“Come, come, Rochester,” cried Miss Ingram, “what piffling twig is that. No, she shall have a proper rod. This yellow beauty will be more apropos,” and she selected a penal length of solid cane, that my Master was only wont to use on me when I had particularly displeased him by, for instance, letting my disapproval of some action of his show by faint praise.
“If you would favour her with a light rod, then I cannot depend on you to deliver her dose at full strength either. I will do it myself.”
“Very well then, you may use the rod you have selected but beware. If you fail to break her, you must take the same yourself. Meanwhile I shall delight in seeing your athletic action,” Mr Rochester replied with equanimity.
“That you shall not,” she declared roundly. “If I am to do the girl justice, I cannot move in these skirts. You shall go behind that screen, and listen. You will hear well enough when she screams.”
It seems that the modesty of an underling is not the same as that of a lady, for I had been left standing half naked for ten minutes or so as they had arranged matters, without any reference to the impropriety of a man watching me, but now Mr Rochester retired behind the screen as the lady made her preparations. Her gown left her free enough above the waist, heaven knows, for I could swear I saw the shadow of her rosy aureolae peeping over the lace at her bosom, but her skirts were many and very full, kept extended by the new fashioned hoops. She stepped out of them to reveal a satin corset, trimmed with fine lace, her thick teats actually lying on its low cut edge. It was a glorious body, all long limbs, rounded arms and legs, full and healthy, promising athletic strength. I would feel her cuts.
“Now girl,” she addressed me for the first time, “step here, and grasp your ankles. Scream and I claim the match, rise, and you shall have extra, as well as fail.”
Her speech was intended to strike terror into me but, in fact, reinforced my resolve. If I was to receive the full tally of cuts to my buttocks, regardless, as her words implied, then I had nothing to gain by capitulating, and everything to loose, for she would be able to crow over Mr Rochester for his misplaced faith in my ability to endure. I set my teeth in my lower lip, and bent to take hold of my ankles.
My estimate of her ability was not in error. Her strength and skill must have come from her long and enthusiastic schooling of horses in her stables. Certainly that rod felt as searching as when handled by the Master. I almost failed on the very first stroke, it seared me so, and I bit my lip so hard to contain it that I tasted blood from the first. She laid on six strokes in a slow steady progression, seeming to understand very well that this was harder to bear than a rushed bunching of the cuts. The welts were all together, and I could feel the single massive bruise rising in my buttocks, full of leaping agony as she set the last strokes directly into the tumescent bar that crossed them, just below the fullest part.
“Hardened slut,” Miss Ingram spat at me, for I had held my cruel pose, and conceded her no more than strangled grunts to mark the passage of pain through my cringing body, “but I shall break you. You are not half way yet. Think of the dozen to come.”
I did, and shuddered, but held my place.
“You must let her up for an instant,” my Master called from behind the screen. “If she were bent over the desk you might leave her there without a break but, bent as she is, she will have difficulty breathing. You must let her up to catch her breath. If she fails to go down, when you command it, the match is yours.”
“You are too soft, Rochester,” the lady replied, but, never the less, she let me gain my feet and my breath for a minute, before directing me to take up my position again. I obeyed instantly, though I would rather have run, and grasped my ankles, my flaming buttocks stretched and spread painfully to receive further punishment.
“Set your feet wider than that,” she called, and I moved them apart, until they were well spread, very conscious that my plump private purse would now protrude between my spread thighs. I think she did it to humiliate me, but by then I was in some distress, and almost impervious to such minor slights.
Six times more she lashed my tender nether flesh with that wicked stick. I groaned, I gasped, I hissed, I made weird whining noises through my nose, but I would not scream. I writhed, I clenched my poor riven cheeks, my knees turned in and fretted on each other, but I would not rise. She kept at the solid bar of bruise in the under hang of my slightly fleshy buttocks, just above the crease and, before the dozen was complete, I knew I bled. I moaned as I rose for my permitted breathing space, and fought the desire to put my hands behind me and nurse my wounded hinds.
Miss Ingram frowned at me as she ordered me back to my straddle legged, bent position, as if she were considering some new move to undo me. I soon learnt what! The cane flashed in to slice into the tops of my plump thighs, an inch below my crease; not into my fatted haunches, but the less well covered region of my plump, but not plump enough, thighs. The cruel blows penetrated the inadequate padding I possessed there and bruised me to the bone, my hamstrings so inflamed that I could not move without limping for days thereafter. I did not scream, but my mewling would have matched that of any kitten trodden on by some clumsy footed kitchen maid.
“That was low,” my Master remarked, from his place behind the screen.
“And how would you know, Sir?” Miss Ingram enquired, “considering that you are not meant to see from there.”
“I could not resist a peek at the glories you display,” he replied, quite unabashed, “however, if you intend to work her thighs, remember, you will have to endure the same, should you fail to break her.”
“I think you should not forget your manners so far as to spy on a lady in dishabille,” Miss Ingram retorted, but I noticed, through the vee of my legs, that she half turned towards him, and struck a provocative pose, resting on one hip, and canting up her pelvis, her nipples, and half her breasts, displaced by her exertions, and now openly on display to him.
“I accept your condition, however, though it will not come to that,” and, turning back, she delivered another searing cut to almost the same spot on my cringing thighs.
Again I nearly screamed, my lip bleeding freely, and nearly bitten through, but I held out, for that stroke and three more like it. For the last, I think she had conceded defeat, and only sought to hurt me as much as she could. She brought the cane up between my wide spread thighs to strike me full on my woman’s parts set so open there. The angle of the stroke was such that she could get no real power behind it, which was just as well, for a cut such as she had been delivering to my tortured buttocks, might have ruined me for life, and certainly have cost me the match. As it was, it was atrocious, but I was past caring and held on, secure in the knowledge that I had vindicated my Master, and humiliated the hated Miss Ingram.
“The wager’s lost and won,” Mr Rochester declared, coming out from behind the subverted screen, “and you shall spread your thighs to embrace the last of your strokes in your turn. Prepare yourself, Blanche, for the game is up, and you must pay the piper.”
“Not in front of the girl,” Miss Ingram almost pleaded, “it would not be seemly.”
“I fail to see why not,” my Master replied, “after all, she had to bare herself for you. Never-the-less, if you wish to retire, Jane, you may. Now Blanche, remove your drawers, and let us see what stuff you are made of.”
Only too grateful to be allowed to depart, and nurse my wounded rear, I gathered my clothes in my arms, as Blanche set her fingers to the ribbons of her drawers, and drew them off her magnificent haunches. As I limped through the door, my last glimpse was of her bending gracefully from the hips to grip her shapely ankles, the pale full moons of her taut buttocks gleaming in the firelight.
It was only a minute or so since I had been bent in that spot myself, the cane ravaging me behind, and its torment had risen to an excruciating peak. I leant on the wall outside the now closed study door, fighting down the pain, and trying to collect myself together enough to mount to my room.
Through the door, I became aware of crisp snicking noises. I recognised them as the sound of a cane meeting naked flesh. Six strokes, and six again, after a short pause. I could hear some gasping noises now, and a groan, followed by a thin whining. This is what I must have sounded like.
There seemed to be some exchange before the last half dozen commenced. Perhaps Miss Ingram was protesting the thigh cuts she had coming, though little good it did her. I could hear the different note, as the rod struck less absorbent flesh, and the grunts of pain that reached me sounded full of anguish. After five, there was another pause and exchange of voices, then a piercing shriek. I guessed that my Master could bring a greater skill, and a more searching power to the cruel stroke between the legs, that she had so ill-advisedly introduced into the contest. At any rate, it seemed to undo her somewhat.
There was another short pause, and then the door opened, and Miss Ingram appeared, clasping her clothes, just as I did mine. Mr Rochester called after her.
“And Blanche, Miss Eyre will have to attend breakfast in the normal way tomorrow, to see to her charge. so I shall expect you to be there too, on time, and sitting in your usual place.” He laid a special emphasis on the word ‘sitting’.
Absorbed in her private pain, Miss Ingram did not observe me where I leant against the wall, but shuffled on wide spread legs towards her own apartment nearby. Though I hated her for the way she had slighted me, and deliberately ensured me a savage beating that I had done nothing to earn, I had to admit that she had shown considerable courage under the rod, for she had had to endure as many strokes as I and, though hers to me were delivered with all the venom she was capable of, her own stripes were laid on by a man and a Master, whose ability to flay a woman’s bottom I could vouch for a dozen times over.
AdŠle and I were at breakfast the next morning when Miss Ingram appeared. She observed how I sat in my place, and said not a word, but gave me a swift look in my eye, before lifting her chin a trifle, and walking to her usual place further up the table, where she seated herself without hesitation. Only a very knowing eye would have caught the slight grimace of pain that contorted her perfect features, as her tender parts contacted the stuffed leather seat.
Though she continued to ignore me for the rest of our acquaintance, I thought I detected a lessening of the contempt in which she appeared to hold me, from then on, though no corresponding increase in warmth towards me.
Charades And Other Games
The house party continued with outings, musical soirees, cards and those other amusements by which the quality were wont to divert themselves.
Someone proposed charades, probably Blanche since the self promotion was entirely in her style and she took a leading part in the business. They had rigged a curtain across the deep alcove in the dining room for a stage, and had the servants bring a hundred objects in to act as ‘properties’ for their performance but, above all and the source of their greatest efforts, especially the ladies, they had had Mrs Fairfax open up some of the trunks stored in the attics, and plundered them of the clothes of yesteryear, put away there, silks and satins, brocade gowns and dresses with hoops. Such a scurrying and slipping into one another’s rooms, half naked, to show off their latest acquisition, the corridors full of flashing thighs, bosoms bouncing unrestrained, indeed uncovered entirely and displaying their ruby tips, bare ankles twinkling in the candle-light, and every other lascivious display of flesh one might imagine.
Finally the time for the play acting arrived. Colonel Dent had command of those who were to watch and guess as to the words portrayed, my Master led those who were to act out the scenes. When the audience had settled, there was a protracted pause, then the curtain was drawn back to reveal a well appointed bed chamber, with a couch covered with cushions and silk sheets, with the semblance of a four poster indicated by a light canopy on poles set about it.
The door opened and my Master and Miss Ingram entered. He was dressed in a rich embroidered suit of a past age, she all in white, with veil and voluminous skirts, a tight low cut bodice, and bearing a bouquet of flowers in her hand. The Misses Eshton attended them, and Blanche threw her posy to one of them.
While Mr Rochester was helped off with his suit by young Mr Lynn, who wore the approximation to the dress of a valet, though more rich and elaborate than the average gentleman’s gentleman might aspire to, most eyes were probably elsewhere, for her attendants began to disrobe Miss Ingram, beginning with her veil and gown, stripping her of her petticoats and stays, unlacing her silver sandals, peeling of the oyster silk stockings, until she stood in shift and drawers only. Her bridesmaids, for it could only represent such surely, slipped a night gown over her head, then let down her shift under its cover, and drew off her drawers, before helping her to get her delicately moulded arms into the arm holes of the night rail. For it was a minimal representation of such garment, having no sleeves, coming but to her calves, cut low on her bosom and, in any case, of such diaphanous material that the peach glow of her body was clearly visible at all parts, from the coral tips of her breasts, to the white columns of her thighs, via the sable delta at her fork.
Now the bridal party led the pair, Mr Rochester in a fine lawn night-shirt, to the bed, and laid them on it together, with many gestures whose meaning was easily translated, causing some blushes, but none to look away, then the attendants all withdrew, leaving the couple alone together, save for a dozen pairs of curious eyes watching their every move. If they were to portray a wedding, then they must consummate it, it seemed. Mr Rochester kissed his bride, with more passion than I thought strictly necessary for the part, then turned her over, and gently slid her gown up onto her hips, placing himself between her thighs, and simulating the act of penetration.
The lady shrieked as if indeed deflowered, though I thought it probable that that event was one of some distance in time, and they appeared to proceed with the act of congress. Though I could not be sure that Mr Rochester was actually lodged in Miss Ingram, there was no doubt that that was what she hoped for. At last, impatient with the pretence, she grabbed her partner, shifting her weight so as to turn him on his back, while she mounted him, taking charge of the proceedings so as to order them more to her satisfaction.
Mr Rochester seemed to protest for an instant, but his resistance was short-lived. Men are our Masters, and rightly so, and when they command we must willingly or perforce, submit our bodies to their lust, but they are notoriously weak when a woman takes command in this way, not rejecting, but demanding, sexual satisfaction, and Mr Rochester, for all his masterful determination in other fields, was no exception. She was in the saddle, and she rode him to where she wanted to be. All he could manage by way of self assertion, was to wave his arms and utter, in a loud stage whisper, “The curtain, Anne, the curtain!”
Miss Eshton did her duty, and the climax of the scene was hidden from our view, though not from our ears.
There was a long interregnum, after the climatic sounds had died away, the while we heard murmurings and movement behind the curtain, as of much material being shifted into place, but, finally, the curtain was drawn back to reveal my Master, this time dressed in Oriental fashion, as an Arab Sheikh or Pasha, an embroidered cloth about his dark head, held with gold cords, his saturnine features made darker still with some cream or juice, wearing a full black beard. Snowy robes enfolded him as he sat to one side of the stage, on a Turkey carpet, across from the great marble basin, that usually adorned the conservatory, and whose carriage hence had obviously occasioned the more strenuous of the grunts and mutterings we had heard.
Arranged by it were palms from the same conservatory, and the whole setting seemed designed to indicate a scene from Bible Lands or, perhaps, Egypt. I thought Mr Rochester looked a little fatigued, as if from exertion, but perhaps this was just his actors craft, and he represented a weary traveller.
When we had had a moment to drink in the scene, and speculate on its provenance, though not to lower our sense of anticipation, Blanche entered
. There was no trace of lassitude in her bearing, for she glowed as from an inner warmth. This time even more of her charms were on view, for she was bare to the waist, or rather, wore only such sketchy covering as to render her more naked than naked. She had a yellow chiffon scarf wound about her forehead, then loosely woven into her black mane, where it fell down her bare back.
From her ears hung heavy gold ornaments, while round her neck she wore a great collar of thick silver gilt, fully three fingers wide, close fitting to her white throat, and fastened with a clasp in the form of a padlock in similar metal. For the rest, her costume above her hips consisted of gold bracelets about her upper arms, a jewel in her navel, and curious ornaments on her breasts. There barbarian jewels clasped her nipples, and hung in delicate filigree over the lower curve of each breast. A covering might be claimed if pushed but, in fact, they only served to emphasise the fact that her glorious globes, with their pert red teats, were bare for all to see.
She was better, though some might claim, still inadequately clothed below. A heavy jewelled girdle about her hips, dipped almost to her groin, leaving most of her delicately swelling belly bare, and supporting a piece of cloth of gold that hung in classic drapes behind, almost to her ankles. In front it only closed to mid thigh, then swept away to either side, revealing dimpled knees and shapely calves on stockingless legs, and bare feet. In short she was the very picture of the oriental slave from some steamy romance of the desert, an impression only heightened by the alabaster pitcher she carried balanced on one white shoulder, one arm raised to support it, the other bent to rest on a jutting hip, a pose that did nothing to dispel her air of exotic femininity.
When she appeared, and after a due delay to let all eyes feast on her revealed beauty, the Emir or Bey or whatever version of the dominant Arab male Mr Rochester so eminently portrayed, made an imperious gesture to the half clad slave, who dipped to her knees in submission, then rose again and turned to the marble cistern, where she made play to fill her pitcher, and carry it to the man, offering him it to drink from, while she knelt again, her head humbly bowed before him.
Jane and Her Master Page 6
