Castle of Subines

When Emily Gardener took a walking holiday in the West Country to do research for her history degree, she never imagined the terrible consequences of trespassing on Sir Alaric Marchmount’s estate. Because on his land and in his castle, his word is literally the law and he had feudal views about crime and punishment and the position of unaccompanied young women. Emily is soon stripped, restrained and mastered by Sir Alaric, and then sentenced to two weeks “exposure, despoliation and hard labour” as his latest “subine”: an old compound contracted word formed out of “submissive” and “concubine”.

In Sir Alaric’s Subine Hall, Emily is intimately prepared for humiliating and degrading service. She soon discovers that in Dunscombe Castle, no woman, not even Sir Alaric’s lovely wife, Zinnia, is free. Over the next two weeks, Emily is served up as a sexual dessert at a dinner party, takes part in a wild subine hunt, undergoes a real roasting, is mounted on display a naked in a suit of armour, serves in a naked tennis match, endures painful bed bondage, languishes in a real dungeon and observes Alaric exercise his right of droit de seigneur with a local maiden.

Every ordeal Emily undergoes revolts her, and yet she cannot escape having intense orgasms under relentless sexual stimulation, exertion and punishment. Is she succumbing to Sir Alaric’s powerful aura of masculine domination? When her sentence is over, can she simply walk away from the Castle of Subines?

EDITORIAL NOTE: previously published as “Castle of Slaves”