‘I will, sir.’
‘Tell me how she organised these Sunday-morning affairs. What did she use and how did she go about her disciplinary business?’
‘For these, she used a stiff leather strap that hung in the scullery at all times. For serious misdemeanours, she inclined to the birch rod, but for regular whippings it was always the strap.’
‘Ah, yes, I am myself a keen aficionado of the birch rod.’
I knew that. I knew it very well.
‘She would line us up, sir, after the master’s breakfast things were washed up, in the kitchen. All the male staff were allowed to stay and watch, too, which was the worst of it. Much worse than the pain.’
‘Oh? I will bear that in mind.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t, sir.’
He tapped my bottom sharply.
‘Your preferences are irrelevant. If I decide that you need witnesses to your shame, then witnesses there shall be.’
I hoped that this was Cruel Film Bastard and not Jasper talking. I didn’t think I would ever be ready for that – bad enough during the summer when Will stumbled upon me, bound and thrashed, in Jasper’s grounds. I squirmed in protest, helping the little bloom of heat from the crop to fade.
‘Come on, then. You and your fellows lined up in the kitchen, with the male staff looking on. What happened then?’
‘We were called forward in reverse order of seniority. The scullery maid got it first. In turn, we bent over the big deal table and the housekeeper lifted our skirts and petticoats. The more senior you were, the more strokes you got. The scullery maid got ten, on the seat of her drawers.’
‘Drawers were kept up?’
‘Oh, yes. The men were there! But if it was a proper punishment, it was given in the housekeeper’s office and the drawers came down then.’
‘A private whipping on the bare?’
‘Not private, sir. The other maids were called in to watch, for purposes of instruction.’
‘Ah, very good. So – where were you in terms of seniority?’
‘I was the senior parlourmaid, sir. I came last.’
‘And how many strokes did you get?’
‘Between twenty and thirty, sir, depending on how much time we had left before getting ready for church.’
‘You must have hoped for the ritual to go on longer than the housekeeper intended, every week.’
‘I did indeed, sir. She had a very strong arm and she laid a firm stroke. It was no easy thing to sit on those hard church benches and listen to the sermon afterwards.’
‘I am sure of that. Well, Walters, you will not find it easy to sit on your hard chair in the kitchen tonight either. Keep that bottom high. How long is it since you were whipped?’
‘But a fortnight, sir.’
‘Then your skin will be tender and ready for the crop.’
It was longer than a fortnight in truth. It had been six weeks since my fond farewell spanking in the bedroom of our Riviera villa. ‘Something to remember him by’. It had certainly made the plane journey memorable, shifting constantly in my seat to try and ease my bruised sit-spot.
‘May I ask how many strokes you intend to give, sir?’
‘You may not.’
It was a test of my character’s stoicism, I knew, but I always hated it when a whipping was open-ended. I needed to know from the start how to stretch out my endurance, how to school my body to release its endorphins at the right rate.
There was always my safeword – not that poor old Walters had one of those. I wondered for a moment if such a thing had existed in the sketchily researched Victorian BDSM underworld. Or had it been assumed that women, as property, could be taken beyond their endurance with impunity? It wasn’t a comfortable thought.
Even less comfortable was the first shocking stroke, making me jolt to the side in an effort to protect my bum from another of the same.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You will not break position, Walters. You will learn. This lesson will not end until you are taking each stroke in silence and without moving.’
This was something we had worked on over the summer. I had never quite achieved it. I was vocal when it came to pain and that was just the way it was. Sometimes Jasper wanted to hear me yell and sometimes he wanted to test me. Cruel Bastard insisted on the latter technique – typical, I supposed, of a cruel bastard.
Jasper wasn’t Cruel Bastard, though, and he deliberately lightened his stroke so that the pain was of that manageable kind that soon turns into a glow of pleasure. I gave silent thanks as each fall of the crop stoked the sensual fire on my eagerly proffered bottom.
‘Yes, this is good, this is true obedience,’ he said. He had worked out that he could make his stroke harder now without reducing my enjoyment. ‘You are not a sniveller like Larkin before you. She would have been bawling by now. It’s part of the reason I gave her to one of the fellows at my Club. She was far too easy to bring to tears. You will be different.’
He had covered both cheeks now with scalding welts. The tight cotton chafed my swollen, punished skin. It felt almost too tender to be borne.
He turned his attention to my upper thighs with strokes that were laconic but cruel. Earlier, they would have made me squeal, but now they made me sigh, very quietly, the tiniest of exhalations, for I did not want to reveal my shameful responses to him. In due course, however, the sighing turned to panting and I knew myself to be well roasted – if not overdone.
He stopped and laid the crop gently on the curve of my bottom, rubbing at its tight, sore surface.
‘I thought to break you,’ he said. ‘But you are stronger than you look, Walters. I may have to rethink my strategy.’
After a short silence, he said sharply, ‘Well?’
‘Well, sir?’
‘You have not thanked me for correcting you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Tell me that you deserved it.’
‘I deserved it all, and more, sir.’
‘Eh? “And more”? What’s this?’
He came around in front of me and rubbed the end of the crop along my mouth and over my face.
‘Have I mistaken you? Are you one of those unnatural girls who enjoy this kind of treatment? Eh? Can I give you away as a whore to one of my flagellant friends?’
‘No, sir, no. I thought only to please you.’
‘To please me?’ His smile was a slow one, curving into wickedness. ‘Larkin liked to please me, Walters. Are you another such?’
‘I … do not know Larkin, sir.’
‘No, you do not know her. Do you know what she would allow me to do after a whipping?’
‘No, sir.’
‘She would part her legs still further, so that the split at the crotch revealed what lay within. It was an invitation, Walters. Do you know what she was inviting?’
‘Sir?’
‘Are you an innocent, Walters? I don’t think so.’
‘She invited you to sin with her? Sins of the flesh?’
‘Exactly so. Sins of the flesh. Have you ever done anything like that?’
God,