Saved by the Highlander (13 page)

“Thank you, my lord,” Ponderby said, winking very subtly. “I hope poor Mary here need not be punished very harshly.”

Roderick looked at Alice, who now wore a look of fright in place of her defiance. “Oh,” he said, not taking his eyes from his erstwhile bride’s. “I am afraid that it is the only way to cure her. Silence, and stern correction, so that she learns her place.”

“I am sure you know best, my lord,” Ponderby said.

* * *

“This chamber, Lady Alice,” Roderick said as they waited for Mrs. Grant to come down to the old dungeon stable, where the lord’s choice had occurred of old, “is very special.”

Indeed, Alice lay, with her hands bound before her and a handkerchief in her mouth, over the very beam where the village girls had of old been laid for the lord of Lormoran’s pleasure in bottom-fucking. Roderick had guided her down the stairs from the castle’s postern gate—the very same stairs, indeed, down which the village girls had always come for their lord’s darker pleasures. Seemingly cowed by her journey, and by Roderick’s intimation of punishment to come, Alice had tremblingly acquiesced in walking down the stairs, once Roderick had said, “Walk sweetly now, Alice, or I shall throw you.”

He had stripped the ridiculous-looking arisaid from her body, and the even more comical snood from her hair, and so she lay in her rather tattered chemise, which must have come with her all the way from England, for no highlander could have given her something so fine as the lovely silk garment. He would have Mrs. Grant bring her something homespun, such as Alana wore.

He stood in front of her, where he had pushed her torso down until she came to rest upon her elbows, and must present her backside for the inspection that Mrs. Grant would carry out. Looking into her terrified eyes, he felt a delicious tension between the urge simply to ravish her, even if Mrs. Grant should see him engaged, forcefully, in fucking the girl who was to have been his wife, and the urge to draw out his pleasure for days—weeks, even. Lord Roderick was certainly a wicked man, and when he had a pleasure at hand that would gain nothing in savor from denial and delay, he took that pleasure without compunction. But this strange turn of events had something truly unique and special about it, and he decided that he should probably deny himself such pleasures as replacing the handkerchief in Alice’s mouth with his cock and taking his ease there.

“My ancestors, the early lords of Lormoran,” Roderick continued, looking straight into Alice’s wide eyes, “brought many, many girls down here to this stable, as we call it. We shall have occasion very soon, I think, to speak of what they did with those girls, if you do not know it already from your
experiences
—shall we call them?—in the highlands. One particular thing my forebears enjoined upon their girls, though, is something that I must tell you immediately. I shall put it thus: many a girl lost her tongue in those barbaric days, because she could not keep it civilly in her head after she had had her time with her lord in this chamber.”

Roderick paused and narrowed his eyes. Alice’s fright had clearly grown even greater; now her nostrils flared with every quick breath.

“I should very much like to take that handkerchief from your mouth, my lady. But I wish you to understand with as much clarity as possible that you have come now entirely into my power. Do you hear me? So entirely that if I wished to slit your throat and bury you where no man, Englishman or highlander, would ever find you, I could do it with the greatest of ease. I will not say I could do it with a clear conscience, but I fear you know already that my conscience is a black, stunted thing that positively delights in such terrible deeds. So, sweet Alice, if you will consent to obey me, in order that your life here in my castle be as pleasant as it may be, nod, if you please, and I shall remove that handkerchief so that we may converse.”

Tears leaked from her eyes now, and those tears hardened Roderick’s cock yet further. She nodded, and he reached down and tugged the handkerchief gently from between her lips.

“There,” he said with satisfaction. “I can tell we will have a great deal of pleasure together, Mary.”

“Mary?” Alice said in a quavering voice, looking up at him in astonishment.

“Yes, Mary,” Roderick said. “I know that you have been under the strange impression that you are an earl’s daughter named Alice Lourcy, but it is time for you to learn that your real name is Mary Herter, and that you are a new chambermaid, out of the goodness of my heart and despite your very bad behavior to your family, here in Lormoran Castle. As long as you obey me, your uncle the butler, and Mrs. Grant the housekeeper, we will be patient and kind, and teach you your station and your duties until you are ready to be my special maid. But if you show us disrespect, or persist in the foolish notion that you are anyone but Mary Herter, we will punish you with a severity you can, I think, hardly imagine.”

Alice’s mouth hung open in shock, as if she felt she must say something, but had no idea at all what words to speak.

“In a few moments,” Roderick continued. “Mrs. Grant will arrive to conduct an inspection of your young body. This inspection will tell us whether you have yet lain with a man.”

Chapter Sixteen

“No!” Alice cried, but Lord Roderick’s eyes grew so terrible that she thought she should die of fear, and she whispered, “I have not, my lord,” in hope that it might somehow appease him.

It did seem to make him smile, but his smile held such malice that Alice’s heart quailed anew.
Niall will find me,
she thought.
He will find me. I must simply stay alive until he does.

But would Lord Roderick… he must mean to ravish her, must he not? And now his housekeeper would… inspect her?

“Your highlander did not have you, then?” the lord of Lormoran asked softly. “Nor did the men who took your party in the road?”

“N—no, my lord,” Alice whispered. “I swear it. You… you need not have me… inspected. I promise that I am intact.”

“Oh,” he replied with a horrid chuckle. “I most certainly need to see you inspected, sweet Mary. All the maids must be inspected, and then punished if they have lost their maidenheads.”

And then you take the maidenheads that remain, do you not, you evil worm?
Would he truly cut out her tongue, as he had said his ancestors did to their outspoken maids? Alice would certainly not put it past him.

A knock came upon a door behind where she knelt over the old wooden beam, in the terribly humiliating posture that held such similarity to the way the outlaws had tied her in the road for their pleasure. A vision flashed through her mind, of Niall bursting into the room and then killing Roderick with a single slash of his claymore, and himself taking her. Despite her fear, she felt herself growing aroused. Why must her mind contain such confusion about these things?

“My lord,” said a woman’s voice behind her, “you asked me to attend you here?”

“Ah, Mrs. Grant,” said Lord Roderick, without taking his eyes from Alice’s. “I should like you to meet Mary Herter, our Mr. Herter’s unfortunate niece. She is to come into my service here.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Mrs. Grant.

“Young Mary has unfortunately been guilty of disrespect, and so she will not be allowed to speak for several weeks at least. Hopefully we will not have to place the bridle in her mouth, but it is my wish that if she does prove unable to obey and to keep her silence, you should not hesitate to bridle her.”

Bridle?
Alice let out an involuntary whimper.

“That is the more important, as Mary has developed the strange impression that she is actually an English noblewoman.”

Alice saw Lord Roderick’s eyes flick upward, as if to meet Mrs. Grant’s. His face wore the expression of one who knows that he will be obeyed in his least command, however monstrous. Alice wondered how true that knowledge might really be, but Mrs. Grant said, “I believe I understand, my lord.”

“I am advised by my personal physician,” Lord Roderick continued, returning his gaze to Alice’s face, “that the best thing for a case like Mary’s is to forbid her absolutely to speak, and also to chastise her regularly and harshly. After you inspect her, I intend to begin to carry out that treatment with my cane.”

“Yes, my lord,” came Mrs. Grant’s stony reply from behind Alice.
Oh, heavens.
How could she bear it?
Niall will save me. He will save me.
“Would you like to uncover her, or shall I do it?”

“Do not trouble yourself, Mrs. Grant,” said Lord Roderick. He stepped toward Alice, and then around her so that now she could see only the stone floor of the dungeon cell and a bit of the wall when she raised her head. How many girls had met their terrible fates in this room? And still he could continue the barbaric ways of his noble forefathers?

She felt his hands at the neck of her chemise, and she shuddered. Then the tug, and the sound of the silk tearing. Heaven help her, she shed a tear for the demise of the single garment that she had brought with her into the highlands—the garment that Niall should have been the one to lift.

Alice Lourcy was naked in the dungeon of the lord of Lormoran. He dropped the ruins of her chemise in front of her face so that she could see them, as if to ensure that she did not lose this reminder of his power over her.

“Thank you, my lord,” said Mrs. Grant. “May I be permitted at least to ask Mary a few questions, to aid in my inspection?”

“You may,” said Lord Roderick. “Her silence does not extend to the obedient answering of questions. But, Mary,” he said sternly, “you shall be caned much more harshly if you answer with any disrespect.”

Alice bit her lip. She had never imagined anything so awful could happen to her. In its way, it seemed far worse than the outlaws tying her in the road, for the outlaws had only a few moments to create the dread of violation, while Lord Roderick seemed bent on drawing it out for her whole future, with the threat of him taking her as shamefully as he could—far more shamefully, she could guess, than he had taken Joan the scullery maid—always hanging over her head like an axe at the ready to chop off Alice’s head.

“Have you lain with a man, Mary?” Mrs. Grant asked, with an asperity that made Alice’s stomach flutter.

“No, ma’am,” Alice said. The worst part, she thought then, was how easily Lord Roderick had cowed her into playing the part of the wayward maid Mary.

“You know what I mean, I expect? His stiff penis in your little vagina?”

Alice’s face flushed as hot as the sun. “I—I… I think I do,” she said. Then she added, “ma’am,” terrified that the punishment would begin right away if she did not.

“Have you seen a penis, Mary?”

“Oh, heavens,” Alice whispered.

“Answer Mrs. Grant’s question, Mary,” Lord Roderick said severely.

“I think so, ma’am.” What should she say? She had seen the outlaws’ cocks, after all, and she thought that
penis
must be a word for cock, which meant that
vagina
must be a word for cunny. Alice had never imagined such a feeling of shame could befall her.

Lord Roderick said, “Mary was assaulted by outlaws, I believe. According to her own account, neither they nor the highlanders who pretended to rescue her managed to lie with her. I can well believe, though, that she has seen a male member.”

Mrs. Grant asked, “Does the wickedness come easily into that little female part of yours, Mary?”

How can she ask that?
The scene was like a horrible perversion of when Fiona had helped her understand what happened on the road.

“My lord?” the woman said. “Shall I fetch your cane, so that we may have our questions answered?”

“Heavens!” Alice cried. “Please, no… Y—yes… I get… I get wet there.”

Then Mrs. Grant touched her there, and not gently: the place Niall had, she thought, been just about to touch; where the outlaw had touched more softly than this awful housekeeper. Mrs. Grant rubbed very firmly, up and down, pressing at the most sensitive place of all, the little bud at the top, until Mary cried out.

“Is she wet, Mrs. Grant?” Lord Roderick’s voice held a cruel hunger, as if he would devour some little creature while it still lived.

“Very wet, my lord,” the woman replied. “Mary, do you touch yourself here, when you are abed?”

“No!”

Mrs. Grant withdrew the tormenting hand and gave Alice a sharp spank upon her right bottom-cheek, and then another.

“You will respect me, Mary Herter!” Her hand fell again, even harder.

“No, ma’am,” Alice sobbed.

Mrs. Grant wordlessly returned her fingers to Alice’s cunny, and now she began to push them in. Alice gasped as the housekeeper’s fingers met an aching, painful resistance.

“She tells the truth,” Mrs. Grant said. “Mary is intact, though ripe for plucking.”

“Tight, though?” Lord Roderick asked.

“Very tight, my lord.”

“And the bottom?”

If Alice had felt shame at the words that passed rapidly between master and servant about her most intimate secrets, the way Mrs. Grant’s thumb suddenly came up against the most intimate one of all, her cringing bottom-hole, seemed to make her float above herself and long to see her body swallowed up by the earth. The thumb pushed. The feeling was horribly pleasurable, while also feeling as if it burned and itched awfully.

“Intact, I think,” said Mrs. Grant. “Certainly very tight.”

“Well, we’ll have to change that for her, won’t we?”

Alice felt herself starting to breathe more quickly, and the feeling of being detached from her body grew even greater.
Niall will come for me. Niall will find me. Niall will rescue me.

“Now, my lord?” Mrs. Grant asked, as if fully expecting that Lord Roderick would say yes. “Shall I fetch the oil?”

A long pause ensued. Alice squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, praying desperately that a shout would come, that the highlanders were attacking. She pictured Lord Roderick and Mrs. Grant surveying her naked, spread backside, cunny and bottom arranged for the taking of a maidenhead and the casual ravishing of an anus.