by Emily Tilton
Rebecca told herself that she didn’t care about honor. She had set out upon the path that led to the little woods, and the sight of a man’s prick, and the thrusting of the prick’s hardness into her… her cunt. She had set out knowing that the path had nothing about it of what the world called honor, or of what it called virtue. What had James said? The flowers of vice. Like in some allegorical book about being a good girl, of the kind she and Thomasina sniggered at in the schoolroom. She had decided to follow the scent of the flowers of vice, though in the end their musky, earthy fragrance was the wicked aroma of a man’s private parts, as he pumped his prick in his hand before he thrust it inside a girl’s maiden furrow and made a woman of her.
Why then did her heart misgive her when she heard this man say the name of that one? She pushed that question down and away, and found again her brazenness.
“And if it does have to do with William? If… if…” Her mind groped for something shocking with which to cover up the truth. She found it, and she spoke it before she could even think it through. To her simultaneous pleasure and horror in speaking words so wicked, she continued, “If I wish him to be able to touch my cunt more easily…”
James’ face grew dark with anger. “Young ladies do not say that word,” he said, and then he started to spank her again, even harder and faster than before, letting his hand do the speaking, as her cries of pain accompanied the sharp slap of his hand on her burning bottom.
“Please…” she sobbed. “Please… it hurts so much… please, stop.” Her bottom squirmed, clenched, just as before but now even more embarrassingly.
“Will you say that word again?” he said, still spanking. “Will you?”
“Please! I… I didn’t know!”
James did stop, instantly. “You didn’t know that well-born women do not say that word?”
“No!” she cried. A moment before, she thought, she would not have cared—she would have tried not to care, at least—that the word William had taught her for her private part could shock James so thoroughly. Now it seemed that the knowledge burned in her mind as he had made her bottom burn for saying it. And she had written it, too, hadn’t she, in the note he had read? A hot blush came upon her face.
“Did William teach it to you?”
“Yes,” she sobbed.
“You must call that part of your person your private part, as I am sure you have always done. If you must be more specific, you must say my vagina.”
The didactic tone James suddenly adopted as he taught her how to talk about that part which she and Thomasina had discussed so frequently, knowing that young men were interested in touching it and doing there what the bridegroom did to his bride, seemed much more shameful to her even than the other word, the one William had taught her. But his earnestness, and the way he had stopped spanking her when he learned that she knew no better than to write cunt and to say it, too, made Rebecca feel that this footman did have some understanding and even some lesson to impart to her.
She sniffled. A strange new purpose came over her. James seemed to her now, somehow, much more manly than William—much more able to guide her along the path of vice, which she could trick him into thinking the path of virtue. She wondered suddenly what his prick looked like—whether it might even be bigger and more fascinating, more beautiful, than William’s. To see one prick was an accomplishment, but to see two—to have had the pricks of both footmen in her… her vagina… in the span of twenty-four hours…
Surely his prick must be hard, must it not, having spanked her, and having seen her bare bottom? Thomasina had known enough to say with certainty that seeing a girl’s bare bottom made a man get hard down there. What if instead of having more spanking, Rebecca could learn a very different kind of lesson from James?
The scene seemed suspended. James looked into her eyes, and Rebecca imagined he could discern the way her body had begun to yield to him. He put his hand on her bottom, and she gave a little whimper. His eyes, so purposeful a moment before, seemed suddenly troubled, and with a rush of excitement she understood that her charms had had an effect on him that he found disquieting. She was going to get her way.
The hand on her little bottom rubbed gently, as if soothing away the pain of the discipline he had found it necessary to provide. Rebecca’s private part became warm, and then wet, under that touch—much wetter than yesterday, with William… as wet as when she did the naughty thing under her night rail, in bed. Her breathing came in little sighing pants.
“I…” James said, his voice sounding much less certain than it had at any point hitherto. It had a thick quality, too, that seemed very different from its previous evenness.
“Would you like… would you like to…” Rebecca said, realizing that fuck must be another word women should not say.
She saw that he would very much like to fuck her; she had not the slightest doubt. Nor did she doubt, later, that she would have won, would have conquered the sense of honor and duty that clearly told him he must not possess her as William had possessed her, must not renew the outrage to a young lady whose character stood in jeopardy.
But a knock sounded at the door, then. James and Rebecca both gave a start and a shout, but the door opened, and Mrs. Rand stood there.
As if seen underwater, where all action seems to unfold so slowly, Rebecca watched her friend’s mundane, preoccupied expression change to horror, heard the word Rebecca reach only “Reb—” before Mrs. Rand’s elegant middle-aged mouth simply hung open.
“Mrs. Rand,” James said, straightening up and thrusting the note into his waistcoat pocket, “this is entirely my fault, and I shall resign. Miss Adams has done nothing wrong.”
“No!” Rebecca cried, terribly confused, but conscious that she must not let him go on that way, when he had meant only to ensure that she returned to the path of virtue. Even if she had no desire to tread that road, James’ clear intent for her good made it imperative that he not be ruined, as she surely must be.
“Miss Adams, I can never express my apologies to you sufficiently for the outrage I have done you in uncovering you this way, and in the theft of your undergarments…”
Rebecca watched Mrs. Rand’s face, and saw that her friend was more than willing to believe ill of a servant, though perhaps some surprise showed in her eyes that this servant should prove so lewd and conniving. Trying to rise from the bed and put herself somewhat to rights, she had almost marshaled her thoughts when she saw James leave the room, Mrs. Rand entering to allow him passage, and coming now rapidly toward Rebecca with an aspect of concern for her shame, for her virtue, for her delicate maidenly blushes, that made Rebecca suddenly want to scream.
Chapter Six
The so-called theft of Miss Rebecca Adams’ undergarments represented what seemed a fathomless puzzle for Dr. Reginald Brown, scarcely twelve hours later, when he had arrived at Rand Park and heard the frank tale Mrs. Rand had to tell him and the much more halting one to which Miss Adams herself gave voice, describing the strange incident in her chamber.
“Now, Miss Adams,” Dr. Brown said, sitting with her and Mrs. Rand in the drawing room. “I must do all I can to understand what happened, so that I may advise your father and yourself as to the remedy that should be taken. Mrs. Rand tells me that the footman…”
“James.” Miss Adams’ voice had in it a note, as she spoke the name, that struck Dr. Brown as both distressed and somehow deceptive. She had not, he reflected, needed to say the footman’s name at all, had she?
“We have two footmen,” Mrs. Rand explained, clearly also noticing a certain oddity in Miss Adams’ denomination. “James Oakes, whom I found in Miss Adams’ chamber, and who has resigned and left Rand Park, was the senior one. I am sure Miss Adams means to make certain you do not accuse our remaining footman William Daren.”
Dr. Brown himself felt quite sure Miss Adams’ purpose lay in a very different direction—though he could not yet say what that direction might be—but he kept that certainty hid for now.
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“Ah, yes. Thank you,” he said blandly. “The footman took your undergarment. But when Mrs. Rand discovered him in the midst of… shall we say?… outraging your modesty, the article—or articles—in question were not present.”
He glanced at Mrs. Rand, whose face wore a frown now, as if the matter had only just appeared to her in this light. “I suppose…” she began, but Dr. Brown interrupted her.
“Please, Mrs. Rand. His grace the duke has commissioned me to discover the facts of the affair as fully as I can, and I must insist that Miss Adams be allowed to answer my inquiries herself.”
Miss Adams, for her part, had turned crimson. Dr. Brown supposed that no great revelation arose for him in that: the modesty of young ladies about their underthings was famous, and well known to him in particular, though he often deplored it. Many of the men who employed him, however, liked to see a girl blush when her drawers became a topic of conversation, and Dr. Brown knew his highest task to be serving their wishes, rather than his own opinions on society’s hypocrisy.
As a physician his specialty lay indeed in the regulation of that sort of modesty for the erotic benefit of the natural men who employed him, or in this case that of the man or men to whom Miss Adams would have her charms assigned, should Dr. Brown think that course of action best for her in the circumstances. He had come at the behest of Miss Adams’ father the duke, but he had received that behest through the Society for the Correction of Natural Daughters, to which his grace belonged, and to whom he had instantly referred the matter upon receiving Mr. Rand’s cable.
Should Miss Adams be proven to have stained her honor irreparably in the eyes of the world, he would of course bring her with him to London for a sort of coming out she had not imagined, but he could not yet discern whether such would be the result of the affair. This matter of her drawers, however, troubled him. He must, despite her blushes, treat it with a mixture of delicacy and frankness, learning as he explored it with the young lady how best to intervene so that she would in the end—if sexual submission to and training by a natural man should become her fate—prove a pleasing companion for the man lucky enough to gain her charms, made obedient to his erotic will.
“Yes, Doctor,” Mrs. Rand said, though he could tell from the way she said Doctor that she had heard some of the rumors put about by his enemies—or even, he supposed, by his friends. Mr. and Mrs. Rand prided themselves in London society, as everyone knew, upon their liberal principles, but neither MP husband nor peer’s-daughter wife truly possessed an open mind, Dr. Brown knew, as men like the Duke of Panton and the rest of the doctor’s friends judged the matter.
He knew however that she would not dare interfere with his investigation, the Duke of Panton being the patron of so many liberal members. Lady Ambers, stopping here at Rand Park at present, gave him more pause, for though she would not be privy to his inquiries she would almost certainly attempt to make herself mistress of all the facts, and might well interfere. She, too, professed herself liberal, but Lady Ambers’ true—and vengeful—prudery was well known among the ton.
“Miss Adams?” Dr. Brown said, after the pause had lengthened to half a minute. The girl had her eyes fixed, it seemed, on the carpet.
He watched her bite her lip before she raised her eyes in an attempt to meet his gaze frankly. In that moment Dr. Brown knew that the whole story had not come out, by any means. Miss Adams’ cheeks remained bright pink, which could be solely related to the matter of her drawers having been raised so frankly, but her abstraction told of a much deeper shame—one, most tellingly, that the doctor thought he could discern her desperately fighting against.
“It is all right, Rebecca,” Mrs. Rand said. “We will not think badly of you for discussing such matters, in these circumstances. Go ahead and tell Dr. Brown what you think happened to your pantalets.”
Dr. Brown suppressed a sigh. “Please, Mrs. Rand?” he said, half-turning to her before turning back to Miss Adams.
“I—I think…” she said hesitatingly. Then her lie—for Dr. Brown knew in an instant that she must be making the tale up on the spot—came pouring out of her. “I think he must have come in when I was walking with Mrs. Rand, earlier in the day. He must have… have stolen them.”
“There,” said Mrs. Rand. “Surely you, Doctor, know that there are men who will do such terrible things, for… for reasons that should not be mentioned in front of an unmarried woman such as Miss Adams.”
But Dr. Brown knew no such thing—or, if he did know that some men enjoyed possessing and using for their erotic release the undergarments of young women, he knew also that the fact had to do with Miss Adams’ pantalets only in an oblique way, if at all. The young lady knew precisely what had befallen her drawers.
The doctor’s first supposition was that James the footman had won them from her by persuasion or even by command. That, however, did not explain why Miss Adams had hastened to clarify the name of the footman in question. He would probably have to inquire about the other footman—William? That investigation should be done among the servants, though, he thought.
He adopted his bland medical smile. “No, that is correct, Mrs. Rand. Miss Adams, your hostess speaks of matters having to do with the marital relations of husbands and wives.”
Dr. Brown had phrased this formulation so as both to satisfy Mrs. Rand’s prudery and to gauge Miss Adams’ reaction. The young lady blushed, of course, and the doctor knew the older woman would put it down to the same modesty that caused her face to redden at the mention of undergarments. But the physician also felt quite positive that in the dropping of Miss Adams’ eyes from his back to the carpet he could discern more sexual knowledge than Mrs. Rand, at any rate, would have credited her young friend as having.
That guilty look did not of course surprise Dr. Brown in the slightest. He had a very wide knowledge of young women at this age, and in particular of natural daughters like Miss Adams. Indeed he had accepted the offer of patronage from the Society for the Correction of Natural Daughters because he had seen already throughout his career that illegitimate female offspring, once they had turned eighteen, very often took a franker and healthier—that is, indeed, more natural—interest in their developing bodies and in the well-developed bodies of men than their more purely bred age-mates.
The case interested him greatly both because Miss Adams seemed a pretty, winsome girl, likely to do great credit to her father even as a natural child, and because the intricacy of the affair posed a pleasing challenge. Because no true fault had come into the light, the footman apparently having taken all responsibility and blame upon himself—and in the process ruining at least for the moment what Mr. Rand had declared to Dr. Brown to have been very bright prospects—the physician must proceed with delicacy, taking care not to expose a scandal that might otherwise lie hid. He felt duty-bound, however, both with regard to his grace the girl’s father, along with the society who had commissioned his services, and with regard to his Hippocratic oath, to do his best to ensure Miss Adams’ happiness even if he judged that happiness to lie in an unconventional direction. If he determined that the girl should be given to a natural man for sexual training and erotic use, Dr. Brown would not hesitate to recommend that course—even if he must recommend it with the utmost discretion, in case the society should reject the idea.
“Oh,” Miss Adams said in a low voice, as her apparently complete response to the news—at least as Mrs. Rand had delivered it—that married men enjoyed purloining young ladies’ underthings. Dr. Brown’s certainty that such had not been the fate of this particular pair of drawers only grew.
“Please tell me, Miss Adams, what happened when—as I gather from Mr. and Mrs. Rand—James Oakes forced you into your bedroom.”
She did not lift her eyes as she spoke in the same low voice. “He said he wanted to… to look at me…” Dr. Brown could tell that she had rehearsed this part first in her mind and then to Mrs. Rand, and that not a word of it was true: even her hesitations seemed like force
d play-acting. Glancing at Mrs. Rand, however, he could see that the matron discerned none of the deception, for she wore a sympathetic, outraged expression on her pleasant aristocratic face.
“I did not want him to hurt me…” Miss Adams’ voice trailed off. The words she had just spoken had seemed to pain her greatly.
“He threatened to hurt you, Miss Adams?” Dr. Brown asked, pretending sympathy.
She shook her head, and he noticed a tear forming in her right eye. “N-no…”
Somewhat to his astonishment, he realized that Miss Adams must feel herself under some obligation to James Oakes. She did not want to speak ill of him, though she clearly knew she must.
“I merely thought,” she continued, lifting her eyes to his as if knowing that only brazen falsehood could serve her now, “that he must be intending to hurt me if I did not do as he said.”
“Ah,” Dr. Brown said, nodding, and keeping his expression as neutral as he could. “And, it seems, he did spank you? Forgive me the indelicacy, but Mrs. Rand said she saw clear signs of that, when she entered.”
Instantly Miss Adams’ eyes dropped again. “Y-yes,” she whispered, almost inaudibly.
The doctor had to admit that the spanking intrigued him most of all. It suggested that the pattern according to which Mrs. Rand seemed to wish to arrange the events leading up to her discovery of Miss Adams bent over her bed with her skirts up and a footman fondling her posterior, covering which no drawers were in evidence—and neither were any drawers in evidence in the girl’s chamber—must be in error. A man who would spank a girl like Miss Adams, whom Mr. Rand would describe as having bright prospects, who took the blame for the incident upon himself… such a man would not, in Dr. Brown’s judgment, play the seducer.
Just then a soft knock sounded upon the door, and it opened a little to reveal the face—the rather troubled face—of a chambermaid. Mrs. Rand, an expression of great annoyance upon her own mien, turned and said, “Yes, Jenny? I thought I left word that we were not to be disturbed.”