Page 11 of The Taking of House Westwood

Sandra wondered if the young woman might be paid a visit by a few of Miriam’s soldiers in the near future. The Lady’s tastes were well known to her subjects. Judging by Miriam’s avid, dark-eyed gaze as she watched the flogging, the punished wife might soon find herself the newest addition to the Lady Westwood’s retinue of “serving girls”.

The man, running his hand over the bright red stinging buttocks of his wife turned to the crowd once more. “Would anyone else like to address my wife’s misdeeds? Anyone?”

The bound woman snapped her head around, looking at her husband over her shoulder. “Kenneth, please no!” Her face was a mess. Tears drenched her flushed cheeks, her fair hair matted to her wet forehead. She cried out as he cracked a heavy palm across her backside, the flesh quivering with the blow.

“Quiet, Em! You know better than to speak. Face forward now.”

His wife turned her face away, resting her forehead against the post. Her back hitched as she wept.

“My arm grows tired,” the husband called out, raising the flogger. “Surely, there is another who can deliver the last fair dose of discipline she so obviously needs?”

Miriam clutched the Countess’s hand in hers. “Watch this.”

“I will try.” A mature woman of perhaps forty, her dark hair flowing over a form-fitting dress of teal cotton stepped forward from the murmuring crowd. “I think I can give her what she needs.”

The crowd roared its approval, several hands clapping the woman on the back in encouragement. The heat between Sandra’s thighs increased as she noted the firm set of the man’s strong jaw, and the glittering gaze under prominent brows. She could see steel in the depths of his eyes as he smiled at the woman who’d stepped forward. There was a heated familiarity there.

“That’s her,” Miriam whispered.

“Who?”

“That woman is her former competitor. The woman from the market.”

Sandra gasped, even as her pussy leaked a bead of moisture down her thighs. Diabolical indeed. “That poor woman must have a hard go of it married to such a brute.”

“Oh, let’s not protest overmuch,” Miriam said, elbowing her friend. “He’s a fine specimen too, Sandra. She’s lucky to be in such capable hands.”

She wouldn’t argue it, for she was drawn inescapably to hard, even cruel men. Men such as her own husband — bastard though he sometimes could be — were irresistible to her. Sandra herself possessed the same streak of cruelty, though it was not quite as pronounced as the outright sadism her friend Miriam was known for. She’d long ago stopped asking herself why she was the way she was, and just accepted it as the way of her nature.

The woman gripped the flogger as the husband stepped forward to stand next to the post, his hand bracing the heaving shoulder of his weeping wife. The crowd hushed once more in anticipation. The woman glanced up at the husband, who nodded his head.

The flogger slashed in with a smack, leaving a further set of tracks on the vulnerable buttocks, and the wife groaned, twisting her hips away.

“Hush now, Em,” the husband said in a low voice, his head close to his wife’s ear. “Just a few more strokes and it’ll be all over. Be strong now, my love.”

His wife’s shift had slipped down somewhat, partially concealing the martyred buttocks. The aggrieved woman, the tails of the whip swinging back and forth in her hand, waited as the husband stroked a hand down his wife’s flank, his fingers gathering up the folds of her shift to secure it high up on her hips once more.

“Come, Sandra, I’ve something else to show you.” Miriam laced her arm in her friend’s, leading her away from the fascinating scene.

The sound of the next strike of the flogger greeted their ears as the two nobles strolled through the massive black doors of the inner keep.

Chapter Five

McClearn Farmstead

Clayton McClearn and his friend Isaac Galt rode along the dusty ridge demarcating the northern boundary of the McClearn farmstead. The morning sun beat down on the fields mercilessly. It was shaping up to be an unseasonably hot day for so late in the year.

Two oxen, dragging a massive iron-tined plow toiled in the field below, turning over the cropland. A young man in grubby coveralls and a broad-rimmed hat cracked a long whip above the animals’ backs, urging them to struggle onward. The crop yield had been plentiful that year, and the subsequent auctions at Wyndhaven and Steerton had been quite successful. Such good news however, did little to raise Clayton’s spirits.

“What news from the Frontier?” Clayton wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow. “I’ve heard nothing in weeks. It’s unusual for it to be this quiet.“

“Lord Westwood has been on the Frontier for at least the last two months.”

Clayton cursed under his breath. “Now it makes sense.“

Isaac grimaced, his graying dark hair blowing in a sudden gust of wind. “Most of what I hear is just talk. It’s been so long since the last Incursion. What if we’re overdue for one?”

“We are, Isaac.”

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