The policewoman was sturdily built, even stocky, but she was an undeniably handsome woman. Charlotte might have called her beefy and made a joke about her powerful arms, at another time or place. Instead, she just bit her bottom lip nervously.
Constable Prentice stared at the prisoner, with laughing hazel eyes, for a long moment. ‘Well, well, well,’ she said at last with a slow smile, ‘how do you do, your ladyship. Ready for a treat?’
She stepped into the cell and lifted up a heavy leather belt with much chinking of associated chains.
‘Hands above your head, dear, while I fix up your restraints.’
‘Please,’ Charlotte said, looking at the gleaming leather and dangling chains with horror, ‘that will not be necessary.’
‘Hoo, won’t it then, your ladyship? I am afraid it is routine procedure. Felons can be dangerous.’ Constable Prentice winked. ‘Especially when they know they are going to be whipped.’
This was too much. Charlotte pulled herself up to her full height and spoke with renewed certitude derived from wounded pride.
‘My good woman,’ she said with hauteur, ‘I am not a felon, and—’
But she got no further. The policewoman fetched her a slap across the face so hard, and so unexpected, that Charlotte was knocked to the stone cell floor. She gasped in pain and clutched her hot cheek as she pulled herself up on to her hands and knees. A pair of polished police brogues came into view as she blinked away the tears.
‘Enough of your nonsense, girl. You are in my hands now. My name is Constable Prentice, but you will call me ma’am. You will also do exactly what I say. No, don’t get up. Do you understand, you little drop of dribble?’
‘Y-yes,’ Charlotte managed.
A shoe stepped heavily on her left hand, pinning it to the floor and making her cry out with pain. ‘Yes, ma’am!’
‘Ah, aaoow, yes, ma’am.’
‘Now, you little piece of filth, you may lick my shoe to show me some respect.’
A sudden upsurge of outraged pride almost made Charlotte refuse, but the woman put more weight on her trapped hand and a wave of pain chased any ideas of resistance right away. Gasping, Charlotte lowered her head and put her mouth to the shiny shoe. Bitter tears, as much from humiliation as from the pain, slowly trickled down her cheeks as she stuck her tongue out and began to lick. It was almost too much to bear; down on her hands and knees in a police station, licking a common policewoman’s shoes so abjectly.
After that she made no objection to the belt which was fastened tight over the shift and locked in place. Wrist restraints were attached to the sides by short chains and she was made to cross her arms in front, as if clasping her belly, while these were fastened, each wrist to the opposite side of the belt, into place. She was helpless and she knew it. Beneath the coarse shift she could feel her vulnerable bottom clench in anticipation of the ordeal ahead. Docilely, she stood while Prentice buckled on a wide collar of stiff leather, then clipped this to a leash.
‘Good doggy,’ the policewoman said, pinching her cheek playfully and giving her a wink, ‘time for walkies.’
She would split. Surely she would split. There was a moaning sound in her ears, but Amelia did not know or care from whence it came. All she knew was the awful, relentless pressure between her legs. She tried to ease it by clenching her raw thighs against the bristle slopes and pushing herself up. It almost seemed to work for a few seconds, then she sobbed as she lost her fight against gravity.
‘This bit is just you and me, sweetie.’ Constable Prentice smiled at her prisoner and patted her fondly on the cheek. ‘We might let the boys in later. I know you objected to having a man see you naked, but I find girls often change their minds about these things. After the first dozen we can see what you say.’
The cellar room was large, gas-lit, and smelt slightly musty. The policewoman tugged Charlotte over to a heavy wooden trestle in the middle of the floor. Then she unclipped the wrist restraints from the belt.
‘Bend over and grip the side struts, legs apart. No, wider, that’s the way.’
With a crisp efficiency that spoke of copious practice, the constable fixed Charlotte’s wrists and ankles to the solid oak legs of the trestle. The waist belt was anchored firmly to the pommel, and thigh straps restricted movement even more. Charlotte was bent so far over that her bottom was the highest part of her anatomy and her head was at the level of her knees. She could move her neck and flex her fluttering fingers; otherwise, she could do little more than twitch in terror.
Once she was fastened, Prentice simply pulled up the flap of her shift, letting it drop down around her shoulders to leave Charlotte’s bottom quite exposed.
The only sound in the cellar, apart from the low hiss of the gaslight, was Charlotte’s heavy, slightly panicky breathing.
Then there were steps, the measured tread of police brogues on cold flagstones. Charlotte listened to the woman walk away. There was a series of rustling noises. She could not imagine what was happening. All she could see in front of her was a wall festooned with whips, straps and other implements of judicial correction.
After what seemed like an eternity, the footsteps came marching back. Charlotte’s bottom twitched in terrified anticipation as the sound got closer, but the steps did not stop behind her, nor the first stroke come quite yet.
‘I find the tunic can be a bit restrictive under the arm, when one wants to really swing,’ Prentice said conversationally.
Charlotte had been watching the brogues come into view, and the shapely, if solid, stockinged lower legs. Now she raised her head and gave a surprised gasp.
Constable Prentice looked magnificent. She had removed her police tunic and her skirt. Beneath she wore only the stockings, elbow-length black leather gloves, and a long black leather corset. From this gleaming, tight-laced sheath, a truly superb body seemed to be trying to escape. Full, firm breasts were pushed up by the half-cups. A thick waist was laced tight enough into its hide casing to emphasise curves that were nothing short of heroic. Powerful, well-muscled thighs were sheathed in black silk stockings, each anchored to the corset by half-a-dozen taut suspender drops.
She towered over Charlotte, who looked up in terror, then quickly lowered her gaze and found herself looking at a bushy triangle of dark brown fur.
Charlotte tried to swallow, but found her saliva had all but disappeared. There was moisture mere inches from her eyes, though; Constable Prentice stroked her cunny, bringing out a gloved forefinger that glistened as if oiled.
‘I prefer to whip drawerless, too,’ the woman said, hoarsely. ‘You know...’ Charlotte focused with a jolt of terror on the whipcord cat which dangled from her free hand, ‘you really are a luscious little sweetmeat. I shall enjoy thrashing you. It’s my luck that you are concerned to maintain the proprieties.’
She laughed, looking into Charlotte’s eyes and wiping the slick stuff from her finger on the girl’s crimson cheek.
The sight of Prentice’s body, so resplendently displayed in black leather and silk, and in particular Charlotte’s close-up view of her juicy cunt, had almost made her forget for a few seconds the purpose of her visit.
‘Ever had the cords, you haughty little bitch?’ Prentice demanded, bringing up her hand and swinging the implement so its tails swished close to Charlotte’s face.
‘No, no – ma’am,’ she managed in a whisper, almost as mesmerised by the swinging whipcord tails as she had been, a moment earlier, by the sight of Prentice’s semi-naked body.
The cords consisted of a wooden doweling handle, about sixteen inches long, attached to which were at least a dozen tails. These were each two feet in length, of slender and formidable-looking whipcord, each equipped with several knots in its business end. The policewoman held the whip up so these slapped gently against Charlotte’s trembling cheek.
‘Oh...’
‘Shut up, I have not hurt you yet, slut! Feel those little knots – hard little devils, aren’t they? Make their acquaintance, for those are the chaps that are going to do you the most good!’
Charlotte tried to stop herself from whimpering audibly, with but limited success. The little knots did indeed feel hideously hard against the soft flesh of her cheek, but the stroking of the cords against her face told her the whip was also wet.
‘It’s nice and moist for you. It hurts more wet, so we like to make sure it is not too dry when we use it.’
Charlotte struggled for a moment against creaking leather straps, anger mingling with her rising sense of fear.
‘You beast...!’ she managed as the policewoman calmly walked out of her sight. Charlotte was still trying to think of some expression to match her fury when she heard the hissing sound behind her.
‘Oh, help, no!’ Amelia babbled helplessly as the pitiless bristles worked themselves into her throbbing labia. She was bathed in perspiration now, writhing uncontrollably on her unbearably prickly seat. ‘Oh, let me off! Have mercy, please...’
‘Be quiet, Amelia.’ The Reverend Dawes’ voice cut into her fevered consciousness. However, the discomfort was all-consuming and she was quite unable to obey.
‘Oh, please, sir, let me off,’ she sobbed.
Strong hands grabbed her hair and hauled her head back. Something hard and rubber was forced between her moaning lips. A strap was buckled to the gag and her hands wrenched even higher as she felt her head pulled back. She could no longer see Gretchen writhe in agony before her, or look down to reassure herself that it was but bristles she was riding, and not the hide of a porcupine, which was what it felt like. She stared at the flaking, magnolia-painted ceiling as acute discomfort gradually melted into agony, and moaned helplessly behind her gag.
‘Haaooow...!’ Charlotte’s cry was a mixture of surprise and pain. With so little experience of corporal correction to her credit, she had not imagined anything could hurt quite so much. Had she not felt the cold wet cords a moment earlier, she would have sworn the lashes were white hot.
They burned a dozen searing lines across her bottom. Charlotte struggled furiously against her bonds, without the least effect other than producing some rather pitiful creaking.
It was a while before the scalding heat subsided, and a full minute before she recovered enough from the pain to be afraid. Now she was aware that another stroke was coming. The woman standing silently behind her must surely be taking aim. The stroke did not fall. What was she waiting for? Fear leapfrogged pain to take control of Charlotte’s mind and goad her feverish imagination.
She heard herself whimper with anxiety. It was coming, Charlotte knew; she just did not know when, and this lack of knowledge was driving her demented. The burning in her bottom was almost endurable now, but the anticipation was sending her out of her mind. The gaslights glowed warm in the otherwise cold cellar. It must have been a dungeon in the old days, Charlotte realised suddenly. Used for inflicting pain. The horrid place had no other purpose.
The cords hissed through the air and instantly her bottom was ablaze with pain.
‘Hoooo... Oooo...!’ she howled in agonised response.
‘Feel that one, did you, missy?’ The policewoman’s voice was thick with amusement.
‘Y-yes, ma’am,’ Charlotte sobbed eventually. She tried to listen, to hear a movement that might warn her the next stroke was coming, but there was only the steady hiss of the gaslights. Then her stomach lurched as she heard another, closer hiss, and agony engulfed her.
‘Haaooow...! Aaooow...!’ she yelped, oblivious to the policewoman’s chuckles. The fire in her behind was not so much unbearable as unbelievable. A girl was shrieking like a banshee, her cries echoing around the dungeon horribly. It took Charlotte some time before she realised the screams were her own.
‘Quite a noise you are making, Lady Letherbridge-Lacey, and I thought you hoity-toity tarts were supposed to be so stoical!’ Prentice remarked.
As some sense of self and situation came back to her, Charlotte found the policewoman was standing in front of her once more.
‘Would you like to take a little pause?’
‘Oh, ah, p-please...’ she sobbed.
‘Well, that was the first six strokes. It will get worse, of course, as your poor bottom becomes a little sore. Still,’ the woman laughed, ‘only another eighteen lashes to go now...’
‘Ooh... please...’ Charlotte’s scalded bottom felt as if it were ablaze.
‘Girls often prefer to take their strokes in sixes, I have noticed. They do say that a few minutes to recover really helps them to endure it.’
At that particular moment Charlotte would have done anything, said anything, just to put off the awful moment when the whip was raised again. Any respite at all from the merciless cords seemed worth her very soul.
The end of the whip handle was placed beneath her chin and this was raised until she looked into the policewoman’s laughing eyes.
‘There is a price, of course,’ Prentice said softly.
A gloved hand grasped Charlotte’s hair as her tormentor stepped forward. She found her nose no more than an inch from Prentice’s dark pussy fur, and she could smell the pungent, exciting scent of female arousal in her nostrils.
‘Tell me, your ladyship,’ the policewoman asked softly, ‘did they teach you to give tongue at your mansion?’
‘No, not you.’ The Reverend Dawes raised his cane to block Gretchen’s escape. Amelia and Bella limped bandy-legged out of the classroom after the maids, though Amelia turned at the door and shot Gretchen a resentful stare.
‘I have not quite finished with you yet, madam.’
Gretchen was still gagged, her hands still secured high behind her back. Quite helpless, she awaited her fate and tried to stop her abraded thighs from quivering.
‘Do you always stand with your legs akimbo, you shameless hussy?’ His voice was amused.
Gretchen did not have a lot of choice in the matter. The bristle pig’s legacy was that the insides of her thighs felt as if they had been scoured. Few novice riders could have been so saddle sore, she thought, glumly.
The Reverend looked thoughtfully at her stance and took a few steps around her as if considering something. As he moved around her left flank she caught a sudden blur of movement. There was a meaty thwack! and she doubled up in pain.
‘I believe I asked you a question, my dear. It is generally considered polite to reply to your tutor’s enquiries.’
Polite or not, Gretchen could only give a muffled moan for a few seconds. Even when the pain subsided enough to let her speak there was not much she could say, given the gag.
‘Oh dear, this could be a long night,’ the Reverend said with a sigh. ‘It might be better if you nod or shake your head.’
He had walked around to face her again. Gretchen hung her head, but her chin was lifted by the tip of his cane until their eyes met.
‘Well, are you a slut, Gretchen?’
Almost mesmerised by his cold grey eyes, Gretchen nodded her head. The cane went down, the tip tracing a path between her breasts, running over the white coutil of her little corset, and then stroking her gently rounded belly beneath the garment’s busk. Gretchen watched the progress of the stick, scarcely breathing as it stroked its way down her body. Only when it reached the nest of golden pubic curls did it come to rest.
A muffled moan escaped her gagged mouth. Gretchen felt her knees begin to buckle and she swayed, but somehow kept her feet. She could not stop her pelvis from pressing forward, though, trying to retain the contact from the stick.
The Reverend’s laughter was the last straw. Gretchen felt the tears well as she stood naked, writhing before him, unable even to beg him to relieve her. Her tormentor used his left hand to unbutton his fly. She watched, wide-eyed, as he took out a formidable erection.
‘Well woman, do you want it?’ the Reverend Dawes said simply.
Gretchen blinked her tears of shame and fear away, and nodded slowly.
‘That’s it, yes! You’re not bad at this, you stuck-up little baggage.’
Charlotte licked with a fervour born of desperation. While her tongue was working, her poor blistered bottom was being spared. She gave a muffled squawk of pain. Constable Prentice was getting more and more excited, and she was holding Charlotte with a firm grasp on the ears. The woman was grinding herself into the girl’s face, and Charlotte was having to breathe in hurried gulps when Prentice’s violent thrusts gave her occasion. Luxuriant pubic curls, wet from saliva and cunt juice, were pressed hard onto her nose and mouth. Swollen sex flesh blotted out awareness of all else. Charlotte was lost, as if sucked into a universe of hot wet cunny.
‘Higher, higher! You know where, you little whore!’
Charlotte tried to obey the gasped instructions, searching for the groaning woman’s clitoris. This was easier said than done, however, for Constable Prentice was squirming like fury. Every time Charlotte’s tongue made contact with her swollen clit, the woman’s pelvis would buck convulsively in response, pounding into the girl’s face and rasping her lips and nose with wiry pubic hair.
‘Oh! Yes! God!’ the woman shouted.
Charlotte winced as the grip on her ears became even tighter. The cunt that had become her world ground even harder on her mouth and nose. In a panic she realised she could no longer breathe at all.
‘Oooh... you bitch...’
Constable Prentice let out a shriek that echoed around the dungeon. Charlotte really thought her ears might be pulled off as the woman’s climax made her grind her pelvis with complete abandon into her face. All she could do was pray the juddering crisis would not be too extended, for her nose was being squashed against a bucking pelvic bone and her mouth all but engulfed by the woman’s dripping nether lips. She should never have defied the Reverend Dawes, Charlotte thought wildly, wondering if she would suffocate before the policewoman finished.
‘Mmmmpppfff...!’ Gretchen tried to protest. This had not been what she had meant when she nodded.
It was true that she had wanted – or rather, needed – that cylinder of engorged flesh inside her. It was need, rather than fear of refusal, that had prompted her, blushing furiously, to assent to his enquiry.
She had not bargained for this, however, and now it was too late to rethink her decision. Dawes had grabbed her by the ear and pulled her round. Then, to her utter horror, the Reverend had begun to steer her towards a bristling stool.
‘Now, don’t whinny, girl. I need to brace you against something, after all.’ He chuckled jovially, releasing her ear only to push her forward by the taut laces joining her stays together.
The bristle pig was too high for her belly, so any protection the little waist-cincher might have offered was quite wasted. Gretchen flinched as the Reverend reached around her and took each of her nipples in a wicked grip, causing another muffled squeal as he used the tender nubs of flesh to hoist her breasts high while pushing her towards the thing with his belly. Gretchen felt herself fall forward and the bristles rasped her ribcage above the low-cut corset. It was when he released her breasts, however, that the gagged squeals really started.
It was excruciating. The flesh on the undercurves of her breasts was exquisitely sensitive at the best of times. The slightest movement against the bristle ridge rasped the skin unbearably. All she could do was to try to keep her upper body still and screw her eyes tight shut against the pain.
‘Heavens, what a noise. You sound like a parboiled piglet,’ the Reverend said with evident amusement. ‘All I can say,’ he gave her flank a friendly pat, ‘is thank goodness for that gag!’
Rough hands grasped the raw insides of her thighs, forcing her legs even further apart and pulling her breasts down even harder on to the pitiless bristles. Gretchen moaned again. Then she felt his cockhead slide inside her, and her muffled moans took on a different note altogether.
‘Well, now.’ There was a bloom of perspiration on the policewoman’s flawless skin. She wiped her brow with a small towel she seemed to have put by ready for the purpose. ‘Pleasant as that was, my girl, I suppose we should get on with our work.’
Charlotte was still gasping and gulping. She was not so distracted that she did not realise what the woman meant by her remark. Icy terror took hold of her vitals.
‘Please...’ she sobbed, imploring the vision in black leather before her with anguished eyes.
‘Good Lord, girl.’ Prentice cut her short with a laugh. ‘Look at your face! What have you been up to, sweetheart? You are as sticky as a well-chewed toffee. Slippy stuff, from your forehead to your chin.’
Charlotte’s fear of the cords was not enough to still her sense of humiliation as her jaw was lifted by a gloved hand and the admixture of tears and slick vaginal juices that smeared her face was wiped away with crisp efficiency.
‘Can’t have you looking like a cunny-sucking little slut, can we?’ Prentice said as the rough towel rasped against Charlotte’s tenderised lips and chin. ‘The men will be down soon, I expect, and what would they think?’
Charlotte gasped as her chin was released. Her head was reeling. Shame, outrage and fear vied within her soul for ascendancy.
Prentice bent, her leather corset creaking noisily in the otherwise silent dungeon, affording Charlotte a fine view of a magnificently rounded, naked rear. The woman picked up the whip and turned to her victim with a wink.
‘Oh, but then,’ she said with an innocent smile, ‘I was forgetting. You feel it is indecent to show your charms to men.’
She gave the cords a contemplative swish through the air. The hissing sound alone was enough to make Charlotte’s buttocks flinch convulsively.
‘A pity, because you won’t get any more respite. Not without a visit from the gentlemen.’
Charlotte found her whole body was trembling. Blood seemed to be rushing in her ears.
‘Please, ma’am,’ she heard a small voice say as the policewoman stepped out of sight behind her. ‘I-I’ve changed my mind. I d-don’t mind if they-!’
A heartstopping hiss seethed through the still air. Charlotte’s upper thighs exploded with pain and she could beg no longer, for she was shrieking.
‘Enjoying it, are you, Gretchen?’ The Reverend’s big cock rammed deep into her, withdrawing halfway only to be driven back again.
Still gagged, Gretchen could only give a muffled whimper in reply. This was perhaps a mercy, as she would not have known how to answer this with truth.
She was certainly not enjoying the way the bristles of the strange stool rasped the tender undersides of her breasts. As the Reverend fucked her ever harder from the rear, the force of his strokes rocked her whole body. However much she tried to keep her chest steady, some of this motion transferred itself to her upper body, forcing her breasts to move back and forth across their abrasive resting place. All Gretchen could do was clench her pinioned fists and blink the tears of pain from her brimming eyes.
Lower down, however, the sensations were of another order. Her hips moved, not simply from the violence of his thrusts, but of their own volition. His cock deep inside her felt strangely wonderful. Pain and fear seemed, strangely, to have aroused her far beyond fever pitch. She needed him to continue. She needed the feeling of his hardness reaming her. But she needed something else, too. As she sensed his climax building, Gretchen tried to cry out in appeal, but all that emerged from the gag was a strange muffled wail.
‘Getting hot, eh, madam?’ the Reverend laughed between pants. He grabbed her hair in one hand and wrenched her head back painfully as he thrust his manhood deep inside her once again. ‘You know, I have special plans for you, my dunce. I don’t intend to keep you with the others. You are a particularly worthless, hardened slut, and you don’t deserve to be kept with human beings.’
This talk terrified the now frantic woman, but that fear did nothing to dampen her feverish arousal. When she felt his hand reach around her capacious hip to brush her clitoris, her tears might have been from gratitude as much as from the bristly caress of the stool.
The Reverend chuckled as she bucked in response to his groping. ‘You see, treating you like a girl is giving you more dignity than you deserve.’
His cock slid home again, his fingers cupping her clitoris as her pelvis jerked in helpless response. A muffled gurgle escaped from behind Gretchen’s gag.
‘I would not wish you to miss the delights of cross county or gym,’ he continued, seeming to speak with increasing difficulty. ‘But otherwise, you are going to spend your time in the dog house like the bitch you are!’
At that point he seemed to lose the ability for conversation, which was as well, for being called a bitch seemed to have triggered something in the depths of Gretchen’s soul. Oblivious now to the pain in her breasts, she writhed like a thing possessed in her unyielding bonds.
A slow explosion of ecstasy erupted in her loins, spreading out in waves to engulf her whole body and annihilate her mind. Echoes of pain against a background of overwhelming pleasure were all that Gretchen Mortimer knew, or cared about.
‘Aaaaaaaooooooooooo...!’ Charlotte was hoarse from shrieking, but the twelfth stroke was so seethingly vicious that she screamed from the bottom of her lungs, her cries echoing around the cellar.
The pain was impossible, as though her bottom and thighs had been set on fire. She had not known, could not have guessed, that agony like this even existed. The intensity was, quite simply, too much to endure.
‘There now,’ Prentice said smugly, ‘one dozen done. See, that was not too bad, was it, my dear?’
Charlotte had to blink away tears before she could even see the woman.
‘Please...’ she heard herself croak, ‘it hurts too much...’
The policewoman stood in front of the weeping girl, legs wide astride, gloved fists resting on her leather-encased hips. Charlotte, strangely enthralled for all her pain and desperate terror, risked a glance up at her tormentor. Prentice was smiling, her eyes shining with excitement.
‘Nonsense,’ she said amiably, ‘it was but a tickle. Next time you come I’ll introduce you to the judicial birch. Now, that will make you take notice, I’ll warrant! With this little tickler,’ she raised the cat and Charlotte flinched reflexively and blinked, ‘you won’t even need to take a break.’
‘Oh, please, just for a minute...’ Charlotte begged.
‘Hmmm, I’d have to call the chaps down and I know how you feel about uncovering in front of men...’
‘Please, I don’t mind... I’ll do anything...’ At that moment it was only too true. Proud, capricious, wilful Lady Charlotte was quite vanquished. In her place quivered a pleading, broken girl, who would have sold her soul for even a few moments’ reprieve from the unendurable flogging.
Still smiling, Prentice walked over to the wall where a telephone had been installed. She lifted the handset and cranked the handle of the machine a couple of times.
‘Sergeant Billings. The prisoner has had a dozen. You might care to inspect her condition before the second. No...’ the vision in black leather’s lip curled contemptuously, ‘she has no objection. She seems to have seen the error of her ways, in that regard at least.’
Charlotte’s bottom felt as if it had been caressed with a blowtorch. The whole of her hindquarters throbbed with rhythmic pulses of pain. Terror of the impending continuation of the flogging vied with an overwhelming sense of shame. Still, she expected Constable Prentice to dress, or at least to put her drawers on, and there was enough curiosity still surviving in her feverish mind for her to blink in astonishment when the policewoman did nothing of the sort.
‘You are a pretty little chit,’ Prentice said as they waited, ‘and I have thoroughly enjoyed thrashing you – not to mention your clever little tongue.’ She walked over to the far wall of the dungeon. ‘I shall have to have a word with the Reverend, see if we cannot have you back here regularly.’
The words caused a cold prickle to travel down Charlotte’s spine. She watched aghast as the policewoman fingered some ancient, ominous-looking ironmongery that was hanging on the wall.
‘We have so many interesting things down here – bilboes, branks, there is even an old rack. We never seem to get the chance to use them any more. Perhaps you would like to come and visit, once a week perhaps, to play with these toys?’
The iron device clanked against the wall. Charlotte licked her lips in horrified fear at the prospect. Constable Prentice turned from the device and smiled.
‘The answer, by the way my dear, is, “yes, ma’am”.’
‘Y-yes, ma’am,’ Charlotte stammered.
‘Good morning, girls.’ The Reverend smiled complacently at his class. ‘I have a lovely sunrise for you today.’
Amelia’s stomach did a little flip at this. Somehow, she was not quite sure how, she had survived a month of the course, and she was now all too familiar with the routine of the Reverend’s cheerless timetable. This period was set aside for studying the instruments of correction. The class was a favourite of none of the girls at the best of times, but a surprise could only be unwelcome.
The knock on the classroom door did not reassure her, nor the sight of the maid Faith, peeking anxiously in at the girls.
The Reverend regarded his maid gravely. ‘Well, girl, what is it?’
‘It’s Mr Campion, sir. He is just coming. Rose has gone to help carry his things.’
The Reverend dismissed her and turned back to the class with a cold smile. ‘Our visitor has arrived, that is excellent. He will be demonstrating his collection of quirts and camel whips, girls.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘To expedite the demonstration, you will all take off your skirts.’
Amelia barely blushed at this instruction. Nor did even she protest as once she might have done. There was a flurry of activity as six girls stood and removed their little skirts. Even Charlotte, though blushing furiously, obeyed the order without demur. It was remarkable, Amelia reflected, how the girl’s demeanour had changed after her visit to the police station.
The girls had all folded their skirts neatly and put them in their desks, but had yet to resume their seats, when a low whistle from the door attracted Amelia’s attention.
‘So these are your famous “flogging drawers”, Richard,’ a male voice said. ‘Most amusing, I must say.’
‘Modest and practical, Jack, modest and practical,’ the Reverend replied dryly.
Risking a glance, Amelia found that Jack Campion’s eyes were fixed to her tightly-knickered crotch. The short man looked as disreputable as ever. He might have shaved but his suit was rumpled and his gold tooth glinted as he smiled.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly, his eyes flicking up to catch her own in his sharp gaze, ‘very modest!’ Then he laughed.
Amelia clenched her fists and failed to stop the blush spreading to the roots of her hair. She cursed the brevity of the uniform blouse silently. The drawers were dreadfully revealing, and the blouse hem barely reached her waist, affording the grinning man a full view of her bizarre undergarment.
Rose had followed him in, hefting a long leather bag which, with a grunt, she set down on the table. She stood anxiously, waiting for a moment, before the Reverend’s imperious wave gave her permission to beat a hasty retreat.
‘A monitor might be useful,’ Campion said with a smile.
‘Of course,’ the Reverend said. ‘I will leave the choice to you.’
Amelia tried to make herself look small and inconspicuous as Campion perused the class. Five other girls seemed to be doing the same.
‘Amelia, my dear,’ he said at last, ‘lovely to see you again.’
Blushing despite herself, Amelia got up and followed his beckoning finger to the front.
‘Get them out, my dear, and lay them neatly on the table.’
Amelia blinked at this, then realised that, though he was staring at her bosom, he was referring to the bag. With relief she obeyed, pulling the leather quirts from the bag, one by one, and setting them out with all the relish she might have felt had she been handling poisonous snakes.
These quirts proved to be little whips, generally about the length of hunting crops, with braided leather or rawhide handles. Most had two flexible lashes, which varied from quite broad, light straps of leather, to one with thick rawhide thongs that clunked against the oaken table ominously as she laid it down.
‘Reverend, before I begin, is there a trestle handy?’ Campion asked brightly.
‘Of course,’ the Reverend replied. ‘Bella, Kirsty, fetch a trestle from the cupboard.’
By the time the thing was in place beside the table, Amelia had laid out a dozen grim-looking quirts in a row.
‘Right, you may take your place, Amelia.’ Amelia suppressed a squeal as Jack Campion gave her bottom a pat. ‘I think I am ready to begin.’
‘The quirt,’ Jack Campion said, lifting an elaborately braided example in reddish leather from the table, ‘is the usual riding whip of the whole western hemisphere, from the pampas to the plains. To the initiated the design and braiding will tell precisely where a rider, be they cowboy, hacienda owner or gaucho, hails from.
‘However,’ he leaned forward and grinned at the class, ‘I would not wish to bore you young ladies with a dry lecture on the subject, so I have devised a little guessing game. First of all, I want you to write down the following names...’
Gretchen was first up. She clutched her list forlornly as she looked at the quirts on the desk.
‘Come along now, girl, Mr Campion has not got all day,’ the Reverend Dawes said sharply from the station he had taken up at the back of the class.
Gretchen had been told to identify something called a ‘saddle quirt from the Sierra Culodoloroso’. She blinked helplessly at the implements on the desk. It was obvious she had no idea at all. In the end she just stuck her hand out at random and picked up a yellow, rawhide whip.
‘Over the trestle,’ Campion said, taking the quirt from her with a smirk.
Gretchen positioned herself over the trestle, her bottom looking as if it must burst out of her flogging drawers at any moment. Amelia watched and waited, quite aghast.
Jack Campion waited a moment, considering the thing dangling from his hand. ‘A Culodoloroso quirt?’ he said with a grin, flashing his gold tooth. ‘No.’ Her bottom twitched in response to the word. ‘I think not.’
He moved like a striking cobra. His arm flashed and the quirt became a faint yellow blur. There was a sickening thwuck and her bottom vibrated briefly. Gretchen gave a deep gurgle of pain. He struck again with expert accuracy, cracking the tails across the very tops of the woman’s thighs. Her knees dipped and she gasped in response. Gretchen was still hopping from foot to foot in an agitated fashion when he unleashed the third stroke.
This one was clearly the hardest. There was a more high-pitched thwuck of impact, closely followed by a tearing sound. The whiplash had split her flogging drawers across the middle. Pink flesh, bisected by a blooming welt of crimson, peeked out of a horizontal tear.
Gretchen was howling now, dipping at the knees and hopping from one foot to another, shaking her head like a Jack Russell with a rat, in a vain attempt to disperse the pain. Amelia found her mouth had gone dry just from watching. She could not take her eyes from the split drawers and revealed weals.
‘All right, stop that silly squawking and sit down,’ the Reverend said. ‘I have had quite enough of you splitting your drawers, girl. How many pairs is that now?’
‘Twenty-seven, sir,’ Gretchen sniffled.
Amelia suppressed a smile. It was true that Gretchen seemed to have spent most of the last month sewing in new panels.
‘Come and see me after the lesson, Gretchen. You are obviously incapable of learning and do not deserve the privileges the other girls enjoy. From tonight you will be stripped of the dignity of these garments. You will leave the dormitory and take up residence in the kitchen. There is an old dog basket there, which is more comfort than you deserve.’
There was a stunned silence, which the Reverend broke after a moment. ‘Amelia, why don’t you stop smirking and see if you can do any better?’
The blood was pounding in her temples as she approached the table. Amelia was so fixed on the line of quirts that she was barely aware of Gretchen’s gasp as the woman’s fresh welts met the hard seat of her chair.
‘Pick the quirt from the region around Nalgas Rayado, please,’ Jack Campion requested with a smile.
How to choose? She had no information. Amelia looked at the little whips, one after the other, with mounting despair.
‘Get a move on,’ the Reverend said impatiently. Licking her lips, Amelia made her choice.
The quirt she picked looked no more like a whip from Nalgas Rayado to her than the others, but she had no intention of repeating Gretchen’s foolishness in choosing one that was bound to hurt particularly. Instead, she chose the example with the thinnest, broadest tails. She picked up the quirt as if the thing might bite her, and handed it to Mr Campion.
Amelia took a deep breath and took up her position, bending over the trestle and gripping the far bar. She tried not to think about how well the position would expose her to the class, and to the watching men. Instead she listened with a hammering heart, for the verdict.
‘Afraid not, Amelia,’ Jack Campion said in a voice that did not sound to her regretful in the least.
She gripped the bar more tightly and held her breath, praying she had picked the right quirt, in terms of pain, at least. The wait was not protracted.
Whooosh... Thwuck! Pain coursed through her. It felt as if her bottom was on fire. Amelia failed to stop a hiss of pain escaping. If that was how the lightest quirt felt, Amelia had not the least desire to try the rest.
Whooosh... Thwuck!
She howled. The beast had lashed precisely the same spot.
‘Be quiet, Amelia,’ the Reverend said, ‘and do try to keep yourself still.’
‘She is certainly a jiggler, Reverend,’ Campion said with a chuckle.
‘The girl is a dreadful fidget, but depend upon it, sir, by the time I have finished with her,’ Dawes said quietly, ‘I shall teach her to take her strokes with more decorum.’
The third stroke was, again, the hardest. It lashed with real venom. She fought the overwhelming need to jump up and clutch her bottom. Somehow she hung on to the rail as she yelped helplessly.
Then it was over. She was sent back, blinking tears away, to apply her scalding bottom to the pitiless seat of her desk. There she sat, trying to forget the fearful throbbing in her rear. Thank God, she thought, for the provision of distraction; even as she had sat, Charlotte reluctantly stepped forward in answer to her name.
Amelia watched Charlotte stare blankly at the whips laid out on the table, and would have smiled if her bottom had not hurt quite so much. It was clear she did not have a clue. Amelia felt the tingle between her legs grow suddenly more urgent. As casually as she could, she slipped a hand over the spot and began stroking, in anticipation of seeing Charlotte’s pert bottom being punished.
‘Oh, heavens, what a relief,’ Amelia said as she finally got her drawers unlaced and drew them off. ‘I swear these damned things get tighter every day!’
‘They do,’ Charlotte put in bitterly. It’s that butter-wouldn’t-melt bitch Faith. She makes us lace them up tighter every time.’
‘I think,’ a quiet voice put in, ‘she is only carrying out the Reverend’s instructions. I don’t believe she is being deliberately mean.’
Amelia turned. Linnet was sitting on her bed and struggling with her own laces. The girl blushed as she pulled off the flogging drawers, affording Amelia a flash of dark pubic curls beneath her little skirt as she did so.
‘Speaking of sneaking little bitches,’ Charlotte’s voice cut in, ‘how come you never seem to get the stick, eh, sweetheart?’
Linnet blushed a deeper shade and blinked with doe-like timidity. ‘I do get punished,’ she said, her delicate hands clenched in tremulous fists. ‘I got that quirty thing – and it really hurt. You saw!’
‘You don’t get as much as some of us, though, do you?’ Charlotte’s voice had taken on a distinctly menacing purr.
‘That’s right, Linnet.’ Amelia caught the mood and glared at the girl. ‘Why do you always seem to get off so lightly?’
Linnet blinked at Charlotte, then at Amelia. Finally, in vain, she looked at Arabella for support. ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice had become a nervous whisper. ‘I do try to be good...’
Charlotte snorted in contempt and Amelia curled her lip. Even Bella shook her chestnut mane at this.
‘I say she is a rotten little sneak who needs teaching a lesson,’ Charlotte said quietly.
‘That’s right,’ Amelia agreed. ‘Let’s take the little goody-goody down a peg or two.’
‘Hold on, girls,’ Bella said. ‘I am in charge. I’m not getting into trouble for what you two do.’
Hope entered Linnet’s expression at this. Amelia looked at Charlotte, then both turned towards Bella, protesting. Amelia did not dare to cross the prefect, but Linnet really did deserve some grief.
Arabella walked across to the door and tried it. It was firmly locked. She bent, affording Amelia a splendid view of the quirt welts on her naked bottom, and peered through the keyhole.
‘Well,’ she said, standing up and turning back towards them. ‘It would rather seem as if everyone else is busy, and we have been left to amuse ourselves tonight.’ A slow and slightly wicked smile spread across her lovely face. ‘Well, girls, what are you waiting for? Come on, let’s get the snooty little slut!’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Very nice indeed.’ Jack Campion took a pull on his cigar but kept his eyes fixed firmly on Faith.
The maid blushed crimson. She had been informed that her uniform would not be required and thus she entered, teetering on six-inch heels, wearing only a longline corset of black satin and matching silk stockings, together with her maid’s cap and a tiny apron of white lawn.
‘How much would you give me for this chit then, Jack?’ the Reverend asked in an amused tone.
Faith stiffened, the glasses and decanter on the silver tray she held tinkling against one another as a quiver ran through her body.
‘Well, girl, what are you waiting for? Serve Mr Campion.’
Faith licked her full lips nervously and stepped reluctantly over to Campion. He had changed for dinner but, somehow, evening dress made him look even more piratical. His hair was too long and his gold tooth glinted too wickedly for the smartest clothes to make him look in the least respectable.
The tray, with its decanter full of brandy, was too heavy for Faith to hold in one hand, and when, as now, there was no table available, the form was for her to enable the Reverend and his guests to serve themselves. This meant bending forward and holding out the tray towards the grinning man.
It was not a comfortable position. The Reverend had rigid views about deportment in his servants, and he had trained her most exactly to carry out his will. Faith stood, trying not to tremble too much, legs absolutely straight and sloping backwards to counterbalance her equally straight torso, which leaned forward from the hips. Even her arms had to be held out rigidly, though the weight of the decanter made this difficult to maintain.
As she bent, she was aware that she was proffering her bottom towards the Reverend Dawes; not something she could ever do without the odd reflexive gluteal twitch. It almost seemed as if she could feel his gaze as heat fanning her naked rear. Today, however, she was more concerned about the man in front of her.
‘How much?’
Jack grinned at her and stuck his cigar between his teeth.
Faith willed him to pour himself some brandy and release her from the growing discomfort of her unnatural stance. But he did not. Instead, the man reached forward, over the glasses and around the decanter, and gripped her breasts.
‘Lesh see,’ he said, the cigar still gripped between his teeth distorting his diction. ‘Nishe ripe pair, thish!’
The corset came equipped with stiff quarter cups, which supported Faith’s breasts ‘like ripe peaches on a tray’, as the Reverend had been known to comment. Above the cups proper, a veil of fine black lace held her breasts firmly, just covering her nipples. Faith had to bite her lip to stop herself from moaning as the man kneaded her breasts gently, pinching the nipples between forefinger and thumb through this lace with professional aplomb, until the little nubs of flesh were stiff and rigid.
Then, with practised ease, he flicked them right out of their covering.
Faith could not suppress a gasp of pain as his fingers pinched her nipples.
‘Be quiet, you silly girl,’ the Reverend said sharply.
Nonetheless, Faith was unable to prevent a relieved sigh from escaping as the man finally let go and poured himself a brandy.
‘Do get yourself a decent measure, man,’ the Reverend put in. ‘It is the best, from the Comtesse de Lasseque’s own private domaine. A thank you for some services I rendered, concerning her favourite maidservant.’
Jack Campion poured himself a large measure of the golden liquid, and sniffed the glass appreciatively. ‘No, don’t go just yet, my dear.’ Faith had turned to serve the Reverend, but Campion’s deep voice stopped her in her tracks. ‘I still have not given your master a price, sweetheart.’
‘Damn these drawers, they are such a blessed bother,’ Kirsty muttered.
The reminder of the prefect’s presence behind her caused Gretchen’s bare bottom to flinch again. Desperately, she tried to concentrate upon her task. This was difficult enough in any case. It was not that scrubbing down the kitchen flagstones was hard in itself. It would have been a dull, slightly demeaning job in normal circumstances. Unfortunately, Gretchen’s situation was not exactly normal. Grimacing, she lowered her head to get on with her work.
As soon as she had been issued with her new outfit, she had understood she was destined to spend a good deal of time on her hands and knees. The little corset was not unlike the other girls’ stays, though it was black instead of white, but the stockings gave the game away. These were of black wool, gartered with elastics at mid-thigh, and equipped with leather patches on the knees. She had pulled the things on with a heavy heart and then grunted as her corset was laced tight, looking around for the rest of her new clothes.
There were none, unless one counted the heavy leather collar or the cuffs that padlocked on to her wrists and ankles. Her breasts, behind, thighs and sex, all her most intimate and vulnerable places, were bare for the world to see.
‘Please, sir...’ she had begun to protest, almost without thinking. The Reverend Dawes quelled her with one steely glare.
‘Hold your hand out,’ he had said, taking down a tawse.
Gretchen held a trembling hand out in front of her, supporting it by gripping the wrist. Three wicked strokes cracked across her palm, sending her hopping up and down in agony. The watching girls had not dared to laugh, but she could not but be aware of the way her breasts bounced as she danced out her distress, and she could sense their barely suppressed amusement as she grimaced and groaned.
‘The other hand,’ the Reverend had said simply, just as she was hoping that was it.
Another trio of quite pitiless lashes scalded her left hand, and the hot tears ran freely by the third.
‘You will not speak unless spoken to.’ The Reverend turned to the other girls. ‘If this trollop so much as grunts at you without permission from now on, she is to be reported to me. Anyone who fails to inform on an offence by her, however trivial, will receive two dozen strokes of the birch.’
These words still ringing in her disbelieving ears, Gretchen had been hauled, the Reverend’s strong fingers tugging at a tender nipple, down the stairway to the scullery. Only Kirsty had been instructed to follow.
‘I’m leaving you in charge this evening,’ the Reverend had told Kirsty, ‘for Mr Campion will be my guest for dinner. Supervise her closely and use this if she needs correction. Do not bother me. I have business.’
‘This’ had proved to be a dark, polished wooden paddle. Gretchen had not liked the look of it at all. However, she soon had other preoccupations. An adapted scrubbing brush was put between her teeth, as if it were some sort of gag or bit, and secured by buckled straps behind her head. A steel chain fixed to the ring in the busk of her corset had been hauled, tight enough to chafe, between her legs and secured to the back. A three-foot long steel spreader bar was locked securely to her ankle straps. Finally, Gretchen’s wrists had been pinioned behind her back.
‘Right.’ The Reverend looked at her seriously. ‘I want all of this floor scrubbed by tonight.’
There was only one way to do it. She had to stick her bottom back and up, to counterbalance, to have any chance of scrubbing the floor. The chain between her legs was a mere annoyance. The presence waiting silently behind her was what was causing the beads of cold sweat to form on her trembling flanks.
Kirsty, as it was not class time, had been granted permission to remove her drawers, unlacing them with obvious relief. As she was absorbed in this time-consuming task, Gretchen made a serious error of judgement.
‘Oh, dearie me, no,’ Kirsty said sweetly enough. ‘Been having a wee rest, have we, petal?’
Gretchen protested in vain. She had been trying, without success, to find a way to move that involved less discomfort. There was a horrid smacking sound of wood on flesh. Gretchen could only guess that Kirsty was slapping the paddle against the palm of her own hand to test the thing. She wondered wildly what it would be like.
‘Get on with it Gretchen, there’s a good lass.’
Gretchen gave a gasp of pure relief and bent her head down to go to work, bottom twitching in nervous anticipation.
There was a sound between a splat and a crack and atrocious pain lanced though her left bottom cheek. Another blow, and her right cheek was on fire. Gretchen squirmed and twisted, but found to her terror and surprise that she was not moving even inches from the source of her pain.
‘Och, no, you are nae going anywhere, my sweet.’
Kirsty was standing on the spreader bar, Gretchen realised with mounting panic. And that meant she was completely stuck and totally helpless.
The prefect punished her with relentless precision, taking not the slightest notice of the strangulated shrieks emerging from her gagged mouth. Gretchen simply had to endure it. A rain of strokes lashed her bottom and her thighs, scouring her skin like some sort of scalding rain. She wriggled, she twitched, she emitted muffled cries, but there was simply not a thing she could do to escape the paddle.
‘Now keep your mouth shut, or we shall have to gag you,’ Bella said.
‘Oh, please don’t pinch so. Ouch, that really hurts!’ Linnet twisted and struggled to no avail as Amelia and Charlotte held her firmly by the wrists. Amelia took the opportunity the girl’s bare thighs and bottom presented to bestow some slaps and pinches, while Charlotte applied equally cruel fingers to Linnet’s breasts.
‘This court will come to order!’ Bella said firmly.
The girls were a little short of props in their dismal dormitory, but she had done her best. Bella had pressed her flogging drawers into service for a makeshift wig. For a judicial bench she sat on the iron foot of her little bed, and in place of a gavel she gripped one of the canes.
‘The prisoner will kneel.’
Linnet would almost certainly have got down of her own volition; however, she was not given the chance. Amelia grabbed a hank of soft hair at Linnet’s temple and used this to force the squealing girl roughly to her knees.
‘Linnet Tremaine, you are accused of being a little goody-goody sneak who has avoided her fair share of floggings,’ Bella intoned with mock solemnity. ‘How do you plead?’
‘Ouch, let me go! Oh, please, this isn’t fair...’
‘I should inform the defendant,’ the prefect said slowly, swishing her gavel experimentally as she spoke, ‘that any plea of not guilty will entail a mandatory doubling of the penalty, should you subsequently be convicted of the offence. Now, stop babbling and wailing, we have not hurt you – yet. Guilty or not guilty, how do you plead?’
Linnet looked around wildly. Amelia could see the moisture welling in her limpid eyes. She hoped the little slut would be silly enough to plead not guilty. For luck, she gave the handful of hair she still gripped a vicious twist.
‘Aaaaooow... oh, please,’ Linnet whimpered. ‘I plead guilty. I am sorry, though I really don’t know what it is I have done.’
‘She does not know what she has done to deserve this,’ Bella mocked, shaking her head in faux sorrow. ‘That is what they all say.’
She reached out the cane and used the tip to lift Linnet’s chin until their gazes met. ‘I am going to spank you, little Linnet. I am going to spank you very hard, because – well, because I want to, and because I can. After that, these other two bitches will want to play some games with you, I expect, but they will have to wait their turns. Let her go, girls. Get up, Linnet, and take your blouse off. Then I would like you to come and put yourself over my knee.’
Faith tried to swallow but she did not have sufficient saliva for anything but a dry gulp. The man’s rough hand was travelling up between her legs. There was something deeply unsettling about the way he felt her, his hand brusque on the naked skin above her stocking tops. It felt more like livestock being appraised at auction than a young woman being fondled by a man.
‘Firm and creamy flesh. Nice, chubby bottom.’ The hand stroked her bare cheeks now. ‘Hmm, certainly she has very smooth, fine skin.’
Faith gave a startled gasp as his strong fingers probed between her legs again, but higher this time. The shock made her look up, blinking. The young maid found herself looking into her master’s cold eyes. Blushing furiously, she dropped her gaze again.
‘Well, well,’ Jack Campion’s voice was rich with amusement. ‘The little slut is undeniably responsive!’ He chuckled as his finger explored her cunny. Faith gave a little whimper, closing her eyes completely now, only her long and rigorous training and the watching presence of her master making her stand still.
‘You have a very saleable bit of girl-flesh there, Reverend. Not a virgin, and not as fat as some of those sheikhs like them, but she is pretty, well trained and responsive, and blondes always command a hefty premium in Fejr.’
At last the hand desisted. Opening her eyes, Faith saw the Reverend Dawes beckoning. She trotted over to her employer and proffered her tray. To her distress, but not surprise, he did not immediately pour himself a brandy, but sat perusing her engorged nipples with an amused smile. He took a leisurely pull at his cigar and then held the glowing cylinder up thoughtfully. Fervently, Faith wished he would not look quite so intently at her nipples while waving the burning cigar around.
‘Very nice of you to say so.’ The Reverend kept his eyes fixed on Faith’s nearly naked breasts. ‘So how much might you offer, if I was to sell?’
‘Oh, I think I could go to five hundred guineas,’ Jack said softly. ‘And do you want to sell?’
Faith felt herself go rigid. Until that moment she had thought the discussion all a cruel game. Being quite used to those, she had been more concerned with probing hands and glowing cigars than with what the men were saying. Suddenly, a sense of panic gripped her. What if her master was serious? The prospect was appalling. Surely they would not ship her abroad to sell her as a slave! Her eyes met her master’s, mutely pleading with him. She could read nothing in his pitiless stare. He could not, would not, surely? It was too awful to think that she might be bought and sold by these men, just like-
‘Faith,’ the Reverend said with just the hint of a smile, ‘go and tell Rose that we are ready for her.’
‘Get a move on, Gruntie, I’m getting hellish bored.’
Tears welled in Gretchen’s eyes at this. She was trying, she really was; it was all so unfair. An hour had passed since that first, furious paddling. An hour of effort and acute discomfort regularly punctuated by pain. Gretchen had inched across the floor, scrubbing with the brush between her teeth, the exertion causing perspiration to bead across her back.
Kirsty, by contrast, had stalked about the kitchen, her high heels clacking loud against the stone flags of the floor and echoing around the room. Occasionally, she passed a remark.
‘I quite like it here,’ she had said to Gretchen’s dumb distress. ‘You all moan but I think the Reverend is all right. I just wish I knew what was going on at home, now.’
Every once in a while she would, with easy grace, deliver a stinging paddle stroke to Gretchen’s throbbing bottom.
‘Come on, buck up you fat slut,’ she had said merrily. ‘You know, you look awful funny like that, like a human scrubbing brush. Still, you probably always were a scrubber, aye?’
There had been nothing Gretchen could do but endure the pain and the indignity, and there was nothing she could do now but work on and pray.
Kirsty was hard to ignore, however. She stood a few inches in front of Gretchen’s face. The girl had very shapely ankles and small feet, and these, in their polished shoes, were in Gretchen’s way. She could not work further forward without splashing the prefect’s brilliant stilettos. Something told her this would not be a very good idea. Not knowing what else to do, she stopped.
Very slowly, Gretchen raised her head. Kirsty’s ankles were sheathed in sheer black silk. She followed the legs upwards, up the shapely shins and dimpled knees. The prefect’s stockings were secured at mid-thigh with white and mauve lace and elastic garters. Above these was a pale expanse of smooth, flawless thigh.
‘Look at me.’ Kirsty’s voice was slightly husky.
Gretchen continued to raise her blinking eyes.
The little pleated skirt was cut to flounce out from the hips and, anyway, was far too short to reach the girl’s garters. Gretchen, looking up from almost below it, could see straight up to the furrow between her legs. Kirsty’s cunt was trim and lightly furred with red-gold curls. The bound woman could make out something glistening.
‘Would you like a rest, pet? Do something different for a wee while?’ Kirsty asked quietly.
Gretchen, who found herself transfixed by the sight beneath her tormentor’s skirt, nodded quickly.
There was no question about it. Amelia had to admit that Arabella Huntingdon-Wickham really did know how to spank.
She held Linnet over her lap with what looked like contemptuous ease, though the girl squirmed and bucked in desperation. With her right hand Bella placed, rather than rained, the smacks down on the rapidly reddening little bottom.
‘Ooh! Ah! Oh! Ouch! Please stop, it hurts!’
‘It’s meant to hurt, you little bag of mischief!’ Bella laughed, delivering another stinging spank to the wriggling girl’s leg.
They were shapely legs, if rather slender, Amelia thought, as she quietly slipped her fingers underneath her own skirt. Indeed, Linnet had a lovely figure altogether for all that she was slim. Her bottom might not have been very big, but it was very sweet. The girl’s flawless upper thighs above her stocking tops had turned from the palest peach to an angry red. Her bum cheeks were getting even redder as Amelia stood and watched.
Bella, evidently, saw no need to rush her work. She had ordered a slightly sulky Charlotte to keep her eye glued to the keyhole when Linnet had started really shrieking.
‘Just gag the little slut,’ Charlotte had suggested.
‘No, I like to hear her squeal. You can, if you like, when it is your turn. Now watch the door, Charlotte, or I swear I shall put you over my knee instead.’
Charlotte glared mutinously at her erstwhile friend, but Bella had been busy with her victim, and eventually, with ill grace, she took up her station.
‘You are really giving it to her,’ whispered Amelia, impressed despite herself, as another flurry of explosive smacks rained down upon the squirming bottom.
‘I like to use the hand on girls with tender bums.’ Bella looked up and grinned before delivering a terrific smack right on the sweet spot. ‘I like to feel them wriggle when I warm them.’
‘Ow! Ow! Mercy! Please! Ouch!
‘Well, she seems to be feeling it, Bella, that’s for sure,’ Amelia said. Linnet’s bottom looked as if it had been boiled, glowing a fiery scarlet from the white lace trim of her corset to the inky tops of her silk stockings. The squirming girl was sobbing bitterly between gasps of pain, as the punishing hand impacted on her rear, over and over.
‘Do you really think so?’ Bella graced Amelia with a beatific smile and fetched Linnet another tremendous smack across the thighs, chuckling at her victim’s agonised squeals. ‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I suspect the little minx is starting to feel something.’
‘Aye, that’s it. Aye, that’s the spot...!’
Gretchen made a muffled, grunting sound. This time, however, it was not a scrubbing brush filling her mouth, but something altogether softer.
Kirsty had removed the gag but, to Gretchen’s chagrin had left her legs stretched by the spreader bar and kept her hands cuffed behind her back. She had braced her bottom against the kitchen table and instructed Gretchen to put her tongue to work. The woman had been glad enough of a chance of respite from her original task, having been taught the error of that misjudgement, but Kirsty turned out to be a most demanding taskmistress.
‘No, not yet you little slut. Lap between the lips, my clit will wait. I want you to taste me and learn who you are tonguing.’
Gretchen learned all right, though her ability to taste Kirsty’s copious juices was marred by the fact that the prefect punctuated her instructions by leaning forward, bending over her attendant, and delivering a series of explosive cracks of the paddle on her already sore behind.
‘Don’t you pull away from me, miss!’
With one hand Kirsty grabbed a hank of Gretchen’s hair and forced the woman’s face hard against her crotch. With the other she delivered another flurry of paddle smacks. Gretchen did not mean to pull away but the pain was so intense that her head kept jerking back in response. The paddle strokes provoked more jerks, which in turn earned her more strokes. She was caught in an agonisingly vicious circle.
Somehow, at last, she managed to ignore the scalding pain sufficiently to keep her face pressed into Kirsty’s pubic bush. Her plump cheeks were soaked now, but how much was Kirsty’s slickness and how much her own tears would have been impossible to judge. Her bottom was so sore that the whole of it seemed to be throbbing, but she forced herself to ignore the pain and put her soul into tonguing her tormentor.
As Kirsty’s climax started building, with a series of shudders from her pelvis, the girl discarded the paddle altogether and grabbed Gretchen by both ears. Then she fairly ground herself against the other’s face to an accompaniment of muffled squeals. The prefect lifted her legs and wrapped them around Gretchen’s neck. Strong young thighs squeezed her head in an anaconda grip that left her struggling to breathe.
Fortunately for her, Kirsty’s crisis was not prolonged. The iron grip relaxed before she was entirely suffocated and at the same time she felt her ears released. Gretchen collapsed, gasping, into a kneeling posture, gulping lungfuls of sweet air.
Whether it was some mysterious reaction to her situation, or a result of the chafing chain between her legs, Gretchen was left half-delirious with her own desire. Still, she had enough sense left not to beg Kirsty. Instead, she looked up with pleading eyes.
‘What do you want, eh?’ Kirsty pushed strands of hair away from her face and sneered down at her. ‘No, don’t tell me. I know what it is, you writhing slut. Come on, kneel up, like the begging bitch you are.’
Anxiously, Gretchen did as she was told, wondering what Kirsty intended for her. She licked her lips anxiously, tasting Kirsty’s juices as she did so.
‘Is this what you want, slut?’ Kirsty asked with a mocking smile.
Gretchen moaned helplessly as the girl hooked the toe of her shoe into the chain that ran between her widespread legs. Kirsty simply used her foot to increase the pressure. A few contemptuous tugs were quite enough.
Her orgasm was like nothing she had ever known before. A great incandescent flash of ecstasy engulfed her. Gretchen’s private hell turned into heaven for an instant. Waves of pleasure convulsed her abused body and she screamed, but this time not from pain.
As sense seeped back into her mind, she became aware of the cold stone floor beneath her face. Then she saw the highly polished shoe tapping impatiently a few inches away. There was a wooden paddle, too, discarded on the floor nearby.
‘Well, Gruntie Gretchen, are you going to lie there gasping like a landed fish all evening?’ a lilting voice from above asked pleasantly.
Gretchen watched with dawning understanding as a girl’s hand reached down for the paddle.
‘All right, you fat bitch,’ the voice said. ‘Recreation break is over. Someone has a lot of work to do.’
‘The master wants you,’ Faith said flatly, any sense of pity she might have felt completely vanquished by relief. ‘But first I have to put you in restraints.’
Rose was freshly bathed and her pale skin shone from the application of fragrant oils. She had been waiting, completely naked except for black silk stockings, gartered just above her knees, and shoulder-length lace gloves. Her green eyes were wide and questioning.
‘I suppose it is a whipping?’ she asked in a husky, anxious voice as she allowed Faith to buckle on a heavy leather collar and wrist restraints. Once Rose’s wrists were cuffed behind her, Faith clipped a leash to the hefty steel D-ring at the front of the collar.
‘Something like that, I expect,’ Faith lied.
She led Rose back into the lounge by the leash. The gentlemen were chuckling about something but, as the two maids entered, the laughter died away.
If Faith, still painfully aware of her exposed breasts and cunny, coloured as the two men stared, Rose blushed as red as her namesake. They halted in the centre of the room, between the armchairs of the reclining gentlemen, Faith a little unsure of what was required.
‘So this is the filly you ran in the cup. Yes, I can see some muscle in her thighs.’
Faith glanced down and sideways. It was indeed true that Rose had strong-looking thighs. Her sleek musculature was a legacy of being trained to pull the Reverend’s cart, for he had driven the girl hard and not stinted the whip. That job was one privilege Faith had never begrudged Rose. It had not escaped her rather fretful notice that, should Rose truly be about to leave the Reverend’s employ, there would arise a need to fill that arduous office.
‘Walk Rose up and down so Mr Campion can see her move,’ the Reverend said, between puffs of his cigar. He swirled his brandy in its glass deliberately.
The air was acrid with cigar smoke and brandy fumes now, the scent so strong Faith almost felt dizzy. Tottering a little on her heels, she tugged the leash, leading Rose across the carpet to the far wall and then back, acutely conscious of the eyes following her and her naked charge.
‘Pity she’s not a blonde.’ Jack Campion’s voice had taken on a weary, sceptical tone.
‘Don’t try that, you damned robber,’ the Reverend put in. ‘You have told me many times that red hair is almost as rare as fair in the markets of Fejr.’
‘As rare, but not as sought after. Also, she is not plump enough for that market. It would cost me to take time to feed her up.’
The Reverend Dawes gave a snort of derision. ‘For one thing, Campion, you rogue,’ he said, ‘the chit has breasts like melons. You cannot tell me your sheikhs will not pay a premium for those.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘For another, the reason she is not plumper is that the girl is fit. She is fit because she has been broken to harness. She is a damned good runner between the shafts and you have told me yourself how those sheikhs of yours like to race pony-girls, and how much they would pay for a well-trained roan.’
As a rueful chuckle from Jack acknowledged some truth in these assertions, Faith glanced back at the girl she was trotting back and forth across the room. Rose was still blushing, but tears were trickling down her flaming cheeks and her eyes were wide with fear.
‘All right, I’ll give you something for the training, and I will admit that pale skin is worth a shilling or two. She is pretty and her breasts are very fetching. Still, I could not go above two hundred guineas for a roan.’
This offer caused the Reverend to splutter in his brandy. Rose gave a little sob behind her, but Faith felt a guilty flush of pride. Certainly, it was humiliating to be talked about like livestock, but there was a strange satisfaction in hearing her valuation put at more than double that of Rose.
‘I value my girls equally,’ the Reverend said, as if reading her mind. ‘I would need five hundred for the girl, at least.’
Jack just laughed at that, and there was a moment of quiet contemplation. As she had not been ordered to stop, Faith continued to lead the gently weeping Rose across the smoke-wreathed room.
‘You, girl, bring her here,’ Jack said at last.
Faith did as she was bid. The tension in the leash increased as she did so. It seemed Rose was reluctant to approach the man.
‘Come closer, you, stand there.’
The man gestured to Faith and she had no option but to step right up to his side, tugging Rose so she was right in front of him, standing between his widespread knees. She watched with anxiety as he took a deep pull on his cigar, making the end glow red. As he moved it towards her thigh she flinched and gave a little gasp of fear.
‘Stand still!’ he ordered brusquely.
‘Stop fidgeting, Faith, or I shall have to put you into severe restraints,’ the Reverend warned her.
Faith watched in abject terror as the glowing cigar came nearer. Only her fear of the Reverend’s displeasure kept her standing there. Hardly daring to breathe, she watched as Jack pushed the unlit end of the cigar behind one of the front suspender drops of the corset, the elastic holding it firm against her naked thigh. She gave a whimper of relief as she realised his purpose. She was simply being used as a handy cigar holder, with nothing more to worry about than how long he meant to leave the fat corona smouldering there.
Next he handed her his brandy glass, and took the leash from her hands. Faith held his glass with hands that were still trembling. Though she kept her eyes respectfully downcast, she could not stop herself from furtively looking to the side.
The hand that had felt her own leg so professionally was now appraising the flesh of Rose’s thigh. If Faith’s hands still trembled a little, Rose’s legs were quivering and Faith could hear the girl’s rhythmic sobbing as she stood in front of the trader and cried.
‘Legs further apart.’
He slapped her thighs to enforce this instruction. Rose gave a gasp of pain and obeyed with evident reluctance.
‘For all that blubbing the little slut is dripping like a tap,’ Jack Campion commented dryly.
‘Oh, those are crocodile tears. Take no notice of the silly chit,’ the Reverend said complacently as Jack continued to explore.
‘I’ll own that these titties are firm fruit for the size. Two-fifty.’
‘Four-fifty is as low as I could go.’
Jack had Rose’s nipples between his fingers, twisting them until the girl gave a squeal of pain.
‘She is not very stoical, is she?’ Jack said in tones of regret. ‘Three hundred is my final offer.’
‘That is a fault? You will be telling me next your buyers do not like to hear their mounts squealing!’
The Reverend laughed loud at this absurdity and Jack conceded the point with a rueful chuckle.
‘I cannot go your price and make a profit, Richard. Three-fifty really is as high as I can go.’
‘I will have to find, and break in, another maid. It is such a business...’
This time it was Jack’s turn to laugh. ‘You poor man. It is not as if you have to find another pony-girl and train her up to run in next year’s cup!’
‘Three hundred and eighty guineas and you have a deal,’ the Reverend said. ‘Not a farthing less.’
‘You drive a hard bargain, Richard. Three-eighty it is.’
‘You can take her with you, if you wish. I know your word is good. But I would like an hour or so to make my farewells. I shall miss the way she moans and squirms when she is buggered, and I always think it is only proper to cane a girl goodbye...’
‘Of course,’ Jack said. ‘There is no hurry at all. Please do take your time.’
His hand moved towards her thigh and Faith thought he was going to retrieve his still smouldering cigar. Instead, he reached between her legs and took a firm grip of her cunny lips. She let out a startled cry.
‘You might care to make use of the facilities whilst I do so,’ the Reverend offered.
Faith found herself looking into Jack Campion’s wolfish eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, smiling at the maid as he pushed his fingers deeper. ‘Thank you, Richard.’
‘I’m sorry, Linnet, it won’t do.’ Amelia frowned at the girl on the bed. ‘You really must stop squealing or I shall have to gag you.’
Linnet kept her eyes fixed on the burning candle in Amelia’s hand. ‘Oh please, Amelia, have mercy,’ she babbled. ‘Whatever it is I have done, I’m really sorry.’
‘Not as sorry as you are going to be, you little slut.’ Charlotte leaned over and pinched the girl’s nipples again until she cried out piteously. Amelia sighed and put down the candle. She looked around the room. It was ironic, she thought; the rectory was as well equipped with the tools of bondage as almost any house in the three counties, yet the girls were locked into a dormitory that was sadly lacking in the equipment they needed. Necessity being the wicked stepmother of invention, Amelia and Charlotte already had lit upon the one available source of binding cords available, and pressed the laces of their drawers and corsets into service.
Linnet, still tearful from her spanking, had been made to strip completely naked and lie back on her bed, after they had pulled off the mattress. The girl made some fuss when her sore bottom met the steel springs of the bared bedstead, but she had soon been pinched and slapped into lying almost still. Amelia bound her thumbs together with a lace, and by this means secured her hands to the iron head of the bed. Charlotte, meanwhile, secured the whimpering girl’s big toes and stretched her legs out and wide apart, securing the taut laces to the bedstead. Linnet was then truly helpless. The laces, though thin, were strong, and the bondage, though undoubtedly less than comfortable, was perfectly secure.
Bella had discharged her prefectorial duties by examining the knots carefully. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Just don’t keep her like that too long; I don’t want those laces to cut off her circulation.’
Bella had then volunteered to keep watch at the keyhole. At first this generosity surprised Amelia, until moaning from that direction and the sight of a quickly pumping hand had shed light on her benevolence.
The laces provided serviceable restraints, but Amelia could not see how to use them as a gag. The problem was that the Reverend had allowed the girls no personal belongings whatsoever. She looked down at Linnet again and saw the answer. Quickly she slipped the garter off her left thigh and retrieved one of the trembling girl’s stockings.
‘This will make a gag, but it is rather dry,’ she said, smiling at Charlotte. ‘It would be better if we could make it a little bit more moist. After all, we don’t want the little slut to choke.’ She wiped herself carefully with the folded stocking, pushing it into her lubricious slit before handing it to Charlotte.
‘This is going to make a mess of her stocking,’ Charlotte said with a grin as she put the makeshift gag under her skirt. She closed her eyes and her pink tongue licked her lips as she manipulated the folds of gossamer silk.
‘Yes, I know,’ Amelia said, with a look of cod concern. She shrugged. ‘Let’s just hope she does not get discovered.’
‘Oh please,’ Linnet looked appalled as understanding dawned, ‘I’ll get into trouble.’
There was laughter as Charlotte walked across to Bella, who took the distinctly sticky stocking with a slightly distracted smile, and added her own copious contribution to its moisture content.
Charlotte brought it back and waved it in front of Linnet’s delicate nose.
‘Have a sniff, you little slut. That scent will tell you how much you are being honoured. Now, open wide!’
Linnet kept her mouth firmly closed and shook her head. This time it was Amelia’s turn to reach out with her sharp nails, pinching the girl’s rigid nipples and then twisting till she yelled.
The sticky stocking was pushed into Linnet’s mouth and secured by means of the garter. Charlotte turned to Amelia as she fondly patted Linnet’s wet cheek.
‘Right,’ she said, ‘now we can get back to work without all that silly squawking.’
Amelia said nothing. She merely picked up the candle again. Linnet seemed mesmerised. Gagged as well was bound, she could do nothing except flinch and quiver in her bondage. First Amelia stroked the girl’s bare upper thigh, the pale skin smooth and warm beneath her fingers.
‘So soft,’ she said huskily, ‘one might think she had never been whipped here. It must be very tender.’
Linnet struggled so much that the bedsprings began to creak in protest. When Amelia let the hot wax fall on Linnet’s bare thigh it sounded as if she had taken up the trampoline. She squirmed violently in her bonds, making muffled noises behind her gag.
‘What do you suppose she is trying to say?’ Charlotte asked louchely, raising an exquisite eyebrow in disdainful curiosity.
Amelia let wax drip from the candle to splatter on Linnet’s belly where it was exposed beneath her corset busk.
‘Do you know,’ she said slowly, ‘I really have not got the least idea.’
A search of the dormitory had revealed at least one other item the girls could press into service for their boisterous little game, namely Gretchen’s hair grips. Gretchen kept her blonde tresses in plaits, which were usually kept neatly coiled around her crown. She used metal grips to secure them and, as this was approved by the Reverend, there was a bag of spare ones by her former bedstead.
Linnet bucked with even more than her previous vigour as Charlotte leaned forward and manipulated the grips. Two of them now gripped her nipples. All Charlotte had to do was to reach down and squeeze the ends together. This she did from time to time, and it seemed that Linnet’s nipples were becoming more sensitive with every passing minute, for each time Charlotte performed this office, Linnet’s struggling grew noticeably more frantic.
‘Steady,’ Amelia said with a chuckle, ‘you want to watch that bucking, Linnet, or this wax could go anywhere.’
There was some truth in that. Though firmly secured by the corset laces that bound her thumbs and toes, Linnet could move her pelvis a good few inches as she squirmed.
There was a ragged circle of wax splatters coating her inner thighs and her lower belly. The temperature of the wax was not high enough to really burn her, but her reaction left no doubt that it was painful when it hit her tender skin.
Amelia dribbled the hot liquid in a slow spiral, getting ever closer to Linnet’s sex. She held the candle lower, so the wax had less time to cool down as it fell through the air. She did not want to burn the girl, so while Charlotte manipulated the nipple grips, she dropped some wax on the back of her own hand, from no more than an inch away.
It was hot enough to make her wince and bite her lip. A few seconds later she peeled back the solidified white wax. The skin beneath was pink from the heat, but quite undamaged.
‘Ow!’ she said.
‘Hot?’ Charlotte asked sympathetically.
‘Awful. This bloody stuff has blistered me,’ she lied for Linnet’s benefit.
Amelia brought the candle back over the target area, this time close enough to hit the prisoner’s pubic bush.
‘Keep still now, Linnet,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m going to lower the candle, so it might be a bit hotter.’
She let the wax splatter on the fine pubic hairs and, once again, Linnet writhed in her makeshift bondage.
‘My turn, my turn!’ Charlotte insisted, grabbing Linnet’s hair and dragging the girl, still on her knees, over to her bed.
Amelia lay back, luxuriating in the waves of little after-climaxes following her orgasm.
‘Would you like to lick me out, slut?’ Amelia had asked her victim, once the girl’s mons was well covered with wax. ‘Or do you only suck cock?’
It had taken a few moments, and a few more of Charlotte’s nipple manipulations, but eventually Linnet had understood that she was being offered a route out of her bondage. Once understanding had dawned, she started nodding as vigorously as she could manage.
They untied her thumbs and fingers, then bound her hands with the lace again, this time behind her back. The stocking gag had been removed. The nipple grips, despite Linnet’s pleas, had been left in place. Amelia sat on the edge of her bed, and Linnet had been made to kneel and put her tongue to work between her tormentor’s widespread legs.
It had not taken long. Indeed, Amelia would have liked the experience to last longer. Linnet licked diligently and surprisingly skilfully, and Amelia had been so aroused that it was little more than a minute before she found herself peaking.
In a sleepy daze she watched as Linnet serviced Charlotte. The girls’ nipples were always displayed by the too-tight blouses, but Charlotte’s were now so engorged that they looked as if they were about to burst right out of the fabric. Charlotte writhed slowly and sinuously as Linnet worked her tongue. She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip, though this did not stop strange moans escaping from her mouth. Suddenly she arched her shoulders right back, putting Amelia in mind of a stretching cat. The high scream she gave was cat-like, too.
‘Hell’s teeth, it’s the Reverend!’
Amelia had almost forgotten Arabella’s vigil. Cold fear cut through her post-orgasmic glow. By the time she heard the key rattling in the lock she was standing to attention.
‘Good evening, girls.’
The Reverend’s voice had an amused note. It so happened that Amelia found herself facing Charlotte, whose bed was opposite her own. The girls exchanged a look of wide-eyed fear. Charlotte stood as tensely rigid as did Amelia, who could see beads of perspiration on the other’s forehead.
‘Well, well, Kirsty, it would appear some have been enjoying themselves, whilst we have been at work.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Kirsty was carrying a solid little leather bag. At a gesture from the Reverend she set this down on the floor with a chink.
The Reverend walked over to Linnet’s bed. The semi-naked girl was sobbing still, but he ignored her. Instead, he thoughtfully lifted and examined the corset lace, still tied to her bedstead. ‘I wonder what sort of larks these naughty girls have been up to.’
He dropped the cord and turned to Linnet.
‘Well, my dear, would you care to explain why you are half-naked?’
He reached out and plucked the hair grips from her nipples. Linnet gave a gasp and doubled up in pain.
‘And what are these? I presume you have been playing some sort of girlish game.’
Amelia felt her stomach clench as she awaited the girl’s answer. Would the silly trollop have the sense to keep her mouth shut? The expression in Charlotte’s eyes suggested she was thinking something similar.
‘Ah, oh, yes, sir,’ Linnet sobbed.
‘Well,’ the Reverend said, then paused. There was a long tense silence, broken only by Linnet’s gasps and sobs. ‘High-spirited young girls are bound to indulge in a spot of horseplay. I do not object.’
He walked across to stand in front of Amelia. From a distance of a few inches, he stared into her eyes. Amelia felt her knees quiver and she was afraid they might buckle beneath her.
‘So long as it does not turn into bullying,’ he said with a smile that froze her soul. He dropped his gaze. Appalled, Amelia did likewise, in time to see him take her right nipple between forefinger and thumb. She bit back a moan as he pinched the flesh through the thin blouse. Then she could not help but gasp with pain as he pinched it between the little legs of the grip.
To her puzzlement and great relief, he left it there and turned to Charlotte, trapping her right nipple with the other grip as she hissed with pain.
‘I won’t have bullying here,’ he said shortly, walking back to Linnet. ‘If I discover any, I shall punish those responsible most severely.’
Amelia and Charlotte exchanged another terrified glance. Amelia risked a quick look round at Arabella, who was trembling visibly and had gone very pale.
The Reverend regarded the sobbing Linnet solemnly for a moment. Amelia was really frightened now, the throbbing of her gripped nipple giving her a dread intimation of agonies to come.
‘What a state you are in, girl. What is all this, wax?’
Linnet gave a gasp as his fingers picked some hardened wax from her inner thigh. ‘Y-yes, sir... Ooh, ah.’
‘Well, no need to make a lot of silly fuss, girl. Playing with the candle, were you?’
Again there was an awful silence. Amelia thought she was going to faint.
‘Y-yes, sir,’ Linnet said between sobs.
‘I thought so. Well you have been a bad girl, Linnet,’ the Reverend said with a chuckle, ‘and I am afraid I shall have to cane you.’
Astonished, Amelia dared to look round in time to see his fingers yank a piece of wax from Linnet’s pubic hairs. The girl gave an anguished squeal and doubled up again.
‘Yes, this will have to come out,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I had better do the job myself, I think. Kirsty, cut along and get some more of those restraints from the cupboard, and take them to my bedroom. I have a feeling that she is going to wriggle like an eel.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Kirsty’s heels clacked on the bare floorboards as she hurried off.
‘The rest of you had better get some sleep,’ the Reverend said. ‘There has been enough excitement for one night. Charlotte and Amelia, get into bed at once.’
He turned to go and then, as if having an afterthought, turned back. ‘All this jollification almost made me forget why I came here!’ He bent and picked up the bag Kirsty had brought. Opening it, he took out a set of chains and leather straps. ‘I am a little concerned for your moral wellbeing,’ he said with a smile, looping a chain around the iron foot of Amelia’s bed. ‘Such healthy young women may fall prey to the perils of self-abuse.’
Amelia watched in horror as he buckled leather straps around her ankles, chaining her spread legs to the bottom of the bed.
‘Bella, watch what I do and put a set on Charlotte,’ he instructed crisply. ‘You will find a set in the bag for Linnet later. From now on, the prefects will secure the other girls each night.’
Amelia let him lock the wristbands on her and secure them by chains to the bedhead. It was too beastly for words. The Reverend had left plenty of slack in the chains; she would be able to move around within her bondage, but not enough, she realised, to reach down and caress that all-important spot.
‘Don’t mind, do you, Amelia?’ he asked with a grin, spotting her expression after checking Charlotte’s chains. ‘You weren’t intending to frig yourself... were you?’
Amelia felt her cheeks turn red. She was caught between cold fury and a toe-curling sense of shame. ‘No, sir,’ she answered through gritted teeth.
The Reverend laughed heartily and patted her burning cheek before pulling the blanket up to her chin. Then he placed a kiss on her forehead. ‘Of course not. Well, sleep tight!’
She had never seen the man in a better mood, Amelia thought bitterly.
‘I’m only sorry that I cannot stop and entertain you girls some more,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Unfortunately,’ he gave Linnet’s behind a gentle smack, provoking a startled squeal from the girl, ‘I really must get that wax out and reintroduce this pretty little bottom to the cane!’
The rain rattled relentlessly against the rectory windows. From time to time the drumming sound became more insistent and sharper in tone. With a shiver, Amelia wondered if the heavens’ arsenal included hail. It had been getting colder as the weeks passed and autumn turned to winter.
She had still not got used to the Reverend’s relentless discipline. As the course had continued so had his standards become more exacting, ensuring that her bottom felt the depth of his displeasure with dreadful regularity. Yet the days had settled into a familiar pattern that felt strangely reassuring. The Reverend Dawes had her in his grip, and if that grip was harsh it could, at times, feel seductively secure.
There was nothing seductive, however, about the prospect of a run in the freezing rain.
‘Surely he won’t make us run cross-country in this,’ Charlotte said with a worried expression.
‘Christ, I hope not,’ Bella replied with a shiver. She gripped the blanket on the edge of her bed and looked down. ‘A bit higher and firmer now, you little slut.’
Amelia glanced in her direction. Linnet was on her knees again, making use of her cunning tongue beneath Bella’s skirt. The sight made Amelia smile, despite herself. Gretchen was no longer billeted with the others and, in her absence, Linnet had become a sort of dormitory slave. When she was not being tormented for the others’ amusement, she spent most of ‘quiet time’ on her knees, between one of the others’ legs.
As always, the sight of Linnet giving tongue provoked a surge of desire in Amelia’s loins. She wondered if she would have time to commandeer Linnet once Bella had finished with the chit...
There was a rattle of the key in the dormitory door. Every girl fairly leaped to stand at attention by her bed. Bella was still struggling to pull her gym shorts up and Linnet, looking seriously dishevelled, was gasping like a landed fish. To general relief it turned out to be Faith, followed by Gretchen, who was struggling with what was evidently a rather heavy load.
‘All right, Gretchen, put them there.’ The maid indicated a corner of the room.
Amelia watched as Gretchen put the pile of rubber sheeting down. She kept her head bowed all the time now in the presence of the others. She wore only the corset and wool stockings that, apart from the hefty leather cuffs and collar, had become her usual uniform. Fading welts were noticeable on her bottom, but there was something else that caught Amelia’s eye as she turned back to the maid.
Gretchen’s pubis had been shaved and there was what looked like a pair of padlocked steel rings linking her outer labia. The sight sent a little thrill of fear through Amelia. Day by day, Gretchen was being reduced to an ever more degraded condition. Already her demeanour seemed less like that of a trainee, and more that of an abject slave. The sight fascinated and terrified Amelia in almost equal measure. She could not help but wonder if this was being essayed for some particular reason, or if it was a harbinger, a pointer to ordeals in store for the rest of the trainees.
‘There are capes, sou’westers and galoshes for everyone. Strip and put them on, quickly now, girls,’ Faith instructed crisply, cutting into Amelia’s panicky train of thought.
‘B-but...’ Charlotte stammered.
Faith shrugged. ‘You are to carry your gym kit, but the Reverend thinks it might get too sweaty under your capes.’
It was not much of an explanation, but Charlotte had learned her lesson, for though she blushed, she pulled off her gym vest and shorts without further ado.
The scent had reached Amelia’s nostrils now; the strange, pungent odour of latex that always made her senses reel. She remembered the rubberwear section of Mademoiselle Isobel’s; she had seen things like these waterproofs there.
With a shudder, and a blush, she pushed away memories of tight rubber bloomers and the horridly sticky rubber incontinence sheets she had been forced to endure at Hope Hall.
‘Here, Amelia.’ Kirsty interrupted her unwelcome reverie again by handing her a little pile of black rubber things.
The dormitory became a whirlwind of naked girls struggling with rubber boots. The ‘galoshes’ were like no rain gear Amelia had ever encountered. They consisted of a tight sleeve of thick black latex, in truth more like a stocking than a boot. This ended in a much more rigid shoe form with six-inch heels. Faith moved around the dormitory, dispensing the talcum powder, which was essential to enable the girls to ease the clinging rubber up their legs. The boots reached high up Amelia’s thigh, finishing at the very crease where her leg and crotch met.
‘Are you sure these are the right ones?’ she asked Faith, without much hope.
‘They are rather long, aren’t they?’ Faith smiled sympathetically. ‘Now tighten up that belt to keep them snug. The Reverend says that if they are not drum tight, he’ll beat a tattoo on your slovenly behinds.’
With a sigh, Amelia bent to her task. The galoshes were topped by a sort of fixed belt, which she buckled up and pulled tight, almost like a garter. The boots done, she turned to the cape.
‘No,’ Faith said from behind, ‘it’s easier to do the sou’westers first, believe me.’
The rubber hat increased the pungent smell around her, as well as restricting her peripheral vision. There was a chinstrap, which Amelia tightened.
She glanced at Charlotte, who looked surprisingly fetching. She had her own boots fastened tight, and the bottom of her sex actually came a little lower than the tops of her absurdly long, gleaming boots. She had her legs slightly apart, trying to balance on the perilously high heels.
She was blushing furiously, though the fact that she was struggling with the chinstrap of her hat made it look as it might be from exertion rather than shame. Whatever the reason, the girl’s pale skin, blushing cheeks and strange garb made an intoxicating combination. Amelia wished again that she’d had the time to appropriate Linnet.
The rubber cape went on and Amelia felt a prickle of panic. Stupidly, she had assumed that its surprisingly thick and heavy folds of latex would reach somewhere around her knees. In fact, if she stood straight, the hem of the garment barely touched the top buckle of her boots.
‘We aren’t going out in these, are we?’ Charlotte wailed.
‘I think so,’ Faith said as she tightened the strap on Linnet’s hat. ‘Where you are going is on the other side of town.’
Amelia felt the blood rush to her temples. The hem of the cape brushed her sex as she teetered on the precarious heels.
‘No objections, I hope, girls?’
The Reverend’s deep voice made Amelia quake with fear. For a big man, he could move almost silently at times.
There was a tense silence, broken only by the rustling of rubber. The Reverend stood contemplating his trainees with satisfaction. He held a carpetbag in one hand, an umbrella underneath his arm.
‘Please, sir.’ Charlotte’s voice was hoarse with fear. So different, Amelia thought, from the haughty tones the girl had first used to their tutor. ‘Must we go out in public – in these?’
‘The rainwear is to protect you from the elements, girls,’ the Reverend said mildly. ‘But I see you feel uncomfortable, Lady Charlotte. Does anyone else feel the same way?’
Amelia looked around. Gretchen stood with her head bowed, frozen, as she had been since the Reverend’s sudden entrance. Kirsty stood at attention, a glimpse of red-gold fur just visible between the black rubber of her boots and the hem of her cape. Bella, too, waited docilely enough, a ribbon of pale flesh displayed between boots and cape hem and a nest of chestnut curls perfectly visible below the bottom of her cape.
Linnet was trembling visibly and her pretty face was all that could be seen of her under the rubber, except a glimpse of thigh flesh and a few dark pubic strands. It was clear the girl lacked the courage to speak up. It was her or no one, Amelia realised.
‘Please, sir...’ Was that her voice? That submissive, plaintive little whisper; was that really what the Honourable Amelia Colinbrooke sounded like under the spell of the Reverend Dawes? Fighting her fear, she straightened up her shoulders and swallowed hard. ‘Please, sir. I feel uncomfortable, too.’
There was literal truth in this statement. The sight of Charlotte and the others dressing had caused Amelia’s nipples to engorge until they felt ready to explode. The rubbing of the cape over the swollen buds was driving her to distraction, even as she spoke. Worse, the dormitory was warm, and the latex cape was fast getting hot. A rivulet of perspiration formed on her chest as she waited his response, and she felt it tickle as it trickled down between her breasts.
‘P-please, sir.’ Linnet’s voice made Amelia’s sound confident. It was no more than a whisper, choked with fear. ‘I do, too.’
‘Anyone else?’ the Reverend said. ‘No? Very well. Charlotte, Amelia and Linnet, stand out here. I think I have the means to deal with your fears. Hold your arms out, Charlotte, and push back your cape.’
Amelia suppressed a moan as she realised his intention. Why had she not kept her stupid mouth shut? She watched him open the carpetbag and take out some heavy leather straps that seemed to drip with glinting steel D-rings and snap hooks. Quickly the Reverend buckled leather restraints around Charlotte’s wrists and upper arms, just above the elbows.
‘Please, what...? Ow!’ The slap was a hard one across Charlotte’s bare bottom.
‘Silence now, Lady Charlotte,’ the Reverend said gruffly. ‘I believe I have allowed you your say.’
The whimpering girl’s arms were folded across the small of her back, then the wrist and opposing elbow bands shackled firmly. Charlotte was now pinioned helplessly, but the Reverend was not quite finished. Letting the cape fall back over the girl’s naked body, he produced a broad leather collar and quickly buckled it about her throat, over the high neck of the rubber cape. A dog leash was clipped to this and the end handed to Kirsty, who did not bother to hide her delight at this game.
‘Watch her on the stairs, Kirsty. If she falls in those heels she will not be able to use her hands to save herself.’
The Reverend handed a set of similar restraints to Bella with instructions to truss Linnet likewise. Faith performed the same office for Gretchen, even though she had made no complaint. The Reverend took a final set of leather cuffs and collars from his bag, and turned to Amelia with a smile.
‘I am glad you spoke up, my dear,’ he said as he buckled on a wrist cuff. ‘I like to know if a girl feels uncomfortable in her rainwear.’
Amelia gave a gasp as he hauled her arms across her back to pinion them in place.
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘if I know who feels unhappy, I can make sure it is quite impossible for them to run away!’
When will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? Amelia berated herself as she struggled to keep from falling on the slippery cobbles of the high street. The first irony was that the streets of Hatherby were quite deserted. The relentless rain had driven everyone indoors and there were few eyes around to linger on the revealing hems of the girls’ little rubber capes.
The second irony was that she could not have spoken out now, had she wished. As an afterthought the Reverend had added gags to the protesters’ bondage. A wide bung of black rubber had been forced into Amelia’s open mouth. This had been secured with a strap that passed behind her hat, the strap of the sou’wester being tightened in concert with its fellow so it chafed quite painfully beneath her chin.
Rain hammered down, bouncing off the capes and making the procession of girls look shiny and slick. They did not walk quickly. The heels had been difficult indoors; on the wet street the girls moved with teetering caution, especially those who’d had their arms secured behind them.
Amelia followed the Reverend Dawes, who walked under a large umbrella tugging her chain leash from time to time. The rain was cold on her face, and splashes hit her bare flesh, reminding her of how inadequate the covering was. It felt the more pronounced because the rest of her body was very warm indeed. In fact, her torso was veritably steaming underneath the heavy cape. Amelia’s nipples rubbed maddeningly against the rubber cover as she walked, and perspiration bloomed all over her naked body. This trickled in cooling rivulets down her back and between her breasts.
If she could have moaned aloud, no doubt Amelia would have done so. Tears of helpless, hopeless humiliation sprang to her eyes, washed away almost as soon as they formed by the torrential rain. She knew she was helpless on her master’s leash as any spaniel bitch.
The big wooden hall was so new that it still smelt of fresh sawn wood. High ceilinged and brightly lit by the incandescent, new electric light, it radiated an aura of modernity.
They stood in a sort of foyer. Hinged partitions divided this from the main part of the hall. However, these had been folded back like a mahogany concertina, allowing Amelia and her companions an unrestricted view into the place.
A powerfully built man in a singlet and what looked liked circus tights was swinging Indian clubs in the centre of the hall. He was bald, with an impressive waxed moustache and even more impressive biceps, which flexed as he swung the heavy clubs with easy grace.
The Reverend coughed discreetly and the bald man turned, blinking at the little party in astonishment for a moment. We must be a bizarre sight, Amelia thought, feeling her cheeks begin to burn as they stood dripping water on to the floor of the foyer.
‘Ah, Reverend,’ the man said with a grin, ‘you made it after all. I was afraid the rain might prove too heavy.’
‘Not at all, Mr Ziri.’ The Reverend began to unbuckle Amelia’s collar, gesturing to her and the other girls. ‘Mademoiselle Isobel has provided excellent waterproofs for my charges, as you see.’ He turned to the prefects. ‘Unleash and unbind them, girls. I want you all in your gym shorts and singlets right away.’
‘Welcome to Hatherby gymnasium, my dears.’ Mr Ziri had a heavy accent. He walked up the little row of girls, studying each in turn and fiddling with his moustache in a way Amelia did not much like. Nor did she like the way his eyes lingered on her breasts. Not for the first time, she wished they did not jut out before her quite so prominently. The tight jersey singlet did little to conceal her buxom charms in any event, and the way the Reverend insisted the girls wore their gym strip emphasised them further. Her little vest had been stuffed inside her shorts and pulled down until her breasts were flattened by the pressure of the material, making her nipples stand out like bullets.
‘We are going to do a little circuit training, girls.’ The Reverend rejoined them, having changed into his sports shorts and vest. ‘Mr Ziri has devised an exercise routine for you. He and I will be on hand to lend encouragement.’
Amelia looked at the gym equipment glumly. She had a good idea what ‘encouragement’ was going to mean.
Mr Ziri went to a side room and emerged with objects that made Amelia’s stomach flutter fearfully. With a twinkle in his eye he handed one of the wooden paddles to the Reverend Dawes. They were flat, with oval faces which gradually narrowed from the widest point until a handle was formed, flaring out slightly again at the very base. At the widest the paddles were a good seven inches across, and including the handle part they were almost two feet long. The Reverend slapped his paddle, hard, against his hand, producing an explosive crack. Amelia would have laid good money that six girlish stomachs contracted in concert at the sound of that impact. Certainly hers had.
‘These are pelota bats,’ the Reverend said with a grin. ‘Mr Ziri and I are going to have a game of what did you call it again? Jokari?’
‘Yes, Reverend.’ The man laughed, slapping his paddle against his thigh and producing another horrid crack.
‘It is not balls we will be batting, if there is any slacking on the circuit,’ the Reverend said, suddenly serious, his eyes narrowing as his gaze raked the line of trembling girls. ‘I think, perhaps, that I shall give you a taste before we start, just so you know what to avoid. Turn around and grab the lowest wall bar. Feet out, I want your toes against the line.’
The polished wooden floor had been marked out to make games courts, and there was a white line about three feet from, and parallel to, the wall bars. Amelia looked down, placing the toes of her gym shoes against the line with care. Then she bent from the hips, knowing to keep her legs rigidly straight, and grasped the lowest bar, which was no more than a few inches from the floor. This meant her body was jack-knifed, with her bottom quite the highest part of her.
The fluttering in her belly grew worse by the second as she waited. She had to force herself to take regular breaths. Don’t be so stupid, Amelia, she told herself crossly. How bad can it be? A little smack, a little sting. It will soon be over. After all, she’d had enough corporal punishment over these long weeks. She should be getting used to it by now.
Perhaps that was the problem. The more she was thrashed, the more she found it hard to stand and wait for it to start. Every cane stroke, every kiss of birch or leather, seemed to have burned itself on to her memory, making her anticipate, all too vividly, how tender her bottom was and how much the next punishment was going to hurt.
The beast was making it worse by not getting on with it, she thought, willing her tutor to get the demonstration over with. Clearly, however, the Reverend was in no hurry.
‘Six such lovely bottoms, Reverend,’ Mr Ziri said with relish. ‘These shorts display them very nicely. I don’t suppose they give much protection.’
‘Thin cotton, Mr Ziri, but even that can save a sight more skin than these minxes deserve. We might have to take them down for some slippering on the bare before we are through, do you not agree?’
‘Indeed,’ the other man said, a good deal more eagerly than Amelia would have liked. ‘Unfortunately, it often proves necessary to put such pretty young ladies across one’s knee!’
The two men laughed heartily at this. Amelia felt the blood rush to her face as she strained to hold her position. It was becoming difficult to keep her legs straight, and her back was also beginning to feel the strain. However, she knew the penalties for poor posture well enough, and she resolved to keep her position perfect as she waited for the inevitable paddle spank.
Somebody was for it. She could tell from the way the men were talking that they were eager to administer salutary slipperings. By the time they left the gymnasium someone’s bottom would be very sore. But still, it did not necessarily have to be hers that really got it. If she concentrated every fibre of her being on keeping her position well, and then on doing the exercises flawlessly, it might be someone else’s cheeks that were made to pay.
‘Kirsty has a lovely seat. She fills her shorts very well, do you not agree?’
Kirsty was at the opposite end of the line of bending girls from Amelia. She had hoped he would start with her and get it over with, but she tried to tell herself she would not have to wait much longer.
‘Indeed, Reverend, a most lovely bottom. Plump and firm as anyone might wish.’
‘Nicely padded, certainly. Eh, Kirsty?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Crack! The sound was explosive, echoing about the gym.
‘I don’t suppose you felt that much at all, eh, girl?’
‘Ooh, ah, actually sir, yes... I rather did.’
‘I’ll give you another anyway, for luck,’ the Reverend said languidly. ‘If that is all right with you, of course, my dear.’
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’ Even the irrepressible Kirsty, Amelia noticed glumly, was sounding strained and hoarse.
There was another crack and an anguished hiss of pain.
The Reverend chuckled, and there was the sound of a gentler pat. ‘There now,’ he said, ‘I suspect she felt that, even through her shorts.’
‘Oooh... ah... yes, sir. Thank you, sir,’ Kirsty said.
‘Now this is an altogether more delicate proposition. Not such generous proportions, eh, Linnet?’
The girl in question could only manage a panicked whimper in reply.
‘Don’t whinny, girl,’ the Reverend said sharply. ‘You are not a horse.’
‘S-sorry, sir,’ a frightened voice said softly.
‘Yet you will notice, Mr Ziri, there is a certain chubbiness to this bottom. For all that she is a slender slip, there is some flesh to mortify!’
The Reverend had clearly illustrated his point for another sickening crack echoed around the hall. Linnet was not Kirsty, however, and she yelped with pain.
‘Be quiet you silly girl, and get back into position. Push that bottom up and out. Do it, or I promise it will be the worse for you!’
There was a second crack and another yelp. Amelia swallowed hard and closed her eyes.
‘Now this is beautiful Bella. Lovely long legs, excellent thighs, a fine and meaty bottom.’
A girlish gurgle suggested to Amelia that the Reverend was illustrating his remarks with a demonstrative hand.
‘She looks fit and strong. I might do something with this girl,’ Mr Ziri said.
‘Oh,’ the Reverend replied, ‘I think we could all do something with a bottom like this!’
The sound of the bat smacking resilient flesh rang out again. Arabella managed to limit her response to a grunt. There was another crack and an agonised sigh.
‘Not bad, Arabella, you are learning.’
‘Uh, ah, thank you, sir,’ the object of his approbation managed to gasp.
‘Lady Charlotte has a most aristocratic seat.’
Amelia could hear the Reverend’s hand patting the bottom in question and could imagine the proud girl’s humiliation all too well.
‘Yet she does not always set the example one might expect.’
The expected crack came, followed by a startled shriek.
‘See what I mean?’ There was displeasure in Dawes’ voice. ‘Get back into position this instant, miss! I mean to smack that impertinent rump again.’
Amelia’s stomach was knotting itself into tangles now. It was not that she felt particularly sympathetic, more that the panicked sounds she was hearing seemed to bode ill for her own impending appointment with pain.
There was a series of gentler slaps and a few male oaths and threats. Finally the paddle struck again. This time Charlotte fairly shrieked. The strain of listening to the approaching punishment was lessening Amelia’s resolve to take her own turn well. Slowly but surely, the sounds that echoed around the gym were corroding her courage away.
‘Your poor deportment will be dealt with later, Charlotte. Be in no doubt about it. I am only passing on because otherwise we shall all be here all day.’
‘Ha!’ Mr Ziri said. ‘That is a big one! She looks about to burst out of her shorts!’
There was a crack that sounded like hand on bottom, rather than paddle. Gretchen gave a fearful gasp.
‘Gretchen is a very hard case. It is as well that there is plenty of flesh to punish here.’ Another slap rang out and Gretchen yelped again. ‘For she requires a great deal of correction. Do you not, my girl?’
‘Y-yes, sir,’ Gretchen replied in a hoarse whisper.
‘Indeed,’ the Reverend said solemnly. ‘Fortunately I have both the will,’ there was another explosive crack, the loudest yet, ‘and the means!’
Gretchen made a strange strangulated sound, not unlike the creaking of a rusty gate.
‘Back into position, you fat trollop!’
There was another loud retort, followed by another howl of pain.
‘A disgusting exhibition, Gretchen. You will be dealt with shortly. And I do mean dealt with. I would not anticipate a particularly pleasant experience, were I you.’
Amelia was glad that she had the wall bar to grab, otherwise her trembling would have been quite uncontrollable.
‘Now that is a beautiful bottom, Reverend.’
Amelia found she was too frightened by the paddle for their words to matter quite as much as they should have done. The humiliation of having her bottom discussed by these lowborn men was intense, yet still her fear was greater.
‘Indeed, Mr Ziri, Amelia has a lovely figure altogether and her bottom is frankly hard to beat...’ The men laughed at the unintentional pun. ‘No, I mean hard to match, of course.’
Amelia felt his hand on her bottom cheeks, patting the cotton-clad flesh gently.
‘It is no hardship to beat such plump, resilient perfection. The girl juts out heroically, in fact, both at the front and at the back.’
Something told Amelia that the pleasantries were over. The hand had left her bottom and there was a pause in the men’s chat. Her whole body had tensed, unbidden. An automatic flinching of her flanks was the only movement she made as she waited in tense silence for long seconds.
Crack!
Amelia’s world was pain. It was worse, far worse, than she had anticipated, like white fire spreading across her cheeks.
‘Keep that bottom up, Amelia.’ There was warning in his voice rather than anger.
Amelia shook her head and tried to think through the waves of pain. She pressed her bottom up and out, though that was the last thing she wanted to do. Just one more and it will be over, she told herself. Somehow she managed to hold her position until the second scalding smack came cracking down.
She heard a girl howling somewhere, the voice sounding nothing like her own. She gasped, shaking vigorously, until the high tide of agony began to ebb away.
She had done it! Still wincing, she felt relief flood through her. She had taken her two cracks and had not got into trouble like Charlotte and Linnet. That had to improve her chances of avoiding the slipper. Almost exulting, despite the fact her bottom still burned, Amelia awaited the order to straighten up.
‘Now, girls, you know what to avoid during the exercise,’ the Reverend said. ‘No, Gretchen, Amelia, do not straighten up just yet.’ There was a pause. ‘Mr Ziri, perhaps you would like to give each of those cheeky bottoms a couple of pats, too. Just so they know exactly what they should expect.’
Amelia’s breath was getting ragged and she was starting to perspire freely. With a grunt of relief she grabbed the rope that rang the bell to mark her first completed circuit. As usual, the athletic Bella, closely followed by Kirsty, had beaten her to it. At least, she thought as she set off around the gymnasium again, the others were behind her. The sound of pelota paddle impacting on shorts seat echoed around the hall. Amelia did not dare to pause and look around to see who had caught it. Instead, she took a deep breath and began her second circuit with the bar.
This should have been easy. It was easy, really. All one had to do was to walk ten feet along the narrow bar that linked the feet of an upturned mahogany bench, two feet above the gymnasium floor.
‘A simple balance test to begin gently,’ the Reverend had told his wide-eyed charges before they set off.
The only problem was the presence of Mr Ziri. He stood, paddle in hand, between the bar and the vaulting horse. Amelia had to put her hands on her head, trying to ignore the way this made her breasts press out even more embarrassingly against her singlet, and the way Mr Ziri’s eyes lingered on her prominent nipples. Then she had to stop her legs from trembling as she walked along the narrow wooden bar.
It had been hard the first time around. It seemed as if the paddle was itching in Mr Ziri’s hand, and her buttocks were still smarting from the whacks he had given her a few moments earlier. Somehow she managed not to do as Gretchen had, which was to flinch away as she passed him and lose her balance. Gretchen had been made to bend and grasp the bar whilst two more whistling smacks had been administered with the pitiless wooden paddle. Without being given time to wipe the tears of pain from her cheeks, she had been made to start from the beginning again.
Amelia had been luckier the first time, but now the strain of the circuit was telling on her legs. Her thigh muscles were trembling as she mounted the bar for the second time. She made the mistake of looking at the waiting instructor. To her horror Mr Ziri smiled back and winked.
Somehow Amelia forced herself to concentrate. She locked her fingers behind her neck in the prescribed manner, and started to walk down the wooden edge. The first few feet went well enough, then an explosive cracking sound and a squeal of pain, off to her left, made her flinch and she swayed precariously. Her stomach turned a somersault in response to her teetering, but somehow she managed to steady herself. Amelia swallowed hard. She was almost in range of Mr Ziri’s paddle now, even if he did not move a step.
‘Come on, girl, get a move on.’ He slapped the bat against his hand menacingly. There was nothing for it. She took a faltering step.
She found it almost impossible not to cringe from his malevolent presence. Her whole body seemed to want to lean out away from the bat in his hand. This made it very hard to balance, and as she passed him she felt her foot miss its step.
The tears were in her eyes even before his gruff order to bend over. Amelia grasped the bar, forcing her legs straight, and waited. At least this time she did not have to suffer the eternal anticipation she had at the wall bars.
There was an explosive crack and pain ripped through her. The beast had got the same spot he had before. Only her grip on the bar prevented her from straightening and grabbing desperately at her abused flesh. It felt as though she was wrestling the thing in her struggle to stay obediently bent. The second stroke seared her other buttock. Amelia closed her eyes and hissed like a steam whistle. It felt as if her bottom had been skinned.
‘Let’s try that again, dear. Quickly now, or you will hold the others up.’
She could not wipe away the tears that trickled down her flaming cheeks, ordered as she was to keep her hands behind her neck. Amelia’s legs were not trembling any less than they had been as she mounted the bench again. Nor was her dread of the pelota bat diminished. She simply did not see how she was going to get past him. Suppressing a despairing sob, Amelia set off down the bar again.
This time luck was with her. Her first few steps went well enough. Then, just as Amelia came within reach of the paddle, she saw Bella approaching the vaulting horse, which stood on the other side of the waiting man.
Bella set off at a run to vault the horse. Mr Ziri turned to watch her approach and Amelia took the chance to teeter quickly along the bar.
He had got her on the first circuit. Indeed, as far as she could tell, his speed and skill with the bat had allowed him to help every vaulting girl to clear the horse with a well-aimed whack. Amelia gambled that he would not be able to resist the temptation offered by Bella’s well-filled shorts as they went flying by.
It was a good gamble. Amelia heard the crack, Bella’s gasp and Mr Ziri’s laugh as she tottered safely past the distracted man. With a fleeting feeling of relief, she leaped off the end of the bar and ran like a hunted rabbit towards her next ordeal.
Equidistant now from Mr Ziri’s station between the horse and bar and the Reverend’s favoured haunt patrolling the ropes and mats, Amelia allowed herself to relax a little as she began her set of squat thrusts in the middle of the gymnasium, hands still held behind her head.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...’ She shouted out the number of each thrust as she jumped from the squatting position, not daring to complete her sets with less than complete enthusiasm, despite the pain that was stabbing through her thighs. In front of her she could see the Reverend Dawes still vainly attempting to encourage Gretchen up the rope. It was not a sight designed to encourage slacking.
‘All right, girl,’ the Reverend said, shaking his head, ‘get those shorts off. Maybe my motivator will have more effect on the bare, and you never know, it might help to lighten the load.’
Gretchen’s cheeks were streaked with tears and perspiration. With a despairing wail she quickly unbuttoned her shorts and pulled them off.
‘Right, let us try again!’
‘But s-sir, I c-can’t,’ she gasped even as she grasped the thick rope descending from a great beam beneath the ceiling. Amelia found her eyes fixed on Gretchen’s bum cheeks. Lurid oval shapes the colour of ripe plum tomatoes testified to the persuasiveness of the pelota bats.
Crack! The bat caught Gretchen’s bottom with an echoing smack so emphatic that Amelia winced at the mere sound, setting the generous flesh vibrating from the impact. Gretchen tried desperately to haul herself up the rope, but it was hopeless. Her flesh was too sumptuous, her arms too long unexercised for them to be able to haul her skywards. Furthermore, her technique was hopeless. Amelia could see she had no idea how to use her feet and legs.
Gretchen no longer wore her shorts. Her blonde plaits, pinned around her crown, and white singlet emphasised how red her puffing cheeks were. The same singlet, and the creamy paleness of her legs and white of her knee socks, contrasted with the even more lurid scarlet of her bottom and upper thighs. She hopped hopelessly around in circles, trying to simultaneously haul herself upwards and avoid the punitive paddle.
The bat came down again. Another heart-stopping crack echoed around the gym. Amelia watched as the woman’s cheeks bounced under the impact once again. Gretchen emitted a high-pitched squeal and jumped a foot into the air, holding herself by the rope for several seconds, before sliding back with a despairing wail, only to receive another wicked smack.
‘Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty!’ Amelia’s thighs were in agony now and her breath was gone. She tried to run over to the mats but it was more of a limping scuttle. Kirsty was getting up as she arrived, allowing her to pick a place on the mats as far as possible from the Reverend. As Kirsty climbed the rope, Amelia hoped he would continue to concentrate on Gretchen.
She began the set of abdominal curls, shouting out each number as before, which was not easy as she was so out of breath.
Amelia heard the Reverend ordering Gretchen to run ten times from end to end of the gym, his bat landing with a crack on the woman’s backside as she struggled to obey. Her heart sank. As she curled upwards she saw Kirsty’s bottom coming closer as she descended her rope. The Reverend stood beneath, paddle at the ready. Amelia could guess what he was watching. It seemed that Kirsty could guess too, because her descent slowed.
‘Come on, Kirsty,’ the Reverend called out. ‘No slacking, girl!’
As soon as Kirsty’s hindquarters were in range he unleashed a beauty. Amelia watched the arc of his arm and the long paddle as it cut through the air. Her belly contracted in sympathy at the sound of wood on thin cotton and the tender skin beneath it. Even the indomitable Kirsty could not prevent a pained grunt from escaping. She let go of the rope and dropped to the floor, running off to do her gym lengths before the Reverend could decide to bestow another stroke.
Amelia called out her fifteenth and final curl, suddenly aware she was alone in that part of the gym with him. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The Reverend was towering above her, bat in hand, smiling broadly.
‘Buck up, Amelia,’ he said. ‘I won’t have slacking, girl.’ He slapped the bat against his meaty thigh for emphasis. Amelia scrambled to her feet despairingly, gasping for breath. What on earth could he mean by ‘slacking’? How could she, or any of the girls for that matter, possibly put more effort in?
The next exercise was one she particularly hated. First she had to pick up the medicine ball. Amelia’s instincts were screaming for her to get her bottom away from the Reverend’s bat before bending to pick up the heavy ball, but she knew any attempt to get out of range would merely make the very thing she sought to avoid inevitable. Somehow she made herself bend, thigh muscles still protesting from the squat thrusts, and lift the heavy ball.
Upright, she held it out with arms outstretched in front of her.
‘One, two, three, four, five,’ she counted aloud, ready to raise it to another count of five. As she did the Reverend stopped her by placing his bat on top of it and pressing down.
‘A little too fast, Amelia,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I think you should start again and be less hurried.’
Amelia lowered the ball, suppressing a sob. The weight of it was starting to hurt already, and she had to repeat the action ten times over. The first time around she had barely managed it. This time her muscles were fatigued. She did not know if she could complete her sets if she repeated the first count.
‘One... Two... Three...’ She forced herself to enunciate slowly, pausing between each number. The Reverend’s eyes were fixed on hers. Amelia was transfixed by his predatory gaze. ‘Four... Five,’ she finished. Only then did she dare to raise the ball. ‘One, two, three, four, five,’ she counted as she raised it high above her head, shoulder muscles aching, the Reverend’s eyes still boring into hers.
She held the ball above her head for another count of five, then lowered it slowly again. Forcing herself not to rush, she counted out the next set.
By the fifth set Amelia was in real difficulty. The sounds of exercise and punishment still echoed around the bleak gymnasium but they were distant, as if heard in a dream. All she could focus on was the excruciating pain in her shoulders and upper arms. That and the eyes of the man who stood, staring into hers.
She fought gravity and the heavy medicine ball. It seemed determined to fall floorwards, her overtaxed muscles barely able to hold it up. Somehow she counted to five and began to lift it. Tears welled and began to trickle down her cheeks. She could barely count aloud for gasping with the pain. It was impossible. Too heavy. Her arms hurt too much. Somehow she got the thing above her head. This taxed different muscles and there was an instant of relief before these began shrieking their protest in turn. Amelia gasped out her count of five and began lowering the ball again.
‘Hold it up, girl. I want those arms absolutely straight.’ A furrow of displeasure creased the Reverend’s brow.
The medicine ball was quivering as exhausted muscles transferred their shaking to the thing. Far worse, it was dipping, the weight too much for her arms and shoulders to support. Helplessly, Amelia watched it sink in front of her, vaguely aware that the Reverend had stopped staring into her eyes and stepped to the side.
The paddle stroke was wicked. Her already tender bottom exploded with pain. Strangely, this was almost helpful as the intense agony temporarily eclipsed the aching in her arms. The lightning jolt of pain also seemed to give her a temporary strength, and she managed to finish the count and get the ball above her head once more.
Unfortunately, the effect was short-lived. By the time she lowered the medicine ball the pain was fading and her shoulder muscles were even more distressed than before.
‘One... ugh... two...’
‘Keep it up girl!’
‘I-I c-can’t, sir...’ Amelia howled helplessly as her arms drooped in front of her.
Crack!
‘Aaaooooohhh...!’
‘I said hold it up, miss!’
‘Three...’
‘No, no, you silly girl, you cannot count that.’
Crack! Once again the pelota gave her bottom a meaty thwack. Amelia opened up her lungs and shrieked.
‘Very well,’ the Reverend said in disdainful tones, ‘since you persist in being feeble about this matter, I shall let you off the rest of the set.’
Relief flooded through Amelia, but it was tinged with dread.
‘However, there will naturally be a penalty. Please remove your shorts.’
The immediate relief in being allowed to drop the ball was so intense that it quite eclipsed Amelia’s shame at having to uncover, and even for a moment, dread of the penalty. She unbuttoned her shorts, feeling the pain in her shoulders finally begin to ebb away. Struggling to tug them down, she winced as the cotton grazed those portions of her hindquarters that had been kissed so brusquely by the hardwood bat.
‘That must be tender.’ The Reverend gave a sigh as he regarded her glowing bottom. ‘Unfortunately, I am afraid I shall have to make it really rather sore.’
A bit of the old Amelia, the proud Amelia, bridled at this mocking. Anger at her appalling usage and this beast’s hypocrisy stole unbidden into her soul. She turned and glared. It was only for a moment, but he saw it and smiled.
‘Not licked yet, are we, madam?’ There was almost admiration in his voice. ‘I like a bit of spirit in a girl.’
Amelia felt her heart hammer as conflicting emotions boiled within her breast.
‘Now, my dear, pick up the ball and clutch it to your belly.’
She picked up the heavy ball and did as she was bid, pressing her stomach and thighs against it, horribly aware of the way her bottom was pushed out by this posture. Now there was only one thing in her heart and mind. Something called terror.
She gasped as she felt the Reverend’s hand on her sore behind. In front of her she could see Charlotte reluctantly pulling off her shorts for a smiling Mr Ziri, but this sight meant little to her. All her attention was fixed on the presence behind.
‘My, my, this bottom feels hot.’ The Reverend’s relaxed voice reminded her of a tiger’s purr, seductive yet threatening. ‘The exercises must be warming you up, my dear.’
He took his hand away and Amelia closed her eyes, clutching the big medicine ball towards herself. The smack of the paddle was not long delayed. There was a sharp retort, sending fiery pain through her buttocks.
‘Keep still, and count them out.’
Was there a hoarse tone in the Reverend’s voice? Could the sight of her bare bottom be affecting his usual self-control? Amelia had no leisure to contemplate the matter. A second crack doubled her agony.
‘One... thank you, sir,’ she whimpered as soon as the power of speech returned.
Crack!
‘Oooh... two, thank you, sir.’
The pain in her arms and shoulders belonged to another era, perhaps another person. This Amelia knew nothing but the scalding sensation in her bottom. The next pair of meaty cracks expanded her universe to include the tops of her thighs. She clutched the medicine ball convulsively and waited until the pitch of pain started to recede.
At last she managed to count the fourth stroke to the Reverend’s satisfaction. The final crack took her four-square on the spot where the underhang of her cheeks met her bottom crack. The pain was no less intense here than it had been on her thighs, but it seemed to be more endurable, even more welcome, in some inexplicable way. Still, she had to clutch the ball and hiss like a boiling kettle for a moment before she could thank her tormentor for his pitiless handiwork.
‘Very well,’ the Reverend said, sounding regretful. ‘You may go on to the rope.’
The rope proved easier than before. This time around her arm muscles had at least had some respite whilst her bottom took the strain. The presence of the Reverend with his paddle and the throbbing soreness in her naked rear probably also helped her to shimmy up the rope with greater alacrity.
Gasping, Amelia touched the bar at the top of the rope and began her descent. This was less appealing, as she would be lowering her tenderised behind towards the Reverend and his bat. She could not stay where she was, however, and she was appallingly aware of how her position above him revealed the most private parts of her person to his hawk-like gaze. Amelia could feel moisture trickling down her inner thighs and tried not to think about what sort of glistening picture she presented.
There was nothing for it, so she lowered herself as little as she could before jumping down to land on the mat.
Perhaps she had let go of the rope too early, for she could not keep her footing as she landed, pitching forward on to her hands and knees. Her bottom only stuck up for a split second, but that was enough.
The bat caught her across the middle of her buttocks even as she was rising up to run. Yelping, she dashed away and out of range as fast as she could.
The penultimate exercise gave her some chance to recover. She had to run ten widths of the gym, from the entrance to the far wall bars. The first time round, desperate not to lose sight of Arabella and Kirsty, she had run as fast as she could. She knew better now. The circuit training was too taxing to take it at full tilt. The ten lengths gave her time to collect herself and let her arm muscles and bottom recover a little, before she had to start the whole purgatorial round again.
It also gave her the chance to assess the others. Amelia knew perfectly well that she had to stay in touch with the leaders if she did not want to be adjudged to be slacking, but she had to pace herself better if she wanted to have a chance of getting through comparatively unscathed.
Bella was still in front; Amelia could see her at the squat thrusts. She was red-faced but determined and still in possession of her shorts, even if these looked about to burst every time she squatted. Linnet, on the other hand, was now clambering out of hers, blinking fearfully, as the Reverend watched her. Charlotte was struggling with the medicine ball.
Over on the precarious beam, Kirsty was being supervised by Mr Ziri, the nerveless girl seeming to manage easily. That left Gretchen, whose running had slowed to a rather pitiful limp. Amelia passed the plump woman, who was blowing like a steam train as she stumbled by on her last length of the gym.
Now it was Amelia’s turn for the vaulting horse. She paused before the run. To her chagrin Kirsty had completed the beam and scurried off to do her squats. Mr Ziri was waiting beside the horse, pelota bat in hand. Amelia’s belly flipped as his eyes dropped down to peruse her naked sex.
‘Not a very impressive show really, girls. I think I shall have to bring you down here more often to drill a little fitness into you.’
Six gasping girls were lined up by the vaulting horse. Only two of them were still possessed of shorts. Amelia had recovered enough from her exertions to feel the shame of her exposure, but she dared not cover her naked cunny despite the hot eyes of the gym instructor. Mr Ziri’s tights now bulged noticeably at the front. Amelia took a gulp of air and hung her head.
‘Gretchen, Linnet, your singlets are soaked in sweat. You had better take them off before you catch your deaths.’
To her side there was a movement as Gretchen peeled her vest off with obvious reluctance. It was true that the cotton top was moist with perspiration, but then so was Amelia’s. She did not point this fact out, however, electing to silently thank heaven for small mercies instead.
The girls were made to change positions, so that they stood in pairs according to dress. Bella and Kirsty still retained their shorts. Amelia stood between Kirsty and Charlotte; who also wore only her singlet, socks and plimsolls. Linnet and Gretchen, naked except for long white socks and gym shoes, blushed and trembled at the end.
‘As the bats seem to have little effect we are going to try this instead.’ The Reverend glanced towards Mr Ziri, who had picked up a nasty-looking split-tailed tawse.
‘To finish the day’s exercise I want you to run circles around the gymnasium. When you hear this sound,’ he put a whistle to his lips and blew, producing a piercing tone by way of illustration, ‘you will run as fast as you can. When I blow again you will stop dead still. I may, or may not, call out one of your names then. Should your name be called you will skip over here,’ he patted the horse, ‘to take a few of these.’ The Reverend gestured to Mr Ziri, who gave the leather-covered pommel of the horse a heart-stopping thwack with the tawse. ‘Then the rest of you will stand and watch until the whistle sounds again, and you will resume your run.’ His face grew grave. ‘I must tell you, girls, that slacking will result in strokes, as will failure to stand still until the whistle sounds, as will failing to watch attentively. Is that understood?’
Somewhat reluctantly, the girls chorused their assent.
‘Is that understood?’ The Reverend’s voice echoed around the hall.
‘Yes, sir.’ This time the chorus was loud and emphatic.
‘Good.’ The Reverend put the whistle to his lips and blew. The little knot of girls set off at a trot.
‘Faster, faster, I want to see some titties bouncing, girls. Now run.’
Charlotte was at her side and Amelia heard her companion sob at this. For her own part the crude remark had made her all the more aware of how her full breasts jiggled under her thin singlet. It could be worse, she told herself, as Gretchen’s naked melons bounced in the corner of her eye. The group soon resolved itself into the usual order, Bella’s long legs taking her away in front. Amelia tried hard to keep up with Kirsty, losing Charlotte as she chased the Scottish girl.
Pheeeeeep! She careered to a stop, facing the wall bars. Only now did she appreciate quite how diabolical the plan was. Amelia waited in trembling trepidation, praying that her name would not be the one.
Pheeeeeep! With a gasp of relief, she set off once more, chasing Kirsty’s bouncing mop of red-gold curls around the circumference of the gym. She had just been starting to get her breath back by the horse, and now she was panting heavily again.
Pheeeeeep! Again she stopped. Again came the awful wait.
‘Linnet, get that fetching little bottom over here.’
Amelia watched the naked girl trot over to the horse. She could sense Linnet’s reluctance though she did not dare delay. Linnet’s hair had been put into a single plait that swayed as she ran over to the waiting men. The muscular Mr Ziri and the Reverend Dawes waited, each with a tawse gripped in his fist, as they watched Linnet approach them. Her slenderness and delicacy seemed all the more pronounced in contrast to their powerful forms, her nakedness all the more shocking as the men were clothed.
Linnet’s pale skin was but a little pink after her exertions, except for her bottom, which was still glowing from the bat’s attentions. As she reached the dwarfing figures of the men, Amelia saw the girl’s sloping shoulders quiver. She did not know if she had ever seen anyone who looked quite so vulnerable.
The Reverend Dawes did not deign to speak to the girl. He simply gestured to the vaulting horse. Linnet had been under his tutelage long enough, it seemed, for she neither hesitated nor questioned his purpose. Instead, she turned to face the horse. To bend over the pommel of the thing she had to give a little jump. Once in place her chubby cheeks were displayed to perfection.
No longer the angry scarlet they had been just after the attentions of the paddle, the oval imprints of the pelota bats were still plain to see. Gazing at them, Amelia felt a sympathetic twitch in her own punished buttocks and thighs.
The Reverend Dawes reached out and patted the proffered cheeks, drawing a startled cry from Linnet as he did so.
‘Mmmm, still a trifle warm. Not the meatiest bottom I have ever beaten, but it really is a little peach. Have a feel, do, Mr Ziri.’
The men stroked and patted, to the accompaniment of several whimpers from the object of their attentions. Amelia watched with set lips. She should have been glad of the respite. It was a chance to rest, conserve her strength and get her breath back. She should have been glad, but she was not.
To her chagrin, as the Reverend patted and praised Linnet’s trembling rear, she felt a surge of jealousy rip through her. What does he mean, a peach? she thought furiously.
What can he see in that skinny little runt’s excuse for a bottom? If you want to see a perfect one you have only to look at mine! Then the implications of the thought hit her and she felt panic overtake her. No, I did not mean it, she prayed silently, as if afraid that some power might read her thoughts and grant her foolish wish. Let him look at anyone but me!
Even so, when the fondling finally stopped and the tawse was raised in the Reverend’s hand, Amelia willed him to lay on with all his strength. Go on, thrash her, she thought as her hands clenched at her sides. Make her suffer for being so pretty.
Her silent prayer was swiftly answered. There was a whirring sound and the brown leather tails blurred the air before a crack echoed around the gymnasium. Linnet was not given leisure to cope with that stroke, however, for even as the split tails cracked across her bottom Mr Ziri unleashed a complementary stroke that thwacked across her upper thighs a split second later.
The effect of this double stroke on her naked flesh was instantaneous. Linnet gave a shriek of pain and twisted like a gaffed fish on the pommel. Amelia was astonished that the girl did not jump right off the vaulting horse, so violent was the twisting of her slender body.
‘Quite still now, Linnet.’ The Reverend’s voice was gentle. He always seemed, Amelia thought resentfully, most content and at ease when he was whipping girls. The man was a complete and utter fiend.
As soon as the trembling girl managed to regain some composure, the fiend in question unleashed another blistering lash. Again it found its echo in an almost instantaneous stroke from his companion. Again Linnet shrieked and again her body convulsed on the horse.
The welts from the tawse strokes marked her bottom now; a neat set of furious scarlet stripes. There was a pause, and Amelia watched the welts bloom with mixed emotions. The only sound in the hall was Linnet’s sobbing as Amelia and her companions held their collective breath. Then the hissing of the tawse tails filled the air again, followed swiftly by the sound of leather impacting on flesh. Amelia was so dumbfounded by the spectacle of Linnet’s writhing form that she almost forgot what she had to do when she heard the whistle.
Pheeeep! Again she teetered to a stop and waited, grateful for the chance to stand and gasp lungfuls of air. Yet terror mounted by the second as Amelia stood and listened. Gretchen had got it after Linnet. How could it be otherwise? Of course poor Gretchen had got it. The sight of those meaty buttocks bouncing under the impact of the tawse tails would, Amelia felt sure, stay long in her mind.
Then it had been Charlotte’s turn. She had trotted so reluctantly over to her fate that she had been given eight instead of six strokes for her tardiness.
To Amelia’s surprise, and great relief, it was not her name that was called next, but Arabella’s.
Now only Amelia and Kirsty had escaped the kiss of the tawse, and the feeling in the pit of her stomach told Amelia that particular delight would not be long denied her. Even so, as she waited the seconds might as well have been hours. The beasts were playing with her, she realised with impotent anger. They were playing with them all, letting the pregnant pause go on so that it would fill each waiting girl’s mind with mounting fear.
‘Gretchen,’ the Reverend’s deep voice called out. Amelia could not quite stop a sob of relief from escaping at the sound of someone else’s name. ‘Would you mind bringing that fat bottom of yours over here?’