The Mistress of Sternwood Grange Read online

  It started to rain. Preoccupied with her resentment of Celia, Amanda had not noticed the dark clouds gather to eclipse the sun over central London. The big spots of summer rain fell sporadically at first, but soon her bosom was damp, the ice-blue material of her blouse clinging to her swollen breasts. She skipped down the five stone steps, along the pavement then around the side of the solicitor’s office – a converted Georgian town house. She went down the narrow alley, threaded past a wheely bin and emerged into a postage-stamp-sized rear garden. A pair of French windows, open, would lead her back into the receptionist’s office, she calculated. Amanda approached, no real plan of action formed, cowering now in the steady deluge.

  ‘But I forgot –’

  ‘I told you twice. Amanda Silk was not to be seen until I was available,’ the harsh voice replied, cutting off the apologetic – almost tearful – receptionist.

  Amanda paused, keeping carefully out of sight.

  ‘I’m sorry –’

  ‘You shall be, girl. Forgetfulness can be easily remedied, though. I am going to give you something you’ll remember. Bend over. Across the desk. Quickly, girl.’

  Amanda’s blue eyes widened as she inched closer to the glass, spellbound by what she thought – but could hardly believe – she had just heard. She flinched as the glass doors were suddenly closed shut against the rain, leaving her unable to overhear any more. Pressing her breasts into the wisteria, at which her grazed nipples peaked up in protest, she sidled towards the large pane. Through its spattered glass, she peered in. The receptionist was bending over her desk, the bottle of nail varnish and half-eaten Flake crushed beneath her breasts. Amanda saw the varnished nails of the girl’s splayed fingers spangling under the glare of the desk lamp. Celia Flaxstone, her back to the French windows, had already dragged the girl’s skirt up over her hips and was now jerking down a pair of tiny black panties. The solicitor had grasped the elastic in her fist and her knuckles dimpled the soft swell of the girl’s buttocks as they were bared. The panties were left in a restricting band halfway down the thighs, biting into the flesh that they bound.

  Amanda’s throat tightened and her pulse raced as she watched the solicitor dominantly palming the bare bottom she was about to punish. Words were being exchanged – stern admonishment from the chastiser, penitent mumbling from the lips of the girl – but Amanda could not make out what was being said. She strained to understand the muffled tones, horrified yet fascinated by the scene that met her gaze. The straightened index finger hovering above the naked buttocks tapped the left cheek imperiously. Amanda knew that the talking was concluded – and that the beating was about to begin.

  It was incredible. Here, now, in Bird Cage Walk, where London at noon thronged with taxis, tourists and theatre-ticket touts, a bare-bottomed girl was about to be harshly disciplined.

  Amanda felt her slit softening with sticky warmth as, through the glass, she saw Celia Flaxstone stoop, retrieve a wooden hairbrush from the bottom desk drawer, then slide the drawer shut with a thrust of her thigh. Weighing the heavy brush meditatively, she thumbed the soft bristles as the polished pearwood back kissed her open palm. Seconds later, the solicitor planted her feet apart and unbuttoned the cuff of her right sleeve. Loosened, the sleeve was drawn back up to the elbow. The slender fingers gripping the hairbrush tightened around the handle. The brush swept upward, pausing at shoulder height. Across the desk, the bare buttocks clenched, fearful of the impending stroke.

  Amanda heard both the sharp sound of hard wood against soft flesh and the yelp of anguish. Twice, in blistering succession, the hairbrush swiped down across the upturned buttocks, reddening their peach tones instantly. The naked cheeks joggled beneath each fierce stroke.

  Amanda crushed her rebellious nipples into the wisteria, dragging her bosom against the tangled foliage to fuel the burning delight. Dry mouthed, wide-eyed and with a tingling slit quite wet from her excitement, she stared into the office as though hypnotised. Celia Flaxstone had administered nine slicing swipes of the brush across the scarlet bottom. She now inverted the brush to stroke the bristles across the punished cheeks. Despite the black panties binding her lower thighs, the girl across the desk wriggled and writhed, her white sandals threshing the empty air behind her. Celia, utterly in control, reached down and pinned the squirming receptionist firmly by the nape of her neck. Amanda slipped her hand under her mini-skirt and thumbed her clitoris as she watched the varnished nails scrabbling to grip the desk top. She thumbed more frantically as she watched the dominant chastiser ravish the cleft between the hot cheeks with downward strokes of the bristles. Amanda started to come: she must not, she realised. She winced as she grazed her knees against the wall, desperately trying to deny herself the orgasm she burned for. No, not here, not now. Across the desk, as the bristles licked at her sticky innermost flesh, the receptionist pressed her face on to the polished wood, planting a red lipsticked kiss into the reflection of her own mouth as her clenched fists drummed frantically.

  ‘Pull your panties up, girl, and get back to work. I want that will retyped before it is sent off to the Silk girl,’ Celia Flaxstone barked, using the hairbrush fastidiously now to sweep an offending speck from her shoulder.

  Retyped. Amanda, her brain a riot of confusion, grasped that single word – and glimpsed the enormous meaning it contained. She turned and scurried away, her heart suddenly hammering as she collided with – but caught and steadied with her trembling hands – a wheely bin.

  Cooler, though neither calmer nor more collected, Amanda slipped into the powder room and went straight into a cubicle. Seconds later, with her mini-skirt around her hips, and one outstretched arm against the wall to support her quivering body, she yanked down her damp panties and fingered herself furiously. Crack, crack, crack: summoning up each searing stroke, Amanda relived the delicious display of dominance and discipline she had witnessed minutes before. Crack. At the seventh remembered stroke of polished wood across writhing buttocks, her knees buckled. Crack. At the eighth, her belly dissolved, the muscled walls shuddering as they spasmed. Crack. Behind closed eyes she saw the hot bottom receive the ninth – and came loudly.

  Emerging from the cubicle, Amanda was greeted by the wide-eyed stare of three young women. Preening themselves for lunch, they had overheard her orgasm. They stood, open-mouthed, lipsticks frozen in midair. Amanda rinsed her hands, tossed her blonde hair and strode out into the busy restaurant.

  London was lunching. The Cypriot manager, a wily old fox, placed the single blonde in the blue blouse on a banquette in the window. A lamb to pull in the expense-account wolves passing by. Amanda ordered lemon chicken and a Sea Breeze. Gazing out of the window as she nibbled at a bread stick, she suddenly realised that she could just see, sixty yards away on the opposite side of the street, the solicitor’s office. It had stopped raining. At the next table, the three pretty young lambs from the powder room chain-smoked through their first bottle of Chardonnay as they pretended to ignore the wolves at the window. From time to time they would glance at Amanda. Looking up, she saw the curiosity in their eyes develop into a keen interest. Later, tackling her mango water-ice, Amanda tried to shut out the braying laughter around her. Three wolves had joined the three lambs at their table – the Cypriot knew his stuff – and champagne had been ordered. Amanda needed to concentrate.

  Her options were entirely different now, she realised. It was no longer a matter of simply returning to confront Celia Flaxstone about the will. Two significant things had altered all that. The words ‘bend over’ and ‘retyped’. Celia Flaxstone was a force to be reckoned with. That much Amanda fully appreciated. How to do so, she was not at all certain. Admitting her fear of the stern solicitor, Amanda scraped her spoon across her empty dish. Confrontation was completely out of the question. The memory of Celia Flaxstone burned as brightly in her mind as those strokes of the hard wooden hairbrush had burned that girl’s bare bottom. No, she decided, remembering some of the tricks her MBA had taught her. Lateral think
ing was called for. Subterfuge.

  She paid her bill but lingered over coffee. Before it had gone cold, Amanda saw what she had hoped to see: Celia Flaxstone emerging from the doorway, descending the stone steps into Bird Cage Walk and hailing a cab. Three minutes later – Amanda had calculated for five – the receptionist skipped down the pavement, yogurt and Walkman in hand, heading no doubt for St James’s Park. The hairbrush had not, Amanda noted, taken the wiggle from her pert walk.

  She left the restaurant, detoured to buy a Hermes scarf and a pair of Raybans, and mounted the steps once more. Inside, closing the door carefully, she stood by the receptionist’s desk, listening intently. She heard the ragged applause from the Oval as Atherton swiped a six. Mr Dobson was listening to the cricket. But where? Three oak doors were ajar, because of the heat. The middle office was the one where the will awaited her curiosity. Amanda tiptoed to the door on her left. Peering in, she smiled as she saw Mr Dobson sipping his pale sherry. Good. The Hermes scarf and Raybans – together with her cover story of buying a farmhouse in Chiantishire and needing guidance on Italian property laws – would not be necessary if she was quick.

  Inside the middle office, her search for the will proved fruitless. Damn. She could not risk staying too long, or making too much noise. At the Oval, the crowd roared as Atherton was dropped at the slips. Amanda froze, relaxing as she heard the cork to the sherry bottle pop softly. Defeated, she sighed and resigned herself to failure. Out by the receptionist’s desk, she paused, fingering the desk across which the girl had been punished. Remembering the wood spanking across bare buttocks, Amanda opened the drawer and peeped at the cruel brush. Fingering it slowly, her nostrils caught the unmistakeable tang of excitement and arousal. In the paper bin, she spotted the damp tissues. The receptionist had dried herself after the punishment, tossing the tissues away with the remains of her Cadbury’s Flake. Amanda smiled, thrilled to know another’s intimate secrets. Then she saw the will. Of course, she realised. Celia Flaxstone’s last words were to have the will retyped. As Atherton skied another improbable six, Amanda xeroxed the four-page original and made her exit unobserved.

  Two days later, with London sweltering under a pitiless sun, Amanda sat naked in front of a large electric fan. It whipped up strands of her blonde mane, the fine hair lashing her cheeks. It whipped up the corners of the pages set out in two piles before her. Amanda ignored her hair but pinned the rippling pages down with her thumbs. Drawing her knees up to her breasts, her frown of concentration deepened as she studied the contents before her. The pages under her left thumb were from Celia Flaxstone, supposedly a copy of her late aunt’s will. The codicil preventing Amanda from making any inquiries into her aunt’s affairs was clearly typed before the date and spidery signature. The pages under her right thumb were those she had xeroxed from the original will. They contained several references to her aunt’s enterprises – hereafter known as ‘the business’ – but no codicil.

  ‘Gotcha,’ Amanda whispered, peeling her perspiring breasts away from her knees and, splaying her thighs as she swivelled towards the electric fan, surrendered her hot slit to its cool zephyrs. It was already in the eighties, and the fan proved insufficient. Scampering into the kitchen, she raided a bottle of Krug from the fridge. Squatting back down before the fan, she raised a toast to Aunt Clare and then hugged the chilled Krug between her thighs, allowing her labial lips to kiss the dark-green glass.

  It was only after she had put the phone down that she was pleased she had decided to use the kiosk. Already, inquisitive fingers at the other end of the line would be jabbing at the 1471 buttons to trace her call. Using the phone in Westbourne Park Road, Amanda had dialled one of the two Suffolk numbers scribbled in the margin of the original will. Not her aunt’s home number, which she recognised. The other one.

  ‘Sternwood Grange?’ she asked, using the only clue buried in the four pages she had xeroxed.

  ‘Who is calling?’ a cautious voice countered, giving nothing away.

  Ignoring this, Amanda asked for her aunt by name.

  Amanda was in turn ignored. ‘Who is calling?’ the voice repeated.

  Amanda echoed her request to speak with her aunt. A safe gambit, she thought. It was checked.

  ‘One moment please.’ Amanda was being redirected.

  As she listened to the extension ring, she fed another pound into the box. The line went absolutely dead as the secrecy button was applied. There was a click. She heard breathing.

  ‘Sternwood Grange?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘How did you come by this number?’ a different voice countered politely.

  Amanda pressed on, ducking the challenge and asking for her aunt, carefully avoiding any claim to kinship.

  ‘This number is ex-directory. Who are you, please, and how did you get this –’

  Amanda, her hands now wet from the humidity of the phone box, hung up.

  The weekend brought the inevitable thunderstorm and, with it, a slim report from the agency Amanda had instructed to investigate Sternwood Grange. The agency had been thorough but the facts were meagre. Confirming the address and ex-directory number, the report set out its findings in two brief paragraphs. Amanda read them over and over again. Sternwood Grange had been acquired by her aunt six years ago. Not listed as either a country club or a private hotel, it operated as something of an exclusive retreat for the very privileged. Special Branch had been known to escort some of the more illustrious visitors. Set in deep isolation in a forgotten pocket of rural Suffolk, it had a heli-pad, but otherwise access was severely restricted and strict privacy maintained. It was still a going concern, Amanda read, but the agency could not estimate its worth or value, drawing a blank after persuing a financial trail that expired in an offshore company.

  One detail detained her. The female staff of ten were not recruited locally but were young women rescued from the wrath of Knightsbridge and Mayfair magistrates courts. Aunt Clare, Amanda mused, must have been running some eccentric charitable sideline, saving girls already in jeopardy from ending up on the game.

  As the thunder cleared over west London, so did her resolve. The next step was obvious. Contact Celia Flaxstone, accept her terms. Then get down to Sternwood Grange, in disguise. Seek work there, as a maid, perhaps. Just for a week or two, giving Amanda the chance to work out exactly how much this exclusive retreat generated and how much her late aunt’s legacy was really worth.

  * * *

  Amanda settled back into the first-class comfort of the 15.05 as the train pulled out of Liverpool Street and nosed its way out across north-east London. Gazing out at the winking beacon on top of Canary Wharf, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the carriage window. Her blonde mane was now a brunette bob, the cut severely chic. She grinned at the transformation. She had shopped in the Portobello Road for the most tarty outfit, dumped the Cartier and worked out a plausible cover. Things had got a bit hot at the escort agency, she would say. The police had visited, so had the VAT men. Amanda – Mandy from now on – needed to go to ground for a couple of weeks. She had heard through the other girls about this place. Sternwood Grange, a place where a girl could seek work and refuge.

  She dozed, lulled by the rhythm of the wheels. The train journey reminded her of going back to boarding school eight or nine years ago. Sleeping fitfully, she dreamed of those schoolgirl days – and nights.

  Days spent on the hockey pitch, serge knickers biting into her buttocks as, below the hem of her short pleated skirt, her naked legs goose-pimpled in the autumn chill. The shrill blast of a whistle, the patter of pumps, the squeals of excitement, the sudden rush of play. Her breasts bouncing loosely beneath her skimpy hockey vest, she would sweep up the wing. Off-side. Pausing to finger the annoying serge knickers from her cleft, she would plant her feet apart, gripping the hockey stick for a bully-off. A furious tackle: two panting, sweating girls. A collision thigh to thigh, buttock to buttock, with a spirited defender. Later, in the steaming showers, naked girls would shriek and g
iggle as towels were flicked across bare bottoms, bosoms were squeezed and nipples pinched, and old scores settled as new ‘crushes’ began. Sometimes, the captain of prefects would prowl the changing rooms, cane in hand. The girl who had fouled so blatantly would be called out of the steam and sternly instructed to bend over. Instantly surrounded by a dozen naked, glistening girls who shivered with excitement, the bare-bottomed miscreant would be slowly, searchingly caned.

  Then there were the nights. Murmuring contentedly in her dream, Amanda recaptured delicious memories of her boarding-school nights. The scramble for bed to avoid the swish of a slipper or sterner crack of a wooden paddle across upturned, defenceless young bottoms as the dorm senior patrolled between the beds. Lights out. Furtive rustlings as pubescent maidenhood pushed away thoughts of Latin unseens and the French pluperfect and secretly studied more urgent texts: fingers blindly reading the warm flesh between parted thighs. Lights on, abruptly. The dorm senior back to uncover and punish anything untoward. Forbidden literature, smuggled tuck, a trace of lipstick or any infringement of the spartan rules would merit instant chastisement. Amanda recalled spankings as discipline was dispensed. Lights out. Muffled sobbing from the hot-bottomed girl three beds along. Snuggling down into her starched sheets, Amanda would kindle her burning delight, her fingers busy at her hot slit.

  The train hurtled through Manningtree. Amanda stirred sleepily and opened one eye. Startled by her silver leather jacket reflected by the tinted glass at her shoulder, she smiled and woke up. She was beginning a little adventure, an adventure in which she would outwit Celia Flaxstone and defend not only her late aunt’s wishes but her true inheritance.