This is a story about damsels in distress in the Regency period. It contains non-consensual bondage and bad period dialogue; reader discretion is advised.
1.
It is often claimed in the less civilized sections of our world that the English are hypocrites.--And it must be admitted that there is a certain justice to the accusation. In public the English deplore drunkenness; in private drink is their consolation and joy. In public the English abjure violence; on the football field or in the House of Commons they take delight in it. And in public the English affect the greatest shock when schemes of a sensual nature are propounded, yet no specimen of humanity has more appetite for the wretched and the obscene than the Englishman at leisure.
Count Malamar, reflecting on these matters while out riding in Thornfield Park shortly after dawn, was well aware of the hypocrisy of the English but did not resent it. Partly this was because he was constitutionally disinclined to resentment, blessed with a sanguine temperament and short memory for slights; and partly it was because he loved England.
The nation, it was true, had failed to clasp him to its collective bosom with wholly convincing enthusiasm. Servants, neighbours and tradespeople alike viewed him with scarcely concealed distrust, on the usual grounds: he was foreign; he looked and sounded foreign; he persisted in a liking for foreign food; and he owned a large collection of bondage-themed statuary. But living in England, partaking in the English way of life, was ample compensation for the manners of her people. In a matter of hours he would have occasion to express his thanks for eggs and buttered toast; and in a few weeks, for village cricket; but at this precise moment, amid the stillness of the trees and the hushed potentiality of the season, he would settle for the singular privilege of existing in Hertfordshire in the month of April.
Yet the Count was not fated that morning to enjoy his habitual morning ride in peace. His pleasant reverie was interrupted by a shocking sight, in the trees up ahead to one side of his accustomed path: a beautiful maiden, bound tightly to the trunk of a silver birch and mewling piteously for help through a stout gag.
"Nh pmmnphm, khnnn phnr!," cried she. "Nnbhnnn mm frnm phhnph phrmm!" [1]
The Count reined in his steed and fixed the lady with a steely gaze.
"Well well, my dear--and what shall I do with you?"
oOo
An hour earlier than the scene described above, the Reverend Edmund Fox and Mrs Harriet Fitzgerald chanced to be walking through the same locale amid the glorious purple twilight. These names are important, and should by now be familiar.
Any readers sufficiently reckless to plunge into this story without benefit of the preceding chapters are advised to adopt a more civilized methodology; but suffice it to say that Fox is a curate of nine-and-twenty who supplements his meagre income by solving mysteries for genteel families, while Fitzgerald is a poor yet musically gifted widow of six-and-twenty who receives a small stipend for her diligent performances on Fox's organ and a larger one for serving as his most capable assistant in matters of deduction. They are both of them handsome individuals, but we shall regard it as a settled matter, that this fact is more pertinent in the lady's case; her pert bosom, fresh complexion and lovely blonde hair inducing approximately three gentlemen per year to make an offer of marriage.
"Eliza Catchpenny was set upon by a man of vicious and intemperate character," Mrs Fitzgerald mused aloud, "an event which is sadly plausible in our degenerate age. But it is stretching the limits of probability to suppose that coincidence alone led her sister Georgiana to be waylaid by an identical criminal and mistreated in an identical manner, comprising the loss of her clothing, the application of excessive quantities of rope and a tight cloth gag, and her exposure as a public spectacle in front of her neighbours."
"This was a planned and targeted outrage," agreed Mr Fox. "Perpetrated by a culprit who knew both girls and wished to see them humiliated for reasons best known to himself."
"Unless the culprit is Count Malamar, for he has a reason known to the entire neighbourhood: he is a wicked foreign deviant obsessed with binding and demeaning beautiful women."
"It sounds to me, Mrs Fitzgerald, as though you have solved the mystery already." Mr Fox smiled, eyes twinkling. In truth, neither believed that the Count was to blame, although the reasoning was sound enough.
"He is not our man," she replied. "He is honest--repulsively honest, I would say--about his predilections, and has no shortage of wenches to cater to them. He has too much to lose by a scheme of this nature, and very little to gain. Nevertheless, we must find a way to rule him out of our enquiries. And you have, I surmise, arrived at such a plan."
"Indeed I have, my dear.--And a most enjoyable plan it is. I suppose you have guessed the stratagem?"
"I have guessed it, and am tolerably certain I have guessed it correctly. Let me see.--The key is to put the Count's character to the test. We know he is a villain, but is he that species of villain which labours to find ways to indulge his villainy within the bounds of society and therefore retaining its protections? Or that which cannot turn down opportunities of wickedness no matter the danger to himself?"
"Go on."
"The test is as follows," said she. "A pretty damsel, secured tightly with ropes, shall be cast into the gentleman's path at a moment when he believes himself unobserved. If he snatches her up, throws her over his saddle bow and rides off with the utmost complaisance, we have our man; while a gallant unbinding and offer to escort her home should indicate the contrary determination."
"Most perceptive of you, Mrs Fitzgerald."
"Furthermore--" And here the lady's eyes sparkled flirtatiously. "Furthermore, I believe I know the identity of the lady doomed to writhe in a captor's ropes."
"Very likely; very likely indeed. For it is most important to the scheme that the damsel in distress be tolerably beautiful, in order fully to test the gentleman's capacity to withstand temptation. Given this requirement, none but my dear friend could possibly suffice."
"My dear sir, you flatter me to an unpardonable degree."
"Not at all; as a churchman I speak only the truth. But I must point out, my dear, that you are not wholly correct in your surmise. I do not propose to bind you and cast you in the Count's path as bait."
"I shall not be bound?" Hope blossomed in the widow's bright eyes.
"Oh! as to that, you shall most assuredly be bound, and bound well. I meant merely that you shall also be gagged and tethered firmly to a tree, to plausibly explain why you have hitherto been unable to obtain assistance or make your escape."
"Ah, a gag; of course. A lady of education and manners must naturally be prevented from speaking, for how else can the gentlemen be assured they shall not be interrupted by good sense?"
"Possibly; but be silent now, my dear, for your whiggish chatter grows wearisome."
"Yes, Mr Fox."
He nodded, pleased by this shew of obedience. Mrs Fitzgerald had an odd tendency at the most unexpected moments to behave submissively and do as she was bid without a murmur. "That is better. Now, you shall further be deprived of your outer garments in order to present a more fetching and eye-catching spectacle to the Count; and do not complain, for this is important."
"No, Mr Fox."
"Your account of the situation will be that you were set upon by gypsies and robbed. This will serve admirably; the gypsies have robbed the carriages of many genteel families about these parts; Malamar will believe it at once."
Mrs Fitzgerald raised her eyebrows, and appeared to consider an ungenteel reply. Fox knew of her interest in radical political thought, and deplored it; but he hoped she was not about to argue.
"Hush now, my dear; the gypsies are to blame, and there is an end of it."
Mrs Fitzgerald commented wryly that Mr Fox "had evidently given the matter a great deal of thought;" and the gentlemen was left in no doubt that, as ever, any outer submissiveness merely concealed a greater quantity of inner wilfulness. Yet she conceded that the plan might very well work, and he perceived that he had carried his point. Having modified her clothing in the desired manner--removing, with a number of becoming sighs, her jacket, gown and chemisette and piling them up neatly upon the ground--she placed her hands behind her back and invited her companion to begin his work.
oOo
The Count, curiously, gave no indication of being surprised, far less concerned, by the lady's unenviable plight:--as if bound and gagged maidens were a common occurrence in his daily tour of the estate. Mrs Fitzgerald, somewhat abashed by the lack of amazement her captivity occasioned, was left to ponder, whether the Count's imperturbability were evidence of callousness to feminine suffering, or of superb good manners; he was a monster, or he was a man of impeccable breeding; but it seemed contrary to logic and the principles of a well-regulated society that he could be both.
Raising his hat, quite as if the two were meeting in a ballroom or at a dinner given by a mutual acquaintance, the Count greeted Mrs Fitzgerald, asked how she did, and expressed his joy in the unexpected pleasure of her company. She attempted to respond with decorum, but found this impeded by the cloth between her lips.
"Pmmnphm rmmnphm mm!" cried she, attempting to give the gentleman to understand through her muffling gag that she would take it very kindly indeed if the said item could be removed. "Phmphm rnpmph nrm mghcmphphnfmm phnghph." [2]
"But my dear, how unfortunate!" he replied, smiling. "I should be no less delighted to release you from these bonds than you should be to escape them; but the thing is quite impossible. Whoever has bound you has done so with good reason, and far be it from me to question its validity. A gentleman does not unbind another gentleman's damsel."
"Ymn jmphph, phnr." [3]
Mrs Fitzgerald had, of course, less cause for fear than she would have the Count believe; but her mortification was real, as was her physical discomfort. Mr Fox had lashed her wrists together behind her back with positively nautical severity, and repeated this process upon her elbows, which to the lady's regret had been caused to touch. Her body was wrapt with a further quantity of rope, which held her rigid in a soldierly posture, shoulders back, bosom pushed out, back arched. Her legs were bound at the ancle, knee, and thigh, and as previously mentioned her mouth was well stifled by a knotted kerchief tied behind her head. She was, in short, a comprehensively bound and gagged prisoner, utterly helpless and fully at the mercy of her rescuer, if such he was; although she increasingly felt that this supposition admitted of considerable doubt.
"Besides, who is to say that women
should
be unbound? It strikes me as a matter for dispute, whether a lady's proper place is dancing prettily on the arm of an eligible bachelor, or squirming in his ropes; women being by natural disposition the fairer, and weaker, but above all vastly more submissive sex, it is only apt that they be bound and gagged at all times for
our
amusement, and
their
protection. You think you wish to be free, I grant you; but in your heart you yearn only to be ever more tightly truss'd."
Mrs Fitzgerald was not unacquainted with such views, but had seldom heard them so clearly and unapologetically expressed. She rolled her eyes, which evidently amused him.
"You are vext," he concluded, "and upon my word I do most heartily regret it. Our acquaintance has been short, but long enough to make me esteem you, and feel a lively interest in your happiness. Perhaps it would be agreeable, after all, to remove this pretty gag and hear your pretty voice."
The Count reached behind Mrs Fitzgerald's head and gently loosened the knot of the gag, before pulling the sodden cloth from her mouth. She coughed and attempted to moisten her lips in a ladylike fashion.
