Runaway Brides in Fantasy

If I didn’t tell you where the following passages are from, you wouldn’t guess they are not from a spanking story of exceptional quality. They’re not, though: I’ve transcribed them from “The Tower of King’s Daughter” by Chaz Brenchley.

So, Julianne had been travelling to be wed at her father’s orders, but she had reasons to run away from her betrothed and his powerful uncle. Except the guy catches up with her.

“My lady, I am glad to have found you…”

“Do you hunt me with dogs, my lord baron?” she cut him off, at last allowing her outrage its escape. “With dogs?”

And she lifted a hand and slapped him, hard and fast and furious, raising her own little cloud of dust that might have had her laughing another day, in another mood.

“Am I a hare or a deer,” she went on against his startled silence, against the rising murmur of his companions, “or a runaway slave, to be hounded down this way? Am I an animal?”

“You are a runaway girl,” Imber said quietly, “in rebellion against a contract and your father’s will. If you were an Elessan yet, and in Elessi, you could be whipped for this. If my uncle were here and saw you strike me, you would be whipped regardless.”

“I think not.”

“You don’t know my uncle,” and there was a touch of a smile to his face and voice both, before he stilled it. “He may yet demand it, when he hears; but I can protect you from that, at least.”

And later, when Julianne and her lady companion are brought back to camp:

Imber’s uncle came striding into the tent with a riding-whip in his hand, and the dark look of a man who meant to use it. Elisande’s hands tightened on Julianne’s shoulders, from where she stood behind the chair; actually – after one brief, shaming moment of qualing inside, of wanting to beg and plead, don’t beat me, don’t hurt me, – Julianne thought her friend stood in greater danger than she did herself.

Even the Baron Imber… would not whip the daughter of the King’s Shadow. Certainly not before she was wed to his nephew. … But if you cannot whip the lady, whip the maid.

There was no punishment to come, and I was glad of that (at the moment I’m not into   unfair whippings delivered by objectionable characters, and much as the girl’s behaviour seemed to warrant it, a punishment would have been unfair nonetheless. To say why would be a spoiler; read the book.*)

So yes, no whipping for Julianne, but seriously, the prelude was so good and juicy, I just about melted reading it.

There’re also lots of other hot bits in the book: a large part of it deals with monastic discipline (yum!) and the relationship between a knight and his squire (yum!). The squire gets into trouble on just about every page, and has to be scolded a lot (yum! yum!). For a vanilla gay man, the author sure knows how to push a kinky girl’s buttons.**
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* Though beware: in the US it’s been split in two.
** Except: men flogged to death? Not hot. Necessary for the plot, but not hot.