partridge slowly and deliberately dragging her hard nipples across the crimson domes before crushing her bosom with tender dominance into the favourite’s hot bottom.

  * * *

  The preparation of tea, coffee and toast were Mandy’s allotted tasks the following morning. She was soon engrossed in her duties, buffing up a sheen on the silver Georgian coffee pots and decrusting the perfect triangles of golden toast. Partridge flitted between the kitchens, offering praise and encouragement in her anxious supervision of the scurrying maids. Erica, Mandy noticed, was less flustered, remaining cool and calm as she stalked the flagstone floor, spoon alert and ready to swipe the maids’ bottoms. The bustle increased into a frenzy, but still Erica remained serene.

  There had been no time to talk. Sophie had, twice, flashed warm smiles across her laden trays to Mandy, but Mandy had ignored them, pretending to be busy with her pots of aromatic Earl Grey tea. She was still angry, angry and jealous of the housekeeper’s preference for the platinum-blonde maid.

  A sudden hush greeted the arrival of Celia Flaxstone, who swept into the kitchens, mistress of all she surveyed. Partridge stiffened with tension, Mandy thought as she glimpsed the housekeeper’s hands fluttering anxiously. Was she afraid? Afraid of Celia Flaxstone. If so, why? Pushing these thoughts aside, Mandy turned strategically away from the kitchen and attended to her steaming kettles ranged across the Aga. Out of the corner of a wary eye, she saw Celia Flaxstone approach Erica and greet the cropped blonde with a warm kiss. For Partridge, Mandy noted, the mistress of Sternwood Grange had only a few curt words. Celia Flaxstone sauntered across the flagstones, pausing to finger the leather harness of the Gibbet.