by Wendy Leigh
But when I get back to the castle and find a note from Robert, I am forcibly reminded that I’m not.
Dinner at 7. We have guests. And Dungeon 5 at 10. Be prepared for both. R.
I decide to wear the beautiful navy Armani Robert bought me in Geneva. As I do, the image of myself and of all the punishment my body has taken in the past few days flashes through my mind, and I go to the long mirror in the corner of the suite to check that I have no marks on my cleavage.
I don’t. Robert is far too experienced at chastisement to place visible marks on my body.
My ass, however, is another story, as all over it there is ample evidence of Robert’s harsh treatment.
And I love it.
At the top of the staircase I bump straight into Mrs. Hatch, who looks me up and down as if she were a horse trader evaluating a Thoroughbred mare.
Then she sniffs, and I know that I’ve been found wanting.
“I hope you’ve had a good day, Mrs. Hatch,” I say to cover my feelings of inadequacy.
She throws me a look of scorn from those coal-black eyes and goes on her way, and I’m glad.
But why does Robert keep her around?
Before I can answer my own question, I realize that I’m outside the Mayfair Dining Room, about to come face-to-face with Robert’s guests.
What if they’re movie stars?
Or royalty?
What if they knew Lady Georgiana?
Of course they did!
What in hell will they think of me?
I want to run.
At that moment Robert comes up behind me and puts his arm around my waist.
“Let’s go in to dinner, now, shall we, darling?” he says.
Darling! Robert called me darling! And for a moment, it almost seems as if I am his darling, his love, and at that moment, my insecurities are eclipsed by my elation.
To my relief, instead of royalty, movie stars, politicians, or billionaires like him, Mary Ellen and her handsome husband, Rory, are the only other two people at dinner.
So the four of us have dinner together.
Almost like regular folk.
Except that dinner is served by waiters in white tie and tails, the food is Michelin three-star quality, and in the background a six-piece jazz band plays American standards.
A typical evening at Hartwell Castle, the evening of my fifth test of submission in Robert Hartwell’s dungeon.
After dinner I go back to the suite, change, and put on the emerald-green velvet corset, emerald-green fishnet stockings, and emerald-green lace high heels that Robert sent to my room this morning.
Then, to my surprise, he arrives at my suite to escort me to the dungeon. Resplendent in head-to-toe black leather, he glitters with dominance. My heart beats faster as I think of the upcoming night with a combination of trepidation and excitement.
I follow him in silence, my eyes fixed on his broad back and long, athletic legs.
The door to Dungeon 5 leads straight into a large, high-ceilinged office.
I stand in front of the ebony desk, and Robert takes his place behind it and announces, in a voice as formal as if he were a Supreme Court judge issuing a verdict, “This fifth test is about you, Miranda, and only you. About your deep capacity for submission, about your sincerity, about your integrity, about the truth. And nothing, or no one else,” he says.
Meaning not about Georgiana!
“Now, Miranda, let me explain a little of what is ahead of you in the next test.”
I nod but am starting to feel afraid, because when it comes down to it, I still don’t know the full extent of what he’s really capable of doing to me.
“Miranda, this test will either make you or break you, and will tell me everything I need to know about your submissiveness, about the woman you are to the very core of your womanhood, the woman who is either the real thing or is not,” he says in a grim voice.
My mouth is suddenly dry and the taste on my tongue is bitter. But petrified as I am, I know that if he offered to let me out of the test, I’d refuse outright, and take it anyway.
“Follow me, Miranda,” he says.
Then he strides toward a large door leading from the office to an inner chamber. This one looks more like a typical dungeon, and I can see that he has upped the stakes considerably.
Amid all the racks, the equipment, the dungeon furniture, one thing stands out: a device that sends sheer terror shooting down my body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
Large wooden stocks, straight out of a medieval torture chamber.
Or from days of old when a suspected witch was dragged to the village green, stripped naked, then imprisoned in the stocks, whereupon all the villagers pelted her with rotten produce, taunted her, and punished her as hard and as much as they wanted.
Imprisoned in the stocks, a naked woman was on permanent show, her body presented for untold humiliations and tortures inflicted on her by anyone who had a twisted yen to do so.
Thank God that it’s just him and me here in the dungeon and not another living soul!
His face expressionless, he beckons me to approach the stocks.
At the thought of being imprisoned in that monstrous contraption, not able to look around, or move even an inch, my breath quickens, my heart starts pounding, and I panic more than I’ve ever panicked during any of Robert’s tests.
In fact, for the first time ever, I feel like using my safe word and running.
But if I do, I run the risk that he will forever banish me from his life, his world, and I shall never see him again.
In the coldly unforgiving voice of an executioner, he orders me to place each foot in the board in front of the stocks. Then he snaps it shut. My legs are now locked open, exposing my most private parts, and I can do nothing to protect them from any assault, be it penetrative or punishing.
Then he lifts the top half of the wooden board at the top of the stocks and orders me to rest my head and arms in the holes on the bottom board.
Shaking uncontrollably, I nevertheless obey.
Then, gently but with purpose, he lowers the top half of the wooden board over my neck and wrists.
I can’t move, I can’t turn around. All I can do is stay still, a naked object, a target.
I feel like a condemned witch, a hapless miscreant, my buttocks presented and offered up for punishment, secured as I am like a butterfly by a pin, immobilized there by my cruel and relentless Master.
He has imprisoned me in the stocks, and I hate it more than I could ever imagine hating anything to which he has chosen to subject me. More than at any other time in my life, I am powerless, out of control, helpless, and afraid beyond belief.
He knows that, of course, which is why he is putting me in stocks to test, punish, and humiliate me in the cruelest way imaginable.
In my mind’s eye, I see my hair tied back. My swollen mouth.
My breasts hanging down, unprotected. My ass jutting out, exposed.
I am naked, helpless, offered up to him for punishment, just as he wishes.
I say a silent prayer that I’ll be able to withstand what lies ahead.
To my horror, I hear the heavy tread of a second person entering the dungeon and banging the door shut. A stranger. And that stranger is now confronted by the sight of me imprisoned in the stocks: my protruding ass, my spread-open thighs, my back, my hanging breasts, but not my face.
Robert has reduced me to a fleshy inanimate object, just ass, back, thighs, legs, and breasts, all offered up for the pleasure of this nameless, faceless stranger standing just a few feet away behind me, surveying every exposed and vulnerable inch of my naked body.
I hear Robert stride over to the rack of implements.
“Use this on her this first,” he commands.
I can’t see which impleme
nt he selected.
I tense, petrified.
“No clenching,” Robert snaps at me, “or you’ll get double.”
I will myself to relax.
Then the air around me is torn apart and the crop slashes into me.
I scream a bloodcurdling scream.
For the riding crop did not hit my proffered ass, back, or thighs but up between my legs and into the heart of me.
“Very good,” Robert says. “Give her more of that. And then the cane. At full strength.”
Then I hear him stride in the direction of the dungeon door.
He is leaving me at the mercy of a stranger. A stranger whose face I can’t see, and who hasn’t seen mine!
And there is nothing that I can do to defend my naked, exposed, and vulnerable body.
Nothing.
I hear Robert unlock the dungeon door and I am filled with panic.
But I have no choice but to take whatever punishment the stranger chooses to mete out to me. No choice at all, if I want to pass Robert’s final test and prove the full extent of my submission to him.
So I remain silent, my entire body straining in fear and anticipation of whatever the stranger is about to inflict on me at Robert’s behest, with his full approval, with his blessing.
Before Robert slams the dungeon door behind him, he issues one last and final instruction:
“She’s all yours, Mrs. Hatch,” he says.
It’s almost over, and I want to die.
My entire body burns from the caning she has administered to me so cold-bloodedly and so efficiently.
Even worse than the pain and agony she has inflicted on my naked, defenseless body is my shame that she, of all people, didn’t merely make me flinch and twist and squirm and moan, but made me beg for her to stop. And laughed at me when I did.
Then she executes one last stroke of cruelty on my naked, helpless, and exposed body. She inserts a large, thick, ridged dildo into my sore and lacerated ass, then rotates it, in a whisper mocking me, taunting me that she has taken me down a peg, given me a lesson I will never forget: that I will never be a great lady, never be the mistress of Hartwell Castle, and never be Georgiana!
“That’s enough! End it now! And leave this minute!” I hear Robert’s booming voice. In my agony, my shame, I hadn’t even heard him enter the dungeon. Mrs. Hatch exits the room without another word. But the fact that Robert may have witnessed her cruel and humiliating assault on me is almost more than I can bear.
And—for the first time in my life—the tears flow.
Robert is beside me now.
He tenderly wipes away my tears, releases me from the stocks, and kisses me, kisses me, kisses me.
Then he stands back from me and makes an announcement in his deep and resonant voice, which reverberates through my mind, my body, my soul, and, most of all, the deepest recesses of my heart.
“That’s enough, my Miranda. I have tested you more than any other woman in the world could have endured,” he says.
“And you took it all, even the ultimate and most excruciating test I set for you. I would have gambled my last dime that during the fifth test, you would break and use the safe word and stop the whole thing. But you didn’t. You bore it all for me, because submission to the will of your Master is part of your innermost nature, your true vocation in life and the very heart of you.
“And I know now that everything the sender of the wreath insinuated about you was a pure and unadulterated lie. You are real, and a born submissive.”
I look into his eyes, and the love and tenderness I see there is so intense that I almost believe that it could last a lifetime.
I don’t want to ruin the moment, but I can’t see how I can go on unless I ask him the question still eating into me. So, my heart in my mouth, I ask him: “Why did you leave me alone with Mrs. Hatch, Robert? Why did you abandon me and leave me at her mercy—” My horror that he gave me to her is escalating.
He gently takes my face in his hands and looks deep into my eyes.
“But I didn’t, Miranda. I didn’t leave you alone with her. I just slammed the dungeon door and pretended to leave you there alone with her. I did that in order to test your mettle, your resolve, your ultimate submissiveness in the face of the most arduous challenge of which I could conceive. But I was there in the dungeon all the time, watching, making sure that she didn’t give you more than I wanted you to take, more than you were able to take,” he says.
“You mean you didn’t leave me alone with her?” I say, my voice quivering.
“No, my darling, not even for a single second. Not then, not ever,” he says.
And a blissful warmth spreads through me because I honestly and truly believe he means every single word he has just said and will stay true to it for now and for always.
He envelops me in his arms again, kisses my hair, my eyes, my lips, so passionately that for the first time in my life, I feel safe.
“And now, Miranda, you have truly earned the right to learn the terrible secret of how my life with Georgiana finally ended,” he says.
Chapter Fifteen
Robert takes my hand in his and gently leads me up the seemingly endless narrow spiral staircase to the top of the North Turret, Hartwell Castle’s highest turret, the turret that houses his own private suite.
I’ve been longing to gain admission to his suite ever since I got here, but tonight I’m not in any shape to drink in the atmosphere or the details. I am far too exhausted, yet keyed up.
Acutely aware of my fragile state, he runs a bubble bath for me and tells me to relax in it and try to recover from my ordeal. And when he comes into the bathroom and soaps me all over, as if I were a small child, then dries me, I am glad that I didn’t resist his suggestion.
Afterward, while he has a shower, although I long to go to him and wash his spectacular body from top to toe, and finger every part of him, I sense that he needs to be alone for a while.
So I lounge on the plush canopy bed, close my eyes, and dream of Robert and of our future together, here, at Hartwell Castle.
In my fantasy, for five days out of seven I am at his side, his wife, mistress of Hartwell Castle, and its queen. But during that time, Robert always has his big, black book close at hand. And every so often I see him making a note in it, and when I do I quake with trepidation and arousal.
As well I might, for on the sixth day he summons me to his office, produces his black book, reads all my infractions out to me, and allocates a punishment for each and every one of them.
And then I spend the next day in the dungeon, submitting to what he has decided should be inflicted on me.
A structure for our life together as dominant and submissive.
I know that one of the major pressures on a dominant is a submissive who is forever mooning around, wanting attention from him. And I never want to be like that. So in this, my fantasy—my plan for our life together—the parameters are set, and the day reserved for punishment and submission has been designated in advance.
Yet during the seconds, minutes, hours, and days leading up to the moment of reckoning, when I shall stand naked before Robert and he will pick up his black book and detail all my infractions, there will always be an undertone to our ostensibly vanilla life together. And I want it, need it, crave it, as much as I crave and need and want him.
Robert emerges from his shower, and I love how he looks in his black silk robe, so tall, so strong, so masterful.
Together we lounge on the bed, his powerful arms wrapped protectively around me, and I am in bliss. I almost don’t want him to speak and break the spell of my happiness.
But I know that there will be time for those emotions, that joy and sense of security, much later.
Instead, I wait expectantly for him to start telling me the end of the story and reveal the cause of his hatred of Ge
orgiana.
But the suite bell chimes, and one of the waiters enters, bringing us the dinner Robert must have ordered earlier in the evening: beluga, lobster, followed by chocolate mousse, washed down by Cristal.
All to commemorate our very first meal together.
And together we eat until we are both satiated.
Through it all I want to say so much, to ask so much, but I sense that he is far away from me, inwardly rehearsing what he is about to tell me.
For a while we snuggle close to each other on the purple velvet sofa facing the window, through which the lights of Manhattan glimmer at us from a distance.
Then he lights a cigarette and begins.
“I slipped away from the wedding reception as soon as the last guests started leaving. Up to the West Turret, the Honeymoon Suite, where the canopy bed was covered in violets, nothing but violets.
“My desire mounting, I stood by the bed, waiting for Georgiana to make her entrance, hardly able to contain my raging excitement.
“As she requested, I had already affixed the shackles to the bedposts. A riding crop and a cane stood in the corner.
“Then Georgiana appeared on the threshold of the Honeymoon Suite, her willowy form lit so brightly by all the klieg lights she had ordered to be installed especially for our wedding night that it was if she were a movie star gliding into a Hollywood premiere.
“In her purple chiffon negligee, through which I could see the outline of her flawless body, she resembled a divine angel.
“Angel. All of a sudden I flashed back to Le Château, and how I met Georgiana. Then I pushed the memory out of my mind and concentrated instead on the goddess in front of me.
“She was standing very close to me, her body pressed to mine.
“ ‘Master,’ she said, ‘now that I belong to you heart and soul, now that I am yours completely in the eyes of the Lord and in the eyes of the law as well, on this, my wedding night with you, I have one request. A request that I beg you to consider, Master, please.’