Cordelia Lavington Chapter 6
By Governess

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Copyright 2010 by Governess, all rights reserved

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This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY. It contains explicit depictions of sexual activity involving minors. If you are not of a legal age in your locality to view such material or if such material does not appeal to you, do not read further, and do not save this story.
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Chapter 6

Mrs Lavington went to the drawer and took out the soft leather strap.

"Please, mother, no. I promise I'll lie still. Please."

As always, Samuel found the thought of being helplessly secured over the armchair for a whipping truly frightening.

"But clearly you cannot lie still, Samuel. If you could lie still you wouldn't be standing, pleading with me."

"Please mother, I'm sure I can. Please, don't tie me."

She ignored him and started to thread the restraining strap through the loops on the arm. He watched, biting his lip his eyes bright.

"Over the arm please, Samuel."

He backed away, reluctantly. She smiled.

"Darling, what you don't understand, is that this is being done for your own good. What did I say would happen if you broke your promise and put your hands back?"

She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"Well?"

"You . . . you said I would get extra strokes."

"Yes, additional strokes. And what do you think would happen if you promised again to keep still and broke your word? What do you think I would have to do?"

He hung his head.

"Punish me even more."

"Yes, Samuel. And do you think you would just get a few more strokes or something worse?"

His reply was whispered and barely audible.

"Something worse."

"Yes, something much worse. So isn't it kinder to secure you over the arm so that you can't resist? So that you have to accept your punishment and learn from it."

There was a flat, hopeless acquiescence in his tone.

"Yes, mother."

"Well then, place yourself over the arm so that I can secure the strap."

He bent forward and pulled himself up, stretching out his hands secured by the thumbs. She gave his body a further heave into position and then passing the end of the strap through the buckle drew it tightly around his body. And then tighter still. He was breathing heavily in short gasps.

Mrs Lavington stepped back. There was something exquisitely affecting about a small naked boy firmly restrained and offering his round, firm, little rump for punishment. A boy was usually so full of life, but this vitality could often be mixed with a self-confidence beyond his years. Boys needed to be taught humility. And so, she thought, with a wry smile, did girls like Elizabeth.

A spanking asserted a mother's right over a child to correct bad behaviour and render him complaint to her will. This was inevitably a humbling experience. It emphasised a child's lowly place in the divinely established order of things. But its aim was not first and foremost to humble but to correct. A mother's will was expressed through the nursery law she had made and to which she required obedience. But when a child broke the law not just out of self-interest but in an act of defiance that was different. A child who actively opposed his mother was possessed of a spirit of arrogance. And then the child needed to suffer not merely punishment but also humiliation. Cordelia Lavington had no compunction about this. Just as a child was taught the true inner spirit of generosity by being made to share, so too humility was taught by shameful humiliation.

Cordelia Lavington looked again at her eleven year old son restrained across the arm of the chair. Many would have thought her unduly harsh in her response to his incapacity to lie still and accept the discipline she had decreed. But she knew better. Clutching at his buttocks had been forbidden and was a clear act of defiance. The excuse that he could not bear the pain was for her inadmissible. It was not a matter of bearing the pain. That had to be borne. It was a question of doing so in obedience to her will. He had chosen actively to resist her. And where there was resistance, then firm action was required to drill into the boy a sharp awareness of his subordinate status.

And there was something especially satisfying about humbling a boy and shrinking his false self-esteem. And God willing eventually to enable him to acquire a true spirit of humility.

The boy wriggled over the arm. The leather strap gripped him around the waist but it was soft and while helpless over the arm, not all movement was prevented. His mother smiled as his hips twisted. She raised the tawse and brought it down with all her strength. The boy stifled a roar of agony, his trunk heaving up and his legs kicking. Another stroke was applied and then another. Each time the thick, flexible, leather tails curled around the bare flesh, licking the surface of the skin to a raw inflamed red, leaving the boy writhing in agony.

Cordelia Lavington was not one to hurry a punishment. She paused between each stroke and allowed the boy time to smart. Despite his training, after more than a dozen cuts, he was roaring profusely. But still the flogging continued. Eventually, his mother stepped back. Before placing the tawse on the table, she ran the leather tails lightly through her hand. They were distinctly warm to her touch. But not as warm, she thought, as her son's eleven year old bottom and thighs. Although 'warm' as a description hardly did justice to the heat radiating from Samuel's inflamed flesh.

She left the boy secured and sobbing over the chair arm and went into the kitchen to put on the kettle. She put the tea on a tray together with a glass of water and returned to the drawing room. The boy was still heaving over the arm, tearful and ashamed. She put down the tray, and went over and unbuckled the strap that held him. He knew better than to move until given permission, and lay there still sobbing.

She ran her hand lightly over his bottom feeling the heat radiating from it. She smiled.

"Stop crying, Samuel, and off the arm, please."

He struggled up, grimacing as he did so and reaching round to his bottom.

"Did I give you permission to touch your bottom, Samuel?"

The hand was quickly removed.

"N . . . no, mother. I'm sorry."

She waited for him to compose himself.

"You do know why you have been punished, Samuel?"

Ye . . . yes, mother."

"And why was that?"

"Be . . . be . . . because I disobeyed."

"Yes, Samuel. You disobeyed. I asked you to get ready for bed and you ignored my request. Is that right?"

"Yes, mother."

Well? Have you learnt your lesson? May I expect obedience from you in future?"

He was still crying a little, but had largely regained his composure

"Yes, mother."

"And why did I have to tie your hands and secure you over the arm of the chair?"

"Because . . . I put my hands back. I'm sorry mother."

"Yes, you put your hands back. You tried to put them between your bottom and the tawse. But in doing that you were also putting them between my will and yours. You were not only resisting the punishment, you were also resisting me, Samuel. And a child who opposes his mother's will, who sets himself in judgement over her, has to be humbled. He has to be cast down, shamed and humbled. And that is why your hands were tied and you were strapped to the sofa arm."

She paused.

"Now go to your room and I will be up to say prayers in ten minutes."

She handed him the tawse.

"And hang this on the back of your bedroom door. I hope it will not be needed for some time."

She smiled.

"But that depends on you."

She watched him go, holding the tawse awkwardly in his hand.

She sat down and took a sip of water from the glass, before drinking her cup of tea. Some might have felt drained by the physical and emotional demands of disciplining three children, but Cordelia Lavington had deep reserves on which to draw. In that she was like her own mother.

She looked across at the mantelshelf and at a large round pebble that sat there. It might have been used as a paperweight. She had brought it home from a holiday when she was seven and she had kept it ever since. She had been playing on the beach and had lost her temper with a younger child and had thrown the pebble at her. The child's mother had picked up the pebble and brought it to her own mother and complained.

"This lady says that you threw this pebble at her daughter, is that right?"

"Yes, mother. Please, I'm sorry."

"It is not me you need to apologise to, Cordelia. Apologise to this little girl and to her mother.

She recalled her stuttered apology, and the lady's stiff acceptance. Her mother had then smiled.

"I am sure you will agree that my daughter's behaviour cannot be allowed to go uncorrected. That more is needed than an apology. She had turned to Cordelia.

"Cordelia take off all your clothes, please."

She had felt every eye on her as she slowly undressed. The little girl's gaze was particularly unsettling. She must have been about four or five.

"And now, Cordelia, run down to the sea and get yourself thoroughly wet."

She couldn't think what her mother was about, but she knew better than to disobey. She had felt an exquisite shame as she ran down the beach, a small naked girl, to where the waves were breaking. Red-faced she had sat in the sea and let it wash over her. Wet and dripping, she had run back, salt in every pore. Her mother, still holding her clothes, had made her walk in front of her to the beach cabin, with the lady following, her little daughter holding her hand.

Her mother had then excused herself and disappeared into the cabin. She came out almost immediately grasping a chair and with a towel over her other arm and a hairbrush in her hand. She set the chair down and sitting on it placed the towel over her lap.

"And now Cordelia, over my knee please."

Never had she been spanked in such a public place. And how that spanking had hurt. The hard back of the brush had smacked again and again across her dripping wet bottom. And all in front of the little girl and her mother. And then when she was exquisitely sore, her mother had made her sit, sobbing in the sand, before turning her once more over her knee. Afterwards the woman had simply said, 'thank you' and had walked away holding her little daughter's hand in hers. Afterwards, as she was towelled dry, the remaining grit adhering to her bottom was rubbed agonisingly into her damp inflamed flesh.

Mrs Lavington got up and walked across to the mantelshelf and picked up the pebble and held it in her hand. After the spanking, her mother had given her the pebble and told her to keep it by her bedside as a reminder that girls who throw stones at other girls are soundly spanked. She smiled at the memory, enjoying the cold smoothness of the pebble in her hand. She looked at her watch. Time to go and say prayers with Samuel. As she passed the hall table she picked up the hairbrush. A little reinforcement would not come amiss, she thought.

(To be continued)