More Of Governesses

That conversation, the first evening in the drawing room at Thornfield, was not the end of the subject of governesses and Blanche's poor view of them. The next day most of the house party had taken themselves off in carriages to view some ecclesiastic ruins some hours drive away, taking hampers with them, and intending to call on the local House to dine with cousins of Mrs Dent, before returning by moonlight, which the fine weather looked fair to provide.

Mr Rochester had stayed behind, pleading estate business. Blanche had stayed too, making no excuse, but clearly hoping for some time alone with my Master. The business took somewhat longer than she had bargained for, and it was not until evening that she was able to make good her design.

His estates people gone, Mr Rochester invited me to bring my sketchbook into the comfort of his study, where there was a fire, the other rooms not yet warmed in the absence of his guests, and there too, uninvited, Blanche drifted. While I stayed quiet in the window seat, their conversation turned to the previous evenings entertainment, and the strong and unfavourable opinions of governesses, held by the females of the party.

"Oh, I make no apology for the views I expressed on the subject of Governesses," Miss Ingram declared, roundly. "By their spinelessness and pusillanimity they disqualify themselves from being thought of as members of any high order of humanity, and are fair game for those of a superior and more heroic nature."

"I see that you must be included in those latter beings, but would you say Miss Eyre had no spine, no courage?"

"That milk-sop? Such a whey faced little thing, creeping round under ones feet. She should be whipped to teach her to keep from mixing with her betters, but that she'd faint at the first touch of a rod, and have to be carried hence. I'll wager a mere school boy's sixer, and she'd flee your employ."

"Would you now?" mused my Master, "what stake would you suggest? Would you stake a like swishing on your own fair bottom, if she should prove to be stubborn?"

Miss Ingram looked momentarily taken aback, but recovered herself immediately.

"Why Sir, your reference to my posterior is a trifle indelicate, but I will overlook it on this occasion, since it comes about in the course of a discussion involving such anatomical parts. Yes, of course I would wager the same, since it is certain that I need never have to pay the forfeit, there being no possibility that she could endure the rod. However," she continued, endeavouring, I think, to raise the stakes to the point where she could, indeed, be certain of winning without having to submit herself to the rod, "six would hardly be enough to provide any sport. Let us make it a dozen. Better still, a dozen and a half."

Mr Rochester maintained his light air, and said it might as well be a dozen and a half, and the match would be won and lost, if I should scream, or rise before permission was granted. So all was set to the satisfaction of the parties, I still sitting quietly in the corner, quite unconsulted.

"Come here, Jane," my Master called, acknowledging my presence for the first time. "Miss Ingram is of the opinion that you are too weak to bear the rod. You are to have a dozen and a half, to see if you can endure. Strip yourself and make ready."

I would not give the woman the satisfaction of hearing me protest at this undeserved punishment, nor hear me beg for mercy. I put my fingers to my gown and, in a few minutes, stood in my stays, stockings and shoes, unbuttoning my drawers. I laid them on a chair with my other clothes, and reached for the string of my corset.

"That will be enough," says she, seeing Mr Rochester's eyes upon my figure, "we have no desire to see your dismal dugs. Your fat posterior will suffice."

I swallowed the humiliation in silence and moved to the centre of the study, keeping my chin in the air, though I would have rather curled up into myself, and have the floor swallow me, but I could not, and would not, disgrace my Master.

Mr Rochester took up a modest cane from the collection in the holder behind his desk.

"Come, come, Rochester," cried Miss Ingram, "what piffling twig is that. No, she shall have a proper rod. This yellow beauty will be more apropos," and she selected a penal length of solid cane, that my Master was only wont to use on me when I had particularly displeased him by, for instance, letting my disapproval of some action of his show by faint praise.

"If you would favour her with a light rod, then I cannot depend on you to deliver her dose at full strength either. I will do it myself."

"Very well then, you may use the rod you have selected but beware. If you fail to break her, you must take the same yourself. Meanwhile I shall delight in seeing your athletic action," Mr Rochester replied with equanimity.

"That you shall not," she declared roundly. "If I am to do the girl justice, I cannot move in these skirts. You shall go behind that screen, and listen. You will hear well enough when she screams."

It seems that the modesty of an underling is not the same as that of a lady, for I had been left standing half naked for ten minutes or so as they had arranged matters, without any reference to the impropriety of a man watching me, but now Mr Rochester retired behind the screen as the lady made her preparations. Her gown left her free enough above the waist, heaven knows, for I could swear I saw the shadow of her rosy aureolae peeping over the lace at her bosom, but her skirts were many and very full, kept extended by the new fashioned hoops. She stepped out of them to reveal a satin corset, trimmed with fine lace, her thick teats actually lying on its low cut edge. It was a glorious body, all long limbs, rounded arms and legs, full and healthy, promising athletic strength. I would feel her cuts.

"Now girl," she addressed me for the first time, "step here, and grasp your ankles. Scream and I claim the match, rise, and you shall have extra, as well as fail."

Her speech was intended to strike terror into me but, in fact, reinforced my resolve. If I was to receive the full tally of cuts to my buttocks, regardless, as her words implied, then I had nothing to gain by capitulating, and everything to loose, for she would be able to crow over Mr Rochester for his misplaced faith in my ability to endure. I set my teeth in my lower lip, and bent to take hold of my ankles.

My estimate of her ability was not in error. Her strength and skill must have come from her long and enthusiastic schooling of horses in her stables. Certainly that rod felt as searching as when handled by the Master. I almost failed on the very first stroke, it seared me so, and I bit my lip so hard to contain it that I tasted blood from the first. She laid on six strokes in a slow steady progression, seeming to understand very well that this was harder to bear than a rushed bunching of the cuts. The welts were all together, and I could feel the single massive bruise rising in my buttocks, full of leaping agony as she set the last strokes directly into the tumescent bar that crossed them, just below the fullest part.

"Hardened slut," Miss Ingram spat at me, for I had held my cruel pose, and conceded her no more than strangled grunts to mark the passage of pain through my cringing body, "but I shall break you. You are not half way yet. Think of the dozen to come."

I did, and shuddered, but held my place.

"You must let her up for an instant," my Master called from behind the screen. "If she were bent over the desk you might leave her there without a break but, bent as she is, she will have difficulty breathing. You must let her up to catch her breath. If she fails to go down, when you command it, the match is yours."

"You are too soft, Rochester," the lady replied, but, never the less, she let me gain my feet and my breath for a minute, before directing me to take up my position again. I obeyed instantly, though I would rather have run, and grasped my ankles, my flaming buttocks stretched and spread painfully to receive further punishment.

"Set your feet wider than that," she called, and I moved them apart, until they were well spread, very conscious that my plump private purse would now protrude between my spread thighs. I think she did it to humiliate me, but by then I was in some distress, and almost impervious to such minor slights.

Six times more she lashed my tender nether flesh with that wicked stick. I groaned, I gasped, I hissed, I made weird whining noises through my nose, but I would not scream. I writhed, I clenched my poor riven cheeks, my knees turned in and fretted on each other, but I would not rise. She kept at the solid bar of bruise in the under hang of my slightly fleshy buttocks, just above the crease and, before the dozen was complete, I knew I bled. I moaned as I rose for my permitted breathing space, and fought the desire to put my hands behind me and nurse my wounded hinds.

Miss Ingram frowned at me as she ordered me back to my straddle legged, bent position, as if she were considering some new move to undo me. I soon learnt what! The cane flashed in to slice into the tops of my plump thighs, an inch below my crease; not into my fatted haunches, but the less well covered region of my plump, but not plump enough, thighs. The cruel blows penetrated the inadequate padding I possessed there and bruised me to the bone, my hamstrings so inflamed that I could not move without limping for days thereafter. I did not scream, but my mewling would have matched that of any kitten trodden on by some clumsy footed kitchen maid.

"That was low," my Master remarked, from his place behind the screen.

"And how would you know, Sir?" Miss Ingram enquired, "considering that you are not meant to see from there."

"I could not resist a peek at the glories you display," he replied, quite unabashed, "however, if you intend to work her thighs, remember, you will have to endure the same, should you fail to break her."

"I think you should not forget your manners so far as to spy on a lady in dishabille," Miss Ingram retorted, but I noticed, through the vee of my legs, that she half turned towards him, and struck a provocative pose, resting on one hip, and canting up her pelvis, her nipples, and half her breasts, displaced by her exertions, and now openly on display to him.

"I accept your condition, however, though it will not come to that," and, turning back, she delivered another searing cut to almost the same spot on my cringing thighs.

Again I nearly screamed, my lip bleeding freely, and nearly bitten through, but I held out, for that stroke and three more like it. For the last, I think she had conceded defeat, and only sought to hurt me as much as she could. She brought the cane up between my wide spread thighs to strike me full on my woman's parts set so open there. The angle of the stroke was such that she could get no real power behind it, which was just as well, for a cut such as she had been delivering to my tortured buttocks, might have ruined me for life, and certainly have cost me the match. As it was, it was atrocious, but I was past caring and held on, secure in the knowledge that I had vindicated my Master, and humiliated the hated Miss Ingram.

"The wager's lost and won," Mr Rochester declared, coming out from behind the subverted screen, "and you shall spread your thighs to embrace the last of your strokes in your turn. Prepare yourself, Blanche, for the game is up, and you must pay the piper."

"Not in front of the girl," Miss Ingram almost pleaded, "it would not be seemly."

"I fail to see why not," my Master replied, "after all, she had to bare herself for you. Never-the-less, if you wish to retire, Jane, you may. Now Blanche, remove your drawers, and let us see what stuff you are made of."

Only too grateful to be allowed to depart, and nurse my wounded rear, I gathered my clothes in my arms, as Blanche set her fingers to the ribbons of her drawers, and drew them off her magnificent haunches. As I limped through the door, my last glimpse was of her bending gracefully from the hips to grip her shapely ankles, the pale full moons of her taut buttocks gleaming in the firelight.

It was only a minute or so since I had been bent in that spot myself, the cane ravaging me behind, and its torment had risen to an excruciating peak. I leant on the wall outside the now closed study door, fighting down the pain, and trying to collect myself together enough to mount to my room. Through the door, I became aware of crisp snicking noises. I recognised them as the sound of a cane meeting naked flesh. Six strokes, and six again, after a short pause. I could hear some gasping noises now, and a groan, followed by a thin whining. This is what I must have sounded like.

There seemed to be some exchange before the last half dozen commenced. Perhaps Miss Ingram was protesting the thigh cuts she had coming, though little good it did her. I could hear the different note, as the rod struck less absorbent flesh, and the grunts of pain that reached me sounded full of anguish. After five, there was another pause and exchange of voices, then a piercing shriek. I guessed that my Master could bring a greater skill, and a more searching power to the cruel stroke between the legs, that she had so ill-advisedly introduced into the contest. At any rate, it seemed to undo her somewhat.

There was another short pause, and then the door opened, and Miss Ingram appeared, clasping her clothes, just as I did mine. Mr Rochester called after her.

"And Blanche, Miss Eyre will have to attend breakfast in the normal way tomorrow, to see to her charge. so I shall expect you to be there too, on time, and sitting in your usual place." He laid a special emphasis on the word 'sitting'.

Absorbed in her private pain, Miss Ingram did not observe me where I leant against the wall, but shuffled on wide spread legs towards her own apartment nearby. Though I hated her for the way she had slighted me, and deliberately ensured me a savage beating that I had done nothing to earn, I had to admit that she had shown considerable courage under the rod, for she had had to endure as many strokes as I and, though hers to me were delivered with all the venom she was capable of, her own stripes were laid on by a man and a Master, whose ability to flay a woman's bottom I could vouch for a dozen times over.

AdŠle and I were at breakfast the next morning when Miss Ingram appeared. She observed how I sat in my place, and said not a word, but gave me a swift look in my eye, before lifting her chin a trifle, and walking to her usual place further up the table, where she seated herself without hesitation. Only a very knowing eye would have caught the slight grimace of pain that contorted her perfect features, as her tender parts contacted the stuffed leather seat.

Though she continued to ignore me for the rest of our acquaintance, I thought I detected a lessening of the contempt in which she appeared to hold me, from then on, though no corresponding increase in warmth towards me.