GOOD BREEDING (3 page)

“Male desires……..quite extreme.” Oh yes. She was counting on it, and so was Adam Bestwood
. She closed her eyes as her breathing steadied and confused images of Clara Bestwood’s face, cruelly sneering slave drivers and Mr Bestwood’s cock swam through her mind interlaced with visions of riding whips and the cruel stockwhips she had seen slave drivers carry in Bristol.

Chapter Three

On the quay
si
de Adam introduced Clara and Phyllis
to Sir Archibald and Lady Stuart. Archie was an old friend – a man in his late fifties who had been driven into the colonies by the same problems that Adam was suffering from; gambling debts. He had prospered
out here
and when creditors began hounding Adam
, it
was to
Archie he had turned and h
ad been offered a post on the Jacaranda
estate. Archie
was a tall, spare man with
white hair and his wife was considerably
younger
than him and quite a beauty in her own right. Adam kissed the hand he was offered and looked deep into
the green eyes that appraised him with unusual openness and almost blatant speculation.

“I’ve heard a great deal about you,” she said with a smile and Adam glanced across at Archie who laughed.

“I’ve told her you’re a swordsman of great renown,” he said.

“And they’re always welcome out here in the colonies,” his wife added, giving
him a smile that left him in no doubt that everything that Archie had told him about the way women were treated out here was perfectly true.

With Phyllis following behind in the second coach with all the luggage, they set off for the estate and Adam watched his beautiful young wife taking in every detail of the scenery as they passed. It was colourful and chaotic with a dozen languages being spoken and shouted around a harbour that
smelled of tar and fish and spices. People dressed in ragged but brightly coloured clothes, some of the black women even had their arms bare he noticed.

A month
later,
Clara
was slowly beginning
to
come to
terms with everything. She had been deeply shocked at the lack of clothing on some of the slaves but had at the same time been unable to look away from some of the superbly muscled
male
specimens she had seen with just short white trousers and sun hats on as they laboured in the fields. Sir Archibald’s house was magnificent and Lady Isabelle had been more than kind, her servants had washed all their clothes and she and Phyllis had been free to walk around the magnificent grounds, admiring all the strange plants and trees they had no names for.
On that particular morning
Lady Isabelle had provided the lightest muslin that modesty would allow
and slowly she was adjusting to the lack of underwear
as she walked
and
was
learning to take some pleasure in the feel of air circulating beneath her skirts. She now no longer felt a wave of
horror at the blatant way the n
egro women wore their sleeves short, or the way their skirts some
times left an
ankle and occasionally
even a
calf on display.

She and Phyllis had frequently been taken on drives by Alex Sweeney, Archie’s senior overseer and they had become partly inured to seeing the slaves flogged
, once or twice they had seen a female hung up by her wrists. However, Alex had driven on to spare their blushes when their clothes had been torn off preparatory to the whip being plied.

Her darling Adam
and Sir Archibald were
frequently away at the East house, getting everything set up for them to move there shortly and that night
t
he
y were
due back.

At dinner the conversation ranged freely around subjects associated with sugar planting and harvesting and some issues involved with ‘breeding’, Clara assumed that horses were being talked about and lost interest until Lady Isabelle rose and suggested they withdraw.

Phyllis accompanied them as they sat before the open windows that overlooked the lawns, the curtains moving gently in the light breeze.
Lady Isabelle seemed a little ill at ease as she sat beside the faithful Dorca
,
who was bent over her embroidery. Eventually she rose and fetched something from down beside the grandfather clock that stood over behind Sir Archibald’s chair. She laid it on the table as she returned and Clara saw it was a long, wicked looking length of cane.

She stared at it in horror.

“Clara, my dear,” her hostess began. “Has Adam ever…….punished you in any way?”

Clara protested vigorously that Adam was a perfect gentleman and would never hurt her.

“Archie is a gentlema
n too, but you have to understand tha
t
out
here in the colonies, my dear, we women need to be handled rather more sternly than at home. There are, after all rather more temptations around….”

Clara found her mind treacherously replaying moments when she had seen male slaves’ muscles rippling as they cut and stripped the cane
, the way the sweat had glistened on the powerful swells of pe
ctoral sinew, the deep, strong
chests and sturdy
thighs.

She blushed and Lady Isabelle smiled.

“Ah! I see you understand. Now, while Archie and Adam have been away, it appears I have allowed the house to become a little less clean and tidy than Archie would like. And so he has decided that I am to be caned tonight.”

Everything seemed to go very quiet.

Clara stared at her aghast. “What? Sir Archibald beats you?”

“Regularly. In here and very hard.”

Clara jumped up. “Then I must go! I cannot be party to such a despicable deed!”

“But Mr Bestwood has expressed a desire
that you stay, Ma’am,” Phyllis said quietly. “He said I was to tell you that he would be greatly displeased if you were to disobey him in this.”

“You took a vow to obey him, Clara,” Lady Isabelle reminded her. “Archie knows that I can take a caning however hard he dishes it out. I’m sure Adam will be much gentler with you.”

“He will not get the chance, Lady Stuart! I assure you of that!” Clara blustered but sat down nonetheless.

The door opened and Archie and Adam entered, bringing with them the familiar male odours of brandy and cigars. In fact Sir Archibald was carrying a decanter and seemed in high good humour.

“Come on, girl. I want your arse bared and ready for the cane as soon as may be! When a man’s been away, he needs to make sure his wife’s
not carrying anyone else’s marks,” he laughed uproariously and Adam smiled over at Clara, where she sat with her heart thundering and a tumult of butterflies in her stomach. He came over to her and stood behind her chair as the scene unfolded. With a mysterious little smile playing about her pretty lips, Lady Isabelle reached down and began to furl her skirts up. Without needing to be told, Dorca, the handsome half-cast maid stood and began to help her. Before Clara’s scandalised gaze
, Lady Isabelle’s stockinged calves, knees and then thighs came into view and when her stocking tops appeared, Clara could stand it no longer and leapt to her feet. But before she could say a word she felt Adam’s hand grip around her bicep with painful force.

“You will stay and watch, Clara, or you will pack your bags for England and sail tomorrow. Alone.” He spoke quietly but with a vehemence that turned her blood to ice. When she looked at him it was to find his eyes fixed on her with an intensity that somehow terrified her and at the same time released a warm flood into her belly – something she had never experienced before. Slowly she sat down, still staring at this handsome stranger who used to be her gentle and kind Adam.

“We’ll start with a dozen,” Sir Archie was saying and turning her eyes back to the room, Clara saw that Lady Isabelle was bent over the back of an exquisite Queen Anne chair and was holding onto the seat, her knuckles white. Clara was sitting directly behind her and could see, for the first time, another woman’s sex, pouting from beneath the firm buttocks
and fleeced with thick, dark hair. The skirts of her evening gown were bunched in a froth of lace and satin at her back and Dorca stood beside her, still placid and unmoved. Clara glanced at Phyllis and was astonished to see her still calmly embroidering. She looked up and saw Clara’s gaze on her.

“My father favoured birches on my mother and used his belt on us children,” she said.

Before Clara could respond the room echoed to a loud Crack!

She jumped and looked back to Lady Isabelle’s bottom. The cane was being flexed in Sir Archibald’s hands and across the pale expanse of buttock a thick line was appearing in front of her very eyes. She was taken by surprise by the second lash and so was watching as the cane sliced into her hostess’s flesh, cutting deeply and then springing away, leaving the flesh to ripple back and Lady Isabelle to fidget from foot to foot as she fought to absorb what must have been the most atrocious stinging imaginable. A third and a fourth lash were laid on in quick success
ion, fetching high pitched mews
from Lady Stuart and almost forcing her to rise. Dorca reached out and steadied her, making sure her skirts stayed raised
. Sir Archibald laid the cane carelessly across his wife’s back and poured himself a brandy while the lines carved in the smooth flesh matured into the classic rough edged, double lines left by a good flexible cane.

He smiled over at the dumbstruck Clara.

“Y’see, out here, we men are often away from home and it’s good for the women to know that even so, we care enough about them to keep them on the straight and narrow,” he told her.

She felt Adam’s hand on her shoulder. “In time you’ll understand that a woman is born to pain at the hands of her masters,” he said.

Clara looked up at him and saw he was still staring hard at her
.

“Well put, Adam. Mustn’t keep Isabelle waiting,” Sir Archibald concurred.

Silently the room witnessed the remaining strokes of punishment. Lady Isabelle mewed and squirmed her way to a dozen strokes, the thick red lines striping her from coccyx to nearly the junction of buttock and thigh. After the twelfth stroke
sh
e was visibly trembling and her cries came out in a strange warble.

“Adam? Would you do me the honour? I think a further half dozen should remind her of
her duty
.”

Clara watched in dismay as, without any hesitation, her husband took the cane, swished it in the air a couple of times with complete ease and strolled over to the trembling hindquarters, where he laid the shaft across them. He turned to Clara to make sure she was watching.

“To apply these strokes with anything less than my full force would be an insult to a generous host,” he said and struck before Lady Isabelle could take in the import of his words. Clara clearly saw the shaft sink deeper into the softness than at any time before and Lady Isabelle shrieked.

“Oh good shot, sir!” Sir Archibald cried, quite unmoved by his wife’s agony.

The s
econd, third and fourth
strokes followed quickly and Dorca had to hold her mistress down as the cane hammered into the lower slopes of the buttocks.

“They’ll remind her they’re there for weeks, every time she sits down,” Sir Archibald chuckled.

The fifth and sixth strokes were delivered with just as much force and then the room was silent but for Lady Isabelle’s sobbing. Clara watched Adam flex his arm and return the cane
to Sir Archibald
and suddenly she recalled one of the first times she had seen him. He had been riding and she had looked up as he had reined
in
by her and her mother, effortlessly he had controlled the
huge,
sweating beast and she
had
noticed the calm strength of his hands and the riding whip he held and occasionally flicked at his mount with. At the time it had filled her with strange feelings and now those feelings returned as she watched the men discuss the marks their cruelty had left on the woman in front of them, discussing the tracks and prodding the inflamed flesh.

Eventually Lady Isabelle was allowed to straighten up and smooth her skirts down. Her pretty face was streaked with tears and Dorca dabbed at her with a handkerchief.

“I fear that I may be out of practice, Archie. You must tell Mr Bestwood that I am not normally so noisy,” she said with a wan smile.

“They were hard strokes Madam,” Adam said, bowing gallantly. “And splendidly taken.”

Clara sat, bewildered and seething with
a
strange
disquiet at the memories of seeing another woman’s sex for the first time and seeing a woman’s body react to pain.

She slept very little that night and was grateful that her husband didn’t summon her to his bed.

Phyllis gave full tongue to her ecstasy as he
r second orgasm shattered her and
her employer’s cock ploughed her to a frothing, seething mass of sensation without thought. Then at last he came inside her and they both lay satiated.

Eventually he bent to kiss her breast and lay back beside her.

“She was not as horrified as she was trying to make out,” he said.

“No, I think you may be right that breeding will out. We’ll find out tomorrow, sir,” she replied.