‘Too grown up for a uniform, then?’ the Reverend asked mildly.
‘Quite. As is Arabella, too.’
Dawes looked at Charlotte’s companion and smiled. ‘Ah yes, we must not forget Bella, must we. My dear, would you be so kind as to follow Faith up to your quarters? Just a moment, Lady Charlotte, there was one other thing.’
Bella went with the servant girl, leaving Charlotte on her own with Dawes for the first time. Not that this made her nervous, exactly. A little more circumspect, perhaps.
‘Now, my dear, I expect you feel too grown up for corporal correction, too?’
‘Corp... you mean flogging, vicar? Really, that would be quite absurd. Indeed...’ she paused before continuing untruthfully, ‘I really never heard of such a thing.’
The Reverend Dawes had turned to the far wall as she spoke. For the first time she noticed the astonishing selection of canes, belts and riding crops that hung there, waiting. He picked a two-tailed tawse and turned to her with a confident smile. Charlotte stared at the thing in his hand as her voice trailed away.
Crack! The Reverend Dawes suddenly struck the leather top of his desk, producing a retort like a pistol shot. Despite herself, Charlotte jumped, startled by the sound. Before she had time to recover he had rounded the desk and grabbed her by the hair.
‘Aaoow... let go! Ooh!’
The struggle was as brief as it was one-sided. The Reverend Dawes simply hauled her by the hair until she was bent over the desk. Then he put the handle of the belt between his teeth and used his free hand to haul up her skirts.
‘No, for shame, sir! Let me go!’
He did not let her go. Charlotte found it difficult to struggle; his grip on her hair was too strong. All she could do was reach back with her arms. The masses of silk skirt he had pushed up around her waist obstructed her hands; her sense of shame at her exposure sent her into panic.
‘Oh, please sir, unhand me. Please, let down my skirts.’
‘Not just yet, miss, there is a job still to be done.’
‘Oh, ah... what are you doing, sir, desist!’
To Charlotte’s mortification the chaplain gave a throaty chuckle as his firm hand explored her bottom through her drawers.
‘What are these, girl, silk? You won’t be wearing such fine underthings here for a good while. Still, I’ll warrant they will offer scant protection, so I’ll not fight you for them, just this once.’
His hand stopped feeling her. There was a pause, then a sort of whuffling noise. Charlotte heard the crack of belt on bottom flesh an instant before she felt the scalding pain.
‘Aaooow...!’
It was simply indescribable. Her bottom seemed to be on fire.
‘Tsk, tsk, Charlotte, I had heard you were a terrible little tartar. I expected more fortitude, for I have barely kissed your pretty bottom yet with my strap!’
There was another horrid whuffling and another white-hot flash of pain. Charlotte got her right hand protectively over her seared bottom. There was another crack and then her fingers were ablaze. ‘Ah, oh, aaoow!’
‘Foolish child. Put your hands back and I will belt them for you. I should grip the front of the desk, if I were you.’
Charlotte was not quite beaten. She struggled violently, for all that this meant her hair felt as if it was being pulled out by the roots. She put her left hand back and got an agonising crack across the knuckles for her trouble. Another stroke impacted hard across her upper thighs. The pain was so intense she could not even gasp for a few seconds. After that, she could do nothing except follow his suggestion. She leaned forward and grabbed the edge of the desk, screwed her eyes shut, and gritted her teeth.
Crack!
‘Aaooowww...!’
‘That is a little better, Lady Charlotte. Hold that position for me, there’s a good girl.’
Crack!
‘Oh, oh, God.’
Her bottom felt as if it had been boiled. Charlotte had never experienced such intense pain. She could think of nothing but how she might get him to desist. Pride, anger and determination seemed to have had been utterly annihilated by the strap’s venomous tails.
‘Oh, please sir, please, oooh, I cannot...! Please stop, have mercy. I’ll do as you say!’
A particularly wicked stroke of the tawse impacted on already welted flesh, and Charlotte lost the power of speech altogether for a moment. All she could do was clutch the desk edge until her knuckles were quite white, stamp her feet and emit a strangulated grunt of utter agony.
‘I am so glad that you have reconsidered your attitude, my dear.’
There was another heart-stopping whuffle, and Charlotte’s thighs were ablaze with pain. She was powerless to stop the tears that coursed down her cheeks, and quite beyond feeling ashamed of so craven a display.
‘For obedience will, undoubtedly, make your stay here much more pleasant.’
Another sharp retort echoed around the study as the tawse tails bit her bottom. Charlotte felt the pain rip through her, so intense she was unable even to shriek.
‘Corporal correction will be your regular lot, even if you essay to obey.’
‘Ah, ah, oh, oh, p-please, sir...’
Crack!
Charlotte hissed in agony as her scalded thighs were stung again. If she survived this ordeal, she realised in a panic, she would never dare to disobey this man again.
‘But,’ the Reverend Dawes continued, in his casual, conversational way, ‘should you be disobedient it will be very much the worse for you. I shall have your obeisance and compliance, madam.’
The final stroke across the centre of her bottom was so vicious that Charlotte was engulfed by a red rip-tide of pain. She leaped up like a flushed pheasant, gripping her blistered buttocks in both hands and making a strange, deep-throated gurgling sound. She fell, or perhaps tripped on her voluminous skirts and collapsed on the study floor.
Charlotte could barely register anything except the incandescent agony of her welted flesh. She lay on the study carpet, clutching her rear and writhing like an eel as she gasped with shock. After a minute or so the pain began to subside, terribly slowly. An appalled awareness of her situation stole into her soul.
The Reverend Dawes was standing over her. She looked up in shamefaced fear, eyes blurred with tears. He towered over her, immovable as a tree. The strap swung easily in his right hand. Charlotte blinked and looked down at his brilliantly polished shoes.
‘Tsk, tsk, what a disgraceful exhibition, girl.’ His deep voice sounded amused. ‘You will learn to take your punishment with much more decorum than that.’
He bent and grabbed her hair. Charlotte felt her head wrenched back until she was forced to look into his pitiless grey eyes. There was something about his gaze that seemed to paralyse her, as if he could see straight into her soul. She was barely aware of the cold leather of the tawse being tapped gently against her cheek.
‘Now, my dear. The uniform. Perhaps you would care to reconsider taking off your dress?’
‘Oh, oh, oh...’ Charlotte whimpered as she lowered her evidently tender bottom on to the mean mattress of her bed. ‘I swear that beast has blistered my poor bottom.’
She stuck out her pert chin defiantly, but Amelia noticed she could not quite stop it from trembling. Lady Charlotte was an exquisitely pretty blonde with a trim, but not ungenerous, figure. For all that she had stripped down to her corset and silk drawers, she still looked every inch the spoiled young aristocratic madam, used to getting her own way. Amelia smiled, perhaps recognising something of herself in the girl’s demeanour, and wondered how long that hauteur would endure under the tutelage of the Reverend.
‘Ach, that man, he is very strict. I do not know if I can survive many more whippings the like of this,’ the big woman, Gretchen, said in an aghast, awe-struck whisper. She was standing by her bed in nothing but her cors
ets and her stockings, her large bottom facing Amelia as she twisted, trying to examine the purpling welts inscribed by the Reverend’s cane.
‘Buck up, girls. After all, it’s only six months.’ Bella had taken the bed next to Charlotte’s. ‘I’m sure we can survive it if we do our best.’
Her hopeful words were not matched by her tone, and Amelia noticed that the leggy girl’s eyes never left Gretchen’s striped bottom as she spoke.
‘Och, he has barely tickled you, woman.’ The new arrival, Kirsty, snorted as she wandered over to Gretchen. She turned and winked at Amelia, then gave Gretchen’s buttocks a hearty slap.
‘Ow, that’s so sore! Please, don’t.’ The woman gasped, clutching her cheeks protectively as Kirsty laughed.
Amelia had been first to bed. Now, as she watched her new companions disrobe around her, her fingers began to stroke her inner thighs under the blankets. Almost of their own volition her fingertips made little circling movements, up towards her urgently tingling sex. She turned back to Charlotte, who was still whimpering about the soreness of her bottom. Amelia licked her lips and let her fingers slip between her lubricated nether lips. Her other hand came over and started caressing the skin around her now urgently throbbing clitoris.
To her disappointment, Charlotte did not drop her silken drawers and expose her freshly tawsed rear to Amelia’s gaze. Blushing and muttering about privacy, the girl got beneath her sheets before wriggling out of the rest of her underthings. How long would such coyness be countenanced? Amelia wondered, with a thrill of excitement.
‘You don’t think... he won’t whip me, will he?’ The voice was small and tremulous. ‘Not if I’m good. I mean, if I do what I’m told.’
Amelia turned to the speaker. She had almost forgotten about the sixth occupant of the small dormitory. Linnet was such a quiet little thing that it had been easy to overlook her amongst the bustle of the other stripping girls, as she sat on the bed behind Amelia’s. Now she looked at her properly, Amelia thought, she really was a pretty piece. Long brown hair framed a pale oval face with light brown, doe-like eyes. The girl wore only her chemise, and was wringing her slender hands nervously. There was something mouth-wateringly vulnerable about her, making Amelia smile for the first time since breakfast.
‘Oh, no,’ she said insincerely as Kirsty snorted behind her, ‘I wouldn’t worry, sweetheart.’
The limpid eyes turned to her and Amelia felt herself melt in response. The girl blinked at her anxiously, her plump, cherry-red lower lip trembling ever so slightly.
‘If you are very, very good,’ Amelia continued, smiling slyly at the girl as she continued to caress herself furtively beneath the sheets, ‘I don’t expect our good Reverend will feel the need to thrash you... at least, not more than two or three times daily!’
Chapter Two
‘Tighter? But, but... oof! How can it possibly be any tighter?’ Charlotte expostulated between grunts and gasps. Faith looked at her tape measure and shook her head.
‘Sorry, miss,’ the maid said, politely but firmly, ‘it’s the Reverend’s instructions. You are to go down to nineteen inches, Miss Arabella to twenty.’ She paused and looked around the dormitory. Gretchen was hauling on Amelia’s corset laces whilst Kirsty performed the same office for a red-faced Linnet. ‘The figures are all here.’ She waved the sheet of paper and then pinned it to the wall. ‘All of you must lace down to the figures as ordained or, make no mistake, we shall all of us be for it.’
There was a chorus of sighs and half-hearted complaints. Amelia gritted her teeth and gripped the end of her bedstead as big Gretchen hauled away again. Used to formidably tight lacing, as she had been at Hope Hall, this ordeal was perhaps less vexing to her than the others. In any event, her nineteen-inch target was soon achieved and confirmed by Faith’s tape.
Gretchen was another proposition. The Reverend had ordained a waist of thirty-one inches for the plump woman, a figure considerably exceeding the natural, uncorseted circumference of any other girl’s waist. In Gretchen’s case, however, it was a figure that took some prodigiously tight lacing to achieve. Amelia took one of the laces in both hands, Kirsty hauled at the other, and Gretchen grabbed the end of her bedstead with her chubby hands and held on for dear life.
‘Ach, oof! Please, it is too – oh, too tight.’
Faith signalled Amelia and Kirsty to haul harder and stepped forward to whisper into the groaning woman’s ear.
‘It has to be done, miss. The Reverend will be furious if we do not get you down. You would not want him to be angry with you, would you?’
Gretchen gave a whimper of fear that turned into a groan as Amelia and Kirsty gave the laces one last heave. Faith told them to pass the free lengths several times around Gretchen’s impressively nipped in waist. Then she measured the result.
‘Thirty inches!’ she declared. ‘There you are, you see.’
‘Please, if there is a spare inch, for mercy’s sake unlace me that little...’ Gretchen gasped, breathing in a flurry of little pants.
‘Heavens no,’ Faith said, with a hint of a smile. ‘These targets are just the Reverend’s starting points. Later he is bound to revise them downwards. You had all better begin getting used to some serious lacing whilst you are here.’
This news caused a chorus of groans and wails around the dormitory. Amelia held her peace, however, admiring her handiwork. Gretchen looked truly astonishing in her ferocious corset, her great breasts, wide hips and big bottom seeming even more impressive now her waist was so pitilessly moulded by the thing. To Amelia’s chagrin, she was given little leisure to contemplate the sight.
‘Quickly now, ladies.’ Faith clapped her hands. ‘Breakfast is at seven and the Reverend promised to allot a cane stroke for every ten seconds that anyone is late.’
This news brought a renewed sense of urgency to the dormitory. Unused, it seemed, to such tight lacing, Gretchen had to sit on her bed for a moment and recover, leaving Amelia to lace up Kirsty’s corsets with only the rather feeble help of little Linnet. This was no easy task. Kirsty had a full figure, with generous breasts and a sweetly jutting young bottom, yet she was possessed of a waist that was already very trim. The problem was the tariff. The Reverend Dawes had put her down for seventeen inches and, trim waist or not, achieving this figure was nigh on impossible. Fortunately, Kirsty endured Amelia’s pulling with remarkable stoicism, her only complaint as the laces tightened being the occasional grunt.
By the time it was done Bella and Charlotte had also, somehow, achieved their ordained waists.
‘All right, ladies, here are the drawers the Reverend wishes you to wear.’
Faith picked up a bundle of white cotton garments and began handing each girl a suitably sized pair. Amelia took as deep a breath as her constricting stays would allow and took the drawers from Faith. There was a murmuring of astonishment from the other girls. As soon as she picked up the garment, she felt herself go faint.
Now she understood. The man was an utter fiend! Since she had seen them modelled in Mademoiselle Isobel’s Emporium, the Reverend Dawes’ patent ‘whipping drawers’ had been cunningly and diabolically refined. As before, they were made of two panels of finest white cambric, a front and a back part, with legs that reached halfway down the thigh.
Bella was the first of the trainees to be put into the strange drawers. She was a generously proportioned young woman, with the strong thighs of a girl who had spent many childhood days with powerful hunters gripped between her legs. Amelia found herself staring at Bella’s sleekly muscled legs in frank admiration.
The laces linking front and back panels of the drawers had been loosened, so Arabella could step into the things and haul them up. Leather strips with eyelets for the laces reinforced the sides of the fine cambric panels, and these laces were tightened just as the stay laces had been. Arabella stood stoical at first as Faith tugged them taut, tightening one side
a little and then the other. As the fine cotton was drawn ever tighter over Arabella’s mons, she had begun to blink furiously and emit some startled-sounding squeals.
‘You see how they work; the rest of you had better put your own drawers on now and start lacing them tight,’ Faith said. Amelia tugged her own laces taut, feeling the constricting material grip her bottom and thighs, biting her lip as the pressure of the thin cloth against her clitoris turned from pleasant firmness to uncomfortable constriction, by slow, inexorable degrees.
Faith raised her hand. ‘All right, that will do for now.’ All six girls stopped tightening their drawers with relief. ‘You are going to have to do this quickly,’ she warned, and handed each girl another long narrow lace.
In fact, it proved quite impossible to complete the next task rapidly. The waistbands of the odd drawers had also been reinforced with leather, and provided with a row of metal eyelets. Faith showed the wide-eyed young women how to thread the lace through each eyelet, and then through the corresponding hole at the bottom of their corset. Before she had half completed this fiddly task, and well before she began tightening the lace, Amelia, with a sick certainty, had understood the scheme.
She watched Charlotte, directly in front of her, struggle with her laces. The drawers were cut short, leaving a gap between the corset bottom and the top of the strange pantaloons that was at least two inches wide – at least to begin with. Two inches of pink flesh bulged from the gap between the wickedly tight corset and impossibly constrictive pair of drawers. This ribbon of flesh was soon scored, criss-crossed by the zigzagging line of the lace that hauled the two garments together, with ever more perilous tension as Charlotte tugged at her lace.
‘All right,’ Faith said with a concerned expression, ‘is everyone laced up?’
‘I’m no’ quite... Ach, this is awful fiddly!’ Kirsty complained.
Gretchen was struggling, too, and Amelia had to wait while the maid helped the slowcoaches complete their task. She found herself looking at Charlotte and Bella. Charlotte had an anxious, rather glum expression on her face that contrasted markedly with her hauteur of the night before. One taste of the tawse and she is terrified of the man, thought Amelia, a little contemptuously, wondering how she would have stood up to the rigours of Hope Hall.
Rectory of Correction Page 3