The Mistress of Sternwood Grange

by Arabella Knight

  Twisting and writhing, Mandy shuddered in her bondage. Erica went upstairs and returned with a bustle of naked, sleepy maids for the group punishment.

  ‘Pay attention,’ the cropped blonde barked.

  Mandy, her wrists burning as they hung painfully from the leather collar, jabbed at the empty air with her naked feet.

  ‘I promised you that I would bring order and discipline to Sternwood Grange and, as you will discover, I never break my word. You will all lose one week’s pay.’

  The assembled maids moaned in dismay.

  ‘Silence. And I want you to bear that in mind while punishing our little thief here. Four strokes apiece. Commence.’

  Sophie stepped up, accepted the wooden spoon and swiped Mandy’s bare bottom savagely, evidently relishing her chance for revenge. After the four searing swipes, Mandy’s buttocks tightened, as if squeezing out the pain from her ravished cheeks. Sonia followed, her strokes softer. The rest of the maids queued impatiently to vent their anger at the loss of yet another week’s wages. Mandy’s bottom paid a hot and heavy price as they blazed her crimson cheeks with the cruel wooden spoon.

  ‘Excellent,’ Erica remarked, stepping up to thumb the hot flesh and inspect it intimately. ‘Back to bed with you all. As for you, girl,’ she remarked to Mandy, ‘you can stay up there for a while. Stay and suffer.’

  ‘It’s only me,’ Sonia whispered, tiptoeing back across the flagstones eight minutes later. ‘Are you all right?’

  Mandy nodded silently, smiling down at the minx.

  ‘Ooh, your poor bottom. Let me make it better.’

  Mandy closed her eyes, wriggling her wrists in their leather collar to ease the burning ache. She opened her eyes at the soft sound of the fridge door. Sonia giggled as she rattled the ice tray, deftly closed the fridge door with her foot and scampered across to the hot, punished bottom swaying in suspended bondage.

  Mandy gasped as the ice cube swept across the swell of her ravished cheeks, and gasped again as the minx traced slow circles on the crimsoned globes.

  ‘There,’ Sonia whispered. ‘Better?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I hated it. Spanking you with that awful wooden spoon.’

  ‘I understand.’

  The minx drew the ice cube down along the length of Mandy’s cleft. Mandy grunted softly.

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Mmm. Very.’

  The cube paused, glistening against the sphincter. Mandy twisted and bucked in her bondage.

  ‘May I kiss you?’ Sonia murmured, her lips now inches from Mandy’s pubic fuzz.

  ‘Lick me,’ Mandy whispered huskily, her words half command, half imprecation.

  Sonia wedged the ice cube between the punished buttocks and gently rotated Mandy, bringing the proud pubis three inches from the tip of her tongue. The distance between the two pairs of glistening lips – one darkly fleshed and vertical, the other pink and horizontal – vanished as Sonia brought her mouth up to, then into, Mandy’s delta. A lapping sound filled the silent kitchen, almost but not quite drowning out the soft moans of delight. A fiercer sucking sound followed. Mandy squeezed her buttocks together, forcing a trickle of cold ice-water to sparkle as it slivered down her cleft and dripped, dripped slowly on to Sonia’s breasts below. Fused, flesh to flesh, mouth to splayed labia, the minx furiously tongued the girl suspended in the Gibbet.

  A sound at the door made Sonia spring back, her chin as wet as her gleaming bosom. Released, Mandy swung slowly round in a slow agony of anguish. Had Erica, and her spoon, returned? Mandy twisted to see. The velvet voice of Partridge broke the tense silence.

  ‘Should you not be upstairs and in bed?’ she inquired. The tone was not stern, more one of concern. ‘You know what will happen if Erica catches you here, Sonia.’

  ‘But Mandy was punished unfairly and she’s been so kind to me,’ Sonia replied breathlessly, ‘and she –’

  ‘Talked you out of any foolish ideas about running away, I hope,’ Partridge interrupted gently.

  Sonia blushed and looked down at the flagstone floor.

  ‘Kiss Mandy goodnight, Sonia. I will take care of her now.’

  ‘Will you?’ the minx asked eagerly. ‘Promise?’

  Mandy, twisting in the Gibbet, turned to face Partridge just in time to see the housekeeper’s large, brown eyes devouring her helpless nakedness. Partridge nodded and smiled. Sonia encircled Mandy’s thighs with her embracing arms, and kissed the flaming buttocks tenderly. Without another word, the little maid scurried out of the kitchen, nimbly dodging a spank aimed at her retreating bottom.

  ‘We don’t need the light,’ Partridge said, reaching out and switching it off.

  The chain suspending Mandy rattled expectantly.

  ‘It was really very good of you to take care of little Sonia. You stopped her doing something very foolish, tonight. Running away: it would have been a disaster. But then all the maids, and many of the angels, are unhappy here. Things are so different since –’

  ‘Erica took control.’

  ‘The mistress has her reasons,’ Partridge said, her voice sad and gentle. ‘Fruit, wasn’t it?’ she inquired brightly.

  ‘Fruit?’ Mandy echoed.

  ‘I was informed that you are being punished for attempting to steal fruit.’

  Mandy remained silent. In the darkness of the larder, she heard Partridge rustling. The rustling stopped. Footsteps approached her. A hand swept up between her thighs and grazed her pubic mound. Mandy welded her legs together. Partridge laughed gently and, reaching out, cupped and weighed the soft warmth of Mandy’s bare bottom. Imperceptibly, she inched the cheeks apart, slowly widening the cleft. Mandy gasped.

  ‘I cannot take you down from the Gibbet. Erica is now in a position of power here since the mistress came down from London to inspect her enterprise.’

  Mandy quelled her surge of anger at these words.

  ‘But I can reward you, Mandy. Reward and pleasure you for taking care of little Sonia. You are generous and unselfish. Such qualities cannot go unrecognised.’

  Mandy felt the hands at the cheeks of her bottom slide down her thighs, following the line of her naked legs to her feet. Stooping, Partridge picked up an unseen object from the flagstone floor.

  ‘Feet together,’ the housekeeper whispered.

  Mandy’s feet pressed together as if joined in silent prayer.

  ‘I could only find this orange, my dear, but I’m sure it will serve.’

  Placing the orange just above Mandy’s knees, Partridge palmed the fruit slowly upwards, rolling it against the naked flesh. The leathery touch of the peel on her own satin sheen sent a thrill arrowing down from Mandy’s belly into the tightening muscles below. She clamped her thighs fiercely as the orange approached her pubic mound.

  ‘Open wide,’ Partridge whispered.

  Mandy inched her thighs apart, admitting the orange in between them. The palm positioned the fruit, pressing it against the labial lips, and crushing them tenderly, before raking it up across the tiny, erect clitoris. Mandy screamed softly, jerking violently in her bondage.

  Partridge deftly shifted her hand to cup and press the fruit up into the pubis. Rolling it gently at first, then with a mounting frenzy, she ravished the clitoris. Mandy squealed as her pink thorn rose up, only to be pressed beneath the soft weight. The hand that held the maddening fruit suddenly squeezed: zest spurted out, invisible in the darkness but filling Mandy’s nostrils with its delicious tang. The juice scalded her open sex. Mandy threshed, rattling the taut chain that stretched up above her to the oak-beamed kitchen ceiling. Mandy sensed the hand guiding the fruit down against her splayed labia. They widened into a welcoming smile and kissed the thick peel. Mandy whimpered. With a burst of intimate fury, Partridge skimmed the bound and helpless girl’s wet slit mercilessly, stretching up with a warning hand against Mandy’s lips to stem her welling screams.

  The housekeeper removed her hand. ‘Open your mouth,’ she commanded.

  Mandy pa
rted her dry lips as the legs of an unseen chair scraped the flagstone floor. Mandy sensed, rather than saw, Partridge mount the chair. The haunting tang of the zest flooded Mandy’s senses as Partridge held the orange just above her upturned face.

  ‘Wider,’ came the command.

  Mandy’s mouth stretched open, her tongue flattened like that of an exhausted animal. Mandy heard Partridge grunt softly with effort as she squeezed the orange viciously. A cascade of pulpy juice rained down over Mandy’s face, splashing her with sweet, sticky wetness. Lowering the split and weeping fruit, Partridge allowed Mandy to bite deeply into it.

  ‘Enjoy,’ urged her sweet tormentress, cramming the wet flesh into Mandy’s mouth.

  Eyes tightly shut, her slit tingling and ablaze, Mandy mouthed the citric pulp, violently sucking its ripe sweetness. Partridge dragged the orange away. Mandy’s chain rattled as she jerked in a spasm of ecstasy.

  ‘No noise, my dear, no noise when you come,’ Partridge cautioned, her voice warm and tender. ‘This must be a silent pleasure.’

  The chair squeaked in the darkness as, having dismounted, the housekeeper removed it. Mandy quivered expectantly, the pain in her bound wrists now pleasantly, unexpectedly sweet. Partridge returned the split fruit to Mandy’s labia. Grinding the pulp into the flesh-lips, and pleasure-punishing the clitoris, the brown-eyed housekeeper fuelled the flames of Mandy’s burning climax. Working the orange adroitly, the controlling hand scrubbed the crease until a suppressed scream filled the darkness as, writhing in her bondage, Mandy came.

  Turning slowly, her arms stretched painfully up into the leather collar, Mandy listened to the loud silence that remained after the housekeeper’s departure. Nothing broke the stillness except the rushing sound in her ears: the beating pulse of her hot blood quickened by orgasm. No, she realised. She listened intently, and heard the tick of the clock. The clock, she remembered, which Erica had been winding earlier on. Winding with such grim exactitude: each twist of the supple wrist had tightened the spring just as effortlessly as each twist of her supple wrist would tighten the skin of a bottom she was punishing. Clocks suited Erica, Mandy mused.

  The cropped blonde was blindly obedient. A clockwork martinet. Slavishly obeying the controlling mechanism: Celia Flaxstone. The grey-eyed solicitor controlled Erica and, through her, Sternwood Grange. The new mistress planned to run her private realm with clockwork precision. Partridge, Mandy smiled as she considered the comparison, was too tender-hearted to survive in the new regime. Partridge, with her big brown eyes and her gentle severity.

  Mandy resolved, if and when she gained her rightful inheritance, to keep Partridge on, certain that the housekeeper would serve her as loyally as she had served Aunt Clare. And the minx, Sonia, would have no more reasons to attempt another escape. Harmony, happiness and pleasure would come back to visit – and stay at – Sternwood Grange. When Mandy was mistress of Sternwood Grange, pleasure would come before profit, and all profits would be shared.

  The door squeaked. Mandy tensed with pleasurable expectation. It would be Sonia, sweet little Sonia, the ponytail-swishing minx. Sonia, back to show her affection and devotion.

  Mandy took a deep breath and wriggled eagerly, twisting in her bondage to catch a glimpse of the little maid. One fingertip, then a second, grazed her pubic fuzz. Mandy mewed like a kitten at its cream.

  ‘Bitch.’

  A scarlet flash of light flickered across Mandy’s brain as the unseen fingers plucked at her pubic tuft.

  ‘Bitch,’ Sophie hissed. ‘I saw you seducing her. Leave her alone.’ The fingers tweaked the soft curls again. ‘Partridge is mine.’

  Erica would be on patrol, and would deliberately leave Mandy in the Gibbet for at least another hour. Mandy jerked her wrists as the chair legs scraped the flagstone floor and Sophie mounted. Helpless in her bondage, she squirmed at the hot breath of the jealous maid as it neared her left breast. Where there was hot breath so close to her nipple, Mandy knew, sharp teeth must surely follow.

  Five

  ‘Up. No, leave that towel alone. I will dry you then dress you for the part.’

  Mandy got out of the bath and surrendered her shining nakedness to Erica’s towelling hands. She shuddered as the fabric enfolded her and she felt the thorough palms first at her breasts, then at her buttocks – and, finally, in between her thighs.

  Another dawn had broken over Sternwood Grange. The sun was already blazing down, promising a fiercely hot day. Mandy was being bathed and prepared for her training. As an angel, under Erica’s tutelage, she was about to encounter the first of her three test residents. A debriefing would follow, at the end of each trial, at which it would be decided if she had won her spurs.

  Towelled, talcumed, and in a pair of tight white panties, Mandy was given a pair of sheer, black, nylon stockings.

  ‘That is all you will require,’ Erica remarked, appreciating the swell of her pantied cheeks as Mandy stepped into each black nylon and smoothed them up her slender legs.

  Fingering the dark band of the stocking-tops, Mandy followed Erica along the length of the Long Gallery. Her heart raced. Would Erica turn to the left, or to the right? Was Mandy going to serve a dominant, or discipline a submissive? Erica strode purposefully ahead, her rippling buttocks giving no hint of which way the cropped blonde was heading. Mandy’s concern grew into curiosity as they passed by the last of the double doors. At the far end of the Long Gallery, Erica unpocketed a key and opened a green-baize door.

  ‘The Games Room,’ she announced, stepping inside and beckoning Mandy in.

  Sunlight streamed in through an oriel window. Through it, Mandy glimpsed the heat haze shimmering above the distant elms. The walls of the room were covered with a dull ochre paper, slightly peeling. A map of Scotland, a sketch of Mozart and a shelf of geological specimens furnished one wall. A bust of Dante, a faded diagram of a Roman amphitheatre and a botanically labelled fern graced another wall. Dusty books on dustier bookshelves lined the third wall. The floor was scrubbed pine. A school desk and a chair, a larger teacher’s desk on a raised platform and a blackboard completed the furniture.

  I’m to be a schoolgirl and have my naughty bottom caned, Mandy thought, biting her lower lip.

  ‘Your cap and gown are over there.’ Erica pointed. ‘Your cane, slipper and strap, together with ink, pens and paper are waiting for you in your desk.’

  ‘I’m the teacher?’ Mandy squeaked.

  Erica nodded briskly. ‘Your submissive loves to relive the harsh delights of her schooldays. Her boarding school was notoriously strict.’

  I’m to be the teacher, Mandy repeated silently, a surge of relief coming up through her tightening bosom. My resident will be a submissive – a submissive eager for the stern delights of crisp discipline. She strode across to the peg and took down a black gown. Slipping it on, she failed to cover her near nakedness underneath. The gown flapped open, allowing enticing glimpses of her bare breasts, white panties and black-stockinged thighs.

  ‘This is the Schoolroom. Your submissive will be arriving shortly. Rowena –’

  ‘Rowena?’ Mandy echoed.

  ‘The red-haired angel.’

  Mandy nodded.

  ‘Rowena will be in attendance throughout the entire session,’ Erica continued, drawing a fastidious fingertip along a dusty bookshelf. ‘Photographing your efforts.’

  Mandy paused in the process of adjusting a perky mortarboard on her dark, bobbed hair. She looked up. ‘Photographing?’ she queried.

  ‘Yes. She will take no part whatsoever. Your task is to follow this set of cue cards and entertain your submissive. Rowena will be here merely to record what you achieve.’

  ‘But the photographs? I don’t understand –’

  ‘Thirty-five millimetre stills. Sharper than video. We provide each resident with a souvenir of their visit to Sternwood Grange, and the snapshots provide me with evidence of your skills and abilities.’

  ‘I see.’ Mandy nodded. Her mortarboard slipped
and tumbled to the floor. Bending to retrieve it, she saw Rowena silently enter the classroom. Dressed in a skin-tight bodystocking, Rowena’s heavy breasts bounced as she paced over to the oriel window and checked the light source with her meter. A Pentax dangled against her thigh.

  ‘Better take a look at those,’ Erica said, handing Mandy the cue cards. ‘That’s the scenario you must improvise.’

  As Mandy studied the cards, Erica took up a duster and wiped out the past historic of the French verb fouetter, leaving the blackboard clean and the air thickened with chalkdust in the streaming sunlight.

  Mandy read the four white cue cards carefully. Moments later, the classroom door opened and a breathless schoolgirl bounded in. A schoolgirl of twenty-six summers, but a schoolgirl nonetheless, wearing a short, grey, pleated skirt; white ankle socks and black sandals; a starched white shirt buttoned firmly at each sleeve and a blue, red and silver striped tie. The long blonde hair, Mandy noticed, was drawn back into severely plaited pigtails. Under the blouse, the outline of the Playtex bra proudly announced the pubescent swell of the Sixth Former’s breasts. The schoolgirl’s green eyes sparkled with expectancy. Mandy noted the lipsticked, slightly sullen mouth. Glancing down at her cue card, she read: LATE FOR SCHOOL.

  Erica withdrew silently, slipping out through the sunbeams like a shadow, leaving them swirling in her wake. Rowena levelled her Pentax, remaining invisible in the shadows, her bodystockinged buttocks thrust up against the far wall. Mandy took the lapels of her black gown between pincered finger and thumb of both hands and pulled it forward. Her naked bosom spilled out deliciously, wobbling slightly as she planted her nyloned feet apart.

  ‘Late?’ she barked.

  ‘Yes,’ lisped the uniformed blonde, giggling. ‘I stopped to speak with a boy.’

  ‘Come here, you naughty girl. And is that lipstick I see, hmm?’

  The blonde pigtails flounced as the girl mounted the platform, fingering her tie nervously.