Free The Harlot Bride by Alice Liddell Page B

what happens to them what crosses ‘im! I ‘ope he gives it to you good, and I’ve ‘alf a mind to tell him you were shaking me, for ‘e’d be sure to give you extra lashes if he knew!”
    Lucy fell back a step. Lashes! She paled, remembering what it was he’d said before he closed the door in her face last night. Hadn’t he said he’d “attend to her disobedience” in the morning? Still, she had never imagined that he meant…A scolding, perhaps. But no, it couldn’t be! Surely not for what occurred, or rather didn’t occur, last night?
    Lucy shook her head in disbelief, her stomach tight with trepidation.
    Mary had turned back to the bed, and was angrily yanking clothing out of her bundle. It was unmistakably a nursery wardrobe, the sort of dress worn only by young girls still in braids.
    “Mary…please…I’m sorry I shook you. Please, Mary, tell me why you have brought these clothes?”
    “Because you’re to get a spanking!” the maid said sullenly, sorting out the ties of the childish pinafore and rolling the opaque white stockings. “It’s part of your punishment. I expect he’ll make you wear ‘em all day, and certainly until you’ve done your time in the corner.”
    Spanking! Time in the corner!
    Lucy sank into the chair by her bed, dazed, much to the annoyance of the maid, who was far wiser than Lucy to the ways of the master of the household, and ever so anxious to get her task completed before he arrived.
    “Yer can’t be sittin’ now,” she begged. “His Lordship’ll be ‘ere at any moment. If oi haven’t got yer ready and waitin’, it’ll be my skin as well as yours.”
    Up until now, when called on to assist Lucy with her dress, Mary had indulged Lucy’s insistence on modesty, but there was no time for such niceties today.
    “Come on, now, off with that nightdress,” she said impatiently tugging the ends of it from under Lucy so she could pull it up and off over her head. Finding herself suddenly naked in the presence of the maid, Lucy pulled her knees up to hide her middle and quickly crossed her hands over her chest.
    “Oh, never mind that,” Mary scolded. “Stand up, quick now, and step into these.” She was holding out a pair of drawers, the loose old–fashioned kind made of thin muslin.
    Lucy, caught up now in the maid’s obvious disquiet, and anxious to have herself covered again, stood as best she could while trying to preserve her modesty, and put in one foot, and then the other into the proffered underthings, and allowed Mary to turn her about so she could fasten the drawstring tie at the back.
    “Why, they’re all open down the middle,” Lucy cried out in surprise, looking down to see that the fabric wasn’t properly stitched at the seam between the legs. The two sides gaped open right at the middle, and, much to Lucy’s shock and dismay, allowed a bit of her ladies’ tuft to protrude into plain sight. Bending forward, Lucy grabbed at the cloth and tried to pull the gap closed. “Why ever would anyone make such a garment?” she exclaimed as she endeavored to regain some degree of modesty.
    “Oh, why do you think, Miss Smarty Pants?” said Mary at the rear, just finishing up the tie. “They’re drawers for naughty girls who need plenty of spankings.” And with that, the impudent maid gave a smack at the bum cheeks that peeped through the gap in the back.
    “Oh!” Lucy cried, jumping forward, too stunned by what Mary had said to protest the shocking liberty she’d just taken with Lucy’s person.
    Next, Mary made her put on a childish white blouse, without any sort of covering or binding for her chest, so the material fell directly upon the nipples of her breasts. Thankfully, there was a pleated front that hid them from view, but what Mary knew, and Lucy had yet to learn, was that the pleats hid two lengthy slits, one to each side of the button placket, that had been sewn in at his Lordship’s explicit instructions. Thus, the blouse provided far