“You shall always look where, Miss Blanchet?”
Lina sobbed. “At the floor,” she bawled. Then, heart racing, she added, “Sir.”
Smack.
“And you shall speak when?”
The pain was too much. This last slap was burning on her hot, throbbing skin as though she had touched a poker. “Oh, please stop, please! I shall do whatever you—”
Smack. Smack. Smack.
Lina opened her mouth, but remembered that there was nothing she could do but take her punishment, if she wanted him to stop.
“This is also an important lesson, Miss Blanchet,” he said, putting his hand on her throbbing skin, making it ignite with heat again. “When you are disciplined, you shall accept your punishment, or you shall even thank me for it. But you shall never, ever, complain. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Lina managed to say.
“Shall I spank you again so that you are fully disciplined?”
Lina’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and her throat went dry. She balled her hands into fists, and her body shook as she tried to will herself to ask for her punishment. Between her legs, she could feel the stickiness of whatever it was that was flowing from her naughtiest place.
As she said the words, the thrilling, painful pleasure rolled through her abdomen again, and so when Mr. Blackstone’s hand came down upon her skin a moment later, she screamed, but she could not be sure whether it was from pleasure or pain.
“Yes, sir,” she said, mustering as much volume as she could. “Spank me again.”
Humiliation turned the skin of her face red and hot, and the burn of the spanking that was delivered by Mr. Blackstone came quickly, biting into her flesh and spreading across her bottom, red-hot, then warm, in waves.
Mr. Blackstone had stepped away again, though she could not place where he was in the room. Tears spilled from her eyes and tickled the sides of her face as they coursed over her cheekbones, and, because she was so placed, into her ears.
She sniffled, and waited, for there was nothing else to do. The possibility that Mr. Blackstone might rain down upon her with another succession of slaps lingered in the air, almost like the touch of his hand over her skin. She squirmed, and her face burned each time a wave of the unfamiliar, hot sensation licked at her insides, and made her pulse deep inside, down, between her legs, where she ached.
Oh my, she thought. These were naughty thoughts, and she knew it. She struggled to push them aside in her mind but could not.
At long last, without her hearing a sound as he approached, Mr. Blackstone was next to her. She knew, because she felt his hands as they loosened the straps on her wrists and ankles. But that was all he did, and her skirts were still over her head as she began, tentatively, to twists against the restraints, which started to come loose.
“You will return to your room. I shall call Mongrave to escort you. Miss Blanchet, do not entertain any wild ideas in your mind. You may dislike the predicament in which you find yourself, but I assure you that you have no other choice. The Harlowes, for one, would be impoverished and tossed into the street because of your indiscretions. As would you. If you are obedient and receptive to your training, you will live a life of luxury, and your guardians will remain with what little wealth they have, and a renewed social standing.”
He was suddenly behind her again, and though he did not touch her, she could feel his presence on the surface of her skin. “You have,” he growled, “no choice.”
Lina fought against the urge to correct Mr. Blackstone, particularly on the issue of her “indiscretion.” She chewed her lip until it nearly bled, and closed her eyes in fury. It would do no good to make her case to Mr. Blackstone now, and there was a terrible truth in his words. She could not inflict suffering on the Harlowes, if only for Anna’s sake.
She had no choice.
The idea slithered through her, and, like the burning of the skin on her bottom, and the sound of Mr. Blackstone’s voice, it was curiously frighteningandpleasurable.
His voice was far away, near where the bookshelf that had admitted Dr. Doyle would be, when she heard him next. She wondered how he moved so stealthily; he was an imposing man.
“Free yourself and exit to the hallway when you are composed. Mongrave will escort you to your room. I expect,” he added, a feral purr in his voice, “to hear nothing of disobedience, so much as a breath of it, Miss Blanchet.”
She sniffled. “Yes, sir,” she said, to make certain beyond all doubt that Mr. Blackstone would see no further reason to punish her.
* * *
Her skirts were roughagainst her tender skin, but she held her head high behind Mr. Mongrave. She did not know if the servants were aware of Mr. Blackstone’s humiliating treatments, but she would not let them have the satisfaction of knowing that her bottom burned so much she could barely walk.
The rotund maid was turning down the sheets of her bed, and patted them with two brisk and professional strokes before looking up at her. Her expression betrayed no emotion whatsoever. “You’ll find in your bathroom the most modern of luxuries, Miss Blanchet. Have you used a hot water faucet before?”
Lina was dumbstruck, which didn’t seem to bother the maid, who walked efficiently around the bed and into the sitting room, which was connected on the far side to a bathroom. Lina followed, not knowing what else to do, and stared emptily as the maid showed her how the contraption worked. It was really quite remarkable: hot water flowed from the tap as though someone had boiled it freshly, but Lina was too stunned by the painful burning of her bottom, the still-stinging humiliation, and the shock of her change of fortune, to register much of what she was saying.
