Rebellious Bride

by Lizbeth Dusseau

“Please, no more!” she wailed.

  SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

  They were the finishing blows, but nonetheless fierce; they left their own imprint on her bottom, the whole mass of once white skin was a hotfired crimson, and Abigail was sobbing.

  “The cane, Margaret,” Neville ordered.

  Both women shriveled at this new command.

  “Not marks, Neville, please don’t forget tomorrow.”

  But ignoring his wife’s comment, Neville grabbed the cane away from her and pushed Abigail back in her place.

  As fierce with the cane as he was with the paddle, he was at least quick. Ripping off a half dozen sharp cuts within seconds.

  “Yeeeeeawwww! Oh god!” she wailed with each one, though it did no good to cry because the next followed rapidly on the heels of the last. Certainly by now, the whole house knew that Abigail had been duly whipped and caned.

  Thankfully, the caning was over in a few moments, even though the burn in Abigail’s bottom seemed to attack her every where with a pain that lingered long, and sobbing that didn’t cease until the sharp sensations finally diminished.

  Stepping back from his task, Neville eyed the punished bottom, the fading glow of red, and the distinct lines where the cane struck. He was satisfied, satisfied that his sobbing daughter would enter her marriage just as she should. For Abigail, a well punished posterior was her trademark, a testi-mony to the fact that this young woman would probably need substantial correction her life long. And for his part, Neville would certainly do his best to see that her deport-ment was adequately handled in the future. It had been a quandary to him for days, what to do with his opinion of Abigail’s conduct. But, with one last punishment, one last glance at her crimson cheeks, he made up his mind to fulfill his duty in giving his fair but rebellious daughter to another man. He’d talk to Aaron Barrow before the ceremony.

  “You can go now,” he announced.

  Neville watched as Abigail came to her feet again, pulled her bloomers about her bottom and let the muddy skirt drop to her feet. “You won’t tell Aaron about this, will you?” she asked. Stopping at the door on her way out of the room, she implored her father with a sadly tear streaked face.

  “I should,” Neville replied, coldly.

  “Oh, father, please no, I’ll take another whipping, please don’t tell him!” She was absolutely petrified at the thought of Aaron knowing about this. “He doesn’t need to know of this, marriage will be a much different life for me, I know that.” She might have gone on pleading with him, but her father wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Hush child, I’ll consider your request when I have a calmer mind,” Neville replied. “Of course, if you behave yourself, there’s no need to worry anyway. Now go to bed.”

  Once Abigail was out the door, Margaret sighed deeply, having nothing to say to her often fierce husband. Love him as she did, she’d always found the man too severe. Rising from the chair, she was about to give him her goodnights - it was far too close to morning to consider anything else for this one day - but Neville called to her. “Margaret, you can take your place now.”

  “What?” She turned wearily around at the door to question him.

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re going to chastise me too?” she asked.

  “As if you weren’t half this insurrec-tion.”

  “I will not!” she vowed.

  “Don’t shame yourself, Margaret, by acting your daughter’s age. It doesn’t become you.”

  “But Neville, it’s so late, and we all need to be up early in the morning.”

  “Then you should have considered that earlier. Take your place, or I’ll tie you down.”

  With another sigh, Margaret McPhearson made her way back to the desk, and like her daughter had done, bent over the massive wood structure.

  “I found your attempts to defend her most deplorable.”

  “Neville, I was simply trying to make peace.”

  “If Abigail wanted peace, then she should have behaved herself in the first place.”

  “But why this now?” she asked.

  “Because, my dear, you deserve it, and we both deserve the satisfaction later.”

  He reached for the bottom of his wife’s skirt to pull it up himself. Unlike with his daughter, Neville took great interest in baring his wife’s bottom. It was always a breathtaking sight that first glance at her white rear cheeks, that even with age had not ceased to allure him. For her punishment, rather than the hard wood paddle, he chose a buggy whip that would snap against her skin, making small marks and sharp pains in her posterior. A few of those was all he needed to convey his message to her. Time and experience had made his wife a more compliant woman than he first knew her to be. Now submissive to his will most of the time, he only considered this a small complaint, even if he was treating it with his typical intensity.

  “Neville, I’m so exhausted,” she pleaded her case.

  “Then you take these few without incident, Margaret, and we’ll be on our way.”

  The sharp thing with its long leather shaft and brilliant biting end snapped against her backside seven times, three on each lovely rear cheek, leaving distinct red marks each time, a seventh strayed low, catching her at the base of her bottom, right at the top of her right thigh. She howled like the dickens, and stomped her feet.

  “Oh, god, please Neville!”

  “A good reminder to you, Margaret,” he said as he lifted her from the desk and drew her into his arms. “Your support in matters like these is important to me, I expect a more compliant wife.”

  “Ah, Neville, you’ve had me these twenty some years, you think I don’t support you?”

  He kissed her lips deeply and she responded.

  “Sometimes, I think the reminder is worth the trouble,” he said. He felt her bare bottom skin against his hand. He could just barely make out the slight welts by feeling. She seemed to squirm against him, perhaps stimulated when he fondled the punished places. “There, isn’t that better?” he asked.

  By the way Neville treated her after a punishment was over, Margaret almost agreed with him, though she would never tell him so.

  The house hummed with happier tunes come morning. With the bird’s song came the cook’s sweet tune rising into the air to wind its way throughout the house and dispel any traces of the disturbance that might remain from the night before.

  In her room, the bride-to-be lounged in her bed as she listened to the morning, trying not to think of what would be happen ing to her before this day was over. It was too much think about, Aaron, the wedding, marriage and… sex . In typical fashion, Abigail removed the nervousness from herself, by pretending that there was nothing special about this day at all. At least she tried to.

  A twinge of pain reminding her of the night before, Abigail felt her bottom. The poor wounded thing was sore, and likely to be so for some hours for the fierce licking she’d taken in the middle of the night. Yet it was well worth the trouble to have had her last hours with Darcy. The childhood friend would always be special to her. Darcy, like a roving Gypsy, had her own uncharted path to take; she certainly wouldn’t be following in Abigail’s footsteps into marriage. She was much more likely to make her way in the world as a shopkeeper, or a tavern hostess, of even a dance hall girl in some wild western town where such uncivilized places still existed.

  Abigail envisioned her friend’s life with much more excitement than her own.

  “My mind’s made up, Abby, you tie that knot tomorrow,” she told her, “I’m off to foreign lands. Somewhere really special. Probably China.”

  “You can’t go to China without me! Besides how are you going to get to foreign places? It’s not easy for a woman to go alone anywhere.”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But my daddy’ll be after me with a shotgun likely, so I’m not tarrying here. You can bet on that.”

  “I wish you weren’t going,” Abigail said sadly. ,

  “Don’t worry, I’ll catch up with you somewhere.
”

  “Sure, I’ll be pregnant in the middle of a sweltering summer and you’ll come serve me lemonade.”

  “Don’t sell your life short too quickly, Miss Abigail,” she said with sunshine eyes - they could twinkle even in the dark. “That Aaron Barrow is no boar of a man. I think you’ll be surprised.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Gals like me hear things.”

  “Tell me what you’ve heard!” Abigail demanded.

  “You’ll have to see for yourself, luv. Now you best be off.”

  That was when all hell broke loose, and the rain fell, and the dress got ruined, and shortly after, she slipped in the mud and was caught by her father and paddled.

  Still, it was all worth it to hear Darcy’s version of things. That was what she’d miss about her most, that and the way she made her one of the naughtiest brats around. She wasn’t sure what she’d do now with no inspiration, then again, being married, perhaps there’d be other things to inspire her.

  In the early afternoon of that day, Abigail trotted down the aisle of the small chapel on her father’s arm, smiling broadly. If someone had lifted her dress to show her bottom, they would have seen small red spots where the cane had marked her. When she saw them for herself in the mirror, as she was getting ready for the ceremony, Abigail resigned herself to the fact that the marks would be there when it was time for bed that night. They weren’t all that bad - of course there would need to be some explanation to Aaron - if he saw them. Then again, she had no idea what would take place on her wedding night, perhaps her bottom wouldn’t be a factor at all.

  Despite her sore posterior, her bruised feelings and the anger she bore for her father, Abigail held her head high. She planned to go into her marriage with the same haughtiness she had for life itself. Nothing at that moment would tame her, and getting out from under her father’s rigid sensibilities suddenly felt like freedom, a lush exuberant freedom to celebrate as much as she was celebrating a marriage.

  Aaron took her breath away. Standing at the chapel’s altar he wasn’t smiling at her. In fact, his expression was a little grim, that was the way he naturally was. Serious. Though he could laugh and smile and frolic, his basic nature was solemn, not in any severe way to make him morose or surly, but solemn in a calming, reassuring way. Sometimes she looked at that as an asset; other times she worried that he’d be no fun. On this particular day, his solemnness was comforting, and she found herself moving to his side, passing from her father’s arm to his, with all her surging independence flooding through her. Marrying Aaron was a move towards something steady, and perhaps to keep her exhilaration in check. But most importantly, marrying Aaron was a move to freedom.

  When the words were spoken, the blessing finished, when the good Lord had shined down on the pair with His infinite mercy, they turned about and marched together through the chapel.

  To Abigail’s immediate delight, as the two looked towards the back of the chapel, there was Darcy standing in the doorway, looking like some forest imp, her face filled with light, wearing the only dress she owned: a diaphanous old thing with flowers strewn across the front, its hemline slightly tattered. She was a vision the way the sun-light hit her sandy red hair. Before Abigail and Aaron reached the back of the chapel, she smiled and waved good-bye, and then skipped out on her way.

  “Who was that?” Aaron whispered to her.

  “Darcy “

  “Darcy Greenwood? My she’s changed,” he said.

  “You know her?”

  “Ah yes,” he said.

  Abigail was intrigued by his reply, though by then, the two were too crowded with friends and family to continue the conversation.

  The family mill where Aaron worked and lived was some twenty-five miles from the McPhearson home. For Abigail however, going to her new home was like moving to another country. In her childhood there were times she tried to get as far as possible from her parent’s house, but she’d never been twenty-five miles from home on one of her runaway excursions.

  When their carriage stopped at the big gray house Abigail thought her new home looked a bit like Aaron himself, tall, substantial and solemn. While the house had been his mother’s, she was dead some fifteen years, and with the remnants of his family moving out so that Aaron could have it for his bride, the place was a bit sparse.

  “Things need to change in here soon,” Abigail said, when she stepped into the meagerly furnished parlor, and wandered around the room.

  “You think so?” Aaron replied, gazing at his stunningly beautiful wife.

  Abigail was suddenly feeling nervous. Here. Now. Festivities over, it was just she and Aaron and lots of expectations. She thought her heart was thumping in her brain.

  “So, I’ll be changing a few things,” she said, whipping around to look Aaron in the eye.

  “It’s all yours, my love. You can do with it just as you like.”

  She smiled, as she quaked inside. “So, show me the kitchen,” she said.

  “You want to see the kitchen?” he asked, surprised. Even he knew that Abigail was not particularly the domestic type.

  “I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?” Aaron paused a moment. “I think not, not now,” he said. He came to her side, put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

  “Nervous? About what?” she replied. Looking up to his face, he seemed taller than ever, his stature having grown miles since the wedding a few short hours before.

  He didn’t answer with words, but seemed to scoop her up into him, bringing his arms around her, while kissing her on the lips. Gently lifting her from he feet, he carried her upstairs.

  She didn’t think about one thing she saw on the short journey to his bedroom, before he deposited her in the big fluffy bed of soft comforters. Without thinking another thing, she was caught up in the feelings of love and desire and sensation that pulsed everywhere through her. Not even realizing what was happening to her, they were soon both unclothed, their bodies melting against the other like it was when they danced, only much closer and more intimate, as his hands explored places on her that he would never have touched the night before. Her hands responded, finding his flesh a curiosity, his muscles a thrill to touch, their firmness making her more possessed by what was happening inside her. Even as he gently entered her, she was so mesmerized by the sensuous commotion that she forgot the twinge of pain that grabbed her between her legs. He whispered comforting things to her in her ear, and her body responded, relaxing into the steady movement of his manhood. No ever said it would be this way. She was in awe of the feelings, from the fierce tingling sensations to the passionate degree of love that was making this more than just another adventure.

  Something in her own body swelled, and a delightful peak of energy surged with a rush, and then died pleasantly away even as Aaron shuddered himself, and then fell back on the bed next to her.

  When he turned towards her, after they’d rested awhile in an exhausted silence, she pulled the covers about her, while Aaron did nothing to cover his naked body.

  “You don’t have to be modest,” he said, running his hand through her blonde hair.

  “You know your eyes are so dark,” she observed, not responding to his comment. “You are modest,” he said.

  “It’s a first time… ” she replied.

  “Then I won’t push,” he said, pulling his arm around her body. “So, Mrs. Barrow, you like the bedroom, or do you have to go to kitchen right away?”

  “I like this just fine,” she answered. “And to hell with the kitchen.”

  He smirked and hugged her close.

  After a long silence, with the need pressing, Abigail grabbed the sheet about her body and moved towards the chamber pot at the far side of the room. The truth was, Abigail wasn’t so much modest as fearful of Aaron seeing her naked. The marks from her punishment had not faded in the least. They stood out rather boldly on her pale skin, and she was sure he’d say something if he saw them. Finishing her
task, she returned to the bed, plopping down beside her husband, giving him a sweet smile.

  “Tell me, Aaron, how do you know Darcy Greenwood?” she asked.

  Aaron smirked, but said nothing, as if he was fishing for words.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “I don’t know if I should tell you, it might be rather embarrassing for Darcy.” “My love, I know Darcy as if she was a twin sister. We’ve been friends for years.” “Yes, I’ve heard,” he said wryly.

  “You have?” Abigail wondered aloud.

  “Darcy Greenwood and I go back a number of years,” Aaron began. “Her father used to work for my family. I first met her. when I was seventeen, she was about ten and bit of a rascal, to say the least.”

  “She’s the most wonderful person I know,” Abigail said in her friend’s defense.

  “The most wonderful?”

  “Except for you, maybe,” she teased. “But she’s always been a hellion, a bonafide brat.”

  “Just like me.”

  “Not like you, not exactly.” Aaron spoke as if he knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “So, what’s behind all the mystery, you’re not telling me everything. She is my best friend. I think I have a right to know.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, it was a while ago,” Aaron said. “Darcy was always shuffled around from relative to relative, though I suppose you know that. She’d spend a few months each year with her father, Darcy hanging around the mill because Buford Greenwood had no where else to take her. She was just an ornery brat most of the time, and I’d tease her, but then a couple of years ago, I caught her with her hand in the til, taking money right out from under my eye.”

  “She stole from you?”

  “Her father put her up to it, he could be pretty threatening. Though, I like to think I set her straight.”

  “What did you do?” Abigail asked.

  “I should have turned her over to my father, but he would have only fired Buford and I didn’t want to see that happen. He was so shiftless, I thought it was better she had some decent place to stay. So anyway, I whipped her good to teach her a lesson.”