by DJ Black
Where did this story begin?
Was it the day that Sylvia Burns decided that she would never marry unless it was for money? Was it before that, when Gerald Peters made his first million? Or is this a story that is as old as time, where a young woman of a certain outlook, shall we say, seeks out an older wealthier man? Who can say for sure? Who even cares? Sylvia Burns certainly didn't. Not after she had become Sylvia Peters. Not at first anyway.
In any case, Gerald didn't have too much to do with his wife and that was the way Sylvia liked it. Although to put this into some kind of perspective: Gerald had three houses, a castle, seven cars, a private plane, two mistresses and one trophy wife, namely Sylvia.
Sylvia was not your typical trophy wife. For one thing, although she was pretty, she wasn't what anyone would call a stunner. In Sylvia's own view she wasn't that well-endowed on the bust front either and her hair a dark brown-black was a far cry from the regulation blonde that such women usually sported. But she had good taste and money to indulge it. In fact she had just about everything she could want, when she wanted it.
The only trouble was Sylvia was bored. She had been on three long holidays that year already and when she had asked for her allowance to be doubled, Gerald had merely signed the cheque without a word.
"I only asked, because I wanted an argument," she said forlornly to her maid.
Tatiana shrugged; she had other things on her mind.
"Are you in trouble with Lady Granger again?" Sylvia asked in a lacklustre voice when she saw Tatiana wasn't listening.
Lady Granger was what the household jokingly called Mary Granger the housekeeper behind her back. It was on account of this woman that Sylvia had long since given up on the illusion that she had any say in running the house. A situation made perfectly clear to her on her very first day when she had asked for the rust-red curtains at the front of the house to be changed for blue ones.
"Blue ones," Granger had said slowly as if addressing a child. "I hardly think so."
And that had been an end to the matter.
The other peculiarity concerning Mary Granger and how she ran the house was her predilection for corporal punishment. The entire female staff lived in acceptance, if not fear, of the woman, who viewed their bottoms as a casual target for her wrath.
Sylvia, who thought she had seen it all, was so perturbed to be living in what to her lights could only be described as a BDSM nut house, that a month before the wedding she had complained to Gerald.
"Oh, I don't concern myself with such things as much as I once did, but it is rather fun don't you think?" he had told her dismissively. "If you like I'll have Mary Granger take you in hand. Perhaps even if you don't like, if you really want to cause any further fuss about it."
"I was only saying," she had said hastily.
After all she had been given a million for just getting married. The subsequent financial nuptial arrangements were worth considerably more. It wasn't even worth her while seeking a divorce, well not for 10 years or so anyway.
Back in the present, she realised that Tatiana was still ignoring her, which was the most interesting thing that had happened to her all day. She was about to ask again why the girl was so distracted when she noticed the maid bend over to turn down her bed.
As Tatiana's short skirt lifted up behind, Sylvia could see two smooth red ovals staining the maid's neat, pert and very bare bottom.
"Oh heavens, whatever did you do?" she asked the girl.
"Oh this? This is nothing," Tatiana said as she rolled her eyes and jerked her head towards her behind, "I have to report to Lady Granger later on for some 'further reprimanding.'"
"I see," Sylvia gaped, now transfixed by the view her maid was affording her. "How does she...? I mean what does she use to make it so red?"
"For this, she put me across her knee for about 15 minutes’ application of the sole," Tatiana said ruefully. Then seeing the puzzled look on Sylvia's face, she added, "It is a shoe-sized stiff piece of leather with a coarsened striking surface."
"Don't you mind?" Sylvia gasped.
"Of course I mind, that is the whole point, but it's better than..." Tatiana sighed, "You don't know about me then?"
Sylvia shook her head. Despite being Gerald's wife for almost three years, she realised now that she didn't know much about his household.
"My father is a big man back in Russia; I mean oil, gas and mineral rights rich. But he is rather old school," Tatiana sighed.
"So what are you doing here?" Sylvia asked.
"Growing up I got everything, I mean everything. I had a Lambo at 16 and private flying lessons and my own plane at 18. By the time I was 21, I was... let me say, in something of an experimental phase. Boys, girls, drugs... you get the idea." Tatiana's accent suddenly thickened somewhat. "Daddy not like it one bit."
"I can imagine," Sylvia mumbled, not wishing to break the girl's confiding streak by talking too loudly.
"One day there was I on a yacht in the Black Sea with two oligarch daughters, a former KGB general and a tiger..." Tatiana closed her eyes expressively and gave a quick shake of the head as she added, "Don't ask." Then she sighed. "The police became involved and one of the girls ended up in hospital. One of Daddy's deals went screwy and he ended up owing a lot of money, not to say some big favours to the Russian Mafia."
"Shit," Sylvia whispered.
"Shit, this is a good word for it," Tatiana rolled her eyes up. "Another is total fuck-up, well that is two words, but you get the picture I am painting."
Sylvia nodded.
"Well after Daddy whip my behind good, which was much too late in the day if you ask me," here Tatiana rolled her eyes up before continuing, "he gave me a choice. I either have to go to Siberia and work as this guy's total bitch for a few years or marry some man I hate, but who our family owed favours to."
"So how...?"
"I not like either choice, so I run away to London." Tatiana shrugged. "Daddy caught me of course, but by then he had met Mr Peters. That's when he came up with another way to teach me some respect for work and money and I don't have to put out, if you get me?"
"Oh I get you," Sylvia gaped at her maid, wide-eyed that such things could still happen.
"Mr Peters promised two things, a safe place away from the oligarch crap and a sound spanking when I needed it. He said 'a good spanking never hurt a bad girl.' He kept both promises and I a very bad girl."
Tatiana was grinning now. Sylvia smiled back.
"I not bored now," Tatiana said conspiratorially. "Not like you I think."
The smile was wiped from Sylvia's face.
Tatiana's story and her personal observation played on Sylvia's mind for days after that and she wandered about the house looking at it in an entirely new light.
Sylvia took particular note of Tatiana, who to her certain knowledge had stood at the foot of the servants' stairs with her bare bottom displayed for well over an hour; nor had that been the extent of the girl's discomfort. From the look of the welts and marks on her exposed bottom, it was evident that Lady Granger had applied herself to punishing the girl for some considerable time after they had spoken.
Several times, Sylvia made a pass of the pantry office in the bowels of the house beyond the kitchen. It was a part of the house she had never concerned herself with before, but now she realised that Mary Granger saw a succession of maids and other female staff there on a regular basis. And from the sound of it, a reprimand from Lady Granger always constituted a sound spanking if the mournful faces and rubbing of bottoms departing her office was anything to go by.
Finally Sylvia was so intrigued that she went and knocked on Mary Granger's door.
"Is there anything I can do to... I don't know... help maybe?" Sylvia asked.
Mary Granger sat back at her desk and looked her nominal mistress up and down with an appraising eye. The housekeeper had short sensible hair, that by the look of it had never been coloured and was instead a non-descript dark brown. But despite cultivating a severe look, Mary was rather pretty, Sylvia realised, at least as pretty as herself, but, she had to admit, rather less obvious.
"I don't know. Is there anything you can do? I can always use another hand to mop floors or scrub out the stable blocks," Mary said wearily.
"I was rather thinking..." Sylvia didn't really know.
"Too good for you eh, I thought we had been through all this before, haven't you got to go on holiday or to a party or something?"
"Tatiana said..." Sylvia began.
"She thought she was too good for it too, but I soon taught her differently," Mary said with a tone of finality as if she wanted Sylvia to go.
"Does my husband ever...?" Sylvia didn't need to spell out that she was referring to spanking.
"It's been known, but usually he leaves that to me," Mary cocked her head to one side as her mouth formed a perfect line.
"I see, but..." Sylvia looked at the floor.
If she left this conversation now, she would never be able to pursue it again.
"How does it all work? I mean, why... why wasn't I...? I'm just curious that's all," Sylvia continued.
"He has a vanilla face to show his business friends and he needs a vanilla wife to go with it I suppose," Mary shrugged.
A pained expression crossed Sylvia's face and she sensed that Mary's words said more about Sylvia's true value than anything she had in the bank. She felt her world recede to a single point of nothingness.
"Please I..." they were small words heavy with despair.
"You are free to do whatever you like," Mary said with a newfound sympathy. "You could just take the money and run."
"Yes but..."
An awkward silence fell between them.
To break it Mary said in an exasperated voice, "Very well, come here."
As she spoke she opened a draw in her desk and removed something.
"Wh-what?" Sylvia was taken aback by Mary's change of tone.
"I know how to handle girls like you," Mary said as she stood up and patted the palm of her hand with the short piece of leather. "This is called a sole. A moderate application of this will put you in a receptive frame of mind and then we will discuss how you might be able to help, if that's what you really want. If that is what you still want when I am finished with you."
"No look, I didn't mean..." Sylvia was transfixed by an emotion somewhere between shock and curiosity, a hesitation long enough to ensure she was bundled into place across Mary's knee.
"Let me go; you can't do this," Sylvia wailed, but she was unable to find the will to truly resist.
"What are you wearing here?" Mary chided as she rolled up the back of Sylvia's skirt and tugged at the virtual thong-like undergarments. "These are hardly worth the effort."
"What are you doing?" Sylvia cried indignantly.
"Shush," Mary snapped as she dragged the woman's knickers down and right off her legs.
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