The Secret Sins of Lizzy Barton

Chapter Four-1

CHAPTER FOUR

Setting The World Right

Lizzy crept cautiously to the entrance of Mrs. Harkin’s bright yellow morning room.

“You called for me, mum?” she inquired as she peeked her head in the door.

“I did. Come in, Lizzy.”

So, Lizzy tiptoed in.

Nellie Harkin cleared her throat several times before she finally spoke her mind.

“I am terribly distressed over the riot you caused with your absence last night,” she started out quite curtly.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again.”

“It had better not. But it’s not the future I’m interested in right now. This egregious behavior must be dealt with. I cannot continue to pass over your faults. Your tardiness is thoughtless and rude. The haphazard way you dress, that hair all askew…” She sounded as if the litany was just beginning.

Lizzy immediately pressed her hands along her apron to smooth wrinkles, although it was not a particularly successful attempt. Then with the back of her hand she pushed back her stray blonde hairs. How should she look after scrubbing wine stains from linen for the last two hours? she wondered silently. “I just came from the laundry, ma’am,” she tried to explain.

“It’s not just this time, it’s every day, Lizzy. I simply cannot excuse your lack of common consideration again.” The way her jaw twitched suggested that the ire of the previous evening was surfacing again. The woman suddenly stood up. “Mr. Flynn will be meeting us in the stable with his strap,” she literally shuddered as she spoke, enough that Lizzy could feel the emotion in the pit of her stomach. It instantly soured.

“Oh, please, ma’am, I swear—”

“I do not need your swearing! Go! Go now! I’ll be right at your heels.”

Minutes later, Lizzy and her mistress were inside the stable, where the wild birds flitted through the rafters, where carriage horses whinnied, and where Lizzy faced a formidable man in the brusque stable master, Mr. Flynn. Smells of animal dung and dark, loamy earth filled the air with a pungent sweetness that bespoke of the stable’s inherent purpose. The scene to follow would seem to belong in a place like this one. Retribution was an elemental undertaking. Where words and compromise and good reason failed, sometimes a straightforward punishment like this one was necessary to set a small world right again. In Nellie Harkin’s point of view, her meticulously crafted world was all askew because this one house servant had forgotten herself on such an important occasion as the previous night’s spring fest.

Lizzy, Nellie and Mr. Flynn stood facing each other in an open space inside the stables, adjacent to the horse stalls, with Nellie turning abruptly to face her offending servant. “Perhaps you could enlighten us, Lizzy Barton. Do you have any excuse for your gross negligence last night? Does your tardy appearance in the kitchen have anything to do with your hand, perhaps? Tell me. I’d really like to know.”

Lizzy gazed briefly at her hand then looked down at her feet. She remembered how she’d sworn to Mr. Addison that she had a good excuse for missing the preparations completely and almost missing the party itself. In truth, she had no excuse that Mrs. Harkin would find acceptable, so she declined to make a comment.

“No, mum,” she said, under her breath.

“I’m afraid I cannot hear you. Speak up!” the woman’s voice fairly crackled.

“No, ma’am.”

There was a rustle in one of the far stalls. “Who’s there?” Nellie called out.

All three looked in the direction of the noise and saw Mr. Addison move from the shadows into the light provided by the stable’s open door.

“Ah, William, come here, will you please,” Nellie ordered the young man. “I could use you as a witness.”

“I really need to be off, Ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat.

“Oh, you can certainly stay for this. It won’t take but a few minutes of your time.”

A bit chagrinned, he moved a little further into the stable, directly behind Nellie Harkin. Once the mistress had secured Mr. Addison’s attention, she turned back to Mr. Flynn and the trembling Lizzy, whose eyes were now transfixed on the thick leather strap the man held in his right hand. The lengthy piece ominously dangled against the stable floor, stirring up a small cloud of dust as the man shifted from one foot to the other.

“Over the beam, girl,” the burly man commanded, while pointing to the hefty sawhorse just a few feet off. “An’ raise yer skirt, less you expect me to raise it for you.” Wild red hair was the burly man’s crowning glory. Everything about Mr. Flynn was huge, his face, his barrel chest, his sturdy, muscled arms, thick waist and staunch legs. Standing like a mountain over the much smaller Lizzy, he made the poor girl tremble so that she almost hoped that, by some stroke of good fortune, Mr. Addison would come to her rescue again—if so, she might have been moved to think more graciously of him. No such luck this day, however, no one intervened on Lizzy’s behalf.

After nearly a minute of frozen contemplation, Lizzy turned, strode toward the sawhorse and planted her feet firmly on the ground before it. For just an instant, she considered running out the stable’s back door and disappearing into the wilderness beyond. In fact, the feeling came on her so strongly that she must have communicated her mutiny to the observing trio. She felt a heavy hand on her shoulder to keep her in place and understood then that any attempt to flee would be immediately met with resistance far greater than she could overthrow.

Resigned to her fate, Lizzy closed her eyes, as if that might mitigate her embarrassment, then she reached back and grabbed her skirt, lifting it up to bare her behind. She leaned over the beam, feeling the hard wood press against her throbbing pubic mound. Yes. Throbbing. The energy that fueled the scene was from that same caldron of obscure desire that fueled Mr. McGreevy’s deep hunger. That, Lizzy recognized. Although no one would know that, she was quite certain that Mr. Flynn’s leather strap would fail to seduce her further.

When she felt the man’s warm hand at the top of her bloomers and that hand yanking the thin material off her posterior, the shudder that followed was so deep that her audience was sure to notice. Tears formed in her eyes knowing that her bottom was completely bare, the poor thing sacrificed to her bad judgment on the night before, when prudence failed her and she wandered in a senseless stupor, all because she could not sort out her failed life. She’d railed against her misfortune, raised her fist in anger, and then sank ever deeper into her depression when she stumbled over a broken fence and tore her hand apart.

Now this.

Bottom bared before a leering audience. Tears leaking from her eyes. And then…

Smack!

“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeuch!” Her body was thrust forward with the first blow and nearly toppled over the beam, only to have Mr. Flynn grab her back the second before she fell on her head.

“You ain’t goin’ anywhere, lass,” he declared. “Ya better hang on.”

Hang on she did. Every nerve in her clenched up tightly, as the gruff assailant winded up, reared back and let his thick leather fly, hitting directly on both of her ass cheeks and curling around her hip. Immediately, a rosy color emerged out of the creamy orbs.

Smack!

Smack!

Smack!

Another and another smack came down against her ass, raising the warmth and the color by degrees, until the skin seemed to flame with fire and Lizzy’s crotch churned miserably against the hardwood beam.

She gagged herself by force of will, smothering cries that were difficult to hold back. She prevailed because it was the one thing about the horrific punishment that she could control. Although when one smack hit directly across the tender flesh of her upper thighs, she almost lost the fight. Perhaps the man was challenging her resolve. Believing that, she dug in deeper, feeling the strap delivering pain that would cause most anyone to scream. Yet she prevailed, maintaining her wincing silence with fervent conviction.

While Lizzy suffered, her audience looked on; Nellie Harkin with satisfaction—although she often winced in pain as she saw the leather rebound off her maid’s fair flesh; and Mr. Addison with some amazement. He could feel his hand itching to take up a cane or lash himself, for surrendering women were one of his favorite passions—even if the girl in question was an unwilling participant. In fact, he rather liked the way she deliberately suffered in silence, choosing a much harder path than a more vocal woman would. No one could say that Lizzy Barton didn’t have the impudence for two. She was a wonder, something that he was glad he stayed to observe.

When at last Mr. Flynn finished, Lizzy was so exhausted that she fell to the stable floor in a sobbing heap. If Mrs. Harkin wanted to witness her suffering, she could, now that the chastisement was over, with Lizzy’s hard fought control dissolving into this very sad display.

Lizzy’s bottom ached. The skin was taut and fiery. And yet, the warmth that soon spread from the surface of her bare flesh moved deep into her body and lit carnal fires everywhere. Once her crying was over and her eyes dry, she sensed these facts with some distress and struggled not to squirm in a salacious way. Her audience had not altered its gaze until she had recovered some and the emotional spell that wound around the small company was broken.

“Let this be a lesson to you, girl. I will not tolerate your thoughtless behavior. If it means you part company from your dear sister, then,” she drew in a long breath, and blew it out, “so be it!” She nodded to her two accomplices, “Mr. Flynn, Mr. Addison,” then gathered her skirts in her hands and moved swiftly from the stable toward the house. Mr. Addison bowed slightly and returned to his mount, riding out of the stable before Lizzy got to her feet.

With the help of Mr. Flynn, who lifted her weary body from the stable floor, she made a hasty retreat and returned to her chores.

Late that afternoon when Lizzy was outside the house pouring wash water down a drain, Mr. Addison came from around the corner of the house, as he was leading his horse back to the stable.

“Miss Lizzy,” he smiled and nodded. “How is your hand?”

The girl bristled, brushed back her hair and looked up. “If you wish to mock me, sir, I will not allow it.”

“I was inquiring about your hand.” He bristled himself.

“Not here to gloat?”

“Why would I gloat?”

“I suppose it is every day that you witness what you did this morning?”

“Certainly not. But I hoped that was in the past.”

“Indeed, it is.”

“But it embarrasses you.”

“Yes, it embarrasses me!” she snapped. “And a gentleman who was in your position this morning would have begged off being a witness to the incident. Instead you chose to watch with your lascivious eyes.”

“Lascivious eyes?”

“Yes, exactly. I can only guess what you might have been thinking.”

“And I wonder at your thoughts,” he came right back.

“I’m sure you got an eyeful, those are my thoughts. Why you take any interest in me at all, I have to wonder. I am a serving girl, no more.”

“Ah, but no serving girl argues with such aplomb.”

“And what does that mean?”

He snickered. “You figure it out for yourself.”

“I think I have a right to an explanation.”

“Oh? Really? You who accuse me so? Well…I don’t think that I’m the first to wonder how you can argue points like a member of Parliament, and your sister can play the piano like a virtuoso. The Barton’s sisters’ accomplishments hardly sound like those of uneducated servants.”

“Oh, let me stop you there, sir, before you get any more silly notions. My sister and I may not sound and act like other maids of our station, but the explanation is simple. In our previous employ, we were taken under the wing of a wealthy and learned woman who was as concerned about our educational well-being, as she was concerned about our beating her parlor carpets. She insisted we develop our natural talents.”

“I see. She must have been formidable with her tongue to have schooled you so well.”

Lizzy recoiled further; she was boiling mad by now. “I really don’t have time for more of this,” she sought to shut the man down, but he pressed on.

“I’m curious about this woman, this other employer,” as if he didn’t believe her story.

Lizzy let her mind stray, then seemed to display some genuine emotion. “She is gone, sir,” she finally said. “Dead. I really don’t want to think about it anymore. I would hope you’d let it go.”

“Ah. Well.” A strange look of amusement filled the man’s face, though it did little to fend off his haughty expression.

“Exactly what are you thinking, Mr. Addison?”

He held up his open palms as if to say, he had been conquered. He smiled, bemused. Then without comment he backed away a few steps, turned toward the stable, leading his stallion by the reins.