French Lessons Read Online Free

Daddy’s
cars, a group of teddy boys watched from a wall across the road, laughing and
pointing. Exchanged red–faced looks between the teenage girls revealed
the fear of what awaited them at home, further amusing the boys. While sullen,
knowing nods from father to father confirmed that each man had a short, sharp
shock in store for his little girl.
    Although
Eleanor protested that the rowdy dancing and the breakages had not been ‘her
fault’, Harry insisted she ought to have known far better in someone else’s
house. The drive home seemed to take forever. Harry said not another word,
completely ignoring Eleanor’s frantic apologies and repeated reminders to her
father that she was fourteen. As soon as they arrived home she was marched into
his study, Harry nodding grimly to Nanny Thomson in passing. Sitting down on
his large leather desk chair, Harry ordered that Eleanor lie over his knee.
When she refused in indignation, he gave her one more chance and said he would
tell Nanny to fetch a hairbrush otherwise. Trapped and cringing, Eleanor had
finally obeyed her father and lain down reluctantly across his huge, hard
knees. She was mortified and infuriated. For what he himself imagined would
surely be the last time in his daughter’s life, he pulled up Eleanor’s wide
skirted party frock, with its pretty lilac net veiling, and yes ... Eleanor
shuddered at the very memory of it now.... he had briskly lowered her knickers.
She had groaned in deep shame as she felt the cold air of the room on her
backside. She told her father tearfully that she would never, ever forgive him
for this. Letting her grow accustomed to being bared, Harry had gripped her
tight and lectured her sternly. He reminded her that while she was under his
roof, she would demonstrate the good manners he had brought her up with. Or she
would suffer the consequences, at no matter what age. Eleanor was in floods of
tears of embarrassment before the punishment had even begun. Her father’s stiff
hand spanking was then doled out. Eleanor sobbed as her soft, bare bottom took
the red hot, stinging punishment she had earned through her thoughtlessness.
Harry’s scolding had continued quietly throughout the humiliating ordeal. He
had made the very measured spanking last, ensuring that her bottom ached for
days.
    Eleanor
had cried like a toddler, protesting loudly about being treated like a baby and
threatening to run away. For a week she sulked and snivelled in self–pity
and shame. When eventually she had come round, Harry had warned her one final
time to think before she acted. Contritely, she had promised him to do so.
Apart from anything else, she never wished to go over that broad, hard knee
again as long as she lived.
    Disciplining
his daughter the old–fashioned way seemed to have done the trick up to
now. But it saddened Harry to see the turn things had taken of late. In having
found Tamara and quickly remarrying, he had witnessed Eleanor’s insecurities
come to the fore. There were flashes of spite and a childish petulance he did
not like one bit. But if it were the last thing he did, his wife and his
daughter would get on.
    As
she started to drift to sleep, the yacht cradling her cosily, Eleanor dreamt of
quite different plans for her holiday. And Tamara Kelly–Walker featured
absolutely nowhere in them.
    Up
on his balcony at The Grand Hotel on the hill in Monte Carlo, Charlie
Hetherington drank in the heady night air of the Riviera. Leaning over the
thick sculpted stone wall, he studied the harbour from on high. There was no
doubt at all that the Eleanor–Jane ruled the waves, her broad
bobbing hulk dwarfing all the other vessels. Intrigued, Charlie wondered which
one of the lit lower cabins belonged to the cute little blonde he had spied
aboard. She really was a dream. With no girlfriend in two years, and his
tedious apprenticeship now behind him, Charlie felt a dizzying sense of
freedom.
    By
morning, Eleanor had all but forgotten her