Opening the desk

Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschild’s glorious country house, was the destination for my latest vanilla day out.

I say ‘vanilla’…

The place was full of antique writing desks, of which the Baron was a great collector. (One such, formerly owned by Marie Antoinette, provoked comment in The Times about his profligacy when he bought it for £6,000 in the late 1800s). Needless to say, my mind wandered…

A young woman, crouching in front of a grand, oak desk in a gentleman’s study. She works frantically, trying to persuade the hair clip she’s inserted into the lock to do the trick and open the drawers.

So frantically, in fact, that she doesn’t notice his Lordship enter the room. He stands, silently, in the doorway watching her at work. And then coughs, quietly. She scrambles to her feet, dropping the clip to the ground.

She attempts a flustered explanation, but is quickly silenced. He rings a bell; the girl is sent to stand in the corner whilst the butler is despatched to the garden to cut a bundle of switches. He returns, and is instructed to hold the girl’s hands as she bends over a chaise longue, her dress lifted and her bottom bared. The whipping is sustained, severe, accompanied by a stern lecture about trust and honesty.

—

Now, as I was dreaming up the little fantasy, the woman in question was a uniformed maid. But the more I thought about it (and, trust me, I’ve thought about it a great deal!), the more I realised that the scenario would be far, far hotter were it the gentleman’s young wife.

“I… I just wanted to see what you kept in there,” she’d proffer, by way of explanation.

He’d take a key from his pocket and hand it to her. “I have no secrets from you, my darling. You only need to ask. I trust you. And I believe I have the right not to expect such untrustworthy behaviour from you. I think you need to be taught a lesson you won’t forget, my dear…”

And then he’d ring the bell, and the butler would be despatched as before…