Unstill Life
When a visiting artist proudly shows her sketchbook of artistic nudes to Lady Constance Burnmoor, the situation spirals into scandal and spirited correction. Artistic sensibilities are strained, and someone is about to encounter an entirely new variety of brushstroke.
from 📚 Vintage Spanking
The drawing-room of Whackton Manor felt like a haven of tranquillity after the hustle and bustle of her train journey. Pattie Simpson was an old friend of Lady Burnmoor and, only a few years earlier, the aristocratic lady had personally suggested that she devote more of her free-time to sketching, painting, and imaginative artistic pursuits.
“Are you still focusing your attention on fruit-baskets and flowers?” Lady Burnmoor enquired. “I remember that your juicy melons and ripe peaches were enough to make anyone’s mouth water. But, I always hoped you would flesh-out your portfolio with a few living subjects?”
Pattie considered that fruits and flowers might technically be living, but Lady Burnmoor was not renowned for indulging humorous frippery. The eager artist blushed as she considered how to reply.
“I have indeed, Constance,” she said. “And I must confess that, in one of my more audacious moments, I enrolled in a life-class at Little Dithering College. I hope you’re not too shocked! I only work with female subjects, of course, and it’s perfectly respectable. The experience has been wonderful, especially since one of their delightful young models has become an inspirational artistic muse for me.”
Lady Burnmoor’s smile did not waver as she took another delicate sip of her tea. Her calm demeanour came as a tremendous relief to Pattie.
“I suppose some people might suggest it’s rather daring of you,” Lady Burnmoor acknowledged. “But I’ve always believed that learning to embrace classical nude figures is the cornerstone of a proper artistic education. As it happens, I know the town of Little Dithering very well. My niece, Arabella, attends the finishing school there and she’s currently staying with me for a few days. You couldn’t wish to meet a sweeter or a more charming young lady, so it’s lovely that you’ll be able to make her acquaintance while you’re here.”
Pattie had worried that her old friend might take a dim view of this bold artistic endeavour, but it seemed her formidable reputation as a stern disciplinarian might have mellowed in recent years.
“I would never presume to impose upon you, Constance, but if you would kindly give me some feedback on my recent sketches, I’d be ever so grateful.”
The aspiring artist reached into her satchel and passed her sketchbook across the coffee table.
“But of course, I’d be delighted,” Lady Burnmoor reassured her friend, taking the book and turning the pages with growing curiosity.
As she explored deeper into the ring-bound portfolio, bowls of fruit and vases of flowers gave way to relaxed, carefree figures. There were studies of extended limbs, close-ups of a knee, a hand resting upon a bare shoulder; each curve and contour defined in the finest, crisp detail. She proceeded, turning the pages more cautiously now.
Delicate pencil shading picked out the definition of toned muscles, and darker strokes gave dimension to the featured model’s lithe physique. Her rear peripheral-hemispheres were every bit as appetising as Pattie’s earlier peachy subjects and almost seemed to emerge three-dimensionally from the page. These partial studies soon expanded and grew in confidence. Lower torso explorations of the model’s most delicate nether regions were rendered in exquisite detail, from various profiles and angles.
As Lady Burnmoor turned another page, a full-frontal sketch revealed itself, the beautiful model reclining against a soft sheepskin throw. Pattie’s keen observation left nothing to the imagination, from the girl’s blossoming curves and firm youthful breasts, to the cheeky dimples bracketing her broad smile. The effortless perfection of her body acted as a perfect accompaniment to the mischievous glint in her eye.
Pattie breathed a wistful, romantic sigh. “She’s absolutely captivating, wouldn’t you agree, Constance?” she enthused. “And so passionate. Even when fully exposed during our classes, she betrays no inhibition whatsoever. The young lady is only twenty-one, but her artistic presence is quite remarkable.”
Lady Burnmoor’s hand remained frozen at the corner of the page, reticent to move beyond the current piece.
“Indeed,” she replied in a distracted tone. “And I can see your own talents are developing too. Although I think I’d prefer to take a more detailed look later on, if you don’t mind.”
Sensing her friend’s thoughts were elsewhere, Pattie took back the sketchbook, unable to resist this opportunity to peruse the pages. Engrossed in her drawings, she neglected to look up as the door opened and another guest entered the room. In the background, Lady Burnmoor could be heard offering tea and a muffin, though her icy tone of voice suggested the new arrival might not be in her best books.
Pattie was focused upon her sketches when a startled gasp from the centre of the room made her look up. The newcomer was tall, blonde, and every inch of her was familiar.
As their eyes met, Pattie gazed back in surprise..
“Good heavens!” the astonished artist exclaimed. “Trixie Prendergast! What on earth are you doing at Whackton Manor?” The pretty young woman, standing close beside Lady Burnmoor, was shaking her head in disbelief and sheer panic, her eyes pleading.
Exhibiting the famously calm demeanour her family had cultivated through generations of stern social breeding, Lady Burnmoor finished pouring the tea before continuing.
“Miss Pattie Simpson,” she declared in grand tones, “allow me to introduce my niece...” and here there came a deathly dramatic pause, before she laid-bare the young lady’s true identity. “Miss Arabella Burnmoor.”
The younger woman’s cheeks were flushing a shade of pink that would have done credit to a particularly exotic variety of wild English rose.
“Auntie Constance, I can explain everything!” Arabella insisted. Although, under the circumstances, even the finest lawyers in the land would have struggled to devise an explanation that might satisfy Lady Burnmoor.
Events unfolded with such rapidity there was precious little opportunity to provide any sort of explanation whatsoever. Arabella’s aunt had already taken a firm grip upon her ear, and she found herself steered most indelicately across a pair of broad and accommodating thighs.
“No-No! Auntie, please. You can’t do this to me!”
But her Auntie Constance remained unmoved by this optimistic assertion.
“I beg to differ, Arabella. Or perhaps you prefer: Miss Trixie?” Lady Burnmoor remarked with contemptuous sarcasm. “Whoever you are, I think you’ll find that five minutes across my lap will deter you from any further immodest poses, and for quite some time.”
As the girl’s skirt was deftly flipped back, and her white cotton bloomers were dragged downwards in a mortifying plunge to her knees, Pattie’s eyes widened in recognition of that beautiful behind. It was presented in an unaccustomed aspect, and one which was far less becoming than any formal, conventional pose. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic artist had the presence of mind to grab a freshly sharpened 2B pencil and flip to a blank page of her sketchbook.
Any sense of regret that Pattie might have felt stemmed not from the bare-bottomed blistering that was about to ensue, but from the realisation that this cataclysmic curtain-call would likely mark the end of Arabella’s modelling career. At least, for the time being.
As the chastening scene unfolded before her very eyes, she seized this final opportunity to immortalise her favourite model’s posterior for posterity! It was just a pity that her work with Arabella, otherwise known by her thoroughly disreputable nom de plume, Miss Prendergast, was unlikely to ever see the light of day.
In contrast to lessons taught in more conventional schools of art, Lady Burnmoor’s notions of brushwork began with the swift retrieval of her trusty Mason Pearson hairbrush from her handbag. There seemed no doubt that Arabella’s posterior would prove highly receptive to this traditional medium!
Entwining her left arm in a vice-like grip around her niece’s hips, she applied her own unforgettable impressions of colourful and vigorous artistry, transforming the upturned derrière’s pale-ivory blank canvas into a burning ocean of dazzling Venetian-red.
The scratch of Pattie’s pencil, and the light rustle as she flipped pages, was drowned out by the cacophony of Arabella’s anguished howls of protest, and the insistent crack of polished wood striking hard against her bare and rapidly reddening cheeks.
Pattie was struck by the challenge of capturing unrestrained corporal punishment in real-time, whilst Arabella continued being struck by nothing but the hairbrush.
“Please, Auntie, this has to stop! I’m far too big for a smacked bottom!” the distressed débutante protested. “Remember that I’m a young lady of standing!”
Lady Burnmoor fumed, though her brush-arm did not falter for a second.
“It’s a good thing that you’re a young lady of standing, you shameless girl. You will certainly not be a young lady of sitting for quite a while!”
The relentless assault of the stout hairbrush provided more than ample evidence that Arabella was indeed, apparently not far too big for this particular remedy!
As the crack, crack, crack of the brush echoed around the compact drawing-room, Pattie’s hand raced to capture the essence of the young woman’s squirming discomfiture. Skilled pencil strokes caught the kicking motion of her legs, and the swift application of blurred shading gave heartfelt authenticity to the rippling sting of her lively bouncing buttocks.
Poor Arabella’s bottom throbbed and quivered, the heat flaring with every cruelly calculated impact. The exposed orbs of her enticing derrière were looking less and less like a rosy peach, and were transforming into something more akin to a pair of sunburnt plums.
Lady Burnmoor’s studious ministrations kept her so preoccupied that she appeared unaware of Pattie’s observant activity, even when she crouched low beside the coffee table in order to capture a better angle of Arabella’s anguished expression.
Precisely three and a half minutes later, the crisp ding of a tea-bell, and the arrival of a young housemaid, drew the unorthodox denouement to a mercifully abrupt close. With all possible discretion, Pattie slipped her sketchbook and pencil back into her satchel.
For the moment, the indignant débutante was rendered speechless by the unseemly predicament in which she so unexpectedly found herself. Snatching gulps of air between her sobs, she felt the incessant, prickling bite of a devastating spanking, washing back and forth throughout her bottom and thighs.
In the meantime, from the doorway, the housemaid uttered a most unladylike exclamation, a freshly laid tea-service rattling upon her silver tray as if shaken by a brief, localised earthquake. The girl stared, astonished, at the sight of Miss Burnmoor’s scorched and smouldering bottom. She herself had suffered the anatomically instructive consequences of that awful hairbrush on more than one occasion. Yet it was somehow comforting to know that its enforcement duties did not discriminate across the usual social hierarchies.
Arabella, her fine dress in disarray and her cheeks streaked with warm tears, leapt to her feet and, half-hopped, half-danced, as she fought to restore her bloomers to their more customary place.
“I’ve never been treated so!” she whimpered, frantically massaging her bruised and smarting bottom. From the corner of her eye, she could sense the housemaid’s sly smirk.
“Think yourself lucky, young lady,” her aunt warned. “If I learn that you are undertaking any further misadventures into the modelling world, you’ll feel the sting of my riding-cane across the seat of your britches! I trust this will be an end to the matter! Now go to your room – this instant.”
With a doleful glance at the two older women, Arabella departed, wearing the kind of rueful, sulky pout that would be more at home upon the countenance of a well-disciplined schoolgirl. She could never have been described as a shy young woman, but this was one exhibition that she sincerely wished had been held in private.
“Set the tea on the table, Martha,” Lady Burnmoor commanded, her face flushed from the exertion. “And then, go upstairs and help Miss Arabella to make herself look presentable again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the maid replied, struggling to suppress her giggles.
Afternoon tea at Whackton Manor was rarely a dull affair, but today’s events marked a pinnacle of household sensation. When the time came for Pattie to depart, Lady Burnmoor drew her to one side, out of earshot of the smart footman who waited beside the carriage door.
“If you would be so kind, Pattie, please do let me purchase one or two of your latest sketches. A pair of watercolours, I believe would be perfect. That’s just the kind of striking artwork I require for my guest bedroom, as an impactful warning to some of my more impetuous visiting relatives!”
Pattie nodded, her own cheeks warming with a light blush.
“It would be my pleasure, Constance. I only hope I’ve been able to do justice to such a dynamic subject.”
“Fret not, my dear,” Lady Burnmoor said with a rare chuckle. “If you require further sittings, you only have to ask!”
Pattie smiled as she contemplated the possibilities, boarding the carriage and making herself comfortable, seated upon the luxurious cushions. She reflected that it would be several days, at least, before the unfortunate Arabella would feel comfortable adopting a similar position.
It had been a spanking of a duration and intensity that Pattie had hitherto never witnessed. Could she, in good conscience, request a second-sitting, simply as a means of regaining access to her model? With that tantalising thought still tickling her imagination, they pulled away along the carriage-drive.
In the most unexpected and sensational of circumstances, her inspirational artistic muse had, against all odds, become the unwitting subject of her first commission.