Reforming Rebecca

by Emily Tilton

  He had commanded her to do it, while she watched. He had done it to her himself.

  He had told her that her future husband would not allow her to do it without permission.

  He had named it.

  She blurted out the question. “May I masturbate?”

  The doctor turned back to her, a serious and almost sympathetic expression upon his face. “No, Miss Adams, I fear you may not. You will be closely observed from now on, so that you may be kept from the hands and penises of unworthy suitors—and unworthy footmen. Your vagina and anus belong to your future husband, and are being held in trust for him by the society which has employed me as their medical advisor—just as you also hold them in trust for him. You will also have a maid to observe your conduct in bed, and you will be punished for any self-pleasuring in which you are detected. If your erotic feelings reach a point where you feel anxious they might impair your judgment, you may send for me, and I will relieve your symptoms as I have just done, perhaps also with the use of an implement designed for girls who have experienced first coitus.”

  He reached to his bag and put the speculum in it, then, to Rebecca’s shock, brought out something that could only be the implement to which he had just referred: long, black, and shaped… like William’s prick, though much larger, with the funny fluted head and even, she thought she could see, prominent veins down the side. She bit her lip to stifle a cry of alarm.

  “The article has several names, and has been in use in one form or another, so far as can be told by historical research, since the dawn of humanity. The most common, though, quite vulgar one, is dildo. Medical men use a more ancient term: fascinus. I like that term a good deal more, since young ladies like you do indeed seem to show a great fascination with it.”

  Rebecca couldn’t suppress the weak little “no” that burst from her mouth despite her knowing it to be a lie.

  The doctor took no notice. “In all events, knowing as you now do that that part of your body is reserved to the man to whom you will belong as his personal property will have a salutary effect, if probably also at first a distressingly arousing one. You have been accustomed to think of your private parts as your own little garden, perhaps. You must now accustom yourself to the natural idea that the man who claims you as his will be the one to till that garden as he pleases.”

  The doctor had said unworthy footmen, Rebecca now realized, suddenly, as she tried to puzzle out the doctor’s full meaning. Had he meant it simply as a turn of phrase, or had he intended the implication that there could exist a worthy footman, too?

  * * *

  By the time Rebecca had dressed again, with Jenny’s help, and descended into the conservatory to find Mrs. Rand and Lady Ambers, Dr. Brown had, it seemed, departed.

  “You found him helpful, I trust?” Mrs. Rand asked.

  Rebecca felt her face nearly betray her with a frown of puzzlement that would certainly have betrayed a discomfiture she did not wish to show her older friend—let alone Lady Ambers, whose face seemed to display all the censoriousness for which Rebecca had heard, even at school, the doyenne had achieved great renown.

  “Yes, very,” Rebecca replied softly.

  “And what is the complaint for which the doctor was fetched all the way from town?” her ladyship asked in a tone so haughty Rebecca thought it might break a pane of the conservatory’s glass roof. “You may tell me, my dear, though I am sure it is something not fit for the ears of general society, if Dr. Brown was called. I must confess that I cannot fathom what so many gentlemen seem to see in him—the rumors, Mrs. Rand, the rumors!”

  Her ladyship spoke in a theatrical whisper, turning to Mrs. Rand with the air of one pretending to keep a secret between married women—one that a maiden’s ears must not hear. Rebecca’s strangely recovered sense of shame, and her new idea of Dr. Brown’s constructive modesty, seemed to conspire to bring precisely the blush to her cheek that Lady Ambers must have intended should rise there.

  “I see from your face, dear girl, that that horrid physician must have been summoned for something wicked. Out with it, then! I assure you I am quite as modern as any woman in England—have I not shepherded the liberal party along, and tolerated even your father’s peccadilloes for lo these many years?”

  Rebecca looked desperately at Mrs. Rand. She did not think that Lady Ambers meant it in the slightest when she called Rebecca dear girl—her ladyship clearly had some idea of using Rebecca’s precarious situation to accomplish an unguessed-at aim of her own. Mrs. Rand, thankfully, came to her aid.

  “It was nothing, Lady Ambers,” said the matron smoothly. “Pray do not embarrass poor Rebecca this way!” Mrs. Rand wore a bland, amused smile, and Rebecca felt very grateful for the political acumen that let her friend speak on such terms with a peeress of Lady Ambers’ stature.

  “Nothing, eh?” her ladyship said, with a rather dissatisfied air. “If you say so.”

  They passed several minutes, then, discussing the plans for Rebecca’s coming out, in which she was gratified to find Lady Ambers very interested. Her anxiety about her ladyship’s intentions receded as the friendly little chat went on.

  Then, however, in an instant, it became entirely plain that her ladyship’s dissatisfaction with Mrs. Rand’s dismissal of the visit from Dr. Brown as nothing had only grown—or that perhaps some darker purpose lay hidden behind her conventionally aristocratic demeanor.

  “Miss Adams,” said Lady Ambers, “if you wish to come out properly, you will make up your mind to one thing in particular.”

  “What is that, your ladyship?” Rebecca asked, genuinely interested and unsuspicious.

  “That such stories as I have heard about your school friend Miss Thomasina Perkins shall not be told about you.”

  Rebecca looked to Mrs. Rand, but found her friend’s face set in a frown. She felt the color mount into her cheeks. What could Lady Ambers mean? And why would she mention Thomasina?

  “What have you heard, your ladyship?” she asked icily, all her defiance seeming to flood back into her, with a feeling of strength that intoxicated her senses and made part of her quail before it, even as the rest of her embraced this confrontation. She could see that danger of some kind lay ahead, but the interview with Dr. Brown had forced her into a world of such strange new thoughts and emotions that the return of the old ones—the resistance and rebellion against the mores of women like Lady Ambers—could not help but produce a sort of ecstasy of anger.

  Mrs. Rand turned to her with wide eyes, obviously surprised by the sudden change in her tone. “Rebecca—” she began, clearly intending to remonstrate concerning the proper way to behave to a noble doyenne who might ease Miss Rebecca Adams’ path in the world so greatly.

  But Lady Ambers herself clearly understood exactly what sort of change had come over Rebecca, and for some reason seemed to relish it. “Only that the little chit thoroughly disgraced herself last month in Hyde Park, of all places. She was discovered in the shrubbery, in the company of a stable boy.”

  Oh, Thomasina, Rebecca thought. What has become of us? What will become of us? She wondered if the stable boy was like William, or like James.

  As she took in Lady Ambers’ news, her eyes downcast, and thought of poor Thomasina and the opprobrium that must have fallen upon her, Rebecca’s fury suddenly blazed up hot and uncontrollable.

  “What if Thomasina did… did something… with that stable boy?” she demanded, looking up at Lady Ambers. Rebecca could see in her ladyship’s eyes that she had stepped with great precision into a trap set for her, but she could not have stopped herself for all the world. “What is it to you, you beast?”

  Mrs. Ambers narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, and in that cold expression Rebecca saw that she had managed to find some sort of doom here for herself.

  “Rebecca!” Mrs. Rand said. “Apologize this instant!”

  “I won’t!” Rebecca said, tears coming to her eyes, of rage rather than of remorse. She jumped up from her seat. “What sort of
a life will you lead us to, when we only want to… to… enjoy ourselves?”

  The word enjoy, somehow, seemed to offend Mrs. Ambers and Mrs. Rand even more than the word beast had, as if they knew precisely what sort of enjoyment Rebecca meant. Suddenly she wished Dr. Brown were here in the conservatory, to tell these women about a girl’s natural needs.

  “She must be punished, Mrs. Rand,” Lady Ambers said then.

  “Oh, but…” Mrs. Rand protested, but Rebecca could tell that she had put her friend in an awful position. If Mrs. Rand defied her ladyship, it might not be too farfetched to say that a government could fall—at the very least, Mr. Rand’s prospects of a cabinet seat would be greatly diminished.

  “I insist.” Her ladyship fixed Rebecca with a basilisk stare. “There is only one way to teach such a girl to behave. The cane upon her bare bottom, in front of the household. An example must be made of her, for her benefit and that of your servants, and that of all the girls who will be told the story and turned by it back to the path of virtue.”

  Rebecca’s breathing became harsh and fearful. Part of her wanted to throw herself upon her knees before Lady Ambers. Indeed she thought that perhaps her ladyship might relent—that perhaps Lady Ambers only wanted a sign of victory over the daughter of the Duke of Panton, who had received a visit from the notorious Dr. Brown. Her whole body shook as she thought of the cane, of the terrible scene her ladyship had painted, but she refused to show herself weak. Her own victory might be small, and painful, but it would be hers, nonetheless.

  “Won’t you apologize, Rebecca?” Mrs. Rand pleaded with her.

  “I will not,” Rebecca said.

  “You will be caned, then, until you do,” Lady Ambers said, her gray eyes regarding Rebecca cruelly. “Mrs. Rand, may I offer the services of my coachman? He is accustomed to disciplining the maids in my household.”

  Rebecca’s resolve almost deserted her, then. She turned to Mrs. Rand desperately, hoping that her friend would at least say that Mr. Rand would carry out the punishment—or herself, even.

  But Mrs. Rand seemed defeated. “Thank you, your ladyship,” she said.

  She turned to Rebecca, then, with an expression that said that Rebecca had chosen this course, and that the lesson she learned, terrible as it must be, she had deserved.

  “Rebecca, you will report to the drawing room at seven o’clock to be caned. Send for Jenny at a quarter to. You will wear only your chemise, and you will be whipped upon your bare bottom until you apologize to Lady Ambers.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  James heard about the caning only at half past six. He learned of it from Mr. Rand himself, in the presence of Dr. Brown, and although he could not prevent it, he received from the doctor a special commission with respect to Miss Adams’ punishment that puzzled him and excited him in nearly equal measure.

  “I am here to attempt to persuade you, Mr. Oakes, to return to Rand Park at least for an interview with Mr. Rand that I believe could mend your prospects,” the doctor had said, standing upon the doorstep of the home of James’ farm-laborer cousin Robert Gerdon, to which James had decamped following his abrupt departure from Mr. and Mrs. Rand’s employ.

  James had shaken his head in confusion. Why should a London physician seek to mend the prospects of a footman, and what had Dr. Brown to do with him at all? The Rands’ doctor was Dr. Brook, whose surgery was in the market town three miles distant.

  “I understand your confusion, Mr. Oakes,” the doctor said, “though I am afraid I cannot alleviate it much due to the rather delicate nature of my commission, but it concerns Miss Rebecca Adams. The inquiries I have made concerning her have given me good reason, I believe, to view you, far from the appearance you nobly attempted to present when Mrs. Rand discovered you with her in her chamber, as her benefactor. Moreover, the benefit you tried to do her lies—though I am sure this will seem mysterious, and I cannot help that now—in the realm of the services I am seeking to render the young lady’s father.”

  James had frowned, more confused now than he had been to begin with, and then remembered his manners.

  “Won’t you come in, Doctor?” he asked. James’ cousin’s house was not fit for a London physician, to be sure, by the standards of the society James had served as a footman, but his liberal principles decreed that the hospitality of a poor man had equal value to that of a great one.

  “No, thank you,” Dr. Brown replied. “I won’t trouble you. But I do earnestly request, both for your benefit and for mine, that you call upon Mr. Rand and me at half past six this evening.”

  To James’ puzzlement had been added the strangeness of knocking upon the front door of Rand Park, an entrance through which he had never passed before in his life, despite having served the household for three years before the incident in Miss Adams’ chamber. Thankfully Mr. Thomas had expected him, though he could read on the gruff old butler’s face that the man’s confusion was at least as great as James’ own.

  “Are they in the study, Mr. Thomas?” James had asked, doing his best to mingle the humility due his former superior with the natural pride of a man who had walked free of a footman’s duties the previous afternoon.

  “Yes, Ja—… that is to say, er, Mr. Oakes.” Mr. Thomas frowned. “If you don’t mind my saying it, Mr. Oakes, I wish you well.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Thomas,” said James, very sensible indeed of the faith the butler put in him, in the face of James’ blackening of his own name by taking responsibility for what had occurred, and more to the point by leaving Mr. Thomas a good footman short when Lady Ambers was stopping at Rand Park.

  He followed the butler to the door of the study, and after a soft knock upon the door heard himself announced as Mr. Oakes, sir, a very strange experience for a former servant of the house.

  “Ah, James,” said the short, rather rounded Mr. Rand, MP. His florid face and full whiskers completed the impression of a jovial fellow, though James knew that at least in parliament one took the veneer of good humor for the man’s true nature at one’s peril. “Or, I suppose, Mr. Oakes. You have met Dr. Brown, I understand?”

  “Yes, sir. Good evening, Doctor.”

  “No sirs for you any longer, Mr. Oakes,” Mr. Rand said with a smile. “I was most displeased with you yesterday, but the capable Dr. Brown has set me well straight and shown you for the hero you are. No sirs for you—at least of that nature. Now, let us—”

  Another knock sounded at the study door, and Mr. Thomas reentered the room. “Lady Ambers,” he said, and her ladyship swept by him.

  Mr. Rand frowned, shooting out his lips a little. James knew his former employer well enough to know from the slight gesture that Mr. Rand did not care much for this doyenne of his party.

  Lady Ambers looked James up and down, as if trying to remember where she had seen him before—an obviously disreputable personage in the humble brown suit of clothes and stained, though clean, linen that constituted his entire wardrobe now that he had returned his livery. If he had not felt such gratitude not to have stuck in her memory, James would perhaps have given way to fury at the woman’s hauteur.

  But he saw that the look she gave Dr. Brown had in it almost as much aristocratic arrogance, and saw that the doctor merely smiled, as if in secret amusement. He did not know who this mysterious physician might be, but James aspired to that sort of self-assurance, and to see Dr. Brown smile thus seemed to communicate a little of it to him as well.

  “I wish you to know, Mr. Rand,” said her ladyship, “that my coachman will cane Miss Adams in half an hour, in your drawing room, and it is my hope that you will be present, in order to demonstrate to her and to your own household that you intend to uphold standards of decency in your house even when the miscreant is the daughter of a duke.”

  “Your ladyship,” said Mr. Rand a little helplessly, “cannot this wait a few moments? As you see, I am engaged with Dr. Brown and… and this man.” He gave James an apologetic look, to tell him that the failure to name him arose
from a desire to allow James to escape her ladyship’s notice as the footman found with Miss Adams the previous afternoon.

  For his part, James found his thoughts very hard to gather into a semblance of order. What could Lady Ambers possibly mean? How could she intend to have her man whip Miss Adams in the drawing room? Of course James knew from experience how defiant Miss Adams could be, and how inclined to act against her own interests to show her freedom from convention, but the idea of this punishment stirred in him the same protective instinct he had felt when trying—unsuccessfully, it appeared—to set the girl’s feet back on the path of virtue.

  “And who is this man?” Lady Ambers demanded, turning her severe gaze upon James once again. James, to his consternation, saw her remember his identity. “Good heavens. You are the footman, are you not? The one discovered with Miss Adams?”

  Mr. Rand, to his great credit, hastened to James’ defense. “I assure you, your ladyship, that the incident to which you refer was in fact a very different sort of—”

  The noblewoman interrupted him with a haughtiness James found breathtaking. “I imagine Dr. Brown has persuaded you of that? Well, I do not choose to care about the nature of Dr. Brown’s mysterious services, which all the fast set seem to whisper about around their whist tables. Miss Adams’ terrible conduct, on the other hand, though it should be spoken only in a whisper, cries out for stern correction. Something disgraceful occurred yesterday, whatever Dr. Brown might say, but whether some excuse or explanation exists for that occurrence or no, Miss Adams insulted me this morning, and I have come here to announce that she will pay the price very soon upon her bare rump, at the hand of my coachman and by the consent of Mrs. Rand.”

  Mr. Rand, his face a little red, looked to Dr. Brown to defend himself, and James could see in the MP’s eyes, in hope of the doctor extricating him from the burgeoning wrath of the peeress. “I did persuade Mr. Rand that Mr. Oakes here did not deserve the blame for the incident in Miss Adams’ chamber, your ladyship,” the physician said smoothly, “but if the girl has insulted you that is of course a different matter.” His Scots blue eyes turned upon their host. “Miss Adams, I believe we can all agree, is a wayward young lady. She may very well require frequent correction—indeed, I had to whip her myself earlier today, as I feel certain you will see when she undergoes the caning you demand.”