Hall of Infamy

by Amanita Virosa

  Carrot and Stick

  It really was an outrage! To be treated like that, by such a horrid little tradesman. It really was too much! Amelia stroked her denuded mons as she fumed. Awful though the experience had been, she seemed unable to stop thinking about it. For all her shame and anger, her shaven sex fascinated her and she could not stop fondling herself. Amelia gently fingered her quim as she lay in the bath, experiencing a strange mixture of emotions from the sensation: part horror, part excitement, and part delight.

  After her own shaving, Amelia had watched Clara receive the same treatment, and the image had burnt itself into Amelia’s mind. Slowly, she licked her lips as she remembered the different elements of the scene: Clara’s slender limbs; the black straps brutal against the white of her silk stockings; the bound girl’s gurgling cries as Mr Catchpole worked with the shaving brush; the blonde fur being stripped away by the gleaming, relentless razor; the way the girl had whimpered at the touch of the cold steel. Amelia permitted herself a smile as she remembered her cousin’s paroxysms while the barber’s knowing hands had coaxed her into climax. The spectacle had almost made her own ordeal worthwhile.

  The door opened suddenly and Amelia raised her hands quickly to her breasts.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you were up to, Amelia,’ Jamie said, as he lounged in the entrance. ‘You just can’t keep those fingers from your sex, can you, you slut?’

  Amelia held her tongue but, to her chagrin, felt her cheeks redden.

  ‘Aha,’ her tormentor said with a smile, ‘it looks like I was right.’

  Amelia silently cursed her traitorous face as he sauntered over to her.

  ‘All right, you should be clean by now. Stand up.’

  Amelia stared at him, and at the whippy-looking yellow cane he held. Jamie held his peace for a moment as Amelia struggled with herself.

  Deciding there was little alternative, she got up sullenly, doing her best to cover her naked charms as the water drained off her into the slipper-bath.

  ‘No, Amelia. I thought we had discussed this. Place your hands behind your head. I want to take a look at Mr Catchpole’s handiwork.’

  This was too much for her to endure. Rather than do as she was told, Amelia put her left hand, with which she had been attempting to cover her breasts, down with her right, which she was using to shield her quim.

  ‘You really are a slow learner, Amelia,’ Jamie said regretfully as he stepped behind her and unleashed a sudden stroke of the cane. The whippy stick cracked across Amelia’s wet bottom. She gave a startled shriek of pain.

  She tried to turn, to keep her naked rear away from him, but shuffling in the wet tub was slow, and his circling was quicker. Again the cane whistled through the air and thwacked across moist bottom-flesh. Amelia squealed again. When the third stroke caught her across her thighs, Amelia doubled up and howled. Then she raised her hands, though she still crouched wincing, knowing that she could not win this game.

  ‘Ow! Ooh! That really stings, you – you – you…’ As she blinked the tears of pain from her eyes, she met his gaze and the insult died on her lips as she watched him flex the cane.

  ‘And so unnecessary, Amelia, my dear,’ Jamie said calmly. ‘Eventually you will learn it is best to obey right away. Now get your hands behind your head and stand up straight. Legs apart… Oh yes, that’s much more appropriate. Would you mind terribly, Amelia, if I were to have a feel?’

  Amelia moaned as he placed his hand over her wet mons and squeezed gently.

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s very nice. He did do a good job. Mrs Pritchard tells me you enjoyed it too, after all that fuss! Anyway, time to get dressed now. Lord Alex and Lady Alicia have asked me to present you to them after dinner tonight, and I have something particularly special for you to wear.’

  ‘Not long now. Just wait till I see Uncle Alex. Just wait till he sees what Jamie has done to us. God, I hope we don’t have to wait much longer. I’m dying for a pee.’

  ‘Oh, Amelia, please don’t make things any worse.’ Clara blinked in appeal. ‘Aunt and Uncle must have agreed to this…’ She fell silent and leant against the dark oak-panelled wall with a chinking of chain.

  Dressing for dinner had proved a grave disappointment to Amelia. Jamie had donned a smart dinner-jacket, complete with a white tie and white double-breasted waistcoat. However, for Amelia and Clara there was nothing but a fresh pair of stockings, clean knickers, and a new silk smock for each of them to wear.

  ‘I thought you said there was something special,’ Amelia had muttered as she put the hateful outfit on once more.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Jamie smiled and produced from his jacket pockets a pair of sky-blue lacy garters and matching hair ribbons, and a similar set in pink. ‘Here.’ He handed the blue set to Clara. ‘To match your lovely eyes.’

  Amelia had fumed to see the silly girl’s eyelashes flutter at the compliment. Then he had handed the pink set to her. ‘To match your bottom when I spank it later, Amelia, and your blushing cheeks.’

  Amelia had very nearly mutinied again, but he had strolled over to the cane cupboard and she hurriedly pulled the garters on. Betsy had then put the cousins’ hair in girlish bunches with the ribbons, as Amelia watched Jamie out of the corner of her eye. The young man had emerged from the cupboard with a handful of dark-brown leather straps.

  ‘What is taking them so long? We must have been here for over an hour.’ Amelia shifted from foot to foot. The pressure in her bladder was starting to become acute. She was also increasingly uncomfortable. Jamie had strapped the girls’ wrists behind their backs. Each wrist was secured to the opposite arm by a second strap, buckled just above the elbow, so that their arms were bound across the small of their back. This left their befrilled bottoms available and impossible to protect. Collars had followed, and chain leashes attached to these.

  ‘Now, listen carefully, my pets.’ Jamie had taken the leashes from Betsy and smiled at his captive’s amiably. ‘There are a lot of stairs and, without your hands available to save you if you fall, I want you to be very careful and try to trot along in step.’

  Amelia had had just enough time to add this outrage to the catalogue she intended to bring to her aunt and uncle’s attention before he had set off. After that, she had had to concentrate. There was no real reason why they should trip, though the heels on their white button-boots were certainly perilously high. However, the feeling of having no recourse to her arms, usually taken for granted, made her feel dreadfully insecure.

  When they had finally got to the dining room Amelia had taken a deep breath, ready to present her long list of complaints. But to her utter fury, Jamie had produced a padlock and secured the leashes to an iron ring set into the wall by the dining room door. He had then kissed Clara on the forehead and told them to wait.

  ‘I suppose they are having their dinner,’ Clara mused, belatedly answering her cousin’s last question.

  Amelia glared at her. The position of her arms had tautened the thin silk over her breasts, and her pretty nipples were sticking out. The bunches made her look even sweeter and more vulnerable than usual. Amelia shook her head. ‘And what about us,’ she demanded, ‘what about our dinner?’

  ‘Oh Amelia,’ Clara said softly, ‘I – I don’t think we are allowed to eat with… with… them.’

  ‘Them? And who are they?’ Amelia demanded furiously as the blonde girl quailed, her chain leash clinking as she cringed away. ‘The adults? The quality?’ Amelia spat the words, pulling herself to her full height and standing as erect and proudly as her bondage and shaming outfit would allow. ‘I am an adult. I am nineteen and I am a baronet… I… I… I—’

  ‘Of course you are Amelia, my sweet,’ the Marchioness of Hatherby’s husky, amused voice put in.

  ‘Oh, Aunt Alicia.’ Amelia was a little taken aback at Lady Alicia’s abrupt appearance. Her ladyship was looking particularly
resplendent in a mauve silk evening gown trimmed with cascades of white lace. Long mauve satin gloves complemented the dress, and her raven tresses were coiffed into an elegant arrangement. She smiled fondly at the tethered girls.

  ‘And Clara, how lovely. My, how you have grown!’

  ‘Jamie, he – he,’ Amelia spluttered, ‘he made us, he has dressed us like this, he – he chained us and left us here—’

  Lady Alicia put a satin-covered finger to Amelia’s lips. ‘I know, and I know what a trial it must be to a girl of your spirit. Never mind. Look, he has given me the key.’

  The woman winked and held up the padlock key, and Amelia felt her heart lift. Lady Alicia released the lock and took the ends of the leashes in her elegant gloved hand.

  ‘Those men are having their cigars and port and—’ she bestowed a radiant smile on the cousins ‘—no doubt discussing awful crudities.’ She gave the leashes a firm tug and Amelia found herself stepping forward uncertainly. ‘So you two little darlings had best come along with me.’

  Amelia and Clara followed their aunt into the splendid drawing room.

  ‘Aunt Alicia,’ Amelia said as her aunt tugged them over to a comfortable chaise-longue.

  ‘Yes, my dear?’ Lady Alicia paused and half turned with a questioning expression.

  ‘Do you think I – we – might have these awful straps and things removed? We’ve been trussed up like this for ages and it’s ever so uncomfortable.’

  To Amelia’s distress, Alicia pursed her lips, as if considering this carefully. ‘Not just yet, Amelia, I think.’

  Amelia’s heart sank as her aunt sat on the chaise, still holding their leashes, and indicated that the girls should get down on their knees. She tried another tack, for her need was becoming urgent.

  ‘Please, Aunt, I – I really do need to be excused.’

  ‘To be excused?’ Alicia arched an eyebrow enquiringly.

  ‘To go – I need to go.’

  ‘But to go where?’ Alicia idly picked a dressage-whip from the chaise with her free hand.

  ‘To – to – to… I need to use the, the water-closet.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lady Alicia put the tip of the crop beneath Amelia’s chin, lifted it and beamed. ‘You need to go and do pee-pee! Silly girl, why on earth did you not say?’

  ‘I…’ Amelia blushed, abashed by her aunt’s evident amusement.

  ‘Did that beast Jamie not let you squat before had your bath?’

  Now Amelia’s cheeks turned crimson, and she knew Alicia was mocking her. Jamie had indeed offered her the use of a bucket in the nursery parlour before she had taken her bath. She had refused indignantly. Watching Clara tinkle into the bucket, frilly knickers around her ankles, as tears of pure embarrassment ran down the blonde girl’s face, had not persuaded Amelia to change her mind. The nursery water-closet was kept locked now, and Jamie held the key, but she had told herself the chance was sure to come. If she absolutely had to, she had reasoned, she could even fill her bath a little more, once she got out of it. At least that would be in private. Unfortunately, Jamie’s abrupt entrance had put paid to that particular scheme.

  Amelia looked up at her aunt and pleaded with her eyes. The pressure in her bladder was getting worse all the time. For a long moment, she looked into her aunt’s dark brown eyes and tried to fathom what the woman was thinking. At last, Lady Alicia leant forward and patted Amelia fondly on the cheek.

  ‘You know, you really should have gone when you had the chance,’ she said, and once again her beautiful face broke into a dazzling smile.

  ‘I wonder what Hope Hall will be like?’ Emma risked a shy smile at her companion as the carriage lumbered out of the reformatory gates.

  Polly was seated opposite her. The interior of the coach was functional, even grim, with doors of black-painted iron, and the small windows were barred. However, the seats were of horse-hair and leather, and soft enough to mitigate the poor suspension over uneven ground. Emma was profoundly grateful for this, as the after-effects of her ‘farewell’ still lingered on the tender skin of her rear.

  ‘At least we are quit of that place.’ Polly gestured with her free hand in the direction from which the coach had come. ‘You’ll be all right, I expect.’ The big girl gave Emma a wan smile.

  ‘I’m sure you will be, too,’ Emma said reassuringly.

  The coach hit a rut and lurched violently, throwing both girls about on their seats. Only the handcuff, which manacled Emma’s left hand to a bar set by the carriage door, prevented her from being thrown to the floor. She rubbed her wrist ruefully, for the violence of the motion had caused it to chafe against the iron bond. She looked at Polly, who had her own left wrist secured to the opposite door.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Polly said quietly. ‘They obviously mean to make you a lady’s-maid, eventually, but I think that the Marquis had special plans for me.’

  ‘Oh.’ Emma smiled encouragingly, although what she had overheard in the reformatory courtyard concerning her fellow passenger had puzzled her. ‘Never mind, your job might be even better.’ Polly showed no sign of cheering up, so Emma decided it might be best to change the subject. She looked around the prison carriage again.

  ‘What were you in for?’

  The big girl gave a resigned shrug. ‘Oh, the usual. Gross moral turpitude. They caught me with a proscribed book. And you?’

  Emma blushed, the shame of her conviction and the proceedings of the court still fresh. ‘Immodesty and immorality,’ she whispered and hung her head. ‘I – they said I was pert to my mistress, when I would not… do something she asked… and, and then they said there were these stains on my sheets…’ Emma blinked away a tear as she remembered the terrible injustice of it all. She looked up at the brown-eyed girl who was watching her sympathetically, and cheered up a little at the sight of a friendly face – a rather beautiful friendly face, at that.

  ‘This is a surprise, anyway,’ she said. ‘When we arrived at the bridewell, we were just marched up from the train. I did not even know they had carriages like this.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Polly said flatly. The coach passed under some trees and it became gloomier inside the padlocked carriage. ‘I heard a wardress talking.’ She looked at Emma. ‘It seems this thing was sent by our new employers.’ Both girls looked at the barred windows of the prison coach, and back at each other. ‘Apparently, this splendid carriage is the property of Hope Hall.’

  ‘I know it’s hard, girls, but we all have to go through it.’

  Amelia knelt next to Clara as their aunt, still holding their leashes in one hand and the long crop in the other, explained a little about their situation.

  ‘Well, actually,’ Lady Alicia continued, smiling smugly, ‘it was different for me. But then, of course, I come from a different country.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see why—’ Amelia muttered mutinously.

  ‘Shhh, you must learn to speak when you are spoken to, if you wish to avoid… unpleasantness. There is a saying in Hatherby, which is “to bestow, first you must know”. The Marquises of Hatherby and their families all have to taste the bitter dregs of servitude before they can be entrusted to wield the rod of true authority. In other words, if you wish power and privilege, you need to find out how it feels to be subjected to them.’

  ‘So why isn’t Jamie on a chain, then?’ Amelia said sullenly.

  Lady Alicia sighed, put down the crop and dropped the girls’ leashes. She leant forward and lifted Amelia’s face gently until the young woman was looking into her dark eyes. The older woman shook her head regretfully.

  The slap was so sudden Amelia did not see it coming. Lady Alicia’s left hand held her head, gently but firmly, as her right cracked across Amelia’s cheek. ‘Speak when you are spoken to,’ she repeated slowly, eyes twinkling with merriment.

  Rather than take up their leashes, she beckoned Clara to shuffle
forward on her knees, and began unstrapping her bonds.

  ‘Jamie,’ she said, apparently electing to answer the question, despite having slapped Amelia for having the temerity to ask it, ‘like Alex before him, attended public school.’

  ‘Now,’ she said to the unbound Clara, ‘slip those silly frilly knickers off. I know they amuse young Jamie, but they give your pretty bottom a sight too much protection for the games we are going to play. Stand now, dear, and place your hands behind your neck. Look, Amelia, did you ever see such a pretty little sex? Mrs Pritchard tells me you enjoyed your shaving, by the way.’

  Amelia blinked at Clara’s shaven quim. As she was still on her knees, it was mere inches from her face. Her mouth felt dry. A potent mixture of fear and desire coursed through her veins.

  ‘Very well. Clara, skip off and ring for the maid. Amelia, get up. I think we’ll have your drawers off as well.’

  Amelia watched glumly as her cousin tripped off towards the bell pull, the bottom of the girl’s bare buttocks showing beneath the hem of the little smock as she moved. Her own panties were pulled down by Lady Alicia and she dutifully stepped out of them.

  The leash-chain dangling from the collar felt particularly humiliating as she stood there, arms pinioned securely behind her, while Alicia’s satin-clad hand fondly stroked her bottom. The chain descended, nestling snugly in the silk between her breasts, and then the cold metal brushed the naked flesh of her denuded quim. The sensation was quite unbearably tantalising and Amelia bit her lip as she tried to ignore the feeling, the pressure of her bladder, and her aunt’s fingers exploring her bottom-flesh.

  The maid arrived before Clara had returned to her aunt’s side. A pretty blonde girl hurried in with a great deal of rustling of long, billowing silk skirts, carrying a large silver tray.