Portrait of a Disciplinarian (29 page)

‘Yes,’ she cut him off. ‘Gladly, but what about Myrtle?’

‘Ah, yes,’ he replied, just as the roar of a blunderbuss shattered the moorland calm.

Both of them jumped up, whereupon Stephanie’s shorts immediately fell down and sent her sprawling face down in a cowpat that proved to have only the thinnest crust over a thick and squashy interior. With her eyes, nose and, worst of all, her mouth full of cow dung, even the possible fate of her grandfather took second place for a moment, until she’d managed to wipe her eyes and spit out the worst of the filth. Even then she was in no condition to follow Freddie, with her shorts round her knees and her face plastered in muck, but a stream ran down from the moor a little way away, and there she made a hasty toilet to both face and cunt.

By the time she’d finished and could see well enough to retrieve her shirt, a considerable number of people were converging at a point well up the slope of Sourton Tors. She recognised her grandfather, still holding the blunderbuss, and relief flooded through her. Sir Murgatroyd Drake was there too, his face, hair and upper body a hideous, pulpy red, but he was not only still standing but expostulating vigorously, his remarks on Sir Richard Truscott’s parentage and personal habits clearly audible across a quarter-mile of moorland. Freddie was rather closer, apparently uncertain whether to help her or his father, while the Reverend Benjamin Porthwell was waddling slowly towards the others. She could also see Claude Attwater, Hermione, several servants and what appeared to be a full complement of aunts.

‘Don’t worry about me!’ she gasped as Freddie returned to her side. ‘What about your poor father?’

‘He’ll be all right,’ Freddie assured her, ‘they were loaded with raspberry jam. Sorry, I didn’t realise you’d gone face first into a country pancake. Rotten luck, what?’

‘Fairly typical, I’d say,’ Stephanie replied with feeling. ‘So he’s not hurt?’

‘Only his pride,’ Freddie responded, ‘but I’d better see to him, don’t you know?’

‘Yes,’ Stephanie agreed, ‘but I’d really rather not meet all my aunts just at the moment, so if you don’t mind –’

She meant to continue, but her words were interrupted by a bellow from her Great-aunt Victoria.

‘Stephanie!’

‘Oh dear,’ she said weakly.

Most of the group had begun to move down the hillside towards her, with the exception of her grandfather and Sir Murgatroyd Drake, who were still arguing. Stephanie considered flight, but it was obviously futile and would only postpone her fate, while no doubt a few extra cuts of the cane would be added for her attempt to evade justice. Against that was the large audience she’d have if they dealt with her on the spot, which would include the passengers of any passing trains, of which, with her recent luck, there were sure to be many. She was still lost in indecision when they reached her.

‘Whatever have you been doing?’ Victoria Truscott demanded.

‘I fell in a cowpat,’ Stephanie mumbled.

‘She never could keep herself clean,’ Aunt Edith remarked.

‘She could never behave herself at all,’ Aunt Gertrude agreed. ‘She’s an embarrassment to us all.’

‘And what a scandal,’ Aunt Lettice added, ‘running off to London when she knows she’s in disgrace.’

‘An outrage,’ Aunt Lavinia agreed.

‘We shall have to punish her most severely,’ Aunt Rosalie concluded, not even troubling to hide her relish at the prospect.

Stephanie sighed and hung her head, knowing that it was useless to protest, only to change her mind as yet another figure appeared, crossing the bridge over the railway. It was Myrtle Finch-Farmiloe.

‘Um … I accept that I need to be beaten,’ she said hastily, ‘but wouldn’t it be better to do it at home? After all, I’m … I’m sure I deserve the cane, and –’

‘A switch cut from the hedge will do very well,’ Great-aunt Victoria observed, ‘and you needn’t trouble to pretend that you’re contrite. You never are, until afterwards.’

Stephanie made a face but didn’t reply, not wanting to be seen to plead in front of Myrtle, who was now within earshot. However willingly Myrtle had licked the night before, she had clearly not accepted her fate as just – at least, not if her expression was anything to go by.

‘I would like to speak to Stephanie, alone,’ she demanded as she reached the group.

‘You must wait your turn,’ Victoria Truscott informed her haughtily. ‘Stephanie is to be punished.’

‘So she should be!’ Myrtle responded with feeling.

‘Perhaps so,’ Claude Attwater stated, stepping forward, ‘but as her fiancé I insist that it is I who perform this disagreeable but necessary task.’

‘Her fiancé?’ all six aunts demanded in chorus.

‘That is the case,’ he confirmed, ‘and thus –’

‘That is as maybe,’ Victoria Truscott interrupted him, ‘and I do not dispute your right to discipline her, but at this present moment my nieces and I will be applying whatever is necessary. Afterwards you may –’

‘Perhaps,’ the Reverend Porthwell broke in, ‘in such a case a man of the cloth might be better suited to applying appropriate chastisement.’

‘What she needs,’ Mrs Catchpole supplied, ‘is for her old nanny to warm her little bottie for her, that’s what she needs.’

All of them began to speak at once, each arguing for his or her right to punish Stephanie, while she stood miserably to one side, attempting to pick pieces of drying cowpat out of her hair. Finally her Great-aunt Victoria’s strident tones overcame the others.

‘Ladies! Gentlemen! Please, this is a most unseemly
display
. Stephanie needs to be punished; that at least is beyond dispute, and in matters of this sort I have always considered the best solution to be to take turns, in strict order of seniority, which, as my brother appears to be otherwise engaged, puts me first. Stephanie, take off that ridiculous outfit and come across my knee this instant.’

Nobody challenged Victoria’s decision, and Stephanie moodily kicked off her boots, peeled her socks off, pulled her shirt up over her head and wriggled out of her shorts, to stand nude and trembling in front of them. Her great-aunt had already sat down on a convenient rock, making a lap, but Lucy Catchpole spoke up.

‘Miss Victoria, if we are to smack her bottie in proper turn, by age, surely I should be first?’

‘Very well,’ Victoria agreed, looking slightly surprised.

‘Just as it should be,’ Lucy said, lowering her ample bottom on to a different rock. ‘Come along, young lady, it’s time big Mrs hand visited little Miss Bottie-Bot.’

Myrtle giggled. Stephanie came forward, blushing furiously and unable to control the pout of her lower lip as she arranged herself in spanking position across the old woman’s knee, her bottom lifted to the open moor and her little tits pointing in the direction of the railway. Lucy’s big hand settled across Stephanie’s bottom, cupping both little cheeks, and the spanking began.

‘Naughty, naughty, Stephie,’ Lucy chided as she applied hard, even smacks to Stephanie’s already wiggling bottom, ‘running away up to London like that, and without telling a soul. Whatever were you thinking? So naughty!’

Again Myrtle giggled, sending the blood to Stephanie’s cheeks, hotter than ever, and then hotter still as she caught the sound of an approaching train above the regular smack of Lucy Catchpole’s hand on her bottom flesh. In sudden panic she tried to escape, but Lucy merely tightened her grip and began to spank
harder
still, setting Stephanie’s legs kicking in her pain as the train appeared. It was an express, which meant that no fewer than ten well-filled passenger carriages were treated to a prime view of her spanking as they passed. There was an astonished, fascinated face at every window, from first class to third.

‘Naughty Stephie, no wigglies!’ Lucy Catchpole said sternly. ‘You’ll only get it harder, my girl.’

Stephanie bit her lip, struggling to keep her thighs together and hold back the tears that were threatening to spill from her eyes. But it was impossible: her head was full of shame and self-pity, and the pain of the heavy, rhythmic smacks upon her bottom was just too much to bear. As the tears began to trickle down her cheeks Myrtle gave a sharp, derisive laugh, then spoke up.

‘What a baby she is!’

‘True enough,’ Lucy Catchpole agreed. ‘Quite the cry-baby, aren’t you, Stephie?’

Stephanie shook her head in angry, shamefaced denial, but with tears streaming from her eyes and snot beginning to drip from the tip of her nose, it was a pointless gesture. Myrtle laughed again, louder than before, and the spanking went on, slap after slap, until Stephanie’s bottom was a hot red ball behind her. Then, an instant before the pain broke her completely, it stopped.

‘That be enough from me, I dare say,’ Lucy remarked, ‘seeing as how there are others to take their turns.’

‘Quite,’ Victoria Truscott agreed. ‘Stephanie, come here. Mr Attwater, pray be kind enough to cut a switch.’

Climbing unsteadily from her old nurse’s lap, Stephanie shuffled the few feet to her great-aunt with her hands on her bottom. Her cheeks felt hot and hard, and she was already dizzy, but there was nothing to be done save submit to her fate. She laid herself across her great-aunt’s lap and lifted her bottom without a fuss. The spanking began immediately, every bit as hard, but
faster
, and Great-aunt Victoria’s long, bony fingers stung far more than Lucy’s plump ones. At once Stephanie began kicking again, and crying more bitterly than ever, the tears and the mucus from her nose making long, glistening trails down her cow-dung-smeared face.

At last it stopped. Claude Attwater was still busy cutting switches down by the railway, so she was passed to her Aunt Lavinia. Again she was spanked, wriggling and tearful, her bottom now so hot the smacks barely hurt, but her burning sense of shame was as strong as ever. Lavinia passed her to Gertrude, and Gertrude to Edith, each taking out her feelings on Stephanie’s blazing bottom, but through it all she kept her thighs firmly together, hiding her quim even as she bucked and squirmed with her bottom hole on show every time her cheeks opened to a smack or when her body bucked in her helpless wriggling.

Edith passed her to Lettice, and Lettice to Rosalie, who proved to have a hairbrush in her bag and once more managed to bring Stephanie back to a full realisation of how much a spanking could hurt. Yet the pain still took second place to her shame and consternation, because spankings were always given ‘ladies first’, and that meant the next knee she would be put over was Myrtle’s.

‘And let that be a lesson to you!’ Aunt Rosalie said as she applied a final smack to Stephanie’s cheeks. ‘Whoever is that peculiar woman?’

‘Probably some yokel come to take her turn with silly Stephanie,’ Myrtle laughed.

Stephanie looked up, blinking away her tears, and saw a familiar dray crossing the railway bridge, only the driver was not Lias Snell, but a huge, red-faced woman she recognised as his wife. She swallowed hard, sure that everything was about to be revealed, in which case what she had just endured would be only a prelude to her proper punishment. Claude Attwater was also coming
towards
her, holding a bunch of supple, painful-looking switches. Mrs Snell reached them first.

‘Myrtle Finch-Farmiloe?’ she said as she climbed down from the dray.

‘Yes,’ Myrtle replied, puzzled but haughtier than ever. ‘I’d like a word with you,’ the huge woman replied, advancing.

‘I am busy,’ Myrtle began. ‘I do not believe we have been introduced.’

‘I’m Mrs Snell, Lias Snell’s wife,’ the woman answered.

Myrtle made to speak again, but broke off with a squeal of surprise as Mrs Snell grabbed her. ‘What are you doing? Get off me! Get off me this instant, you ghastly woman!’

‘Spanking your behind, that’s what I’ll be doing,’ Mrs Snell answered, hauling Myrtle to her as she lowered herself on to the rock where Lucy Catchpole had spanked Stephanie.

Myrtle went wild, screaming and kicking as she was put into position, but she might as well have tried to resist a carthorse. Working with a slow, purposeful force, Mrs Snell upended the writhing girl across her lap, lifted her pretty green silk dress, took down the fashionable drawers beneath and applied herself to Myrtle’s naked bottom. The result was an instant tantrum, with Myrtle howling her head off and thrashing her body in every direction. Within seconds her tits had fallen out of her dress and she was providing a rear view of virgin cunt and tightly puckered bottom hole, ruder even than what Stephanie was showing. Her audience watched in astonishment and considerable interest, no one making a move to help, not even Freddie Drake, who was gaping at her bouncing cheeks like a stupefied goldfish.

‘Freddie!’ she wailed, finally finding her voice. ‘Help me!’

‘Um … er …,’ Freddie stammered.

‘You mind your business, young man, or you’ll get a dose of the same yourself,’ Mrs Snell warned.

‘Er … um …, no, no, absolutely not,’ Freddie went on. ‘I wouldn’t dream of interfering.’

‘Freddie!’ Myrtle repeated, louder and more desperate still. ‘Stop her … Ow! Stop her now! Ow! Or our engagement is off! Ow! Ow! Ow!’

‘I er … I don’t think she wants me to,’ Freddie replied weakly.

‘Besides which,’ Victoria Truscott put in, ‘if this good woman sees fit to apply a punishment, it is no doubt deserved.’

A selection of nods and expressions of agreement greeted this statement and Myrtle’s spanking continued. Stephanie took the opportunity to scramble up from Aunt Rosalie’s lap and apply her hands to her own overheated bottom. Hermione stepped close, rather cautiously, kissed her and put a comforting arm around her waist. Their grandfather was now approaching with Sir Murgatroyd Drake, the one grinning, the other scowling furiously beneath a mask of raspberry jam.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Sir Murgatroyd demanded, then broke off with a sharp cry as Singularis Porcus ambled out of the undergrowth. ‘Good God, that’s the Porker! Damn you, Truscott, what have you done to my pig?’

‘I keep telling you,’ Sir Richard responded. ‘I haven’t done anything to your damn pig.’

‘It was Myrtle,’ Stephanie put in, indicating her rival’s still bouncing bottom. ‘She stole him as her trophy for Gaspers. If you don’t believe me, Sir Murgatroyd, ask Bobbie.’