The little woman picked up a very long and slender riding crop from the table. Amelia recognised the implement as a dressage whip. The thing was pencil thin and tapered, sheathed in polished black leather, and at least four feet in length, finished with four inches of cord trainer that, in turn, ended in a little knot.
Mademoiselle Isobel walked along the row of girls again, this time flexing the dressage whip elegantly in her hands and carefully perusing each one in turn.
‘I am, as you know, Reverend, used to dealing with wilful young women. I have an emporium full of shop girls to keep in order, after all. I shall only send them up to you if they are very naughty.’ Having reached Amelia in the line, she gave her a wink. ‘So if one comes knocking on your door you will know she has been a very, very bad little girl indeed!’
The Reverend chuckled in reply. ‘I shall bear it in mind, mademoiselle, and treat the miscreant accordingly.’ He made for the door, pausing just before leaving it and fixing the line with his basilisk stare. ‘If you are sent to me, girls, do not expect to be treated leniently.’
As if he ever treated them with leniency or mercy! Amelia thought with a surge of indignation. Despite the pique the words provoked, a sick feeling of fear had crawled into her belly during the exchange. Something told her that being sent to the Reverend’s study by Mademoiselle Isobel was a fate to be avoided, at all and any cost.
‘Right,’ Mademoiselle Isobel clapped her elegant little hands together in that delighted manner which had always infuriated Amelia. ‘You girl, Faith, is it? Yes, run along and fetch the backboards from my chaise. The rest of you, start taking those ugly skirts and blouses off.’
Amelia unbuttoned her blouse with fingers she could not quite prevent from trembling. She had not the least desire to renew her acquaintance with the backboard. This pitiless device, buckled to a girl’s already constricting corset, prevented any movement of the torso, forcing its victim to maintain an artificially rigid, upright posture at all times.
Like it or not, Amelia soon found her little corset firmly affixed to a particularly vexing example of these monstrosities. Mademoiselle Isobel’s backboards were particularly long members of that unforgiving tribe. The top came almost to the middle of her skull and broad leather collars were buckled about her neck, then affixed firmly to the wood. Leather straps braced her shoulders rigidly against the backboard. Compensation, a smiling Mademoiselle Isobel informed the groaning girls, for the fact that their corsets were cut low, beneath their breasts, and thus could not be buckled to the board near enough to the neck.
‘Don’t think that I do not approve,’ she said as she stroked Kirsty’s breasts while Faith busily tightened up all the buckles and straps. ‘Such pretty bubbies should not be constricted, or always hidden...’ She patted Kirsty’s cheek fondly with her left hand and, with her right, pinched and twisted the girl’s nipple.
Kirsty gave a groan and her backboard straps creaked in protest as her body tried vainly to twist in response to the pain. Amelia felt a thrill of fear stab through her vitals. Kirsty was by far and away the most stoical of the girls. For her to moan like that her nipple must have hurt like fury.
She did not have long to dwell upon the matter. Mademoiselle Isobel ordered the girls to assemble at the far end of the little hall. With great deliberation, she swished the dressage whip experimentally through the air several times, producing a low, evil whistle that made Amelia’s stomach knot. Then she took up her station by the Reverend’s table and chair, calmly regarding the girls who stood trembling at the far end of the room.
‘Now, my darlings,’ she said brightly, ‘one by one I want you to walk, gracefully and slowly, across the room, around the table, and then back again. It should be easy enough, no, mes petits choux?’
Amelia looked at the cane in her hand and swallowed hard. It should be easy, certainly, but something told her it was not going to be that simple. She was soon proved quite right.
‘You, the tall girl, come along now. Tsk, tsk, with elegance!’
Amelia watched Bella walk towards the little woman. Mademoiselle Isobel leaned against the middle of the table and Bella had to move a little to her left to round it. Even so, it was obvious that Bella was giving her a wider berth than strictly necessary. This did not do her any good.
‘Non! Non! You should move in a stately fashion, like a ship in a calm sea, girls, not bobbing up and down. Or,’ she said with an expression of distaste as she watched Bella’s progress, ‘waddling like a sow.’
Mademoiselle Isobel darted off to the side and delivered a startlingly accurate cut of the crop to Bella’s plump behind. Bella gave a hiss of pain and veered away. Another whip stroke cracked across her cheeks and she gave a startled wail.
‘Stop!’ Mademoiselle Isobel cried out.
Somehow Bella stopped and stood relatively still, her fingers fluttering helplessly at her sides. Mademoiselle Isobel turned to the other girls.
‘You will not deviate from the line. You will not run like startled chickens.’ She cut the dressage whip through the air several times for emphasis. Amelia felt her stomach contract in concert with the ominous low whistle. Bella’s whole body flinched each time she heard the sound. ‘You will walk like ladies and ignore such minor inconveniences as this...!’
Mademoiselle Isobel had been addressing the girls from the far end of the room. Bella, meanwhile, stood quivering, still with her back to Amelia, a little to the right and further back. Without warning, without even glancing around to see where her target might be, Mademoiselle Isobel suddenly lashed out. The stroke caught Bella at the crease where her buttocks met her thighs.
The little woman cocked her head, as if listening with interest to Bella’s anguished hiss, but even now not deigning to turn and look at her, as if she did not feel it necessary to verify the accuracy of her aim.
‘Walk on now.’
With obvious difficulty Bella continued on her way, rounding the little table and turning back. Her face was red now, and streaked with tears. As she walked back, bare breasts bobbing slowly, she had an expression of almost comical apprehension on her face. She blinked sideways at the lounging corsetière as she tried to walk past her gracefully, obviously fighting the almost overwhelming urge to shy away.
Mademoiselle Isobel watched her without comment, and as the prefect got further up the hall without incident the relief on her face was evident to all. Amelia could see the teacher shake her head, even as Bella started to relax.
She ran forward of a sudden. A few skipping steps, a whistling stroke of the dressage whip, and Bella’s face contorted in agony. Then Bella was back amongst her classmates, jiggling about and gasping with pain.
‘Very poor. That was simply horrible, my dear. Amelia, you show her how to do it, if you please.’
Amelia took a deep breath and stepped forward. Suddenly she felt hideously self-conscious, and that, together with the stiffness the backboard imposed on her carriage, made her feel clumsy and graceless as she walked stiffly up the hall. Her heels clacked on the wooden floorboards, seeming unnaturally loud.
Mademoiselle Isobel stood waiting, with the slender crop flexing between her dainty hands. Amelia understood all too well now why Bella had tried to give her a wide berth. It was almost as if the little corsetière gave out a malevolent field of energy that pushed her away.
‘Steady, steady, that is a little better...’ Mademoiselle Isobel said quietly as she got nearer and nearer. Amelia felt her bottom twitch as she passed the table, but nothing happened as she reached the far end of the hall and began to turn.
Whoooosh... Thwick! Amelia gasped as the crop cracked viciously across her bottom. Pain engulfed her, and undid her, for she stumbled on her heels, provoking Mademoiselle Isobel to lash her again, and then again. Amelia fought to regain her self-possession against an overwhelming tide of stinging pain.
‘No! No! Bad, bad girl.
’ Three times in quick succession the dressage whip lashed into Amelia’s bottom as she tried in vain to flinch away. Tears blinded her and she swayed and stumbled on her heels as her bottom blazed. Her flank, where the cord knot had wrapped around and caught her, felt as if it had been stung by wasps.
‘A shocking exhibition, Amelia. I expected better from one of your blood and family. Perhaps the Lady Charlotte will consent to show you how it is done.’
Amelia stumbled to the end of the room. She blinked the tears away in time to see Charlotte totter towards the waiting woman. Her shapely bottom was perfectly displayed by her tight flogging drawers.
Something about the elegantly sceptical arch of Mademoiselle Isobel’s eyebrow told Amelia what was coming. Something in the way Charlotte trembled as she teetered on her heels into range of the whip suggested she had picked up the same cue. Still, she was allowed to pass and round the table. It was only as she began to walk back towards her classmates, eyes blank with fear, that the familiar black blur cut through the air.
The whip fell and Charlotte’s pretty face crumpled with pain. The stroke was quickly followed by a second, causing her to howl.
‘For heaven’s sake stop whining, child, and stop wriggling your bottom like a courtesan.’ Mademoiselle Isobel sighed and signalled Linnet to set off. ‘I can see this is going to be a long, difficult afternoon.’
It was like being trapped in a nightmare. Every little sound, every muffled harbinger of corporal correction, caused Amelia to start. She had been standing in the corridor outside the Reverend Dawes’ study for at least ten minutes now. Waiting to be called.
Through the thick oaken door she heard the sound of stick on bottom, and a cry of pain in response. It sounded as if Bella was really getting it. Amelia chewed her knuckle and fought hot tears as she reflected on the horrible unfairness of it all.
The deportment class had continued relentlessly, regularly punctuated by the sound of Mademoiselle Isobel’s whip impacting on girlish flesh. Indeed, Amelia’s own behind was still throbbing dully.
‘As you clearly cannot walk,’ the little woman had said at length, ‘we must see if you can be taught to kneel, or sit.’
From then on the girls had been introduced to a number of positions, all of which involved discomfort and kneeling on the hard wooden floor. Mademoiselle Isobel had given her instruction whilst stalking around the girls, dressage whip at the ready.
‘Now, Kirsty, knees at least one foot apart. Belly forward, so that you arch your back.’
The prefect’s corset had creaked as she tried to obey, but of course, the backboard had prevented much arching in any direction; or any other movement, come to that.
‘All right, girl, now lock your fingers at the back of your head.’
Amelia had glanced sideways anxiously. Mademoiselle Isobel stood in front of Kirsty, reaching out the end of the whip, just failing to touch the tip of the prefect’s nipple.
‘Now, hold that position, girl. I wish you to stay absolutely still...’
The whip slashed down. There had been a rapping sound and Kirsty gave a surprised hiss. Amelia wondered wildly what had happened.
‘Poor, Kirsty dear, poor. Prefects should set a good example to the other girls, should they not?’
‘Yes, mademoiselle,’ Kirsty managed, sounding pained.
Bella had been next. Instructions on exactly how to kneel had followed, then the whip cut through the air and the rapping sound followed again. Bella was not Kirsty, however, and she fairly howled with pain.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake stop jiggling around, girl. How else is a lady supposed to take aim?’
But Bella had either been unable or unwilling to kneel still, and she had been sent, after a certain amount of pointless pleading, to the Reverend’s study for retribution. Amelia found herself to be next in line.
‘Quite a good posture,’ Mademoiselle Isobel had complimented her, ‘but do try to stop trembling. Your titties are quivering like jellies, Amelia. You know, it is really rather common to exhibit fear.’
It was all right for her to talk! Amelia remembered thinking as the chic little woman raised her dressage whip. The thing paused for a long, long second, like a guillotine waiting to fall. In the end all she had been able to do was close her eyes and pray.
She had heard it cut through the air, and then her right nipple burned like fire. The pain had been simply awful.
It was the knot, she realised with a mixture of amazement and fear. Mademoiselle Isobel had judged the downward stroke so exactly that the only contact was between Amelia’s engorged nipple and the knot at the tip of the cord. All the force of the stroke had gone into that little nub of whipcord, and it felt as hard as the Reverend Dawes’ heart. Still, somehow she managed, more or less, to bear it.
‘But Amelia, this will never do. I must ask you to stop squirming, ma chérie!’
It had been so hard. Amelia had not been squirming, really, but the pain was so intense it had been next to impossible not to move a little bit. At last she stilled her trembling breasts, thrust them out in front of her, hands locked behind her head, and waited.
There had been another stroke and the vicious little cord stung her left nipple. Amelia used every ounce of self-control she could muster, desperate not to scream or wriggle in response to the atrocious pain. Not that it satisfied mademoiselle, of course.
‘Mon dieu, the child is hissing like a steam kettle! Stop jiggling your breasts about in that lascivious fashion, Amelia. Stay quite still. Silly girl, what is all this blubbering about? Weeping is not ladylike, Amelia. It leaves rivulets in one’s face powder and makes mascara run. Now, put those nipples out and try to control your trembling. If you make me miss it will have to be a trip to the Reverend’s study.’
The second time the knot struck her nipple had been utterly excruciating. The swollen little nub had still been smarting from the first kiss of the cord. This time she had not been able to suppress a squeal. If not for the backboard and corset, she would have doubled up with pain. As it was, her writhings produced a great deal of squeaking and creaking as her muscles vainly fought against unyielding whalebone and sturdy leather straps. It had been a good minute before she was able to get into the prescribed position again.
By then every nerve in her body had been stretched beyond breaking point. Still she might have managed had not mademoiselle paused, arm raised, for what seemed an age before delivering the strokes. Empires rose, lapsed into decadence and fell back into dust in the aeons that Amelia quailed beneath the upraised whip. In the end her courage failed her just as the woman finally slashed down.
The ensuing pain had not been significantly less than had she held her position. All she achieved was that she caught the slash of whipcord on the tender flesh to the left of her nipple. As she waited in the corridor she could see an inch or two of vertical scarlet welt still inscribed on the pale skin of her breast. Mademoiselle Isobel, however, had seen the movement as rankest rebellion, and despatched her to the Reverend’s study with a note.
There was another sickening impact and another muffled yelp of pain from within the study. Amelia tried to swallow but her mouth was far too dry. Not so her palms, unfortunately. The note, sealed into a little envelope, was rapidly going soggy in her nervously moist hand. There was dampness in other places, too. Though Amelia did her best to ignore the tingling sensation, she blushed furiously as she wondered just how evident the growing damp patch in the gusset of her flogging drawers would be by the time she was finally called.
‘Very poor, Linnet!’
Charlotte’s stomach contracted in sympathy as the dressage whip whistled through the air and bit into Linnet’s firm little bottom with an emphatic crack. She had almost managed the complex course that Mademoiselle Isobel had set out, using chairs. Heavy textbook on her head, she had been obliged to weave between the obstacles and return without losing
the volume perched precariously atop her skull.
To make things worse, Mademoiselle Isobel professed herself dissatisfied with fluttering fingers, and used wrist restraints to fix the remaining girls’ arms behind their backboards. The anchor points were steel rings in the beastly boards, between the girls’ shoulder blades, and thus Charlotte found herself in some discomfort as she waited her turn at the dismal game.
‘Lady Charlotte, I’m sure you can do better.’
Mademoiselle Isobel bent to retrieve the book, amidst much rustling. Straightening again, she beckoned Charlotte with a crimson talon; a summons the girl did not dare disobey. Though Charlotte was not the tallest of the class, the little woman had to raise her arms high to place the volume on her head.
‘Keep quite still, ma petite. Remain relaxed but steady, breathing shallow but even, that is the key.’
It was quite impossible. Charlotte felt the blood rise to her cheeks. She was naked but for the flogging drawers and a viciously tight corset cut so low that her bare breasts bobbed freely before her, unsupported. The wretched backboard kept her back quite rigid, and her arms were wrenched painfully behind her, making her utterly helpless and vulnerable to the smiling woman’s whip.
Charlotte’s nipples throbbed horridly from being lashed and her bottom was intolerably sore from being flogged. Now she had to teeter on absurdly high heels with this great encyclopaedia balanced on her head, with Mademoiselle Isobel poised, dressage whip at the ready, to inflict excruciating pain. How exactly was she supposed to relax in this situation? she wondered bitterly.
Still, there was nothing for it but to try. She swallowed hard and stepped forward to start the course, only to feel the book shift on her head. Her stomach turned a somersault in response but somehow she managed to steady it. A bead of perspiration broke out on her forehead as she began to walk again.
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