Although World War I did not officially begin until the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, at Sarajevo by the young Serbian nationalist Princeps, there were in the preceding years enough ominous international incidents to have precipitated the great war much earlier than August 1, 1914. But there is one incident which to date has gone un mentioned, and which has come to light only recently through the discovery of a faded old ledger, found in an old trunk when opened during a public auction in New York City. The house and the effects which the auctioneer had knocked down with a fair profit to the heirs of that estate had originally belonged to an elderly spinster, whose mother's cousin had apparently written her memoirs of her experiences as a governess for a royal family in the little Balkan country of Slovenia, now no longer in existence, but at that time a portion of land totalling some two hundred square miles and placed between Serbia and Italy, surrounded by mountainous boundaries on nearly all four sides. The writing was in an elegant English script, the kind of painstaking penmanship that one no longer sees these days. At times, however, the handwriting was flurried, as if its writer had been under great stress-as indeed she had been!
The purchaser of the trunk, who had been looking for antiquarian relics as so many devoted collectors do when they attend an auction, read this ledger with growing interest and then confided it into my keeping, believing that perhaps here was a story which would have titillating interest for the modern reader. And thus it came about that, determining to present it in the form of a novella rather than in the quaint and anachronistic verbiage of the original writer, you may conjecture how England very nearly broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia, an act which could well have begun World War I a good two years earlier and with what aftereffects only learned historians can conjecture....
Vanessa Chumley was a magnificently Junoesque young woman, intrepid, spirited, well educated and extremely beautiful. Doubtless it was this combination of virtues without flaw which had led her to her twenty-fifth year, still unwed and with apparently no immediate bright prospects of such a happy state. She was born in Devonshire to tenant farmer parents, who, though poor, valued education above luxuries and scrimped and saved to provide Vanessa with as good an education as was then possible in England after the turn of the century. Orphaned at the age of eighteen, Vanessa found that her parents had left her several hundred pounds and the family Bible. Since she was fluent in languages and quite retentive in her other studies, she managed to complete what today would be regarded as a college curriculum at the age of twenty-one, often working as a maid or mistress in the refectory and dormitories of the college, and then decided upon her career. During her senior term, she had aided some of her fellow students with their compositions, and she believed that teaching was the most likely profession in which a single young woman could pursue her livelihood while maintaining her self-respect and chastity.
Since it was not easy for a young woman to obtain a post as instructress at an accredited school, Vanessa turned to the career of a governess. A fashionable employment agency for females in London, satisfied with her credentials, sent her to the home of a wealthy widow who had a son of thirteen, and two daughters of eight and ten respectively. Vanessa worked there for two years, improved the minds of her young charges but without having to resort to corporal punishment. She was well acquainted with this discipline, though she herself hadn't ever been subjected to it, even as a child at home. There were many schools which still continued the barbarous practice of forcing an errant female pupil to bend across the desk, her skirt and petticoats lofted and her drawers descended, for an application of the birch or the taws or the cane. Vanessa preferred to appeal to the intellect rather than to the fundament of her charges, and it may be said that she succeeded with the widow's brood.
When the woman remarried, she decided to travel to Spain with her diplomat husband, and Vanessa's services were terminated. It was at this time that the beautiful honey-haired young governess fell in love for the first time, and disastrously.
She had gone back to visit her alma mater, and to acquaint the dean of women with what she had done after her graduation. A debonair private tutor, one Francis Perry, was waiting to see the same dean in her office, spied Vanessa's beauty and introduced himself. He was suave, already an able cocksmith, and though sophisticated and cultured, his burning desire for Vanessa's body and certainly not for her keen mind. They attended several concerts and lectures, dined, and after two months Vanessa began to believe that she had found the man who would end her lonely life and give her purpose and fulfillment. But her hopes were rudely dashed when he urged her to accompany him to his flat under the hoary pretext of examining some rare lithographs which he had just purchased. Vanessa, hopelessly in love with him, had no suspicions that he was not telling her the truth. But once back in his flat with her, he began to embrace her, to kiss her neck and lips and to roam his hands over her sumptuous bottom and full thrusting round breasts until with a cry of shame and indignation, she twisted out of his embrace and slapped his face. Then, bursting into tears, she denounced him as a villain and declared that she never wished to see or hear from him again. Yet he overpowered her and brutally fucked her; in her shame, she fled, not daring to denounce him.
It was the one passionate idyl of her life, and after its disillusioning finale, Vanessa steadfastly determined to pursue her career teaching the young and taking pleasure from the improvements she could achieve with their minds and character.
She went back to the employment agency, which quickly placed her with a barrister and his family. This post lasted two years, and ended when her employer and his family moved to the United States to join his brother. So at twenty-five Vanessa again found herself seeking employment. The year was 1912, the month was April, and already the disquieting rumors of trouble in the Balkans were permeating all Europe.
Miss Eustachia Lamont, head of the agency, welcomed the beautiful young blonde woman in her private office and exclaimed, "Your coming back to us at this moment is extremely fortunate, Miss Chumley. We have had a commission from a very important, and I may even say royal, personage who seeks to find a governess for his daughter. The young woman must be well read, fluent in French and German-as I know you are-and have the most sterling character, for her assignment will be to teach a young girl of seventeen who is of noble lineage and may one day ascend the throne of Slovenia."
"Slovenia?" Vanessa echoed blankly.
"The very same, my dear. It's a small but quite rich country between Italy and Serbia. Your employer would be the Grand Duke Mirko, and your charge would be the Countess Janine. The salary is really magnificent, and of course all your expenses would be paid. You will have your own quarters, even a maid, the Grand Duke writes. You see, the owner of this agency, a retired sales-manager for a large English importing firm, once visited Slovenia and did business for the Grand Duke. So it was only natural that, in seeking an English governess for his daughter, he should remember his English friend and ask him to help him find the proper person."
Vanessa bit her lips and thought a moment. She had no living relatives in England, and she still brooded over the shattering heartbreak which she had had two years ago. Also, she had always wanted to travel, and as a student of history, she was extremely interested in the colorful Balkan countries. It was true that there were sometimes revolutions and govern mental disorders, but then England itself was not the best of all profitable worlds. And certainly as a governess for a royal family, the experience and the references she would gain would be invaluable in the future.
"If you really think I should qualify, I should be most honored to make an application," she replied.
And so, two weeks later, with her passport and her few belongings neatly packed, Vanessa Chumley set forth on a journey that was to change her life and plunge her into an adventure which, if it had been disclosed at the time, might well have caused her government to break off with that of Slovenia....
CHAPTER TWO
The journey from London to Slovenia took four days, but there were no annoying incidents. Vanessa Chumley's passport and a letter of commission from the Grand Duke Mirko himself cleared all obstacles; and so on the afternoon of the fourth day, she descended from the railway train to be met by a towering, pompous-looking man with huge moustachios, wearing the uniform of a captain of hussars, with gleamingly polished boots. "You must be the Englishwoman my master has engaged as governess for the Countess Janine," he said thickly in accented English.
Vanessa blushed, for his eyes had narrowed and the glittering light in them as he appraised her reminded her unpleasantly of her unfortunate affair with the unscrupulous instructor. "Yes, I am, sir. Here are my credentials," she replied.
"I am Emil Stroboff, personal valet to His Highness, the Grand Duke Mirko. I shall take you to the palace, where he awaits you," the burly Slovenian explained.
"I shall be grateful for your aid, Mr. Stroboff," the mature blonde beauty smilingly inclined her head. "Your country is very lovely."
"Yes, though it is quite small, Fraulein. I am told that you speak German, and I should prefer, since my English is still very halting, to address you in that tongue," the tall valet said gruffly to her in fluent German with a Berlin accent. "Many nations would like to absorb us, but so far my master, the Grand Duke Mirko, has resisted foreign entanglements."
He beckoned to a stocky attendant, who took charge of Vanessa's luggage and put it into the carriage which was drawn by two superb black stallions bedecked with the royal colors of Slovenia, black and gold. Then the attendant mounted the carriage and took the reins, while Stroboff seated himself beside the beautiful young English governess. "This is your first time to our country, Fraulein, so it would be well if I acquainted you with our customs, especially those which will concern you most in your new duties with the Countess Janine. You are an Englishwoman, yon are here on passport and special visa because my royal master has commissioned you to look after his daughter. She is a countess, also of royal blood, and at the moment the only heir to the Slovenian throne. Our last king was assassinated three years ago, and the Grand Duke was his younger brother. He wisely refrained from declaring himself successor, because the times are troubled. Yet to all intents and purposes he is the true king of Slovenia."
"I see," Vanessa Chumley politely murmured.
"Good. When in his presence, you must always bow when he enters the room. That will be true also of your charge the Countess Janine."
"Is the Grand Duke married?"
"His wife died ten years ago," Stroboff curtly responded. "He has not remarried, but that is not your concern. Now this is most important. The Countess is young, headstrong and selfwilled. Those are good traits for one who perhaps one day is destined to ascend the throne. You are to instruct her, improve her education, acquaint her with languages, but you are not to chastise her. If you were so much as to slap her, you would be guilty of lese majeste, a most serious offense in our country and punishable most severely. I tell you this because you may find her difficult."
"Am I to assume that she was so difficult that it was necessary to send to England for a governess?" Vanessa could not help jestingly retorting.
Stroboff s face darkened, and he sent her an angry glance as he twisted his moustachios. "You would do well to curb your wit, Englishwoman," he said glumly at last. "You are to be well paid, you will live in the palace and you will have every comfort. So long as you observe the protocol necessary in the presence of the Grand Duke and the Countess, I believe that you will find your stay in Slovenia gratifying and profitable. The rest you will learn from my master."
Several miles from the railroad station the carriage at last entered through the gates of a magnificent estate, with hundreds of yards of rolling lawn and hedges and trees, beyond which stood a gray stone castle, modeled very much like German castles along the Rhine. When the carriage halted in front of the entrance, Emil Stroboff descended and helped Vanessa down, while the driver of the carriage resumed his role as porter and carried in the suitcases. "They will be taken to your new quarters, Fraulein," the valet told her. "I take you now directly to His Highness. This is what you must call him. You will call the Countess Janine Her Highness. One thing more. When you dine, you may not sit down or begin your meal until both of their Heiglinesses have been seated and themselves begun to eat. If you are in a room talking to someone, and either of their Highnesses should enter, you will at once break off all conversation and bow. You thus do honor and homage to the throne of Slovenia, which is required."
The sternness of his comments and his manner itself cast into the soul of the beautiful young Englishwoman a kind of strange foreboding. However, she had little time for sentiments because he at once escorted her up the winding, carpeted stairs and down a corridor towards the chambers of the Grand Duke himself. He knocked deferentially, was told to enter, opened the doors and gestured for Vanessa to go ahead. After she had entered, he entered quickly behind her and then strode forward, bent one knee and inclined his head as he exclaimed, "Here is the English governess, Your Highness!"
Vanessa Chumley stood staring at the man who was to be her royal employer. He was perhaps in his mid-forties, his black hair touched here and there with gray, with an arrogant face, about six feet tall, dressed in a military uniform, covered with medals, booted with spurs, wearing black leather gauntlets to the elbows. He sat in a magnificent thronechair, and beside him stood a slim, black-haired girl in a magnificent organdy frock, a pearl necklace about her olive-sheened throat, and jewels on her wrists and fingers. Her face was oval, insolent as his, and Vanessa could at once perceive a likeness between them which stamped them as father and daughter.
But in her admiration for the insolently handsome Grand Duke and his regal young daughter, Vanessa Chumley quite forgot the necessary etiquette, and the large, piercing black eyes of the ruler of Slovenia fixed on her while his full red lips-sensual and moist-curved in an ironic smile. "Emil, it appears this English Fraulein hasn't been entirely instructed in what's expected of her," he said in English with a thick Croatian accent.
"But, Highness," the valet protested, "on the way to the palace, I myself told her that she must bow in the presence of yourself and your illustrious daughter."
With a gulp of chagrin, her cheeks turning scarlet, Vanessa Chumley took hold of her skirt with both hands and did him a profound curtsey.
"That's better," the Grand Duke chuckled sardonically. "However; Fraulein, if you forget yourself again in the presence of me or my daughter, it will be marked down against you. And so you are duly warned. Now then, for more pleasant things. How was your journey?"
Vanessa found herself stammering that the journey was quite pleasant and that her first impression of the countryside of Slovenia was extremely favorable. After some questions on her own country which indicated to Vanessa how well informed the Grand Duke was concerning politics and history, he signalled to Stroboff to have her conducted to her rooms. "You may rest and dinner will be brought to you this evening," he told her. "In the morning, we shall start the lessons for the Countess Janine." This time she remembered to curtsey to both the Grand Duke and his daughter, who regarded her with a supercilious glare that made her think that she would indeed have problems with this selfwilled teenaged beauty who had blue blood in her veins and who was so well aware of it.
She found her rooms really luxurious, with a private water-closet, as Stroboff mockingly referred to it, to use her countrymen's own term for the bathroom. The meal was served to her by a pretty auburn-haired maid who spoke very little English but who made her understand that her name was Marie. Vanessa tried to question the attractive girl, who was no more than nineteen, as to the habits of the royal master, but Marie hastily excused herself and left the room without satisfying Vanessa's curiosity.
Having unpacked and put away her things in magnificent walnut dresser-drawers, Vanessa discovered with delight that there was an elegant tub, and she enjoyed the luxury of soaking herself in warm water. She first took the precaution of locking her door and then that of the water-closet door, for she was still inordinately shy about her body. Her unfortunate first fucking experience had made here the more conscious of her physical self, and as the years had gone on, she had become shy and chaste as if she were still a terrified virgin.
Five feet seven and a half inches in height, magnificently proportioned, blue-eyed Vanessa Chumley was a morsel of pulchritude fit for royalty itself. Her high-perched widely spaced, firm round breasts with their wide dark-coral aurolae and the crinkly buds of well developed nipples, the slim waist which gave way to spacious hips without the least excess, a pair of bottom-cheeks mouthwateringly contoured in up-standingly rounded hemispheres whose crease gradually broadened as it neared the base, and with splendid long yet graciously curved thighs and supple sinuous calves: hers was indeed a body of a courtesan. Her honey-gold hair was piled in stately pompadour atop her head, leaving her ears and nape bare, and adding 'to her so that she seemed indeed almost a glorious blonde Amazon. Her skin, however, had a distinctive pale-milky tint to it which made her the more ravishingly desirable. The thick curly triangle of her cunt which almost entirely hid the soft pink lips of her mount were of light-brown shade, quite profuse and silky. Her navel was wide and shallow, and an exquisite little brown birthmark adorned the inside of her upper left thigh only a few inches from that grotto of delight which had only once known the entry of man.
The bath relaxed her, and the excellent chilled white wine and capon prepared with chestnuts and truffles made her feel pleasantly drowsy. After her bath, she put on a long opaque batiste nightgown which took her from the neck to the ankles and had long sleeves to the wrists. She slept dreamlessly, and was awakened by the entry of Marie who carried a breakfast tray. The girl gave her to understand that within an hour she was to be dressed and ready to give her first lesson to the impertinent young Countess.
Dressed in her best gown with a new camisole, muslin drawers, gray lisle hose held up by narrow elastic garters which were fixed under the legs of her drawers, wearing two petticoats, and lace-on calf-length black leather boots, Vanessa Chumley left her quarters and, accompanied by Marie, went down the corridor to the other end where the chambers of her young royal charge were located. Emil Stroboff, this time having exchanged the uniform of hussars for the livery a a valet, awaited her with a look of impatience on his coarse face: "You must not keep the Countess waiting, Fraulein. Now, it is the wish of the Grand Duke that you begin to teach her French. She has no feeling for languages yet; she speaks only a few words of English which she has learned from her father, and some German. I warn you, she has a temper, but you must steel yourself against it and remember that you are a commoner and a servant-that is what you are whether you like it or not, because you have been engaged as such-and under no provocation whatsoever must you attempt to correct or chastise her. It will be necessary only for you to report to her father at the conclusion of the lesson and he will take what means are necessary if discipline is required. Be certain that you understand that, or I fear it will be painful for you."
These words again filled Vanessa Chumley with a singular presentiment of uneasiness, but now her pulses quickened as Stroboff knocked on the door, then turned the knob and opened it for her, gesturing for her go in.
It was a salon, sumptuously furnished, and on a chaise lounge Janine reclined indolently, wearing a pretty tearose negligee adorned with Belgian lace, clockwork black silk stockings and elegant black leather pumps with trim heels. Beneath the negligee she wore a little red silk vest and matching drawers, but the negligee was gauzy and it permitted a lavish display of the warm olive-sheened flesh it covered. Her breasts were small pears, firm-tipped and poutingly thrusting, her waist was extremely slim, her thighs elegantly rounded as were her calves, and her bottom was almost boyishly compact and saucily rounded. Her jet-black hair was coiffed in a coronet braid round the top of her head to make her look still more regal.
Remembering protocol, Vanessa curtsied, then apologetically murmured, "If Your Highness permits, we shall begin our French lesson."
Janine shrugged, nodded, and gestured for Vanessa to approach. When she did so, the haughty teenaged girl hissed, "Kneel down, you'll teach me that way," in thickly accented English.
Vaness's face turned scarlet. It was an awkward pose, it humiliated her, and it at once transferred the authority of tutress away from her. She glanced helplessly back at the door, but it had closed and Stroboff was nowhere to be seen. "Do what I say!" Janine again decried, her very thick, arching brows rising with an insolent glare. "I am countess, you are only my governess. Teach me that way or I'll have you punished!"
"Ohhh!" Vanessa gasped, the color in her lovely cheeks deepening at this arrogant declaration. However, she .made the best of an unhappy situation and kneeling thus, took the book of elementary French grammar and began to acquaint Janine with the vocabulary and then the verbs, having Janine repeat. But after some twenty minutes, the slim black-haired beauty rose from the chaise lounge and said, "That's enough. Go back to your room, Englishwoman."
Helplessly Vanessa rose, curtsied again, and then left the room. Stroboff stood outside. "I take you now to His Highness," he said curtly. Once inside the salon of the Grand Duke, Vanessa found herself stammeringly explaining how it was that the first lesson had taken only twenty minutes.
"Then you are not a good teacher," the handsome regent declared, with a curl of his sensual mouth. "You must be firm, you must assert your knowledge. It is important that my daughter learn French and speak it well. You will go back there this afternoon."
And so Vanessa did, but she fared no better than she had in the morning. Then it was, after Janine had stomped her foot and ordered her out of the room, that Vanessa Chumley lost her temper for the first time with a pupil or a charge: "You're rude and ill-mannered, and you're certainly not worthy of being on a throne!" she exclaimed, her voice trembling with anger and indignation.
"Your father brought me here for me to teach you, and teach you I shall."
"You can't!" Janine jeered, and slapped her in the face.
Unthinkingly, Vanessa Chumley's hand shot out and made impact with the olive-sheened cheek of the young countess.
"So! You strike me, do you, Englishwoman? You will pay for that right now! Stroboff!" Janine raised her voice in a shrill cry.
The door at once opened, and the valet entered.
"She has just struck me, Stroboff. The idea, because I ordered her out!" Janine indignantly exclaimed.
"That is very serious, Fraulein. You will come with me to the Grand Duke at once," the valet scowled.
Facing the tall, virile regent, Vanessa Chumley tried to explain after Stroboff had finished his recital of what had happened. But the Grand Duke interrupted her first stammering words: "Enough! You have committed lese-majeste. A commoner does not strike one of royal Slovenian blood. You shall be whipped!"
"Whipped," Vanessa echoed, aghast, a hand to her cheek, her eyes staring incredulously at the autocratic ruler. "But that's impossible! I'm an English citizen-"
"No you are not! Your passport and visa are hereby confiscated, and you are in the custody of the regent of Slovenia, which I am. You have no rights save those I grant you. You would dare strike my daughter, you shall repent it. To the punishment room with her, Stroboff, and prepare her. My daughter and I will be present to witness her punishment."
With a cry of indignation, Vanessa tried to appeal to the Grand Duke, who, with his haughty young daughter, had already left the salon. But Stroboff intercepted her, swiftly bound her wrists behind her back with a buckling thong, and then, his right hand on the back of her neck and his left gripping her tethered wrists, forced her down the corridor and down the steps and beyond that to the dungeons.
"You were warned, Fraulein!" he grumbled. "Don't blame me for this, I take my orders just as you should have done. You don't strike one of royal Slovenian blood. Better to have taken her slap than what you're going to get from His Highness. The whip, Fraidein Englishwoman!"
He shoved her into the dungeon, and forced her towards a large wooden whipping post in the form of a cross, at each end of wnose arms a metal ring was set. There were cords of robe at the base of the post, and Stroboff swiftly made her wrists fast to the rings so that she stood on tiptoe, her arms extended in cross and her body straining against the heavy upright.
"No, oh God, it's unjust! You have no right, I'm an English citizen!" she cried out.
"Not so long as you are in our custody with your passport and visa taken from you, Fraulein. Now, I shall prepare you for the whipping," he chuckled.
Vanessa uttered a cry of indignant horror as he stooped and dragged up her skirt and then the two petticoats, pinning them on her back with a safety pin. Then, inserting his pudgy fingers inside the elastic waistband of the muslin drawers, he began to yank them down, while Vanessa fought with all her might to prevent this catastrophe. With a cry of shame, she ground her crotch against the broad upright, but he slyly pinched the inside of one long, lovely thigh and as she jerked, he swiftly and expertly rucked the drawers down to her calves.
"Ein wunderbares Arsch!" he grunted as he rose, putting his hand upon the snowy flesh. "It will be a pleasure to give the whip to such a bottom as yours, Fraulein!"
"Take your filthy hand off me, oh, I shall complain, sir, the British Government will hear of this outrage to a decent woman!" Vanessa cried, her voice choked with mortification. With all her might she forced herself against the post so as to hide her cuntbush.
Now there was the sound of footsteps, and the Grand Duke Mirko and his daughter Janine entered the cell and took their places on comfortably padded low short benches.
"You have committed an offense against the throne," the Grand Duke declared in a cold voice. "You will sign a confession that you have done this."
"I will not!" Vanessa courageously declared, turning her scarlet face back over her shoulder to contemplate her royal employer. "Your daughter acted like a brat, she struck me, she would not learn or listen, and she only had her due! It is she who should be here in my place, if there were justice in this country!"
"Fine talk, Papa," Janine mocked the beautiful English governess. "I want to hear her howl for mercy."
"It's true you're something of a brat, Janine, but she should have known better than to strike you. Well now, Stroboff, thirty good strokes with the riding crop will do. First, Fraulein Vanessa, you will agree to sign the confession ana humoly apologize for what you have done."
"I'll die before I will! You can whip me to death but I won't!"
"Vanessa gasped. She closed her eyes and dug her nails into her palms, her body stiffening in rebellion and defiance. The Grand Duke smiled greedily. He nodded to the valet, who bowed his head and then turned to the right where from a panoply of hooks there hung several whipping instruments. A dogwhip, a riding crop in black leather with stinging, pointed flap, a five-thong leather whip, and even a cat-o-nine tails, as well as other cruelly punitive implements designed for the burning torment of a naked female bottom.
He took down the crop, bent it between his hands, swished it in the air to prove its flexibility, and then took his stance behind the shuddering half-naked victim.
Slowly, Stroboff raised the riding crop, waiting for his master's signal. The Grand Duke lit a cigarette in his ivory holder, then disdainfully flicked off imaginary ashes, and at that same moment, the crop whistled through the air to slash over the tops of Vanessa's magnificent naked hips.
She sucked in her breath and ground herself convulsively against the upright broad post, the muscles of her jaws shuddering as she strove to hold back any cry. i he black-haired regent leaned forward, posing his chin on his left hand, puffing at his cigarette, watching with narrowed gleaming eyes. This bitch had spirit, and it was precisely what he desired. Stroboff s eyes, met his, and he nodded; the valet again raised the crop and dealt Vanessa a second lash perhaps half an inch below the mark of the first. Once again a sibilant intake of breath was heard, once again that splendid body jerked and squirmed, but not a sound emerged.
Janine's face wore a petulant expression. "Make her yell, make her beg for mercy, I want to hear the bitch cry!" she hissed.
Hearing these words, and discovering that Janine spoke better English than had been told to her that the girl did, the beautiful blonde governess made a further resslve to die under the riding crop rather than to give that heartless girl the slightest satisfaction. Even as she thought this, the lash came down for the third time, and then swiftly the fourth fell with hardly a pause, both strokes imprinting a vivid, burning welt over the upper summits of both huddling, spacious round asscheeks.
The marks stood out vividly on the pale milky skin of Vanessa's voluptuous bottom.
Now the muscles of her thighs were convulsively in play, and her calves flexed and shivered as she strained on tiptoe, for she had been bound with her wrists fixed as high and as horizontally extended as was possible to the rings, to cause her greater discomfort and hence weaken her resistance.
Now there was a long pause, and Vanessa bent her head, gritting her teeth, preparing herself for the next sickeningly hot swipe of the leather riding crop across her cringing assflesh. But that pause was mercilessly prolonged, at the sign of Grand Duke Mirko himself, and only when she suddenly turned her face around to determine what was occurring did Stroboff slash her across the base of her bottom. A muffled groan, "Ohhh-ahh-!" was torn from her, and then, as if ashamed of that weakness, she once again straightened her shoulders and closed her eyes and pressed herself tightly against the post. She had closed her thighs together as tightly as she could, so that she would show these men and that wicked girl nothing of her person. But now her flesh drew and twitched and burned from where the lash had bitten, and the anguishing knowledge that there were twenty-five more strokes yet to be endured weighted her mind and spirit.
The whipping went slowly. By the twelfth slash, Stroboff had expertly applied as many horizontal red welts over the magnificent posterior of the shuddering, courageous young Englishwoman. Tears stung her eyes, but she forced them tightly shut so that no one would see them rivulet down her cheeks. Her nostrils tightened and shrank convulsively, her breath was quicker, and her magnificent boobs rose and fell erratically. The drawers hampered her moving about, and she wished in a sort of irrelevant and shameless sense that they had been taken completely off her. Each time she moved under the lash, they hampered her, made her conscious of her nakedness more than if they had not been there at all.
By the fifteenth cut, she was gasping and groaning a little, her body bathed in sweat. She could feel the drops run down her sides, gather in the moss of her armpits. The pain was intolerable, but she still refused to cry out.
"Harder, harder, Father, make the bitch dance and sing!" Janine petulantly demanded.
He lifted, his cigarette holder towards the valet, who understood. With a crafty smile, Stroboff lowered the riding crop and waited for Vanessa to ease the tension of her thighs.
Then suddenly he slashed it up right into her cunt!
"Ahhrrrrrreeoww! Oh my God, not there, oh not there!" Vanessa shrieked for the first time, jerking at her bound wrists, twisting her face back towards the valet, groaning and squirming, her knees bumping against the upright of the whipping post.
Now, as if that one diabolical slash into her tender cunt had broken her resistance, Vanessa groaned and cried out almost at each successive cut which welted her squirming, huddling, weaving bottomcheeks. Stroboff whipped vigorously, expertly, not trying to break the skin but to obtain the maximum suffering. Now most of the cuts were delivered against the base and lower summits, the most tender regions of the female posterior, and Vanessa was sobbing and groaning, turning her tearstained face back towards the benches on which her royal employer and his spiteful daughter sat grinning at her plight.
But no plea for mercy was torn from her save that one outcry, and so, after the twenty-fifth stroke, the Grand Duke made another sign with his cigarette holder. Once again the lash swept upwards, the pointed flap biting into the tender lips of Vanessa's cunthole.
"Eeeyowwahrrr!!! Oh God, if I must be wh-whipped, oh not there, oh whip me on my bottom, but for God's sake not between the legs, oh have mercy!" she cried hysterically.
The last five lashes whistled over the tops of her thighs and the base of her bottom, scalding swipes of infernal pain, and her body jerked and her groans and sobs were poignant. Yet even as she slumped, breathing hard, sweat oozing down her body, the Grand Duke felt himself gigantic with rut. Never before had a servant of such beauty taken the whip so well.
"That's enough, Stroboff. Now then, turn her around and take off those verdammte drawers! We'll have the wardress of the prison in to make her sign that confession of her crime against Janine!" he directed.
CHAPTER THREE
Emil Stroboff quickly untied Vanessa's wrists, grasped her by the waist, and turned her round to face the Grand Duke and his perverse young daughter Janine. Then as swiftly he retied her wrists to the rings at each end of the crossarm of the whipping post, so that she found herself facing the virile regent of Slovenia and the young countess, who, though only in her teens, might one day rule this tiny nation. Next the valet squatted and yanked off Vanessa's drawers, so that she presented herself with her clothes upturned and pinned above her waist, and naked from that point to the tops of her hose, the thick, dark-golden bush of her cunt in lewd display. With a feverish cry of shame, she tried to clench her legs together to diminish that secret part of herself, while Jannine giggled and pointed towards her, saying aloud to her father, "Look, Father, isn't the Englishwoman hairy down there!! Oh, I can hardly wait for the wardress! Stroboff, you whipped her very well, I only wish it were only half over."
At this bloodthirsty comment, the statuesque captive uttered a groan and closed her eyes, stiffening against the whipping post, once again trying her best to endure her martyrdom without satisfying that horrid girl with her plaints and entreaties for mercy. But because her naked bottom pressed against the hard wooden post, she was made all too miserably conscious of thefierj waves of pain searing her entire posterior. He had been careful not to draw blood, but the skin was so swollen in many places and so tender that it threatened to burst. And worst of all, she could feel the throbbing pangs in her tender cunt where he had applied those two oerfidious cuts of the riding crop right into her sensitive quim. It seemed to her that the lips twitched uncontrollably, almost as if she yearned for a lover, and the annihilating shame which she knew in being thus exposed to the cynical and knowing eyes of that dynamically authoritative man who sat on the bench just beyond filled her with the supreme mortification.
The valet bowed to his master and young mistress, then left the chamber, and returned about five minutes later with a handsome buxom woman wearing a black silk skirt which descended to midcalf, a starched white blouse with puffed sleeves, and a silver whistle fixed round her neck by a tiny silver chain, the symbol of her authority.
"Thank you for coming, Fraulein Her-tha," the Grand Duke smiled at the wardress. She was perhaps forty at most, her light-brown hair becomingly touched here and there with streaks of gray, her body was firm and solid, not quite portly, and her face had an insolent severity to it which made Vanessa tremble and shrink back against the post, even though the consequent recurring waves of heat and pain in her naked ass made her gasp with discomfort.
"I have asked you to come, Fraulein Hertha," the regent of Slovenia continued, "to help extract a confession from this Englishwoman. She dared to strike the Countess Janine, and now she refuses to sign a confession admitting the crime of lese-majeste. I think you have the means by which to persuade her of the widsom of acceding to our imperial wishes."
"Indeed I have, Your Highness," the wardress smiled gloatingly. Then she turned to contemplate the honey-haired victim at the whipping post, her eyes at once lowering to Vanessa's cunt and the cringing flesh of the soft, beautifully contoured inner thighs. From the pocket of her skirt, she took out a curious metal instrument, which looked at first like a corkopener, but which had two clamps at each side, opened by pressure of the thumb. These clamps were lined by tiny little spike-jaws, and there was a wooden handle to the device which carried out the semblance of the corkopener.
"You had best tie her ankles, Stroboff," she remarked, and he grunted assent as he has tend to take a length of cord and bind them round Vanessa's ankles as tightly as he could. Then the woman knelt down, and, to Vanessa's dying shame, callously inserted her left forefinger between the inflamed lips of the victim's cunthole, pressing forward to the very knuckle. She glanced back at her master and remarked, "She's no virgin, Highness."
"So much the better!" he chuckled, giving his daughter a bawdy wink which made her tilt back her head and emit a silvery peal of laughter.
Vanessa felt the sweat trickling down from her armpits, and she cringed back against the post, wishing she could become invisible by some miracle. But now the wardress approached the diabolical little device towards her cunt, sprung open the two sets of clamps and affixed them to the outer lips of Vanessa's cunthole. Instantly the young woman uttered a shriek of agony, for the myriad little spikes bit viciously into the exquisitely tender labia of that ultra sensitive mucous membrane. Her head tilted back, her eyes rolling, blurred with tears, she implored hysterically, "Oh God-have mercy-oh it hurts-take it off, it's biting, it's pinching, it's tearing me, oh for God's sake, mercy, Your Highness!"
"Give it to her, Fraulein Hertha!" Janine urged, leaning forward with her hands gripping her knees and her eyes blazing with sadistic pleasure.
"At once, Highness, the wardress grinned. Very carefully now, making certain that the clamps were well adjusted so that the rounded aaphcator of this curious "cork-opener" covered the orifice and allowed the metal corkscrew with its fearfully sharp point to penetrate directly down the center, she began to turn the handle. Vanessa stiffened, her eyes bulging from their sockets, glassy with pain, and her fingernails dug into her palms almost to the blood as she uttered shriek upon shriek, her body jerking and vibrating with the torment. It had touched the cervix, causing unspeakable agony, so nauseatingly torturing that she could not faant, though waves of retching agony made her stomach agonizingly queasy.
"Oh, it's so delicous when she screams, that proud English bitch," Janine purred. "Father, make her do it again, just once more!"
"Oh no, oh merciful heaven, have pity, I'll sign the confession-I'll do anything you want Y-Y-Your H-Highness, only for God's sake no more, oh take that horrid thing out of me, oh I'm dying!" Vanessa wailed in pain.
The wardress, having turned the handle back to draw away the fiendishly sharp corkscrew shaft, now turned it back again and once more Vanessa's frenzied, clamorous screams rang out, while she jerked madly at her bound wrists and ankles, trying to arch and twist and weave away from the hideous device. But because the clamps securely gripped her cuntlips, she could not shake it loose, and moreover the wardress' hands maintained it in its implacable position.
"Enough!" the Grand Duke Mirko hoarsely commanded, lifting his hand, and at once the wardress turned the corkscrew into its fixture, then unfastened the clamps. "Leave us, Fraulein, and you too, Stroboff!" the regent commanded in a voice that was thick and shaking with his rut.
Both of them bowed and left the chamber. Then the Grand Duke Mirko, unbuttoning his elegant trousers, bared his swollen prick, and his hands caressed the shuddering, sweating flanks and hips of the statuesque honey-haired Englishwoman. "Now I will try to give you a little pleasure in return for all your pain, Fraulein," he chuckled.
His hands moved round towards her bottomcheeks, his-fingernails sank into the welted ridges raised on her tender flesh by the whistling, burning kisses of the riding crop. Vanessa uttered a cry of pain, her eyes wide and filmed with great tears. She felt his prickhead prod against the pain-throbbing lips of her cunthole, and then press resolutely between them, and into her sheath.
"Herr Gott!" he panted, "how tight your sweet kootzele is, sicklich! Even if you are not a virgin, you feel like one, meine Susses!"
Now, fully planted to the balls inside her quaking, contracting sheath, he began to fuck her pitilessly. Even in the turmoil which assailed her senses, Vanessa Chumley found herself staring with a kind of horrified fascination over the Grand Duke's shoulder into the flushed, exquisitely lovely face of the cruel young Janine, who followed her father's fucking of this new governess with the utmost attention and excitement. Her young tits rose and fell violently, her face was unnaturally flushed, her lips trembled and were wet, and her nostrils flickered like a mare's in heat.
But Mirko's excitement was so great from having witnessed her flogging and then the final torture that brought about her confession, that after about a dozen vigorous lunges in and out of her quaking cunt, he uttered a bellow of joy and, crushing his mouth against hers to silence her outcry, felt himself explode deep within Vanessa's love-canal.
After a long moment, with a sigh of content, he drew out of her, thrust his limp greasied prick back into his trousers, and buttoned them carefully. Then, lighting a cigarette, he blew smoke into her perspiring, tearstained and contorted face, as her head fell forward and only the sobbing gasps of her erratic breath told of her consciousness.
"Stroboff will bring you the paper to sign after your hurts have been cared for, Vanessa," he said with a gloating savor to his words. Dimly she remarked that it was the first time he had addressed her by her first name. "We will give you two days to rest, and then you will resume your lessons to my daughter. This time, I trust, there will be no further incidents of lese majeste. Remember, you are now a Slovenian subject, for the confession agrees that you forfeit passport and visa until such time as I, regent of Slovenia, give you back your English citizenship."
Then, beckoning to his daughter to whom he offered his arm, he and Janine left the punishment room, while the beautiful young Engliswoman burst into helpless, disconsolate tears.
And in her isolation in this room which had seen her humiliation and martyrdom and finally her violation, she woefully realized that the pain of the flogging and the torture of her tender cunt had attuned her so that his violent rape of her had brought about an unwanted carnal response....
A few moments later a pretty red-haired maid who could not have been more than twenty entered the punishment chamber, untied Vanessa's wrists and ankles, and bade the sobbing victim, in her best broken English, put her arm around her shoulders. Her name was Tanya, she informed the distraught Vanessa, and she would be the latter's personal maid during her sojourn in the castle. Her arm around Vanessa's waist, she studied the tottering and trembling young woman as she led her back to her room, then quickly removed all of Vanessa's clothing and ran a warm tub. Blushing with shame, Vanessa sat upon a stool in the elegant bathroom while lovely red-haired Tanya knelt between her naked thighs and applied a greenish, soothing salve on the swollen lips of her ravished cunthole. Within a few moments, the atrocious burning pain left by the horrid "corkopener" seemed to disappear, and when Vanessa carefully clambered into the tub and stretched out, a sigh of wellbeing escaped her for the first time.
Tanya brought her food and cared for her during the next forty-eight hours, and on the morning of the third day following her punishment, by which time Stroboff had brought her the fatal confession to sign and had taken it back to his royal master, she was again summoned to the chambers of the Countess Janine.
Greatly to her dismay, Vanessa discovered that Tanya had removed all of her clothing and substituted garments which, by order of the Grand Duke, the Englishwoman was to wear until further notice. She was still more startled when she discovered the articles of this costume: kneelength black leather boots with sharp heels, shoulder-length matching leather gloves, a sleeveless smock made of red silk whose skirt fell just to her knees, a pair of filmiest red silk drawers, and a sleeveless camisole-tunic also made of red silk. She would wear no stockings, and she was conscious as never before of the statuesque nakedness and sculptuary of her healthy young body. The marks of the riding crop had also vanished, thanks to the greenish salve which Tanya had so assiduously applied.
When Tanya took her to the chambers of the young Countess, Vanessa turned scarlet as she had to confront the cruel young girl who had condemned her to so ferocious a punishment. As the maid discreetly retired and closed the door behind her, Janine maliciously remarked, "You look a great deal better, Englishwoman. And I trust that today you aren't going to exasperate me, for I want to go out riding with my father very soon."
Conquering her resentment with a visible effort, her face still downcast, Vanessa haltingly replied, "I-I shall endeavor to satisfy Your Highness to the best of my poor ability."
"Very good!" the pitiless young girl marked her. "I like your new humility, Englishwoman! Now then, before you start to give me my French lesson, pull up your smock and open your drawers and let me see if there are still any marks left from Stroboff s whipping!"
"Ohhhhh! Pl-please, Y-Your H-Highness!" Vanessa gasped in a choking voice, her blushes deepening more than ever.
"What's this? You dare to disobey me? Do you want me to call Stroboff and have you taken back to the whipping room, you stubborn English bitch?"
"Oh no! For God's sake, not that!" Vanessa cried out, truly from the heart. Once again conquering her outraged pride and modesty, she lifted her skirt and turned slowly around. The drawerswhich had been included for her to wear were extremely suggestive, and she had hesitated a long moment before putting them on. There were flaps over each cheek of her behind. Janine now reminded her of the purpose of those buttons when she insisted, "Unbutton them, pull them wide apart, so I can see the bare flesh of your Arsch, governess!!"
And then she maliciously added, "And bend well over!"
Dying of humiliation, Vanessa forced herself to obey and slowly bent over, tightening and jutting out the once again milky cheeks of her magnificent ass, the more salaciously exposed by the two yawning flaps than if she had been entirely bare. Janine came forward and stroked the exposed portions, and Vanessa had all she could do to control the urge to straighten and slap the sadistic and precocious teenager.
But she forced herself to remain bent over and it was as well, for when she had finally finished, Janine laughingly commanded, "You may button up and drop your skirt now, and it's as well for you, you didn't dare to flinch away from my hand, Englishwoman, or I'd have had Stroboff here to give you a good thrashing with the birch on the naked seat. Now let's get to work-I'm in a hurry."
This time Vanessa tried her best to be docile, pleasant and not at all authoritative over the lesson, and she succeeded. Janine had a keen mind, and when left to her own devices and will, learned quickly. After fortyfive minutes, the black-haired little tyrant stood up from her desk, tossed the book to the floor and snapped, "I'm finished with you, Englishwoman. This time I'll tell my father you behaved a little better. Now go back to your room and wait until you're called again!"
At noon, when pretty Tanya brought her her lunch, Vanessa asked, "What happened to Marie, the maid who was with me first when I came here?"
"Oh, her!" Tanya giggled, shrugging her lovely shoulders. "The Baroness Gerda asked the Grand Duke to make her a present of Marie for the Baroness' personal service. I don't envy Marie, I can tell you that, Fraulein Vanessa. She's a hellcat, that one."
"Who is the Baroness Gerda?" Vanessa curiously asked.
"You mustn't breathe a word of this, or I'd be whipped too and by the wardress. Mostly, she punishes us girls in the household, except when the Grand Duke wants to have some sport with us and either whips us himself or has Stroboff do it. I can tell you, not that I ever want to have to choose, but if I did, I'd just as soon have Stroboff, because that wardress is a woman herself and knows just where to hurt the most," Tanya shuddered. "But anyway, to answer your question, the Baroness Gerda von Rothmann is supposed to be His Highness' fiancee, though it's not official yet. She will be visiting here one of these days soon, because she lives in the province of Ordenburg, about thirty miles from here, in her own castle. She's very wealthy, and I know that the Grand Duke is very fond of her. I can understand that, she's so very beautiful, but oh so cruel! I only hope she doesn't lay eyes on you."
"Why is that?" Vanessa uneasily asked.
"Sometimes when she's bored or angry with His Highness, she'll ask him to have one of the girls lashed in the courtyard. She loves to have them put on the triangle with the drummers beating out the roll before the lash, and all the household maids lined up in unison. On those occasions, we all have to wear boots and gloves and a sort of body-tights. And of course," Tanya blushed at this, "when something like that haapens, the Grand Duke is always so excited he takes one of us girls into the punishment room and very often whips her before he has her."
Vanessa covered her face with her hands and trembled. She found herself now in a strange and brutal country, whose customs were terrifying and humiliating.
Tanya tried her best to comfort the beautiful honey-haired Englishwoman, but Vanessa had a strange foreboding, that her voluptuous young body would not .be immune from further mishaps. Nonetheless, she tried diligently during the lessons to please the young Countess, and after a week it appeared that she had succeeded.
Exactly ten days after her flogging, while she was tutoring the black-haired royal teenager, Janine gaily informed her, "In a few days the Baroness will visit Father. She knows all about you, Englishwoman. I'm sure she'll want to see you and look you over."
And Vanessa Chumley could not suppress a shudder of fright at this ominous news.
CHAPTER FOUR
The visit of Baroness Gerda and her effect on Vanessa's future were announced to the beautiful honey-haired governess by the talkative, friendly and very pretty maid Tanya three days after Janine had first informed Vanessa that the Grand Duke Mirko was expecting his fiancee.
"You must wear this new costume, it is the order of the Grand Duke himself," Tanya excitedly exclaimed as she hurried into Vanessa's room with a breakfast tray which she set down on the table near the bed then, hurrying back out into the corridor, brought in a large dress box tied with silver cord, Vanessa hungrily attacked the melon, while Tanya made haste to open the box and to lay its contents out on the bed. Then the governess' eyes widened: "But this is ridiculous," she protested, blushing hotly. "It makes me look as if I were a woman soldier, and I detest militarism."
"Oh please, Fraulein" Tanya anxiously responded, "you have to put it on, you'll be punished if you don't. Besides, the Baroness expects you to be wearing it."
"But that is impossible! What can she know of me?" Vanessa again protested.
"She knows everything that happens in this palace, Fraulein. She knows that you are here to teach the Countess Janine, and she has also heard that you are very beautiful and an Englishwoman. I think she also wants to know whether the Grand Duke is making love to you," the pretty maid added with a mischievous giggle.
At this, Vanessa blushed more hotly than ever. "But that is nonsense!" she stammered. And yet she couldn't forget her cruel whipping nor what had followed right before Janine's very eyes. Since then, however, she hadn't seen the Grand Duke. She didn't know what she would say to him once she was in his presence again; he had used her like a slave, brutally and unscrupulously, and yet, in all fairness-for above all else Vanessa Chumley was a practical and sensible young woman-, she had had to admit to herself rather grudgingly that his fierce virility and tremendous masculinity had made her respond as she hadn't done even with the man who had initiated her and then betrayed her.
Disregarding the scrambled eggs, bacon and hot toast waiting for her on the tray, she stared at the costume which Tanya has spread out on the bed. It was indeed like a military uniform: a red silk coat, thin and clinging, with epaulets in the black and gold which were the national colors: a very thin pink silk camisole with straps which fitted over the shoulders and descended to her waist, a pair of indecently short white silk and lace-trimmed drawers with legs descending just two inches below the thighs, red silk breeches like the long trousers of a soldier, and finally a pair of red leather boots of knee length.
"You must put it on at once, because the Baroness will be here in an hour," Tanya excitedly urged.
"I want to finish my breakfast first," practical Vanessa replied. "There's time enough not to put on that unsightly and ridiculous costume after I've eaten. Does the Grand Duke expect to make a soldier of me?"
"Well, yes," Tanya giggled glancing at the door as if there were someone lurking outside who might report her flippancy to the regent himself. "All of the attractive girls in the household, when they begin their duties at the palace, must wear this uniform for three months, they are given drills exactly like men, they carry arms and they have officers in charge of them who punish them if the drill isn't good. I had to go through that myself last year when my father brought me to the palace and the Grand Duke approved of my being a maid."
"You-you had to drill like a soldier?" Vanessa echoed, sipping her coffee and staring at the lovely girl with incredulous eyes.
"Oh yes! I was punished just like all the others-just like you, Fraulein Vanessa. Only it was Herr Stroboff who-well, who made love to me after I'd been whipped on the parade grounds. I did think I was good-looking enough for the Grand Duke to notice me and go to bed with me, but he hasn't yet. That's what every girl hopes for here."
'Good God! But that's immoral, it's like slavery!" Vanessa exclaimed, her cheeks reddening again.
"Oh no, you don't understand, Fraulein. You see, there are only a few noble families here in our country. The rest of us are commoners and most of us are very poor. It is an honor for any girl to be summoned to the castle to take service with His Highness. And any girl who is lucky enough to attract him is always rewarded by having a good husband who has money and who stands well at court. That's what I'm hoping for. I have my Karl back in the little village of Marisch, but he's a farmer and he'd be awfully poor and couldn't afford to take a wife. So I suppose I shall have to forget him and just hope the Grand Duke is generous enough to notice me one day and then will find me a rich husband," Tanya airily explained.
Vanessa couldn't get over what the attractive maid had told her. To think that every girl in this house had to suffer the whipping and then brutal fucking by that awful man who had beaten her in the awful punishment room! She was in a way happy that the Grand Duke had made love to her instead of Stroboff, because she would have fought the latter tooth and nail after the way he had hurt her, especially between the legs with that awful riding crop. She blushed again even more hotly to remember those "pussycutters" which had slashed from downwards up right between her quivering legs and made her feel as if a thousand hornets had bitten her tenderest part.
To distract herself from these disturbing thoughts, she breakfasted quickly and then, stripping naked-which roused a gasp of admiration from Tanya as her statuesque milky-skinned body stood unadorned for a breathless moment-, she put on the costume. Tanya helped her, and Vanessa's cheeks were flaming when it was finally in place. Whoever had taken her dimensions had had this outfit tailored so that it felt like a second skin. The trousers were indecently tight, shaping out the cheeks of her bottom and following faithfully the crease between the globes, and the red blouse hugged her breasts with a boldness and daring that made her embarrassed at the exuberance with which those magnificent turrets were out-lined to the eye of the beholder. She could see in Tanya's eyes how stunning she was, but she had never felt more immodest, no, not even when she had been stripped on the whipping frame and given the riding crop down there in the punishment dungeon.
But again her thoughts were distracted when there was an imperious knock on the door which Tanya hastened to open, and the wardress Hertha, herself dressed in almost the same smart military costume but with a visored cap and the epaulets showing the rank of major stood before the two young women. "Inspection in half an hour, in the courtyard!" she snapped. "The Baroness Gerda isn't to be kept waiting, and you too, Tanya, put on your own costume and be quick about it." Her face relaxed for a moment and a mocking smile appeared on it as she considered Vanessa: "Well, Englishwoman, you are most attractive, I'll say that for you. I'm sorry if I had to hurt you the other day, but you know that was orders."
Remembering the cruel "corkscrew" device which had been used to torment her tender cunt just before the regent had fucked her, Vanessa bit her lips and lowered her eyes and turned scarlet with confusion. Satisfied with her effect, the wardress laughed aloud and then closed the door behind her.
Tanya left a moment later for her own chamber to don the uniform of service, and then came back to lead Vanessa to the parade grounds. To her amazement, the beautiful English governess saw a reception drill was already being formed by at least fifty lovely young girls and women, dressed exactly as she was, though many wore no epaulets, indicating that they had the lowly rank of privates. Some wore longsleeved bouses with sergeant's and corporal's stripes, and in the center, calling the soldiers to order, was a tall black-haired young woman not yet thirty, who wore the hussar's shako and whose epaulets indicated that she had the rank of colonel. Tanya whispered hastily, "That's Colonel Vasliti, and she's a holy terror. At one time, everybody thought the Grand Duke would make her his official mistress, but then they had a quarrel and she had to work her way up from corporal. She's done very well in three years."
"What rank do I have?" Vanessa amusedly inquired.
"You're a lieutenant, but that doesn't mean anything in this army," Tanya whispered back. "If the Grand Duke takes it into his head, he can have you whipped by a common private. So can the Baroness, so you watch out for her! Oh, oh, there she comes now through the west gate with His Highness and the Countess Janine! You better take your place in line, right here at the end of the platoon and a little ahead of it."
Vanessa took a deep breath and stepped two paces forward ahead of the squad of eight, in which Tanya had already taken her place in the rear row. The handsome black-haired colonel drew a sword from its scabbard at her left thigh and smartly saluted the noble trio coming towards the courtyard, where all parade drills were held. Vanessa observed that in the very center was a steel triangle set into the earth, and far to the right, a flagpole was planted with the royal emblem of Slovenia, with a horizontal bar projecting from one side, an iron chain fixed to the end of that bar and descending with two silver handcuffs at its end. She noticed also that there was a wooden platform directly below the rings, and two widely spaced rings were set into the wood. She wondered what it meant, but she was soon to learn!
"Tenshun!" the lovely black-haired colonel snapped, and all the soldiers stiffened, heads high, eyes smartly fixed on the insolent young Countess, the handsome Grand Duke in a white uniform with medals and the baton of a field marshall, and the Baroness Gerda.
She was a stunning woman, sensual and authoritative. About five feet eight inches in height, she looked taller because she was wearing thigh-length black leather boots with silver spurs and sharp heels. She wore military trousers and coat of fine blue broadcloth, on which medals glittered, with a shako atop her haughty head, and her hands were gloved in black leather. Between them she gripped a flexible black leather riding crop with an oval-shaped flap at its whipping end.
She was auburn-haired, and that glossy lustrous hair was coiffed in a regal coronet braid. Her nose was strongly aquiline, her cheekbones highset, her mouth cruel and ripe and formed in a sneer, and her eyes were a cold blue. Her tawny skin and her regal poise made her intensely troubling and sensual and at the same time aloof and imperious. She walked at the left of the Grand Duke, slowly moving among the ranks and inspecting each "soldier."
Vanessa saw her pause in front of one pretty chestnut-haired and rather petite "soldier," examine the girl's blouse and then turn to the Grand Duke. He frowned, shook his head, and the Baroness declared in a haughty voice which reached to the ears of everyone in the courtyard, "That's a stain, and it's disrespectful to be on parade drill with a dirty uniform. You shall have twenty-five at the triangle after drill. Platoon sergeant, mark this bitch down properly!" The sergeant of the platoon, a buxom blonde of twenty-four, smartly saluted and then bowed her head: "At once, Highness! My profound apologies."
"As her sergeant," the Baroness drily reflected, "you should have seen to it that she didn't even appear here before us. You may mark yourself down for ten with the cat before the entire regiment after she has had her twenty-five."
"Thank you, Highness," the blonde sergeant saluted, crestfallen, and then stepped back into the ranks.
Vanessa's heart began to pound and a sudden cold sweat broke out on her lovely forehead. The auburnharied dominatress was slowly approaching, and the Baroness' eyes had already fixed on her and marked her out, for of course she stood two paces ahead of the front row. Then at last Janine, the regent and the auburn -haired noblewoman confronted her. Baroness Gerda turned to the Grand Duke Mirko: "So this is your famous Englishwoman, Mirko? I do say you have good taste, I've always said that. Have you bedded her yet?"
"Of course, darling," he laughed softly, and Vanessa's cheeks turned the color of the settting sun and she couldn't help gasping with embarassment at his answer.
"I wouldn't have thought much of you if you hadn't," the auburn-haired imperatrix laughed softly. She put out her gloved right hand and cupped Vanessa's chin. "How do you like our country, Englishwomakn?"
"It-it's very beautiful, H-Highness," Vanessa stammered.
"I'm told that you're very courageous. Mirko told me how brave you were when his valet thrashed you. But I wonder, Englishwoman, if you knew that you were to be flogged here in public before all the soldiers, what you would say to that?"
"I-I have tried to act as an obedient subject of the r-realm," Vanessa stammered, "and I can only hope that I have not merited punishment."
"Well, now, she has a quick wit, your Englishwoman, Mirko," the Baroness laughed softly again. "She has understood that once her passport and visa are seized, she must accept being a subject of Slovenia until they are returned to her. So she adapts herself. That's very good, Mirko darling. Have I your permission to test this courage of hers?"
"But of course, my beautiful Gerda," he chuckled amiably.
"Thank you." The cold blue eyes of the Baroness fixed Vanessa with a mocking and triumphant look. "Well then, Englishwoman, after the other punishments-and I daresay I shall find a few more negligent recruits-you shall be the piece de resistance. I'm going to have you given a breast and back thrashing and, since you have already professed your loyalty to your new country, it is most appropriate that you be bound to the flagpole." Thus dismissing Vanessa's fate as casually as if she had just ordered dinner, the haughty auburh-haired tyrant passed on to the next platoon, leaving Vanessa trembling in every limb, the cold sweat now beading her forehead and her armpits while her heart thudded wildly with a mortal shame and terror.
Before the inspection was over, the haughty Baroness had designated three other culprits for punishment at the end of the reception parade drill, two privates and a corporal, all of them strikingly handsome young women in their mid twenties.
It was not time to administer these punishments, and two tall red-haired corporals, who, Tanya whispered to Vanessa, were twin sisters, stood forward with snare drums to beat the roll that preceded every lash. She also whispered a quick message of consolation and compassion to the beautiful English governess: "She just did that for spite, just to show you that you mustn't think you're being privileged because the Grand Duke had you, Fraulein. But that's a dreadful whipping you're to have, and you don't deserve it. Courage!"
However, this consolation did not exactly ease the anxiety and fear in the honey-haired young woman's psyche!
The buxom sergeants now conducted the first of the culprits to the steel triangle, the unfortunate young chestnut-haired private whose blouse had been spotted. Her wrists were drawn high above her, fixed into a single metal cuff soldered to the peak of the triangle. Before her ankles were fettered in metal cuffs at each side of the base of this frame, one of the sergeants proceded to tug down the skintight breeches and then the drawers, finally removing them entirely, after which her booted ankles were locked in the cuffs, thus straddling her naked legs a full yard.
Then a smartly attired captain, a slim light-brown-haired woman, approached, dangling a leather cat-of-nine-tails in her gloved right hand.
Stationing herself at the left of the sobbing prisoner, she turned towards the Baroness and inclined her head in deferential respect, while the drums began their ominous roll. The Baroness raised her riding crop as a sign that the whipping was to begin. The drums stopped instantly, and the captain swept her arm forward, the serpentining tails of the cat swept viciously across the plump bottom of the unfortunate private. It was a chubby solid bottom, its narrow crease distended by the extreme strattle of her legs, and on the pale carnation-tinted skin the bright red streaks of the leather thongs at once blazed. A wail of pain attested to the efficacy of the first stroke.
Once again the drums began to roll, while the unfortunate girl lifted her head and stiffened her body, summoning all her muscles to her defense. She obviously awaited the end of the drums, for that meant the lash. And then they stopped and with a sickening swishhh-crackkkk! the thongs once again bit across the ripest curves of her shuddering bare ass.
By the time the captain had reached the twenty-fifth stroke, blood appeared on the base of the welted bottomglobes as well as on the upper right summit. The shrieks and pitiful entreaties of the culprit had rung out over the parade ground, and now her head bowed, her body sagging by her wrists, she breathed heavily and chokingly as the two sergeants hurried up to release her and carry her away.
Now it was the turn of the sergeant of the platoon who had failed to inspect the spotted blouse. Courageously, she walked to the triangle without assistance, held up her wrists to be cuffed, while the two sergeants rucked down her breeches and drawers, removing them, then fixed her ankles to the lower cuffs. The drums began to roll, ten times, but the captain who applied the cat seemed to lay them on even more harshly than she had on the private's bottom. This was a riper bottom by far, even more tempting for fustigation. Aside from several groans and sobs, the whipped young woman took her punishment valiantly. Watching, fascinated despite herself, Vanessa Chumley prayed that she would have equal courage when her own turn came.
The two privates next to follow each received twenty strokes for unshined boots and unbuttoned blouses, and each in turn was fixed to the triangle, stripped and straddled, then lashed with the cat. One of the privates was a pretty sandy-haired girl no more than eighteen. Whe lunged forward wildly, her hips twisting and weaving in the most salacious manner imaginable as the cat visited her surprisingly plump asscheeks. The other, slim and tall, with bottomcheeks as compact and tight as a boy's, received eighteen lashes, which she took with superb courage though the last stroke drew blood from the top of her right hip. The sergeant, a petite little Venus with coppery hair, a pale milky skin with rosy flecks, and a magnificently opulent ass, received twenty-two, and her bottom was bleeding and viciously marked well before all lashes had been inflicted.
And now all eyes turned to the honey-haired Englishwoman who found herself standing there with trembling legs, her throat and lips dry as with thirst, while the Baroness Gerda, tapping the top of her riding crop into her left gloved palm, watched with wicked malice and gleaming at her victim's discomfiture.
The two sergeants approached Vanessa, flanked her on either side, and one of them whispered, "Quick march, Englishwoman! It's going to hurt, so you'd best make up your mind to it. She's already bet the Grand Duke that you'll yell for mercy after the first dozen."
"Oh God, after the first dozen," Vanessa repeated to herself half-aloud, "how many, then, am I to get?"
The sergeant who had whispered to her overheard this question and answered it: "It is the order of the Baroness that you receive all you can take, poor Englishwoman, courage!"
Vanessa resolved as she neared the flagpole that whe would die rather than utter a cry for mercy directed to that haughty and spiteful beauty. She stood numbly, her lips moving in prayer, her eyes closed, while the two sergeants swiftly and expertly removed her blouse and then her camisole, leaving her naked to the waist, her magnificent breasts shuddering and rising and falling quickly now as the cool air of the spring day caressed them, filming their coral tips.
The rope descending from the bar let down the two handcuffs for her wrists, and she was ordered to extend them, while one of the sergeants stepped onto a ladder and fixed them tightly. Meanwhile, the other sergeant seized first one ankle and then the other, corded it and made it fast to each of the rings on the rectangular wooden platform which covered the parade ground at this place.
Thus poor Vanessa found herself on the triangle, save that there was no triangle, yet her body took exactly the same posture as if it had been fettered to that hellish apparatus.
Now the drums began to roll and the captain approached the trembling victim, studying the magnificently sculptured milky back. Vanessa could not help glancing round her left shoulder, and uttered a sigh of relief when she discovered that the whip to be used upon her was not the dreadful cat but rather a three-pronged black leather whip attached to a short heavy round wooden handle.
Now the drums began to roll, and Vanessa quickly looked forward, closing her eyes and tensing her muscles, testing the traction on her wrists. They had stretched her cruelly, even though she was tall. She could feel the muscles of her ribcage surging against the bare skin, and the tightness of her breasts made her shamefully conscious of her superb proportions there.
She started as she heard the drums roll to crescendo, and waited with almost wildly pounding heart for their ending. Then there was a sudden silence and suddenly the angry crackkk as the thongs curled over her shoulderblades. She had never been whipped there before; indeed, her only whipping had hardly come more than two short weeks ago, but at least she had become aware that the female bottom was the proper place for such punishment. This was new pain, exquisite and cruel, for it spread throughout her nerves and down along her spine, and the flesh of her shoulders seemed to draw and prickle with intolerable heat.
But the drums had already began to roll again. She waited almost impatiently for them to stop, then braced herself as once again the martinet smacked over the middle of her back, the tips of the thongs just whisking against her naked right side.
Only a gasp or two revealed her suffering as the twelve lashes were administered from the nape of her neck to the waistband of her breeches.
Then there was a long pause, and suddenly she uttered a cry as she saw the captain facing her, smiling maliciously, swinging the martinet in her gloved hand. Oh God, it couldn't be endured, no woman could stand it! Not that whip over her naked breasts, oh God, a thousand times rather ten times as much on her bare bottom, but not this! she thought frantically to herself.
But the drums were already beginning to roll again, and she closed her eyes and ground her teeth together. When they stopped, she tilted her head up and then suddenly the breath was knocked out of her body as the three leather bands smacked against both naked tits, below the nipples, creating an atrocious stinging pain the like of which she had never dreamed existed for a woman.
The Baroness Gerda had moved closer to the flagpole to watch the whipping, standing way oft to the left so that she had a sideways view of the halfnude English governess. She saw Vanessa's fingers twist in the air, her body shudder, and she turned to the regent and whispered something, her eyes no longer cold but glowing, her lips moist and red and quivering, her opulent bosom swelling against the military jacket on which she wore the medals of her rank.
It seemed a century of hell to poor Vanessa before the first dozen strokes across the naked tits had been inflicted. The captain had taken care not to direct the thongs against her poutingly firm nipples, and she was grateful for that. But both breasts were covered with angry red streaks, and each breath she took was torment because the tightly drawn skin seemed to burn and draw and contract with unspeakable pain.
She now breathed a sigh of relief as tye captain moved behind her to administer the second dozen to her bare back. These were harder than the first dozen, but she was prepared for them. They seemed comparatively benevolent, for her breasts still hurt her terribly.
But after a pause, when she again saw the captain standing facing her and to her left, she groaned and blinked her eyes clear of the tears which were blinding them. Then, tilting up her head and closing her eyes tightly, digging her nails into her palms, she waited, sucking in her breath as she heard the drums begin again.
The very first lash of the second dozen across her naked tits drew a strangled cry from Vanessa Chumley. She lunged backward instinctively, but again the drums were rolling. This time, almost as if out of spiteful cruelty, their flourish was much too short: even as she returned to her original position from that recoil, the martinet slashed over her bare boobs at the base, and she could not suppress the "Ohhhahrrr, oh my God!" which was torn from her.
Hot tears blinded her eyes, and the shock of the stinging leather thongs against her panting, sensitive bare boobs made her jerk backwards, partly in an instinctive desire to escape the biting fury of the lashes, partly in the physical reaction to the unspeakable gnawing agony. It was if filaments of white-hot electricity rippled across each tender inch of milky flesh where the thongs had bitten.
Again the drums, as she writhed, trying to find support; she had the irrational terror that she wouldfall, with her thighs so hugely widened till it seemed her breeches must burst from the stress; with her arms drawn high, the metal cuffs shackling her wrists bit into the flesh, added exaggeraged stress to the muscles along her ribs, her arms; the armpits even knew the stress of the unnatural traction on her halfnude body.
Then the drums ceased; bracing herself for the lash, she saw the captain's arm rise slowly, drawing the martinet back, and then lunge forward, delivering three thongs over the upper curve of her right breast. A strangled cry escaped her, her body wrenched from side to side, and through her tears she saw the gleaming, narrowed eyes of Baroness Gerda fixing on her, enjoying her suffering. This gave her new strength to withstand the dreadful, searing, throbbing pain, which persisted so long even after the whip had bitten home.
She closed her eyes, so as to escape the contemptuous, gloating stare of the Baroness as the drums began their ominous roll again. She tried to count to herself the number of lashes received and thus to know how many yet remained; those administered to her back, while painful, were nonetheless tolerable because there seemed less sensitivity there. But by now she had had fifteen cuts over her naked bosom, and the throbbing, cumulative hurt of them lent new anguish at the thought of even another stroke ... and at that precise moment, the drums stopped, and with a whistling, then a noisy Smackkkk, the thongs lauched across her left tit, just above the nipple. "Ahh-ohh-ahhhhh!" she groaned feverishly jerking at her bound wrists, while the muscles of her thighs involuntarily flexed as if to close.
Now it was four of this second dozen she had had; eight more, and then, thank God, the whipping would be over her back, which she could stand. If only all the strokes could be given there-and now those hellish drums were rolling, and the background of silence against which they intoned their sinister message made all the world concentrate into this reality: the warm sun beating down on her halfnaked body, its rays caressing her tightened, tractioned, spread body to bring her twitching skin a new sensation that added to the warmth already imparted by the lashing. The indecent cling of the breeches, whose material cut into the groove between her buttocks; their snug molding of her now trembling thighs. And then the drums halted: her face tilted up and her jaws tightened as she prepared herself for the fifth stroke of this second dozen-ahh, it was horrible, oh what pain, as the three thongs bit home over the lower middle of her panting right boob, the tips of the lashes stinging into the satiny valley between her lovegloves. A strangled, sobbing cry arose from Vanessa as her body lunged backwards, vibrated, shook and tremored, and she bowed her head and her fingers clawed the air as she frantically tried to remain stoic, knowing that the spiteful Baroness was studying her intently.
Once again the drums had begun. Oh, let it be over, let it be over quickly, she prayed.
The sixth lash of this second dozen agonized her: the thongs seemed to wrap en masse around the base of her left boob, clutching it as with hotly lecherous fingers. "Ohhouuuuu-ahrrr-oh G-God help me!" she heard her choking, trembling voice call out as her body swerved violently back and to the right as if to escape the range of the martinet.
She heard whispering, and knew whose it was: that vicious little hellcat Janine talking to the Baroness. Oh what she wouldn't give to have that black-haired vixen tied here in her place, she wielding the martinet, to pay her back for everything that had haapened: the shame of that first thrashing, the pain of it-especially when the riding crop had leaped up between her shaking thighs; the cruel corkscrew in the hands of Hertha (and Janine's gleeful request that it be repeated so that the detestable brat could here her screams of pain!); then the Grand Duke's ruthless rape of her painwracked flesh with Janine watching; and now this. All this while, the drums had started up again, now they stopped, and then the whistling Thwackkkkk of the martinet brought her back to the hot sun and the fearful stress upon her tethered, halfnude body, and the sickening, gnawing hot pain of the lash as the thongs visited the exact middle of her right tit and for the first time the coral bud of her exquisitely tender nipple.
It was impossible to bear such pain, no woman should have to endure such monstrous suffering; her head flung back, her eyes staring, glassy with tears, and her mouth gaped in a shrill "Ohheeeeyahrrohh God, oh God, oh merciful God in heaven!" as her body twisted and jerked like a puppet on a string, then came to rest with a convulsive fit of tremoring all the way down to her flexing calves so tightly shaped out by the breeches.
Once again, in that moment of savage anguish, her tearblurred eyes had made out the face of the Baroness, and this goaded Vanessa to struggle for a supreme control over her agony-permeated body so as to lessen that sadistic woman's pleasure in her torment. At least, she consoled herself, she was not all naked: that would have been unbearable. That thought distracted her during the rolling of the drums, and when they stopped, she grimaced and stiffeed just as the thongs slashed mercilessly over her left boob, flattening the nipple down into its aureole as the leather bands seemed to cling in unison directly over that coral halo. And this time, the pain was so excruciating that she thought she would faint; her hips jerked from side to side even as her torso recoiled, then swerved, and she was conscious that her naked breasts were jiggling in the most shameless way. But oh the burning agony left by that blow! A raucous, wordless cry had been torn from her as the captain now stepped back, taking a deep breath and contemplating her beautiful honey-haired statuesque halfnude tiedup victim.
Then, again, the drums, oh merciful God, would they never stop? And then the agitated shuddering of all her sinews and thews, tautened as were all her feminine nerves by the ferocious repetition of pain on her tender halfnude body; she seemed to cringe now as the drums rolled on, her brain fraught with agonized supplications she would rather died than have uttered. Then, suddenly, silence, and the lash; over the right breast, just above the swollen, darkened bud of her nipple. "Ohh-ahrrrr.!" her head tilted back as her mouth gaped, and her fingers clawed the air; then she bowed her head and began to sob hystericaaly.
How many were left of this dozen ... was it three or four or five? Shuddering, blinking her eyes to clear them of tears, she writhed and twisted, gulping in breath as the drums began to roll again. Then, silence, and the lash, over her left breast, at the base, the tips of the thongs flicking over just under her distended, sweat-moistened armpit where the soft dark-golden curls of private hair ware matted and odorous from the agony-sweat drawn from her.
Two strokes of those dozen were left her; each drew strangled yells, frantic twistings; her body lunged back till unyielding grip of the wrist and ankle bonds forced her to return, shuddering and writhing, to the original tethered pose.
Now the captain wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her left arm, for she had already flogged five other "soldiers" before undertaking Vanessa's prolonged ordeal. Then she moved behind the panting, groaning young Englishwoman, but at this point the Baroness raised her riding crop: "Hold!" she exclaimed sibilantly.
Slowly she approached Vanessa, who, grateful for the prolonged interval between the sets of dozen strokes, lifted her head, blinked her eyes and drew in all the cool clean air she could so to strengthen herself for the resumption of her flogging. The auburn-haired dominatress studied the vivid streaks on the milky back, her eyes glinted as they followed the spasmodic rippling of muscles; and then she moved slowly round the captive to study her heaving tits and her tearstained, flushed face. Her smile deepened as Vanessa's dilated eyes opened and regarded her. "Well now, Englishwoman, you surprise me with your courage. I think you have almost answered my question. But we shall see how far you can go. The most any recruit has ever taken of the breast and back discipline is six dozen, three sets to each region.
Then, reversing the crop, she prodded the handle against Vaness's trembling chin and forced the young woman's face upwards. Lips set tightly, the victim closed her ces and shivered, summoning all her willpower not to show weakness. Then she felt Gerda von Rothmlann's leather-gloved fingers stroking each of her shuddering naked tits and she shuddered violently at the perverse degradation expressed by that gesture.
"Hmm, Captain Vasliti hasn't really spoiled those big udders of yours. Englishwoman," came the drawling sneer. "I think they can stand good deal more. "I want her to howl, Captain, you understand?" she said in a loud voice as she turned back to the attractive whipper, who bowed and nodded.
Then, returning to her place beside the Grand Duke, the haughty Baroness nodded, and again the drums began to roll. But this time, the dozen were to the naked, vividly streaked back of the victim, and these Vanessa found herself able to endure, even though the savage heat was like a laceration from the nape of her neck to the waistband of her breeches. Grunting and moaning as the thongs struck vigorously en masse, she plunged forward, relaxing her body all she could, and though tears ran down her cheeks, she did not utter a cry for mercy.
Now it was time for the third dozen to her heaving, welted tits, and as Captain Vasliti moved to face her again, Vanessa blinded her eyes, tried to shift her legs-because by now the exaggerated straddle enforced by the anklebonds had made the muscles of her thighs and calves ache from the continuous tension on them. Also, she turned her face to the left and kept her eyes tightly shut as she heard the drums resume their ghastly rolling.
But the second stroke, instead of continuing the up till now unvarying pattern of alternating on her heaving bare boobs, again struck over the left globe, scarcely missing the swollen, darkened, throbbing nipple as the thongs clacked wickedly over the upper curve of the swelling tit, and Vanessa could not hold back the piercing cry of "Eeee-yahrrrrrouuuuouuGodohGod!" which it tore from her. Her body writhed and twisted long after the stroke, even as the drums started their inexorable roll to annouhce the lash.
When the drums halted, Vanessa opened her eyes and whimpered, tightening her muscles to withstand, the lash; but even this understandable reaction agonized her, for it stretched and tightened the skin of her whipped bosom. Her eyes met Vasliti's, and the captain smiled maliciously as she slowly drew back her arm. Courageously, Vanessa kept her gaze level, though as the thongs hurtled towards her, she closed them and clenched her teeth. For the third time in succession, the martinet clacked angrily over her left boob, once again flattening the excacerbated nipple.
"Ahrrrouuuowwwouuuuuu!!" shs shrieked, lunging back wildly, then forward, her fingers clawing the air, her head tilting back. Drops of sweat rolled down her bare sides, and the cords of her inner thighs ached and flexed from the nervewracking anguish of incessant muscular stress.
The fourth lash struck on the base of her right tit, and seemed milder, though Vaness's breathing was agony for her by now, welted as were both luscious loveglobes. But the fifth returned sadistically to the exact middle of the left breast, once again stinging the puffed, dark-swollen nipplebud. Her body lunged madly backwards, then jerked forward; her hips twisted from side to side, and her lividly striped tits rose and fell violently, each breath costing her acute agony. Tears ran unchecked down her contorted, flushed cheeks.
The sixth and seventh strokes visited the upper and lower curves of her right boob respectively; each drew sobbing groans and convulsive squirmings of her tethered body. But the eighth slashed viciously over her left nipple, and her wailing scream, prolonged and narrowing, rang out through the courtyard, while her body twisted like a cork buffeted on the waves. The ninth cut diagonally over the right tit, just missing the dark-swollen nipple, but the tenth again tortured her left breast, its diagonal slant just brushing the swollen bud, and Vanessa's cries were hoarse and wordless, as, burning with indescribable agony, her torso twisted back and forth, her wrists yanking madly at the metal cuffs which dragged them high. Now it seemed to her that her entire life was concentrated in the drums; vaguely, her glazed, swollen dilated eyes sought out the twin red-haired drummers, as if trying pitifully to gauge the moment for the next cruel cut. When they halted their flurry, she uttered a whimpering "Oh no-no-no!" and closed her eyes just as the martinet swept violently and horizontally over the ripest center of her cruelly punished left tit, driving the swollen nipple back into its coral aureole. Her shriek was high-pitched, wildly agonized, and sobbing followed it even as the drums began their roll to herald this last of this set of twelve to her magnificent naked tits. That last stroke once more punished her left tit, and it seemed that Captain Vasliti had observed some sign from the Baroness in having so relentlessly chosen that high-perched turret as her target. It succeeded in breaking the honey-haired young Englishwoman's resistance.
"OH NOOO!! EEAHRRROHH GOD O MY GOD, OH NO MORE, HAVE MERCY, HAVE MERCY ON ME!" her voice stridently slitirked out as she threw herself desperately from side to side, tears running down her agony-rictused face.
"Cut her down," the Baroness drawled disdainfully. "I am satisfied that she feels Slovenian discipline by now."
Head bowed, body heaving in torment, nearly fainting, Vanessa was only vaguely conscious of being freed from her bonds and dragged out of the courtyard, her arms circling the shoulders of two buxom corporals.
Back in her room, she lay weeping as Tanya solicitously sponged her swollen, striped boobs, then rubbed the greenish salve on them once she had dried the angrily discolored, inflamed turrets. Vanessa was then able to sit up, rather wan and pale, her body trembling convulsively, to allow the charming maid to salve her burning, welted back.
Later, Tanya told her the gossip from the "barracks" (those quarters in which the female servants of the palace resided). His Highness had not yet dismissed his "regiment" once Vanessa had been taken away from the punishment ground, but had ordered the birching with twenty strokes on the naked bottom to a handsome chestnut-haired corporal almost as tall as Vanessa, with saucy, impertinent freckled face, small round tits but surprisingly spacious round bottomcheeks. When she had been whipped, he had ordered her brought without delay or palliation of her stripes to his chamber, and had vigorously fucked her, first making her kneel to suck his organ dry, then to cuddle his limp weapon between his naked tits until it was reinvigorated to adequacy for mounting and riding her energeticaaly. Further gossip was that none other than the Baroness Gerda von Rothmann herself witnessed this lustful scene, and then at night entered her fiance's bedchamber for her own satisfaction.
It was nearly a week before Vanessa's whipping marks vanished, and she was excused from lessons with the Countess Janine during that period. Besides, Highness was engaged in matters of state, and the officialengagement between himself and the Baroness was declared through the kingdom of Slovenia on the day of her departure back to her own castle. When Vanessa learned this news from the faithful Tanya, she was dismayed as well as disgusted with herself to find that for a blind irrational moment, she experienced the feeling of jealousy!
The day after, she was summoned to the chambers of the Countess Janine and the lessons continued. Vanessa blushed with humiliation when her royal charge maliciously inquired into how she had enjoyed "your breast and back warming, Englishwoman." Throughout the lesson, black-haired Janine lost no opportunity to remind honey-haired Vanessa that she had thoroughly enjoyed her governess' suffering in public. Vanessa, however, understood that the that the spiteful teenaged girl was trying to force her into the rash and dangerous mistake of insolently answering back or even slapping her, and did not fall for the trap.
The following afternoon, Tanya knocked respectfully at the door of Janine's chambers to inform the tyranical young girl that her father requested the immediate presence of the governess. Vanessa at once deferentially took her leave of her royal charge and followed Tanya with sinking heart down the stairway to the cellar of the castle where she knew the dungeons and the punishment chamber to be located.
Tanya gestured for her to open the door and enter, then whispered, "Good luck, Frauleen!" which did not ease the anguish which the beautiful honey-haired young woman felt. When she entered the dungeon, it was to find the Grand Duke seated in an armchair clad only in his breasts and boots, naked to the waist, smoking a cigar, while his valet, Stroboff, stood beside an upright pillory set in a slightly raised round wide wodden platform about twenty feet opposite his master's chair.
Vanessa, who had been ordered to wear her "military" costume since the day of her public flogging, stared with anguish-widened eyes at the post with its crosspiece and three yokeholes for the victim's wrists and neck. "Have no fear, Vanessa" Mirko chuckled lecherously, "this time it's not your turn. I want you to be present at the punishment of a handsome, stubborn wench, whose father, a wealthy Jewish merchant, has refused to contribute to my coffers for my intended wedding to the Baroness. This girl was ordered to urge her father to show more patriotic zeal, but since she has failed, I have had her brought here and informed she will be severely chastised and given one last chance to sway her father to reason."
There was now a knock at the dungeon door, and the Grand Duke called, "Enter!" The handsome wardress Hertha and another younger women entered, dragging a stunning, alluring young woman between them. She was of medium height, with disheveled black hair that fell to her panting closely set round breasts, olive skin, and flashing dark-brown eyes and sensually ripe mouth. Despite her protests and cries, the two wardresses forced her to the pillory, the top section of which Stroboff now unlocked and lifted, and obliged the sobbing beauty to bend her head and extend her wrists along the yokeholes, after which Stroboff locked the pillory into place.
The two men then began to strip the Jewish girl, whose cries became frantic with shame as she implored, "Ohh, not naked, in the name of mercy, lave done nothing. Highness-oh not naked before you and that man, have pity on me!
"Naked, all the more because you feel such shame, Natalia," Mirko chuckled, "And also so the good whip can bite well into your big bottom and plump thighs! I will teach you to ignore my royal decree-and I trust that when you return home, you willsoon send me word that your father has at last seen the light! Hurry, Stroboff, I am impatient to watch her under the whip."
By now, the wardresses had ripped off the victim's dress and camisole, then her drawers, leaving her in only her gray lisle hose with elas-tic garters at the tops, and her shoes. Natalia, who was about twenty, struggled frantically at her bonds, clenching her thighs and uselessly trying to diminish her nakedness. Her body was sensually exciting to the extreme; the warm olive tint of her bare skin was glossy and the rippling muscles which surged just under it demonstrated the healthy ardor of a magnificent female. Her behind comprised two extremely plump but solid cheeks set widely apart so that as she stood on tiptoe at the pillory the black tufts framing her pink cunt were plainly visible. Her thighs were delectably rounded, a bit too short for perfection, and her calves were ripely rounded. Her breasts wildly heaved and shuddered as she twisted her face back over her shoulder to watch the valet, who had gone to the wall to take down from a row of hooks one of the many flagellatory instruments dangling in his cruel panoply.
The Grand Duke had beckoned to the stupefied Vanessa to stand at his left, and glanced up mockingly at her. "I wager," he murmured, "this plump pigeon will have far less courage than you, Englishwoman."
"Oh noooo!!" Natalia suddenly screamed, for she had just seen Stroboff take down a long carriage whip with braided thong, uncoil it and flick it out in the air to test the heft and range of this biting, cruel whip.
Then he turned to his royal master, the Grand Duke, who leaned back in his chair, puffed at his cigar, and at last directed, "From neck to heels, and let the lash curl round her with equal force, but take care not to draw blood unless I so direct it!"
"Oh, that is cruel," Vanessa gasped, her face pale and drawn with compassion.
He turned to eye her, a mocking smile on his lips. "You should prefer to take her punishment, which I would double. Englishwoman?"
Before that sardonic lustful gaze she quailed and bowed her head.
"Begin!" he snapped.
"Oh have mercy, Highness!" Natalia wailed from the pillory. She could not see now, for the valet had moved behind her with the whip and, taking his stance, measuring his distance, prepared to apply it. Slowly his arm drew back, then lunged forwardd the braided leather thong leaped through the air greedily and swept over the oliveskinned plump shoulders, the tip curling round to sting her chest as with a shriek Natalia lunged forward.
Fascinated in spite of her loathing, Vanessa could not help but watch as the whipping progressed. With expert mastery, Stroboff plied the long tapering whip, curling it round Natalia's tits and belly and upper thighs, choosing always a new place for its burning kisses. Natalia shrieked like one demented at nearly every lash, ludicrously dancing from foot to foot, struggling with her yoked wrists at neck to escape the inexorable tethering of the pillory. Over her finely grained olivesheened flesh, angry thin welts sprang up, but it was seen that his preferred target was Natalia's plump jutting bottom which he returned to again and again. After forty lashes, Natalia slumped at the pillory, hysterically moaning, stripes visible from neck to ankles-for, after the first five lashes, the valet had moved back to the weeping young woman and tugged down her lisle hose as far as they would go.
He turned to his master, who waved his cigar. Casting out the whip along the floor, Stroboff flicked his wrist, and the tip of the braided thong darted up into Natalia's cunt-hole. Her maddened, inhuman cry rang out, and she wrenched at her bonds, lunger and twisted frantically. A second similar blow drew an even wilder scream and babbled pleas for mercy as she flung herself this way and that.
"Take her, Stroboff, now," the regent hissed.
The valet grinned, then bowed his thanks. Swiftly he unlocked the pillory, seized the moaning naked young Jewess by the tits and dragged her down on her back to the floor. Then, as Vanessa turned away, her. face crimson, he unbuttoned his breeches, liberating his lean, throbbing cock, and mounted Natalia, and began to fuck her ruthlessly. When he had finished, at his master's sign, he lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the dungeon.
The Grand Duke Mirko rose, his eyes glittering with a cruel light. Then, seizing Vanessa by the wrist, he panted, "Off with vour blouse, Englishwoman, or I'll have you pilloried and flogged the same way!"
Trembling violently, her fingers clumsy in her mortification, Vanessa obeyed. Then, as he made an impatient gesture, she removed her camisole, and finally her breeches and since she was permitted no drawers under them, was naked save for her boots. At once the Grand Duke bared his prick, and, pressing her up against a low table, gripped her by the tits as he thrust himself into the soft cleft of her cunt. Shuddering with fear and shame at what she had witnessed, the beautiful young governess closed her eyes and surrendered. But as his passion mounted, as he forced her back into the table and mounted over her, Vanessa began to whimper and groan as she felt her womanhood responding to his fierce virility, and finally she could not control her cries and answering, writhing movements as she was drawn to climax with him....
CHAPTER FIVE
The lessons resumed the very next day, and again Vanessa was mortified when Janine maliciously twitted her on whether she had enjoyed the punishment of the Jewess and was properly grateful to Janine's father for being spared the whip in return for her surrender. The teenaged beauty's knowledge of such intimate matters shocked Vanessa beyond words, and she could only blush and gasp.
But again she forced herself to accept the taunting and immodest jibes which her royal charge proffered, and Janine did not achieve her goal, that of having reason to condemn the honey-haired governess to the whip. Nonetheless, as the week neared its end, the despotic teenaged beauty delightedly realized that the advent of her eighteenth birthday on the following Monday would grant her the realization of that insidious desire.
So, that fateful Monday morning, when, in her customary military costume, Vanessa attended Janine for the lesson, the insolent black-haired girl nonchalantly remarked, "Today's my birthday, Englishwoman. I don't expect you to have any presents for me, since you weren't told of the oocasion. But I think you shall give me a very nice one after all. Yes, when you come here tomorrow morning-if you can-you may tell me if I wasn't right. Now go back to your quarters, I'm finished with studies on this day of all days."
That mocking speech filled the honey-haired English beauty with apprehension, but as the day waned and no further word was brought to her, she began to relax her tautened nerves by reading in the garden. It was nearly twilight when pretty Tanya hastened out to the bench on which she sat, stammering, "Oh, F-Fraulein, you're to come with me at once, His Highness' orders."
"Wh-what is it, Tanya? Why do you look so scared?" Vanessa stammered, suddenly stricken with a foreboding that all was not well.
"Please hurry-I'm to bring you to him at once, or I'll be punished," was the red-haired maid's anxious reply.
Vanessa laid down her book, tried hard to compose her features, but her heart was pounding wildly as she followed the red-haired maid into the palace. And when she saw red-haired Tanya hurry down the stone stairway leading to the cellar, she uttered a gasp of fright and clenched her fists in anguish.
This time, Tanya led her to stillanother of the many dungeons, the door of which was already open, and bowed low to her royal master, who was seated on an upholstered low bench with Janine beside him. As Vanessa entered and saluted, then bowed before him, Janine giggled, "Now for your present to me, Fraulein Governess!"
Vanessa trembled. Standing at one side of the bench was Stroboff, smirking at her. There was a heavy black wooden St. Andrews' cross to her right, with four metal gyves set into the arms and legs; it was titled at a thirty-degree angle, rather low from the floor, and supported at its center by two round metal posts bored into the wood.
"As you know," the regent declared, "this is the eighteenth birthday of the Countess Janine. She asked me, as a special present, to have you birched naked, Vanessa. And since I can deny my daughter nothing on such a happy occasion, I fear you must prepare yourself at once."
"H-Highness-" Vanessa choked, staring with frightened eyes at the bearded valet.
The regent chuckled understandingly. "You needn't fear that Emil will console you after the birching, Vanessa. This much I promise you, for you've taught my daughter ably, hence the mark of favor. Now then, strip naked except for your boots-unless you prefer him to act as your maid?"
"Oh nooink!" Vanessa wailed, and then hastily set about removing her "military" costume till she was gloriously milky-skinned-naked save for her glistening leather boots.
"Now, climb onto that cross and extend your arms along it so Emil may fetter you," was the next order.
Vanessa heard Janine's soft malicious giggle as she blushingly moved forward to the St. Andrews' cross, stooped to put her palms on the broad center, and then clambered onto it, docilely spreading her bare thighs so they might be supported by the legs of the cross, and extending her arms. Stroboff at once locked her wrists into the front gyves, then moved back to fix her ankles in the other set, and Vanessa found herself spread-eagled and stretched for the birching.
Beyond her and to her right was a bucket in which a birch rod comprising half a dozen lean, flexible switches was steeping. Stroboff moved to it, procured the rod and shook out the drops of brine, then slowly moved behind the cross at the left, his eyes feasting on the sculptural white-sheened body before him.
"How many, Highness?" Vanessa heard him respectfully ask.
"Till her big Arsch bleeds!" was Janine's sadistic, gloating answer.
"Come now, Janine," the Grand Duke chuckled, "you're much too bloodthirsty, and besides, Vanessa has been quite an obedient servant."
"Papa, you promised you'd have her thrashed for me, it's my birthday, and I want it that way," Janine pouted.
Vanessa's heart nearly stopped beating and she closed her eyes and shuddered violently as she waited for his answer. "Oh, very well, pet. To the blood, Stroboff, but try not to spoil that superb Arsch too much," it came at once.
"Zu befehl, Excellenz," the valet smirkingly agreed.
He laid the rod over the victim's magnificently sumptuous bare bottom-cheeks, and Vanessa caught her breath and pressed herself down against the cross, praying for courage.
In the background, even through the loud pounding of her heart, she could hear Janine whispering to her father, and suddenly, just as Stroboff slowly lifted the rod from the flinching, huddling milky asscheeks of the beautiful mature sufferer, the Grand Duke called out, "Mind you don't forget the advantages of this whipping cross, Stroboff, from time to time."
"Naturlich!" the valet laughed greedily.
Vanessa held her breath and tightened all her muscles, praying for endurance. Oh God, how many strokes would it take to break the skin and draw blood, she feverishly asked herself, Then the horrid hiss of the rod was heard "in the sudden silence, followed by the moist "Thuckkk!" as the withes swept vigorously down over both asscheeks at their ripest sectors, and Vanessa's body jerked convulsively at the first biting kiss.
Determined once again not to satisfy the sadistic instincts of her royal charge, she ground her teeth and stiffend herself, her eyes tightly closed. The birch fell slowly, about thirty seconds between strokes; after the first ten, Vanessa had acquitted herself heroically, holding back all but a few strangled groans and sobs, though her hips had spasmodically jerked and twisted under the fiery kisses of the withes. The moisture seemed to make them even more murderously flexible and stinging, and her bottom throbbed with a feverishly hot agony that made her eyes well with tears.
There was a long pause after the tenth stroke, and Vanessa vaguely heard Janine murmur something, then giggle, and her father's instant "Shhh!" before once again she felt Stroboff lay the rod over her cringing, burning naked ass. She steeled herself, turning her face to one side, and then suddenly a maddening fierce agony slashed into her cunt as the valet, winking at his master, drew the rod back and delivered a backhanded forward-darting cut that sent the withes right up into Vanessa's gaping cunthole, stinging her asshole as well as the pliant switches bent and followed the obstacles of tender womanflesh in their path.
"OOUUUAHRRR OH GOD, OH GOD, NOT THERE, NOT THERE. MERCY!" Vanessa's shriek clamored hysterically as she twited her contorted, tearstained face back over her shoulder, her body jerking fitfully and uncontrollably on the whipping cross.
"Wunderbar, Stroboff," the heartless young countess called, "but don't stop with just that one! Oh, how I love to hear her screech when she gets touched up between those long legs of hers!"
Groaning in shame and pain, Vanessa longed to reply to that cruel jibe, but wisely held it back, for it would have cost her many more strokes. Now Stroboff resumed the lashing of her firm, spacious naked ass, and she ground her teeth and writhed and groaned as the supple switches stung and bit her tender flesh. The atrocious pain of that cut up between her legs seemed to have distracted her from the scalding torment of her now violently striped and welted bare behind.
Then again the birch swished up between her yawningly straddled thighs and again she tilted back her head and shrieked for mercy, her body lunging and wriggling against her bonds. The rod returned to her bottom after a full minute's pause, and now she began to cry out and sob at every stroke, her feminine nerves attenuated by those infernal slashes into the tenderest nook of her being.
"Make her howl-that's it-make that fat bottom dance, Stroboff!,' Janine excitedly called, her eyes shining cruelly, her young tits heaving as she leaned forward, a hand pressed into her crotch and slyly rubbing as all her carnal emotions were roused by the superb spectacle of the flogging.
By the thirty-fifth cut, Janine herself loudly announced the skill of the whipper; he had drawn blood from an intersecting cut diagonally over Vanessa's right hip, and a new lash, striping the welted base of her now furiously discolored ass, drew blood anew. Stroboff lowered the frayed rod, but Janine again whispered to her father, who made a sign. Then Vanessa, half-fainting in her torment, was galvanized as twice more the withes cut up into her tortured cunt. Her shrieks were inhuman, her body jerked and lunged madly against the cross, and she fell back, moaning wanly.
"Enough!" The Grand Duke's voice was hoarse and overly loud. "Now, Stroboff, roll her over and fix her tightly, then get out!"
Vanessa did not resist. The excruciating pain in her cunt surpassed even that of her bleeding, furiously striped bottom. Her head lolling, her superb tits rising and falling in a jerky rhythm, she was hardly conscious that the valet had left the dungeon and that the regent had moved in between the legs of the cross, liberated his cock, and how leaned over her. Then she felt the stab of his weapon into the chafed, swollen cleft of her cunt, and uttered a frantic scream of "OH NOOOO! NOT LIKE THIS, OH MERCY!"
But in vain; clutching her heaving boobs, her royal master vigorously fucked her, while Janine came forward to watch, her forefinger now wantonly rubbing her crotch to draw her soon to gasping, ecstatic climax....
For another eighteen months the beautiful honey-haired English governess remained in the palace of the Grand Duke Mirko. His marriage to the Baroness Gerda von Roth-mann took place two months after Janine's birthday. And before he took his cojugal rights of his sensual and sophisticated bride, the regent had Vanessa Chumley taken to a bedroom adjacent to his, there blindfolded and spread-eagled on her belly, wrists and ankles corded to the bedposts, and himself flogged her bottom and thighs with a leather switch till his overweening lust hastened him into the waiting arms of his bride in the next chamber.
Thereafter, Vanessa continued her lessons with the Countess Janine, from time to time being compelled to submit to the lash to satisfy not only the lust of the regent but of his bride Gerda herself, who on several occasions initiated the honey-haired Englishwoman into the perverse delights of Lesbos.
A month before the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, the Grand Duke Mirko summoned Vanessa Chumley to his chambers. "Vanessa, I am certain that Europe will soon be plunged into a terrible and lengthy war," he told her. I know your loyalty to the country of your birth, and I will send you back if you desire. But perhaps, in spite of the discomforts you have experienced on my service, you may have some small affection for me-and surely your ardor when you are in my arms indicates as much to my royal ego. If that is true and you wish, I will offer you the role of mistress in title, with an estate of your own and servants, and the guarantee of my protection during my reign."
But Vanessa Chumley, though blushing hotly at his sly reminder of her carnal surrender to his virility, shook her head. "I would rather go back home if my country is in danger and at war, Highness," was her reply. "Perhaps I may be of service as a nurse."
And so it was that, just before the mobilization of the English armies, Vanessa Chumley returned to her native land. There, according to her own journal which we have adapted and edited, she did serve as a nurse through the dreadful four years of that global conflict, and at the end of it married a sergeant of fusileers who had been wounded in her charge. Four children blessed their union. And in those memoirs, at the very end, there occurs a cryptic note recalling the gift the Grand Duke Mirko dispatched by diplomatic envoy from the Slovenian Embassy, a costly brooch with the royal crest of Slovenia in diamonds and rubies, and on the back inscribed, "To her whom discipline most became."
Vanessa did not once, in the conclusion of her memoirs, mention that her husband ever punished her by corporal chastisement. We may only conjecture then, her real feelings for her royal employer whose virtual vassal and slave she became, from her own equally cryptic comment regarding that munificent gift. For she had added, as an afterthought, "Sometimes he who is cruellest is kindest too."
