Chapter Twenty-Three

Georgiana continues her trip down memory lane, mesmerized by her own story as if she’s in an erotic trance. I don’t want to think about who put her into it. But given that she is about to rhapsodize about her first session with Robert at Le Château, there is no way I’ll be able to avoid it.

“Then, innocent as the night was young, I looked deep into Robert’s eyes and begged, ‘Please, sir, may I please be excused for a minute, sir?’ and almost added another ‘please’ at the end of the sentence, carried away by my own over-the-top performance as I was,” she says.

“But he didn’t balk at my terrible acting. He was already so hot for me, so sold on me. In retrospect, probably none of what Murray designed to take place next really needed to happen at all. Because even if we’d never taken Murray’s dastardly scheme as far as we did, even if we hadn’t put so much effort into it, the outcome would have been exactly the same: Robert would have fallen in love with me as wholeheartedly as he did, and married me anyway, and then I would have had unparalleled access to his fortune, then siphoned part of it off to Murray, as agreed.

“But the script was written, I had accepted the role of Pamela, and there was no alternative for me but to act it right up to the hilt, and play it until the curtain fell for the last time.

“So—in slow motion—I removed the signet ring from the little finger of my left hand and placed it on the carved dragon mantelpiece, making sure to handle it as carefully as if it were a precious Egyptian artifact.

“Then Robert’s session with me began in earnest. At that point, according to protocol, my eyes were down. But such is Robert’s level of dominance, his powerful aura, that he conveyed it, not in words or actions but almost by osmosis.

“The best, most genuine dominants, of course, are like that, dominant from the tips of their fingers, dominant in the way in which they stand, talk, look at you.

“All in all, in my experience—which, you must by now have grasped, Miranda, is not inconsiderable—genuine dominants are a breed apart from the average man. Their voices are lower, many of them smoke, and all of them have the piercing, unblinking eyes of a predator, and to a lesser or greater degree, all of them are actors, role players, stars.

“That day in the dungeon at Le Château, Robert was an actor, expertly playing the part of a strict headmaster for my benefit, and of course for his own. At the same time, he was more than a headmaster, for in his performance, there was a great deal of Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre, the hero I read about during my childhood in England.

“Robert, however, surpassed Rochester. He began his lecture with the following announcement: ‘Miss Pamela, since we took you into this school and gave you the responsibility of being head girl, entrusted you with the well-being and disciplining of your fellow students, it has come to my notice that you have proved to be arrogant and conceited, and extremely unfair in your treatment of the other girls. Therefore, after much consideration, I have concluded that you require a protracted amount of extreme discipline, meted out to you without mercy.’

“Then he moved so close to me that my immediate impulse was to step back from him, even an inch, but I knew that if I did, that would make him madder than mad. So I remained stock-still where I was.

“ ‘Now, Miss Pamela, a little information, if you please: as an almost grown-up woman, one who was raised with the benefit of the best education money can buy, what would you define as your particular field of expert knowledge?’ he demanded.

“Taken by surprise by his question, I stood there, tongue-tied.

“Seemingly out of nowhere, he produced a long, thick, wooden school ruler and rapped it against the desk, over and over again, while I flinched each and every time he did.

“ ‘Astrology, I know about astrology,’ I said finally.

“This was what Robert said next: ‘Astrology? A trivial pursuit, if ever there was one. So what star sign are you, Miss Pamela?’

“ ‘Scorpio,’ I said.”

Of course! Georgiana is a Scorpio just like me!

“And then he gave me one of those deep, unblinking, unwavering stares in which dominant men tend to specialize.

“ ‘That fits. And why, pray, Miss Pamela, do you know so much about astrology?’ he said.

“ ‘When I was at Swiss finishing school, the school governors decided that astrology was a great conversational icebreaker and offered the students a course in it. So I took the course, developed an interest in the subject, and after that learned as much as I could about it,’ I said.

“ ‘So you consider yourself to be knowledgeable, educated about astrology, an authority?’ he said, then rapped the ruler on the table so loudly that I jumped up in shock.

“ ‘Yes, sir, I do,’ I stammered, once I recovered.

“ ‘Well, Miss Pamela, unfortunately for you, I happen to have started out my career owning a newspaper, and writing for it as well. And one of the first things I wrote was a daily astrology column. Which is why I happen to know a fair amount about a subject that I wholeheartedly despise,’ he said darkly.

“Then, with a movement so swift and so dramatic that it struck fear in my heart, he grabbed me by the right wrist and turned my palm upward. Then he held me in his grip so tightly that I knew it was useless for me to attempt to move a muscle even slightly.

“At the same time, I was relieved that he picked my right hand to punish, not my left, but then realized that his decision was not random. For as brief as our acquaintance had been and bizarre as it was, he’d already noted that I was left-handed and didn’t want to do me any damage on the hand I used most.

“ ‘First question, Pamela: how many animal signs are there in the zodiac?’ he demanded.

“My brain turned to marzipan.

“ ‘Two . . . no . . . three . . .’ I stammered.

“ ‘Wrong! Seven! Aries, ram; Taurus, bull; Cancer, crab; Leo, lion; Scorpio, scorpion; Capricorn, goat; Pisces, fish.’

“With an almighty whack, he slammed the ruler down on the palm of my hand and I let out an a yelp of agony.

“ ‘Don’t be so dramatic, Pamela, I hardly hit you at all! Next question: how many human signs are there?” he asked in an arctic voice.

“And all I could think of was one, Virgo.

“ ‘Four: Gemini, twins; Virgo, the virgin; Sagittarius, only half human, being a centaur; Aquarius, the water bearer.’

“Another whack.

“ ‘Not so clever anymore, Pamela, are we?’ Robert said, and—all artifice forgotten, all acting out the window—I blushed crimson, bowled over by his dominance, his ability to unnerve me more than I’d ever been unnerved in my life.

“Ten more questions followed, some, like ‘How many times does Mercury go retrograde each year?’—three times—were as easy as pie for me, but I was so flustered, so intimidated by Robert, that I got all of them horribly wrong.

“And so he gave me twelve strokes of the ruler on the palm of my hand, not hard strokes, but hard enough to sting, hard enough to assert himself over me, to establish his unquestionable dominance over me, my submission to him.

“So much so, and so quickly, that I couldn’t believe that I, one of the most dominant women who ever lived, could be reduced to a whimpering, simpering, slavish little fool by a man I just met—a man whom I was programmed to lure into a trap, though not one of my own design.

“That first evening in the dungeon, Robert had me at his first command. And, much against my deepest instincts, my will, my very nature, I discovered that I wanted him, almost as much as he wanted me.”

I can’t believe she thinks I will believe this! And I hope to God that Robert won’t, either.

As if she senses my thoughts, she gives me a glare, then carries on with her monologue.

“In a bizarre way, the spanking scene that followed—perhaps because it was more predictable, more familiar to me—didn’t throw me off balance in the same way that the scene with the ruler did, simply because the ruler and the way in which Robert wielded it, the monologue he conducted while he punished me, were a novel experience for me.

“But I didn’t leap up and stalk out of the dungeon, as Murray had always been deathly afraid I might do if the scene were too heavy for me. Instead, I just surrendered to the experience and the caning that followed, harsh and heavy as it was—accepted everything, and actually even enjoyed it, so much so that when Robert fucked me with what the Italians call brio, I didn’t have to fake coming but enjoyed a real and genuine orgasm. And afterward I was so fulfilled, so satiated, that I almost forgot that Murray had instructed me to conclude the session with my own special talent, sword swallowing.”

She clears her throat and goes on, “You wanted to learn more about the art of submission, Miranda. The information that I’m about to impart to you may be beneficial to you later in life, and I urge you to listen to it very carefully,” she says, and I want to puke.

“I mastered the talent of sword swallowing when I was relatively young, from an Arab prince, the father of one of the other students at Les Orchidées who took me under his wing, so to speak. Sword swallowing, cupcake, is not something to be taken lightly. Nor is the process by which I became proficient in the oral arts. Not on my knees, I must hasten to add, but on my back, with my head hung over the edge of the bed, and my mouth open. In that position, a man can insert his cock into a woman’s throat far more deeply than if she is in any other position.

“Of course, if a woman pleasures a man orally from that position which is so beneficial to him, it can, at first, be very hard on her, not literally but figuratively,” she says, and gives a little laugh at her pun.

I don’t laugh with her because I’m livid that she thinks that she can teach me anything about giving head. Because if I’m confident about anything, it’s about that.

She cuts into my thoughts and goes on, “The first few times I gave a man oral sex when on my back, with my head hanging over the side of the bed, I felt as if I might easily choke. But as time went on, I became more than skillful at controlling my gag reflexes. Which is, of course, why, when I asked Robert to enact a strangulation fantasy on me, I was able to endure it without gagging,” she says, and I give a start that she has mentioned the strangulation fantasy that she used as blackmail fodder on her wedding night with Robert.

I can tell that she expects me to ask her about that night, about the movie she had secretly made of it, about her subsequent threats to Robert, just so that she can justify what she did to him.

“So then what happened, Georgiana?” I say, as dispassionately as I can manage.

She flicks a lock of hair from her eyes and then opens them up very wide.

“Why, Miranda, I really had no idea that your memory was this bad,” she says with a sneer. “I told you all about it just a short while ago.”

I flush with anger but keep silent.

“Well, let me refresh your memory for you. After I cleaned Robert up,” she goes on, and enunciates each syllable as clearly as is humanly possible, “and he managed to compose himself again . . .”

Bitch, to rub her power over Robert right in my face!

“He helped me to my feet, like the true gentleman he is, reached into his wallet, and slid out a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar notes, as casually as if I’d asked for a Kleenex and he was passing one to me,” she says.

And I flash back to how he’d flung the Double Eagle at me as if it were worth eight bucks, not eight million, and I feel a sudden rush of pleasure at the memory of his devil-may-care attitude toward his fortune.

“When I say Robert handed a thousand dollars to me, Miranda, to be accurate, what I really mean is that he tried to hand it to me, but I sidestepped him and didn’t take it. Easy to do, when Murray had prepared me so painstakingly for Robert to shower money on me, and coached me extensively on refusing it,” she says, and I don’t know whom I hate more, her or Murray.

“And then I said the line Murray told me to say: ‘No, sir, I did this at the behest of my Master, not for money.’ ”

Her voice ripples with pride at her own theatrical performance, and I want to slap her. “And what did Robert do then?”

“Tried to push it on me, but Murray prepared me for that in advance, only too well, and so I reacted with high drama, flung Robert’s money on the dungeon floor, burst into floods of tears, and ran out of the room,” she says.

“But how did you manage to burst into tears to order, Georgiana?”

She picks up a cat-o’-nine-tails and trails it up my left arm and down again, then up again, and I stiffen.

“Silly Miranda! Crying on demand is easy as pie! Ever since I was five years old and nanny tried to make me eat prunes when I didn’t want to, I was always able to turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat,” she says, and I can’t help but note the irony that it’s taken me almost my whole lifetime to be able to cry, to be able to lose control and let the tears flow, but she has always been able to do it at will.

“Then what, Georgiana?” I say.

“Then the game was on for real,” she says, and if I could have killed her at that moment I would have, then and there, on the spot.