Reforming Rebecca Read online

  Chapter Four

  For a very long moment, Miss Adams simply stared at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, her face nearly crimson. “How dare you?” she hissed at last. “Leave my room at once.”

  “I shan’t leave your room, miss,” James said steadily, “for I would give you the wrong idea, then.”

  The astonishment in Miss Adams’ gaze turned quickly to anger. “And just what idea do you think is the correct one for a footman to give me, sir?”

  She spoke the word sir with all the sarcastic scorn he thought a human voice might contain, but James had taken a purpose upon him, and he looked back unperturbed.

  “The idea, miss, that you have an honor to uphold, and a virtue, even though you have placed a terrible stain on both of them. That you are a guest in the house of an honorable gentleman, a member of Parliament, and that your conduct may injure him, and his gentle wife as well, who as I gather has done you nothing but good.”

  Miss Adams’ mouth dropped open once again, and again she said, “How dare you?” This time, however, she said it in a white-hot fury that seemed to James somehow pretended, and indicated to him that despite her conduct Miss Rebecca Adams did not lack a sensibility of the moral matters upon which he arraigned her. If James Oakes, a footman, could understand these things, surely the daughter of a duke must recognize them.

  But she also seemed to gain security in her pretense of wrath, for she continued now, with more apparent confidence, her nose curling in a sneer, “You can know nothing of these matters. I do not care even to hear from your impudent mouth what you think you have learned about my conduct, as you call it. Go at once.”

  The only remaining sign of her consciousness of guilt, now, lay in the bright pink circles he observed upon her pretty cheeks. For an instant, James’ courage threatened to desert him. Miss Adams, despite being an illegitimate child dependent on the benevolence of her natural father and his friends, belonged to the aristocracy, to the ton. Such was his inbred respect for the ordering of society that he almost succumbed to the idea that as an aristocrat she must be left to find such counsel and comfort as she could, among her own class—however ambiguous her membership in that class might be.

  But James did not have so much respect that he believed entirely in those notions of class: forelock-tugging and cap-doffing lay in his blood, but he had political principles as well, and he had an idea of his natural rights that sorted ill with such gestures of servility. Serving in Mr. Rand’s household, he had never before felt the confrontation of his respect for his employer’s family honor with his confidence in his own inborn English ability to choose the right, and to enforce that choice. Now, however, despite his moment’s hesitation, he knew he must persevere: his very blood seemed to tell him that with each pulse through his veins.

  He saw upon Miss Adams’ face, as he stood his ground, the slipping away of her own self-assurance. She spoke, her tone seeming to falter as the words emerged from her pretty lips. “Go at once, and… and I shall not tell Mr. Rand that… that you said such offensive things to me!”

  At the end of this declaration she tried again to assume the air of invulnerable superiority she had affected at first, but James felt sure he could detect the shakiness of its foundation.

  “Do as I’ve said, miss,” he said as gently as he could. “I shall help you. You must be in your chemise for your punishment.”

  “Punishment?” she whispered, and he had the distinct impression that she had meant the word to come out dripping with scorn—as it found utterance, though, it seemed to him full of fear and the consciousness of wrongdoing.

  “Yes, miss. I hope that by spanking you soundly I can teach you to regard your honor with more care. I have done my best to ensure that William will not tell his tale, which is the first important thing, but as I see the matter it is even more important that you understand the necessity of your returning to the thorny path of virtue, and walking upon that path henceforward, though the flowers of vice tempt you ever so much.”

  He had not meant to spin this little allegory, and he could see on Miss Adams’ face that it disgusted her—that she did not consider herself to be the sort of moral pupil who might be affected by such facile figures and fables. But as he saw her reaction he also thought that perhaps he had discovered something of the essence of the tangle, or the twist, in her character that had led her to fuck a footman in the woods.

  It seemed to him that Miss Rebecca Adams had chosen to reject all of society’s wisdom, where feminine conduct was concerned, rather than to examine each piece of that wisdom—as James liked to think he had done—and accept those pieces that tended to the health of the happy man or woman. In the matter of fucking, for example, she had it seemed decided to cast aside the very healthy idea that a girl should choose carefully, and with her friends’ help, the man to whom she surrendered her innocence. James’ insight told him, too, that she had done so without any reasonable motive for rejecting the healthy idea but that it came to her from the same social world that called her a bastard.

  “It is no business of yours, sir, which path I have chosen, or whether I enjoy the rank stench of moral roses or the sweet fragrance of immoral peonies,” she spat back at him. “You are a footman, and you will remember that henceforth, and get you gone where I shall not lay my eyes upon you again.”

  Anger boiled up in James, then, and he took three steps forward, watching Miss Adams’ eyes grow ever wider as he approached. Part of him cried that he must not touch this daughter of a peer, but his natural character had risen to such an ascendancy over him—a proper ascendancy, James knew more certainly with his every action to correct Miss Adams’ misbehavior—that he heeded his servile side not a bit.

  He put one hand on the shoulder of her muslin morning gown and the other on her waist, gripping her firmly but not violently. Miss Adams gave a sharp cry and struggled against him, but he turned her toward her bed and began to march her the distance toward its foot. He had intended to place her over his knee, so as to make her consider how when she misbehaved even a noble-born young lady must be treated like a little girl. With all her petticoats still on, however, to lay her over the bed seemed the most practicable method of correction.

  She seemed to realize what he meant to do, and she cried out again, but he said softly in her ear, as they reached the bed, “Hush, Miss Adams. Your shame will be known if we are discovered, and if I lose my place as a result at least I will have shown you and Mr. Rand that I value the honor of this house highly enough to take action—and your own honor enough to seek to bring feeling for it back to you.”

  He felt an unexpected yielding, then, in her limbs, as if she had recognized in his words some measure of reason—or, he thought suddenly and wildly, as if her beautiful young body had responded to his proximity and his intent to master her and to take her in hand. That heady feeling made his cock leap in his breeches, but although he found Miss Adams beautiful practically beyond words, James had too much respect for the world’s opinion to make what he understood to be William’s mistake: to fuck the daughter of a duke might seem like bliss, and some kind of victory over society’s restraints, but the price of the pleasure lay far beyond what any moral man should pay—above all for the wayward young lady, who must think she knew her own mind and what would benefit her, but clearly erred in that supposition.

  Then, however, as if herself feeling the way she had softened and seeing it as a weakness she refused to admit, she stiffened again and hissed, “Get it over with, then. If you think you can change my purpose or my conduct, you are mistaken, sir, but I have no need to deny that with your brutality you can do me this violence.”

  That angered James, but he also saw the cleverness with which she had attempted to change the complexion of the situation entirely: now he had become the miscreant and she the offended young lady. Though the world might see the matter differently, and pass severe judgment on the spanking of a highborn girl by a footman, however, James felt the natural rect
itude of what he would now attempt, aided by his experience with Lady Merlon.

  He bent her over her bed. Her words of apparent acceptance did not receive any confirmation in her continued squirming and struggling in his grasp, and he had to hold her down with his left hand across her waist as with his right he raised her gown, her petticoat, and then her under-petticoat—to find a state of affairs that astonished and, despite a degree of moral outrage, pleased him greatly: Miss Adams wore no drawers. The girl’s sweet young bottom lay exposed to James’ view and, as she kicked first one leg and then the other in a vain attempt at escape, he glimpsed the pretty cunny, fledged in golden curls, where William had wrought the end of her maidenhood, its pink secrets making him stiffen to the hardness of iron in an instant.

  “Miss Adams,” he said with severity, “where are your drawers?”

  She stopped struggling then, for a moment. An entirely new sort of sound came from her mouth, buried in the counterpane—a whimper, or even a sob.

  “Tell me, girl,” he thundered. “Proper young ladies do not leave their rooms in such a state. I feel certain you know that. What do you think you are about?”

  James remembered suddenly the note she had held, and held no longer. He cast his eyes about the room and found it lying on the floor. Letting go of her only for an instant, he crossed to where it lay and picked it up. When he turned to look at Miss Adams again, she had in surprise turned her face over her shoulder to see what he did. Then, when she grasped the purpose of his motion and saw him holding the note, she cried, “No! Please…” and began to rise.

  But he had moved back to take hold of her and bend her well over again. Her skirts had fallen down, and James shifted the note to his left hand as he raised them, conscious that his disciplinary purpose had, in the absence of Miss Adams’ drawers, received a parallel motivation from a lust he felt no need to deny. James was no William; he wouldn’t give in to the hardness of his cock at the heavenly sight of Miss Rebecca Adams’ cunt. He had undertaken to discipline her. In consequence of that undertaking, he would see her bare bottom, and his natural desire would rise high, but no shameful sequel need result.

  He shifted the note to his right hand as he gathered her skirts in his left, still holding her down despite her renewed squirming.

  “Do not read that! Do not… I… I beg of you. Please.”

  But James knew he must see what she had written, if he were to attempt her correction as he intended. He unfolded the paper.

  Chapter Five

  Rebecca fought back the tears that rose to her throat, and then to her nose, her eyes. He had no right. How could he?

  It felt more defiant not to struggle now, so she stopped, and kept looking—glaring—over her shoulder at the footman as he read, and his eyes grew hard. Rebecca set her face into the hardest expression she could command. He had no right. She was a woman, now, after what she had let William do in the little woods. In a moment of weakness she had burnt her pantalets, as if she had something to be ashamed of—but in truth she had nothing to be ashamed of then, or now. She waited for this other footman, this James, to say something.

  He looked into her eyes, and she felt some pride in that she managed to return his gaze without wavering, though she felt the heat grow in her cheeks. Rebecca told herself that the heat arose not from shame but from anger. If only she could have run to Mrs. Rand and told her that one of her footmen had taken it upon himself to read her mail. Had forced Rebecca back into her chamber. Had told her to get undressed.

  Had made it clear that he intended to spank her.

  But she knew that this James had discerned at least one thing correctly: he obviously knew his employers, and he clearly had enough sense to conclude from that knowledge that he might do such things with impunity. Mr. and Mrs. Rand, despite their liberal views even on such things as the Woman Question that lay heavy on the intellect of so many of society’s fashion-makers, were nevertheless members of London society, with moral obligations to fulfill to their ancestors, to their heirs, to the queen, and to the empire. They would not look favorably upon the news that it seemed had already spread from one footman to another, and might just as quickly spread much, much further, in a whisper that roared all the louder for its being passed behind raised hands: Miss Rebecca Adams had been fucked by a footman out of doors.

  She contemplated for the briefest of moments the significance of James’ knowing the fact of her defloration at his colleague’s hand and manhood. A misgiving rose in her mind, present and even urgent despite her dismissing it almost as quickly as it came, since it suggested such a terrible error on her part. Could William truly have told others about what he had done, how he had claimed the treasure of a highborn girl’s innocence? And, did James speak the truth that he—and not the man who had taken advantage of Rebecca’s perhaps injudicious attempt to play the coquette—had ensured that the stain upon her virtue and the Rands’ honor would not be bruited about in town?

  “This is not the sort of note a young lady of your breeding should ever write,” James said slowly, as if pronouncing judgment upon her. The maddening look of disappointment appeared again in his eyes. “Even a girl of my own class could justly receive stern correction for writing something so filthy, Miss Adams. I am going to spank you now, to teach you to regard your honor more highly, but first you will tell me what happened to your drawers.”

  Righteous fury blazed up in Rebecca, erasing any trace of feeling that James might have her best interests at heart. “What right do you have to inquire after my linen, footman? Set aside the matter of your pretending to the defense of Mr. Rand’s honor, and set aside your ridiculous idea of punishing me! The notion that I should tell you what happened to my undergarments would seem ridiculous if you had not already outraged me by discovering their absence, and now that you have… now that you have…”

  Her fury remained hot, but now the idea that this James, this servant, had seen her with her skirts up, was even now seeing her that way, that she did not have her drawers on because she had burnt them, because she had seen upon them the evidence of what she had done in the little woods, with a man between her thighs, a man who had told tales… It all wrought a sob in her chest, a fact that made her angrier still.

  “Hush, now,” James said. Suddenly the severity seemed to have departed from his voice and from his mouth, as if when she had begun to weep he had taken it as a sign of her remorse and the possibility of her amendment, through the condign chastisement he would now provide upon her bare bottom. But the idea that he had put himself in a position to condescend that way made Rebecca even more furious, and she commenced again to struggle, taking him so much by surprise that she almost broke free of his grip, and her skirts fell partway down again.

  She paid the price of her resistance almost immediately, though, and—to Miss Rebecca Adams, daughter of the Duke of Panton—very shockingly. James secured her again, though she kept squirming against his grasp, and lifted her skirts to expose her never-before-disciplined bottom, and began to spank her, hard and fast.

  “You… will… hold… your… back… side… still… miss!” he said in a rapid-fire rhythm, accompanying each word with a smack to her little cheeks, right-left-right-left, as Rebecca yelped and squirmed, but now in a different way—a much worse way. Where before she had tried with her whole body to escape his grasp, now that one part of her, her poor posterior, undergoing the sort of punishment fit only for naughty girls of the lower orders, wriggled in a vain attempt to escape his huge, firm hand, and clenched in a humiliating fashion to ease the smart of the spanking if only a little.

  Her bottom felt like he had set it on fire, the terrible warmth spreading and spreading until Rebecca couldn’t even tell whether the feeling of terrible degradation came down from the shame in her cheeks or up from the smacking of her rear end. Tears of anger and frustration and mortification leaked from her eyes onto the counterpane: she had turned her face away when she had made her almost-successful attempt to free
herself, and now she didn’t want to show him that he had won the little victory of those tears.

  To her mild astonishment, James said, then, as if appending it to the command he had delivered as he brought his hand down so hard upon her poor bottom, amending the miss to something more respectful, “Miss Adams.” Again Rebecca had a twinge of doubt, in the face of the footman’s apparent respect for her. She remembered William calling her a fancy little whore, how it had shamed her even as it had seemed to increase the warmth down where her ‘seducer’ (though Rebecca thought it important to own her own coquettish role in the seduction) had boldly touched and even more boldly fucked.

  The humiliating spanking had awakened the lingering soreness there, from her defloration, as its awful warmth radiated frontward from her punished bottom, and that made it all even worse. She held her backside still, now, just as the footman had commanded: she did not know what else to do, for now she simply wished this all over with.

  But James clearly took that obedience as the sign that his ‘lesson’ had begun to have its effect. “Tell me now, miss,” he said. “What happened to your drawers?”

  “Why?” she cried, looking over her shoulder again despite knowing that he would see her eyes’ brightness, and understand that it came from the tears he had wrung from her. “Why must I tell you?” She heard her voice rise almost to a wail, and cursed her weakness and the way this man’s steadiness seemed to drive her own will before it.

  He looked back into her eyes, and seemed, to Rebecca’s surprise, to decide that her question deserved an answer. “Miss, if you not wearing your proper underthings doesn’t have anything to do with William…”

  At the sound of the name, Rebecca felt her face crumple. Something in the very way James said it told her that this steady young man, who professed such regard for his employer’s honor—and for Rebecca’s own—thought terribly little of his junior colleague.