The Lies of Lord John Read online

  "Mrs. Brown," said her aunt sternly.

  Margaret had expected her to remonstrate, but there were no more lectures. Instead, Mrs. Brown stepped forward and took firm hold of Margaret's wrists. Margaret found herself pinned down against the bed, with the housekeeper gripping her arms over her hand.

  She didn't struggle against it. She surrendered herself and endured the latter half of her punishment, crying out freely at each stroke and sobbing wretchedly in between. Her aunt took her time once more, as if to draw the horror of anticipation out the longer. The slowness of each blow allowed the pain of the last to draw to a pitch of agony before it fell again upon the tender flesh.

  Margaret lost track of the strokes in her head. She was weeping with such abandon now that she could scarcely hear her aunt's voice above her own sobs.

  "Margaret!" It was clear that her aunt was repeating her name.

  "Y-yes, Aunt." She wanted to beg for the punishment to stop, but she had not forgotten the threat to double it if she resumed her pleading.

  "I said, have you learned your lesson? Answer me when I talk to you."

  "Yes, yes, oh, yes, Aunt. I have, I promise. I really am sorry. I will never, ever disobey you or my uncle again."

  "Very well. This is for kicking me—" She swung the hairbrush with more ferocity than ever before, aiming it squarely across the middle of both Margaret's well-punished nether cheeks.

  Even with Mrs. Brown hanging onto her wrists, Margaret nearly bucked upward. Her cry must have been audible throughout the house.

  "And this is for striking me in the face." She matched the stroke with another, just as swingeing, across the top of Margaret's thighs.

  Margaret twisted her whole body convulsively, so violently that she broke free of Mrs. Brown's restraining grip. She collapsed in a heap on the floor by the bed, wailing and rubbing at her backside, all pride and dignity gone.

  "Get up," said Mrs. Cochrane sharply. "Pull yourself together."

  Margaret gulped back her tears, bit down her whimpering, and hastened to climb to her feet.

  "Don't rub the sting off," she said. "You should feel it and be sorry. Sore and sorry, that's the way to learn. Hands to your front."

  Margaret took her hands away from her behind and clasped them before her. The burning in her backside made it almost impossible to stand still, and she shifted from foot to foot as she stood in front of her aunt.

  "Now then. I hope you have learned your lesson."

  "Yes, madam."

  "What have you to say to me?"

  "I am very sorry, madam."

  "And?"

  Margaret stared at her in confusion and sudden panic. She was afraid, in that moment, more than anything else of provoking another session with the hairbrush. She felt that she could not take a single stroke more.

  Mrs. Brown came to her rescue. "Thank your aunt for correcting you, Miss Margaret." She spoke not unkindly.

  "Th-thank you, Aunt." She stumbled over the words. She did not feel gratitude toward the woman who had taken her beloved uncle from her, much as she knew she had deserved the punishment she had received at her hands. She still resented her authority and felt a curious longing to have had firm guidance from someone she loved.

  She hung her head, and when she looked up again, her uncle had come into the room. He still looked troubled.

  "What have you got to say to your uncle, Margaret?" said Mrs. Cochrane.

  Feeling her face grow red with real shame and contrition, Margaret half-curtseyed towards him and said, "I am so sorry, Uncle, for being a trouble to you. I won't do it again."

  Her uncle's face broke into a soft smile. "There, there, my child. You are a good girl, for the most part, a dear girl. It's a pity you had to be punished, but it's all over now, hmm?"

  "Aye, but she'll remember it tomorrow," said Mrs. Cochrane.

  "I thank God I married a good woman, able to take you in hand. Good night then, my dear."

  Mr. and Mrs. Cochrane turned out of the room together, Mrs. Cochrane pausing to hand the hairbrush over to Mrs. Brown before she left without another word to Margaret.

  Margaret stood, mortified and in great discomfort, while Mrs. Brown turned down the sheets and blankets for her. She refused to look at or acknowledge the housekeeper, and slid into bed with her face averted.

  "Goodnight, Miss Margaret," said Mrs. Brown imperturbably.

  Margaret ignored her sullenly.

  The housekeeper snuffed the candle, and the room was plunged into darkness. Only when the door clicked shut and she heard Mrs. Brown's tread on the servants' stairs above her head, did Margaret dare to reach down and rub at her throbbing backside.

  She could see nothing in the dark, but the skin felt hot and swollen and very tender. The immediate fiery sting subsided after a few minutes, so that she did not have to keep moving her legs restlessly under the covers, but a miserable ache set in to what felt like the very muscle deep in her buttocks and upper thighs. She ended up throwing back the sheets and blankets and lying on her stomach with her nether regions exposed to the chilly air of the bedroom, before she could settle herself comfortably enough to sleep.

  Her mind took longer still to quieten and compose to slumber. The pain and disquiet in her heart was greater and longer-lasting than in her bruised behind. She had been forced to acknowledge her complete powerlessness, she had grovelled and pleaded at the feet of her uncle's wife, and she had lost her friend and confidant. The misery of her situation went beyond a sore backside, however painful and humiliating the punishment had been. She knew now that she would never again be the independent, carefree Miss Bell that she had been, mistress of a house in Charlotte Square, aspiring lady of letters about town. She was nothing more than an unmarried young lady under the authority of a humourless, flinty, unyielding aunt, and unless she took steps to change things, she had no hope of escape.

  Well, there was one way and one way only to effect that escape. Daunting as the prospect was, she would have to marry.

  Chapter 8

  Margaret awoke the next morning to a continuation of the same thoughts, even before she opened her eyes to the shaft of bright sunlight that fell through the tall windows of her bedroom when the maid unfolded the shutters. During the night, she had shuffled back under the covers, and she lay pretending still to be asleep until the maid had finished setting the fire and left the room. Then she slipped out of bed and went to the long dressing mirror to see if her punishment had left any visible damage.

  She lifted her nightgown to her waist and twisted around, gasping in dismay at the sight of her bottom covered all over in mottled red and purple bruises. The fair white skin had marked badly, and she could even see a mass of oval indentations where the edges of the hairbrush had struck the soft flesh. She touched the mottled orb of her buttock gingerly and could still feel the tenderness just below the skin.

  A slight noise at the door made her startle and whirl round, and to her dismay, she saw that her step-cousin, Charity, had pushed it quietly open. "Good morning, cousin," she said with a soft smile. It might be characterised as a smirk.

  Margaret was almost sure that Charity had seen her examining herself. The mirror faced the doorway directly. "Good morning," she said with as much haughty dignity as she could muster under the circumstances.

  Without invitation, Charity slipped through the door and closed it softly behind her. She did everything quietly, as if she was trying to slip about the house without drawing attention to herself. Margaret had often suspected her simply of slyness, though she affected modesty and humility. She was also still in her nightgown, with her pale hair hanging loose and undressed as it had been the night before. During the day, she wore it tied back into a plain, severe bun, with no curls or other adornments to soften the effect. With her hair falling long and free over her shoulders like this, she looked far more like the young girl of one and twenty that she was and less like a premature spinster.

  "What do you want, Charity?" asked Marga
ret ungraciously. "I am getting dressed." She went back to the bed to sit down and could not suppress an intake of breath as she took her weight on her bruised backside for the first time. The edge of the horsehair mattress was not particularly soft.

  Charity held up something that Margaret now saw she had brought with her. It was a small earthenware pot. "I thought this might bring you some relief."

  "What?" asked Margaret crossly.

  "For where it is sore. It's a lotion; it soothes the ache a bit. It won't make it go away, but it does make it easier to sit down for the rest of the day."

  "I have no need of such a remedy. It was nothing; it scarcely hurt at all."

  "Forgive me, cousin, but I heard everything. I could not help it, you know. My room is directly over yours."

  Margaret could feel her face burning. She had known very well that Charity must have heard her cries the night before, and it mortified her. She imagined that in the same situation, Charity would have borne her punishment in stoic silence. Already, she was deeply ashamed of her own lack of fortitude, and she did not want to be reminded of it.

  "Besides," Charity continued, "I know how hard my mother can hit. What did she use?"

  "That hairbrush."

  "Oooh." Charity drifted over to the dressing table and picked it up to examine it. "That's heavy. She used her own hairbrush on me, but that was not as large and solid. With a metal bit, too. You must be sore."

  "If I am, it is your doing!"

  Charity blinked.

  "You told them I went out last night. Did you not? It was you I saw at the window as I was going through the yard."

  "I was concerned for you," said Charity composedly, with absolutely no look of contrition or guilt. "I happened to catch a glimpse of a white figure as I went up the stairs to fetch some silks from my room, and I went into the back bedroom to get a better view. I was sure it was you. I thought about telling my mother and stepfather immediately, but I sat and thought about it for the rest of the evening, and then I checked in your room to see if you were there before I went to bed. When I found it empty, I went to my mother. What would you have had me do, cousin? Anything might have happened to you."

  Margaret acknowledged within herself the justice of this. She rolled onto her side, to save the pressure on her backside, and said nothing. Perhaps if she ignored her, Charity would leave her alone.

  Instead of going, Charity sat on the edge of the bed and continued. "As it was, I reproach myself for not having alerted my mother and stepfather immediately. I could not be sure that the figure I saw out the back window was you. But I might have investigated your room straight away. What if some harm had befallen you? It would have been my fault."

  "What harm could possibly have befallen me, in the company of my friend, Mrs. Douglas, in a respectable house in George Street?" said Margaret scornfully.

  "Oh! But I did not know that was where you were. You might have been anywhere. My mother was angry with me when I confessed that I had seen you earlier and not told her. Your uncle was distressed more than angry. I could not have forgiven myself if anything terrible had happened to you."

  "I was at Mrs. Hamilton's literary soiree," said Margaret, through gritted teeth. "Very little ill befalls one at a New Town soiree."

  "But you were with a woman of ill repute," said Charity gravely. "That was very unfortunate."

  Margaret closed her eyes. "Well, I have paid for it."

  "I worry about you, cousin. Please, you will not see Mrs. Douglas again?"

  "If I do, it will be no concern of yours, Miss Rankine!"

  "Margaret, do not be so ill-tempered. I wish we could be friends. I never had a sister, nor a brother, either. We are cousins now, by law. Cannot we be like sisters?"

  Margaret wanted a sister even less than she wanted a cousin, but she felt at that moment that it would be ungracious to say so. "I want to get dressed. Breakfast will be ready soon."

  "Oh! Yes. But you will not sit comfortable at breakfast if you do not apply some of this lotion. Let me do it. It will only take a moment. Lie on your stomach."

  With a bad grace but really wanting some relief, Margaret rolled over on the bed and lay uncomplaining as Charity lifted the back of her nightdress. When she exposed Margaret's marked and mottled nether regions, she let out a small exclamation of dismay.

  "Oh, that looks bad, quite worse than I thought. Lie still, however, and this should make you more comfortable." She dipped her fingers in the earthen bowl and they emerged covered in something yellow and unctuous. "It will feel cold and sting at first, but then it will make it better."

  Margaret bit her lip to suppress the yelp of renewed pain that almost escaped her as her cousin gently applied the lotion to the bruised and tender flesh.

  "She gave you two dozen, and a few more for struggling and disobeying? On the bare?" Charity's sigh was sympathetic. "You will feel it today when you sit, especially on anything hard, and tomorrow, too, I should think, but by the day after, it will have gone off. Did your uncle never chastise you?"

  "No! Never!"

  "I feared my father's tawse far more than my mother's hairbrush," Charity said calmly. "I would do anything to avoid that. I don't believe I was ever punished by him for the same thing twice. I learned my lessons very quickly and very well. I am sorry for you, that you have reached the age of three and twenty and never been guided properly."

  "My uncle gave me all the guidance I needed, without the need to be cruel!" Margaret cried, wincing as her cousin massaged the lotion into the bruises on the top of her thighs.

  "It is not cruelty! I think it is cruel to let a girl grow up without proper discipline. What if you end up like your friend, Mrs. Douglas?"

  "How can you think I would ever do such a thing? I know very well what is right and wrong."

  "Did you know, last night, that you should not disobey your uncle and leave the house?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "And yet you did it anyway. But I warrant you will not do that again, not now that you have a sore bottom to make you feel what you already knew." Charity finished her administration of the lotion and sat up. "There, that will feel better presently. I should lie still a few moments to let it do its work."

  "Thank you," said Margaret, and she could hear the sullenness in her own voice.

  Charity sat where she was, easing the stopper back into the jar. "You know, cousin, when I was only eighteen-years-old, I thought I was in love with a young man who came to my father's church. He was a medical student. He tempted me to private conversations more than once—he addressed me and wanted me to consent to a secret engagement. It was not long before my father died. Mr. Guthrie, his name was. My parents told me that he was not suitable and forbid me to speak to him again. I thought I knew better and contrived to exchange secret letters with him. I nearly agreed to an elopement. My mother's maid discovered the correspondence and my father gave me the hardest leathering I ever had in my life. Of course, I never saw Mr. Guthrie again, nor wrote to him. Not three months later, I learned that he had gotten a merchant's daughter with child."

  "How awful," said Margaret slowly. She was astonished to learn that prim, proper, colourless Charity could ever have had such an adventure, or felt passion, or dared to defy her parents.

  "I was so thankful for my father's care, then. I had thought him cruel and tyrannical, to separate me from Mr. Guthrie and to chastise me so sorely. But I needed the lash of that belt to bring me back to my senses and to trust my parents' wiser judgement of that young man's character. That wretched jeweller's daughter might have been me—seduced and abandoned—or I might have married him without my parents' consent and then discovered his wicked behaviour. He must have been sinning with that girl at the very same time he was making love to me."

  There was a slight catch in her voice that betokened an emotion not entirely subdued. Margaret looked around with greater interest than she had ever felt in Charity.

  "He was a libertine," she said. "But yo
u could not have known that."

  "I could not, because I was young and very foolish, but my good parents knew it, and I ought to have listened to them. It was only by the intervention of Providence, I truly believe, that I was saved that fate, and once I discovered Mr. Guthrie's perfidy, I was truly grateful to my father for his firmness in preserving me."

  Margaret felt a pang in her breast that she could not entirely understand. She had, for some reason, a flashback to the longing for comfort and safety that had overcome her while sitting beside Lord John Dunwoodie in the deserted lower hallway of Mrs. Hamilton's house.

  Charity folded her hands into the folds of her nightgown. "Not long after that, my dear good father went to his eternal reward. I vowed when I watched his coffin carried away along our close that I would honour his name with my life, always. For I know he is watching me still. Since that sad day, I have tried my best to be obedient to my remaining parent, and I tried to be glad even when she told me we were to move from our home and all the way across the bridge, to live in this place." She glanced around at the spacious luxury of Margaret's bedchamber.

  Margaret knew that Mrs. and Miss Rankine had moved to Charlotte Square from a comparatively modest set of upper apartments in the now-unfashionable Old Town, where their family had always lived. It had never occurred to her that either lady would be anything but delighted to exchange the crowded cheek-by-jowl life of those ancient streets for the grandeur and modern conveniences of the most desirable address in New Town. She had assumed, in fact, that Mrs. Rankine had become Mrs. Cochrane in order to avail herself of the comforts of her uncle's wealth.

  "Did you oppose your mother's wish to marry my uncle?" she asked. It was a question she had never thought she would put to the interloper. This was turning into a night and day of surprises, indeed.