Trembling slightly, the brunette turned and headed – not too quickly – towards the exit. She trembled with fear, with delicious dread: not the fear of being apprehended and frog-marched down to the basement room with the bland, beige door, but with delicious dread of what awaited her once that beige door was firmly locked behind her.
3
Rough Shoot
Lady Alice strode purposefully down the draughty corridor along the east wing of Strachayle Castle. Approaching a large, mullioned window, she stopped abruptly, turning to instruct her maid scurrying in her wake.
‘As for the Godolphin girls, Miss Edwina will have this bedroom and I shall place Miss Charlotte in there. During their visit, as their personal maid, you shall occupy the box room at the end of the landing, girl.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The maid nodded obediently.
‘Strictly speaking,’ Lady Alice continued as she fingered the window sill for traces of dust, ‘the rough shoot is a gentleman’s sporting weekend but I am obliged to Lady Godolphin and so have agreed to receive her daughters. It will complete their coming-out season.’
Heather, the maid, relieved to see that her mistress had failed to discover any dust, merely nodded. Lady Alice would have dispensed brisk discipline if her finger had detected any evidence of a lazy maid. But the moment of danger, and the threat of a sore bottom for Heather, had passed. She sighed.
‘London debs frequently prove to be as spirited as they are inexperienced,’ Lady Alice pronounced as she inspected the curtains closely. ‘See to it that there are absolutely no nocturnal adventures. Understand me, girl? No midnight excursions.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Lady Alice drew her lorgnette swiftly up to her piercing eyes. The lenses flashed as the mistress inspected her maid. ‘Girl,’ she barked, ‘did not the housekeeper issue you with a clean, starched apron this morning?’
Heather blushed. Squirming under the glinting lorgnette, she nervously palmed the crisp apron at the curve of her thighs.
‘You have managed, I see, to soil it already. I shall see to it that tuppence is deducted from your wage this sabbath to defray the extra laundering costs. I will not abide slovenliness in my maids. Go straight down to the housekeeper’s office and ask her for a clean apron, girl.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And for two strokes of her tawse.’
Heather bowed her head, meekly accepting the prescribed punishment. Behind her back, her hands fluttered before instinctively cupping and shielding her buttocks.
‘And, girl –’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Come back upstairs to me directly you have been punished. I wish to see your stripes. I want you properly punished and so I will examine your bottom for my own satisfaction.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Three hours out of London and four hours from Inverness, the powerful train thundered northwards, its thick ribbon of smoke curling away over the flat Fenlands.
Watching the gold and brown patchwork of autumnal fields flash by from the luxury of their first-class carriage, the Godolphin sisters lapsed into companionable silence. Since leaving London, their excited chatter had been of the Season so far. Dances, suppers and more formal dinner balls. Their presentation at Court – before a diminutive, plump little Queen dressed in funereal black. Goodwood. The opera. Encounters with virile men ruined by the oppressive vigilance of chaperones. Equally thrilling for the debutantes was their introduction to bustiers and corsetry that squeezed and to the cool kiss of silks and satins upon their trembling young flesh.
Now they were heading for Scotland and the weekend rough shoot. To Strachayle Castle, which would be bristling with desirable males. Their hearts hammered behind their heavy, swollen breasts. To be alone amongst men at last. Alone, unaccompanied and unchaperoned.
Edwina closed her eyes and recounted the intimate highlights of her coming out season so far. She shivered as she remembered the fierce mouth, and the warm, probing tongue, of a Hussar. He had twirled her away from the dancefloor during a waltz, kissed her savagely out on the balcony and then spun her back into the respectability of the ballroom that night in Cadogan Square. She had, later that night in bed, played with her pussy properly for the very first time, the memory of his hard lips and punishing tongue soaking her frantic fingertips.
Edwina flushed at the memory, then shivered with pleasure at the thought of other waltzes, other gallant officers. Dominant men who had gripped her fiercely, held her closely, their proudly erect manhoods urgent against her moistening maidenhead. And that evening in the opera. Yes. She shuddered and moaned at the delicious remembrance. A decorated Major in the Blues, his leathery face masterfully stern, bending down in the darkness to retrieve her gloves. She had held her breath and squirmed as his hands had caressed her upper thighs. She blushed and grew pleasantly hot at the thought of his sure and certain touch, at the bold impudence of his hand sliding beneath her buttocks to squeeze and fondle them throughout the entire second act of Turandot.
Edwina, a brown-eyed, softly lisping brunette, delighted in the easy arrogance and supreme confidence of older men. Experienced, mature men. Melting in their presence, she often felt the soak of her excitement at her silk cami-knickers. She yearned to know their power more intimately. But during the Season, the rules of engagement between the sexes were strict and the codes of propriety severe.
As the train thundered onwards, she lapsed into a waking dream. Behind coyly closed eyes whose lashes frequently flickered with excitement, she conjured up deliciously naughty dreams and desires for the weekend of rough shooting. But Edwina scorned the dubious pleasures of roaring guns, barking dogs and chill mists on freezing grouse moors. For her, the game to be bagged was men. Preferably older men. Worldly men of experience. A Tory grandee, perhaps. Stern and accustomed to command. He would curtly insist upon a midnight assignation, instructing Edwina to attend him in his chamber. Risking the shame of scandal if discovered, she would rush on tiptoe to him. Behind his locked door, he would remain attired in his black velvet smoking jacket, sipping brandy as she shrugged her white lawn chemise off and stood in its puddle at her feet, naked and gleaming before him. He would approach, judging her as he would a horse or dog. Inspecting her intimately, he would run his firm finger from her chin down her throat to her bare bosoms. The fingertip would close into a cruel pincer with his thumbtip at her nipple. Gazing dominantly into her wide eyes, he would tease and tame the painfully peaked flesh-bud then bring his cruel lips down upon it to suck, then bite.
Moaning slightly, Edwina tossed and turned in her sumptuously upholstered leather seat. At the join of her thighs, a warm ooze signalled her delicious distress. Despite her tight clothing, the corset and crinolines, she managed to spread her buttocks wide, almost crying out softly as a dull ache burned deep in her cleft. Lulled by the rhythms of the wheels and seduced by her waiting fantasy, she drifted back into her dark reverie: her wicked desire for naked submission and meek surrender to the sharp appetite of a mature, dominant male.
Behind closed eyes, she imagined him once more, still attired in his velvet jacket, in stark contrast to her soft nakedness. The contrast rendered him more powerful, more masterful. Naked, she would be his plaything for an idle hour. She would uncover her body for his perusal and pleasure. Yes. But, withdrawing his brutal hand from her punished breast, he would ignore her and return to sip his brandy. In her daydream, Edwina whimpered her soft sigh of pleasure. To be naked and ashamed before this man, this silver-haired statesman who forsook her breast to bring his lips to his brandy. She thrilled to the imagined humiliation – and her pussy wept with joy.
‘Put your hands up behind your head, my girl,’ he would instruct her.
Burning with both pleasure and shame, Edwina saw herself obeying with reluctant eagerness. Her breasts would swell and burgeon as her arms rose up, elbows angled, in obedience to his command. At her coiled, dressed hair, her fingers would undo her careful locks, spilling them down in a wanton tum
ble. Utterly naked now, and lewdly exposed, she would inch her thighs apart. Like a harlot. A shameful harlot one furtively read about in the Bible or the lurid Sunday papers taken by the servants below stairs. Dizzy with the thrill of her sinful lust, and shyly eager to be deservedly punished for that sinful lust, she would name for him – touching them, as she did so – her maidenly parts.
‘And what does my little whore call these?’ he would demand, tapping her nipples with the tip of his crop.
Cupping her breasts and offering them to him submissively, she would whisper her shameful response.
The crop would rake down across her belly and drag intimately through the dark nest of her curled body hair below.
‘And what name has my little wanton tart for this?’ he would growl, probing the sticky fleshfolds of her private place.
Rising up on her tiny white toes, she would confess the name.
‘Not fanny?’ he would counter sharply. ‘Or cunny?’
Then, at last, the hoped-for – dreaded – command.
‘Kneel.’
Bowing her head down so that her lips kissed the carpet at his feet, she would crouch, quivering, awaiting his pleasure and her pain. Treading her down with his foot upon the nape of her neck, he would guide the tip of the crop down along her spine to the soft warmth between her raised buttocks. Soon, he would ply the crop less tenderly, more violently. With a vicious affection, to slice-swipe her naked cheeks and kiss them with crimson that would burn to a deeper red. But before the sweet strokes across her helpless buttocks, she would have to endure the bitter-bliss of abject humiliation as she knelt, naked, in his thrall.
The mournful screech of the train’s whistle opened her large brown eyes instantly. Blinking away her fantasy, Edwina gazed out through the carriage window. In the far distance, just visible against the purple smudge of the horizon, she saw that a hunt was up and in full cry. Red-jacketed riders on tiny horses were following a speckled pack of miniature hounds. The master of the hunt saluted the train, acknowledging its whistled greeting with two muted notes on his horn. Thundering on, the train gave a farewell blast. The hunt vanished from sight. Edwina closed her eyes, her mind dwelling on a set of sepia prints she had glimpsed when staying with a great-aunt who rode with the Quorn. Sepia prints of huntsmen erect in the saddle, their crops alert and aquiver. Conscious of the wet seethe between her thighs, a moist warmth that rendered her fluffy little pubic fringe soaking, she seized upon the conjured image of her nocturnal visit to the lair of the silver-haired politician, her Tory squire, in Strachayle Castle. She wanted him still fully dressed, to sharpen her sense of his mastery over her trembling nakedness. A nakedness he would straddle as he flexed his cruel crop. Soon, the pleasurable pain would commence.
Down on the carpet beneath him, she would clench her small fists and willingly inch her bare bottom up. Crack. The first swipe of leathered cane across her waiting cheeks. Taloning the carpet, she would jerk in anguish at the bite across her rounded buttocks. Then, almost immediately, another short thrumming hiss as the crop lashed down. Crack. Another searing swipe – one of many, many more to blaze down and bite-slice her flesh. She would grunt her response into the carpet, the shrill yelp softened by a sweeter note of dark joy. Between the strokes, she would squeeze her cheeks together as if to extinguish the tiny tongue of fire licking the length of her cleft. But nothing, she feared, would damp down the blaze deep in her tiny anal whorl.
Sitting opposite her sleeping sister, Charlotte Godolphin remained wide awake. Her summer months had been long and lonely ones and her Season had not been a success. With short, bobbed blonde hair the shade of pale champagne and glittering green eyes, Charlotte was almost exactly the opposite of her younger sister in every respect. Where Edwina was shy and timid, Charlotte was bold and strong-willed. Where Edwina sought maturity to take her firmly in hand, Charlotte desired to dominate youth.
Early nursery experiences with a tough nanny had allowed Charlotte frequent glimpses of naked male buttocks being firmly chastised. With two brothers and Thomas, a cousin, in the nursery and later at their small desks in the school room, Charlotte enjoyed the spectacle of nanny being fierce with the unruly boys. She had frequent cause to relish the ritual of their bottoms being bared to receive the flurry of stinging spanks.
The intervening years had afforded few crumbs of comfort to feed her growing appetite for the punishment and strict discipline of males. Three summers ago, she had contrived to get her cousin Thomas whipped when he was down for Michaelmas from Eton. She had lied, telling her mother that it had been Thomas who had introduced the grass snake to cook’s bed. Lady Godolphin had plied the dog whip across the howling boy’s bare bottom behind closed doors – but Charlotte had listened at the door, her pulses racing and her breasts feeling inordinately heavy in their sweet ache.
There were rumours, of course. Whispered asides between visiting dowagers. Whispered accounts of the caning of pantrymen suspected of stealing claret – and kisses from squealing maids. Charlotte had also overheard mention of a salon in Ebury Street where young bucks were tied up and flogged with bundles of birch twigs. Charlotte would bring these scraps and morsels to bed with her at night to feed her hot imaginings as her fingers flayed her pussy.
Charlotte was sure that there existed a private world within London society, a secret world where young men sought pleasure in being punished by ladies who found pleasure in dispensing discipline. But the doors to that world remained closed. Not so the doors to the library. She had passed many instructive hours among forbidden books, poring over Sadean texts and alighting, by chance, upon the poet Swinburne. She became acquainted with his professed penchant for pain, for strict punishment. In his confessions, the florid rhymster freely owned his need for cruel stripes to inspire sweet strokes from his pen.
Now, at last, she was heading for Strachayle Castle and the possibility of adventure. Such weekend gatherings always included poets and painters. Yes. There would be several young men, foppish in their long hair and peacock attire. Pale young men who would be eager for her strict attentions. She pictured herself in a drawing room, alone, perusing a small book of French verse. She would be smoking a small, slender cheroot and sipping a pink gin. One such young man, timorous, with delicate hands and shyly averted eyes, would enter. Avoiding her gaze, he would approach the pianoforte, seat himself before it and commence playing. It would be Mozart. She would join him, allowing the ash from her cheroot to spill down upon the white keys. Her presence would make him increasingly nervous. His fingering would become less sure. At his third blunder at the keys, she would sharply rap her folded fan down across his knuckles. With a soft moan of delight, he would bury his fist between his thighs. The bond would be forged between them. Later, in the moonlight of her bedroom, he would be naked and kneeling – hers entirely to do with as she pleased.
Charlotte concentrated hard, just as she did when reading German novels. Concentrated hard, anxious not to miss the slightest nuance. She imagined her bedroom after midnight. They would both be naked, young debutante and kneeling youth. He would be begging to kiss her breasts, belly and below. She, like La Belle Dame Sans Merci in the book in her father’s library, would only deign to allow him to lick and lap at her feet. Whimpering softly, he would obey, his hot, wet tongue busy at her toes. After a strict spell of this delicious homage, she would turn languidly and offer her bare buttocks to his eager, upturned face. Further homage would then be paid, his flushed face buried between her soft, rippling cheeks.
Her sovereignty established, they would enter into the night of discipline and domination. She would select a silken stocking to bind her kneeling slave, bind his ankles together into burning helplessness. Another silken stocking would visit his wrists and render them useless and immobile above his naked buttocks. Whimpering with fearful anticipation, he would writhe. Stern and silent, she would motion to him to be still, and out of pity allow him to peep as she donned a crisp white basque. His eyes would widen in wonder
as she drew the laces tightly, squeezing her breasts until they bulged. Smoothing her belly and thighs, she would gaze down, smiling contemptuously at his thickening manhood raised in a smart salute. Capturing it between her knees, she would squeeze it as tightly as the satin at her bosom squeezed her ripe flesh. She would feel the warmth throbbing between her controlling flesh.
The train clattered over a set of points, jolting Charlotte out of her vivid reverie. Opposite her, her gloved right hand scrabbling fitfully at the silk dress stretched across her lap, Edwina dozed. Charlotte watched the gloved fingers suddenly splay out like a starfish as Edwina, in her turbulent dreams, palmed her inner thighs.
Charlotte studied her younger sister’s face. The mouth was slightly open, the lips moist, the pink tongue-tip protruding as it would to lick at the ripeness of an oozing plum. Edwina was clearly enjoying a very wicked dream. Charlotte closed her glittering green eyes and returned to hers.
She revisited her boudoir in Strachayle Castle, where her naked slave-lover would beg for his pain. As he became both loud and impatient, she would have to kneel down before him and silence his pleading whine. Charlotte clenched her small paw-fists twice and purred as she anticipated finger-forcing her slightly soiled cami-knickers into his mouth. Further dark joy would flow from the binding of his imploring eyes with calico. Silenced, and denied sight, he would be all hers – the green-eyed cat had captured her quivering little mouse. Let the tantalising teasing and exquisite torments commence.
With a gloved hand, of black velvet and stretching tightly up to her elbow, she would finger her captive intimately: rubbing, stroking and then probing as she explored all the secrets of the naked male so far denied to a well-bred debutante. Fear and excitement would bead the temples of her willing victim. The only sounds audible would be her panting breath and the soft creaking of her crisp basque. Utter wickedness. She would then experience the forbidden delight of his hot erection nestling against the soft curves of her bosoms and then, guided by her gloved fist, his twitching length between her satin buttocks. Would she dare to press the glistening tip of his captive shaft into that hot little hole buried deep between her cheeks? Squirming in her carriage seat as the train sped on, Charlotte grunted thickly. In her imagination, her night of perverse pleasures in Strachayle Castle was yet young.
Brought to Heel Page 6
