The Lady Acacia von Eckstrom, Baroness of Glendale, knew all about humiliation, for she’d become quite found of doling it out. Indeed, the beautiful blonde aristocrat, widowed these past three years after her fool of a husband went out for a horseback ride and broke his neck, considered it a point of pride that one of her servants fled from her presence in tears at least once a week. One needed to keep the riff-raff in line, after all, and between her acid temper, the constant threat of getting the sack, and the general demands she placed upon them, she’d handedly been able to avoid the rabble-rousing that plagued many of her contemporaries. Worker’s rights indeed!

So it was something of a shock for the thirty-year-old woman when the stablehands burst into her chambers as she was preparing for bed, showing her not the slightest bit of the deference she was owed. Instead, they’d employed the most horrid sort of language, bound her shapely figure with rope, then when she’d protested their rough treatment, dared to shove some cloth into her mouth! It was vile, it was disrespectful, and it was humiliating, and that was before they dared to place their filthy peasant hands upon her and haul her through the corridors of her own mansion with all the courtesy they’d show a sack of grain. “Mmmmppgghhh!” the noblewoman screamed indignantly. They were supposed to be broken and compliant, unable to even look at her the wrong way. That they could be otherwise suggested that she’d been wrong, an unthinkable scenario, and her struggles intensified, the ropes at her wrists and ankles creaking with the strain. “Mmmmpppgghh, nnggghhh!”

“Does this bitch have a mouth on her or what?” one of the stablehands—Michael? Mikhael? Martin? It was beneath her to become too familiar with the help—stated, eyeing her contemptuously. “You got a spare handkerchief?”

“Even better,” his fellow declared, binding some old burlap cloth over her mouth to keep the gag in place, a base material that had no right being anywhere near her flawless skin. “Come on,” he told her fellow. “Let’s get this over with.”

With little effort, the two stablehands once again bore Acacia up and headed towards the ballroom, the aristocrat struggling feebly every step of the way. All throughout the mansion, her legion of servants was present, yet in another impossibility, they were not attending to their duties as was their lot, but rather swiping every last portrait and valuable they came across, each also taking the time to demean and mock their captured mistress as she was carried past. In the ballroom itself, over a score of the staff gave a mocking cheer as she was dragged in, a chorus of humiliating insults rising to greet her and leaving her burning red from the sheer indignity of it all.

And at their heart stood the one person whose name she’d bothered to learn, the mere sight of the beautiful, dark-haired young woman stoking her fury incandescent. “It’s good to see you again, my lady,” Fiona Abnett declared politely, the dark amusement that glittered in her beautiful blue eyes betraying how much she was enjoying her former employer’s humiliation. Three years ago, she’d been a chambermaid at the estate, a pathetic, sad-eyed creature whom Acacia had delighted in driving to tears on a regular basis. For whatever reason, though, her husband had thought fondly of her, enough that he’d deigned leave her a substantive gift of funds in his will. Naturally, Acacia was hardly inclined to honour that wish, and had the young woman stripped naked, horsewhipped then thrown out of the house before the corpse was even cold, with the money remaining in the widow’s rightful possession. For three years, the sight of the beautiful chambermaid, nude, humiliated and in tears, had been one to cherish, a warm memory to comfort her on a cold winter’s night. This creature who’d replaced her, calm and confident and evidently capable, was a far less welcome sight, and the first stirrings of true unease came over the arrogant aristocrat. “I hope you don’t mind, but I was in the area, and decided to pop over and very some old friends.”

“Mmmmppgggh, mmmppggghh!” Acacia spat, taking in the mob of her unruly staff. They were cooks and chambermaids, groundskeepers and guards and more besides, each of whom had suffered any number of humiliations at her ladyship’s hands, or run afoul of her temper, or otherwise experienced too many hard days in her employ. If they’d only done what I told them when I told them, I wouldn’t need to take such measures, now would I? the aristocrat insisted inwardly, meeting their hateful stares in kind. “MMMMMPPPPGGGHHH!”

“Wow, you really have angered a lot of people, huh?” Fiona quipped, demeanour quickly going cold. “Good people too, people who have done absolutely nothing to warrant the abuses you’ve inflicted upon them. Your husband, he—he was a good man,” she said, her resolve wavering for a moment at the thought of Acacia’s late husband, before returning a moment later, hard as steel. “He understood that his title didn’t give him the right to hurt people, and that’s why we loved him. You though? Seems you’re in need of a stern lesson on that front.”

Fiona snapped her fingers, and Acacia offered a muffled protest as the assembled staff lifted her up off the floor. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to kill you,” insisted the leader of the little uprising. “Humiliation is probably more painful to you than death, anyways. No, we’re just off for a little trip to the village. I’m sure your tenants would love to see you in your nightclothes… or even naked.”

“MMMMPPPGGGHHH!” Peasants seeing her vulnerable, and in her nightgown, no less? The mere thought was simply beyond endurance, and Acacia thrashed about like a wildcat in her bondage, far too many stout hands holding her fast for it to matter. “MMMPPGGGGHHH! NNNGGGHHHH!”

“Yes, a bit of humiliation will do you a world of good. After all, it’s certainly helped us come to our senses as well…”