Reforming Rebecca (Victorian Correction Book 7) by Emily Tilton

Author:Emily Tilton [Tilton, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stormy Night Publications
Published: 2017-06-01T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Mrs. Rand came to bring Rebecca down from her room to the drawing room for her caning a few minutes later. With Jenny’s help she had again disrobed, thinking bitterly but still without capitulation of the number of indignities it seemed must attend the life of a flirt.

She did not mean to apologize. She certainly felt not the slightest bit of remorse for calling horrible Lady Ambers a beast. When she thought of the cane, in the hand of the coachman, her heart beat fast and her hands shook, but Rebecca felt that she had reached some point of decision, and she refused to shrink from it.

Perhaps Dr. Brown’s instruction had taught her that the path she had chosen had many more turnings than she had suspected. It seemed apparent, too, that in future her life would be governed by the desires of those who had employed him to come to Rand Park and to ferret out the truth of her loss of innocence. Nevertheless, Rebecca had learned, too, from her interview with the doctor that while her body and her heart seemed to have some need for masculine mastery, she had also a need to defy any mastery at all, including that of the man who sought to bend her to his will.

She must show the world that the force coercing her, above all when that force did so without justice, would never break her spirit. Perhaps she should not have called the noblewoman a beast, but Lady Ambers had insulted Thomasina for exactly the same kind of behavior in which Rebecca herself meant to engage! They could whip her until her bottom plainly showed their cruelty to all present at this horrid household exhibition Lady Ambers had demanded, clearly thinking that the humiliation would overcome Rebecca’s resistance.

But the news Mrs. Rand brought changed the appearance of the matter enormously, though Rebecca felt no less defiant.

“Rebecca, I must tell you,” said the matron, “that it will not be Lady Ambers’ coachman who canes you.”

Rebecca frowned. “Mr. Rand will do it, then?” Part of her wished to beg Mrs. Rand to ask her husband not to whip her very hard. She did have to confess to her heart that she feared the pain of the rattan, the way it would burn its stripes across her poor bottom like no discipline she had felt. Dr. Brown’s strap had hurt terribly; Rebecca knew the cane would make her scream and cry and beg for mercy. It would not, however, make her apologize.

“No, my dear. It will seem strange to you, but Dr. Brown—”

“I thought the doctor had departed!” Rebecca interrupted very abruptly, her words tumbling out of her mouth in a frightened rush.

“No, Rebecca. He left the house to find Mr. Oakes.”

“Mr. Oakes?” Had she heard that name before today?

“James, the footman,” said Mrs. Rand, giving Rebecca a very meaningful look as she spoke, as if trying to determine exactly what lay buried in her wayward young friend’s breast concerning Mrs. Rand’s erstwhile servant.

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