The Lord's Scandalous Bride

by Emily Tilton

  The captain cut him off, however, before he could continue, though in a kind rather than a peremptory way. “Which is why I wish to speak of the second matter. If we had several days on someone’s country estate, I suppose we could attempt to settle things as one might in Europe—indeed as they do here in New York, and in Boston, and down South in Charleston. That old-fashioned way, I mean, where no one ever says exactly what he’s thinking and eventually everyone understands each other and such topics as who has spent the night where, and who has been taken from what earl’s degrading service—” Here the captain looked very meaningfully at Susan, and waited until she raised her eyes to see that in his expression he had nothing but kindness before he continued. Nele wondered how he could have known about the earl of Hobberly and Susan’s past, but he supposed that if one knew the right people, inquiries of a transatlantic sort might now be made.

  “But,” Allen then went on, in a very bluff manner, “here we are in a hotel dining room with the prospect of six days on the train—if that, if the railway is running on time—before we must present you both in one way or another to the people of Esther’s and my hometown. Tête-à-têtes in the knot garden will be lamentably few, but we do have the power, among the four of us, to make plans, and I have two good men and their good wives waiting for a cable from me to tell them how to prepare the ground.”

  The air had grown so very grave that the little outburst of Esther’s that followed seemed to Nele very welcome. She said, in a rapid, confiding tone, “Amelia is my sister, and her husband Mr. Sullivan—Captain Allen’s old sergeant, who came West with him—is simply marvelous. And we just met Mr. Quill and his wife Maggie last year, but they’re already practically our best friends.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He was a bounty hunter, if you can believe it, Mrs. Loomis. And they rode the West together before they were married, and they met Indians! And the reason we’re all so close is…” But then her face turned bright pink, her voice trailed off, and she looked at her husband, who had a rather stern look upon his face.

  “Was that appropriate, my dear?” he asked her gravely.

  “No, Samuel,” she admitted with a little reluctance.

  “I think you know what will happen back in our room.” Nele felt his brow furrow. Could the captain possibly mean what he seemed to mean?

  “Yes, Samuel,” Mrs. Allen said softly.

  “You’ll get yourself ready over the bed as soon as we return. Skirts up and drawers down. My belt upon your bare bottom, ten times, to teach you not to interrupt, and not—as you know you’re prone to do—to refer carelessly to matters better introduced in a more measured way. Now apologize to Mr. and Mrs. Loomis.”

  Nele felt his eyebrows rise as he looked at Susan, who had raised her own wide blue eyes to him. It seemed so familiar, and yet so odd and unexpected. Men in America must discipline their wives, of course, but to hear the seemingly proper Captain Allen inform his sweet young bride, in front of two strangers, that he would whip her that evening for such a little thing as speaking out of turn… Nele didn’t know what to make of it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Susan looked at Esther Allen’s face, searching for signs of the fellow feeling she thought might perhaps exist between them. Yes, there—Esther’s eyes shone, though her cheeks had blushed very pink. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Loomis, Mr. Loomis,” she said softly.

  “Surely…” Susan said, but then she looked at Nele, and turned back to Esther. “That’s alright, Mrs. Allen.”

  “Indeed,” Nele said, “quite alright.” In his eyes Susan could see that he felt they must not comment upon what had just passed between the Allens, though she felt sure that he burned to know more, just as she did. Was Captain Allen a man like Nele? Or was he man like Robert? Or was he some other sort of man—a husband who simply kept his wife in very tight check?

  But the love in Esther’s eyes, as she looked at the captain, seemed unmistakable. Surely she didn’t like to be spanked, the way Susan… well, Susan supposed she didn’t truly like being spanked by Nele, though that pleased her much better than Mrs. Greatrex’ cane or Lord Granby’s strap or Sir David’s birch. Nevertheless, she thought she could see in Esther’s eyes precisely the way she felt—all over hot and cold, with the beginnings of a tremor between her thighs—when Nele told Susan he must punish her.

  So Captain Allen must be a man like Lord Nele Lourcy, must he not? How strange and wonderful! And to speak thus to his wife before people she had met not an hour before!

  “Let me speak frankly, Mr. and Mrs. Loomis,” the captain said then, looking at each of them intently, in turn. “It was not a subject to be committed to paper, and still less one for a transatlantic cable, so I imagine that when your father wrote you, Mr. Loomis, he did not say in precisely what regard he and I became associates close enough for him to entrust your welfare upon alien soil to me. Nor could he confirm, over the telegraph wires, my very strong suspicion about the nature of your relations, Mr. and Mrs. Loomis. But now that I have had to inform Esther that she has a whipping coming I think it best that I advance our discourse upon matrimonial matters even more quickly than I would have otherwise. Perhaps we should adjourn to our private parlor upstairs?”

  Susan felt her heartbeat quicken quite terribly. Had not Captain Allen said that Esther must have her punishment as soon as she returned to their room? She looked at Nele, who returned her gaze with an expression that said he had thought of the same possibility. Surely not, though? Susan turned her eyes to Esther, who had turned to Captain Allen with a pleading expression.

  But the captain said, “Yes, Esther, they will hear your whipping upon the bed, which serves you right.”

  Susan swallowed hard, and wished she did not grow so warm down below her belly at the thought of what sounds pretty Esther might make as her stern husband’s belt descended ten times in justice upon her backside. She wished even more fervently that she did not long to see what Esther’s bottom looked like as she had it whipped.

  Esther herself compressed her lips into a tight line and rose from the table with a troubled brow, but without, it appeared, a hint of defiance. Susan rose, too, and the men, to follow the lovely pink frock of the soon-to-be punished Mrs. Allen.

  When they reached the Allens’ suite, Esther moved toward a door that must lead to the bedroom, but her husband said, “Wait a moment, my dear. Let’s sit and speak of the matter we must speak of, and you shall have your correction afterward.”

  “Yes, Samuel,” Esther said simply, and sat down upon a little sofa, beckoning to Susan to sit beside her. The men occupied armchairs facing them. Nele’s face wore a bemused expression, as if he could easily tell that whatever would now transpire would prove to his liking, but he also had no idea at all what form it might take.

  “As you have just learned,” the captain said, “my Esther receives frequent bare-bottom discipline. I have spanked her regularly since we were first engaged, two years ago. In my view, it has improved her conduct very greatly. Esther’s sister Amelia also receives bare-bottom punishments from her husband Mr. Michael Sullivan, and although Amelia’s character is of a more serious bent she too seems to be much happier than she was before they married, soon after Esther and I did. Finally, the couple Esther referred to a little while ago, Mr. and Mrs. Travis Quill, practice a similar system to ensure that Mrs. Quill remains mindful of her wifely duties.”

  Susan lifted her chin and glanced over at Nele, who seemed just as mystified as she as to the reason for this strange little disquisition. Esther sat looking down at her hands in her lap.

  Captain Allen said, “You’re wondering of course why I’m telling you this. It’s because, my lord, I know of your, shall we say, tendencies—because of course your father’s similar tendencies are well known. If I may be permitted a slightly indelicate question, which may seem the less indelicate because of my little explanation, do you spank this lovely girl of yours, whose name I suspect isn’t actually Mrs. Loomis?”

  Susan’
s face seemed to glow with heat, and the arousal between her thighs, already so embarrassing because of the talk of pretty Esther’s coming punishment, grew and blossomed with her blush.

  “You may call her Miss Grant, if that suits better. Her Christian name is Susan,” Nele said, sparing Susan herself only a brief glance and addressing his words to the captain. “Yes, you surmise correctly. Miss Grant often must feel my firm hand upon her bare rump.” He paused as if considering whether he should utter what he had it in mind to say. He looked at Susan again, much more searchingly, and she tried to declare with her eyes that he should say of her exactly what he liked—that to have him speak of her with such freedom only made her feel the more deeply that she belonged to him and that he meant to keep her safe. Yes, that he loved her.

  Nele turned back to Captain Allen. “Indeed,” he said slowly, “since I met Miss Grant only a little more than a fortnight since, I have been engaged with her on a project that aims to recover her modesty, after she has suffered such outrages as robbed her of it. Part of this project requires that I punish her for any misconduct I find in her history.”

  Susan glanced over at Esther to find a smile on the pretty face of the captain’s wife. To Susan’s astonishment, Esther reached out and took her hand. “I think that’s marvelous,” she said softly. “And I think we’re going to be great friends.”

  “Truly?” Susan said. “I should have thought you would find my… misfortunes… disgusting.”

  Esther looked at her husband as if for approval as to what she might say, and Captain Allen nodded. “I have two reasons,” she said, turning back to Susan, “not to think so. First, my own mother, as I only learned two years ago, was a kept woman, much as I suppose you must be, though I hope you take no offense at my saying so?”

  Susan shook her head. “I have been much worse things, too, and you would give no offense if you called me even one of those.” She glanced at Nele, then, who returned the look with a kind smile. When she turned back to Esther she saw that the other woman was blushing again.

  “Second,” Esther said even more quietly. “Samuel requires that I submit to him in all things, and I have learned to enjoy voluptuous matters much more than society says I ought. I understand very well how a girl of passionate feeling, and a will to belong to a man, may come to a condition like my mother’s—or to a worse one, as society judges these affairs.”

  Susan felt her eyebrows go up in astonishment. She looked over at Nele, and then at Captain Allen; the two men exchanged a glance of understanding, and then Captain Allen said, “It is the same with Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan and Mr. and Mrs. Quill, and we talk openly of it. What I have heard of you, my lord, tells me that I may speak frankly yet again, and say that each of the girls, in addition to her regular punishment, must also pleasure her husband however he chooses. After her whipping this evening, for example, Esther will receive a further lesson in my manly authority, in a place she does not find it as pleasant to have her husband as, let us say, nature’s usual pathway.” He looked at Susan with a confidential smile. “I feel sure Mrs. Loomis knows what I mean.”

  Susan, whose face had gone hot and cold by turns as she listened, did not know whether she was expected to reply, nor could she conceive of anything she might say. Nele said, “I can assure you that Susan does indeed know. I must confess myself rather astonished to find the men of San Francisco to be as free in these matters as those of my own set back in England, but you are quite correct in your supposition that I can now see very clearly why my father wished to introduce me to you, Captain Allen.”

  “I must hasten to add, my lord,” the captain said,” that for better or worse I do not believe that we in the little circle to which we would like to welcome you engage in voluptuous practices with quite as much license as that to which you and Miss Grant have perhaps become accustomed. Though we punish our wives together, or in one another’s sight or hearing, sometimes, in order to provide a more effective lesson, we do not, for example—” he looked over at Esther with slightly narrowed eyes, “—hold our wives in common, as Plato advised men should do in his ideal city.”

  Susan watched yet another blush spread over Esther’s pretty face. She suddenly wondered whether Esther had perhaps confessed to Samuel that she would not mind being held in common once in a while. The thought, accompanied by the picture of Esther undergoing a rigorous ‘holding in common’ by two men possessed of enormous cocks, one enjoying her along nature’s pathway and the other in the place less pleasant, filled her mind and brought heat to her own face along with renewed wetness down below.

  “Ah,” Nele responded.

  “Nor are the girls—Esther and Maggie, that is, or Amelia and Maggie—allowed to get up to the rites of Sappho, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do,” said Nele, looking at Susan, whose face burned like the sun. “Though Susan and I haven’t come to that part of her story yet, I believe that one of the gentleman who had her in his power for a time enforced such tribadic conduct upon her. Is that right, my dear? Did Lord Granby make you carry on with other girls?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Susan whispered.

  Nele turned back to Captain Allen. “I can see clearly, though, that what libertines like my set of reprobates in England get up to with the willing girls over whom our status gives us easy mastery—having them in common, or commanding them to pleasure one another—might be very much less in order over here.”

  “That’s not to say,” said the captain, glancing over at his wife, “that we don’t enjoy thoughts of such lascivious things. I have had the great pleasure of introducing Esther to certain voluptuous works that I suspect you know rather well, my lord. I often have her read a chapter to me at bedtime, to inspire me in my enjoyment of her person.” To Susan’s surprise, he looked at her, then. “I wonder, Miss Grant, if Esther and I—and then, afterward, our little circle of friends in San Francisco—might have the pleasure of hearing the tale you have been relating to his lordship?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Esther and Susan boarded the New York Central train that would soon depart for Chicago, Samuel—as Nele now thought of him, after the events of the previous day—pulled him aside for a moment. The engine hissed a huge cloud of steam, up ahead where it would soon begin to chug northward toward the lightly settled highlands at the far end of Manhattan—Harlem, wasn’t it called, after the town in Holland?

  “I had a cable this morning,” Samuel said, leaning in to speak directly into Nele’s ear. “From my partner Michael Sullivan—the one who’s married to Amelia, Esther’s sister.”

  Nele nodded, looking into Samuel’s eyes as the captain leaned back and seeing concern there.

  Samuel continued, “It seems your brother is trying to hire some rather unsavory characters in San Francisco, via the telegraph.” He took a piece of telegram paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to Nele.

  CAPTAIN SAMUEL ALLEN, GRAND UNION HOTEL, NYC

  EARL MERCESTER WIRED FUNDS CALLAHAN PER QUILL STOP CABLE READS FEMALE COMPANION LORD NELE LOURCY OF INTEREST STOP QUILL TO PURSUE STOP SULLIVAN

  “What does it mean—of interest?” Nele asked, feeling a crease develop between his brows.

  “It means, I’m afraid, that Joe Callahan is to find a way to get rid of Miss Grant. I don’t know how your brother knew to cable him, but Callahan controls a great deal of the crime in San Francisco, of which I’m afraid, my lord, we have more than we’d like.”

  The whistle blew and the conductors shouted “All aboard!” then, so Nele and Samuel had to join Esther and Susan on the Pullman car, where they had already seen to the stowing of the trunks. They sat prettily beside one another on a long seat that faced forward, leaving the facing seat to the men.

  “And they fold into beds?” Susan was asking.

  “They do!” Esther said. “It’s quite marvelous. Samuel, dear, when did Mr. Pullman invent them? ‘65?”

  “‘67, I believe,” Captain Allen said as he settled into the velvet
cushion that Nele had to admit really did feel quite luxurious. His mind, however, whirled with anxiety over the news that Robert would go so far to bring Nele to heel—or perhaps rather to take revenge upon him, Nele thought, his blood running cold at the idea.

  With a rumble and a sound of groaning pistons, the train began to move. Out the picture window the people on the platform under the great glass dome of Grand Central Depot began to slide by. Nele had the familiar sense of freedom he always seemed to feel at the beginning of a long railway journey, and this one would of course last longer than any other he had ever taken: days and days of having nothing to do but watch this new country go by, out the window, with Susan at his side, and these enchanting new friends as well. The uncertainty of what might happen when they reached San Francisco could do nothing but wait, now, and as the train gathered speed, passing out of the depot and beginning to make its way up the island, with the enormous new Central Park visible a block away between the tall buildings that had begun to surround it, Nele’s heart felt light despite the tale the telegram told of worry to come.

  “Alright,” Esther said. “Samuel has said that I might inquire about the parts of Susan’s story that you, my lord, have already heard. I feel that’s only fair, since she got to hear me getting my whipping yesterday evening, and since of course Samuel saw fit to tell you about what befell me afterward.”

  Nele looked sharply at her, and saw to his surprise that Esther seemed to have a mischievous—even a rather naughty—gleam in her eye. Her cheeks had gone pink, but her face wore a determined expression. He glanced at Samuel, and saw a smile on the captain’s face, so he said, “And did that misfortune indeed befall your posterior, Mrs. Allen?”

  Esther’s color heightened slightly. “It did, my lord. Captain Allen is not a man to speak idly of such matters. When he promises that his wife must undergo that sort of shameful treatment, for her own good and his pleasure, he fulfills that promise with great rigor.”