The Blonde Samurai Read Free Page A

Carlton. James, he insisted I call him. When we first met, my mother doted on him when she discovered his father was a duke, then shooed him away when he revealed he was a second son. It wasn’t until his lordship made his business connections known to her that she convinced my da he was a proper match and our marriage banns announced. I had no idea then the marriage would set the course for a great adventure that tugged at the transparency of my youth and made me realize the life I led was as fruitless as rich, fertile earth without a plow to penetrate her, nurture her.
    But at that moment, hiding in a closet like a rag doll teetering on a shelf, I could think only of what my new husband was doing to the redhead and how much she enjoyed it.
    ’Tis not a sight for a girl of your station, I could hear my mother saying. Look away, Katie, before the devil himself claims your soul.
    But he already had. And what games he played in what I perceived to be a spanking room by the looks of the nefarious items I saw tossed about on the floor, strewn on the table, thrown across padded chairs. Wooden paddles, thorny evergreen brushes, a cat-o’-nine-tails, leather straps and restraints, manacles attached to wooden beams, a black hood, a high-back wing chair, even birch canes standing in a china vase filled with water to keep them pliant and green. I had read about such items, but I had never been privy to seeing them.
    I perceived here a woman desirous of a spanking, whipping, birching, scourging or prickly brushing could get her bellyful. The thought was scandalous to me. My eyes, wide with curiosity, stared and stared. I tried to swallow, but my struggle against what I was seeing and what thoughts it provoked in me tightened my throat muscles, nearly choking me. The idea of my new husband as master of such items altered my perception of married life and changed it from a light romantic flight of fancy and awkward physical coupling to a sensual, highly erotic, naughty union of flesh.
    Would he lay the crop upon my bare backside?
    No, he wouldn’t dare take such a liberty. I was his bride, not a woman of the streets or a spritely maid with a taste for domination, a pawn in the game known as the English vice.
    Flagellation.
    Was this what the two maids chirped about whenever I hovered near this room, this den of decadence? Dressed in shiny black polished cotton and white lace collars, cuffs and caps, the younger miss, Lucie, and Campbell, her older counterpart, made no secret of their curiosity of me. My American ways, my wardrobe from Paris, my light-colored hair bleached a pale gold from sun-drenched days astride my mare. They stared and stared, their sturdy low-heeled boots banging on the wooden floors as they scurried back and forth all day to make our rooms ready for this night….
     
    Though I wasn’t involved in the daily ministrations of this London town house, earlier I had overheard the two maids chattering about a night dark and decadent where his lordship might “fancy a lick or two with the belt on a mott’s pretty haunches before he found the keyhole to her ladyship’s door.”
    When I confronted them and asked what a mott was, Lucieblurted out that such a person was a prostitute from a low-class neighborhood. She was quickly rebuked by the older woman, a portly soul who wore her white lace cap on her head as straight as a ruler, and sent away, leaving the rest to my imagination. Campbell apologized for the girl’s insolence and insisted she was fresh from the country and knew nothing about what she spoke, then attended to my toilette, offering me no further explanation. I pretended to dismiss the incident, since I was certain the maid believed I had aligned my expectations about marriage with the puritan ideal that the wedding night was a dreamlike state consisting of whispers and rustlings in the dark. Nothing more. I dared not change that in her eyes lest she discover my secret.
    What I had found in the town house