Given to the Club by Emily Tilton
Chapter 7
Gerard
Helena squirmed upon the seat of the autocab, tears running down her cheeks at the pain she clearly felt from her well-thrashed backside. She nevertheless behaved herself in the autocab on the way to the clubhouse, but when I helped her out onto the pavement before the grand facade that bore the inscription Drake’s she quailed back, and then tried to take her hand from mine and to run away. I didn’t allow her to pull away, and an awkward moment resulted that I would rather have avoided—for her sake even more than for mine, and for the sake of my club’s honor.
The Drake’s clubhouse stands in the most fashionable district of Prosperia City, on Lourcy Street, the thoroughfare that runs between Founders’ Park and New Bond Street, where the best shops have their storefronts. As such, many of the best people in the city frequent that pavement, and as I conducted Helena toward the entry I saw two other women passing in front of the clubhouse. Their upswept hairstyles indicated their married status, and their eyes were curious to see the little spectacle my treasonous ward had decided to make of us.
Helena looked wildly about her. I watched her notice the fashionable wives, and I saw an unmistakable gleam of hope come into her eyes. I sighed inwardly as I perceived precisely what she would do—and instantly did it, calling out to the women in a desperate voice.
“Help me, for pity’s sake! This man is… is taking me into his club!”
I had of course no fear that the girl could hinder the progress of her interrogation and punishment in this way. Rather to my dismay, however, I had found that even as I had heard her pathetic attempt at a story to conceal her abominable treachery, and even as I had whipped her, my affection for Helena had only grown.
A young lady misled, her noble heart turned in the wrong direction and her intellect exploited by enemies of her world… Helena’s plight called out to me, just as much as her burgeoning submissive sexuality did. There on the pavement in front of my club, where I would soon have the privilege of deflowering her and enjoying her at last, I wished to spare her the indignity I knew she would now undergo. Miss Helena Breverton—I could see in the eyes of the ladies to whom she had addressed her plea—would learn in the next few moments how very badly she had misjudged her planet’s customs.
I gripped her hand more tightly and then drew her close enough to place my other hand upon her elbow. I hoped to make this difficult encounter as brief as possible, and so I began to guide her forcibly toward the door that our loyal old doorkeeper Jones had already swung wide to admit us.
Helena resisted with all her strength, her face wild and tears springing to her eyes. The fashionable ladies had not responded in any way except to look at one another. I could see that the expression they exchanged had a good deal of amusement in it, but I knew Helena would probably see only the sympathy that accompanied it. These wives understood how difficult a time some young women had in their courtship seasons, and their eyes had no lack of compassion.
“See!” Helena cried to them. “He is… he is…”
I could see no way to avoid it. Having secured the girl’s upper arm in my right hand, I turned to the women and doffed my hat with my left.
“Good day, ladies,” I said. “I apologize for this young woman’s outburst.”
They smiled back at me, and I heard Helena gasp at my side as she understood that these respectable wives had no intention of intervening in her duly decreed punishment.
“Has she been very naughty?” one of the ladies asked. I thought I could see in her dark eyes a hint of mischief, as if she would willingly have followed us inside the masculine sanctuary of Drake’s to witness Helena’s comeuppance.
“Very,” I replied, keeping my tone as light as possible, so as not to reveal to these women just how criminal Helena’s conduct had been, and perhaps to excite gossip concerning Mr. Breverton’s shocking lapse of judgment in allowing his daughter access to the documents she had stolen. “I’m afraid she has much to learn today.”
* * *
Helena
I felt as if all the breath in my body had suddenly been reft away. For a moment, truly, I felt I could not take another, that I would expire from lack of oxygen on that horrible spot, before the imposing stone portal that yawned just in front of me, with the elegantly dressed older servant holding it open with a horribly knowing smile on his face.
How could that woman have uttered those words?
Has she been very naughty?
For a moment I tried to pretend to myself that I had heard incorrectly. That she had instead said something like, Have you the authority to take her through that door? or even Unhand that young lady, sir! How dare you?
But the expression in her eyes, burned into my memory though I had turned away, looking for any other aid I might find in the vicinity, told me much more than I wanted to know about how matters stood—on my world generally, and for me in particular.
The woman who had spoken, clearly a highly respectable lady of the city, clearly understood precisely why a Prosperian gentleman would have to conduct a young woman forcibly into his club. Her silent companion wore a similar expression: she too knew that naughty girls must occasionally be taken inside such obviously masculine preserves, there to receive the terrible consequences of their misbehavior.
“No,” I cried weakly, darkness swimming before my eyes as my guardian propelled me past, toward the servant and the open door. “No… please…”
I thought that the woman would simply ignore my words. It would have been better if she had, for my state of mind at any rate. But she clearly had something in her own character that, to my horror, wished to see naughty girls learn their lessons. She spoke in a tone so haughty that the very sound drew a sob from my chest.
“Go in, miss, and receive what you have earned from your guardian, and from his friends. I hope you emerge a better girl.”
I wanted to shout back at her, to demand how she could live as a Prosperian wife, made to wear the horrid governor imposed by her husband, and wish a similar—no, a worse!—fate upon another woman. But the woman had already turned away, to whisper something in her friend’s ear.
The resistance faded from my muscles, and I allowed Professor Simmons to guide me the final steps to the door, my cheeks bright red and my whipped bottom making me wince with every movement of my lower body. The last I saw of those ‘respectable’ ladies was the look of amusement on their faces as they shared their mirth at my expense, and I understood at last that the shameful destiny assigned to me did not appear an outrage from the viewpoint of respectable society.
The things my guardian had promised, all the terrible punishments as well as the humiliations I had through my forbidden knowledge come to associate with marital relations… they would befall me in the edifice to which he had brought me. In the portal of that grand building, the servant in his old-fashioned black suit looked at me closely and smiled at my guardian.
“Hello, Professor,” he said in a voice that reminded me of the leatherbound books in my father’s library. “The gentlemen will be happy to see this young lady, I know.”
“Jones,” said my guardian, “meet my ward Miss Helena Breverton, who will be staying with us for the next few days to pay the price of her abominable misdeeds.”
I tried desperately to keep my face from crumpling into tears, but without success. I found I couldn’t look at the doorkeeper, but had to gaze at his shoes instead.
“She’s a pretty one, no mistake,” Jones said. “Miss Breverton, I hope you’ve made up your mind to be a good girl here at Drake’s. Professor, Doctor Elias arrived a few minutes ago, and he asked me to tell you to come to the morning room. I believe Batson has set up the chair there for you.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, hoping that perhaps what the doorkeeper said had nothing to do with me, pretending even that the words concerned some other matter entirely. My guardian’s reply, however, rendered that effort impossible.
“Thank you, Jones. We’ll have this naughty young lady in that chair in a very few minutes, if you’d like to come up and take a look for yourself. Her little cunny is quite an adorable sight, and I’ve thrashed her soundly so her bottom looks a pretty picture of well-deserved justice.”
My breathing came in little gasps, and my cheeks blazed like the sun.
“I shall ask Batson to spell me,” Jones promised. “Thank you kindly, Professor. Miss, I can hardly wait to see you in your birthday suit.”
I knew my guardian had carried on this horrid little conversation expressly in order to humiliate me, but the knowledge did not lessen my mortification in the slightest. My whole body seemed to flush as he guided me further into the building, toward a grand staircase in the middle of a soaring lobby. My consciousness of the reason for this humiliation, the lesson I had in store for what I had done, made my shame even worse. Professor Simmons had justice on his side, in the eyes of my world; if the facial expressions of the respectable ladies outside had told me anything, they had told me that both men and women viewed a guardian’s rights and duties as sacred. To my dismay, this idea made me feel faint not only with embarrassment but with other, much more complicated feelings—the same unwanted emotions and bodily sensations that afflicted me when the professor had punished and inspected me in his study.
Up the stairs we went, onto a spacious second floor landing, adorned with oil paintings of the men who I assumed must have founded the club soon after the founding of Prosperia City itself, three hundred years ago. Several corridors branched off from this landing, as well as two sets of double doors, one of them open to show a large room full of chairs, and tables with reading lamps set upon them. Sunlight from large picture windows at the far end of the room made me think it must be the morning room, even before I saw the piece of furniture, set close to the window, that must represent the chair mentioned by the doorkeeper, and a man in a white coat standing beside it.
Though I knew it could do me no good whatever, I tried to stand still, tried again to draw away from my guardian. Young ladies of Prosperia did not have to undergo the sort of medical examination for which that variety of chair was used until they reached eighteen. I had in my illicit research learned something about that kind of chair, however, and about the circumstances in which physicians employed it.
I suppose I should not have had any doubt before I saw it. My guardian had after all made my fate plain enough. To have the reclining examination chair with its gleaming knee stirrups confront me thus, however, with gentlemen of Drake’s club seated around it waiting to watch the procedure unfold, made me frantic.
“No!” I cried. “Please… no… I won’t… you can’t!”
I struggled desperately now, so that Professor Simmons nearly had to wrench my arm to move me forward. His right hand gripped my upper arm so tightly that I yelped in pain. I saw the heads of some of the men in the big, comfortable chairs turn to look at me.
“Oh, my dear,” my guardian said, his eyes narrowing as he controlled me almost effortlessly with his masculine strength. “We certainly can.”