Given to the Club by Emily Tilton

Chapter 8

Helena

Inexorably he drew me forward, every step sending an electric thrill of remembered pain radiating from my punished bottom-cheeks. Still I struggled, though I knew both my tears and my limbs’ feeble attempts at escape could only humiliate me further in the eyes of the fine gentlemen who sat in the leather-upholstered easy chairs.

As I turned my head from side to side, searching desperately for some source of aid, I could see that the members’ interest in the young woman brought to the morning room by her guardian had increased; most of the twenty or so well-dressed men I saw had put their newsreaders aside onto the little tables that stood between the chairs. They regarded me with a mixture of interest, scorn, mock sympathy, and worst of all amusement.

I wanted to assume a dignified air, then. I wanted to draw myself up and to stop resisting Professor Simmons. I wanted to march in front of him with my chin high though the tears streamed down my face, showing myself a proud patriot, unjustly accused. Yes, I had broken the laws and customs of my world, but I had done so in defense of the rights of my sex.

Much as I tried, however, I couldn’t stop struggling, though the more I struggled the more foolish I knew I looked.

“Please… help me, for pity’s sake,” I cried to the men who watched my guardian march me forward toward the doctor at the other end of the room, and his chair in the best lit area of the large room, by the windows. “I’ve… I’ve done nothing wrong!”

I heard the professor growl deep in his throat at this protestation, and I felt my cheeks blaze. I knew that from his point of view—and doubtless that of every other gentleman in the morning room—I had just told an untruth. That knowledge drove me to a further desperation, and I began, when we had advanced halfway up the room, to say things which the reasoning part of my mind told me I shouldn’t.

“You… you tyrants!” I began, and though I could see in their eyes that I had driven all sympathy from even the most compassionate of these men, I felt a surge of defiant energy thrill through me, and I had the illusion of power. “You put your horrible governors on defenseless women, and think you have the right to… to…”

My guardian had me to the front of the room, now, and the gray-bearded doctor stood only a yard away, next to his awful examination chair. He shook his head as he listened to me, a sorrowful expression on his face.

Professor Simmons hissed into my ear, “Helena Breverton, you are about to learn what happens to young ladies who speak of things they shouldn’t.”

He used his grasp upon my arm to turn me about, so that I had to face the seated gentlemen, who had begun to murmur loudly at my last outburst. They all wore angry scowls now, and I understood with a rapidly sinking heart that by mentioning the governor I had outraged their sense of decency so thoroughly that any appeal to that sense would fall on deaf ears.

I felt my guardian’s left hand, coming across my chest, touch the fastener at my neck, and I let out a piteous cry as I understood just how thoroughly he intended to humiliate me. I was not even to be allowed to undress in some reasonably dignified manner. My gown fell away from me and within a few seconds, as I gazed down at the light blue carpet of the Drake’s club morning room with a deep crease in my forehead, I stood in my underclothes before the assembled gentlemen of the club.

I thought I had experienced the greatest mortification a young woman could know, then, but I learned very swiftly how mistaken I was. For the members applauded. They clapped, politely but enthusiastically, as if to acknowledge the gift my guardian had brought them, and the presentation he had made of my nearly naked body.

I wished to vanish into the floor and under the earth. The abasement had, however, by no means reached its limit, though already I felt faint with shame, and the blood rushed in my ears.

At that moment, along with the many other embarrassments this entry into Drake’s club had brought, I noticed that Mr. Miniver sat in the front row, looking of course straight at me. I couldn’t suppress a little cry at the sight of his narrow eyes and the slight smile on his lips. My hands, which I had managed to keep at my sides to this point, partly through my vain efforts to escape Professor Simmons hold on my person, now flew instinctively to cover myself, as the heat blazed up, an inferno in my cheeks and—horrid, horrid—elsewhere.

My guardian responded instantly, stepping behind me and taking hold of both my wrists, to twist my arms backwards and hold them there, not painfully but so as to ensure I must display my half-clothed body without hindrance to the eyes of Mr. Miniver and every other member of the club.

“Miss Helena Breverton,” he announced in the voice he must use while lecturing his undergraduates in the halls of St. Giles College, “has a great deal of false modesty, does she not, gentlemen? I assure you, she thinks it real, despite her lamentable tendency to speak of things a maiden should not even know of. Here she stands before all of you, and in particular before me, the guardian whose trust she has abused abominably—and Mr. Jacob Miniver, the suitor she teased with her charms, and who did Prosperia the great service of discovering this young lady’s treason.”

Again I wished to lift my chin, to show defiance. Again my resolve failed me utterly. I sobbed, and struggled feebly against the professor’s grip on my wrists.

“Mr. Miniver, would you do us the kindness of standing to receive our thanks?” he said now.

I closed my eyes as I heard them applaud the suitor who had—in my eyes—betrayed me. The consciousness that in truth I had betrayed him, and everyone else on my world, crept in upon me, but I pushed it angrily aside even as I felt tears begin to stream down my cheeks.

“See how she weeps,” my guardian said as the applause faded away. “She will weep more, today, if I have anything to say about it.”

Then, to my horror, he continued in his lecturing voice, but with words addressed to me.

“Helena Breverton, you are now to be examined before us, and to receive the feminine disciplinary device of which you so prematurely gained knowledge.”

I could only hang my head, my eyes still shut and my lower lip between my teeth.

“We will discover, you little whore, the full extent of your treason, and you will pay for it through the pleasure these gentlemen receive in punishing you and using you for their enjoyment however they see fit.”

Through parted lips I drew gasping, sobbing breaths. I tried to tell myself that I heard a reluctance in my guardian’s tone, as if he uttered the terrible public sentence with some conflict in his breast. I did not know, however, whether I had simply imagined that conflict.

The professor now addressed the doctor.

“Let us proceed. Miss Breverton has lost the privilege of deciding whether to remove her clothing of her own accord, so if you and Mr. Miniver will assist me in holding her in place I will strip her for the examination and installation.”

I don’t know if I would have consented to remove my camisole and my drawers if my guardian had given me the choice, but suddenly I felt desperate to do so, as some silly final assertion of my dignity. Feeling the abased modesty burn in my cheeks and knowing how fiercely I blushed, I began again to struggle against his hold on me, even as the doctor came to take my right hand and—much, much worse—handsome Mr. Miniver came to take my left, raising them above my head.

“Please,” I cried. “I’ll do it… please, let me!”

The gentlemen did not deign to give a response to this request. Instead they held me firmly as I writhed in their grasp, their big hands like manacles around my wrists.

The urge to look at Mr. Miniver came upon me so strongly I couldn’t resist it, though my reason screamed inside me that I would see nothing in his face that I wished to see. His blue eyes gazed coldly back at me as he held my arm high, and the little smile only widened a bit as I felt Professor Simmons begin to raise my camisole.

“No… please…” I wailed.

To my horror, Mr. Miniver answered in his usually pleasant tenor, the tone mocking.

“Perhaps you should have thought of displaying this sort of modesty before you betrayed your world, Miss Breverton,” he said, his voice coming to my ears through the sheer fabric of the camisole that now covered my face.

“Aren’t you the lucky suitor, Miniver?” asked another voice from nearby—probably the man seated in the seat next to Mr. Miniver’s. “Look at those sweet little tits.”

A ripple of laughter ran through the whole room at this degrading ribaldry. My guardian lifted the camisole up my arms, and my captors released my wrists for a moment so that he could draw it all the way off. Tears of shame leaked through my closed lids as I felt all their eyes on my little breasts, the peach-like roundnesses with the cherry nipples that I could feel stiffen mortifyingly under their gaze.

“You’ll have your turn, Bradley,” said Mr. Miniver, his voice so jocular that a hot thrill went through my whole body. Then he said, “Professor, may I?”

Confused as to what he might mean, I opened my eyes to see that Mr. Miniver had turned to look at my guardian with an inquiring expression upon his face. The doctor and my erstwhile suitor had lowered my arms but still held them outstretched from my sides, clearly wishing to allow the gentlemen of the club the best possible view of me clad only in my drawers and about to have even those taken from me.

Professor Simmons answered from behind me.

“Certainly, Mr. Miniver. I think it only fair.”

Then, to my horror, he and Mr. Miniver switched places: the blond man of business moving to stand behind me while my guardian took hold of my left arm.

I thought I understood the worst of what this new arrangement meant, but I had not grasped the half of it. I expected to feel Mr. Miniver’s hands upon the fastening at the waistband of my drawers. Instead they extended themselves around my sides a good deal higher, and even as I cried out in protest they took light hold of my breasts to weigh them gently and teasingly upon their thick masculine fingers.

“Wanted to do that for a while, have you, Miniver?” asked the joker in the front row. Another ripple of laughter traveled through the assembly as I closed my eyes and let out a humiliating whimper. The nipples that Mr. Miniver squeezed between his thumbs and forefingers now grew terribly stiff, and though I bit my lip I could not help the moan the forcible caress drew from me.

“False modesty indeed,” said my guardian. “Her little quim is doubtless even wetter than her eyes right now. The girl is a little whore who found about what marriage truly means and decided she could not bear to be a respectable woman.”

My moan became a sob that I knew betrayed the terrible truth of the professor’s statement.

“Let’s see,” the doctor said from my right side, his voice sounding curious. “We must measure her wantonness before we install the governor.”

“Yes,” called another man, from further back in the room. “Let’s see that sweet young cunt.”