The Harlot Bride (6 page)

Lucy’s mouth fell open in astonishment, shocked first and foremost by his threat of bodily violence, but also deeply alarmed that this man had apparently looked into her mind to read her intentions. She felt the ominous tingling behind her face that precedes the onset of tears.

“Furthermore,” the earl continued, “I should like to you understand that there was no mistake concerning your accommodations. You were lodged in the room you occupy by my express orders, and there you shall remain for the foreseeable future.”

“But…but.. why would you do such a thing?” Lucy wailed, now so dangerously close to tears that she was quite unable to express herself in more composed terms.

“Because through rash and thoughtless action, Miss Lucy Farquhar, you have shamed yourself and the elderly relatives who generously accepted you into their care, and these actions have brought not only yourself, but also your great aunt and uncle, to the very brink of ruin. Your alarming disregard for social conventions is the ultimate foolishness, and belies your obvious intelligence.”

Lord Tazewell paused to allow these words to have their effect.

“Furthermore, it is no overstatement to put forth that I have, in offering to marry you, saved you from a short and miserable life on the streets, for that is undoubtedly where you would have found yourself within a very brief period of time, when your uncle succumbed to either age or cutting social censure.

“By taking you away and bringing you into my home, I have done what little is possible to restore your uncle’s reputation, but in consideration for my generosity, I fully intend to exact a fair price from you. I shall punish you well and repeatedly for your past foolishness, until you fully repent and convince me that you have seen the error of your ways. At the same time, I shall train you to the exacting standards of humility and obedience I expect from each and every female within my estate.”

Lucy fell a step back as if she had been slapped, stunned beyond belief. Ignoring her obvious discomfort, the man fixed her in a stern stare.

“Make no mistake, Miss Farquhar: in society’s eyes, and I dare say my own as well, you have behaved as a common harlot. And so, for the time being, I intend to treat you as such. Keeping you in a simple cell when I have no need of you is just one of the many ways I shall make you feel your reduced status.”

Harlot! Lucy flushed red to have such a word used to her face, although had she possessed more capacity for self–honesty, she would have been forced to admit that she knew full well it was the very same word people all over London had been using for months behind her back. Nevertheless, at this moment her heart was thumping wildly, and her head spinning in confusion, and when she spoke, it was in an inadvisably prideful manner.

“I see. I trust that pretty little speech indicates that His Lordship will not require his ‘wedded wife’ to share his chambers!”

“Certainly not,” the earl interjected.

“Good!” Lucy cried, throwing down her napkin, angry tears welling up in her eyes so that it became difficult for her to see. “For I would find it repugnant in the extreme to be in any sort of nearness to such a disgusting man!”

“Disgusting, am I?” Lord Tazewell said, moving swiftly around the table. “I think it’s high time I attended to that tongue of yours.” With one hand, he took hold of her left arm just above the wrist and with the other, cupped her chin and pulled it so she was forced to look him in the eyes.

“You shall learn, young woman, to address me with proper respect and deference, and you will learn to do so at all times, regardless of your emotional state,” he stated, taking a hold of her left arm just above the wrist. “We may as well begin that lesson right now.”

“You’re hurting me!” Lucy cried, twisting her face away and trying to free her arm. “Unhand me at once!”

“No, I don’t think I shall. Not yet,” Lord Tazewell said, snaking his left arm behind her back so he had a firm hold on her waist. She fought him, misunderstanding the purpose of his embrace, but he easily drew her close, pinning her arms between their bodies so he might release her wrist long enough to free his hand to draw her chair clear of the table. That done, he sat himself in it, noting with wry amusement that it was still warm from her bum, and deftly upturned the struggling minx face–down across his knees.

“Let me up!” Lucy shrieked, trying desperately to right herself.

“No, I don’t think I shall do that, either,” he said, raising his voice slightly so she might hear him above the disturbance she was raising, and shifted her entire body forward so her boots could no longer reach the ground or provide her with any leverage at all in her ongoing struggle against him.

“You, young woman, have been asking for a good spanking all morning, and now you shall it have it!”

He pressed his left palm into the small of her back to hold her down, and used his right to deliver a hard smack upon her wiggling, upturned bum.

“Oh, no. I’m not going to let you up,” he declared. “Not until I’ve given you a good spanking.” And he slapped her bottom harder, five times in rapid succession, knowing that any one of those five slaps was sufficient to raise the temperature of a naughty girl’s bottom, even with the protection provided by her skirts and petticoats.

“Ow, ow!” Lucy cried, now furious. But she was also feeling the pain, and finding it increasingly difficult to speak with clarity or conviction.

Lord Tazewell had ascertained that Lucy was wearing a corset as soon as he laid hold of her waist, and, being well acquainted with the intricacies of female garments, knew he would not get to bare flesh without a great deal of unbuttoning and unlacing, a task that had its attractions, but he was in a hurry to get out for morning rounds. The ungirdling could wait for another day. A bared bottom was always best, but he had plenty of other ways to make a young woman feel the full humiliation of being spanked.

“How does it feel to find yourself turned across a man’s lap, Miss Lucy?” he began. He was slapping Lucy’s bottom regularly now, alternating left cheek and right, and the girl’s growing desperation was apparent.

“Let me up! Stop it this minute!”

“Why should I stop?” he retorted, never letting up. “I’ve finally got you into position to give you what you deserve, you saucy mouthed girl. This is what you have needing for a very long time, apparently.”

“Ow! Stop! Please, stop!”

“Oh, ‘please,’ is it now? Good, then this spanking is beginning to its desired effect. You will keep a civil tongue when you speak to me, Lucy. I’ll not take orders from you or any other woman. Is that clear?”

“Good. Then I shall reinforce that lesson with another dose of what you have just received, and this time on the underside of all those skirts” he said, provoking a fresh round of frantic resistance.

“No, no! You mustn’t! You mustn’t!”

“Why mustn’t I? I’ve made you mine, haven’t I?” Lord Tazewell retorted, reaching for the hem of her skirts. “You belong to me, Miss Lucy Farquhar, and I have every right to turn up your skirts whenever I like, and for whatever purpose I fancy!”

Despite a great deal of desperate wiggling and kicking, Lord Tazewell soon had Lucy’s skirts and petticoats turned up clear over her back, giving him a delightful view of white cotton drawers stretched tightly across her round, upended bottom. It was even possible to make out the little crevice that ran between those luscious mounds, and he moved quickly to resume his slapping and spanking of all that delicious jiggly female flesh laid across his lap.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” Lucy cried out, in an entirely different timbre, the moment she felt the first fall of his broad palm upon the seat of her thin, cotton drawers. Lord Tazewell understood at once, from the sound of that cry, that he had now had his naughty miss in tears. Well and good, he thought with satisfaction. It would not be the last time.

“Feeling that, are you?” he asked rhetorically, continuing her thrashing even as his eyes traveled down the length of her churning thighs to admire her shapely calves and the delicate white lace that edged her underthings. Her shape was exactly as he had envisioned it the first time he laid eyes on her, and it pleased him greatly to see it more clearly. And all the sweeter it is, and all the more fitting, he thought, that he was spying her lower form for the first time like this, upended across his knees, and writhing in the discomfort and embarrassment of a good sound spanking. He vowed to continue matters in this way, taking his time getting to the inevitable and complete unveiling of her person, and to accompany each stage with a good dose of distress and subjugation.

“How to you like having a man look at you as he spanks you?” he pressed her.

At this point, poor Lucy could only sob in answer, her kicks considerably less forceful than before, and now clearly under the power of the blazing pain across her backside rather than her selfish and indignant outrage of before. Lord Tazewell continued to chastise her bottom, with less speed than before, but with no less force. Each well placed blow drove her slender frame down and forward across his knees, each slap contributing to a rosy red glow now apparent even though the cloth of her drawers.

“Have you had enough? Have I made my point, Lucy?’

“Yes, yes,” she sobbed. “Please, no more.”

“Very well, since you asked politely,” he said, finally staying his spanking hand. But he left his other arm fast in place across the small of her back, so Lucy could neither rise nor slide off his lap to the floor. Lord Tazewell was a firm believer in the efficacy of sermons delivered while a well–spanked miscreant was still placed for discipline, and as he spoke, he cupped his right hand proprietarily around one plump, round bun, moving it lightly fore and aft, left and right, to plumb the line of her curves. Even through her drawers, he could feel the heat left by the spanking he had given her.

“Let us review today’s lesson, Lucy. I expect you to speak to me with due respect and deference, and I expect you do this at all times. Is that clear?”

When Lucy didn’t answer, he reached under her with his left hand and turned her chin towards his knee, then bent over her so that their faces were close.

“Look at me, girl,” he commanded.

Lucy did so, with considerable embarrassment, considering her humiliating position and her keen awareness of his right hand, which had not halted its happy wandering across her bottom, and had indeed grown bolder, exploring now that luscious curve in a woman’s bottom that drops down to the insides of her thighs.

“Do you understand?” Lord Tazewell repeated to the well punished girl, unperturbed by the fact that she had clamped her legs tightly together against his hand.

Reluctantly, Lucy nodded, or in any case moved her head as best she could, given that he held her by the chin and had unnerved her with his roving hand.

“Good. Then say it aloud.”

“I…I..understand,” she stammered, “th..th..that I must speak to you more politely.”

“Good. And do you also understand that the next time it happens that you are rude to me, and I’m sure it will, in fact, happen again, that I will spank you again. Only the next time I have to spank you, Miss Lucy, you will take your discipline on the bare.”

“I’m perfectly prepared to do so, you know,” he assured her, his hand sliding up along her hip to the small of her back, where he patted her softly, although the warning was clear. “It’s far better if you learn now that I always mean what I say.”

“Good, that’s better,” Lord Tazewell said in a gentler tone, his hand set to moving again. “And to that purpose, I am taking away your corset. You have a lovely figure and no need of such artifice. More to the point, a corset gets in my way when I want to spank you.”

“But..but it’s not proper!” Lucy protested, albeit weakly, half her attention on the admittedly pleasant sensations the movement of his hand on her bottom had created, even if they were mixed with a painful throbbing that persisted.

“I’ll decide what’s proper for you and what’s not,” he retorted. And turning her face so her eyes were forced to meet his, he added, “You have not, to date, Miss Lucy Farquhar, demonstrated yourself to be a good judge of what’s proper. I intend, with time, to correct that deficiency. In the meantime, I will make all decisions concerning your attire, and you may be certain that corsets will not be a part of it.”

“Are you truly so foolish as to argue with me immediately after I’ve spanked you? Go on with you, and quickly. I do not like to be kept waiting, and make no mistake, my girl: I will take my riding whip to you if you provoke me again. Change, and leave the corset off where Mrs. Deegers may collect it and burn it!”