Given to the Club by Emily Tilton

Chapter 1

Helena

“You had better take off your clothing, Helena,” Professor Simmons, the guardian into whose care my parents had placed me, said.

According to the custom of Prosperia colony, I had come to visit him as the first step in my courtship season, the beginning of the process by which I would become a wife, and a full citizen of my world.

I stared at him with wide eyes. We stood in the study of his rooms at St. Giles College in Prosperia University. I had never seen a bachelor’s residence before, let alone one in the masculine bastion of a university, where women came only on special festival days, or—as in my case today—at the invitation of a don. It had already cost me a good deal of embarrassment to pass beneath the eyes of the porter and the two undergraduates I had seen in the stairwell, who regarded me as they might look at an exotic animal.

Professor Simmons’ rooms had the same rich aroma of pipe tobacco as my father’s library did, a fragrance my mother always called ‘fusty’ and was forever trying to get rid of, or at least to keep contained to my father’s sanctum. Even the entry hall of Professor Simmons’ abode breathed with that masculine scent, however, and it had made my brow crease as I had crossed the threshold.

I had looked at my reflection in the hall mirror, though—at least my new guardian had one of those, to assist his lady visitors in arranging themselves properly. I had seen my pretty face, my golden curls under my stylish blue bonnet, and I had followed Professor Simmons into his study, with the shelves of books lining the walls and the desk of dark polished oak.

Then he had turned to me, crossed his arms over his tweed-clad chest, and instructed me to undress.

“What did you say, Professor Simmons?” I asked.

I honestly thought I had heard my new guardian wrong, though the very possibility that he might have just told me to disrobe had sent a fiery blush to my ordinarily very pale cheeks.

“Your blushes do you credit,” Mr. Simmons replied, looking me up and down in a way that only made the heat in my face blaze hotter. “As your parents told me, you have received the education suitable to the station to which your family and your world call you—including the inculcation of maidenly modesty. You are a lovely young woman, ready for courting by the suitors I approve, all of whom will, I’m sure, count themselves extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to prove themselves worthy of your hand.”

Through this speech, despite my best efforts, I could not help chewing delicately on the inside of my lower lip, a habit I despised in myself for the weakness it showed. My schoolmates did it, I had noticed, at the mention of the other sex, those mysterious creatures we knew only in our fathers and brothers and occasional guests—always, even in the case of our family, kept at a distance, away from the feminine sanctuaries of girls’ school and young women’s social clubs.

Thus the founders of Prosperia colony had arranged it, in order to return at least our world’s portion of humanity to a golden age of material wealth and moral rectitude. Now I had reached my eighteenth birthday, and the next phase of my own contribution to my planet’s greatness would begin. I would marry the man I chose from among the suitors my guardian selected.

I would learn all the things about which my teachers at girls’ school said, “And that, Helena, is a matter for another day, when you are a married woman. Your husband will instruct you in such things, to the extent he wishes.”

For I had been a very curious girl at school, asking for examples about Prosperia’s origins in the first migration, from our mother world, Magisteria—why had our founders left such a wealthy, powerful world? Why did it seem that we alone knew how to regulate society?

Those questions tended to receive gentler responses than the ones I asked about men, and about marriage, but the final answer always remained the same: your husband will tell you of such things, if he wishes you to know them.

That had become the reason I, like my schoolmates, took my lower lip between my teeth at the mere mention of marriage. I loved my father dearly, but he frightened me a little—not because he showed my mother or me, his only child, any harshness, but because he seemed so distant. I could hardly imagine asking him about the founding of Prosperia, let alone about men, though I had even less capacity to imagine asking any other man about what it meant to belong to his gender, let alone the man who it seemed I would have no choice but to call my husband and to address as sir, the way my mother did my father.

Watching my mother, and how she responded to his polite requests at home for the newspaper or for a particular dish at dinner, I wondered if she had asked him such questions, when they first wed. Her sphere seemed so different from his: had she ever been as curious as I?

Surely if anyone could answer questions, a professor could? I looked at Professor Simmons and quailed, for he seemed quite disinclined to answer a young woman’s inquiries on any topic whatever, let alone the matters that my teachers at girls’ school had placed so firmly in the forbidden category of marital affairs.

And yet, it seemed, he had just instructed me to disrobe. He continued, “Yes, lovely. I am sorry to have to violate your modesty, but as your guardian this task falls to my lot. I’m afraid you heard me correctly. Please remove your clothing, or I shall be forced to do it myself. I’m rather surprised your mother didn’t inform you of the nature of your visit here today, but so be it: she has always been a rather timid woman, though possessed of a gracious and gentle nature.”

I stared at the professor, my lips parted. I had no idea whether I should thank the tall, dark, neatly bearded man for the compliment to my family, or object to his calling my mother timid. Those two possibilities, however, seemed extremely remote in comparison to my suddenly desperate need to know what in fact I had come to my new guardian’s rooms to do, or to undergo.

“You are here,” he told me rather coldly, “for an instructional inspection.”

“A what, sir?” I asked, feeling my eyes go very wide. I don’t suppose I had ever known that two such innocent words could come together into so very alarming, and yet so terribly vague, a phrase.

“You heard me, Helena Breverton,” my guardian said. “As your guardian, to prepare you for marriage, I must inspect you thoroughly, and tell you certain important facts about courtship and marriage. We will have these inspections weekly, until you choose a suitor. Thereafter, he will be the one to inspect you. At that time, you will also go with your mother to the doctor for your premarital examination.”

I had heard about a prospective bride’s visit to the doctor’s office, and though what occurred there remained a closely guarded secret, I had seen my married friends blush when the topic arose—so of course here, with the professor, I blushed myself, and lowered my eyes to the bare surface of his desk, behind which he had taken his seat.

Regarding me now with what seemed a calculating air, as if he meant to gauge my reaction in the color of my cheeks, he said, “Some guardians prefer to leave the majority of the instruction involved in these matters to the girl’s husband, but as an educator myself I consider it worth my time to provide a young lady with more information, arming her—so to speak—for the courtship campaign that awaits her. You will therefore spend a good deal of time here with your knickers down, Helena. Let us begin. Please put your hat on the table over there, and remove your dress.”

My jaw had slackened. At the very same time I realized that Professor Simmons meant to inform me of the very things as to which I had felt such curiosity, part of my mind came to the conclusion that I didn’t truly wish to know about those things after all. It seemed from what my guardian said that they must be learned in the most humiliating—unthinkably shameful, indeed—way imaginable.

I stood mute before him, my eyes casting about, seeing the table he had meant, my cheeks aflame at the thought even of removing my favorite blue hat and placing it there, let alone my matching gown.

He had said the word knickers. Only at that point did my mind fully register that I had just heard my guardian use a word I had—I realized—thought men must not even know. I could never imagine my father saying knickers, at any rate. My blush only grew fiercer as I began to understand just how much about the other sex I didn’t understand.

Much, much worse, Professor Simmons had said I would… I could barely conceive of it at all… he had said I would spend time in his study with my knickers down. I swallowed hard, and my eyes closed against the sight of the room that had itself become shameful.

“Helena, my dear,” my guardian said, a tinge of regret coming into his tone, “it seems we will have to begin with a lesson in obedience. I did not wish to have to do this, but spirited young ladies like yourself who have not received proper discipline at home do often require it. Once you are undressed you will receive six strokes of the cane for this hesitation to obey me. It will be twelve if you delay any further.”