Saved by the Highlander (8 page)

“I do apologize, sir,” Alice said, trying to keep her tone as cold as she could. “It was beneath my dignity to insult you thus.”

Once she had spoken these words, she wished them back immediately. How could she possibly have said something so very rude? But she knew, did she not? She had spoken that way in order to conceal her true consciousness of having done him wrong under a guise of elevated manners. Perhaps part of her, too, had wanted to ruffle his calm—even to make him angry—in order that he would not discern Alice’s confusion. But she had not of course taken the comfort of her backside into consideration, and she watched her words succeed all too well in angering Niall McAlpin.

Alice’s racing heart and her rapid breathing, though perhaps they did cover over her sense of shame at having insulted him, also betrayed the much greater sense of shame she now felt at the idea that she would have to raise the plaid and her chemise under it, uncover the round little cheeks of her bottom in front of him, and then… then the even worse part would begin.

Niall’s eyes positively blazed. “My lady,” he said, with a grim resolution, “you had better stand up and go over to the bed this instant. I do not wish to shame you as much as you seem to wish to shame me, but I am going to punish you thoroughly now, even if I have to pick you up and carry you to the bed, and hold you down upon it while I whip your noble rump.”

Before the highlander’s onslaught of authority, Alice’s nerves broke down. “Please,” she whispered, beginning to cry. “Please don’t. I am… I am so sorry…”

But Niall reached out his hand, grasped her firmly around her upper arm, and began to pull her off the stool. Somehow the thought of being dragged to the bed seemed so much worse to Alice than moving there on her own feet that she cried out, “No! No, I’ll go!”

Niall let go of her arm them, and Alice did rise on very weak knees. She clasped her hands in front of her waist, where she had belted the arisaid upon waking, proud of her new ability even if she still found the garment very strange. She began to shuffle toward the sleeping end of the croft house.

“Faster, if you please, my lady,” Niall said behind her. “The sooner you bare your backside for me, the sooner this will be over.”

The true punishment, Alice thought to herself then, wasn’t the strapping, was it? No, the true lesson Niall now taught her was about the very same dignity she had tried to assume in attempting to locate the limits of his resolve and her power to use her noble birth. She had wanted literally to lord that birth over him. Telling her to make haste to raise her skirts and show him her naked posterior presented for discipline demonstrated to Alice that he held the power of this humiliating chastisement over her, that that power belonged to him by right, and that Alice would acknowledge it and come down from her high horse, or her bottom would be bared and whipped time and time again.

That thought—the idea that Niall MacAlpin would henceforth, while Alice Lourcy remained in his village, thrash her when she deserved thrashing—stirred emotions in Alice’s breast that she felt she could not interpret, but which she also felt she must push away at all costs despite not even understanding what they were. She did obey then, and sped her feet to the bed. To get this horrid moment over with would at least make it possible to go forward without acknowledging how it made her feel to have the chief of Clan Alpin inform her that he would take charge of her behavior, and employ his hand and his strap in the service of improving it, and Alice herself.

“Over the side of the bed, now, my lady,” Niall said behind her. Out of the corner of her eye Alice saw him go to an angle of the wall and take something from a hook that stuck out of the stone. The strap was long, black, and thick. Niall curled the end of it around his fist.

Alice still stood, trying to pretend she wasn’t watching what Niall did with the wicked leather implement. Niall’s voice came to her ears again, now a little impatient. “Do as I’ve said, my lady. Your elbows upon the mattress if you refuse to lift your skirts and I must do it for you.”

“No!” Alice cried. “I’ll do it!”

“Very well,” Niall said. “Lift them nice and high, and then bend over the bed for me and push your bottom out for the strap.”

How could she obey? Every inch of her body seemed to tremble with fear of what that long black strap would feel like when Niall began to whip her. How could Alice lift her skirts when she knew that the poor bare bottom she exposed would soon be red with the marks of punishment?

From somewhere, though, she took the strength to put her hands behind her and to gather the folds of the plaid with the silk of her chemise inside them into her hands, feeling as she did so the shameful movement of the air against places that Alice’s governess had instructed her so often should never be exposed.

“Bend over now,” Niall said again. His voice sounded gentler to Alice, as if her obedience in going to the bed and lifting her skirts had won her at least a little respite from his anger. She held her skirts up at her waist, terribly conscious of what Niall must see with her knees tightly closed, but knowing that when she bent over he might be able to see what Fiona had called her cunny, with its golden hair not quite concealing the cleft of her most intimate secrets. She blushed fiercely, and somehow she obeyed. She felt Niall’s hand upon her waist then, holding the skirts up. “On your elbows now,” he said. “Your bottom well pushed out.”

Alice arched her back, suddenly feeling that the humiliation the highlander visited upon her could not possibly grow any greater, and understanding it as a sort of freedom. She felt her prim little backside rise a bit and, on her slightly bent knees, move toward Niall, and she felt as if she truly were offering it to him in a gesture of submission. That made her blush again, but at the same time those strange feelings seemed to whisper to her that her submission was as it should be.

“My lady,” Niall said. “I shall whip you now, to teach you to respect me. Thank me for whipping you.”

“What?” Alice squeaked into the plaid that covered the wool-filled mattress, feeling the heat in her face grow into a fire.

“You must thank me for teaching you this lesson, my lady,” Niall said evenly.

Desperate for it to be over, above all now that this command to express gratitude to her punisher had stirred even more strongly the feeling that something in her submission to him was right and proper, Alice whispered, “Thank you for whipping me.”

“You are welcome,” Niall said, “and I hope it does you the good that I intend by it.”

Then, suddenly, he began to strap Alice, bringing the leather down upon both her bottom cheeks, quickly and hard, over and over. From the very first the strap stung Alice’s rear end much more painfully than his spanking her with his hand upon the road had done, but thankfully the smart was not quite as severe as she had feared. It hurt, and the idea that a man thrashed her upon her bare bottom hurt her pride even worse, but she did not cry out as she had feared she would. The tears rolled down her cheeks, though, and as the strap visited the same spots again and again she heard little whimpers coming from her throat.

As the anguish of her bottom grew worse, she found she must bounce a little to try to soothe it, but Niall said, “Hold that rump still, my lady, like a good girl,” and that was the worst of all, for she could not obey, but she must flex her right knee and then her left as he whipped her, knowing that he certainly could see her cunny as she did so, but unable to prevent it. Niall made a little sound of dissatisfaction at that. “If you were my wife, my lady, you would learn to hold still for your strappings.”

Alice gave a gasping sob at these words, because they had so terribly pierced the veil she had tried to draw over her feelings. If she were his wife. How could he say that? And yet he had meant nothing by it, certainly.

“Have you learned your lesson, my lady?” Niall finally asked, after a very severe lash that made Alice yelp.

“Yes, sir,” Alice said, not even thinking about whether ‘sir’ was what one called the man who whipped you.

“You’ll stay like that for a few minutes and think about what you did. You may rub your bottom, if you wish, to take away the sting.”

Oh, how could he! But immediately the scene grew even more humiliating, for just as she reached her hands back and took her punished cheeks in them to try to soothe the pain, Fiona opened the door and said breezily, “What are you two…” Then her voice trailed off.

“Lady Alice has just paid the penalty for some injudicious use of her tongue, Fiona. All is resolved, however. I must go out and see to the flocks—would you please ensure that she stays as she is for a bit?”

“I shall,” said Fiona. Her tone made it plain that she did not enjoy the sight of her guest’s punished backside, and Alice’s heart swelled with gratitude to hear it.

“Good day, my lady,” Niall said, and then Alice heard the door of the croft house shut behind him. She wondered why he had not stayed to force her to return the salutation, for that seemed much more like him than to leave so abruptly. Had a look passed between him and Fiona, behind Alice? Had something about whipping her wounded his composure?

Did the untoward feelings in her heart, and now, to her shame, in her cunny, have an answer in Niall’s breast?

Chapter Ten

Lord Roderick, when he discovered that no one could tell him whether Lady Alice Lourcy was alive or dead, decided that the only way to compose himself was to punish all the maids. Accordingly, he sent for Mrs. Grant.

“I am dissatisfied with the general cleanliness of the castle, Mrs. Grant,” he said. “If you please, I should like to have a general correction here in my library on the morrow.”

Mrs. Grant blanched. It had been several years since the last general correction, and Roderick could tell that his housekeeper had hoped there would not be another one.

“Yes, my lord,” she said hesitantly. “And… the… details?”

“The same as last time. The girls are to be paraded without their clothing through the castle before dinner, then brought to the library and made to form a queue for their whippings, which I shall give here over my desk.”

Mrs. Grant seemed even more reluctant to speak now. “And… afterward, my lord?”

“Yes, Mrs. Grant. The same. The rest of the maids turned with their bottoms to me, while Alana and another girl shall attend my pleasure.” It had been Catriona at the last of these sessions.

“My lord, I beg you…”

Roderick sighed. “Mrs. Grant, is not the general correction a tradition of this house?”

“Yes, my lord, but…”

“But what, Mrs. Grant?”

“The times have changed, my lord!” Mrs. Grant burst out.

Roderick felt hot anger fill his chest. He rose from behind his desk. “Indeed they have, my good woman, and much for the worse. The lord of Lormoran did not have to answer to his servants for his pleasures, in the old days.”

Mrs. Grant quailed back. “I only mean… my lord, I wish to protect you and your name! The people in the village are talking.”

“Have they not always talked, Mrs. Grant? Have they not then always learned to be silent, when the lord of Lormoran wished to enjoy himself?”

“Yes, my lord, but that was because they knew your father, and your grandfather, would take their own daughters to the castle.”

Those were the grand days, Roderick thought, and though his anger burned hotter to have Mrs. Grant allude to his present weakness in comparison to the powers of his forebears, he felt rather wistful, too. When he had been eighteen years of age, and his father had been in the prime of life, the general correction had always been followed by a grand debauch after dinner. Roderick himself had fucked his first maid at just such a debauch, as his father looked on in approval.

Mrs. Grant spoke the truth of it: the eighteen-year-old girl into whose sweet young cunt Roderick had plunged his virginal, though rampant, cock, while she cried out, “Please be gentle, my lord,” had been chosen for service at the castle because her brother had dared to say in the tavern that the lord of Lormoran should look to the state of his soul. The man had been transported and his sister, Tabitha, had come to serve the pleasure of the lord he had insulted.

Stripped naked upon the village green, Tabitha had pleaded with her father to resist the soldiers of the castle guard who had come to take her away. But the man had three other daughters, and knew his place. He told her to be a good girl, and that the other girls at the castle would take care of her.

They did take care of her, too. The lords of Lormoran had always had a genius for the maintenance of good order despite the idiosyncratic nature of their household, in which the master expected special service of the junior servants and of the maids in particular. Though part of their care involved preparing Tabitha for fucking by the lord and his son, another large part involved her comfort and her happiness, and they made certain that when Roderick had her maidenhead, Tabitha came willingly to Venus’ altar.

That was what the village folk would never understand: the girls whom the lords of Lormoran enjoyed learned to be good girls, whether for their whippings or for their fuckings. Tabitha became Roderick’s special maid, and when he came to her chamber every afternoon, and she welcomed him into her tight little cunt and her tighter little arse, she cried out her happiness to submit to such a noble master.

And why could not Roderick do the same thing to as many sisters and daughters as he pleased? Because, it seemed, the world had decided that the standards of
morality
applied to noblemen in the same way they applied to other men. Absurd, but, Roderick supposed, not new. Foolish men had been prating since time began about their
rights.
Had not Wat Tyler died upon that altar?

No, the new element came in the way people like the folk of the village of Lormoran seemed to have developed the idea that they might
do
something about it. And so Roderick’s father, in his old age, had abolished the debauch, and let months go by between general corrections. In his current agitated state over his ignorance about the fate of Alice Lourcy, Roderick felt the need not only to reinstitute the general correction, but to bring back the pleasant days of the debauch as well.