The wind howled about the moonless night, sending dead leaves in rustling
waves along the dry grass, to settle again until the next gust sent them in
another direction. Ella pushed her
way against the elements, holding her tattered sweater against her shoulders as
she fought one current of cold air after another.
When she came to the door of the angular mansion on the hill she was out
of breath, and before knocking, sagged wearily against the thick door frame.
A broken gargoyle scowled, looking as though it would jump from its
concrete cloak and bury its beastly paws into her flesh.
The image of blood spilling down the entrance stairs, and the fright
behind it, gave her the impetus to bang on the door for entrance.
It had been three years since she’d last felt the hard surfaces of that
aging door, or had rested her eyes on the towering mansion, or had caught the
old scent that permeated its walls with fear.
The knocker banged against the
brass plate, the noise of it filling her ears with memories.
Yes, it had been three years, but when the door swung wide, Bigsby
greeted her as though she’d never left. His
officious manner hardly warmed her, though she was nonetheless heartened by the
sight of his familiar face.
“Ella, you’re quite
cold,” he said as she stepped into the entry way, her eyes immediately
glancing upward toward the intricate hunting scenes carved into the rising
canopy that was the ceiling “Would
you like a sip of brandy while you wait for Master Clive?”
The dutiful servant ushered her into the small drawing room off the
entrance—Clive’s personal sitting room.
“That would be fine,” she
answered. She still hugged her
shoulders. The mansion was always
drafty.
She took a seat in the small
leather chair in front of the fireplace and drew a wool afghan over her slight
form. Bigsby poured her a sifter of
brandy. Once it was in her hands he
clicked his heels, gave her a respectful nod and started toward the door.
“I’ll tell Master of your arrival.”
“I would be just as happy if
you didn’t let him know I’m here, not yet, anyway.”
She started to rise with anxiety suddenly catching her in the throat,
remembering Clive.
“I’m afraid the Master
would be most distressed to have your return kept from him.
If I can be so bold as to say this,” he added, “some things are best
handled straight-away as letting them linger.”
Ella stared at him
thoughtfully. This was wise
counsel, but not one she welcomed. “I’m
sure you’re right,” she finally said sighing.
Returning to the warmth of the chair, Bigsby continued with his mission.
Waiting for Clive, Ella rested her head back against the seat and closed
her eyes. For just a moment, she
could feel a sea breeze on her cheeks, and imagine her face toward the sky, the
bright ball of flame hotly baking her skin with its fierce warmth. Just one small vision, it flit through mind and then was
gone. Her thoughts returned to the
drawing room, and the dankness of its spirit that surrounded her.
If it weren’t for the fire in the grate, she’d be bathed in a
coldness that would sink deep into her bones.
Even with her eyes closed, Ella could feel her surroundings keenly: the
mahogany paneling, the shelves of the leather bound histories, the rich oriental
carpet and the purple velvet drapes across the windows—the kind so thick you
could hide within their folds and not be seen.
She’d done that as a child.
If only the picture of the
seashore would return, just one last glimpse of its gentle beauties—perhaps it
would take away the gloom of this horrifying return to the place of her
childhood. And yet, just minutes
steeped inside its walls, she was captured by the gothic aura of Faltz House,
once again enveloped in its charms and mysteries and its terror.
It would be some time before the peaceful pictures of her excursion away
from this chilling house would return.
Hearing the door open, Ella’s
eyes jerked open. Clive had
entered. She knew that without
turning toward the door, his essence went before him like a herald.
“So, I see you’ve finally
given up your maverick jaunt,” he said, his voice sweeping her with its chill.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
She automatically rose from the chair and faced him.
Perhaps if she was obedient from the outset, he’d have some pity on
her. If she submitted without a
fight perhaps he wouldn’t remember how she’d left in a defiant panic three
years before.
“And you’re ready to
yield?”
“I am.”
She looked him squarely in the eye, hardly meek, yet still compliant.
Her first gaze into his face, she could see he’d hardly changed.
Perhaps his inky black hair was a bit longer, now a beautiful mane of
ebony he brushed back off his imposing shoulders.
His eyes were as icy as she remembered them, but beautiful in their
coldness. He’d been dressed for bed, she imagined, and had donned
these clothes hastily when Bigsby informed him of her appearance.
Dusty jeans—perhaps he’d been riding that day, a loose white
collarless shirt tucked inside them, and his riding boots—he was never without
them. If he’d come to her in
stocking feet, she might have earned a reprieve from her inevitable fate, but
then that wouldn’t be like him to put necessary business aside for any reason.
Clive Faltz was in his late thirties, yet he had an ageless mien. He was the perfect replica of his father before him, with his
gothic masterpiece mansion and his old-world taste for women, justice and
beauty. Indeed, given his age,
Clive might be more startling that Victor Faltz.
To have developed this fierce style so young was unexpected.
But then, Clive was an unusual man.
Like his father, he was an anomaly amidst the vast ranchlands of Montana.
These renegade expanses suited his temperament well—rigorous, often
forbidding and always willing to allow a man to live as he chose—though Clive
seemed more like an English nobleman than a rough cattle baron.
In spite of the fact that he worked his ranch with the lust of any
cowboy, he remained a gentleman’s gentleman, reeking with good breeding.
“Perhaps the wider world has
been ungracious to a flower as sweet as you,” Clive opened the encounter with
the withering, weathered beauty. The wayward woman looked gaunt and tired.
Her locks of pale red hair were plastered to her head with rain, and were
only now drying, hinting how they could shine lustrously. She was slight of
build, her body like a bending willow, her breasts delicate handfuls of
translucent whiteness, her waist slim, and her rounded hips providing an
alluring swell to an otherwise unremarkable appearance.
Her jeans were a size too big and her sweater was baggy as if it came
from some goodwill bag. Where once
Ella had been the fairest bloom in the county, her face was now colorless, and
her hazel eye seemed devoid of light. Staring
into her pitiable expression, Clive was moved, knowing instantly what was
required to restore her. All the
gloom would go away and her mood would brighten as soon as he’d removed the
great burdens from her conscience.
“For a while I was happier
than I’ve ever been,” she told him almost proudly.
Then her eyes looked down at her feet tucked into the small pink flats.
“But it didn’t last,” she added.
The admission was one filled with heaviness.
“You should never have
attempted a cause so feeble,” he told her as though that truth was
self-evident.
Staring into his cold eyes it
was hard to admit he was right, but time, distance and three brutal three years
between this and their last confrontation, convinced her he was right.
Then too, Clive was never wrong. Oh,
how things might have been different if she hadn’t been so doggedly stubborn
that night. In a quarrelsome fit
she fled the mansion, and had since paid dearly for that blunder.
Thinking that she could live without Faltz House and the master of that
manor was a error in judgment she’d come to regret after just six months on
her own.
“I made a mistake,” she told him.
“And I’m here to take my due.”
Though she looked tired and vanquished, her voice did not waver as she
spoke.
He nodded in acknowledgment,
turned his back to ponder for a second and then turned back.
“I’ll chastise you in the cellar as I promised,” he said in a flat
monotone. “I hadn’t expected
your return, so I’ll need to prepare, but I’m sure I can make do.”
“You’ll be using birches as
you swore?” she asked.
“Of course, my dear, I never
break my word. Though I suspect
that I’ll begin with something else, perhaps warming you with the bite of
wood.”
She shuddered.
There was not a nerve ending in her body that wasn’t lit with fear and
heat. Yet the more she stared into Clive’s face, the more she
witnessed what drew her back to him after a vow to never lay eyes on him again.
“In the cellar,” he said.
Turning, he opened the drawing
room door and motioned her to exit with him.
Winding her way through the downstairs hallway, they came to a door just
outside the kitchen and she opened it gingerly.
Descending the stairs, the chill that had begun to relent with the brandy
and fire returned to her body, settling into her heart.
Her loins, in contrast, were on fire, the flame from them would not
die—not until this ritual had reached its end.
Clive lit the oil lamps along
the dark staircase, though there was little illumination; this was a dark so
black it swallowed light like food to feast on.
The smoke and fumes rising into the dank air brought memories Ella would
not forget—those other times. Hitting
the cellar floor, the two turned left moving into a chamber where there was
nothing but a small stool for her to sit on and a three foot long bench.
“Give me your wrists,” he
said, reaching for the two slight hands that were now callused from some hard
labor, the red nail polish chipped.
His command quickened every
atom in her body.
Offering herself, she watched
as his deft hands worked a rope around her slim wrists several times so they
were immovably bound. Pleased with
his handiwork, he next removed her pants, yanking the garment to her feet,
taking panties and all in one swift move. Pulling
the pile out from under her feet she stood before him bared and humbled though
he had one more task to perform before he was ready.
“Sit, I’ll return
shortly,” he said, and though anxious to leave, he waited while she complied.
The low stool required her to bend low and land ungraciously on the hard
surface. The height of the stool made her bent knees a good bit higher
than her ass, so her thighs naturally parted into an ungracious pose. Resting
her bound hands between them, Ella watched Clive vanish as if by magic.
The walls leapt out at her with the shadows and ghosts and memories of
her visits to this punishment chamber. She
remembered the stone, the cracked mortar and the loneliness that crept in round
her. The silence was deafening.
She knew that any moment, Clive would suddenly sweep into the room, his
gritty determination preceding him, his powerful aura pouring from him with
haughty arrogance and command. Ella
had been a child and youth and woman that needed to be bridled and constrained
and Clive was an expert in that task—one of the many skills that had been
handed down to him by his father. She’d
been a homeless waif when Victor Faltz rescued her from sure destruction. Over the years, he’d championed her, disciplined her spirit
and brutally dealt with her misdeeds. But
it was to his son, Clive, that Ella owed her allegiance and her affections, even
if Clive was often as brutal to her as his father.
Even though she’d banished herself from Faltz House for three years,
the facts of their relationship would never be altered.
She would greet the next hour trembling in terror though she would endure
knowing the satisfaction that would flow once she’d paid for her crimes.
By the time Clive finally returned to the cellar, Ella’s legs ached and
her ass end felt numb. Perhaps that
would be in her favor considering the plans Clive had to punish her. A second fierce shudder raced through her when she saw what
he brought with him: in one hand the paddle he’d used on her many times
before, in the other hand, a bundle of fresh-cut switches from one of the trees
in the woods some twenty yards from the house.
Seeing the random assortment of
slender branches tied together, she gasped quietly. “They’ll rip me to
shreds.”
“Then so they shall,” he
returned, pulling her to her feet. Her
legs had become weak, and she was hardly able to stand.
“Clive, I …” she began to
stammer.
“Hush, my darling.
You knew when you left the price you’d pay if you returned.
I trust that you’ve thought this through clearly?”
Returning was all she thought
about since the day she left. Even
when she was living a life on her own without the men of Faltz House, she could
not dislodge them from her mind. They remained with her, both fixed and fluid images.
Fixed in their heartless resolve and yet fluid in the way the picture of
them would follow the moods she’d see on their faces: resilient, stern,
compassionate, unrelenting and, at times, utterly kind.
“Your treachery and
disobedience are as fresh now as they ever were, Ella.
Don’t do yourself a disservice and try to negate the impetuous
recklessness that drove you from this house.”
“I would never do that,”
she replied. “I was only hoping that I could do this without the bonds at my
wrists, that I could come to you freely without the need for this to cloud my
willingness.”
“I understand your
willingness, and appreciate that ready compliance—even though it’s been so
long in coming. Still, you will be
bound. Let the ropes remind you of
how you are bound to me irrevocably. Perhaps
the marks they leave will make an imprint that will not easily fade from your
foolish mind.”
Clive turned Ella around and
shoved her toward a rough-hewn bench. Pushing
her to her knees, she straddled the end like a saddle, a leg on either side of
the foot wide seat. The sharp edges
of the boards cut into the flesh of her inner thighs.
Her body rested along the length of the board, and her roped hands were
drawn in front of her, fastened down buy a leather cord that was looped between
them and tied securely.
Letting her cheek lay against
the wood, she waited.
The punishment proceed with the
paddle, just as she knew it would. The
flat surface of the well-oiled implement landed briskly several dozen times to
warm her flesh and make it glow brightly. Clive
laid it on with an even stroke, being patient, thorough and unwavering, despite
the mounting protest the penitent woman waged. She had no way to bodily revolt
as securely as she’d been immobilized, but within her confinement she churned
as she could for the pain mounted steadily.
Most of the paddling was aimed at the center of her ass cheeks, but he
also strayed lower and higher to more tender flesh where the burn was vicious
instantly.
When Ella’s behind had turned the proper shade of red, and her cries
were at level of anguish he knew well in her, he abruptly halted. With the finish, the room became utterly silent, just the
sound of the two breathing heavily—Ella from her anguish, Clive from the
energy he’d just expended delivering the paddling.
As she lay impassively, the pain turned to warmth, invading her limbs,
her loins and her churning belly. The
air around her tickled the raw skin. She
might have giggled under different circumstances.
Not now certainly, she had a good deal to dread with this chastisement
only half over.
Gathering himself, Clive moved
away and picked up the bundle of birches, whisking the seven thin branches
though the thick cellar air with an awesome sizzle.
Another swish through the air, and Ella was certain that this next would
strike her ass, but again they hit the empty space around her without striking a
thing.
Now, ready to begin the heart of her atonement, Clive stepped to her ass
once more, noting that the lustrous crimson on her cheeks was beginning to wane.
“I didn’t get a chance to soak these in brine,” he said, “that
would have been most suitable for the occasion, but perhaps this hastily made
concoction will do as well.” That
said, Ella felt a sudden sting on her bare behind.
Clive had sprayed some homemade brew about her bottom and the instant the
potion hit, she jerked feeling a vile sting.
Though he’d not broken the skin, the roughed up places were singed with
a biting sensation, one that only promised to become more agonizing once he
began with the birches.
“Clive …” she uttered
quietly, a gasp, a plea, a trace of hope in her voice.
But Clive was beyond that. What
he heard from her in woe did not move him. Rearing back, his powerful arm came
downward toward her naked derriere and delivered the first of many incisive
strikes.
“Ahhhhhhh…” her
voice was quiet, but the sentiment fused with terror and pain.
Another and another, the strikes landed in a vehement succession, and did
not stop until the burn on her buttocks was far greater than it had been before
and there were tiny lines where the thin branches made welts.
“Gawwwwww! Pleeessssse!”
she wailed.
He struck another and the air
was hot with sound. Another and she
was begging him to stop.
“Nooooooo, please!”
He struck again and again, a
dozen times over, her ass laced with lines, dozens appearing, at first distinct
and then becoming one enormous rash of red welts.
When he had enough of her ass, he moved lower to the tops of her thighs
and repeated the angry treatment until she screamed for him to stop.
Returning to her ass, he punished her more, in just seconds having her at
another anxious and frenetic peak that seemed wholly unmanageable to the
contrite Ella. And then, not to appease her, but so that he could reasonably
continue laying it on for some minutes more, he settled into a slower pace,
giving her some seconds to recover from one strike before the next one landed.
Clive said nothing the entire
time. His thoughts were spoken from
the birches, his resonating feelings coming from the fierce treatment he’d
sentenced her to. He was grateful
that she maintained her penitent spirit, and though she shrieked and cried, she
did willingly accept. This allowed
him to complete the task much sooner than he might have.
In the past, Ella had been less docile, her wit and temper getting the
better of her—they’d always been to her detriment.
Perhaps her negligent life had brought about this change.
Perhaps three years of exile had taught her to value what she’d so
easily cast away. Perhaps she was
at last ready to take her place beside him, the humble yet intensely lustrous
soul that she was. This was his
fondest hope.
After the blows stopped, Clive
threw the bedraggled bundle of horror into the corner, then splashed Ella’s
roughed behind with more stinging brine.
“Ah, noooo,” she whimpered
while there were still tears streaming from her eyes.
The stinging intensified for a time, but then dwindled away.
The warmth remained.
Undoing the tether at her
hands, Clive lifted her to her feet, holding her carefully lest her legs weaken
underneath her.
“And now, wife, I see you’re weary,” he said kindly.
He ran his hand along her cheek to brush away a tear.
“Go to our wedding chamber and wait for me.
I’ll be there shortly to do what should have been done a long time
ago.”
He was about to leave.
“But what of my hands?” she
asked sweetly as he was walking away. He turned back and eyed her head to toe.
“I should like you to remain
bound, Ella,” he replied. “Yes,
bound this night, that suits you well and satisfies me.”
Clive remained cool as he
spoke, his eyes were as forbidding and cruel as she remembered them.
Hearing his answer another frightful fear traversed her pain-ridden body.
She could be certain that nothing had changed inside these fortress
walls. While the rain pelted the
ground outside and the raw winds made the night forbidding, it was all the more
forbidding inside this haven from the storm.
Her only hope was that the heat of her would warm his physical body, that
his voice and eyes and disposition would eventually thaw inside her embrace.
She looked at her husband longingly, waiting for more.
The silence was as difficult to bear as the lashing from the birch.
But then quite suddenly he spoke again, his voice no less severe, though
the message was changed.
“When you’ve paid for the
crime of deserting me, Ella, then perhaps you can tell me of you, and where
you’ve been. I should like to
know.” A long remembered
affection returned to his eyes. There
might have been tears, but he was too hard a man for that.
After one last glance, Clive
left and Ella managed to dress despite her bound wrists.
She had waited three years to sleep with her husband, she’d waste
little time now making her way to their untouched bed.
