Damsels in Distress (13 page)

She sat at the dressing table and considered her reflection. Should she put on more rouge? No, she thought, she already wore more make-up than usual. She did not wish to look utterly like a harlot, after all. She watched the blush bloom on the cheeks of her reflection. The truth was that what she was wearing already scandalised the puritanical part her mother had implanted in her soul.

A brand new white satin corset, liberally trimmed with lace, pushed up her full young breasts in a way she hoped was inviting, but made her blush to look at. The finest silk stockings and even silk drawers, the extravagant cost of which had astonished her, were worn beneath a fabulous negligee. This was a very riot of lace and flounces and, tied with a single ribbon in a bow beneath the bust, framed her cleavage within a veritable wreath of costly lace.

It was no good, she thought, as she stared at the pretty girl in the mirror. She did look like a trollop. Joe might like this sort of thing on Biddy, but Charles was a gentleman, and sure to be scandalised if he saw her got up this way.

Just as she rose with a sigh to remove the jezebel robes, even as her fingers reached for the bow of the negligee beneath her breasts, the sound of a carriage on the cobbles outside gave her pause. In a panic she ran to the window and peeked through the curtain, in time to see Charles striding towards the house.

Elouise could hardly breathe. The exquisite satin corset had been laced extremely tight, but that was not the entire reason her breasts heaved. She had been stupid. She should never have listened to Biddy and her tales about Joe. What did it matter if the wedding night was disappointing? Charles had been kind and gentlemanly even if his ardour had been lacking. Why should such a gentle, decent man like Charles like the sort of thing Biddy had described?

Elouise had left her door open a crack and she could hear him coming up the stairs. Charles would go straight to his own room. There was no doubt about it. There really was no need for her to change. All she had to do was to let him walk past her door.

‘Charles, would you come here a moment?’

Why did she call out? Her heart was hammering in her breast as she stood astonished by her own effrontery. Why on earth had she done such a foolish thing?

The door opened slowly, cautiously, and Charles stood looking at her in astonishment. He was a large man, imposing with fine whiskers and a somewhat stern expression that habitually masked his shyness. Something in the pit of her stomach told her that for once his mood was truly as grim as his thunderous face.

‘Elouise…’ He seemed to be having difficulty talking. Perhaps he was so appalled that he would never speak to her again. ‘What, what…?’

Deciding there was no longer anything to lose, Elouise somehow found the courage to proceed with her plan. She pulled the negligee open below the bow, displaying her shapely legs and trying not to blush too much as she did so.

‘I, I thought I needed some more underlinen,’ she said softly, trying not to sound too hoarse as she spoke. However, suffocating anxiety made her voice sound a little strangulated. ‘But I, I’m afraid I have rather exceeded my allowance. These things were ever so expensive.’

The next minute was the longest in her life. Charles stared with a face like thunder. She kept expecting him to turn, disgusted, and stalk from the room. It seemed he must be too angry to speak, for he stood silent for what seemed like an eternity.

‘Did you, indeed?’ he managed at last, in a gruff voice.

It was now or never. Elouise picked the cane up from the bed and walked rather tentatively over to her husband, whose eyes seemed to get even wider as she held out the rod.

‘I’m afraid I have been rather naughty, Charles.’ She licked her lips with quite unfeigned anxiety. ‘Do, do you think,’ she swallowed hard, ‘that you will have to punish me?’

Charles looked into her eyes, down at her breasts, proffered by the corset, at the cane she held out between trembling fingers, and then back up into her eyes.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said hoarsely, and to her joy and relief she caught a twinkle in his eye. ‘You have been a very naughty girl, Elouise, and I shall definitely have to teach you a lesson.’

He took the cane from her and sliced it through the air experimentally, and the ominous whooshing sound it made put an instant end to Elouise’s sense of relief. Charles may not be about to stalk out, disgusted with her, but now she had to let him give her a thrashing. Giggling with Biddy, and imagining the scene as she waited, it had seemed so exciting, but faced with the reality of that cane, she wondered quite how much a thing like it would hurt.

‘Come here, girl.’ This was a new Charles, masterful, brusque and distinctly stern. Elouise stepped forward, trying hard to control her trembling. His free hand reached out to the ribbon, and for a second his fingers hovered, inches from her breasts. She could see her own bust heaving, almost palpitating as she waited as if mesmerised, to see what he would do. After a moment he pulled the ribbon, releasing the bow.

‘Take it off,’ he said. ‘Take off that strumpet’s gown, girl.’

Elouise did as she was told, and felt even more naked, even more exposed. His hand reached down and took hold of her thigh, stroking it through the thin material of her drawers.

‘Silk?’

‘Yes.’ The feelings his fondling provoked made her thigh tremble in response.

‘When you are being punished, Elouise, I think it more proper that you address me as sir. Do you understand?’

‘Y-yes. I mean, yes sir.’ Elouise bit her bottom lip to stop herself from moaning. Her husband’s hand was so firm, so arrogantly assured. It was as if he had become possessed by a different, much more formidable man.

‘Now,’ he swished the cane through the air again and she could not stop a startled cry escaping in response. ‘I’m not going to give you the stick tonight, my sweet.’

‘No? Ah, sorry; I mean no, sir?’ Elouise did not quite know if she was more disappointed or relieved.

‘No.’ The fingers that explored her thighs moved up until they found the bow that secured the drawstrings of her silken pantaloons, and Elouise felt her mouth go dry as the knot was unhurriedly undone. Then she felt the blood rush to her face in response to the rustling of silk, as the drawers slid down around her ankles.

‘No,’ he said again, tipping up her chin with the cane until she had to look into his impaling hazel gaze. ‘If you ever do anything like this again you may rest assured that I shall cane you for your extravagance. I shall thrash you every time you exceed your allowance on such fripperies. But that can wait. Naughty girls are spanked first, you see.’

‘Spanked…?’ Elouise had no time to consider this proposition, for Charles moved even as he finished speaking. Throwing aside the cane he grabbed her, and one strong hand gripped her by the arm and the other clasped her satin encased waist as he hauled her over to the bed. Sitting down on it he pulled her right over her knee, and it was all so sudden, his strength so overwhelming, that Elouise gave a startled cry as she found herself flung across his lap. Without meaning to struggle her hand moved back protectively, only to be gripped around the wrist.

She was caught. It was true that she had set the trap herself, but that did not make her any less the prisoner of her husband’s strength. Her bare bottom felt so naked and vulnerable that she whimpered, even when he patted it gently.

‘You have a lovely firm sit-upon, my dear.’ There was pleasure and satisfaction in Charles’s voice as he stroked the cheeks in question. ‘How long since you had it warmed?’

‘N- never,’ she stumbled. ‘M-mama did not…’

The stroking hand was doing strange things to her loins. ‘A virgin bottom? How utterly delightful.’

There was a sharp crack and Elouise gave a gasp of pain.

‘Oh, and Elouise, did I not request that you address me as sir?’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

She was in a panic now. The slap had taken her by surprise and the stinging heat in her bottom took her breath away. Then his hand returned to stroking, fondling, and feeling, and Elouise felt herself calmed by it, stroked slowly away into an enchanted, dreamy place.

Then the hand stopped stroking and she froze. Instinct told her he had raised it and his palm was hanging, like the sword of Damocles above her quivering bottom. She held her breath, expecting the smack to come, but it did not. Not straight away. Charles waited and the tension mounted, cranking higher and higher until she almost wished his arm would fall, for she felt she could not bear the suspense a second more.

Finally it came; a loud clap that echoed around the room, a stinging slap that made Elouise wriggle in response. The first few spanks were gentler than the previous punishing slap, but the heat built quickly in her hindquarters. Charles’s hand came down, and down again. The sound of hand impacting on tender bottom flesh rang around the bedroom. Elouise squirmed and clenched her fists and she whimpered, but more perhaps from the maddening tingling in her loins than from the burning of her rear. At least that was the case at first.

‘Oh, ow, please, Charles… I mean, please sir!’

‘Keep still, my little wriggler, and take what you have earned.’

Slowly, surely, the smacks became firmer. Her husband’s hand came down harder, ever harder, punishing the tender flesh of her bottom and stinging the backs of her thighs.

‘Spend my money on silk underthings will you, you little minx?’

‘Oooh, sir, it stings, it smarts.’

‘It’s meant to smart, miss. It needs to smart if it is to do you any good.’

The heat in her hindquarters grew, building by degrees from a pleasant glow to a quite breathtaking intensity, and Elouise bucked helplessly against the hand that gripped her corseted waist, but for all her increasingly frantic struggling, Charles seemed to hold her firmly down on his lap with consummate, almost contemptuous, ease.

‘Please, ouch! Oooh please, Charles, sir. Please have, ah, please have mercy, sir!’

‘Are you sorry then, little mischief?’

‘Oh, ow, yes sir, I’m, ouch, very sorry, sir!’ Elouise lied with increasing desperation, wriggling her bottom frantically in a futile attempt to avoid the relentless rain of smacks, and to her relief he stopped spanking her at last.

Elouise lay slumped across her husband’s lap, panting desperately. It was not easy to catch her breath, and as she gasped she wished she’d not had Biddy lace the fine new corset quite so tightly.

The stinging in her bottom slowly subsided, turning by degrees into a more bearable glow. Not that Charles allowed her long to enjoy the warm sensation, slumped facedown across his lap.

‘Are you ready to say sorry properly now, young miss?’

Something in his voice made her stiffen. ‘Yes, yes, sir.’ She did not know what he meant, but she had no intention of provoking any more punishment that night if she could help it.

‘I want you to get on your knees now, Elouise.’

Quickly she did as she was ordered, scrambling onto her knees in front of him. The shyness she had felt when she first dropped her drawers returned and she could not stop herself from covering her pubic bush, only to feel his hungry eyes on her heaving breasts. He stood and towered above her, and she chanced a glance up, meeting the gaze of her lord and master, looking down with a paternalistic smile.

‘Kiss the hand that punished you and thank me for spanking you.’

Elouise leant forward and kissed the proffered hand. It felt hot against her lips, almost as hot as her glowing bottom. ‘Thank you,’ her voice was a hoarse, excited whisper. ‘Thank you for spanking me… sir.’

‘Good girl.’ Charles gently stroked her cheek, and Elouise felt a strange contentment enter her heart at his words and touch – at least until he grabbed a fistful of her hair, whereupon she yelped as he hauled her to her feet and threw her, quite casually, over his shoulder and carried her effortlessly towards the door. There was, quite simply, nothing she could do about it, and she hung over his shoulder, entirely helpless as he bore her from the room.

‘I think we will sleep in my room tonight,’ he said, striding along the landing towards the room she had not entered since that wedding night. He opened the door without difficulty and carried her into the room, and Elouise gave a startled squeal as her husband placed his hands about her tight-laced waist, and simply tossed her onto his bed.

‘So you never got the stick then, ma’am?’ Biddy was much agog.

Elouise raised the bone china teacup to her lips, in no hurry to enlighten the maid. Charles had stayed in bed with her until gone ten and seemed reluctant to leave, even then. His wife had felt even more loathe to quit the scene of so much pleasure, and so she elected to take her breakfast in bed. Her mother would have been perfectly appalled to see her lounging there, gossiping with servants, but this fine morning Elouise simply did not care.

‘No, Biddy,’ she replied at last, ‘Mr Cameron put me across his knee, if you must know, but I did not get the stick.’

‘Lucky you, miss,’ the maid said ruefully as she tidied. ‘Joe says he’s going to take his belt to me tonight ’cos I provoked him so.’

‘And did you, Biddy?’

The maid stood and gave her mistress a shy smile. ‘Course I did, miss,’ she admitted. ‘You know how slow men can be. If we didn’t provoke them… lor! We’d have to wait till doomsday!’