Chapter One

The young man was somewhat miffed on his last summer home from prep school to learn that his parents had hired a guardian to oversee his well-being during their prolonged trip abroad. His visions of unsupervised partying melted into oblivion as they introduced him to Miss Laura, a trim, petite brunette with a slight British accent whom he guessed to be a well-preserved 40. She greeted him with an ironic dignity, and promised in private to give him as much leeway as possible within the fairly stringent limits his parents had defined. Over the first few weeks of their summer, the older woman and younger man developed a tentative friendship, with Miss Laura treating him as an adult in a natural way. He appreciated that her attitude towards him was notably devoid of the patronization that had characterized some of his parents’ other hired caregivers who had tried to get chummy with him before.

They settled into an amiable rhythm of sharing most meals over pleasant conversation, with the young man working out in the home gym and pool most mornings and spending afternoons and evenings socializing with his friends. He had no idea how Miss Laura spent her days, though subtle signs indicated that she made dedicated use of the exercise facilities in his absence. He found himself entertaining some erotic fantasies about her at odd moments when he would notice her lean, athletic physique, but she seemed far beyond his reach, and certainly gave him no reason to hope otherwise.

One evening over dinner he noticed a subtle change in the atmosphere, with her already defined air of irony exaggerated a bit as she questioned him more deeply about his life at prep school. When they finished eating and the cook came in to clear the table, he rose and started to leave to join his friends for his evening plans. He was surprised to hear her state firmly, “I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel your outing this evening, as you and I have an issue to settle.”

He reacted with surprise, asking what the matter was. Glancing over at the retreating form of the cook and raising an eyebrow suggestively, she said that the issue would be better addressed privately. Miss Laura then instructed him to phone his friends to cancel his plans and meet her in his room where all would be made clear. Feeling a surprising sense of foreboding about what was ahead in the hands of this suddenly very authoritative woman half his size, he complied.

Within a few moments, he answered a firm knock at his door and Miss Laura entered and stood before him, fixing him with her direct, brown-eyed gaze. She said that she had become aware of a serious violation of conduct on his part, and that the consequences would depend on how frank he was in his responses to her. He colored and stammered that he had no idea what she meant. She responded that so far he was only worsening his predicament, but he remained genuinely bewildered. She then inquired, “Where do you store your erotica?” He blushed fiercely, and stammered that he had no idea what she was talking about. “Even worse,” she said, as she strode to a bedside table and opened a bottom drawer, from which she removed a book that had been hidden underneath some others.

Miss Laura went on with her usual sense of faintly humorous irony, “Now are you going to make things even worse for yourself by denying you know anything about this?” She held in her hands a copy ofBeauty, Anne Rice’s erotic fantasy about submissive young men and women, termed ‘Princes’ and ‘Princesses’. In this book, these attractive young people were willingly subjected to all manner of sadomasochistic sexual experiences at the hands of