Notes: I'm currently reading a book called Between Women, Friendship, Desire and Marriage in Victorian England by Sharon Marcus. It is quite enlightening and includes a chapter on the female homoeroticism of birching. Apparently the English were/are obsessed with the birch and bottom beating. So I thought this was an interesting homoerotic aside.
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Emma
By
archaeobard
Perhaps it would have been different if I could not feel her body against mine in the night, draped in the curve of my arm, her head against my breast with her breath raising my flesh. I asked myself how I loved and could think of no word for it. She was not some fashion plate upon which I could fix my stare and admire openly. So I would glance when her look was elsewhere, frightened that she may catch me at the game. Sometimes she would spy my blush and her eye would question but find no answer from me.
It was not seemly for a mistress to court her maid. This was why I allowed my affection to stray and the focus of my erotic obsession turned to Emma. She was grand, and when first I saw her she was dressed in the latest Paris fashion with a great two tiered skirt with crenulated hems. The frills upon her bodice drew my eye to her bust and from that moment she caught my gaze she knew.
She had come up from London to model. Richard had insisted on life works and my uncle would not permit a man; though he believed me sexless, I thought perhaps his concern was more for Richard and his tastes. So we had Emma, whose soft eye and softer form melded easily to my heart.
Where Sue was coarse, Emma was silken. She would stand and I would draw and all the while she would tease.
“What do you think of the birch as punishment for children?”
I knew she had seen my uncle’s work and did not think her comment related to children.
“I am sure it is a fine punishment.”
Her arms would be raised and her small breasts pointed. I would place my pencil in my mouth and wonder at her.
“I have heard,” she would say, “that whipping is fine.”
“I could not lay the birch upon anyone.”
“Oh,” she would say and avert her eye, “not even if one was disobedient?”
My hand would falter and my lip would tremble, “Perhaps if one was disobedient,” I would say.
Her arms would drop then and her hands rest upon the flesh of her hips. A coquettish smile would grace her lips.
“Please resume your position,” I would say, “I cannot draw with your arms at your sides.”
“And if I disobey?” Her eyebrow would arch.
“Please resume your position, or I shall have Sue whip you.”
End
There were many things I wanted from her and I would ask for them in turn, but there was one thing that I would not ask of her. I could not ask it lest she see the truth of it, for truly she must know.