The two young women shared the
sunlit glade, their horses quietly cropping the grass as the girls took their
seat on a mossy bank, dry and soft now in the Midsummer warmth. The long skirts
of their riding habits just failed to over the tips of their elegant leather
boots, while the frogged silk jackets served to
emphasise rather than conceal their narrow waists snd
swelling breasts, their natural curves thrown into even greater prominence by
the new fashion for tight lacing and boned corsetry that had displaced the
loose exuberance of the Directoire. Gone were the high waisted muslin gowns
of the Regency and females of all classes now submitted their bodies to the
bondage of whalebone stitched so tightly, one strip beside another, that they
formed a solid carapace. This time around, unlike the straight silhouette of
the seventeen-nineties, the satin and whalebone armour flared over the hips
from wasp waists and no longer compressed the breasts, but carried them roundly
din half cups high on the chest.
Though they affected the same
style of dress, as befitted young ladies of wealth and fashion, they made a
complementary rather than a matched pair, one blonde, soft featured and demure,
the other taller, crowned by a mass of rich auburn hair above her unmistakeably
aristocratic features which habitually wore a look of eagerness and animation.
She spoke.
“Only a week now, Mary, and
you’ll be spreading your legs in your marriage bed. Still, Arthur’s a good fellow and will be
gentle with you which will be as well, seeing that you’ll be going to him
virgin. I wish you both great happiness and I dare say you’ll find it together
but the married state is not for me. I have so much I want to taste and touch
yet.”
“Sometimes, dearest Arabella, you remind me of a man.”
Her tall companion turned a look
of mock surprise upon her fair friend.
“Well, then, Mary mine, it must
be men’s bodies that you lack knowledge of, for you’re certainly very familiar
with mine. I can assure you I’m all woman, and not in the least like the male
sex.”
“Don’t twit me so. You know
perfectly well that I admire your lovely body for just that femininity. I’m
talking about your recklessness and yearning for adventure. You’re just like
that brother of yours.” She smiled fondly, betraying perhaps a certain interest
in the young man in question. “He’s always into some devilment or other and so
are you. He’d make a wager on anything, offer to fight any comers with fists,
sword or pistol for the sheer hell of it, and be off to cross a desert or climb
a mountain or any other challenge that came his way. If it were not for the
fact that Ladies simply do not do such things, I believe you would be off on
the same madcap adventure at the drop of a hat. Indeed, I cannot understand why
you submit so readily to the tyranny of the corset. I thought you, of all
women, would rebel.”
“By no means.
My stays give me a feeling of restraint and reassurance without which I shudder
to think of what I might do. Mama has often spoken of the libertine effect of
the loose gowns she wore in Prinny’s days, when more
than laces were loosened, she tells me. In such attire I dare not think of what
follies I might be capable, but the firm hold of my corset is always there to
quell my thrusting nature. As to my adventurous nature, why
there, sweet Mary, you may have made a point.”
“And then,” her voice acquiring
a more serious tone, she continued, “I do indeed hanker for excitement, and envy the
men, that they can indulge their adventurous impulses. I would like to give and
receive challenges, and pit my resolve and resources against others.”
Mary looked shocked. “But that
would be so unladylike! Society would be scandalised, and how would you find a
husband if you behaved like that?”
“Oh, Pooh to society” Arabella replied, with a toss of her chestnut mane. “I
don’t give a fig for their opinion and as to husbands,
I’d rather do without one if I can’t find a man who wants me as I am.”
“But do you not hanker for a
man’s love?”
Arabella
smiled. “Love. What’s that? I have not met it yet. I
have met lust, though, and I recognise that in myself as well as in men, and
have had great joy of it. Perhaps I’ll recognise love too, when it comes along
but that is yet to be.”
Once more shock registered on
her companion’s face. Could it be that it was tinged with delicious excitement?
“Arabella! You can’t mean that you have let men have
their way with you! How could you endure it, and what if you should get a
child? You would be ruined.”
“Silly goose!
It is nothing to be endured.” she laughed. “Tis the
greatest sport if the man has any imagination or the woman any sense. As to
avoiding a swollen belly, there are ways!”
“How can that be? Everyone knows
that if you let a man discharge inside your womb you’ll like as not bear a
child nine months later.”
Her friend regarded her with a
considering look. “I really cannot decide if I should educate you in these ways
or not. You are such an innocent, Mary, that I wonder if I should not leave you
so, to marry still a virgin and raise your brood happily ever after. Such a life is not for me,
or at any rate, not until I’ve had my fill of men and adventures.” She
shrugged. “On the other hand I can’t see you running after men, even if you did
not fear pregnancy, and perhaps when you are married you’d welcome the means to
slow the stream of brats.”
“Yes, please tell.” Mary
pleaded. “I do so want children when I marry but I wouldn’t like to become so tired and broken down as some I’ve seen. My cousin Louise
is only a few years older than I, but could be my mother, so worn is she by
five babies in as many years.”
“Why then, it’s simple. Apart
from offering your lover your rear opening, which many delight in, you use a
slip of sponge. My old nurse came from Sicily, where my mother found her when
Father was at the Consulate in Palermo. Women of the Mediterranean have used
the trick since Homer’s time. You soak
the sponge in olive oil and slide it up your love tunnel until it covers the
entrance to your womb, and all will be well.”
“So that’s how it’s done.” the
fair girl smiled. “No wonder you dare so much.”
The chestnut tresses tossed
again.
“Oh, it’s not just games with
the men I seek. I look for other challenges, other trials, other
dangers even. I have no use for dice or cards for money, that means nothing to
me, but I would hazard myself, to test my strength and endurance and find their
limits, to gamble with my body as the counter.”
“Arabella
dearest, don’t say such things. You quite frighten me” and then her curiosity
winning the battle with her fear, as is usually the way with women, “and how
can you test yourself so, and without being ruined by scandal?”
“Well, as to scandal, I can be
as discreet as the next woman, better than most of our acquaintances, I dare
swear, but in any case, why should I care?
I shall be twenty-five tomorrow and come into the inheritance my
Grandmother left me.” she smiled contentedly. “I
cannot touch the estate, the trustees will see to that, and therein lies my
security, but the income is large and mine to do with as I please, so you see,
I can snap my fingers at them all: men, scandal-cats and Society, and seek out
excitement where I please.”
“And what form will that excitement
take?” asked Mary, round-eyed.
“Why, that we shall have to
see.” said Arabella thoughtfully, sitting up and
putting her hands behind her neck. The movement lifted her firm breasts,
already upthrust by the tight corset with its
lace-edged cups. She tilted back her head, exposing her long white neck and
continued thoughtfully, as if to the sky.
“I think I have missed something
in my life to date. It’s been very happy in many ways, and I’ve lacked for
nothing but I’ve not been extended either. I don’t know what it is to suffer
pain and learn to bear it. I haven’t faced danger or discomfort. I think I will
use my coming independence to explore these things and my inner self. How or
where I don’t know, but I shall be constantly on the watch and seize the moment when it
comes.” Her mood changed abruptly. “Enough of this
daydreaming.” Springing up, she grasped Mary’s hand and hauled the
slight blonde girl to her feet. “Fetch your horse. We are due at Caston House in half an hour and we mustn’t keep Aunt Julia
waiting for her tea.”
Two minutes later, tall red ead and small blonde departed and the glade fell still
again.
CHAPTER 1
DOMESTIC
DISCIPLINE
Boredom had driven her out. She had no patience
with the silly girls, lost as they were to anything other than the assessment
and acquisition of husbands, and the futilities of fashion. So she’d excused herself on the pretext that
she felt a touch of the megrims, for which she had always found fresh air a sovereign
remedy, and had sent for her groom to prepare her horse. Now, the idle chatter of the house party left
behind, the Lady Arabella Dymphna
Gregory-Rawlings cantered through the sun dappled woodlands. Her long trailing riding habit concealed the
slim thigh hooked over the horn of the side-saddle on which she was seated, and
hung down to cover the trim booted foot in the left hand stirrup. She rode with straight back, from good
breeding and firm whaleboning, her jacket open in the
warm summer air. The sights and sounds
of burgeoning nature all around made her feel alive in every part of her being
and she rode with a feeling of excitement as if she might meet with adventure
at each new turn of the path.
Presently she emerged above a
little river, a village just to her right and hard by the stream below her, a
building that appeared to be the communal wash house where several women were
arriving with their loads, and others were standing by, apparently in animated
discussion. Arabella
rode down the slope and, not wishing to get involved with the villagers, kept a
little to one side so as to reach the river bank just behind the wash house
where, screened by bushes, she let the horse drink from the clear stream.
As she sat there quietly,
letting him have his fill, she became aware of women’s voices on the other side
of the bushes.
“I reckon as how it’ll be a rare
contest today, Peg. There’s
some fine strong women entering.” This from a deep country
voice.
“Raw you might say for some of
them before it’s over.” This sounded like a younger woman. “There’ll be some
well cooked bums around here this afternoon.
Are you putting yours up, Nan?”
“No, I’ll keep my shilling to
myself, though I might wager it later on someone like that big Betty. How about you then? You going to put
your arse up?”
“Got to, haven’t I? My Ma says if I don’t have a go, now I’m
eighteen, she’ll skin my backside for me herself, so I might just as well have
a go in there as at Ma’s. At least I’ll
have the satisfaction of having a go at one or two of the other girls on the
way.”
Arabella
listened, spell bound. She had heard
passing reference from the maids, many of whom were village girls, to these
whipping contests in country parts, but she’d never actually come across one
before. As she understood them, the
women all put a small sum, though no doubt large enough to them in their near
poverty, into a pool, it seemed to be a shilling a head, or rather bum in this
case. A knock-out contest followed,
until the eventual winner scooped the pool.
The women were still talking. “I
always enjoys a good tussle between two strong
women. It needs a country woman for this
sport. I can’t see one of those fine
pieces up at the Hall taking stripes on her bare arse. They’d have a fit of the vapours.”
“You don’t know everything, young
Peg. When I was in service a few years
back, before I married Tom, I heard and saw things you wouldn’t believe. Sir Roderick was a stickler for discipline
and that went for everyone in the household, from the lowest kitchen maid to
Lady Meredith herself.”
“You’re telling me Lady Meredith
was beaten for her faults just like anyone else?” Peg’s voice was unbelieving.
“Oh yes, indeed she was. And quite often too. We always guessed when, for the Master would
ring for the Butler and her Ladyship’s maid together. They never told, being loyal servants, but we
knew all right.” Nan laughed. “There’s
not much goes on in a big house like that, what the servants don’t find out
sooner rather than later. They always
know who’s slipped into someone’s bed at night, which girls are missing a
maidenhead, and who’s missed her monthlies and is in a muck sweat lest her
belly should begin to swell.”
The listener on the horse made a
mental note to be a little more discreet.
When you’ve been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, and been
surrounded by servants all your life, it is only too easy to forget that they
have eyes and ears, and tongues too.
“Oh Nan, go on. What happened? Did you ever see it? Do tell.” No disbelief now, Peg’s voice was
full of eagerness.
“Yes I did see it once, and it
was this way. The Master and Mistress
were to go to visit nearby. Her
Ladyship’s personal maid had been given leave to visit her Father, who was sick,
and was to be away over night, and I was appointed in her place. I’d often helped with her dressing and hair
and suchlike, and I think she liked me.
Indeed if I’d not married Tom I think I might have got on and, perhaps,
even got to travel with her Ladyship and seen the world, Paris even. Paris, that’s what I’d always wanted, but I
got married instead.”
“But what happened? Oh Nan, stop being such a tease and tell me
what happened.” Peg could hardly contain
herself.
“Well, as I said, they’d been to
dine at friends, and when they got back, it was obvious the Master was not best
pleased and her Ladyship looked very contrite.
We learned from the coachman, after, that he’d accused her of flirting
with a young man at dinner, and she couldn’t deny it. Anyway, they’d been home about ten minutes
when the bells go for the Butler and the Lady’s maid, that’s me of course that
night. All the servants in the hall
begin to snigger and make remarks about raw rumpsteaks
and suchlike, but the Butler quells them with his best frosty look. ‘Come on, Nancy,’ he says, ‘We’ve got business to attend to.’” She sniffed. “Some of
those servants had no proper respect for their betters. Didn’t deserve no
place in a good house.”
“And what happened when you got
upstairs?”
“We goes up to the Blue
Drawing-room and there was the Master, standing in front of the fire lifting
his coat-tails to warm his backside, and her Ladyship standing a little way
off, trying to ignore the fact that her backside was about to get warmed too.
‘Ah, Stevens,’ says she, ‘I am to be chastised.
Sir Roderick feels that my offence calls for a salutary fustigation, so
go and fetch a long crop from the stables.
And Nancy, please help me out of my clothes in readiness for
correction.’”
Peg could not contain
herself. “You mean she had to take it on
the bare?” she interrupted, breathless with excitement.
“Yes, bare as a babe, or at any rate the part that mattered. I helped her off with her gown and petticoats
until she stood in just her corset and chemise.”
“What! Nothing
else? No drawers?”
“Why, she still wore her silk stockings
and little pumps with heels, but she never held with drawers, and most Ladies
still don’t. Nasty modern French things
they are and no good is likely to come to girls what wear them. I hope you’ve got no uppity ideas about
wearing drawers, my girl.” admonished the older woman.
“Oh no, I knows me place,”
answered the girl, placatingly. “but
I thought all the fine ladies were wearing them now.”
“Not all. Even now, some holds to decent ways
still. Anyway, as I was saying, there’s
her Ladyship, standing in her stays and chemise. She was, still is for that, a very fine
figure of a woman, not yet thirty at that time, tall, slim but with good meat
in all the right places, as you could see, as she had on the very finest of
silk chemises, it being worn under evening dress, and cut very low, relying on
the lace at the top of her decolletage to keep her
nipples covered, so now they peeped above the corset top and gave her away.
“She had been standing all
unconcerned, as if just undressing to go to bed, rather than to be whipped, for
it’s not done for ladies to show their feelings, but her fine pink teats had
hardened with her fear of what was coming.
Even though her beautiful face showed nothing but indifference as we all
stood and waited.”
Arabella
was agog to hear more, and so it seemed was young Peg, who could not restrain
her curiosity.
“So what happened next?” she
burst out.
The excitement of her tale was
beginning to affect the teller too.
“After a few minutes the Butler
returned bringing a very vicious whalebone whip, about
three feet long, with a plaited leather grip.
At the sight of it Milady’s expression didn’t change, but I could see
that she turned a little pale.
“Sir Roderick waved one hand at
Mr. Stevens. ‘Madam is to have two dozen,’ says he, ‘Well laid
on. None of the tickles you give the
maids. This is a strong, well bred woman
and she needs a full blooded whipping. I
want her to feel proper contrition, preferably in her arse and for at least a
week, whenever she sits.’
‘Very good, Sir Roderick,’ says
the butler, ‘Would you be good enough to take up your
position, Milady, if you please?’”
Peg could not contain her
astonishment. “You mean to say the Butler was to do it?”
“Oh yes. Sir Roderick never did
anything for himself, other than at sport or in bed. He often said it was the duty of rich men to
let their servants do everything, to give them employment.”
“But what did her Ladyship
think?” persisted Peg. “Surely she objected to the Butler using the whip on her?”
“Oh no. She was a General’s daughter, and had been
brought up to accept duty and discipline, and unquestioning obedience to one’s
superior officer, which meant, in her case, her husband. She would never have questioned his
authority, and especially,” Nan added with emphasis,” not in front of the
servants.”
“She must have been a bit of a
mouse.” sniffed Peg.
“Not on your life.” Nan defended
her Lady indignantly.” She was the most spirited and lively person you ever
met, but she believed in discipline and order, and the Quality setting an
example for lesser folks.”
“All right. Don’t take offence,”
said Peg, quickly, “I know how much you respected her. One thing about having the butler do it, he’d
hold back a bit, her being a Lady an’ all, so she’d be better off than if Sir
Roderick did it himself.”
“Don’t you believe it, my girl,”
came the reply, “Mr. Stevens was a very strong man,
with a wrist on him like a steel spring, and he kept it in trim on our
backsides. He carried out all the
punishments in the servant’s hall personally, and I can tell you I blubbed like a baby every time he did me.” Peg looked
suitably respectful for, before she gave it up, the older woman had done very
well in the periodical village whipping contests, and had a reputation as a
‘good stayer’.
“And what’s more,” Nan
continued, “he was Sir Roderick’s man, not her Ladyship’s, and would consider
it his duty to carry out his Master’s instructions to the letter. Besides, I do believe he enjoyed it the more
that it was an upperclass ass he was carving.”
“So what happened then?”
“Her
Ladyship walked across the room, as calm as you please, as if she was going to
greet a guest, rather than get a whipping, while Mr. Stevens stood testing the
whip by flexing it in his hands and cutting it through the air. It made a wicked sound but Milady didn’t
blink an eyelid. She went up to a chaise
longue with a high roll end, and bent herself over
it. You can tell how lissom and bendy
she was, because, even in the stiff corset she wore, she was able to put her
forehead on her crossed arms on the seat.
Mind you, it pulled her right up until her weight was on her toes. ‘Lift that rag, girl’ says the Master to me,
‘I want to see how the meat cooks.’ So I ups and turns
the tail of the chemise over her back.”
“You mean it was really on the
bare, like we gets it?” asked Peg.