Mayfair, London 26 August, 1872
My
extraordinary journey to embrace the way of the warrior
began in a posh town house in Mayfair.
On my wedding
night.
It was a London society affair replete with
the trappings of engraved wedding invitations, cascades of
floral abundance adorning the church pews and lavish gifts
whose glitter dared not be anything but gold. And me with a
diamond tiara atop my head ornamented with so many
pear-shaped stones I creaked my neck trying to sit like a
swan, though I was more the Yankee ugly duckling. Did I
mention we had a bishop among the clergy presiding?
I
can hear you groaning at my description, ready to toss the
book aside before we land upon the silken earth of the
Orient, fearing you have chanced upon the prim meanderings
of a young matron lost in romantic illusions before she
takes to her bed while her husband visits his mistress. I
assure you this is no such missive. 'Tis fire and passion I
reaped when I dared to abandon a life of privilege and taste
for the way of the warrior. Riding the wind to meet the
gods, slashing through the rain, my arms bending from the
weight of the heavy steel sword in my grasp, a dirk nestled
between my breasts near my heart. But I'm allowing my
passion for this life to raise a fever in me and deliver me
from the memory of what happened on my wedding night. It was
a different instrument of pain that made me twitch and moan.
An item worn and smooth and without the sharp point of the
sword but just as accurate to reach its mark.
A black
riding crop.
I shall never forget what should have
been a night woven with satin threads and romance, wanton
kisses and honeyed sighs. Instead, I was shocked to see my
new husband racing up the stairs after a saucy redhead and
whipping her plump backside. I ran and hid in a teak
garderobe that smelled of whiskey and snuff and mold. A
strange desire awakened in me, making me want to know more
about this suggestive, mysterious world that disturbed me,
stimulated me.
Are you shocked? Insulted? You're
a young woman of good breeding, I hear you say,
modest, shy. I'm Irish-American and proud of it,
though too often my fiery race is dismissed with a cutting
glance meant to be a public snubbing by stony-faced
termagants suffering from the social disease of snobbery. I
ignore them. I don't care about their political citadel with
its perfunctory restrictions and bloodless debutantes in
their swinging crinolines keeping their suitors at arm's
length. I grew up riding bareback, my hands and face often
gritty from digging into the wet, soggy bowels of the earth
to feed our empty bellies before my father made his
fortune.
I come from a hardworking, God-fearing
family and never had it in my mind that I'd live in a posh
house. But here I am, Thomas O'Roarke's daughter, Katie,
hiding and holding her breath as she watches the
intoxicating scene played out before her in this Mayfair
town house. Not what I expected married life to be when I
attended Miss Brown's School for Young Ladies, where I was
bred to become a grand lady by the headmistress herself,
Miss Herminone Tuttle. I wanted to please my mother (who so
desperately wanted one of her daughters to make a
successful marriage), so I dabbled in the folly of silks and
corsets, gossip and scented notes, singing and drawing
lessons, all necessities coveted by a girl of my nouveau
riche status to furnish her female arsenal. Day after day
Miss Tuttle lamented about my chatty nature, spurred on by
my insatiable curiosity to question everything. Not wise, I
discovered, for a girl born in a white frame house in the
Pennsylvania woods, a plain girl with more brain than bosom
who linked her dreams with her emotions and sensibilities.
No wonder I was rejected by every eligible bachelor approved
by the Knickerbocker Society matrons.
But it was my
mother, dear soul that she is, who established my power base
of teachers and dressmakers and embarked with me to London
with one goal in mind: husband hunting. She emphasized to my
suitors I had money and plenty of it. (My father is a
railroad tycoon, a self-made man with more guts than
schooling. He's a grand da, always encouraging me to be the
inquisitive lass that I am. "Katie, me girl—" my father is
fond of saying when we spar over a political issue "—you
have more fighting spirit in you than any man I've met." How
I love him.) But I had no real path, no realm laid out to
pursue my dreams. I often asked myself, What is to
become of me? We Irish often find ourselves taking up
the more unsavory professions, such as following the life of
an actor, or worse yet, a writer. 'Tis the gift of words
bestowed upon us by the rulers of the heavens, and I be no
exception. I find myself more oft than not in trouble
because of it, but I can't keep my thoughts to myself. I
speak before thinking, making my observations with a keen,
dry wit and at times without tact, which is why I kept
neither beau nor my mother's faith I'd ever make a match. No
amount of primping and lavender water could take the smell
of horses and hay out of this girl who crossed the Atlantic
to find a husband among the British aristocracy.
To
my mother's dismay, more than one London suitor complained I
was too quick with the sassy remarks and too eager to
express my opinion. She chided me for my boldness,
emphasizing that eligible males were more interested in the
sway of a girl's body than the wit of her words. Here again,
I failed the test. I was taller than the fragile English
girls paraded around the circuit for three months out of the
year. Thin as paper doilies they were and each one cut from
the same curlicue pattern. I was fair-haired and blue-eyed
and cut a good figure with a small waist, though I had
boyish hips.
Then the forces of nature took it upon
themselves to present a delicate rearrangement of destiny
(also known as the exchange of a great deal of money), and I
received a proposal of marriage. As was more the custom than
not in these hasty marriages, I went to the altar knowing
little about my husband, save he had a title and a manner of
looking at me that made my pussy burn with
longing.
My hunger for romance proved to be my
undoing when I allowed myself to be wooed by this deviant
aristocrat with wild black hair and a slight limp. His chest
and shoulders were broad and strong, his head held high as
was his ego. I noticed the wide dimple in his chin deepened
when he set his mouth in a grim line. Lord James Carlton was
as handsome as a prince of the realm and he knew it. He
exuded charm, though I would later discover this show of
assuredness and sybaritic demeanor concealed a different
side of him that when challenged erupted into a dark,
decaying soul.
I knew none of this when I accepted
his hasty proposal of marriage. Trying to hide my surprise
as well as my girlish pleasure, I fancied myself in love
with him and could not admit that what I felt was mere
infatuation. What did I know about love? Nothing. What I
didn't know I concocted into stories, romantic tales too
often centering around an idealized heroine created out of
an alchemist's bottle.
And now this display of bare
skin and beautiful breasts and round buttocks askew before
my eyes, what God himself had designed to covet the devil's
lust, made my mouth drop. How can I explain to you the
emotions racing through me? I was a young girl, barely
nineteen, and though I rarely admitted it, I was rather
naive about the ways of the world save for what enticing
books I'd read in this house, their salacious descriptions
never matching the rise of anticipation playing out before
me. I couldn't take my eyes off the girl's buttocks. Red
streaks crisscrossing her cheeks. Long, straight marks. A
wild craving hungered deep within me, something I never
expected, as if my dark alter ego was enjoying the
pleasurable lashing. I never dreamed so innocent an item
could induce such a look of pleasure on a young woman's
face. Eyes closed, plum lips parted, jaw slackened, head
back, glorious red hair tossed to and fro over her pale nude
shoulders, her expression could only be described as
saintly, as if the blows from the crop erased her sins from
her soul and she floated toward the heavens in a state of
spiritual ecstasy.
Hail Mary, full of
grace…
I envied the freedom she possessed to
accept the shadow of her other side, something I dared not
do. Though I prided myself on my independence and my modern
view of a woman's place in society I was, through no
accomplishment of my own, Lady Carlton, wife of Lord James
Carlton, his lordship born to Braystone House, a
fifteenth-century limestone goliath situated somewhere in
the Midlands and unknown to me.
As was this side of
my husband.
A mischievous giggle escaped my lips.
Who ever dreamed his lordship fancied a taste of the
whip for his pleasure?
Settling in, I'd had
little time to accustom myself to his persona since I was a
stranger to this new reality, but this display of flesh and
depravity took my breath away and evoked a different feeling
within me. A feeling that both puzzled and delighted me.
Sniffing the sweet, odorous scent between my legs off my
fingers, I smiled and accepted it as a sign of my readiness
to abandon my virginity for pleasures promised. I pulled the
thin wrapper closer around me and in doing so, awakened a
family of dustballs from their slumber. I couldn't deny my
ego was as fragile as the ball of dust I crushed beneath my
bare foot. It was obvious my husband took no interest in the
fact that his bride yearned for his embrace and had
performed a succulent toilette for his benefit. Hours ago I
had wiggled into a cocoon of peach silk and fancy ribbons,
insisting the maid loosen the lacings on my night corset,
then peeled down my white stockings and attempted to do the
same with the constrictions of my staid upbringing. I was
determined to enjoy this night, asking him to "Touch me
here, milord, and there.Yes, I like it. Do it
again."
I was at this moment without
words. Dry lips parched, I could only stare at the
scene being played out in the dimly lit room in the
five-story house in London's Mayfair district near Berkeley
Square. Flanked on either side by equally elegant facades, I
had been impressed by the crest of arms upon the gate piers
nearly obscured from view by the rich foliage surrounding
the mansion. No doubt so was the ribald behavior of its
occupants.
Cramped, I continued to watch my new
husband wield a riding crop with a dexterity that not only
slapped the pink rump of the willing girl with inviting
sounds, but clearly indicated his familiarity with both the
pretty subject and the leather instrument.
Calculated, solid blows. Each perfectly aligned and
making the girl cry out. Breathy whimpers at first, then
rising sounds both shrill and anxious, accompanied by the
fast, constant cracking of what I perceived to be a very
ordinary-looking riding crop.
Ordinary? I
shook my head. Nothing here was ordinary, I
protested inwardly, knowing far more than skin and flesh was
revealed here. I saw a man who craved power, who must
conquer, dominate. Such a man intrigued me, but I was too
innocent to see the treachery inside him that would eject me
from my ordinary world and into a place where temple bells
sounded to announce the changing of the winds, monks uttered
incantations to keep demons away and the echo of a man's
voice reverberating in a hidden valley urged me homeward. As
you can see, I find it difficult to pull myself away from
what has become so familiar to me in Japan, but I must
because it is important you understand the unique happenings
on this night that sent me upon that journey.
Curious thoughts pricking at my mind. Odd murmurings nudging
me not to turn away, but watch, listen.
Sigh.
I couldn't look away.
Strange
stirrings awakened deep within me, the same sensual, wiggly
feelings I'd experienced only when I rode through the woods
on my mare, my pubic mound pounding hard into her flanks. I
didn't resist the stream of pleasure overtaking me. I
imagined should anyone gaze upon my shocked face, they'd see
me wide-eyed and incredulous, then a slight smile, my lower
lip quivering, turning into a look of amazement then awe
that such a thing could make me wet.
Very
wet. Yes, I detected a stickiness between my legs
similar to what I'd noticed on more than one occasion when I
was near Lord 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.