‘Because you seek to defy me,’ said Cruel Bastard.
Walters’s head shot up.
‘It is not so, sir. Are you unhappy with my work?’
‘No, Walters, your work is perfect. More than perfect.’
‘Then I do not understand, sir.’
‘Look me in the eye, Walters. Yes – yes, there it is. There is my difficulty with you. You don’t flinch. You don’t cower.’
‘Do you want me to fear you, sir?’
‘Damn it, I want you to understand what I can do to you.’
I forgot my next line and stood there for a moment, shuffling my feet on the floor.
Jasper turned to me and clicked his tongue.
‘You are …’ prompted Cruel Bastard gently.
‘Oh! Yes. You are my master. I understand that you can do anything to me.’
‘Good. Then you’ll understand that I can punish you on a whim, for no other reason than that I don’t like the way you look at me. Kneel down, Walters, and kiss my boots.’
Walters knelt and did as she was told. I remembered the leather-and-polish smell and how grateful I was that these were costume boots that had never trodden a muddy path.
‘Fantastic expressionlessness,’ murmured Jasper. ‘You nailed that look precisely.’
Actually, now he mentioned it, I was starting to be convinced by my performance. Walters seemed a separate entity to me, not least because I would have pouted and huffed and complained about the unfairness of it all, while she did everything with that serene grace I hadn’t realised I possessed.
And the capricious sadism of Cruel Bastard (whose character name was actually Lord Dunraven) took my breath away. It was a few steps beyond Jasper’s natural inclinations, but he captured it with terrifying ease.
Dunraven removed his kiss-anointed boots from the footstool and ordered me to bend over with my palms flat upon the buttoned velvet.
I grimaced in sympathy with my character, remembering how awkward it had been to bend in that corset. The bones had dug into the underside of my breasts, squashing them upwards into even ruder display.
I was filmed in profile, but Jasper said afterwards that, when he filmed the scene properly, I (or the other actress) would be facing the camera. Obviously, in that case, the caning would not be real. For the purposes of rehearsal – and our private enjoyment of the film – he wanted to see the stripes laid on my bottom though.
This being only a few days after our trip to London, there were six fading streaks across both cheeks already. I was dreading the additions, especially as the old ones still throbbed when I sat down.
‘I suppose you think you know what I’m going to do to you?’ said Dunraven, picking up a supple length of rattan from beside the chair. He placed its tip beneath my chin, forcing my face upwards.
‘You are going to thrash me, sir,’ I said. I
liked the neutrality of my tone – it worked well for the character, I thought.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, lowering his face until it was an inch or two from mine and smiling his wide, bright smile. ‘That goes without saying. I’m going to give you six hard strokes and I’m going to see that you feel them for a long time afterwards. Perhaps the sting will remind you to subdue this spirit of yours when you are in my presence.’
He spoke the words softly, caressingly – not all hissy and mean like a melodrama baronet. It made them twice as frightening and I clenched my thighs. I gasped, unable to rein in my growing arousal, when Dunraven ran the tip of one long finger from Walters’s brow to her chin, stroking her cheek with his thumb. The look on his face was the clear prelude to a kiss.
But the kiss never came.
Instead he whispered – and it was obvious he had theatrical training, because he could make a whisper carry further than most people’s yells – into Walters’s face.
‘But that’s not all. Did your esteemed housekeeper ever show you the disciplinary properties of ginger root?’
‘Ginger root, sir?’