There was no door from the staircase into their leader’s office. Alice later learned from Mother’s own lips that she preferred it this way, with anyone who was willing to climb the turret to the level below able to hear quite clearly all that went on in that room. “Pour encourager les autres,” the severely handsome older woman explained. She was confident that all her charges would benefit from taking in the sounds of penitent visitors to her office receiving their just desserts, both painful and pleasurable. But at the moment she first climbed those final stairs with great temerity, our heroine had no idea that anything was ahead but the all-too-familiar pain of being spanked far longer than she thought she could stand.
And then the two young women arrived, standing stock still while the
