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Epilogue
Two years later, on a similarly cold and wintry day, the Lady Susan Brisbane endured her last birthday whipping.
Tommy Parkins was not present for the contrite noblewoman’s final shaming penance. He had left the Earl of Brisbane’s employment the previous year and was working his own plot of land in a neighboring province.
Sir Charles would not have chosen the handsome young horseman as one of his daughter’s chastiser anyhow. The stern parent had sensed a quiet intimacy between his offspring and the young stableman which might had influenced his fustigatory efforts.
Mr. Gerard and two stout horsemen delivered the first fifteen lashes of the naked beauty’s twenty-one count allotment while the young woman’s father administered the final six strokes.
With amazing fortitude and a strength of will beyond her years, the Lady Susan stoically bore her whipping to the end; triumphing at last over her tormentors. And after the Earl’s final lancinating cut, number twenty-one as hard as he could cut in; the sobbing young sufferer, with lips bitten bloody, turned her pale, drawn face back at her father with all her shame and agonized hatred burning in her huge, tear-blurred eyes; then spat contemptuously before defiantly walking away.
The Lady Susan would never face her stern parent’s wrath again. As was his custom after his daughter’s birthday thrashings, Sir Charles left Brisbane Manor for his hunting lodge in the mountains. The Earl would spend four to five days in seclusion; possibly to avoid his daughter’s accusatory looks as she limped painfully around the house.
When Sir Charles did not return after his normal length of stay, several men from the stables made the three-hour horseback ride to the lodge. It was there that they made a grim discovery.
The once sturdily-built log cabin had been reduced to a smoking pile of rubble. Amid the still-smoldered embers, the Earl of Brisbane’s body was found. It appeared like he had made it to the door before the smoke and flames consumed him. The door lock’s iron key was by his hand and the bolt of the heavy lock was still drawn. What the men did not notice was the ash residue inside the keyhole from the wooden buttons that had been slipped into the lock from the outside to prevent the key from going in.
What had also gone unnoticed back at Brisbane manor, was the slender, hooded figure that had slipped out of the house, gingerly mounted a horse, and rode north several nights earlier.
There was no elaborate funeral for Sir Charles Brisbane. The Lady Susan ordered her father’s remains buried in an unmarked grave by the cabin where he had perished. The young mistress further shocked the region by announcing that she would wed Tommy Parkins the following month.
On the day after the announcement of her impending nuptials, Lady Susan stood before the assembled household of Brisbane Manor. Still bearing the fading brown stripes from her birthday thrashing on her lush buttocks, the defiant young beauty flexed in her hands the supple whalebone switch which had performed such yeoman’s duty to her cringing, naked backside in the past.
As a challenge to any of the servants who may have doubted her mettle or questioned her ascension to the position of mistress of Brisbane Manor, the Lady Susan offered to submit to a bare-bottomed whipping from anyone. The only stipulation to the proposal was that her chastiser would have to endure the same from her.
Needless to say, no one stepped forward.
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