A blush heated her cheeks. “That was some time ago. Surely we are both a little older and wiser now.”
“Yes indeed, a good deal wiser.”
“I still have the letter,” Penny said. “I would have sent it to you sooner but I had no idea where you were. The truth can’t hurt Tom now.
If you show it to the Colonel of the regiment you will be exonerated.
Perhaps you could even be reinstated.”
He seemed genuinely amused by her suggestion. “It’s much too late for that. Besides, I like my new job and the rewards are a lot better. I believe I’ve got what I wanted most, Penny; Tom’s acknowledgement of the wrong he did. I don’t need to see the letter. Your word it exists is good enough. And it was decent of you to speak up; surprisingly unselfish, in fact.”
Irked by his implication, she did not reply. He looked at his wristwatch.
“I have a long trek ahead of me if I’m to have those girls in Dhokat in time. There are still several hours of daylight left so I’ll get going today, though I’ve time for the late lunch Courtney promised me first.”
He gave her a big grin. “Don’t fret, Penny. You’ll meet your girls in the palace at Dhokat three days from now, I promise. And don’t go imagining there’s anything personal in any of this. Believe me, it’s purely business.”
He turned to the double doors dividing the parlour from the dining room as they opened. Courtney stood in the doorway, flanked by Ranee and another Indian slave girl. Penny gasped. Apart from their jewellery, both girls were entirely nude.
“Ah, Penelope, come and eat with us,” Courtney said. “You must be hungry. You missed breakfast and, as I recall, despite all your exertions yesterday all you had was a little milk.”
She winced.
“Yes, come on, Penny,” George said. “You needn’t worry we’ll make you strip and serve the meal. That’s what the slaves are for. And I’m sure Courtney has a soft cushion for your chair. Do join us.”
A twinge of pain shot through her rear even as he spoke, and Penny almost damned both men and stormed off to her room. But she was hungry and rather to her surprise believed what George had told her, even if he had made it sound like an order. She remembered how controlling he had been with her in the past, and she was relieved when no thrill of excitement teased between her legs. Maybe her treatment at Raham Dil’s hands had cured her of that, she thought hopefully.
She would eat with them, Penny decided. She needed her strength.
Only three more days and she would be in Dhokat. Once more, though George did not know it, she would be the one with the upper hand. At last Penny Winter would be back in control, her trials at an end and her future secure. The pleasant feeling of satisfaction the thought gave her just managed to take the edge off the discomfort in her backside as she sat down.
*
Jahngir Khan closed both hands around the rope and looked deep into Julia’s frightened eyes.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” he said. “You will humbly beg my pardon and promise to obey me, or I’ll flog you just as my grandfather flogged his slave girls, and with the implement you yourself chose.”
Julia was greatly regretting that foolhardy act of bravado as she felt the strain on her shoulders and upraised arms already beginning to make them ache. For half-an-hour he had made her kneel in silence beside him while he had oiled the whip’s stiff, ancient, plaited strands of dark-red leather until they became supple and pliant once more. She had hoped it would have been enough time for his temper to cool, at least sufficiently for him to exchange the whip for a switch instead, but he had shown no sign of relenting. Neither had Julia.
It had been obvious his purpose was to unnerve her into giving in.
It was plain that he was determined to force her to submit. She was equally determined she would not. Her heart was pounding madly and her gut churned incessantly with a fear bordering on terror. But it was not quite terror, nor blind panic either, and even though its grip was fierce Julia could feel her new-found strength flowing through her tautly-strung body as surely as she could the blood pumping rapidly through her veins.
Steadfastly, she looked back at his dark, brooding stare and shook her head.
“I love you,” she said with swelling pride. And she would prove it the only way she could – by facing her worst fear and showing him she could overcome it. It might be as meaningless to him as her love was, but it meant everything to Julia, the one sacrifice she could make for the man she loved, even though he was the man who was forcing her to make it.
For over five years her shyness and lack of confidence had hung like a millstone around her neck. Then in a few brief and startling days she had seen who she was, what she could be, what she could have and what she truly wanted. All too soon it had been taken away from her but she was not going to return to being timid little Julia Thomas; so staid, so conventional and so willing to do everything everyone else expected of her. That had all begun with a whipping, and now it was going to end the same way. What would happen afterwards Julia did not know or even care. What she did know was that she would never be the person she was before. And that was the way she wanted it.
Jahngir’s eyes flashed with anger. Lips compressed into a thin line, he yanked on the rope and pulled it tighter still until Julia was balancing precariously on her toes. The bite of the leather straps binding her ankles to the bronze bar set into the bathhouse step intensified as her hands were strained higher until her fingertips almost brushed the bronze ring in the lintel above her head. The Pathan secured the rope that was tied to the short chain joining the stiff leather cuffs encircling her wrists, and stepped back.
Julia twisted her head around to look back between her up-stretched arms at the girls huddled apprehensively close to one another at the edge of the garden behind her. Their faces still bore the shocked and fearful expressions that had appeared when they had returned from their bath and seen Jahngir with the whip in his hands and Julia naked on her knees beside him. Their happy chatter had died at once, and she had seen the wide-eyed look of horror Afia had given both her and the Pathan. He had prolonged the English girl’s anxious wait by having the girls dress and put on their make-up. Never had Julia heard such a silence in the zenana while they performed their morning ritual. When she had not weakened, he had increased the pressure on her by having her made-up too, her blonde hair brushed and arranged, her face powdered and painted and even her nipples rouged. For the first time they had not stiffened and swelled in response to the touch of Afia’s fingers.
The girls were silent and still as they watched her, with the same awful anticipation Julia felt herself plain on their faces, and she could see that more than just Afia’s eyes were looking back at hers with a wordless plea for her to submit. She turned her head to face her front. At once, her belly gave a lurch. Jahngir had taken a position in front of her and to her right, and was stretching out his hand.
“Give me the whip, Afia.” He had made her hold it while he fastened Julia so uncomfortably in the place where his grandfather had flogged his slave girls until they bled. So dry-mouthed her tongue stuck to her palate, the English girl swallowed hard and tried ineffectually to suppress a shiver. The heels of Afia’s silken slippers tapped on the stone steps and she held out the whip with her thumb and forefinger as though it was unclean.
“Please, my lord,” she began, and got no further when he snatched the length of leather and brandished it before her eyes.
“Silence, or you will be next,” he growled. “I’ve had enough of rebellious slave girls disrupting my household.” His glittering gaze shifted to look beyond Julia to the rest of the concubines, and she could imagine them quailing beneath his fierce glare. Yet, intimidating though it was, she met it levelly when he turned it on her, even when her lower lip trembled as he raised the whip. Let him see her fear. Let him see her conquer it for the sake of her hopeless, unrequited love.
The stiff whip rested suddenly below her throat,
and Jahngir let it trail slowly over her uplifted and out-thrust breasts. Julia looked down as she felt its menacing touch. It was terrifyingly thick, much more than his middle finger at its hilt and tapering gradually to a tip still as wide as her own before ending in a tight, knotted tassel. It must be over three feet long. Julia’s gut clenched tighter than her balled fists as she remembered the savage hurt of the wicked riding crop the head groom had used on her five years earlier. Could the whip possibly be even worse?
“Are you so eager to feel the bite of the lash?” Jahngir demanded.
Julia looked up. “No, my lord.” She used the title deliberately.
“I… I fear it very much. But I love you more.” Even through her rising terror the words brought a wan smile to her lips.
He seemed to flinch from it. “If that is true, why will you not obey me?”
“In everything else, gladly. But I will not willingly be given away.”
“A slave cannot impose conditions on her slavery,” he said, eyes bright with anger again. “You will obey without question.”
“In all else I would, and accept your judgement always. But not in becoming a gift for another man.”
“You will not be given a choice,” he said flatly, bringing his body level with her left hip.
Julia looked straight ahead. The morning sun was not yet high.
She could feel its heat on her bare back and see its beams reflecting in the water of the pool within the bath house. Sweat was already streaming down her nude body. Her belly was hollow with fear and her bowels were knotting and twisting as they had when she had watched Kate stretched across Jefferson’s desk and caned. Once more she remembered how her unreasoning terror had filled her as the riding crop had scored agonisingly into her tender young buttocks, and the jeers and laughter that had accompanied her torment that day.
“You need only speak my name to end it,” Jahngir said, and flexed the tightly plaited, shiny leather between his hands. It creaked softly, ominous and threatening.
Julia clenched her jaw and clamped her lips hard together as she battled the sudden, desperate urge to cry her submission. From the corner of her eye she saw him lift the whip high above his head. Her heart leapt and she caught her breath as every muscle in her body tensed.
Then the Pathan’s arm swung down.
Chapter 8
A vicious streak of sharp, searing pain tore across the soft-skinned cheeks of Julia’s buttocks. It was agony. Even as the appalling shock of the first ferocious impact ripped through her body like a lightning bolt, a second scorching stroke lashed her helpless flesh.
It was like fire, yet worse than fire, for with the cruel burning came the weight of the blow itself, scoring a throbbing furrow into Julia’s yielding bottom, driving the hurt deep into its firm, resistant muscles.
Eyes wide and staring, she heaved against the rope holding her arms aloft, and fought the need to scream.
A third stroke blazed a fiery line across her flanks, followed at once by another and another, each accompanied by a crack like a pistol shot and more terrible pain. Julia’s buttocks bounced excruciatingly. She had been right. The whip was even worse than the crop. She would never stand it. She would crumple and her resolve would abandon her.
Tied so tightly she could not even writhe in her torment, her body still tried, twisting and straining her sorely stretched joints in its futile efforts to escape the flaring burn and bite of the leather. Yet, she did not cry out.
Her jaws were clamped together so hard she expected her teeth to shatter at any moment. Her rapid breaths were snorting in her nostrils and her chest was growing tighter with every second that passed, but Julia’s mouth remained adamantly shut. She would not cry out, she would not beg, and most of all she would not submit.
A fearsome lash seemed to set her tender skin aflame and sent pain ploughing deep into the throbbing flesh beneath. In Julia’s throat a half-strangled shriek rose up and tried to force its way through her clenched teeth. Fighting hard, she suppressed it, only for another savage bite of intractable leather to immediately score deep into soft, fragile flesh. Julia screamed. The floodgates opened. With every meaty crack of the whip that followed she cried out, helpless to stop herself. She wept too, from the ferocious pain and at her own weakness in giving in to it. But still she did not cry Jahngir’s name.
His blows hurt her abominably. Julia breathed raggedly, head spinning, body streaming with sweat and racked by uncontrollable shudders and frantic jerks. Each wicked stroke seemed harder than the last, as though her obdurate refusal to give in was provoking the Pathan into intensifying her punishment. Or perhaps it was only that she was losing her battle. Surely by now her tormented rear-cheeks had been flogged to torn and tattered shreds under the blistering bites of the whip.
The panic Julia had been fighting from the beginning surged up inside her. She summoned her waning strength and fought it down, but she knew she was been driven beyond the limit of her endurance. Her gesture, her sacrifice for the sake of love, meaningless in any case to Jahngir Khan, was at an end. As the leather scored agonisingly into her flesh again, the pain in her heart seemed to equal that searing her tortured buttocks. Her courage and defiance dwindled, melting away under their double assault. Julia could bear no more.
“No, my lord! Oh, stop, stop! She bleeds.”
Two arms wrapped around Julia as she heard Afia’s fervent entreaty rise above her own cries. At the same moment, she felt the pressure of a body against her blazing bottom and the wicked crack of the whip scorching bare skin.
“Agh! Ooh! Ooh!”
It was not Julia who cried out. A strangled sob came from directly behind, and the arms tightened around her and pressed two big breasts against her naked back. The Indian girl had deliberately taken the stroke meant for Julia across her own buttocks.
“Afia, my love, forgive me,” she heard from Jahngir, immediately followed by the clatter of many slippered feet on the bathhouse steps.
Instantly, Julia was surrounded by the girls and their hands at her arms and shoulders and waist were supporting her sagging figure. She had not strength to raise her drooping head and her vision was a blur through her tears.
“Please, my lord, enough,” she heard Afia plead tearfully and the others joining in. “Your point is made. Untie her I beg you. Let us bathe her and soothe her hurts. There has been enough cruelty.”
“Cruelty?” Jahngir asked sharply. There was a long, and to Julia, agonising pause. “Aye, you’re right. That’s what it was.” She heard no anger in his tone. It was quiet, almost subdued. Abruptly her arms were free, and but for the girls she would have fallen. Afia released her hold and pulled away. Julia’s bottom flamed. Through the pain and her tears a vague outline appeared.
“I’m sorry,” it said in the Pathan’s voice. “You were very courageous.” The blurred figure vanished. “Do what you want,” the same voice said, and then more faintly, “I want nothing more to do with the girl.”
It was just another blow to add to all those he had already given her.
*
“Down,” Ross called sharply.
Kate dropped to the thin carpet, painfully hitting knees and elbows on the hard tiles beneath as she sprawled full length. He made an impatient noise and rolled to the edge of the bed, sitting upright to plant both feet on the floor and lean towards her.
“Why have you lifted your head? Didn’t I say to keep as low as you could? And you’re sticking your bum up as well. Get up. We’ll do it again.”
Rubbing a bruised elbow, Kate got to her feet, bewildered and rapidly running out of patience. What sort of training was this? And if he attached so much importance to it, why had he left it until the last minute? There were only hours now until her fate was sealed. In the morning she was going to be taken away, not, she had learned only the previous day, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, but to be sold privately to a rich and powerful man who would keep her in pampered luxury. As if it made any difference,
Kate thought with a flash of temper.
She no more wanted to be a slave now than she had on her first day, unless….
She looked at Ross, sitting there as naked as she was, a big, cuddly bear of a man, strong, magnificent and so much kinder than he pretended.
He had barely raised a hand to her in the last three days, even when her performance during her training had been less than perfect. Kate had tried hard, hoping, aching for him to say the words she longed to hear, but as each day had passed and the deadline drew nearer, her heart had grown heavier and she had become ever more distracted.
Now it was their last night together, the last time she would ever experience their lovemaking, the last time she would ever lie comfortably and happily in Ross’s arms in the warm glow of its aftermath. And here he was wasting what little time they had left in a puzzling and pointless exercise. What possible use could she ever find for flinging herself to the floor? Kate’s temper flared, then died at once as the pain of regret overcame her and moisture prickled her eyes. She had never imagined that anything could mean more to her than her quest for excitement and adventure. She had not even understood that there were things of far more importance. She knew better now, for she had discovered something that mattered much, much more.
“Get down,” Ross barked, and Kate flopped to the floor, suddenly determined to satisfy him and get the senseless business over with. She pushed her pelvis into the carpet and crushed her breasts flat against it, pressing her cheek down onto its roughness.
“That’s it. That’s the way,” Ross said. “Good. Now, one more time.”
“Oh, what’s the point?” Kate groaned as she clambered to her feet.
“There’s only a few hours left. I… I thought…. Oh, won’t you make love to me? We’ll never have another chance after tonight. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
The familiar stern look of displeasure that so reminded her of her father appeared on the ex-soldier’s face. “Come here. Here! Now!” The moment she was in arms’ reach he grabbed her and tipped her over his knee.
Kate and Julia: Slave Girls of the Raj Page 14