Taming the Wilde (5 page)

Then he spoke
words that chilled me to the bone and caused me not to lift my eyes from the page until our lessons were done. “You will see me after, Miss Wilde.”

From that point on, the
lessons that were very slow and very tedious and well below my capabilities seemed to pass with astonishing speed. Two hours went by in a torturous flash of nervousness that made me feel quite ill to the pit of my stomach.

When my fellow prisoners filtered out of the room and I was compelled to sit at my spot without moving it was almost too much to bear. I could not stop my eyes from drifting to the birch with its damnable twigs too numerous to count.

Roake seemed in no hurry to engage me, so there was a long period of silence in which I sat with my hands in my lap whilst he seemed preoccupied with books and his damnable ledger. When I thought I could take it no longer, he finally looked up from his seat. “Stand up, Miss Wilde.”

I stood, feeling my legs trembling with the effort. My knees felt weak and I thought that I would surely faint if he were to strike me again. Only when I was standing did Roake approach me, his hands clasped behind his back. “Where did you learn to read?”

“My tutors taught me well enough.” I mumbled the response, though I felt a certain lingering pride in the ability that had bought me to this point.

“A pity they did not teach you obedience whilst they had the chance,” Roake observed in his usual dry manner.

I found it infuriating and managed to give the man a look that would have cowed someone with any sensibility at all. “My father would not have tolerated it.”

“But he has tolerated your decline into lawlessness and criminality.”

“He is long since dead.” My head was now held high, my courage coming to the fore. He could speak as ill of me as he liked, but I would not tolerate him speaking ill of my father.

Roake looked at me long and hard. “I am sorry to hear that,” he said at length. “No doubt that explains your presence here.”

“No doubt,” I agreed, clamping my lips together so as to control the emotion that rose in me as I spoke of my dearly departed father. There had never been a more gentle or indulgent parent; he had truly doted on me every day until fever took him. His memory was the dearest thing I had, the one family treasure that had not been stripped and sold.

“You vex me, Miss Wilde,” Roake admitted with more passion than I had come to expect from the man. “You are a prisoner on this ship and you must be treated as such. But if you can manage to restrain your impulse to provoke, you may have the post of assistant...”

“Thank you, Master Roake.” A smile broke over my face, made all the more genuine by the relief I felt in knowing that he was rewarding me, not punishing me.

But I had spoken too soon, for he held up a hand, indicating that he was not finished. “First we will tend to the matter of your misbehavior. I will have order on this ship and I will not have you undermining my authority with games.”

My joy drained away as quickly as it had come over me. “What do you mean?”

“I warned you last time we spoke what the consequences of further misbehavior would be,” he said, pulling out the chair from his desk. “Now, bend over the back of this seat and I will attend to your punishment.”

My mouth went dry, my legs became like lead. “I cannot.”

“Bend over, Miss Wilde!” He snapped the order, his voice cracking against my sensitive ears like a whip.

“I will not.” I lifted my chin and took refuge in defiance. It was easier to turn him down than to acquiesce to his humiliating demands.

He did not ask me again. His large hand clamped at my elbow and he guided me forward, pressing me over the chair until I was forced to steady myself with my hands on the seat. “Do not move,” he ordered, “until I tell you to do so.”

I found my hands clasping the sides of the seat even as my toes struggled to find purchase on the floor. I was not quite tall enough to place them down so my hindquarters were dangling, my rump on high display.

“Please Master Roake,” I gasped, finally setting aside my pride. “Please do not strike me, I beg you.”

Something about the request stilled him. I heard him stop moving and I felt his eyes upon me.

“I have not broken any of the rules, not really,” I added, feeling my face grow warm as blood rushed to my cheeks. “I am sorry I tried to fool you.”

“It was mischief you sought to make,” he said, a gravelly voice in the deep. “An undermining of my authority. That I cannot allow to pass.”

There was a swishing noise as he passed the birch through the air and I cringed in response. I had not ever been beaten as many of my peers had
been; I had been indulged and rewarded almost up to the moment I was cast out of the familial home. The idea of being struck with a rod was gross to me and I do not mind admitting that I felt a deep fear take me in its grasp. Roake seemed to be a completely uncompromising man, a hard fellow who saw all in his charge as the debris of society, needing to be whipped into shape.

“I do not think your authority can be undermined by one such as I. Surely you do not need to beat me to prove it?” I hoped to appeal to his sense of pride, to make myself seem small
to make him feel large.

“I do not beat you to prove my authority to myself, I do it to prove it to you,” he said with a short laugh. I did not know if it was an expression of genuine humor or harsh judgment
. It was impossible to tell in my precarious position.

“I can very much assure you that as I find myself in this position I very much believe in your authority, Master Roake. I have never doubted it.”

“You have a way with words, my fine lady,” he said, drawing closer and laying the rod across the seat of my light skirt. “But you are just as much in need of discipline as anyone else on this ship.”

I closed my eyes tightly and braced myself for what now seemed to be the inevitable. I had failed in my attempt to gain his mercy and I had failed in my attempt to fool him and I had failed in my attempt to claw back some form of
self-respect. Bending over that chair I felt myself completely weak and helpless against him. I wished fervently that it were not that way. I wished that he and I might change places so that he could understand what it was to be in terror of discipline.

The rod left its place and returned in a biting series of cuts across the center of my cheeks, each of the individual strands of wood providing its own beating. At first I felt nothing but a light wisping as he landed the birch several times against my hide, then a blazing fire emanated from the places it had lain, crawling through my flesh with prickling fury.

Another stroke landed just as my expression of pain found voice, and then another. Several more cuts of the rod landed in quick succession, rapid fire strokes that found their mark over one another creating a thick band of rushing heat that made my muscles contract and my feet kick.

“How do you find your lesson, my lady?” There was something mocking, or at the very least, humorous in his tone. He was enjoying himself. I saw that much as he walked around to the side and crouched down next to the chair so that he might see my face and I might see his.

My knuckles were white with the energy it took to hold onto the chair and I gritted my teeth as I gave him a strained smile and attempted bravery. “Oh very instructive and improving I am sure. Quite bracing.” I could not help but wince as I spoke, for my poor rump was protesting in a way that could not be ignored.

He met my insolence with a grin, his teeth flashing white with wicked enjoyment. “Bracing eh, let us see if we cannot invigorate you further, Miss Wilde.”

I allowed myself one quick sob under my breath as he stood and moved back behind me. He was making sport with my tender flesh. As I had suspected on first sight of the man, he enjoyed wielding implements of pain and I had made myself an altogether easy target for him. I was a lamb presenting itself to the wolf over and over again, never tiring of the bites and wounds.

Roake was certainly eager to see the punishment through. I trembled as I held position, the pain of previous blows still sinking into my flesh as I once more stretched my skin for his cruel attentions. The rod pressed against my skirt and in that instant I knew I could not stand the thought of it landing and quickly rebelled, standing up straight.

“Down, Miss Wilde!” Roake snapped the words and swept the rod across my hindquarters, catching it just under the curve of my cheeks and lifting me up onto my toes.

I danced forward, clutching at my bottom with a squeak of pain and sending the chair tumbling across the room. None of it was intentional; rather it was an uncontrollable reaction to the pain unleashed on my tender hide. “For the love of God please desist!” My plea went unheard for he followed after me and landed another lick, this time to my upper thigh. It was a stroke that made me dance in place, clutching at my person with both hands.

Roake laughed aloud at the sight I made and twirled the rod up under his arm, indicating something of a respite. “Miss Wilde, you are a pleasure to beat.”

“I am glad I please you,” I said with a sarcasm so deep it emanated from the marrow of my bones. I had by that time turned so that I faced him and needed fear no further strokes for the moment. “I would hate to think that you would be bored on this great voyage.”

“Again you take refuge in word play, Miss Wilde,” Roake said, placing the rod down on the desk. “But I know how much the rod burns. You need not pretend it does not smart.”

“And give you the pleasure of observing my pain? I think not.”

“If I wished to revel in your pain I would do so.” His timbre dropped and his eyes became intense and I felt myself swallowed in his gaze as the sea swelled under our feet, rocking us back and forth. There was nothing truly solid anymore, everything was liquid, the world had become water and with it my emotional state was fluid and confusing. I watched as he paced across the room, retrieved the chair and set it before me once more.

“Bend over, Miss Wilde.” His mustache twitched as he gave the terrible order.

“And if I do not?”

His expression became devoid of all humor as he answered me. “I will bind you to it and thrash you bare.”

I bent over the chair, hating him. In all the commotion my hair had come lose from its tie and tumbled across my face in a reddish curtain that provided me some privacy as I silently cursed him and all his progenitors.

“It seems to me, Miss Wilde, that you have been the recipient of little physical discipline, if any at all.” Master Roake spoke by my side.

“What of it?” My reply was terse, but my position was uncomfortable and my pride wounded. I was not in the mood for an analysis of the causes of defect in my character.

“It is a pity for various reasons, not the least of which being you do not seem to know when you are being treated kindly.”

My short laugh echoed one of his. “If this is your version of kindness...”

“Hush, Miss Wilde,” he snapped, interrupting me. “You should know that the birch is almost always given on the bare. To give it over a skirt is to mute the punishment many times over.”

“Oh.” I was confused for to me it seemed as if Master Roake had little interest in muting punishment when it came to my person, or indeed, any person at all.

“If I were to deliver it as I should, you would lose a great deal of the dignity you seem to hold so dear and the pain would be multiplied, so I suggest you begin to show a measure of gratitude, lest I reconsider my approach.”

He was now cowing me with his words even more than he had with his rod. I felt myself inexplicably ashamed, though there was no reason I should feel grateful for his beating me at all. “I am sorry,” I said softly.

I felt his fingers brush against the skin of my cheek as he moved my hair away from my face so as to look at me. “It pains me to see a lady of your caliber on this ship,” he said. “You should be long married to a man capable of taming your girlish wildness. I cannot change these circumstances, but I can show you the error of your ways when it is necessary to do so.”

There was a curious intimacy in his speech that I did not know how to answer. He did not press for a reply, but let my hair fall again as he moved back behind me and applied the rod more vigorously than before. The sound of twigs cracking and breaking against my hide was quite audible in the relative silence of the schoolroom. I gritted my teeth and resolved to be silent, but a few more strokes and I could no longer stop myself from crying out.

“You might think yourself clever because you have managed to outwit most you have crossed in your short life,” he said, pausing to lecture me further. “But I have seen all manner of ploys and deceit Miss Wilde, so when you next think to pull the wool over my eyes, remember this treatment well. It would be unfortunate if I were forced to administer the next beating on your bare hide.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I breathed deeply. My shame knew no bounds in that
moment; it seemed to me that Roake could see all the thoughts in my head before I so much as had them. I felt myself a silly, pathetic little thing and the burn of the punishment seemed in that moment to be quite justified. “Forgive me,” I said through my tears.