‘God, but you’ve a fine arse!’ he grunted.
Eloise responded with a resigned sob and lifted her bottom to make it easier for Henry to move inside her. He increased his pace, making her grunt and pant in reaction as his belly slammed into her buttocks. The faint sound of a bell reached them, forcibly reminding them of the need for haste.
‘Be quick, you English lunatic!’ Eloise panted.
Henry gave a frantic flurry of shoves, forcing his cock to the very hilt with each one. Eloise gasped as the breath was knocked from her body and sprawled across the barrel, losing her balance from the force of his thrusts. She swore incoherently and then he was coming, deep inside her without thought for the consequences.
‘We had better get on with it,’ he puffed as he pulled out of her. ‘You can come to climax later, if you’ve a need.’
‘You are a maniac, an idiot!’ Eloise gasped. ‘How can you think of sex at a time like this?’
‘Presented with your bottom, mam’selle,’ Henry replied, ‘I would think of sex on the very steps of the gallows.’
‘You are like a wilful child!’ she stormed. ‘You cannot contain your beastly lust for five minutes! And you are obsessed with my bottom!’
‘Only a corpse would not be, and perhaps a backgammon player,’ he replied smoothly as he fastened his breeches. ‘But come, there’s not time for petty quarrels.’
Eloise responded with a snort of utter contempt but grabbed the supper boy’s coat from the floor and made for the cellar stairs. Pausing only to gather up a trio of bottles of les Languettes, Henry followed. Despite having just had her, the sight of her bare bottom pushing out from the torn breeches as she climbed the stair sent a hot flush to his loins, especially when she stumbled and thrust it to within inches of his face.
In her room, Henry replaced his habit and began to load himself with the treasure of the Château. Finally, so hung about with purses of gold, silver, coins and jewels that he could barely stagger, he was ready. Eloise was likewise heavily laden, the boy’s long coat at least partially hiding both her voluptuous figure and her burdens. Yet even with her hair pinned up under his hat, she looked not only distinctly feminine but very unlike the supper boy.
‘You need more height,’ Henry declared critically, ‘and less hip. Also, he moves as if his legs were made of sticks, while your walk has always reminded me of a Covent Garden nun I know by the name of Becky.’
‘You know a nun?’ Eloise queried.
‘Hardly that,’ Henry laughed, ‘unless a nun might be had against a wall for a threpenny. Becky’s a doxy, putain to you.’
Eloise opened her mouth to speak but closed it, instead adjusting the hat to hide more of her face.
‘It must pass,’ Henry continued. ‘Merely keep to my right and out of the light. I shall exchange a quip with the guards and will wager that the two mumpheads won’t spare you a glance. If they do, then we must trust to my barkers and the speed of our legs.’
‘I can barely walk, let alone run,’ Eloise complained.
‘Then let us hope that the need never arises,’ Henry replied and stepped towards the door.
Jean Faugres watched the last trace of light fade over the St Romain cliffs. He was in an ill temper, the general unrest and a poor vintage having reduced the demand for his professional services, while the constant presence of his wife and children had made it impossible for him to pay his long-overdue visit to Eloise de la Tour-Romain. This, however, was the night. Marie and the children were with a cousin in Chassagne, a sufficient distance to ensure that he would remain undisturbed. With the old order gone and the fiery Emile Boillot laid up with a cracked skull, his dominance in the village was undisputed. Certainly none would dare dispute his right to visit the Château, nor to question his reasons for the visit.
Pulling on his finest coat and clapping his hat on to his head, he made for the door. The village was gloomy in the last of the dusk, the houses showing as black shapes against a background only fractionally less dull, the occasional candlelit window providing the sole illumination where a householder had failed to close their shutters. Using his stick to guide himself, he set off along streets that had been familiar to him since his family had moved to St Romain. Briefly he moved downhill, and then turned along the base of the spur on which the Château stood, looking up to the outline of its turrets and battlements. Passing the church, he struck up the road to the cliffs, all the while thinking of how he would enjoy Eloise once he had persuaded her that she had no option but to surrender.
For him, her attraction lay not so much in her bounteous curves, nor in her pretty face. Rather it was her very arrogance that attracted him, her automatic assumption of absolute, unquestioning superiority over all not of the nobility and especially, it had always seemed, to him. He knew full well that she would no more consider him as a lover than she would one of her horses or dogs – less so, if some of the nastier rumours that had been circulating were true. To even have suggested dalliance would have resulted in a flogging at the least, and he had never dared do more than steal covetous, lust-filled glances at her when she rode through the village.
Now, things were very different. Her power was gone while, if he so chose, he might be the one ordering her flogged. Indeed, he decided, that was a good idea. Yes, he would have her stripped and tied to the back of a cart by her hands, the local dung cart perhaps. Then she would be whipped through the streets of the village, naked, with not so much as shoes on her feet. She would look a great deal less haughty with her lush buttocks, belly and breasts criss-crossed with welts from hazel wands and plaited apple shoots. Then, when she was a sweaty, dishevelled mess, with her red-gold hair bedraggled and her face streaked with tears, he would have her thrown in the pond by the Auxey road, or perhaps placed in a pillory for public ridicule. The shaving of her head would make a final, degrading touch, and one he felt sure she would appreciate to the full.
His cock was growing stiff in his breeches as he thought of the state she would be in and, at the idea that at the end of it he could make her beg for her life, it grew stiffer still. He hastened on, wondering whether it would be safe to force Eloise to suck his cock or if the risk of her fiery temper and sharp teeth exceeded the gain. Perhaps it would be best to explain her options to her first, pointing out that only by absolute surrender to him did she stand a chance of leniency. Then again it might prove more enjoyable simply to force the little minx down on the floor and fuck her were she lay with her skirts turned up, her fat boobs pushed out of her bodice and her thighs well parted to accommodate his body.
As he turned the corner where the road reached the flat top of the spur, he noticed two figures coming towards him, one of fair size and hunched into a cloak or cassock, one smaller and moving with a peculiar gait.
‘Good evening, my friends,’ he ventured uncertainly, assuming them to be villagers but curious as to their reason for being on the spur.
Neither answered.
‘Michel? Hubert?’ he queried, using the names of the two men set to guard the Château.
The larger of the two gave an odd grunting sound as the smaller stepped to the side.
‘Who are you?’ Faugres demanded and grabbed at the hat of the smaller figure.
The hat came away in his hand and for an instant he was looking into the faint, yet unmistakable face of Eloise de la Tour-Romain. He grasped at her clothing even as he was opening his mouth to shout for the guards. Something heavy struck his forehead, sending the world spinning around him, then it struck again and his senses slipped away.
‘Damn!’ Henry swore under his breath. ‘Of all the luck!’
‘It is Jean Faugres!’ Eloise hissed from where she was examining the prone man. ‘Give me your knife, Henry.’
‘What for?’ Henry demanded.
‘I’m going to slit his throat!’ Eloise hissed.
‘You can’t do that,’ Henry objected, shocked at the sheer bloodthirstiness of his companion.
‘What
else are we to do?’ she questioned. ‘Besides, he was coming up to ravish me!’
‘You don’t know that,’ Henry objected. ‘Look, leave him. Come on!’
‘I am sure of it. Give me the knife!’
‘No. Look, leave him, will you, you bloodthirsty bitch? As it is, they may not even bother to look for us. Kill their upright man and they’ll be after us like a pack of hounds!’
Grabbing her arm he pulled Eloise up and dragged her, still protesting, into the screen of undergrowth that they had so nearly reached when accosted by Faugres.
For the next hour they groped their way through the dark, following the line of the cliff and finally locating Peggy and Todd. Natalie was already in the camp, and threw herself sobbing into Eloise’s arms as soon as they arrived, with Peggy quickly joining her.
‘Bene darkmans, sir,’ Gurney greeted Henry, with greater restraint. ‘Evening, Miss Eloise.’
Six
All morning they had been climbing into the Morvan, with the woods becoming denser and the ground more uneven, while what few tracks existed became increasingly rough. For Eloise, the extent of her loss was simply too great to take in and she walked in a daze, her mind balking at the acceptance of reality. Her rank was to her a certainty, a God-given right, which could no more be taken away than her heart. With that rank came the right to her land, to her privileges and to a superiority as unquestionable as it was natural.
Disbelief quickly gave way to self-delusion, with her old arrogance reasserting itself. The events that were shaking her world, she concluded, were no more than a brief disturbance. Shortly the trouble-makers would be put down and everything restored to its rightful order.
‘We should have taken horses!’ Eloise stormed as they reached the crest of another hill to find yet more dark, tree-shrouded upland before them.
‘And how, pray, was I supposed to do that?’ Henry demanded. ‘Lower them from the battlements? Perhaps while playing the pianoforte and dancing a cotillion? Or perhaps we should simply have rode out of the Château gates, passing the guards with a disdainful sniff?’
‘Idiot,’ Eloise replied and turned her back on him to look out across the gloomy hills of the Morvan.
Henry drew a long sigh. The return journey had so far been altogether harder than the one out. Gurney was tough, while Peggy had proved remarkably game and never complained of hardship. Natalie was not only tiny but soft from years of light domestic work, yet at least tried to put a brave on things. Eloise, however, was a very different matter. Not only had she wanted to wear a gown of brilliant yellow silk that was as impractical as it was conspicuous, but she had also proved much the slowest of them, while constantly reviling Henry for what she evidently saw as a lack of foresight and finally demanding that she be made a litter.
He had been forced to give in on the dress because the other one she had chosen was a vermilion brighter even than the yellow, while his suggestion that she wear what remained of the supper boy’s apparel had resulted in her sitting on the ground and refusing to move at all. On the matter of the litter, he had finally put his foot down, resulting in a shouting match that had ended only when he and Gurney had flatly refused to construct the thing.
‘A clever man would have purchased a wagon and horses in Cosne or Châtillon,’ Eloise now said, apparently musing and keeping her eyes directed out over the Morvan but clearly intending her words for Henry. ‘No, not even a clever man, any man with a whit of sense. He would also have purchased a light carriage, or perhaps a gig. Thus I might have travelled in the comfort and style suited to my station in life. The wagon would have allowed us to bring an adequate quantity of provisions and at least the bare necessities of my wardrobe.’
‘And attracted every bloodthirsty peasant for a score of miles!’ Henry retorted, merely drawing a haughty sniff from Eloise.
For a moment there was silence, Henry struggling to hold his temper, Eloise standing still with her upturned nose pointed disdainfully skyward. Everything about her projected her high self-opinion, a superiority so assured, so prideful that it made Henry’s blood boil with resentment. Not only was Eloise profoundly ungrateful for her rescue, but she also seemed to feel that those who had done it were now obliged to act as her servants. Henry had expected gratitude, or at least a sense of obligation to her rescuers, rather than the sulky, resentful attitude she seemed to be displaying.
‘Why,’ she said suddenly and aloud, ‘is it my misfortune to always be served by such lackwits and buffoons? My . . .’
Her sentence was never finished, for Henry had made two fast steps and taken a firm grip on her arm. Eloise’s poise vanished in a squeal of alarm as she was pulled off balance. An instant later, he had sat back on to a decaying stump and thrown her across his knee. Her flailing arms and furious protests were ignored as he pulled up her dress and petticoats with one brisk motion, as was the scream of indignation at the exposure of her bottom.
‘No!’ she yelled. ‘Not that, you bastard!’
‘Yes, that,’ Henry replied. ‘A spanking, Eloise, a spanking to hue your big arse and leave you blubbering.’
He twisted her arm hard into the small of her back, cocked his knee up to project the chubby pear of her bottom further into the air, and planted a hard slap full across the cheeks. Eloise squealed in pain and outrage, only to receive a yet harder slap that sent a wave of flesh over her bottom and thighs and set her legs kicking. Soon she was howling, with her buttocks red and sore as slap after slap was applied to their quivering surfaces. Henry’s expression of grim determination faded as the spanking progressed, to be replaced by a happy, satisfied grin.
As Eloise’s buttocks danced in the soft forest light, the villagers of St Romain were being exhorted to inflict a far sterner punishment on her. Emile Boillot, his head still wrapped in bandages, was attempting to raise enthusiasm for her pursuit. Jean Faugres stood by his side, occasionally adding a bellowed comment on Eloise’s depravity and the need for her to be brought to justice.
Despite the general dislike of Eloise’s family among the villagers, the efforts of the two agitators were coming to very little. The vintage was in, and the wine fermenting, allowing little spare time for the workforce. Moreover, despite the doubtful quality of the crop, it was, for the first time, entirely theirs. Few indeed wished to waste such good fortune for the sake of returning Eloise to St Romain, and the great majority were simply content to enjoy not only her absence, but that of the entire de la Tour-Romain family.
Boillot brought his speech to its climax, ending with an exhortation to follow Eloise and her rescuers and bring them back to St Romain. A ragged cheer greeted his demands, but only two voices were raised in agreement, those of Michel Brochon and Hubert Magnien, the two guards who had allowed her to slip past.
Eloise lay over Henry’s lap with her burning bottom thrust high and her thighs cocked apart in what she was faintly aware was a thoroughly lewd display of her sex. It was immaterial, though, the pain of her spanking having driven all thoughts of self-respect from her head and taken her to the point where she no longer had control of her own body.
She knew vaguely that her two maids had watched her beaten in mingled horror and delight, horror that their mistress should have such indignity visited upon her, delight that the woman who had made their own bottoms dance to the tune of physical punishment so often was now howling and blubbering over a man’s knee with no more self-restraint than they themselves had shown. Suddenly it stopped, just at the point when her pain and misery were giving way to the inevitable sexual response.
‘Are you sorry?’ Henry demanded, giving her bottom a gentle pat that made it very clear what was going to happen if she said no.
‘Yes,’ she sighed.
‘And will you be good from now on?’ he continued.
‘Yes,’ she responded glumly.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Henry answered and laid another hard smack across her seat.
Eloise squeaked, then gave a louder cry as h
er spanking started again, as hard as before. Soon she was mewling and beating her free hand in the leaf mould of the forest floor. Her bottom felt huge and swollen, also desperately in need of a cock between the warm, roughened cheeks, then in her cunt, perhaps even in her anus, yet a spanking was a spanking, and it still hurt. Finally it stopped, leaving her breathing hard and uneven.
‘Now, will you be good?’ Henry demanded.
‘I’ll be good, I promise,’ she snivelled.
He made no response, but slid a hand between her thighs. She could only moan in pleasure as a finger found her vagina and slid in easily. Indifferent to the audience, she stuck her bottom up, hoping to be masturbated. Henry merely laughed and called her a slut, then let go of her wrist and pushed her to the ground. She knelt, hot bottom thrust out to the forest, as Henry fumbled with his breeches and freed his erection.
Still sobbing bitterly, Eloise opened her mouth for Henry’s cock. Her need for sex had been rising steadily since midway through the spanking, until she knew that, should the proposal be made, she would accept whatever the men considered proper for her. Half of her had been hoping that the spanking would be purely admonitory; the other half had known full well that the sight and feel of her naked, throbbing bottom would leave Henry with a raging erection that he was bound to want to quench in the damp hole of her cunt.
‘In it goes, little one,’ Henry said happily and fed his erection into her waiting mouth.
Both hating herself and exalting in the sensation, she started to suck his cock. Henry gave a knowing chuckle and began to fuck her mouth, holding her by the hair as he slid his penis in and out.
‘I must spank you more often,’ he remarked. ‘You’re ever so much the better for it.’
Eloise felt a new flush of shame and resentment at his words, but carried on sucking, unable to resist the feelings that the spanking had started – and, more importantly, the fact that it was Henry who had spanked her.
The Rake Page 12