The Harlot Bride (9 page)

Chapter 6

Seeing Lord Tazewell looming large in the doorway, Lucy felt panic rise in her throat. He was so big and tall, and there was no mistaking what he intended to do with the formidable strap in his hand. The young maid next to her seemed nearly as affected by the sight of that heavy band of leather, and although she knew the strap was intended for Lucy’s bottom and not her own, she stammered in her haste to make her exit.

“B–b–beg pardon, milord,” she said, eyes firmly to the floor, making a little bob before him.

“You may go, Mary, and close the door behind you. But go and fetch the button box from Mrs. Deegers, and when you’re returned, wait with it outside the door. Never mind what you may hear from within. You are not to enter until I’ve called for you.”

The maid made another nervous bob, and left quickly, shutting the door carefully as she went.

Lucy was in such a swirl of conflicting emotions that she thought she might fall over on the spot. She didn’t at all like what she had just heard, and it made her terribly nervous to be alone with this man, all the more so after the humiliation of last night. It didn’t help that he was now standing tall and silent in front of her, appraising her from head to toe. Even though she was fully clothed, and as modestly as any schoolgirl, Lucy felt more naked and ashamed before him than she had last night in the drafty hallway.

Although Lucy was still smarting from being sent away the night before, she found herself afraid to speak too forcefully, especially with him standing there with that..that..
thing
in his hand. The only thing to do, it seemed, was to convince him that it was all a mistake.

“I should like to speak to you about what happened yesterday evening,” she tried, her voice wavering slightly despite herself.

“If you wish to apologize for your tardiness and disobedience, you may,” Lord Tazewell said. “But that will not stay my hand. I intend to punish you regardless. But before I do, may I say how much it pleases you to see you dressed this way.”

Lucy reddened. “This…this is ridiculous attire for a grown woman,” she complained, her courage returning, brushing nervously at the very short skirts. “I can’t imagine why you had Mary bring it.”

“On the contrary, it is very becoming, and a vast improvement over your usual attire. And as for why I ordered it for you, you will soon see for yourself how well suited it is for naughty girls who are about to punished.”

“Please, let us desist in such talk!” Lucy persisted, still unwilling to believe he truly intended to carry through on this talk of punishment, despite convincing evidence to the contrary. He had, after all, already turned her over his knee once. She blushed at the memory, but pushed on.

“Last night was simply a misunderstanding,” she insisted, shoring herself up by assuring herself that the man was nothing but a schoolyard bully trying to intimidate her. Her task now, then, was to demonstrate to him that she didn’t scare easily. But she wasn’t, in truth, entirely sure how she might best accomplish that. So she took a deep breath and began to speak in what she hoped was a suitably placating tone.

“I very much regret upsetting you, Edward, it’s simply that I didn’t believe you truly intended me to walk the halls dressed in that scandalous gown, and so I thought….”

Lucy was momentarily unnerved. This wasn’t going at all as she had unexpected. But she gathered her wits and redoubled her efforts to convince this man that he was wrong about her.

“Then allow me to apologize for presuming, as well. As for yesterday evening, well, you see, I was quite certain that you couldn’t possibly have intended, when you said not to wear anything but the gown you so kindly provided, that surely you hadn’t intended that I should walk the halls…”

“That is precisely what I intended,” he interrupted, “and it’s no concern to me what the servants may or may not see.”

“But…!”

“It’s not your place, young woman, to spin my words into a cloth of your own making! I say what I mean, and I mean what I say, and if it takes a dose of the strap to convince you of that, it will be leather well spent!”

Lucy stood for a moment, her mouth open, trying to divine some way out of what was increasingly looking like a most uncomfortable situation.

“You, Miss Farquhar, have made it your custom to ignore social conventions, and to interpret rules according to your own selfish fancy, and look what’s become of that! It’s time that you learned that you are not above society’s rules, and, more importantly, that you are certainly not above mine. Now,” he said, taking a hold of her upper arm and turning her to face her bed, “bend over and place your palms flat on the coverlet.”

Lucy resisted this direction most vigorously. “No, no! I’ve told you it was a misunderstanding, and there is no need for any of this,” she protested, but it was now obvious, or should have been obvious, that this man with a leather strap in his hand was not inclined to listen to the whines of a young woman trying to wiggle out of a whipping.

“No more excuses,” he said sternly. “Palms flat. The sooner you obey, the sooner we’ll be done with this.” He took up her chin in his hand and forced her to look him in the eyes.

“Stop this, Lucy,” he said in a quiet voice. “If ever there was a young lady in need of correction, it is you. Look at the trouble you have brought upon yourself! You have needed a firm hand all your life, and now you have it. Stop your protests! The more you resist, the harder I’ll punish you.”

His voice unnerved Lucy, and she felt the fight ebb away inside of her. He felt it too, his hand so close to her throat. And so, with a tiny sob of submission, Lucy allowed herself to be maneuvered until she stood in front of her bed, bent at the waist, with her hands on the bed and her bottom turned out to the room.

“Now you shall see how well suited this clothing is for naughty little girls in need of a good lesson” he said, drawing her skirts up over her back. When she tried to protest, he ordered her hands back to the bed. “I had Mrs. Deegers sew buttonholes in the hem, so I can fix your skirts up to these buttons at the back of your pinafore,” he said, as he did just that. “That’s so your skirts can’t fall down and get in my way, no matter how hard I whip you nor how much you struggle.”

Lucy felt quite faint.

“Please, no…” she begged, feeling quite cowed by the vulnerability of her position and the certainty of more unpleasantness to come. “ I..I promise I’ll mind you, if you’ll just stop. I don’t need a spanking.”

Lord Tazewell laughed.

“Such audacity, my foolish girl. I could spank you twice a day for a month –– and that’s not a bad idea–– and you’d still be in need of a good spanking!”

Still amused, he took up the sides of Lucy’s thin drawers, parting them widely so the softly rounded flesh beneath was bared to him, providing at long last, the first glimpse of her nakedness. Her rump was just as white and round as he had imagined it, and to say he found the sight stirring would be to state the obvious.

He stepped back to appraise his naughty young miss, and her position. She was very beautiful like that, dressed in a childish outfit, bent with skirts up and drawers open, hands to the bed, with her lovely naked bum proffered.

Lord Tazewell had no illusions that an untrained girl would be able to stay like that for long, not once he started laying his strap across that tender white flesh, but he nevertheless prodded her into what he considered the proper position for a female awaiting correction. He touched her back lightly between her shoulder blades, urging her to lower her upper body a bit, then placed one hand gently on each of her hips, adjusting her body so her bared bottom was properly raised for the strap.

“Now,” he instructed. “You are to stay like that, no matter how much it hurts, for the full ten strokes. Ten with my strap will always be your minimum punishment for disobedience, although I will generally mete out more. If you attempt to rise, or remove your hands from the bed before you’ve taken all ten lashes, I will stop, reposition you, and begin again. Is that understood?”

Lucy was so frightened she found it hard to breathe, let alone speak, but fearing what might happen if she didn’t give some kind of answer, she made a feeble nod of her head. Apparently he was satisfied with this, because she heard and felt him move away.

The very next thing Lucy felt was a streak of fire across her bottom, accompanied by a fearful crack of leather. She shrieked in pain and shot upright, her hands clasped tight to the burning skin. “Ow, ow, ow!” she cried, dancing in agony from one foot to the other, oblivious to everything but the awful hurt on her backside.

And true to his word, he started again, intoning a clear count of “one” as he brought the strap down once more across her bottom. Lucy managed to stay in place for this one, although she howled, but with the second fall of the strap she was back up, dancing frantically at the side of the bed.

“You seem quite determined to make this harder than necessary on yourself,” Lord Tazewell sighed, turning her once more to face the bed.

“No, no, please,” she begged, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t take any more!”

“Of course you can, and you shall,” he insisted. And unmoved by her pleas, he once again started the punishment from the beginning.

This time, Lucy managed to stay in place as he punished her, intoning the count after each stroke.

“One. Two. Three...”

Pain coursed through her entire body, making it nearly impossible for her to hear how many she had taken. By the fourth time his strap lashed across her proffered buttocks, she was sobbing and pleading most piteously, but she now knew the consequences for breaking position, and although it took every ounce of control she had, she did not rise from the bed again.

“Seven. Eight….”

Lucy had never felt experienced anything so painful. She was wagging her bottom, moving her hips frantically to the left and right in a vain attempt to escape the relentless fall of his strap. But each time the cruel leather found its mark.

“Nine….and ten!”

The last was the worst, and Lucy fell sobbing against the bed, crying out as the pain continued to burn fiercely in her punished flesh. Lord Tazewell ordered her back into position, and then turned his head towards the door, calling for Mary.

As the door opened, Lucy flew up and cried out in alarm, desperate that the maid not see her half naked and beaten raw. She pulled at her skirts, trying to bring them down, but they were well fastened to her pinafore, and lacking anything else with which to cover herself, she rolled over as if to hide her bottom against the bed. But even the soft cloth of the old coverlet was a torment to her whipped skin, and she rolled back onto her bare tummy in agony, making far more of a spectacle of herself than if she had simply remained as she was.

“Back up! Get your palms flat on the bed and your bottom out as it was before,” Lord Tazewell ordered. “Never mind that Mary’s here. It’s instructive for naughty girls to have a witness to their shame. And Mary is no stranger to the strap, I assure you,” he added, bringing a blush of embarrassment now to Mary’s cheeks as well, as she stood nervously in the doorway.

“Did you bring me the butter as well?” he asked, using his index finger to push around the objects inside the box. They were made of smoothly polished wood, rather like the spools around which thread is wrapped, but with rounded ends and a thinner, more tapered middle, and there were various sizes inside the box.

“Yes, milord. Cook sent me with both types of your liniment, sir. The plain and the nettled one. I’ve the jars in my apron pocket.”

“Very good,” he said. “The plain one will do for now. I’ll save the nettles for another time, when Lucy needs a particularly pointed lesson.” And having made that decision, he took up one of the items in the box and motioned to the maid that she might close it. “Go on, put that down, and attend me with the butter.”

Mary set the box down, as instructed, and fished in her pocket for the two little jars. She selected the correct one, and undid the top.

Lord Tazewell pulled Lucy to her feet. She stood crying, eyes to the floor, terribly self–conscious, and most unwilling to look at either Mary or her tormenter. As a result, she had no warning at all of what was to come. Although the truth was that even had Lucy spied what it was that those two had in their hands, it was simply impossible that she might have been able to divine their purpose. Nothing in her life to date would have provided the slightest reference for what she was about to experience.

“Come across my lap, my girl,” Lord Tazewell instructed, keeping hold of her arm as he sat himself in the chair.

“No, please,” Lucy protested weakly, terrified at the thought of a spanking across his knees, especially after that terrible thrashing with the strap.

“I’m not going to spank you,” Lord Tazewell stated. “Not if you do as I say. What I want is for you to place yourself across my lap, face down, so I may attend to your bottom.”

It was only then that Lucy noticed the jar of liniment in Mary’s hands, and as embarrassed as she was to have anyone see her bare and spanked bottom, she now understood that he meant to rub some balm into the sore skin. In truth, it stung so badly that she welcomed any measure of relief, although she feared it would be a terrible torment to have the punished skin touched with even the lightest caress.