Mr. Collins nearly drooled in his eagerness to retire. The night after their wedding, and then again after their journey to Hunsford, she had pled fatigue, but this evening Charlotte had made no mention of headache nor of sleepiness.

She was oppressively aware of her husband’s desire. This was part of the bargain, and she intended to keep her bargain.

“Shall we to bed, Mr. Collins?” she asked evenly.

He agreed moistly, swiftly retreating to his room and calling for his man to dress him for bed.

Charlotte quietly accepted the help of her maid, steeling herself for what was to come.

His knock came quickly, and she invited him in. He entered, wavering between desire-fueled speed and shame-faced hesitation.

Charlotte forced herself to reach out her hand to him. “Shall we pray before bed, Mr. Collins?”

Collins grasped at her suggestion, delay suddenly and confusingly desirable in the face of great, unknown delights. He came to her and they knelt together as he fought his befuddlement for an appropriate application to a merciful God, commending Him in particular to bless Lady Catherine De Bourgh for having directed him to marry.

After their “amens,” Collins turned to his wife. “It is strange… I find myself thinking of my time at school, of a schoolmaster who had me under his particular tutelage.”

Charlotte, grateful for any delay, drew him to sit next to her on the bed and bade him tell her all about it. Gratified, Collins poured his heart out to her.

“He was a great man, very strict,” Collins explained. “And he cared to very much about my progress. When I excelled, he praised most pleasantly. But when I failed…”

“If he cared so about your studies, he must have had your interests at heart,” Charlotte ventured.

“Yes, his care was ever for my learning,” Collins quickly agreed. “But, as I said, he was a strict man, and on the occasions that I did not meet his exacting standards, he was… forced to punish me.”

“His punishments must not have been too hard to bear, as you were so attached,” Charlotte said.

Collins shifted uneasily. “They were… painful.”

Feeling that he wanted to reveal something to her but that he was hard pressed to do so, Charlotte probed. “Was it the ruler? I had heard of prefects at boys’ schools administering a ruler across their young scholar’s knuckles.”

“No, not the ruler. He used his own hand. He believed a hard hand against the soundest part of a boy’s form would best transmit the lesson of disapproval for failure.”

Charlotte was confused by her husband’s pained air.

“Did he often punish you?” she asked sympathetically.

“Only when I needed it,” he confessed, smiling slightly. “He always knew best. My own father was quite busy and removed from our family scene, so I had not enjoyed a corrective hand, such as he supplied.”

“I see,” Charlotte said.

“It was painful, as I said, but sometimes a most… curious sensation… would come upon me as he punished me. A feeling akin to what I have felt upon contemplating the nuptial bed, which is why I feel bound to relate all this old school story to you, dear Charlotte.”

Her mind raced. What was William trying to tell her? She felt something important was at hand, if she could be grasp it.

“What was it that you did that forced your teacher to correct you?”

“The first time it was low marks on an exam. After that it was instances of clumsiness, in speech or in movement.”

“And were there many such corrections necessary?”

“Oh, yes,” Collins said, lost in memory. “For a time, before I learned grace, it was necessary for him to correct me once a week or more.”

“And how long did this go on?” she asked.

Collins, biting his lip, fell silent.

“Mr. Collins, tell me, for how long did he beat you?” she asked again, demand creeping into her voice.

He trembled and the answer forced its way through his lips. “It was for several months. But he became displeased when… when he was correcting me and… my body would respond in a most unseemly way.”

“And that was an incorrect way for you to receive correction?”

“Yes, he was most unhappy with me, telling me that I could not even be punished correctly. He would send me off into the hall, and sometimes the other boys would see my state.” Toward the end of his statement his voice could barely be discerned, so low did he whisper.

Charlotte observed him as he trembled in the cold light of revelation. He seemed so helpless, so completely exposed.

“Tell me how he would correct you,” she ordered him.

“He would bid me lower my trousers and lie over his lap,” Collins said tremblingly. “He would then strike my buttocks with his hard hand until I cried that I had learned my lesson.”

Charlotte noted that he had grown fully erect, his cock poking his night shirt up toward his belly button as he sat. The thought of him atop her, plunging it into her, gave her impulse to do aught to make another path.

She said boldly, “And yet, you could not control that,” she said, pointing to his erection with some disdain, “Then as you cannot control it now.”

Collins gasped, trembling and collapsing in on himself.

“No, Mr. Collins. I cannot let this go unpunished. You know what you must do. Make haste.”

She gestured to her lap, and with swift and sudden capitulation, he raised his night shirt and threw himself across her lap.

His buttocks presented a broad target, and she raised her hand in wonder at herself. Spurred by the necessity of recalling his teacher’s heavy hand, she raised it high and as hard as she could, smacked his right buttock.

Collins writhed as he lay across her lap, ecstasy lighting his body. His left buttock cried for equal treatment, and it was with delight that he felt Charlotte’s hand come down, equally hard, upon it. He cried aloud in pained pleasure as she rained down blows upon him, his cock frantically rubbing against her night dress in his transport of delight.

She felt her arm flagging, and stopping for a moment to scratch her fingertips across the reddened flesh, bent to say coldly in his ear, “Have you learned your lesson, Mr. Collins?” And then unleashed another volley of hard slaps. Collins once again writhed and erupted in pleasure and release.

He slid to the floor and Charlotte stood over him.

“You are a bad boy, aren’t you, Mr. Collins?”

He could only nod dumbly in agreement.

“You need your punishment, don’t you?”

Again, he nodded.

“You are lucky that I am here to punish you as you need.”

“Yes, very lucky, very lucky,” he stammered.

Forcing herself to be assured, she reached down and pinched the wet tip of his cock, feeling it twitch in response.

“If I am to take the trouble to punish you, you must try to be very good and to do all I tell you, for I know what is best for you.”

He slurred utter surrender, and Charlotte helped him into bed, then retired to her own, there to collapse in stunned amazement at her own bravery and her husband’s oddity.