The Scot Corsair Page 25

  "Then that means submitting to my authority."

  "Yes, Captain," she whispered.

  "I want you to be sure about this, Elspeth. You've defied your brother's authority and left his protection without his permission. If you are to be my wife, I would not like to think you would do the same by me."

  "Oh no!" Her cheeks flushed, she stepped towards him and looked at him seriously with bright, almost feverish eyes. "I will never—I will always—please believe me."

  "I believe you mean it now," he said repressively.

  Her mouth quivered, her golden hair hung in wet strands across her cheeks.

  After a moment's potent silence, he said, "I am going to give you what you deserve for your disobedience and outright folly in writing to my brother, against my express orders."

  She pulled in her lower lip, and nodded.

  "And in future, I will expect you to listen when I tell you not to do something, or I will not hesitate to apply the correction again and as many times as it takes to teach you proper wifely submission and obedience. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Briefly, he considered how to do it, while she stood before him, meek and trembling. He wanted to make the point firmly, so this would have to hurt; he also yearned to have her whole body close against him, and if he put her over his knee, physical desire might overwhelm him. Besides, the urge to bundle her across his lap, bare her pretty backside and wallop it long and hard with his good right hand was strong; but he knew that this would be gratifying his own frustration and anger, rather than applying a measured correction for her own amendment.

  "Lay over the bed," he said.

  With one anguished glance back at him, she stumbled towards the bunk and, after a hesitation, leaned forward across it. Roderick lifted the wet woollen skirt of her travelling dress, and found another two petticoats between him and his target. One by one he peeled back the layers of soaked cotton, laying them up over her waist, until he exposed the two plump, perfect orbs and the slender white thighs.

  He took his time in pulling his old leather belt from its hoops, letting her lie there, exposed, in nervous anticipation. Then he pressed his hand lightly into her lower back, bunching up the fabric of her many skirts and holding her, gently but firmly, in place.

  She twisted her head round to see what he was doing, and made a small whimpering noise as she saw the belt doubled in his hand. But she screwed her face into a determined grimace and looked away again.

  Another reason he had decided to have her lie over the bed to take her punishment—and apart from the fact that it required her to position herself, and therefore submit with grace to the chastisement—was that it gave him considerably more scope to swing his arm and bring the belt down hard and square on its target. Wielding the belt while she was across his knee was more for the sake of giving her a good taste of its sting. In this position, he could deliver a leathering she would remember.

  "This is for direct disobedience in a matter which could have meant life or death," he said, lifted his arm to its full extent, and swung the belt as hard as he could across both pale buttocks.

  He had struck the first lash without mercy, and the doubled leather hit the bare flesh with a resounding crack, but he had forgotten that water made the sting of a beating worse. Salt water, worse still. Elspeth let out a startled gasp that was half a groan and bucked her body upwards.

  He had forgotten that, but it was too bad. He had to carry on and give her what he had promised, if she were to understand that her behaviour must improve.

  "Hold still," he said sternly, pushing her back down onto the bed. "You will take the punishment you deserve, Elspeth, and you will show me that you take it willingly."

  "Yes—yes," she gasped, then, "Ohhhh," as he supposed that the bright red ridge the belt had raised across her white skin began to smart in the salt water. She reached a hand back to rub at it.

  "Hands out of the way," he said, in the same unrelenting tone.

  She sniffed, and clenched both hands into the bedclothes.

  "I told you not to let my brother or anyone know that I was alive, but you chose to write that information in a letter, and put it in the hands of someone you did not know, who could have done anything with it. Do you understand how incredibly dangerous that was?"

  He brought the belt down again twice in rapid succession, a little less harshly than before, but only a little. His anger and sense of disbelief was rising again as he recalled her folly.

  "Yes!" she cried. "Yes! I'm sorry! I only wanted to—"

  He cut off her justification with another lash, this time across her upper thighs. Her words choked off into a wail. "It doesn't matter what you only wanted to, Elspeth. What matters is that you should have obeyed me. And you will obey me in future, if you are to be my wife."

  "I will! I promise! I will! It hurts—ohhhh—"

  "It's meant to hurt, so you won't forget it. Now hold still, Elspeth, and take it like a brave girl."

  She made a gulping noise, and clenched her fists and pressed her legs together, and uttered not another plea or verbal protest as he slowly and deliberately criss-crossed her bottom and thighs with eight more swingeing strikes of the belt. Four from one side, and four from the other, so that the blossoming welts formed a lattice pattern over her quivering buttocks. Each lash began to draw an involuntary cry from between clenched teeth; he could tell that she was trying to take her punishment in silence, but as the pain of the overlapping strokes built up one on another, her courage broke down. By the fifth lash, the first from the other side, she let out a full-throated wail. At the next, she began to sob and did not stop.

  He finished the task he had set himself with the two last strokes, swinging the belt down as hard as at first despite her tears. Then he put the belt on the bed beside her, and gently took hold of her arm to raise her to her feet.

  "There," he said softly. "That's done."

  She stood before him, rubbing her bottom and crying still. "I'm so sorry, I really am. Oh! I am so sore."

  "It will wear off in a while. No skelpt behind ever stung forever. But the lesson, I hope, will not. From now on you obey me when I tell you to do or not to do something for your own good, or for my safety."

  "Yes. Oh, yes!"

  He took her in his arms then, and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his fingers, then bundled her none too gently back onto the bed under the bow windows. Stripping off his still-soaking shirt so that he was naked to the waist, he fell full on top of her and kissed her violently, ravenously. She responded with a gasp of mingled pain and pleasure as the weight of his body pressed her newly-thrashed backside into the mattress, and he found one stiff hot nipple with his mouth.

  By the time she parted her legs wide and eager for him, panting and arching her back, he was sure she had temporarily forgotten the sting of the belt. He entered her in one hard possessive thrust, with a groan of triumph and relief.

  He would never let her go again.

  They stood on a wide, wide beach, hot white sand underfoot and an azure ocean stretching to a hazy horizon. Elspeth held loosely onto Roderick's hand as they both watched the Heron diminish to a dark spot where the endless sky met the shimmering distance. There was no need to cling tight. He would not be going anywhere else without her.

  "Beannachd to Stirling," said Roderick. "I hope he makes it back to Venezuela and doesn't get distracted on the way."

  They had waved goodbye to Stirling not half an hour ago, having helped him to launch the row boat back into the water. Rather than risk arriving in a port, the Heron had simply dropped anchor at a likely point along what seemed to be the endlessly empty coast of New England and Roderick and Elspeth had landed on the beach with two trunks of possessions and a third filled with gold sovereigns.

  She strained her eyes, but she could no longer see the Heron now. Nor was there anyone or anything to be seen along the sweep of sands, or the woods and cliffs beyond. Not a house, not a road, not a wa
ll, not a man or woman other than their own selves. She knew that not far away there must be some kind of town or settlement, she knew that there were even great cities in America somewhere, but for now, they might as well still be at sea.

  It felt quite as safe.

  "Who shall we be?" she said eagerly.

  He was still watching the horizon, and took a moment to glance round at her with a questioning look.

  "You said we should change our names. Who shall we be?"

  "Anyone," he said, after a moment's thought. "Anyone we want. You may choose."

  "You are... Mr Black, for you were the Black Scot, you know. And I shall be Miss MacDonald, in honour of my cousins in Barbados. Miss... Angelica MacDonald. Though not for long, of course."

  "Now that is a name to live up to, Angelica," he said dryly.

  She laughed and tugged at his hand. "Let's go and find a minister, Mr Black."

  But they did not, or not immediately. The empty sands were too inviting.

  The End

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