The Academy Read online

  THE ACADEMY

  The Academy

  Arabella Knight

  Rover Books

  New York

  www.RoverBooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction.

  In real life, make sure you practise safe sex.

  This book is made available in electronic form by permission of VirginBooks by RoverBooks.

  www.RoverBooks.com

  First published in 1995 by

  Nexus

  Thames Wharf Studios

  Rainville Road

  London W6 9HA

  Copyright © Arabella Knight 1995

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 0-7952-0055-2

  DOI 1335/0795200560

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The author and publisher specifically disclaim any responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Other eBook Erotica Titles

  Chapter One

  The deep blue Daimler purred effortlessly through the early morning London traffic. Miranda sat back, her soft, full bottom snuggling into the sumptuously dimpled leather seat. She was tired. Although the luxurious car was pleasantly warm, she shivered. The events of the previous hours flashed through her mind like a silent film. Caught red-handed on a dare-devil shoplifting spree. Bringing her boredom to Bond Street, as Rollo had smirked ironically. Being arrested — Rollo had vanished and abandoned her to her fate — then the helpless moments in the back of the grim police van. Interminable hours overnight in the sordid police station. The belated arrival of the family solicitor to haggle for her release. Worse still, being caught by those freelance press photographers (How did they get there? How did they know?) snapping their gleeful fill of her utter disgrace. Hours of shame and humiliation, severe enough to ruffle the confidence of Lady Miranda Davinia Gordon-George. Only eighteen summers old, she was already a svelte beauty, oozing the poise, the arrogance and the haughty pride bred by successive generations of sound money and social rank. Remembering her shame, Miranda shivered deeply.

  Behind her, the winking lights of the Telecom Tower were glowing faintly in the pale dawn. Ahead, she saw the blaze of orange sodium lights that marked the M4 as it rose up out of Paddington and strode on concrete legs westwards. The opulent Daimler nosed down Praed Street, whispered along beneath shimmering plane trees and came to a stop at the Notting Hill lights seven minutes later. London was stirring. The traffic was thickening.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Miranda asked. Her tone was sure and certain, for she spoke with a voice accustomed to command. Courtesy and politeness were unnecessary when one was either very rich or very privileged. Preferably both — which she was.

  ‘Your Aunt Emma has cancelled her Rome trip. She’s coming down to Wiltshire,’ the unctuous voice of Mr Porteous replied. ‘We’re picking her up at her Kensington flat before going on directly to Sandstones.’

  Miranda winced. What a common little man. Picking up Aunt Emma, indeed! One simply did not say such things. One called for, or perhaps collected, Aunt Emma. He really was a terrible little bore.

  Miranda shuddered suddenly. If Aunt Emma was coming down to Sandstones it looked as though a family conference was on the horizon. With her parents abroad so much — Hong Kong, and now the Gulf — Aunt Emma and her husband, Sir Peter Cranbourne (tipped for the Cabinet soon) had acted as Miranda’s guardians for several years.

  ‘Was she cross? About having to miss Rome?’

  ‘Quite furious, I’m afraid,’ Mr Porteous, the family solicitor, replied with every evidence of relish.

  Miranda groaned inwardly. There was going to be a terrific row. Aunt Emma had cancelled her trip to Rome. Sleazy snaps would soon be in the papers. Things were looking grim. Just because Rollo, a young blood despised by Miranda’s guardians, had dared to go shoplifting, an escapade that had ended in ignominy for her. Aunt Emma would scold her. Aunt Emma.

  The Daimler purred piously down Church Street, Kensington. Miranda dozed lightly, lulled into a fitful reverie in the warm, silent womb of the car. Aunt Emma. The engine murmured the refrain softly. Miranda stirred uneasily. In her sleep, she frowned.

  When she was almost sixteen, Miranda had blithely taken two twenty-pound notes from a desk drawer in the estate office in order to buy a new martingale for Toast, one of her two ponies stabled down at Sandstones, the family seat. Before she had time to replace the missing money from her own very generous and liberal allowance, the loss had been noticed. Aunt Emma had been in residence, running a rough shoot for Sir Peter’s political chums. There had been a little bit of unpleasantness with a Minister’s valet over the loss — Aunt Emma had been firmly insistent on conducting an inquest in the servants’ hall. Having grilled the household staff thoroughly, and drawn a complete blank, she summonsed Miranda for what proved to be an awkward interview. Unaware of the cloud of embarrassment created by her aunt’s heavy-handedness, and dismissing the sum as a mere trifle, Miranda had made the mistake of lying. But the piercing blue eyes of her indomitable aunt had been unsettling, and impossible to evade. More insouciant than penitent, and with vague explanations and no apologies, Miranda admitted to taking the money.

  The consequences were both painful and humiliating. Ordered up to her bedroom, Miranda had sat with growing unease for an anxious hour and a half. At long last, Miranda had heard her aunt striding along the corridor. Then the bedroom door had opened sharply and Aunt Emma had marched in. She had been wearing a snow-white silk dressing gown over a crisp basque. A satin sash was drawn tightly around her waist. A grim, inscrutable smile played on her pursed, full red lips. Miranda was taken firmly by the mop of her thick, blonde hair and spread across her aunt’s soft thighs. With her tummy nestling into the silk-sheathed lap, Miranda gasped in disbelief as her denim jeans and white knickers were peeled off slowly.

  The late afternoon sun of a warm, Wiltshire summer had been shining in through the leaded glass of her bedroom window, bathing Miranda’s pale, naked bottom in a warm swathe of shimmering gold. Then the severe spanking had commenced. Six firm slaps in rapid succession for having even dared to think of taking the wretched forty pounds. A brief but equally stinging sermon had followed, with Aunt Emma’s hot hand resting gently on Miranda’s burning cheeks. Six more harsh slaps, three on each upturned buttock, had then exploded in the afternoon summer silence, each fierce slap seeking and finding the tender, reddening curves of her exposed, joggling bottom. Those, her aunt had curtly explained, were a punishment for actually stealing the money. Miranda had squirmed and wriggled, but there was to be no escaping the burning shame and blazing humiliation of the chastisement. Aunt Emma spoke in low, curt tones, and all the time her flat palm had been stroking and rubbing Miranda’s hot bottom.

  As the brief, scolding lecture came to its conclusion, Miranda had felt her aunt’s thumb sweep acr
oss the surface of her satin-soft buttocks, pause and then come to rest in the gently sloping valley between her fiery cheeks. Time seemed to stand still. Even the doves in the stableyard held their sweet notes in their soft throats. Only the solid gold carriage clock on the dressing table had refused to be daunted and had ticked softly but determinedly onwards to the hour.

  Miranda, with all the fierce pride of a fifteen-year-old, bit her lip, suppressing the instinct to squeak with surprise at the outrage to her buttocks or squeal with discomfort at the painful punishment meted down upon them. She had not shed a single teardrop. Silence reigned. Thankful that the punishment was over, Miranda had slipped off her aunt’s soft lap.

  ‘Now bring me your hairbrush,’ Aunt Emma had commanded, her tone quite neutral and completely free from menace or rancour.

  Obediently, Miranda had pulled up her knickers and denim jeans and, scooping up the broad-backed, long-handled hairbrush which was fashioned out of hard, polished cherrywood, almost skipped back to her aunt. Kneeling down at her punisher’s feet, she bowed her crop of blonde hair into the lap she had moments before been stretched across, and waited for her hair to be lovingly, soothingly brushed. Instead of the anticipated reconciliation, more harsh words of admonishment bruised the sunbeam-heavy air.

  ‘Across the bed, young lady,’ came the stern command. ‘Jeans and knickers down. At once, please,’ her aunt had firmly instructed. Confused, and a little fearful, Miranda unzipped her jeans and wriggled out of them. Once more, her tight, white cotton panties were peeled off to flutter helplessly down to her ankles.

  ‘Over the bed. Right over. Hands out in front. Bottom up, young lady,’ came the crisp order.

  Stretched out fully across the bed, her golden hair splayed out along the deep, silk eiderdown into which her anxious face was buried, Miranda presented her already ruby bottom for what threatened to be an even more scorching punishment. Involuntarily, her small hands gripped the edge of the soft, silk eiderdown.

  ‘Lying is something we simply do not do. Stealing, that is of course wicked but understandable. Often necessary. Indeed, this family would not have got to where it is today if some of our illustrious ancestors had not been more than a little imaginative in their acquisitions of tithes, rents, land deeds and revenues from surrounding estates. But lying …’ Crack. The hairbrush spoke with a cruel note of cherrywood on naked flesh. ‘Lying…’ Crack. Again, the hairbrush had hissed through the air and savagely kissed the soft, clenched cheeks resoundingly. ‘Lying is simply bad form.’

  Aunt Emma had paused, the polished back of the cherrywood hairbrush hovering in mid-air over the squirming bottom.

  ‘Stay still, or I will double the punishment,’ Aunt Emma had warned in a voice of icy control. ‘Raise your bottom up a little. A little more. Dip your tummy.’

  Miranda had obeyed instantly.

  ‘That’s better,’ Aunt Emma had remarked with grim satisfaction.

  Four more times the wicked hairbrush, once an instrument of comfort and now a fierce tormentor, sliced the air to splat down across the juddering, rubescent buttocks. Girlish buttocks, soft and rounded as they suffered the stinging punishment, raised and offered in timid obedience to the cruel wood…

  Vrrrmmm. A dispatch rider, eager to turn right into Kensington High Street, revved his BMW bike harshly. Miranda opened her eyes, realised that she had been dreaming, and sighed with relief. The Daimler, dignified and unperturbed by the harsh motorbike, sat ticking gently opposite Barkers store. Miranda blinked away her fretful sleep and glimpsed the reassuring ears of Freddie, the family chauffeur, over his creased neck and blue serge collar.

  ‘Left here, we’ll cut across the Cromwell Road,’ Mr Porteous said with unnecessary urgency. Miranda noticed that the voice trembled slightly, betraying the fact that its owner enjoyed a brief taste of command. In Miranda’s circle, family solicitors kept silent and sipped pale sherry. Commandeering the Daimler had been quite an adventure for the little weasel, she reflected. Freddie nosed the big, silent car left, past the frenzied windows of Hyper-Hyper. Miranda gazed into the displays of silver, black and gold. A year ago she had spent a little over four thousand in one summer splash at the exclusive boutique, but now minor Royals frequented it the place was becoming far too middle-class for her. Similarly, at Henley and Wimbledon she did not bother attending the Leander Tent or Centre Court any more, but simply went to the champagne and champions’ supper parties secluded from the common gaze.

  As the stately Daimler whispered to a silent halt in a leafy square deep in South Kensington, Miranda pretended to be asleep. It would be simply hell, she thought, if her stern Aunt Emma and the odious Mr Porteous started to go to work on her en route to Sandstones. She really needed to shower and dine before all of that tiresome business. A splendidly liveried doorman, one of the very few retained in London, ushered Aunt Emma into the confessional silence and gloom of the Daimler. The door clunked expensively and reassuringly behind her. She fussed with her mink stole impatiently.

  ‘Wretched girl. Wretched business,’ she fumed, vigorously closing the partition glass to deny Freddie the chauffeur the opportunity to take any further pleasure in the family crisis. From under her fluttering eyelids, Miranda saw Freddie glimpse back at her in his mirror. He winked. Despite herself, she grinned.

  The family conference proved to be sticky going.

  After arriving at Sandstones, Miranda had luxuriated in a fifteen-minute shower. The icy sluicing left her invigorated. Then, towelled and softly talcumed, she had slipped into tight, pale, thigh-hugging, bottom-moulding, powder blue Shantung silk slacks and had eased herself into the embrace of a cherry pink cashmere jumper. Splashing orange water liberally onto her wrists, between her breasts, across her pale white belly, she took the familiar sweeping oak staircase of the Wiltshire residence three steps at a time down to the spacious dining room. She had deliberately not worn a brassie`re, planning to sit directly opposite the toad, Porteous, and relish his turning pink as her soft bosoms bounced within their loose cashmere bondage.

  She really was a bitch, she thought, laughing to herself. But the atmosphere in the dining room was markedly strained. Tense, even. Aunt Emma sat next to Mr Porteous, chivvying grilled oysters onto a solid silver fork. She sighed impatiently between each liquid mouthful. Her diffident husband, Sir Peter Cranbourne, sat slightly apart, a green minis-terial box stamped with three crowns open at his elbow. He slowly consumed Treasury statistics together with the celery and Stilton soup before him. Lunch was underway, and taken in the main in a loud silence that became oppressive as the warm lobster salad was cleared and mango water-ices were served. Miranda played safe with black grapes and coffee. As ever, Mr Porteous ate loudly and greedily. When Sir Peter had swilled his balloon glass expertly to judge the cognac, his increasingly impatient wife broke the lowering silence.

  ‘Scandalous,’ she commenced with a harsh bark.

  ‘We certainly have been hearing some worrying things, to be sure. Most worrying,’ Sir Peter bleated mildly.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Aunt Emma snapped. ‘The girl’s completely out of hand.’

  ‘If I may say so,’ chimed in the weasel Porteous, unctuously dabbing his thin lips with a white napkin, ‘the charges were certainly of a very embarrassing if not actually grave nature, I venture to suggest.’

  Miranda detected the accusing whine in his tone. As ever, he was anxious to keep well within the Aunt Emma camp. She drew a deep breath. It was going to be a tedious afternoon. Boring. Boring. Boring.

  Playing absently with her coffee spoon, Miranda glanced up briefly and caught a glimpse of the majestically angry frown that glowered on her aunt’s stern face. She shivered slightly. Thank goodness she was now too old for another apppointment with that cherrywood hairbrush. Miranda giggled slightly, stopping abruptly when she caught her aunt’s fierce eye resting on her.

  ‘Well,’ Sir Peter drawled, opening his hands expansively. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Dubai and I’ve managed to
square things with your parents. They were most perturbed. Most perturbed. Your mother was quite relieved to learn that the charges have been dropped.’

  ‘Put aside,’ Mr Porteous interjected. ‘Merely put aside, Sir Peter.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so.’ Her uncle nodded vaguely.

  A sudden sense of relief swept over Miranda.

  ‘I have taken care of all the details,’ the toad solicitor simpered.

  The details. Shoplifting with Rollo of whom they disapproved. And the press there on the spot, as if by some black miracle, for the disgrace. Miranda studied the squat, oily solicitor carefully, and with a sudden rush of apprehension realised how she would hate to be indebted to this weak yet insidious little bully. How merciless and how cruel he would prove to be to anyone in his clutches. The fearful moment passed.

  ‘That Rollo. Bad blood there. Needs a spell in the army,’ Aunt Emma thundered, tracing back Miranda’s disgrace to the first causes. ‘Anything in the Ninth and Twelfth Lancers, Peter?’ she trumpeted.

  ‘I’ll speak with a chap I know, my dear,’ Sir Peter promised vaguely.

  Gosh. Poor Rollo, Miranda thought. In a year’s time he’ll be heading up a line of armoured Saracens as they bounce across Salisbury Plain.

  ‘As for those press photographs, I have concluded my negotiations. The prints and the negatives have been destroyed. For a not inconsiderable sum,’ Mr Porteous said, timing his contribution for maximum effect.

  ‘How much?’ roared Aunt Emma, purpling.

  ‘Three thousand. A syndicate had put in a bid for sole rights. I had to work quickly. I’m afraid I had to use Sir Peter’s name with the editor.’

  Damn you, Miranda cursed. The weasel was really putting the knife in now. Why? What possible reason could he have for making things so unpleasantly hot for her?

  ‘Outrageous,’ spluttered Aunt Emma. ‘Too damn close a call. I’ve had to cancel Rome. Your parents are distraught.’