Rectory of Correction (9 page)

‘Very well,' the Reverend said, picking the badges up from the table once again. ‘Bella and Kirsty, you two will be the prefects.' He flung the badges over to the named girls.

Amelia tried to blink back the tears of disappointment. The idea of Kirsty and Bella in authority over her tasted like wormwood in her mouth. She almost wished herself back in the nursery of Hope Hall. This course was proving even more dreadful, if possible, than that purgatory had been. A fat tear rolled down Amelia's cheek and splashed on her bare thigh above the gartered top of her stocking. It was uncanny, she thought glumly; just when things seemed as bad as they could be, the Reverend had the knack of making them even more horrid.

‘Right, girls, dismiss,' the Reverend said. ‘Tea is in one hour. Bella, Gretchen, Charlotte, I will see you here afterwards for your detention. Oh, and Amelia, perhaps you would care to join us. I will not have pouting or unnecessary blubbing.'

 

‘Faith!'

There was a note in her master's voice that made the maid stiffen. She turned from the table she was laying and curtsied.

‘That girl, Linnet,' his voice was a low growl. Faith knew the tone only too well. ‘Run and fetch her. I will be in my study.'

The door closed with a click. Faith looked up and met the gaze of Rose, who was setting out cutlery. Laying table was getting to be a real hazard.

‘Someone's for it,' Rose said, with a glint in her eyes. ‘That little trollop is going to get one sort of rod or another, I should say.'

Faith left her colleague to complete the preparations and hurried up the stairs to the girls' dormitory. Rose was right, she thought. When her master got into that mood, no girlish bottom within a mile of the rectory was safe. Her own had been spared at lunchtime. To escape twice in the same day would be no less than a miracle.

‘What do you think he wants?' Linnet's heels clacked down the corridor forlornly after her a few moments later.

‘I don't know,' Faith said. ‘But don't worry, you'll soon see.'

The girl looked at her with wide eyes as she knocked on the study door. Faith could not prevent a smile. Linnet certainly looked toothsome in her little uniform. The girl's hair was caught in a loose ponytail, framing a pretty face that seemed to have gone very pale.

‘Enter.'

Faith took a deep breath and opened the door.

‘Linnet Tremaine, sir,' she said and waited.

Linnet seemed to be too nervous to move. She stood as if frozen in the doorway.

‘Well, come in, girl,' the Reverend snarled, ‘for God's sake!'

Tentatively, Linnet stepped into the gloomy, book-lined study.

‘Close the door, Faith, I might require your help. Bring the little baggage here.'

Faith swallowed hard. She had nursed a hope of quick dismissal to her duties. Instead, she put her hand in the small of Linnet's back and pushed her towards the Reverend's large desk, blocking any attempts at escape in case the victim bolted.

The Reverend resumed his seat and perused Linnet, putting his fingertips together and regarding the girl contemplatively. Close behind her, Faith found herself staring at the girl's exquisitely slender neck which, like the rest of Linnet, was now visibly trembling.

‘How are you settling in, my dear?' The Reverend's tone was friendly but, to Faith's ears, about as reassuring as a king cobra's hiss.

‘Ah, all right... sir,' Linnet stuttered desperately.

‘Good...' the Reverend said, breaking into a blood chilling smile. ‘Not too strict or exacting, I hope? I'm not working you too hard?'

‘Oh, no,' Linnet blurted in a panic-stricken voice.

The Reverend raised an eyebrow and Faith closed her eyes and swallowed.

‘Ah, I mean, no, sir,' Linnet mumbled, and Faith breathed again.

‘Good, good,' Dawes said with an amused twinkle in his eyes. ‘I tell you what, why don't you come around here and sit on my knee?'

This suggestion produced a small but audible squeak of panic. Linnet seemed almost too terrorised to move. Quickly, Faith grabbed the girl by the elbow and steered her around the desk to the waiting man. A strong arm scooped Linnet on to his lap, and Faith smartly stepped to the side.

‘There now,' the Reverend said, and chuckled.

Linnet licked her lips. The girl was now sitting sideways across the Reverend's capacious lap, his left hand gripping her tight-laced waist. Faith stood to the side, knowing to wait for further orders, trying to breathe regularly and still her pounding heart.

The Reverend's right hand rested upon Linnet's silk-clad knee. Linnet gave a little gasp and her hands fluttered anxiously at her side, as if she did not quite know what to do with them.

‘Place your hands behind your head, dear,' the Reverend said quietly, as if reading her mind.

Linnet looked from side to side, reminding the maid of a cornered rabbit, before doing as she was bid. The action further tautened the girl's blouse. Now it was seriously straining to contain her pert breasts. Linnet's dainty nipples seemed to be swelling as the Reverend squeezed her knee, impudently indenting the thin cotton with little pink protrusions. Faith found herself licking her lips, unable to take her eyes from the scene.

The Reverend's hand had begun travelling up the girl's trembling thigh, toying with her garter and then stroking the thin strip of bare flesh between her stocking top and the constricting band of her flogging drawers. The girl failed to suppress a moan as his fingers began to trace a path over the taut material that encased her inner thigh.

‘And how are you finding these things, my dear?' Faith heard a husky, strained note in her master's voice. ‘Not too tight, I trust?'

‘Oh no, sir,' Linnet lied hoarsely.

The girl's cheeks, so pale a little while before, were now flushed a deep pink. Faith watched, enthralled, as the Reverend pushed the little skirt up and out of the way. Then he took hold of her cotton-sheathed thigh. Faith winced in sympathy as she watched him pinch.

‘Oooh...!' Linnet gasped.

‘Be quiet, girl,' the Reverend said sharply.

He shifted his left hand from her waist, grasping the skirt and pulling it entirely out of the way. Faith's eyes widened at the view of the girl's crotch this revealed. She blinked, and looked again. It seemed Linnet's vulva had swollen, stretching the taut cotton to a perilous degree.

‘Open your legs, wider.'

For once the compliant girl did not obey immediately, but looked around with a panicked expression, blushing furiously.

‘Oooh... aaah...!'

Faith knew what those pinching fingers felt like and her stomach fluttered in sympathy. Linnet opened her legs with new-found alacrity.

It was not just the swelling of her sex that made the sight so extraordinary. The Reverend chuckled deeply as Linnet hung her head in shame.

‘What's this? I hope you have not wet yourself, girl? Faith, come here and see.'

Faith did as she was ordered, stepping forward and bending from the hips as much as her corset would easily allow. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the tingling in her own loins. The girl's secretions had entirely wet the gusset of her straining drawers, turning the thin cotton quite translucent. The swollen pussy lips that strained against this moist material made, it had to be admitted, a truly fetching picture.

The Reverend's fingers began to stroke this moistness. As she had not been given further orders, Faith stayed bent, a few feet away, and watched as he caressed Linnet's pussy.

‘Oooh, please, sir...?' Linnet's voice sounded beyond strain now, and halfway to distraction.

‘I want you to be silent, girl,' the Reverend said sharply, ‘and I wish you to keep still.'

This last order was clearly quite impossible. Linnet had closed her eyes and was biting her bottom lip desperately. She could not stop her pelvis from squirming in response to his touch, however. After a few more seconds of cunning manipulation, the girl's self-control deserted her entirely.

‘Hoooo... ooooh...' she moaned, as she began bucking furiously on his knee. The Reverend chuckled and continued, until there was a sound of ripping cloth. Faith hardly heard it however, for demure Linnet was now writhing and groaning wantonly.

‘You have split your drawers, my girl.'

‘Y-yes, sir.' Linnet seemed to have returned to her senses, though she was still rather red-faced and panting heavily. ‘S-sorry, sir.'

‘You disobeyed my order to be quiet and to sit still.'

Linnet licked her exquisite lips anxiously. ‘Sorry, sir,' she whispered, blushing a deeper shade as if at the memory.

The girl was still sitting on his knee. Faith watched as he began unfastening the buttons of Linnet's blouse from the bottom up. Linnet's eyes widened and watched his progress nervously.

‘Yes,' the Reverend Dawes said dryly. ‘Sorry, you will be.'

Linnet bit her lip as the last button was undone and her blouse fell open, exposing her shapely breasts to Faith's rapt gaze. Suddenly, the Reverend looked up and straight at the maid.

‘Faith, fetch me a two-tailed tawse, a medium but with a touch of stiffness to it. Oh, and slip off your uniform. I want you to horse this chit, and it might get in the way.'

Faith made haste to obey. She scurried, skirts rustling as she did so, to where the Reverend's main collection of corrective implements was displayed. As usual the sight made her feel a little dizzy. The collection took up almost all the wall. Canes were arrayed on racks. Riding crops and dressage whips of every size and shape dangled mutely from neatly arranged rows of wooden pegs. There were polished paddles and wicked martinets. Terrifying bullwhips dangled next to sleeker signal whips and a wide selection of both cord and leather cat o'nine tails.

Trying to ignore the cumulative aura of menace that, as always, seemed to hum from this display, Faith quickly picked a split-tailed tawse from the wide selection. She hurried back and placed it on the desk before her master, with a curtsy.

The Reverend did not even acknowledge her existence. He had made the now topless Linnet stand, and was helping the girl to step out of her skirt. Aware that the tension in the room was increasing by the second, Faith began unbuttoning her dress.

‘Ruined!' The Reverend's tone seemed almost jovial to Faith, though it still contained a distinct note of strain. ‘We better have those things off as well.'

‘Yes, sir,' Linnet said glumly, looking down at the split crotch of her drawers and blushing furiously.

‘No, don't bother.' Linnet had begun fiddling with the laces of her drawers but the Reverend stopped her and withdrew a pruning knife from his trouser pocket. ‘The girls are waiting for their suppers. At that rate we will be here all bloody day!'

The idea that the Reverend Dawes might worry a jot about keeping his girlish trainees waiting was so utterly absurd that Faith had to fight the sudden mad desire to giggle. Linnet, however, watched the knife with obvious terror, the red of her blushing cheeks draining away in seconds.

‘Oh, please...'

‘Shut up and stand still, girl,' the Reverend growled, as he cut the connecting cords between the girl's drawers and her corset with swift dexterity. ‘I won't nick you if you stop hopping about and quivering.'

By the time the things were off, Faith was also ready; stripped to the familiar dishabille of black corset and silk stockings. She felt her cheeks burn as the Reverend turned and dropped his gaze, briefly, to her exposed sex, before turning his attention back to the girl who was trembling before him.

The white corset and black silk stockings suited the slender girl, Faith thought. The tightness of her lacing emphasised her narrow waist and exaggerated her modest curves. The little nest of dark curls below her belly contrasted with the porcelain perfection of her skin. Her exposed breasts, no bigger than peaches, were high up on her chest and exquisitely shaped.

The Reverend Dawes apparently shared the watching maid's opinion, because he reached up and began to stroke the girl's breasts with both hands. Faith watched the nipples swell as he caressed the flesh around them. Linnet flinched and her fingers fluttered at her side, but she had the sense not to cover herself or try to step away. When he took the erect nipples between thumb and forefinger and squeezed, however, the girl gave a lost little cry and twisted in response.

‘Turn around,' the Reverend said quietly, releasing her suddenly. Blinking anxiously, Linnet obeyed.

He had barely whipped her on the run and the pure alabaster of her pretty little bottom was marred by no more than a couple of fading lines.

‘Bend forward, girl. Place your hands on your knees.'

This posture meant Linnet's bottom was thrust back towards him and he began to stroke the flawless flesh, almost tenderly.

‘You have a very pretty sit-upon, my dear,' the Reverend said in a strained growl.