Dear Sir Elizabeth,

In recognition of your recent exemplary service to Her Majesty, you are cordially invited to winter at the Heartgarden, and to select for yourself one permanent consort from among the most beautiful and highly trained aspirants in the realm.

Congratulations, brave hero.

From the desk of the Headmistress

Heartgarden Castle

This was not something Elizabeth had ever hoped or planned for.

The Royal Heartgarden was the most selective and exacting finishing school in all the world. Less than one percent of boys who applied there, hoping to train for a life as a luxury consort to a powerful lady someday, were accepted.

Even fewer completed the program.

Duchesses and Countesses chose consorts from the Heartgarden. Perhaps wealthy traders who held some economic power over Her Majesty.

Knights like Elizabeth might socialize with the highest of nobles, and share in some of their privileges when invited, but not this one.

Elizabeth had fully expected to marry a simple man with skin like leather, who could perhaps read just well enough to help her organize her shire’s requests for help. One who would smile and nod at the gossip she brought home from court, never quite understanding it.

When her carriage passed through the outer gates of Heartgarden Castle, she had to keep reminding herself that she was not here as an escort, a guard, or any other part of someone else’s entourage.

She was here as herself, for herself.

Invited, personally, by name.

The first courtyard they passed through was mostly taken up by a heart-shaped fountain surrounded by impeccably pruned rosebushes. As the carriage followed the arcing flagstone path around the fountain, it passed near a gazebo, where a dozen beautiful young men in fine satin gowns were gathered for tea.

At the sight of the carriage, they all rose from their wicker chairs and rushed to the near edge of the gazebo, waving and blowing excited kisses.

One of them might be mine.

That was a wicked thought, and Elizabeth quickly corrected it for herself.

One of them might be my husband. Not my property. Nothing so crass, obviously.

She remained a little giddy at the possibility.

The carriage proceeded through another gate in one of the castle’s towering stone walls, and finally came to rest in front of a formal entryway three times as tall as Elizabeth’s house.

When the driver opened the carriage door, an austere-looking woman in a simple riding tunic was waiting alone on the entrance steps. A set of wide metal rings holding hundreds of keys rested proudly on her hip, attached to a chain belt.

“Welcome, Sir Elizabeth,” the woman said, keeping both hands on her riding crop. “I am Headmistress Jane.”

Jane was about twice Elizabeth’s age, somewhere in her mid or late forties. Her silver-streaked black hair was drawn into a tight and perfectly centered bun, and she very nearly made her welcome sound genuine.

It was only the slight extra emphasis on Sir, drawing attention to Elizabeth’s lack of a higher title, that gave her away.

“Pleased to meet you, Headmistress,” said Elizabeth, bowing and pretending not to notice.

“If you’ll just join me in my parlor for some refreshment,” said Jane, “I’ll have your bags brought to your room.”

#

Elizabeth followed Jane up the stairs and into an ornate entrance hall of marble and gold. She didn’t get the chance to take it all in before Jane took a turn through a plain wooden door, leading the way to a far more modest room, with a few sofas, bookshelves, and a hearth.

Jane took only as much time as etiquette absolutely demanded to ask Elizabeth about her journey, and whether she preferred tea or ale at this time of day.

Once Elizabeth had a cup of tea in front of her, Jane segued immediately to presenting her with a leatherbound volume with the Heartgarden’s emblem embossed on the cover.

“Before you meet the aspiring consorts we have on offer, I must ask you to swear compliance with the garden rules,” said Jane. “Guests who willfully break these rules, or make repeated mistakes, will be escorted from the premises and not invited to return, I’m afraid.”

Elizabeth was sure Jane would be simply devastated if she had to nullify the invitation of a lowly knight.

“While we deeply respect your accomplishments, and the queen’s judgment in bestowing this honor,” Jane pursed her lips distastefully, “our first duty is always to the sanctity of the garden and its work, as her majesty would no doubt agree.”

Elizabeth had the feeling this meeting was not part of the welcome noble ladies usually received here.

She also had a feeling that the garden rules were the sort of thing a real noble lady would have known already, making the meeting unnecessary.

She took a moment to skim the book’s opening chapter.

“Some of the rules exist to protect our aspirants’ well-being,” Jane prefaced them.

Unless expressly instructed to do so by a trainer or another section of this manual, visitors may not: 

·         Strike or otherwise cause physical pain or potential injury to aspirants.

·         Issue threats or spread misinformation for the purpose of manipulating an aspirant’s behavior.

·         Encourage conduct that would jeopardize an aspirant’s good standing with the Heartgarden.

It continued for a while in the same vein.

“I didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” Elizabeth promised.

“Yes, I’m familiar with your reputation,” said Jane.

“My reputation?” Elizabeth asked pointedly.

“I only meant that I wouldn’t expect someone of your gallantry to have any trouble with the basics,” Jane said with a tight, diplomatic smile. “Other rules, however, exist to protect our aspirants’ training.”

She surveyed Elizabeth, checking for understanding. Elizabeth kept her face neutral.

“You see, during your interactions with the aspirants, you will be acting as an authority figure to them,” Jane explained. “In some situations, it will fall to you to administer appropriate discipline. We recommend keeping the rulebook on your person at all times for reference. You will also need to familiarize yourself closely with the aspirant code of conduct, so that you can spot infractions in a timely manner.”

Elizabeth skipped ahead to the indicated section.

Aspirants must present themselves at all times in a manner that reflects the Heartgarden’s values and standards of excellence. This includes: 

Chastity – Chastity belts are to be worn and kept locked at all times, except when removal is absolutely necessary for discipline, or for prescribed health, hygiene, or maintenance regimens. Unlocked aspirants must submit to continuous supervision until re-locking, to prevent self-spoiling. Any unauthorized attempts to remove, circumvent, modify, or otherwise tamper with a chastity belt are strictly prohibited. 

Obedience – In addition to this code, aspirants must follow all directions from trainers and ladies. They must also adhere zealously to the spoken and unspoken rules of any situation, including but not limited to punctuality, games, and table manners. 

Non-presumption – Aspirants may not sit, recline, eat, drink, speak, or exit a room without permission. 

Honesty – While proper decorum may often require keeping things to oneself, aspirants may not tell lies. 

Tact  – Aspirants may not speak negatively of anyone. 

Humility – Aspirants may not speak positively of themselves, except as absolutely necessary to answer direct questions regarding their ability to serve. 

Selflessness – Except in answer to a direct question, aspirants may not express personal displeasure, dissatisfaction, or desire. Aspirants must be attentive to all signs of displeasure in others, and must do everything in their power to alleviate such feelings. When multiple individuals are showing displeasure at once, an aspirant must tend to the highest-ranking person first. 

Cleanliness – All aspirants must bathe and shave daily, and observe thorough oral hygiene. Before entering common areas, aspirants must be fully dressed in: 

·         Chemise

·         Corset

·         Petticoat(s)

·         Dress

·         Stockings (lace)

·         Slippers (high-heeled)

·         Tidy hairstyle with tasteful ornamentation 

Outside of bedtime seclusion, aspirants may not remove or disorder any articles of clothing unless directed to do so.

There were footnotes attached to each rule, listing the page for the corresponding disciplinary procedure if broken.

Jane smiled with some satisfaction at the overwhelmed expression Elizabeth realized she must be wearing.

“We understand that some ladies may wish to institute more… permissive standards for their personal consorts,” said Jane. “You are, of course, free to do so once your selection has been finalized. We can even provide your chosen consort with individualized supplementary training to meet your preferences, if desired. For as long as an aspirant remains potentially available to other ladies, however, we must take great care not to confuse them. The Heartgarden prides itself on the unrivaled quality of our results, and consistency is the cornerstone of our method.”

It all sounded a bit excessive to Elizabeth.

She had known that Heartgarden consorts were highly trained, of course, but she had never given much thought to what that meant. She had mainly imagined them practicing music and dancing, learning languages, frosting decorative cookies, the sort of things that would help them throw glamorous parties and entertain important guests for their ladies.

Elizabeth appreciated a virtuous, demure, well-mannered man as much as the next lady, but to explicitly forbid them from expressing so many things, even in emergencies or perfectly appropriate moments….

Aside from feeling a bit sorry for the aspirants, Elizabeth found herself intimidated by the task of courting someone this way.

She was not interested in building a harem, as she knew some of the highest ladies did. Whoever she chose as her consort, she intended to marry and keep as her sole partner.

How could she possibly get to know someone well enough for that under such circumstances?

She had half a mind to ask for a carriage home, and return to her old plans for her life.

But then again, she had all winter to see how things might develop, and nowhere better to be. Her leaving wouldn’t change anything for any of the aspirants here, and if she got into a situation where she was required to do something she truly disagreed with, she could always leave then.

For now, there didn’t seem to be any harm in seeing this rare opportunity through a bit farther. If she didn’t, she’d probably spend the rest of her life wondering about it.

And staying would get on Jane’s nerves, which at the moment seemed nothing but a bonus.

“I completely understand,” Elizabeth said with another friendly, falsely oblivious smile, slipping the book into her travelling satchel. “I’ll have it memorized by morning.”

#

Elizabeth was a quick study. She managed to keep her promise and still steal a few hours of sleep in the soft canopy bed in her room.

She woke to a knock on her door. By the time she could get herself up to answer it, the boy who had knocked was hurrying away down the corridor and around the next corner, his skirts rustling behind him.

On the floor was a breakfast tray and a card with instructions to assemble in the green drawing room when she was quite ready to begin the day.

Still excited and curious for what that day would entail, Elizabeth was one of the first ladies to reach the drawing room, freshly groomed and wearing her nicest embroidered tunic. Her shoulder-length hair was brushed and tied neatly with leather at the nape of her neck.

The other ladies who trickled in all seemed to know each other and have plenty of catching up to do. Elizabeth knew a few of them, but being a knight, she wasn’t a priority for their attention.

She hovered at the edge of both the room and the conversation.

At least she didn’t feel underdressed or uncouth next to the higher ladies. Some of them were still eating handfuls of bread and cheese and hadn’t even changed out of their nightshirts.

The room was laid out with a row of tiny tables, each accompanied by one comfortable armchair and one spindly stool. A pair of ceramic bowls were arranged on each tabletop, full of slips of paper.

One side of the room was empty of all furniture, providing open floorspace.

That was the side Jane entered from.

“Welcome, honored guests!” she addressed the room with a wave, before returning both hands to her ever-present crop. “The Royal Heartgarden has a record-high of over two hundred aspirants certified and ready to serve you this season. We recognize that this number may be as daunting as it is exciting. So, for this first day of the season, we’re proud to present you with a hand-picked selection from among our most promising. Please welcome… Charles! James! David! Gabriel!”

The aspirants sashayed into the room in response to their names, each adding his own extra twirl, pose, or flourish to the movement before lining up against the wall, hands clasped on one hip, one slippered foot pointed in front of the other.

Jane stopped in front of Gabriel and ran her riding crop along the delicate skin exposed by his off-the-shoulder gown, correcting some microscopic or imagined error of his posture.

“Edgar!” she continued announcing. “Daisy! Christopher!” She went on summoning aspirants until there were two for each of the dozen ladies present.

Elizabeth thought for a moment that she must have heard – and seen – incorrectly when Daisy entered, but no, when Jane started adding commentary on a few of the aspirants, she definitely referred to Daisy as “she.”

It had never occurred to Elizabeth that the Heartgarden might admit girls, but she supposed it made sense, to cater to a wider range of noble ladies’ tastes.

For her part, Elizabeth had always found other women’s bodies just as alluring as men’s. She had simply assumed that no woman would settle for a life as the spouse of a knight. No matter how respectful and considerate Elizabeth endeavored to be, the expectations placed upon someone in her position meant that whoever she married would live always in her shadow, putting in long hours of support work with no official credit.

To a lowborn boy, that would still be a great advancement he could not hope to achieve any other way. Girls had more options — the chance of winning knighthoods of their own, or building large commercial enterprises.

Then again, for every girl who rose in such a way, there were a hundred more who failed and lived out their lives in the fields where they were born. Perhaps, for those who knew themselves to be unsuited for business or combat, becoming a lady’s consort held some appeal after all.

“Ladies, if you would each take an armchair,” Jane directed.

Elizabeth did so right away.

Other ladies dawdled, distracted by their previous conversations, but soon enough, everyone was seated.

At a clap from Jane, half the aspirants lined up across from the ladies, standing behind the spindly stools.

The other half lined up against the wall.

The one who ended up in front of Elizabeth had been introduced as Christopher. He had wavy, golden-brown hair, and his soft arms moved as if they were hiding hard muscles not far below the surface. Like the rest of the aspirants chosen for this activity, he looked about nineteen or twenty years old.

“The aspirant across from you is yours, for five minutes,” said Jane, picking up an hourglass from a side table. “I recommend you use the time to ask one question from the bowl on your left. If you wish, you can also allow your aspirant to ask one from the bowl on your right. And…” she turned the hourglass. “Begin.”

Elizabeth waited, but Christopher did not move.

Elizabeth looked to both sides. The other pairings were already immersed in conversation. However those conversations had started, she had missed it.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” said Elizabeth. “I think we should get started.”

Christopher gave her a polite nod, but that was all.

“Oh!” Elizabeth remembered. “Please, have a seat. And I give you permission to speak.”

Christopher smiled as he realized that she was only being forgetful, rather than testing him. He pushed down on his dress, which was apparently supported by a hoop skirt, because it lifted up in the back. He enveloped the spindly stool within the layers of fabric and perched on top of it.

There was an unmistakable clink of metal on polished wood, as his chastity belt touched down.

The reminder that the belt was there, right under his skirts, intrigued Elizabeth more than she would have expected. She sort of wanted to see it.

“Thank you, my lady,” Christopher said graciously.

“Of course,” Elizabeth laughed, a touch nervous, reaching into the left bowl of paper. “Now, let’s see what we have. Are you… oh.” She broke off as she read the question, and cleared her throat to stall.

Jane was pacing along the tables, and her gaze fell on Elizabeth and Christopher at that moment.

Elizabeth hadn’t read the ladies’ half of the rulebook nearly as closely as the aspirants’ half, but she suspected she’d be breaking some rule if she failed to complete her part of this exercise. Treating her aspirant too “permissively,” perhaps.

“Are you ever allowed to orgasm?” she finished apologetically, turning the slip of paper around to prove that this was what it really said.

Jane moved on.

Christopher noticed Elizabeth’s distress and responded instantly.

“It’s perfectly all right,” he assured her. “Headmistress Jane fills the ladies’ bowls with questions she knows you’re likely to be curious about, but that you might not feel comfortable asking on your own.”

“Are you comfortable answering them?” Elizabeth asked.

It took Christopher a moment to understand that he was being asked to express a preference.

“To be honest, I find it much more agreeable than answering questions about the weather,” he said.

He bit his berry-colored lower lip and smiled guiltily at this bit of personal exposure.

“And, to answer the original question, yes, some orgasms are permitted, but as rarely as possible. We each worship our future lady as the owner of our pleasure. Until she claims us, and chooses to bestow that honor upon us for her own reasons, any pleasure we take, we steal from her. But Headmistress Jane says that some stealing is, unfortunately, necessary to turn us into the consorts our ladies deserve. Once every month, we— well, those of us who produce seed,” he corrected himself, with a glance at Daisy, “we have to have it extracted, for our health. We stay locked up for that, and they give us an anesthetic if we show symptoms of enjoying it.”

He gave another guilty smile.

“Sometimes, though, if we’re very, very good, we’re allowed to steal a real orgasm on a special occasion. Being able to remember what it feels like helps us to respect its power, to feel the weight of what it means if our lady chooses to give us one. I had one for my birthday the year before last. I had to fast in solitude as penance for three days afterward, of course, to remind me that I had stolen what I could not possibly earn, but it was worth it.”

The guilty smile remained, but a touch of a brag crept into his voice.

Elizabeth would never tell.

“Who administered it?” Elizabeth asked. “Headmistress Jane? Yourself?”

“Goodness, no,” Christopher put a hand to his chest, right at the low neckline of his gown, in shock. “There’s a machine. I’m not certain how it works. We’re blindfolded and immobilized while it… works on us. To prevent us from gaining premature knowledge of our bodies. It’s the only way to keep our virginity perfect. So, if you, just for example, were to become my permanent lady, you could be assured that you would be the first to teach me the pleasure of human touch.”

He rested his hands on the table, soft skin and short, polished nails easily available to her, but not presuming.

Elizabeth was just about to suggest that he draw a question from the other bowl, when Jane announced, “Time’s up! Aspirants, switch.”

Christopher gave her a reluctant goodbye smile as he lifted himself, and his dress, off the stool without disturbing it.

He and the rest of the aspirants at the tables switched places with those lined up along the wall.

The next aspirant to stand at Elizabeth’s table was Daisy.

Hoping to be able to fit in more than a single question this time, Elizabeth remembered to give her permission to sit and speak before Jane had even overturned the hourglass.

Again, the metal of a belt clinked against the wood, and Elizabeth found herself curiously picturing it, and how Daisy’s might be designed differently from the others.

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Elizabeth.

“You as well,” Daisy said sweetly, and then segued into a neutral comment on the blooms in the garden.

It took effort for Elizabeth to keep her attention on Daisy’s face.

There was something so… perverse about seeing a woman in a gown. It didn’t feel like it should have been allowed. The corset pushed her breasts together and up, almost to the point of spilling out. Far stranger than the aesthetics, though, were the delicate, submissive, male mannerisms Daisy had obviously learned here.

Elizabeth realized now that she’d never given a second thought to the way men folded their limbs to take up as little space as possible, the way they dropped their gazes when they felt observed, or the way they so carefully selected the softest possible version of their words, even without Heartgarden training.

It took seeing those habits on a woman to make her consciously notice them.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure she liked the combination… but she wasn’t sure that she didn’t, either.

As a change of pace, perhaps. A novelty.

“Shall we?” Elizabeth asked, when Daisy had finished talking about the roses outside.

Daisy nodded agreeably, twirling one of the shiny black curls that hung artfully from her up-do.

“Do you ever wish for more freedom?” Elizabeth read the question aloud.

Daisy took that same moment Christopher had, to do the math on what this question licensed her to say.

“I miss it now and then,” she admitted. “But all in all, no. I like my keeping to be strict.”

“Why?” Elizabeth improvised. “Do you enjoy being punished?”

She had heard of such things, but never discussed them with anyone in any detail.

“Sometimes I do,” Daisy admitted easily, and then her eyes went wide. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t do my best to serve my lady well! What I mean is, I’d rather know that I’ll be punished for my transgressions than wonder whether anyone notices or cares what I do.”

“So, when you’re chosen, you’re hoping things will stay more or less the same for you?” Elizabeth asked.

“I will adapt to my lady’s needs,” Daisy recited automatically.

“But what are you hoping for?”

Daisy thought.

“I want her to know what she wants from me, and to teach and enforce it ruthlessly. Whether it’s the same as what I was taught here, I don’t much care. The only thing I’m hoping will be different…”

Elizabeth leaned in, encouraging her to finish her thought.

“I’m hoping that I might have my lady’s attention all to myself,” said Daisy, her gray eyes wide again, with an added sparkle. “That I might serve her and take her training and discipline one-on-one, always. But even if I don’t, I doubt I’ll have to share with hundreds of other aspirants.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” said Elizabeth.

She almost let slip that she was looking for a sole spouse, but it felt too much like a promise. Instead, she gestured to the right bowl.

“Your turn.”

Daisy chose a slip of paper and unfolded it.

“What is your favorite dessert?”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer provocatively or literally. She took the safe approach. “Apple cake.”

Daisy seemed pleased enough with this answer. She smiled and looked away to resist saying something.

“Are you thinking about one of your preferences?” Elizabeth guessed. “Is that your favorite too?”

Daisy shook her head.

“Are you thinking about how good you are at something?” Elizabeth tried again.

Daisy did not quite nod, but the deepening of her smile gave confirmation.

“How good are you at baking apple cake, Daisy?”

The smile became a grin before Daisy reined it carefully back in. “I am competent, my lady.”

Before Elizabeth could give her the right prompt to allow her to brag a little harder, Jane announced the time to switch.

The group of aspirants waiting against the wall shifted one space to the right, with the one on the far right sashaying across to the far left so that they could each approach a new table and trade places with the aspirant there.

#

Elizabeth had to admit, it would be easy to get used to this. So much beauty, so much polished flirtation, so much hope and eagerness focused on her.

She could have done without the distracting behavior of the other ladies, however.

Everything had started out well enough, but as the game went on, most of the ladies grew obnoxiously bored with it. Countess Vera of Arbelle, on Elizabeth’s left, had started ordering her aspirants to sit on the armrest of her chair instead of the stool, so that she could fondle each of their muscle groups in turn, while barely pretending to listen to their answers to the questions.

Lady Mary of Dinore, two seats to Elizabeth’s right, had swept both bowls off the table to shatter on the floor, and was directing each aspirant to dance for her among the fragments, before pulling them across her lap and spanking them soundly for no reason at all, not even a pretense of one.

Jane showed no interest in correcting this clear violation of the guest rules. Not as long as Lady Mary was the one committing it, anyway. Elizabeth was quite sure she herself could not have gotten away with such disregard.

Not that she wanted to.

The aspirants were so sweet and dutiful already. How hard was it to show them even the slightest bit of respect?

After a while, Elizabeth found herself wanting to apologize for what each aspirant had already been subjected to by the time they reached her table.

Most of them did a good job of hiding their feelings about this treatment, but it weighed visibly on Gabriel.

He arrived in front of Elizabeth with his skinny shoulders raised cautiously toward his ears. He averted his gaze from hers, but only by a few degrees so that he could watch for oncoming attacks.

“Hello, Gabriel, I’m Elizabeth. You have my permission to sit and to speak as freely as the code allows,” Elizabeth recited her recently perfected introduction. “I’ll do my best to give you more specific permissions as they come up.”

Gabriel looked at her with a more suspicious, evaluating gaze than she’d seen on an aspirant so far, as he perched himself on the stool.

Elizabeth examined him in return. He looked about as different from the others as was allowed, she realized, in every possible way. His dark brown hair was washed and brushed, but fell mostly loose around his shoulders, down to his waist. Only two sections, at his temples, were braided and tied together with a ribbon in technical compliance with the code.

His lips were painted, but with a more natural tone of pink.

His eyebrows were groomed, any stray hairs removed, but while the other aspirants’ brows were plucked back to thin, arched lines, his retained an expressive thickness that made his gaze more intense.

His look might have been harsh, almost unmanly if it weren’t for his large, delicate Adam’s apple. The way it fluttered in time with his thoughts would have made him look soft and pretty even in knight’s armor.

Elizabeth picked a slip of paper, curious to know more about him.

“If I had the key to your chastity belt, what would you be willing to do for it?” she read.

“What would you make me do?” Gabriel fired back, instantly.

His defiance was subtle, wrapped in airs of innocence. Still, it was so different from the way all the other aspirants conducted themselves that Elizabeth looked instinctively over both shoulders, to check if anyone else had noticed. The ladies on either side of her were preoccupied with their own aspirants, and Jane was at the other end of the room.

This didn’t put Elizabeth fully at ease. She leaned closer across the table.

“Are you some kind of test?” she whispered to Gabriel.

“Why would someone be testing you, my lady?”

Elizabeth was fairly sure there was no rule against her answering him honestly.

“You know that if I’m caught letting you get away with anything, I’ll be sent home, right?” she hissed. “Did Headmistress Jane send you to trick me into giving her an excuse?”

“Am I in danger of getting away with something?” Gabriel asked.

“You’re required to obey all rules spoken and unspoken, including in games,” Elizabeth recalled. “There’s an unspoken rule here that you’re supposed to answer the question.”

Gabriel paused half a second, before smiling and showing off his perfect teeth, caught in the act.

“You’re right, of course, my lady. You’d better check the punishment for that. For both our sakes.”

Elizabeth pulled the book from her satchel and flipped through the pages as fast as she could, aware of Gabriel watching and waiting.

Disobedience (unspoken rule, first daily offense): Bare-handed strangulation, 30 seconds, applied in a kneeling position.

“Kneel beside my chair,” Elizabeth ordered, her voice uncertain in her own ears.

Gabriel gathered up his skirts and obeyed.

He clasped his hands behind his back and offered no resistance as she wrapped her hands around his slender neck.

No resistance, that was, except for his uncomfortably perceptive gaze, which remained fixed on her.

Tentatively, Elizabeth squeezed, and began counting the seconds.

Gabriel seemed to slip into a practiced sort of trance, conserving his energy and oxygen, still using her face as his focal point.

He made it look so easy that Elizabeth tightened her grip, afraid to be caught going too soft on him.

But even with his pulse beating against her palms, that delicate Adam’s apple of his struggling under her thumbs, Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling that some of the control she’d held in this game was slipping through her fingers, her future forming itself without her input.

When she let go at the end of the thirty seconds, they were both breathing hard.

She ordered him back to his stool.

“Pick one,” she told him, nodding at the right bowl.

This part seemed to be easier on the aspirants and allowed Elizabeth to do more of the talking. Maybe they could run out the clock this way without Gabriel feeling the need to do anything else that Elizabeth would be expected to punish.

He chose and unfolded one of the papers.

“What’s your favorite book?”

Elizabeth felt her face fill with a completely uncalculated smile. “The Ballad of Delena.”

Before she could launch into summarizing it for Gabriel’s benefit, he let out a breath of recognition.

“You’ve read it?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes, my lady.”

Elizabeth hadn’t thought there were any men who read Rencepia’s ballads on their own.

“What do you think of it?” she remembered to ask directly.

“It’s one of my favorite fantasies,” he answered.

“Fantasies?”

“About the possibility of rising up from the bottom,” he explained.

That was what Elizabeth liked most about it too.

“Switch!” Jane announced the time.

“Request me,” Gabriel whispered urgently as he lifted his skirts from around the stool.

“What?” asked Elizabeth.

“This evening, you’ll be asked if you’re interested in a longer trial period with any of us that you’ve met so far. Request me.” He took a nervous sideways glance at Lady Mary, who blew him a taunting kiss with her foot on Charles’s face.

“Please,” Gabriel added, and then returned to the wall.

With his plea still in her ears, Elizabeth tidied the accumulated paper slips into a pile. As she did so, she turned over the slip he’d drawn.

How do you like your laundry done? it said.

She looked up. Gabriel was still eyeing her from across the room, waiting for her to discover his lie, watching for her reaction.

By that time, her next aspirant was standing at the ready behind the stool.

She greeted the new one, crumpling Gabriel’s slip casually into the pile.

#

The game of questions was followed by a lunch banquet, a longer dance display, an even larger dinner banquet, and then cocktails in one of the rose gardens.

The conversation during the cocktail hour was mostly between the ladies. A group of aspirants hovered nearby, serving them their drinks and trying to discreetly avoid Lady Mary and her cluster of friends.

When Lady Mary ordered one of the aspirants to lap up a drink she’d spilled in a flowerbed, Elizabeth decided to retire early.

An envelope was waiting under the door of her room when she arrived.

Just as Gabriel had predicted, the papers inside informed her of her right to request a specific aspirant as her trial consort.

This right may be exercised multiple times, and at any point during your stay, but you may not have multiple trials running concurrently. Beginning a trial later may help you make a more informed request. Beginning one earlier may prevent your preferred consort from being selected by someone else, and will allow for a longer trial period before final choosing.

After the main letter, there was an explanation of a complicated point system, which would allow her to make multiple requests with different weightings, in case more than one lady requested the same aspirant at the same time.

Elizabeth spent a long time staring at the list of all of the available aspirants. There were beauties here she’d barely become acquainted with, and others she hadn’t even been introduced to.

Part of her felt cheated. She had only been here a day, and already her “gallantry,” as Jane had mocked her for it on her way in, might end up dictating the rest of her experience.

It wasn’t as if she wanted to spend her winter at the Heartgarden behaving like Lady Mary, but was it so unreasonable to want to take her time? At least have the chance to meet everyone before making a commitment?

All of the aspirants here were hoping to be chosen, and a lot of them were probably hoping not to be chosen by Lady Mary. What made Gabriel so special that she felt compelled to stake a protective claim on him? Was it just because he’d asked her to?

No. It was more than that.

She had never in her life met a man quite like Gabriel. And she knew what happened to unpowerful people who stood out too much in the presence of nobles.

Gabriel certainly stood out, more even than Daisy. Whether by choice or because he couldn’t help it, he wore his sharp, intelligent identity on his sleeve, over the soft cookie-cutter one the Heartgarden had assigned to him.

That was blood in the water for ladies like Mary, the ones who actually wanted to be hated by the people they controlled.

The other aspirants could accept how she treated them in a boring enough way that she might lose interest and move on to the next. But Gabriel’s indignation would have piqued her interest the moment she got him across her lap. His unclaimed days were numbered, and his opportunities to catch a kinder lady’s eye were running out.

Elizabeth opened the bottle of ink at the desk in her room, picked up the quill, and committed all of her choosing points for the night to Gabriel.

Unless someone else did the same before tomorrow, he was hers.

There. She’d done what she could.

And it wasn’t a firm commitment, she reminded herself. She was still free to get to know the others. A higher lady certainly wouldn’t hold herself back just because she had a trial consort.

At worst, she could keep Gabriel out of Mary’s hands for a while, as they both explored their options.

#

The knock that woke Elizabeth the next morning did not lead her to a breakfast tray and an empty corridor.

The moment she opened her door, the hands of six other ladies reached through to pull her from her room.

“First claim! First claim! First claim!” the ladies chanted, shrieking with laughter and pushing her down the corridor, still in her long night shirt and bare feet.

“Congratulations!” Countess Vera crowed, the first words she had spoken to Elizabeth since they had arrived. “I never knew you could be so decisive!”

Lady Mary fumed as she watched Elizabeth pass, decidedly not chanting. This seemed to add to the amusement for most of the others.

Aspirants, already dressed for the day, lined both sides of a predetermined path through the castle. They applauded and curtsied as the other ladies marched Elizabeth past them.

The march ended in the grand central courtyard, which was packed with yet more aspirants, along with several women Jane’s age and older who must have been their trainers.

A path down the exact center of the courtyard was left open for Elizabeth, leading between the flowerbeds and up to a raised, canopied platform.

Headmistress Jane was already waiting there, standing behind a low stone altar, with Gabriel on her left.

At one end of the altar were a silk scarf, a pair of gloves, and a riding crop to match Jane’s own.

Elizabeth walked the path with all eyes on her, the ladies and the aspirants from the corridors filling in the space behind her as she went.

She climbed the steps to the platform and stood in the conspicuously empty space on Jane’s right, behind the altar. This must have been correct, because Jane responded only with a stiff nod of acknowledgement.

Gabriel leaned forward slightly to send Elizabeth a grateful glance.

“We have our first trial consort of the season,” Jane announced to the crowd, prompting a deafening cheer. “Aspirant Gabriel, sit on the altar and prepare yourself for transferal.”

Gabriel moved around to the front of the altar, sat on the edge, and lifted his skirts resolutely up over his waist. His chastity belt glinted in the sunlight for all the crowd to see.

It was a single plate of molded metal covering his pubis, with a faucet-like tube encasing his cock, holding it in its flaccid shape and size. The tip of the head was just visible, sticking out of the end.

A hole below the tube allowed his testicles to hang out, unprotected.

It was all held in place with a set of chains around his waist and hips, drawn together at the back with a single heavy padlock.

“Sir Elizabeth, do you vow to safeguard this aspirant’s chastity and virginity from all pleasurable human touch, and to uphold his training for his permanent lady, whether or not she be you?”

“I do,” said Elizabeth, because absolutely no good could come of saying anything else at that moment.

“Aspirant Gabriel, do you vow to respect, worship, serve, and obey Sir Elizabeth as the highest-ranking person in your world, before even Her Majesty, for as long as you remain bound to her?”

Gabriel managed to stutter out an “I do.”

Jane picked the scarf up from the altar and wrapped it around Gabriel’s eyes.

Once she was content that he was fully in darkness, she selected the correct key from her many keyrings, raised it ceremonially to the crowd, and then reached down to place it in the lock at his back.

Gabriel kept his hands at his sides, gripping the edge of the altar with white knuckles, while Jane unraveled the chains and eased the plate off of his pubis. She set the whole belt down at the end of the altar with the other objects.

“Sir Elizabeth, don the gloves,” she directed.

Elizabeth pulled on the thick goatskin gloves, beginning to suspect what loophole they were here to exploit.

“Bring him to the edge of ruination,” Jane directed.

With his eyes covered and no permission to speak, Gabriel could not communicate much, but his head turned in Elizabeth’s direction in an expectant-seeming way.

Carefully, unable to feel his delicate skin through the thick gloves, Elizabeth lifted his shaft between her fingers and stroked the underside.

The response was immediate.

Gabriel moaned softly and leaned his head back, Adam’s apple reaching for the sky.

Emboldened, Elizabeth closed her hand gently around his fast-developing erection, forming a tube for him to thrust into. He lifted his hips off the altar a couple of times to make use of it, and for a moment, Elizabeth was able to enjoy watching his ecstasy, without dwelling on Jane’s choice of words.

Then Jane put her hand firmly on Gabriel’s shoulder from behind.

“This is what you’ve trained for,” she reminded him. “Control yourself. If you spill your worthless seed now, you will not be allowed redemption through penance. You will be decertified and expelled from the program. Years of your life, wasted, preparing for nothing. Even you wouldn’t dare make yourself that much of a disappointment.”

Gabriel held himself rigidly to the altar after that, keeping as still as part of the stonework.

A look from Jane told Elizabeth that she could not hold still along with him. She worked her gloved hands up and down his length in what she hoped looked like an honest effort.

“Good,” Jane told Gabriel. “You’re going to sit there like a good aspiring consort, imagining what life will be like if you’re truly chosen. What it will be like when your lady has the right to put her bare hands on your cock and stroke you to completion, if she so chooses. You’re going to wish today were that day. You’re going to be reminded that it’s not, and that there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Gabriel’s face burned with shame, but to Elizabeth’s astonishment, she could feel, even through the gloves, how much he hardened with each reminder of his position. She wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to get harder than he already was, but he did, and the timing was too precise to be coincidental.

For the first time, Elizabeth recognized in him a sliver of the sort of person who would choose this life. The rest of him fought it, but his body made itself visibly at home with his helplessness.

She tried to touch him more softly, to keep him safer from expulsion, but that only seemed to arouse him more. He dripped a slow, steady flow of clear fluid, turning his skin slick under the gloves. His hips stretched involuntarily forward again, and a low mewing sound rose from the back of his throat. All Elizabeth could do was continue with mechanical strokes, counting on his training to be enough.

“Stop,” Jane told her at long last.

Elizabeth pulled her hands away immediately and stripped off the gloves.

Gabriel sighed vocally, with mental relief and physical desolation.

His cock flicked back and forth, seemingly reaching for Elizabeth of its own accord, unable to comprehend why she would abandon it in its moment of need.

“Turn him over,” said Jane.

Gabriel did most of the work himself, with Elizabeth only having to symbolically nudge and guide him onto his stomach. Soon, he was kneeling in front of the altar with his hips up against it, his torso stretched across its narrow width.

His long hair hung down over Jane’s polished leather shoes behind it.

The loops and swirls of carved stone along the side of the altar, which Elizabeth had assumed were purely decorative, left space for Gabriel’s lonely erection to stick through and hang in the hollow space under the altar’s surface, with nothing, not even cold stone, to rub against.

Jane untied his blindfold and lifted his fallen skirts back up. She draped them over his back, displaying his bare ass to the applauding crowd.

“Pick up the crop,” Jane directed Elizabeth, pointing with her own to the spare one on the altar. “Show him that you have it. Let him think about how it will be yours for as long as he is.”

Elizabeth lifted the crop by its thick, leather-wrapped handle, and gave the tapered end a little shake.

She had never made a habit of using one with her horses at home, but she was familiar enough with them to guess that this was the most refined model she had ever held. Flexible, strong, with some heft to the loop of leather that formed the popper at the end. It was all engineered to hit faster and harder than any responsible trainer would hit a horse, while being easy on the user’s wrist.

As instructed, Elizabeth shifted the crop to her left hand and held it in front of Gabriel’s face, before returning it to her right, where she assumed she was about to need it.

“Give him a reminder for each of the ninety-one days of winter, and one more for the life he might have in your service afterward.”

Elizabeth smacked the popper against Gabriel’s ass, leaving a faint mark on his left cheek.

Gabriel took in an audible breath.

Intimidated by the number of strokes ahead of them, she hit him nine more times in quick succession.

There. More than ten percent done already. She hoped that made getting to the end feel as possible to him as it did to her.

“As your true lady can bestow pleasure at her fancy, so can she bestow pain,” Jane narrated ritualistically, as Elizabeth switched to punishing Gabriel’s other cheek. “Regard her always with respectful fear.”

Gabriel watched Elizabeth work on him. A faint smile infiltrated between his winces, which made her feel instantly better about what she was doing.

She even found herself slowing down, just a shade, savoring the way each flick of her wrist could produce a sharp and instant feeling in him.

After years of pleading for common sense and decency from rooms full of nobles who had no interest in listening to her, it felt guiltily glorious to have such a small gesture of hers heeded so intently, by anyone.

Gabriel wasn’t one of the people she most wanted smack some manners into, but as the person who had hijacked her once-in-a-lifetime Heartgarden trip, he made an acceptable substitute.

“Take this gentle demonstration with gratitude,” Jane told Gabriel. “Your true lady may prefer a whip without a popper to soften its blow. Or harsher methods still.”

Gabriel nodded against the altar, the only response he could give.

When Elizabeth had finally completed his sentence, every available bit of skin from the bottom of his corset to the tops of his stockings was glowing pink.

She looked up from this strangely satisfying sight to find Jane holding out a thin silver chain to her, with a key dangling from it.

Jane made sure Gabriel saw the key change hands, from herself to Elizabeth, before picking up the scarf and covering his eyes again.

“Secure your consort,” she instructed Elizabeth.

Elizabeth gathered up the belt, trying to remember exactly how the chains had fit around him before.

When she nudged Gabriel to turn over and sit up on the altar, she found that his erection had not subsided at all during his whipping.

“It looks like he’s going to need some help returning his proper size,” Jane observed disdainfully. “Give it to him.”

Gabriel visibly braced himself.

Elizabeth looked uncertainly at the crop still in her hand, then at Jane, to make sure this was what was expected.

Gingerly, she slapped Gabriel’s erection with the crop.

He twitched with a stifled grunt.

The erection retreated a little, but not far enough.

She aimed the next, harder slap at his testicles.

The twitch, the grunt, and the retreat were all more dramatic that time.

Quickly, before anything could happen to make him rebound, Elizabeth pressed the plate of the belt into place, forcing his still somewhat enlarged penis through its faucet-shaped restraint, his swollen testicles through the hole below.

She wrapped the two chains that formed the literal belt around his hips, and after a moment’s fumbling, passed the other two chains between his legs, gathering all the ends together behind his back.

Under Jane’s silent, keen observation, Elizabeth fed the metal loop of the padlock through links in all four chains, at a close, secure length.

The lock was not self-latching, and required Elizabeth to insert her key and turn it to secure the loop in place.

There could be no mistake that the power Jane had handed her was real.

Once the task was complete, Elizabeth lifted the key’s chain over her head and hung it around her neck.

The crowd burst into its most uproarious round of applause yet, followed by a return of the chant, “First claim! First claim! First claim!”

“Yes, first claim!” Jane agreed, clapping primly to bring the crowd back under control, and then untying Gabriel’s blindfold once more. “Now let us see this lucky aspirant to his lady’s room!”

Elizabeth pulled Gabriel’s skirts down over his belt and helped him to his feet, right as a group of other ladies descended on them again, marching them back out of the courtyard the way they’d come.

She kept one arm around him all the way back to her room, supporting his unstable walking, shielding him against the ladies’ whoops and crude comments.

#

Once the bedroom door was closed behind them, Elizabeth and Gabriel stood next to it for a long while, staring awkwardly at each other as they waited for the giggles and whispers to disappear from the other side, replaced by sulkily retreating footsteps.

Finally alone with him, Elizabeth said, “You knew all that was going to happen.”

“A real lady would have known too,” Gabriel retorted.

Elizabeth was briefly speechless, from the shock of being spoken to in such a way by a man, and one in Gabriel’s position, no less.

“A real consort would never have said that,” she pointed out in return.

Gabriel took this harder than she’d expected, looking away, face burning as bright as it had at any point in the claiming ceremony.

“I did what you asked,” said Elizabeth, making her voice gentler but firmly hitting the point. “I requested you, and now I have you. I think it’s time I knew who you are. So, sit, brag, gossip, pine, disparage, I don’t care. Just tell me everything.”

Gabriel wrung his hands and paced the room for several seconds, before sinking onto Elizabeth’s desk chair.

She took a seat on the edge of the bed, across from him.

“By now,” Gabriel began haltingly, “you’ve figured out that I’m not just here for a chance at the high life. I have… I have an uncontrollable urge to be owned. In certain ways. In private. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. I wish I could just be a rebel all the time, in every way. I’ve tried to change it, but I can’t.”

Elizabeth listened without comment.

“I committed myself to the garden later in life than most,” Gabriel explained. “I remember what it was like to be a free man who could touch myself at will. I hope you don’t think less of me.”

Elizabeth shook her head.

Gabriel let out a breath of relief. “Well. The sad lesson it taught me is that the pleasure I can give myself is nothing compared with what it becomes when it’s taken, withheld, and given back to me. Even the waiting and wanting is better than what I can do with freedom. I used to think that made me perfect for the Heartgarden, and I didn’t have any better prospects, so I put in my name, and I flew through the program. But there’s so much about me that’s wrong.”

“I’m getting used to the natural look,” Elizabeth said encouragingly, leaning forward to brush a lock of loose hair behind his ear. “Even the backtalk.”

Gabriel smiled faintly. “Those things are forgivable. Lots of ladies like a bit of resistance that won’t go away no matter how much punishment they dish out. Headmistress Jane knows that. That’s why I made it into the welcome selection, to help show off the variety the garden has to offer. What really makes me wrong is that I want to belong to the right lady.”

“Understandable,” said Elizabeth.

“Not here,” said Gabriel. “I’m supposed to be eager to please anyone. But I’m trying to cheat the terms I agreed to. I want a lady I can trust. I don’t care if she’s not as rich and powerful as we all imagined our ladies would be. But I want her to control me the way I need her to, and then turn around and talk to me like a person, with a mind, because I’m that too. I want a lady who can juggle those two things for the rest of our lives.”

“And you think that’s me?” Elizabeth asked.

Gabriel gave her a guilty look and a shrug.

“I barely know you,” he acknowledged. “But I’ve read about the gallant Sir Elizabeth, and how she treats the weak and vulnerable. From what little I’ve seen of you in person, you seem to match your reputation. That’s about as close to a guarantee as I’ll ever get in here.”

Elizabeth touched the key on the silver chain around her neck.

“So, what you’re telling me is that, if I decided to say to hell with the rules, and I took this key, and this little bit of privacy that we have now, and I offered to make it up to you for that cruel ceremony you had to go through….”

Gabriel’s eyes widened, fixing on the key like a starving animal on a scrap of food. He definitely hadn’t expected her to say that.

“I… I would do as my lady commands,” he recovered himself enough to recite a formal reply.

“But you wouldn’t want me to do that,” Elizabeth clarified, twirling her fingers through the chain so that the key dangled and swayed in the air. “You wouldn’t want me to let you use this.”

“I do want it, so much,” said Gabriel, reaching out a hand not quite far enough to touch it.

He stared at it hungrily for a few more moments, and then closed his eyes.

“I want it, so take it away from me,” he forced the words out, looking amazed with himself for managing. “I need you to show me that you can, by yourself, without Headmistress Jane standing over you.”

“As you wish,” Elizabeth said, tucking the key under the neck of her night shirt.

She managed to sound as indifferent as she imagined Jane would have, while silently cataloguing and tucking away a thousand feelings.

The willingly stricken look on Gabriel’s face, the feel of the key dangling between her breasts, gave her a thrill so strong it scared her, stronger even than arriving here at the garden in the first place.

This whole visit had been such a dizzying dance already, of power taken and given whenever she least expected it, but she was getting a cautious feeling that she’d come out on top.

Never in her life had she had so much power over another human being’s happiness. She’d tried so hard not to want it, but that battle was now lost forever.

Knowing that Gabriel’s desires were just as embarrassing, just as involuntarily contradictory, seemed to give her own the courage to exist.

A traditional, submissive consort and a bright, spirited partner rolled into one man… it seemed too much to ask, and yet the possibility sat right before her.

Gabriel squirmed in his belt beside her, staring at his knees as he tried to calm himself.

Elizabeth wondered if he knew how perfectly their shame and excitement matched.

“I assume the Heartgarden has a library?” she asked him, circling back to the other half of what he claimed to want.

“Yes,” said Gabriel, taking a moment to adjust to the change of subject. “At the base of the west tower.”

“Go there,” said Elizabeth. “Pick out your favorite play with parts for both of us to read, and wait for me.”

Gabriel got up, started toward the door, and looked back at her. “What are you going to do?”

Elizabeth hadn’t been planning to tell him. But the question was so direct, so full of nervous anticipation of her answer and how it would make him feel, that it seemed only right to give him that.

“I’m going to do what you can’t,” she said simply. “Maybe a few times, in fact, before I’m able to meet you as a clear-headed, intellectual friend.”

Gabriel gave a strangled squeak of longing, cleared his throat, and offered nonchalantly, “I could help you with that, my lady. There are ways, without breaking any rules…”

It was tempting, but too soon. Elizabeth had too much to work out on her own.

“Maybe another time,” she said. “Go.”

Gabriel obeyed, his face a mess of excitement and disappointment, and excitement for his disappointment.

Elizabeth locked the door behind him, lay back on the bed, and reached under her night shirt to rub herself, coaxing her bottled-up tension to the surface.

She didn’t try to explain any of what had happened here to herself. She only reviewed the most intense moments, letting herself experience them without the need to appear righteous, dignified, and strong.

She lingered over various faces and bodies, Christopher’s Daisy’s, even Jane’s, but found herself returning, over and over, to Gabriel.

Whatever she told herself, she already knew that when she left the garden, she would not be leaving him behind.

***

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