Read Online Elizabeth's Education (Forbidden Lust) by Maggie Carpenter - Free Book Online

together, and he continued to hold it as they made their way along the landing to her room.
    She opened the door, smiling, but to her instant dismay she realised she had carelessly left her previous clothes strewn untidily about. The simple cotton dress, from which she had changed so quickly, lay on the floor, and a trail of grimy clothes, remnants from the morning’s events, led from the middle of the room to the bathroom.
    ‘Oh dear,’ he said, eyeing and assessing the mess instantly, his manner suddenly brusque, ‘what do we have here, Elizabeth?’
    Her heart jumped. ‘I, um, I d-don’t seem to have put my things away.’ The obvious was all she could feebly stammer.
    ‘No, you certainly have not,’ he said, his tone leaving no doubt about his displeasure. ‘And I consider it a personal insult that you should allow me to see your room in such a poor state of tidiness. Fetch me your hairbrush, Elizabeth.’
    She looked up at him, instantly understanding his intention, beseeching him silently, but he was unmoved. So she walked to her dresser, knowing all the while that he was right to be displeased with her. She should never have left things as she had, expecting them to be miraculously picked up and dispensed with without consideration.
    ‘What a mess,’ he said, closing the bedroom door. ‘You really are very slovenly, Elizabeth. It’s just as well I came up to see this, isn’t it?’ He looked around. It was a fashionable room indeed; artfully and stylishly decorated, all the accoutrements a young lady could ask for, including a handsome four-poster bed, draped with a flowing, diaphanous white fabric.
    There was a full-length mirror, which had two smaller mirrors hinged on either side. A cream-coloured dressing table was placed in the window, allowing her to view the gardens as she groomed herself. Delicate flowers were etched in the wood, painted in pastel shades. He walked to it, and taking the hairbrush from her hand, told her to turn and face the window.
    ‘From now on, Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘every time you look out this window, you will remember this moment. It might help to remind you that laziness and slovenliness are not permitted or tolerated.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied meekly, head bowed in shame.
    During their recent time together Elizabeth had felt a bond growing between her and Lord Michael. She had convinced herself that the punishments that had gone before, though necessary, were history, not to be repeated. But now she realised such was not the case. She was, and suspected she always would be, vulnerable to his disapproval and subject to his discipline.
    ‘Tell me how sloppy you’ve been,’ he told her, ‘and ask me for your deserved punishment, Elizabeth.’
    She felt the familiar blush rise in her cheeks. ‘I… I was very neglectful, sir, in my habits,’ she acknowledged quietly. ‘And I… I would be grateful if you would see fit to punish me accordingly… sir.’
    ‘Very well,’ he nodded. ‘You will lift your skirt, drop your knickers, and bend over.’
    She felt the tears in her eyes but obediently bent at the waist and leant on the dressing table, her bottom bared for the reprisal her poor show warranted.
    He moved behind her and placed himself as he had in the sitting room that very morning, facing into the room with an arm over and around her waist. He ran the smoothly varnished wood of the hairbrush over her naked globes, savouring the evidence of the morning’s beatings. Then speaking softly but firmly he lectured her.
    ‘Elizabeth, today you have done well in some respects, but you failed to follow those pluses through. Was it not obvious to you that you should have tidied your own mess? I certainly hope you did not leave it for Grace, for if you did I shall ask her to spank you when she returns from her day off.’
    ‘Oh, no sir!’ she cried. ‘That was not my intention, I assure you!’
    ‘Granted, it is her employment,’ he went on, ‘but as she’s