'What would I not give to kiss her!', Amy exclaimed, while she herself saw to the additional sponging of Astrid's body above her hips.

'Madam will be very angry if you do', Marie scolded, though she herself could not resist slipping her middle finger up past the sponge and letting it brush beneath the lips of Astrid's cunt, making her quiver adorably. Occasionally Lady Tingle permitted them to sport with some of the girls who were brought to Hardcastle for training, but only those whom their mistress considered to be naughty but submissive, having no streaks of arrogance in them and being fit only for 'harem games', as her Ladyship would declare. Instinctively, Marie had already divined that Miss Astrid Cane was not one such. Had she been, Lady Tingle might well have birched her first, for it was thought to be 'as fine a way of bringing a young lady on as any. That she had accorded Astrid much more intimate attentions was a sign of more loving devotion.

Astrid by now had ceased to protest, knowing well enough that there was no purpose to it. Thoroughly washed, she was dried and powdered in the bath before the chains were released and her aching arms allowed to fall. That she would soon enough escape she had no doubt and therefore permitted herself to be taken in silence back to the boudoir, where her hostess had been amusing herself by reading a novelette of a kind that may only be purchased in Paris or from certain discreet establishments in London. The change of expression in Astrid's face amused her but did not surprise her. The mettle of her mama showed more clearly now, save for a slight trembling of Astrid's fingers as she was sat upon the bed.

Julia's nostrils twitched at the fresh and perfumed aromas that exuded from the young woman's naked body. 'Your first experience, my dear, has, I trust, not been too alarming?', Julia asked without a trace of irony in her voice. Women were ever more intriguing to handle than males, for the subtlety of their minds was greater and their instincts more finely attuned. A battle of mind and soul with a male could be won briefly by a determined female. With her own kind the matter was often different.