Trapped in Their Manor, Twin Dukes Keep Me Captive

Chapter 7:Whipped

Flickering candlelight cast the count’s amused gaze as he watched me.

I had seen a look just like it once, at a ball hosted by Madame Robert in Ludwigsburg. The notoriously vulgar Marquis Breton had fixed a brewer’s daughter with that exact stare. He forced the poor girl onto his lap, kissed her roughly, then struck her dozens of times in quick succession before shoving her off his knees. No one dared intervene, and I would never forget how she wailed in despair.

It was the gaze of a man crippled by endless boredom who had finally stumbled upon prey capable of rousing his fleeting interest.

The priestess of love dried the count’s hair for him, giggling as she swayed her graceful figure toward a small side door off the flower hall and vanished through it.

The count stood and stepped before me, staring down at me from above.

“No one in this land has ever dared say ‘f**k’ to my face. Before your execution, have you anything left to say?”

He spoke English this time, with a handful of words I failed to comprehend, yet I knew they could herald nothing good. Beheading? Hanging? Exile? I mused grimly, clinging to the faint hope of a swift end. I dreaded beheading most of all—not only for the agony, but because the severed head would be mounted on a wooden stake to rot in wind and sun, a disgrace unthinkable for a noble.

“I demand treatment befitting my station. Beyond that, I have nothing to offer.”

Yes, a true noble bore standards, even when staring death in the face.

If the count expected me to collapse into tears, clutching his legs and begging for mercy beneath the shadow of death, he would be sorely disappointed. Half my blood belonged to my birth father: a libertine, yes, but an authentic duke with unassailable aristocratic bearing.

Even my nominal father, Viscount Edmund, had known full well the duel meant certain death, yet he ignored every plea to stand down. He kept his appointment for his dubious courtesan lover, only to be run through the spleen by his opponent’s blade. Men carried his body home, and he drew his last breath before my mother and me. Even at the brink of the grave, he clung to the pride and poise proper to a nobleman.

“God sees all, and He shall pass righteous judgment,” I added at last.

I had intended to utter the line in English, yet halfway through, my paltry vocabulary abandoned me—I could not recall the word for “judgment,” so I switched to French instead.

It was only logical. Mastering French alone let me converse with nobles from every realm; even England’s own aristocracy spoke it. The scraps of English I knew were only thanks to treaties forged between Württemberg and Britain.

Two footmen in livery stepped forward and clamped hands upon my shoulders. I braced myself for the count’s order to drag me away, to end my twenty-four years of life on the gallows.

But it never came.

The beautiful priestess emerged once more from the gilded rose-carved side door, still clad in her sultry, revealing garments, draped only with a sheer pale blue cashmere shawl. She held out a coil of silvery material to the count with deference, the metal glinting strangely in the candlelight, like a hibernating serpent.

The silver whip slithered loose in the count’s grasp, and my pupils constricted sharply.

“No—you cannot do this!”

I had faced death with composure, yet panic surged through me as I struggled wildly, only for the hands on my shoulders to dig in like an eagle’s talons pinning its quarry fast.

It was a silver whip, as thick as a man’s thumb and over a meter long.

I could accept an abrupt, swift death, but not public flogging, humiliation fit only for the lowest common rabble.

“You devil! Satan! Fiend of hell! Insolent brute, tyrant who abuses your power!”

I ranted recklessly, no longer caring for decorum.

The count flicked the whip once, gazing down at me.

In soft French, he said, “I had planned to drag you back and hang you alongside those slaves who made their foolish misjudgments. But I have changed my mind. Hanging you would let you die clinging to the delusion that you perish as a noble. You need to learn your true place, and I shall take great pleasure in teaching you today. Four witnesses stand here, so you shall receive forty lashes.”

“Add the ten I reserved for you alone, and that makes fifty. Count yourself fortunate. For any other wretch, I would order a hundred strokes before hanging them.”

As he spoke, he circled around to stand behind me.

The moment his final syllable faded, searing agony exploded across my back before the c***k of the whip even reached my ears.

It was indescribable—like a bolt of lightning crashing into my spine. I lurched upward in agony, yet the two footmen held me fast. I swore my bones might have shattered, and a scream foreign and raw tore from my throat, scarcely recognizable as my own voice.

My vision swam black, my ears ringing endlessly, and the metallic tang of blood flooded my mouth. I feared I had bitten my tongue clean through in torment.

The second lash fell.

Someone stuffed a wad of torn cloth—something, I could not tell—into my mouth to stop me from biting my tongue raw. Even so, my cries echoed unbridled through the flower hall.

Third lash.

I nearly choked on the gag forced between my teeth.

Fourth lash.

I slipped into a fleeting blackout.

Fifth lash.

Bone-deep torment jolted me back to consciousness.

The men holding me loosened their grip; there was no need to restrain me any longer.

The sixth lash never came. I crumpled limply onto the carpet, barely able to tell if I still drew breath.

A figure knelt beside me and pried the gag from my jaws, saving me from suffocation. Cold fresh air rushed into my lungs, yet I lacked the strength to cough. The blazing, raw pain across my back consumed every ounce of my awareness; even the shallowest breath sent tearing agony shooting through my frame.

After an endless stretch of time, the black haze faded from my sight, and the blond, blue-eyed man who had brought this nightmare swam back into view.

The count knelt beside me, watching me with undisguised amusement, terrible burning fire glinting in his sapphire eyes.

“How pitiful. Tears stream down your face. I suppose no one has ever disciplined you like this before?”

He tilted my chin upward with the whip’s wooden handle.

“Tell me—do you require more correction to grasp your proper station?”

I could not utter a single sound, only stare at him with eyes wide with terror and supplication.

I had never endured such unspeakable torment. Once, I had thought the beatings from my tutors were the worst suffering imaginable, yet today I learned what true torture by lash felt like. Before the nightmare of that silver whip, all my rigid noble codes crumbled to dust.

Lingering, drawn-out physical torment was far crueler than instantaneous death.

I surrendered.