Golden Girl Ch. 07

The Test

In the first month of her training under the Scarlet Lady, Dorée learned a great deal more than she had with Berenice. The chambermaid had taught her basic etiquette and comportment. She had learned how to carry herself, how to hold her hands, how to walk two steps behind. She had learned how to enter a room unobtrusively and how to display herself upon command. All this she had done by copying Berenice and doing exactly what she was told.

The Lady, however, took a different tack. Except when she had a particular ritual in mind, she did not often tell Dorée what to do. Her tutelage was not based on making Dorée behave a certain way or present herself just so. It was based on making Dorée feel what was done to her and reveal her every response without pretence or reluctance.

"We have no need for a masked Harlequin forever repeating the same lines!" The Lady snapped at Dorée when she tried using the set phrases Berenice had taught her. "The Duc has plenty of puppets to dance for him. He grows weary of such empty shadow-plays. Any slave may be taught to mouth 'Yes, Master,' to submit out of fear or habit. How much more intriguing is the slave who is compelled to bend not from without, but from within."

Dorée considered this for a while. She was sitting at her Lady's feet by the fire on a chilly April night. Sleet was lashing at the window, but Dorée felt cosseted in the warm glow of orange firelight. Her cheek was laid against her Lady's knee, while the Lady rested her sherry glass on Dorée's head. The intimacy of the setting emboldened her to ask,

"If you don't want me to say the polite words I've been taught, then...how can I know what you do want me to reply?"

The Lady smiled indulgently.

"You might try replying with your own desires."

Dorée frowned.

"But I've been told not to speak out of turn, not to lose control of my tongue, not to..."

"Indulge your carnal urges?" the Lady prompted.

"That too. I have tried to remain virtuous, and I do succeed when the others are not tormenting me. Your chambers have been a haven, my Lady."

The Lady sat up a little straighter and set down her sherry glass on a table.

"How long have you been here, Dorée?" She asked, turning the girl's face to hers.

"Near six months in the Chateau, and near a month in your service." Dorée replied.

"And in all this time, you have never sinned of your own will? Never touched yourself or taken pleasure from another?"

"O no! Never! I've been obedient in every respect. I don't want to end up like-" Here she cut herself off, unable to speak ill of the woman she still considered her friend.

The Lady, however, was thinking of other matters.

"Do you know what it feels like, the pleasure of the flesh?"

"I...sometimes feel a sort of pulse or heat swell within me. When you touch me as you do..." Dorée bowed her head, her cheeks hot with more than firelight now.

"But your pleasure never comes to consummation?"

Dorée shook her head uncertainly. She thought of her penance in the dungeon, when the chain had been pulled between her legs, but that passion was more like a consummation of pain than pleasure.

Suddenly, the Lady stood up and strode brusquely out of the room. Dorée quailed against the hearth, afraid that she had said the wrong thing and angered her Mistress.

"Juliet! Juliet, where are you?" The Lady called down the hall. Dorée had only recently learned that this was the name of the Scarlet Lady's Companion.

"Here, my Lady! What is your will?" Came Juliet's bright reply from the next room. Unlike her name, there was nothing tragic in her nature. She was as steadfast in her good humour as the desert sun -and almost as pitiless.

Dorée pricked up her ears. Over the pop and crackle of the fire, she could just barely hear the conversation between the two. The Lady spoke first, saying,

"Bring me the bench, my dear. I believe it is time for a lesson."

"O, what fun! It has been quite a while, hasn't it?"

"A lesson for Dorée, not for you."

"Ahh. Then may I...?"

"Yes, you may assist me."

"Fantastique!"

There was an excited pattering of slippers on the parquet floor, then a strange thumping sound. After a few more mysterious bumps, the door was pushed open by a crepe-soled foot and Juliet bustled in ahead of two footmen carrying something large and bulky. It appeared to be a low bench wrought of mahogany, but with a strange metal contraption under the legs.

"Here we are!" She crowed as they plunked it down in the middle of the room. She shooed the footmen out with a sprightly swat at their bottoms and another volley of laughter.

The Lady entered. She threw a stern glance at Juliet, who was practically dancing in place with excitement.

"Do have a little decorum, girl. We need to prepare her for the Duc, and you know he is more solemn about the Mysteries than you and I."

"O yes, he is the very Ruler of the Rite, the Emperor of Enigma!"

This time the Lady corrected her Companion with a slap that was just hard enough to be a warning. Juliet straightened up into a lofty pose and faced forward. It still came across as more mocking than menacing.

"Dorée, come here." The Lady commanded.

Dorée got to her feet and went immediately. She stopped before the Lady with a curtsey to show she was on her best behaviour.

"In just a moment, your eyes will be covered and your body uncovered. I will have you kneel, and you are to hold yourself in the posture you are placed. You should first know, however, that no harm will come to you. On the contrary, this is a test of your ability to know pleasure. I'm sure you've been told that carnal pleasure is a sin?"

She paused for confirmation. Dorée murmured a quiet "Yes, my Lady."

"Well, it may be so. However, the Duc believes that in order to know virtue, one must have a thorough understanding of vice. Likewise, one so acquainted with pain as yourself should also have a full knowledge of pleasure. To that end—" and here the Lady stroked Dorée through her thin shift, in that place that made Dorée pulse "—you must relax into the sensations you are about to undergo, no matter how foreign they feel to you. Will you do it?"

Dorée nodded, though this time she wasn't entirely sure what she was submitting to.

"Very well. Juliet, the blindfold."

From behind her, Juliet's soft, lily-scented hands drew a sash of red velvet over her eyes. Those same hands unlaced Dorée's shift and pulled it off of her. The sleet lashed the window again, and this time Dorée shivered, for though it was warm in the room, something in her peasant upbringing still protested against being so exposed on a foul night such as this.

Wordlessly, the Lady's long, firm fingers caressed Dorée's skin, rubbing such heat into her arms and shoulders that she could no longer even imagine feeling cold. When Dorée's trembling subsided, the hands pressed down against her shoulders, bringing Dorée to her knees. There came a scraping sound from behind her, and then something pressed up against her lower back and buttocks. She guessed it must be the seat of the bench. It was cushioned and reclined away at a steep angle behind her back. Not sure what to do, she kept still until the Lady's hands pushed her at the shoulders to make her lean far back in her kneeling posture.

There came a point where Dorée had to give up her weight to the bench rather than holding herself upright. As she gave her balance over to it, the bench seemed to recline backwards and unfold underneath her buttocks. She gasped as a hinge creaked, gears ratcheted, and her knees were lifted off the floor. The bench lifted her up, then locked into position so that she was lying prone on her back with her head raised, her legs spread, and her toes just brushing the floor. She clasped her hands to her breast instinctively, but the Lady's Companion lowered them to her sides.

"Shall we bind her?" Juliet asked softly.

"Let us see how she holds herself," the Lady replied.

"As you say."

For a while, no sound came but the hiss and snap of the fire. Dorée's exposed skin felt as if it were tingling in apprehension. The longer she waited the more sensitive it grew, anticipating a touch, a blow, a stroke. Something. Anything. When the touch finally did fall soft as a feather on her thigh, she started as if struck with the crop. The Lady made a soft, amused sound. The hand gripped her more firmly, seizing her flesh and squeezing it just hard enough to make Dorée squirm.

"Yes, that's it. Let your body move as it will." The Lady breathed in her ear from behind. Dorée's mind reeled at the confusion of being touched from below and spoken to from above. She realized it must be Juliet who was kneeling between her legs, dragging perfectly manicured nails down the insides of her thighs. She trembled at the knowledge that her Mistress would see every response, every tell-tale reaction, to whatever Juliet did next.

What Juliet did was certainly enough to provoke Dorée, for suddenly there came a sharp pain in her thigh, followed by something hot and wet. A bite and then a lick, smoothing over the pain with pleasure. Dorée let a little moan vibrate her throat. The bite came again, lower down her thigh and harder on her soft flesh. Then again and again. On the last bite, the soothing tongue flicked in to the tender bud at the top of Dorée's cleft. Dorée's back arched. She'd known that her body was acutely sensitive there, but she hadn't imagined how intense even the softest touch would feel.

Juliet laughed low in her throat, and this time it was not a giggle. It was a tigress's growl.

The tongue came again, tipping and tapping, teasing in fashion at once gentle and insistent. Dorée's hips squirmed as the intensity of the sensation threatened to overwhelm her at once. Juliet moved lower, spreading Dorée's lower lips and plunging her tongue between them. The sensations modulated, becoming deeper and not so ticklishly intense. But there was no respite from stimulation. As she lapped, Juliet found Dorée's thighs and pushed them up so that her feet were resting on the bottom of the bench with her knees steepled. The wicked girl fondled the undersides of her legs and buttocks, sometimes stroking, sometimes scratching, sometimes pinching and then kissing the spot of pain. Dorée began to cry out in earnest now. It all felt so good. A yearning kindled in her, or rather, a kind of urgency. It was not just that she wanted to feel more; rather, it was that she could not stop. The course of pleasure had been set into motion, and she knew in the deepest crevice of her being that it had to come to completion.

Suddenly, a cool, smooth hand traced down her throat from behind. The Lady's hands were on her. Dorée could feel her long, pointed nails -so much sharper than Juliet's- brushing the throbbing vein under her jaw. Ever so lightly, their needle points followed her clavicles to the centre of her chest. Then both hands spread out to cup her breasts. As Juliet's tongue delved into her sex, the Lady's hands increased their grip. Her nails found Dorée's tender nipples. A high, sweet sharpness flooded Dorée's body. The Lady's vise-like grip held for just longer than she thought she could bear. At the moment the nails released, Juliet's tongue returned again to the pearl at the top of Dorée's cleft.

More vigorously now she lapped and swirled over that most sensitive point. Dorée's voice rose with her cresting pleasure. Her body came up off the tilted bench as her back arched even harder than before. She felt her bottom begin to slip off the padded cushion. The Lady's hands came down, pressing her breastbone firmly and holding her to the bench. At the same time, Juliet's hands caught her from below, gripping her thighs below the knees. Her sex was pushed down harder against Juliet's face, and Juliet ground her tongue against Dorée's most tender point with ravenous abandon.

And then it was as if the sun had burst inside of Dorée's body. From the radiant point under Juliet's tongue, it suffused the throbbing flesh of her sex, and then her calves and thighs, her belly and breast, and burst from her throat in a scream so loud it echoed in the marble hallways outside the chamber doors. She could feel the Lady's hands still on her breastbone, and the steady, reassuring pressure there was like a blessing, a benediction laid on her pleasure. The burning light of the sun cooled, dimmed, and left Dorée peacefully adrift in the darkness behind her blindfold.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After that starburst, Dorée found within herself a new world, nova-born. She was astonished to find that the experience of carnal pleasure was not degrading or disgusting, as she'd assumed. In fact, it was an ecstatic rapture that moved her spirit as well as her body. It reminded Dorée of a time when she was very young, when her still-living birth-mother had taken to hear a great choir performing in a cathedral. She had been amazed, then, at how those heavenly voices not only struck her ears, but resonated inside her breast as if stroking her soul itself. It was terrifying and wondrous at the same time. Now, her climaxes stirred in her the same holy ecstasy.

Over the following days, she became more aware of her body's cravings for that sublime pleasure, and less able to hide or deny them. The Scarlet Lady and her Companion rarely denied Dorée the indulgence of her pleasure. They tried her on the bench again, and on the hearthrug before the mantle, and bent over a couch. It was always Juliet who acted in accordance with the Lady's wishes and applied her skilful tongue to various portions of Dorée's anatomy. But the Lady was also there with her hands on Dorée, and it was she who gave Dorée the sensation of being blessed and favoured.

One night, however, just as Dorée was being bared for the feast, Juliet stopped and called her Lady over. A finger stroked her sex and there was a pause. Then, Dorée felt her legs being gently let down. The Lady's voice was cool and imperious.

"Your woman's courses have come. We must stop your training for now."

Despite herself, tears flooded Dorée's eyes.

"But, my Lady, why? I have had my courses each month since I arrived, and still I served. Is this any more unclean than what we have been doing so far?"

"Not unclean. No, never that! But it is the Duc's commandment. He says that when blood is shed in this Chateau, he is the one who must shed it. None of this promiscuous spurting. You are to be on work duty only. Have you not noticed it each month? Perhaps not, since you haven't been used this way before."

"And you cannot defy him?"

The Lady's eyes narrowed and her voice became positively arctic.

"Do not let your newfound sense of power in pleasure deceive you. You are still his slave, and you will follow his commands. It would not be defiance on my part if I took you here and now; I can do whatever I will. But you would be in breach if you came to climax, and I highly doubt your ability to control yourself at this stage. Do as I say. Off to work with you."

"And I'm off to repeat every word of this conversation to the Duc. Won't he love it! I foresee a different Test for our Golden Girl." Her Companion said with gleeful malice.

Juliet must indeed have reported everything to the Duc, for soon enough a new order came. Dorée was to sweep the entire South Wing this week, not only the Lady's chambers. To do it, she was given only an old straw broom and a warped copper dustpan. She did not dare beseech the Lady for new ones, as she could tell by her Mistress' cold demeanour that it would be a futile effort. She also understood that this must be another test. So she took the paltry supplies and walked with heavy feet to the far end of the South Wing.

Never had Dorée felt more at the whim of others. When she was punished for wrongdoing, she could accept her penance. When she was teased by others, she could brace herself against them. But to have the fire of her pleasure lit and stoked only to be snuffed out again was another level of cruelty altogether.

"Kindess is cruelty," she murmured to herself. Tears sprang to her eyes. Had Berenice known this same torment?

Well, if she was meant to work, then work she would. Dorée bent her head in resignation and crouched to whisk the pile of dust she'd swept up into the dustpan. But here was a new challenge. The pan was too warped to accept the debris. Some of the larger bits went in, but most of the fine dust went below the pan or scattered around it. She swept the dust back up and tried again, but it was clear that the pan's lip was too far askew. Dorée stared at it, thinking,

'Should I ask my fellow servants for another? No, they would never give it to me. I'm sure this is all part of their nasty game. Oh, why do I endure this?'

Her shoulders shook with tears of frustration. She very nearly threw the dust pan to the ground in spite. But just then, something caught her eye. Lying on the floor near a gentleman's writing desk was a large piece of parchment marred by a black stain, as if from a spilled ink-pot. It had been tossed carelessly on the floor -the nobility were not at all interested in cleaning up after themselves- where it had been sitting for some time, given the dust on it. As she looked at that parchment covered in dust, an idea occurred to her. Taking it, she rolled it into a broad cone and pushed the closed narrow end up into the hollow handle of the copper pan. The flat edge hung out well over the warped copper. Holding it gingerly against the floor, she was able to sweep the dust into it much more easily.

With a quiet smile, Dorée set to work again. She hoped someone was watching her, so they could see her small victory over this test. If they made her work, she would do it. If they gave her challenges, she would overcome them. And if they then decided to grant her pleasure as a reward for her unexpected success, all the better.

Dorée, as you may have guessed, was a rather clever girl in her practical way. But the Duc was also a clever man, and not one who took kindly to being outwitted. The Lady's Companion was indeed watching Dorée and waiting to tell delicious tales of tears and frustration. When she reported how Dorée had taken pride in doing a task meant to humble her, the Duc was piqued. Then, after some thought, he became amused. Finally, and most fatally for Dorée, he grew determined to play the next move in the game personally.