Chapter 1

 

Gerald Harvey sat calmly at the antique desk in his beautiful, book-lined study in the magnificent old house that had been built by his great-great-great-grandfather in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Harveys were offshoots of a very old English noble family and they had done very well for themselves in the new country. And contrary to many such dynasties, each generation had contributed to and not taken away from the family's wealth and prestige.

There had been no black sheep and Gerald's assets, outside of this great house in Toorak, Melbourne's premier suburb, the country property at Mount Macedon, the beach house at Portsea and the apartment up on the Gold Coast of Queensland, numbered in the order of three billion dollars, all in blue chip property or other investment interests and he himself had already added another ten percent since his father had died suddenly two years ago. His sister had been endowed with a very generous trust fund of her own but the bulk of the estate had come to him as the firstborn.

Gerald is a grave, very dignified young man of twenty-nine years who is very conscious of his position in society and the duties of noblesse oblige that have been a hallmark of his family every since emigrating here to the colony of Victoria in a land that would become Australia at the turn of the century. He is also a fitness fanatic and examines his naked body in the full-length mirror in his bathroom every morning for the slightest sign of fat or a blurring of the fine musculature of his slim body.

But today is Saturday and every Saturday he undertakes a full and very intrusive examination of his wife's body, here in his study and with Simpson, his butler in attendance. Amelia is also a blueblood, having come from the de Winter clan whose pedigree goes back as far as Gerald's own.

Gerald loves his wife very much but he is also very strict with her. He has to be-every husband has to be, these days...

Let me explain. The women's liberation movement started late in the nineteenth century but gathered momentum during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By the middle of the latter, it had reached the stage where women had attained a majority in the House of Representatives in the Commonwealth parliament-and they then moved to disenfranchise men as being incompetent and unworthy of the vote. It passed both houses but the governor-general of the day, refused to sign it as being unconstitutional and ordered new elections.

Men were returned to a vast majority of the seats in both the House and the Senate and they then retaliated by disenfranchising women-totally. Women were also banned from universities and were sacked in their thousands from the higher positions in the professions, business and industry. In short, they were sent back to the position they had held in the early part of the twentieth century.

Women were no longer permitted to own property. They could not have bank accounts of their own and were made subservient to a male. In the first instance, it was to their father or legal guardian (who, of course, had to be a male). When they married, it was their husband who was made responsible for their actions and behaviour. If their father or legal guardian died and they could find no other male to take over responsibility for them, they became wards of the state-and that meant slave, even if the term wasn't used. They were housed in the workhouse and could be hired or even bought from it as a drudge.

As a housewife, her primary responsibility was the house and the children. The house had to be spotless, meals tasty, economic and delivered on time. The children were expected to be clean and tidy, polite and studious. Sports were permitted and encouraged for both wives and children were required to be fit and healthy.

In your normal suburban household, this meant the wife had to attend to all these duties herself. In a large mansion, such as Gerald's, it meant she had to manage the servants so that everything ran smoothly for her husband's comfort and welfare.

And so now Gerald waited for Simpson to deliver his wife to his presence. She was not permitted to merely come down at the appointed hour, enter his study and strip for his inspection. Oh no! Gerald was nothing if not a stickler for form and so Amelia had to wait for Simpson to come up to her suite and then, in front of him who was her head servant, remove each and every one of her items of clothing, folding each one-her maid was not permitted to help her on these occasions-and place it on a pile on her bed in readiness for her return, and then precede him down the stairs to her husband's study to be examined in great detail.

Simpson then moved up to the door, knocked and at the request to enter, opened it and stood aside for his mistress to precede him into the room. Amelia now moved straight up to the turntable that Gerald had had installed halfway between the door and his desk and stepped onto it while Simpson moved to one side, remaining in the room as he would invariably have certain duties to perform after the inspection.

His face was quite impartial but if the truth was known, he eagerly anticipated these Saturday morning rituals. His mistress was utterly beautiful. Not so much in the sense of a beauty queen but in the natural loveliness of her face and body. She had chestnut-brown hair that was long and wavy and gleamed wonderfully. Her eyes were brown and her skin as smooth as silk and as soft as satin. But her body, in line with Gerald's own, had to be quite perfect, and of his requirement that all the people in his employ-and even his wife-must ensure their bodies were slim, athletic and fit.

Amelia's body is superb. There is no other way to describe it. She is slim but very athletic and her muscles, like Gerald's own, are well-toned, supple and very pleasing to look at. Also like Gerald, he had had her body depilated nude very soon after their marriage. He disliked hair on the human body and had had his own treated very early in his adult life.

Now, as Simpson eyed his mistress as she stood on the turntable and immediately assumed the position Gerald demanded for her opening display, he struggled to keep his cock in check. In fact, he had now purchased a restraint and used it every Saturday morning for he well knew if his master noticed an overt bulge in his striped pants on these occasions, he would be facing the boot.

Amelia had immediately placed her feet on the two 'foot' imprints etched into the stainless-steel metal of the turntable, then raised her hands up behind her head, clasping them behind it and then raising her head to stare up at the ceiling high above her. This presented her naked body in a spectacular pose and now Gerald activated the turn table which began to revolve, very slowly, displaying her whole body to him as he sat there and eyed her critically.

Unlike his butler, he was not sexually excited at this spectacle. Gerald was as strict with himself as he was with others and this was a legitimate physical examination of his wife's body, not a sex trip.

That didn't mean that he didn't enjoy her body. At regular times, he made love to her in her bed and their love-making was spectacular. Both were fit, strong and had trained their bodies for stamina as well as strength. Both were young and enjoyed sex. But, like everything else in his so ordered life, Gerald regulated the when and the how with meticulous precision.

And that meant that this was not a time for sexy thoughts but a proper inspection of his wife's physique and as he now looked her over as she stood there in that so provocative pose, his eyes narrowed. What was this, he thought as he eyed her belly. A slight blurring of the sharp lines of her abdominal muscles?

He was instantly out of his chair and moved purposefully (but not hastily) around his desk to approach her slowly turning naked body. Amelia had sensed his movement and now lowered her head to look at him in worry. What had he discovered, she wondered but she didn't say anything. At these times she was not permitted to speak except to answer his questions.

He stared down at her belly in distaste then reached out to feel it (the turntable was large enough for him to stand on it as it revolved) and then retracted his hand as if bitten by a wasp.

"Disgraceful, Amelia," he said. He didn't shout. He spoke in normal tones but Amelia knew he was very angry from the slight flush on his face and the hardness of his eyes. "I don't ask much of you, my dear, but keeping your body trim and fat-free is one of them. And look at this!" And he now took a pinch of her stomach skin between his fingers and showed her the slight layer of fat between them.

"You know what this means, Amelia? Yes, of course you do. It is twelve strokes of the cane to your naked buttocks, but let me check out the rest of you, first. If there is fat here, there may well be elsewhere..."

His inspection was full and thorough. It was also very intrusive. He checked out her mouth which she had to open to allow his fingers entry. He ran his warm hands all over her breasts, palpating them to ensure they were not fatty. He kneaded her buttocks and stroked her thighs.

He also inspected her vagina, poking his fingers (he had carefully washed his hands before commencing the inspection), teasing her clit to ensure it responded as it should and that she gushed appropriately. And finally he had her bend over so that he could check to see that she had cleaned herself out inside as well as out. And here came her second mistake.

She hadn't been careful enough in the administration of the daily enemas he required of her (and himself, for that matter) believing that the rectum ought to be as clean as the outer parts of his and his wife's bodies. And when he withdrew his gloved hand from her anus, he caught a whiff-just the slightest hint of one-on the gloved finger and turned to her in more anger.

"Again, disgraceful, Amelia, you know I require you to be scrupulously clean down there. Well, I'm afraid this means you must be punished for that offence as well. I think that as this is the second time you have been careless down there, Simpson will see to your proper cleaning out and then you will be caned on the anus. So, we will begin with the first punishment. Simpson?"

The butler acknowledged the tacit order: "Sir, twelve strokes to the mistress' buttocks. Fetch the caning bench, please, Madam."

He was still the butler to his mistress although he was now about to cane her delightfully boyish posterior with a dozen meaty strokes of the rattan cane which the master imported from Singapore.

Amelia stifled a sob-any overt resistance to Gerald's orders would result in a doubling of the punishment and she certainly didn't want that-and ran over to the cupboard wherein was kept the bench. It was long and narrow and had Velcro belts attached at its extremities for her wrists and ankles.

Gerald liked to see her buttocks caned in their soft position and so she had to lie prone along its narrow length while the butler affixed her wrists and ankles into the belts, securing her perfectly for punishment.

He then took up the cane, a metre long, one-centimetre thick length of the sturdy rattan palm cane that grows in the jungles of Malaya and has been used as an instrument of punishment for centuries.

He liked his mistress and he felt sorry for her, aware that his master's demands of her were extremely strict, to say the least. But he liked his job even more and it was a husband's right-and his duty-to ensure that his wife stayed on the straight and narrow.

He would therefore not temper the blows. Gerald required her to suffer pain. He said often enough that it was still the best and most effective punishment and it needed to be severe to have the most benefit.

Accordingly, Simpson raised the cane and then slammed it down across the crown of both cheeks and then retracted it smartly, watching in awe (as he always did) as the soft gluteal muscles indented under the force of the stroke and then sprang back as he retracted the cane.