Why might a girl be hiding away in a barn? I only ask because that’s at the heart of a little spanking scene that’s been playing itself out in my daydreams lately, but I can’t fathom a sensible starting point for my plot.

The spanking side of the equation is pretty clear. A girl in a big house is caught stealing food. She’s questioned, and merely complains that she was hungry. A spanking ensues – hard, but not excessive, for one can’t expect a girl to starve, much as one disapproves of theft. “Misguided”, she’d be told. “If you’re hungry, ask.”

Yet a few days later, someone (the butler?) notices the same girl stealing food once more, hiding it in her dress, and sneaking out of a back door of the house. He trails her from a distance, and spies her heading towards the outbuildings. The girl sneaks into a barn; our detective follows, quietly following her inside. There, to his surprise, he hears two voices from the hayloft – so he climbs a ladder and finds both his quarry and another lass of a similar age, who’s greedily tucking into the stolen food.

They’d be taken back to the big house, of course. The young thief would be whipped, severely, as would their uninvited guest. But where had this latter girl come from? A childhood best friend, seeking sanctuary with the one person who’d help her? Turned out by her parents? Dismissed from her post as a maid at some other country estate? In flight, having been handed over to be married against her will?

And, whilst I’m pondering the unknowns: who was the girl who was helping her? Was she really a servant, as I’d initially envisaged? Or was she maybe the daughter of the master of the house? Had she known the hideaway at all – or simply found the girl, tired and hungry, in her hiding place and taken pity on her.

Oh how I love working out the whys and wherefores of spanking scenes!