Reforming Rebecca

by Emily Tilton

  “I know, ma’am,” the girl said fearfully. “It’s only… it’s just that I think I’ve found Miss Adams’ drawers. In the grate… all burnt up, but you can still see a bit of the lace.”

  Dr. Brown swung his eyes immediately upon the young lady. Though she managed with impressive speed to get her face under control, for a moment he saw what he had half-expected to see: sheer terror.

  Chapter Seven

  They couldn’t learn anything from the ashes of her pantalets. Rebecca told herself that with all the firmness of which she felt herself capable. Nevertheless, the specter of Dr. Brown examining those ashes, and discerning what she had done with William in the little woods, distressed her and terrified her even as she controlled her features.

  She must be brazen. She had become a coquette, now, and James had failed to change that, though Rebecca still could not help wondering whether he might have… if Mrs. Rand had not burst in and found them.

  Rebecca still had not faced the meaning of what James had done when he took the blame for what his employer saw when she opened the door. Certainly in one very important sense he had only spoken the truth, for if he had not decided he must punish Rebecca to return her to the path of virtue, she would not have had her skirts up and her bottom bare, and his strong hand would not have rested upon her burning backside, caressing, giving her a sort of pleasure of which she had never dreamt.

  But she had no doubt at all, now, as she looked back upon it, that James had meant only her welfare—that, unlike William, he had struggled manfully to resist the temptation Rebecca understood very clearly now her bare bottom and his hardened prick must represent. Her having chosen the way of vice, lined with its exotic, musky flowers, did not lessen her appreciation of James’ wish to help her, especially since he had taught her such an unexpected, and perhaps unintended, lesson: that a strong, firm man like James Oakes was to be preferred to a naughty boy like William Daren.

  Mrs. Rand was saying in a puzzled voice, “James burned them, then? After he stole them from her press?” Then the illogicality of something else seemed to occur to her. “But Rebecca, you must have been walking without them. Why did you not say anything?”

  For that at least Rebecca had an answer ready. “I was too confused and ashamed, Mrs. Rand. I did not know what I should do.”

  Mrs. Rand frowned, but the strange Scots doctor, with his sandy hair and his kind, though guarded, eyes, came unexpectedly to Rebecca’s aid. “You can understand that, surely, Mrs. Rand, can you not?”

  “I suppose I can,” she said slowly. She turned to the maid. “Thank you, Jenny, you may go.”

  “I left them there in the grate,” Jenny said. “Shall I clean them away?”

  Mrs. Rand looked at Dr. Brown. “No,” he said quickly. “Leave them there, please. I shall have a look, with Mrs. Rand’s permission.”

  Rebecca felt the heat creep back into her face. Not with Rebecca’s permission—but with that of her hostess and, it seemed now, for the moment at least, her duenna. The coquette must of course escape the notice of her chaperones in her coquetry: she and Thomasina had felt very sure of that principle at least. Rebecca must do all in her power to allay Mrs. Rand’s suspicions now.

  “Of course, Doctor. We must get to the bottom of this matter.”

  The matron clearly had not intended any sort of jeu des mots, but she realized afterward that she had made one nonetheless, and she looked at Rebecca meaningfully and without any humor in the little jest. Rebecca swallowed hard, realizing that she had indeed come under scrutiny.

  But again the doctor seemed to have her comfort at heart. “We shall, Mrs. Rand. We shall. And we shall find, I think, that Miss Adams has done nothing wrong.” He smiled kindly at her. “Now, if you please, I should like to have a few words with the servants, and think I will interview Miss Adams in her bedroom. We shall do a thorough, modern examination, as suits a young woman of your age, Miss Adams, though you will perhaps find it a trifle embarrassing. The time has come, though, for you to hear at least a little about those marital relations to which we were referring earlier. May we meet there in your chamber at four o’clock?”

  * * *

  Rebecca’s apprehension as the hour appointed for her interview with Dr. Brown approached could scarcely be described. She had her excuse for her absent maidenhead ready—she and Thomasina had come up with it long since, right after their eighteenth birthdays—but she could not suppress a creeping dread that Dr. Brown would see its falsity in an instant.

  Over and over again she examined the remnants of the pantalets—really, as Jenny had said, only a little bit of lace from one of the legs. Each time she assured herself that she had nothing to fear, that as preposterous as the story of James stealing and then burning the garment sounded, nothing could disprove it, especially in the absence of James himself. Then, though, a few minutes later, she would return to the grate and look again.

  Where had James gone? She had not dared ask, though she supposed she might have done so on the pretense of fearing for her safety. She felt so diffident of her ability to keep the true reason from her voice, though, that she could not bring herself to speak up on the matter to Mrs. Rand. Rebecca felt sure that somehow the color of her cheeks would betray her desire to know of the disgraced footman’s whereabouts not because she wished him far away but because she wished him near—if only so that she could somehow arrange that her father do him some good turn for his selfless taking of the blame upon himself.

  All perhaps to no avail, though, for Dr. Brown had of course decided to speak with the servants. Had not James said, though, that she need not fear the tales William would tell, that he had stopped their spread somehow?

  She thought of William, and how she had longed for him only the previous morning—how she had written the shameful note, using the words he had taught her. She felt, under her skirts, where she now wore pantalets borrowed from Mrs. Rand, that same throbbing, but not for William. Rebecca’s hand strayed to the front of her gown, tried to press there a little, as if the little bud covered in drawers, chemise, two petticoats, and the gown itself might somehow receive that slight pressure. At least, as a young coquette who had had a man’s hardness in her… her vagina, she thought, using James’ word in her meditations with a tiny blush, she could feel entitled to a little of that marital pleasure. She couldn’t wait until this terrible interview with Dr. Brown had ended. Perhaps she could feign illness and take to her bed in her night rail, and touch herself there, right upon the place to which she now had no access at all, as if society had claimed her lascivious lower part as its property, over which it must keep careful guard.

  A knock came at the door, and Dr. Brown entered with Jenny. Rebecca frowned, wondering why he had brought the chambermaid. She had a sudden apprehension that perhaps the girl had found something more than she had earlier declared, but the doctor’s words proved that fear groundless—though in their own way they made her apprehensions worse.

  “I asked Jenny here to come to help you undress, Miss Adams. I shall need you in your chemise alone, for my examination.” He had a leather physician’s bag in his right hand, and now he set it down upon the nightstand.

  “Oh, but…” Rebecca protested, casting about in her mind for some excuse. “But I thought we were to… to look at the ashes.”

  Dr. Brown smiled. “That will not be necessary, Miss Adams. I believe I know all I need know about your undergarments.”

  Rebecca felt her eyes go wide, but Dr. Brown said nothing more on the matter, but instead turned to the chambermaid and said, “Go ahead, please, Jenny.”

  Rebecca could see very clearly that she had no recourse. She turned away, to walk toward the dressing screen in the corner of the room, but Dr. Brown said, “That won’t be necessary, Miss Adams. I shall see all of you anyway. Let’s have you undress right here.”

  The idea shouldn’t have discomfited Rebecca any more than the notion of having an examination by a physician without her clothing beyond
her chemise on, but somehow the matter-of-fact way in which Dr. Brown spoke his wish for her to undress in front of him made her heart quail. If she chose to remove her gown and corset and petticoats behind the dressing screen as she did every day—as every decent woman did, she had always been taught to think—should he not allow her that privilege, illogical as it might be?

  She felt her cheeks warm a bit as she realized how thoroughly her resolve to play the flirt, the coquette—and, she allowed her mind brazenly to articulate, the fancy little whore—seemed to fade here before this strange doctor. She knew she should be able simply and unblushingly to allow Jenny to unlace her and take her clothes away to the press, then to stand in her chemise in front of a medical man like Dr. Brown. But she thought of James’ face, of the look in his eyes when he had spoken of her honor. She thought of his big hand, spanking her little bottom, teaching her a lesson, and she suddenly wanted to go to the screen.

  No, she thought. No. I have chosen the path with the flowers. I have been fucked by a footman, and I would have been fucked by another if silly Mrs. Rand hadn’t barged into the room. She turned toward her bed and stood still as Jenny helped her with her gown’s laces, and then those of her stays.

  Her gown and then her petticoats pooled around her feet, and she stepped out of them, keeping her back still to Dr. Brown. Her chemise would let the light through, and the knowledge that he would see the shape of her bosom dredged back up those apparently irrepressible early lessons at school, about the proper masking of the feminine form. She had showed enough frankness, had she not, in complying with the doctor’s wish about undressing here in the middle of the room?

  Again she recognized, with anger and frustration, the insidious action of the modesty she had determined to put away. What had James done to her?

  “You may go, Jenny,” said Dr. Brown. “I shall ring when it is time to help Miss Adams don her gown again.”

  Rebecca felt her face crumple at this news, and she almost spoke up to pretend to the illness she had determined would cover over the illicit actions of her fingers beneath the covers, once the doctor had departed. Surely she could feign that indisposition later, though—when the doctor had nearly finished his examination. The ache between her thighs at all these thoughts of James’ hands and stern words, however, seemed almost to drive her to distraction.

  I am a fancy little whore, she thought then, brazenly and defiantly. Thomasina had said that the young wife had cried out her pleasure as her husband fucked her. Surely for an unmarried girl to feel so deeply a need for such pleasure must make her not just a flirt but a whore. If James should return, he would have to spank her again, and then… and then fuck her, to teach another, sterner lesson.

  She would not give in, though, even were James to come striding through the door out of which Jenny now made her way. She would tell him, as she would also tell Dr. Brown if the occasion arose, that she found nothing amiss in her conduct, even if it were known that that conduct included a fucking out of doors by a footman. They could spank her; they could whip her, birch her, cane her, even, and still she would defy them, in order to tread the path she had chosen, flowers or thorns though it might hold for the coquette who walked it.

  Chapter Eight

  “Lay yourself upon your bed now, if you please, Miss Adams,” said Dr. Brown in his brusque medical voice. He patted a spot two-thirds of the way down the mattress. “Upon your back, with your bottom here. Your knees raised and spread, if you please. We will begin by discussing your vagina.”

  It had taken all of five minutes to piece together the true story of Miss Adams’ defloration. The most remarkable fact Dr. Brown had ascertained did not, in the end, involve her drawers: he had encountered more than one young woman, previously, who had burnt her undergarments in an attempt to evade detection. The circumstance that surprised Dr. Brown was, rather, the senior footman James Oakes’ nearly successful effort to suppress the knowledge of Miss Adams’ shame, as the world termed such acts of illicit coitus.

  If Dr. Brown had not known precisely what he must look for, and to precisely which servants he must speak, he would not have uncovered the matter. He ventured to say, without danger of flattering himself, that he might well be the only man in England—perhaps even in the world—able piece the story together under the circumstances. Thus, if Miss Adams had not had the good fortune to be the daughter of a nobleman so circumstanced as to have Dr. Brown at his disposal, Oakes’ efforts would probably have been successful, and her eventual happiness, oddly enough, ruined by the very gesture that the young man valiantly intended to save her.

  Five pounds in the hand of the stable boy, always a servant so placed as to hear from both the coachman and the footmen their choicest exploits in their master’s household, had ferreted out the outline of the tale. Dr. Brown need only discover the rest of it from Miss Adams here in her chamber, and he would be able to make his findings and recommendation known to the society.

  He felt fairly confident that he could handle the matter discreetly with Mr. and Mrs. Rand: as long as scandal might be avoided, their management of Miss Adams’ career in London society should continue to prove a boon to them, thanks to the duke’s generous repayment of the kindness they did his daughter. As long as her courtship might be managed, once she reached town, under the society’s watchful eyes, there seemed little reason to doubt she might make a fine marriage to a chosen man capable of providing the dominance Miss Adams would require to find connubial bliss.

  Indeed, the footman Oakes’ apparent decision to attempt the discipline of Miss Adams for her conduct had revealed, Dr. Brown felt certain—though he intended to verify this fact presently, as he must before he made any recommendation on its basis—her need for submission. James Oakes had done her a true service after all, though it would require Dr. Brown’s intervention to realize its benefits.

  The doctor’s most difficult task, in the end, might be to persuade Mr. Rand to do his erstwhile servant some significant good turn to compensate the young man for the selfless deed by which he had preserved Miss Adams’ honor in such difficult circumstances. The girl otherwise would surely have found a way to do that honor, and the honor of those around her, grave injury, and though Mr. Oakes did not perhaps deserve a knighthood, surely he deserved to be found a situation elsewhere—and of course he had also earned a letter of introduction, which Dr. Brown himself would provide if he could find the apparently vanished man, to the Society for the Correction of Natural Daughters. Though except in extraordinary cases the society awarded the mastery of the girls whose sexual training they oversaw only to gentlemen, the services of a young man capable of firm-handed discipline were always welcomed, and well rewarded, in the members’ households.

  That challenge lay in the future however: at this moment Dr. Brown need only conduct what he termed an instructional examination of a fairly standard kind, to ascertain the circumstances surrounding Miss Adams’ defloration. He must also, to be sure, awaken the young lady to her duty, as well as to the pleasure fulfilling that duty might bring, should she hew to the natural approach to her sexuality that the doctor would present to her. All of this he had done now for so many other girls of every rank and station that though he always took great pleasure in the particularities and peculiarities of each young woman’s circumstances, and in tailoring his instruction to them, he had no consciousness of any difficulty in discharging his commission.

  He could see, though, without surprise, that the discussion he had opened concerning Miss Adams’ vagina would not prove anywhere near as routine for her as it did for him. His understanding of the events transpiring in her sexual life over the past forty-eight hours indicated to him that she had at some point made a decision to approach the matter of courtship and marriage in a manner that Dr. Brown called natural, but which the world usually characterized as coquettish, flirtatious, or even whorish. The best way to begin to instruct such a girl, so as to bring about the adjustment of such conduct to the conventions e
nforced by society upon well-born young women—even the natural daughters of dukes—was, in Dr. Brown’s experience, to make certain they understood that they could still feel shame, and along with shame feel also modesty, which Dr. Brown often privately allegorized as shame’s handmaiden.

  Miss Adams certainly felt both, now, as she had frozen in the midst of complying with Dr. Brown’s instruction to lie upon her bed, looking over her shoulder at him with the crimson mounting in her fair cheeks. Her mouth had fallen slightly open, indicating that—hardly unexpectedly—she had nothing to say.

  “Go ahead, please, Miss Adams,” Dr. Brown said rather severely. He patted the spot where he had requested she place her backside again. “We must speak frankly about your vagina, now, and it is best that it be exposed to my eye and, with the help of my mirror, to yours, when we do so, so that I can illustrate my words and teach you about your needs and responsibilities.”

  He went to his bag and fetched the simple oak hand mirror that he had found so very useful over the years: its silvered glass, six inches in circumference, glinted in the rather dim sunlight filtering in through the partly drawn curtains. The sight of the mirror affected Miss Adams most extremely—as it often did with girls who needed to be brought back to notions of shame that they had attempted to abandon. She gave a little cry, and turned so that she now stood beside her bed, facing Dr. Brown across it. She took a step backward, looking exceedingly charming in her chemise and making him regret, as he very often did, the fashions of the time that created such an artificial figure out of a young woman’s body, in the service of an utterly false idea of her proper needs and desires.