Dusk was falling and the lamplighters were already out tending to the gas lamps when Freya von Hohenfels alighted from the Hansom cab at Camberley House, 63 Grosvenor Square in Mayfair. The 25-year-old Prussian was tired after her two-day journey from Berlin and looking forward to taking up her appointment as Housekeeper at the residence of Hubert Wadsworth, the bachelor Earl of Camberley.

She found herself before the portal of an extravagantly styled house that reflected the self-importance of its occupant, who was making a fortune importing guano from the South Atlantic to satisfy the demands of Victorian horticulturalists for exotic fertilizer in their exotic conservatories.

The front door was opened by a tall, striking, auburn-haired butlerine dressed in a sensuously severe uniform of Duchess satin that contoured her well-rounded shape.

Freya entered an opulent world far removed from her Prussian upbringing. The majestic hallway was illuminated by a glittering chandelier that lit up the painted ceiling of cavorting nymphs and the life-size painting of harem girls by Lord Leighton which hung in gold-leafed splendour over a marble fireplace. A gleaming floor led to a sweeping stairway, its intricate wrought-iron banisters ending in ornate pedestals supporting Italianate marble statuary.

The butlerine took Freya’s cloak and bonnet, handing them to a bewigged footman.

‘James will take your things to your room.’

She looked appreciatively at the well-endowed young Prussian. ‘Welcome to our household! I am Davison, the butlerine. Please call me Cordelia. I do hope we’ll be friends.’ She smiled. ‘Rumours of your caning expertise precede you. If his Lordship has his way, there’ll be some sore bottoms below stairs!’

She gave a provocative wiggle of her butt, so obligingly outlined by her uniform. ‘I hope you won’t be caning my own rump.’ She laughed. ‘But you’re welcome to discipline the stable lads if the Earl will let you near them. Their randy buttocks could do with a stinging Prussian kiss. From what I gather, his Lordship has more than …’

The Earl’s stable activities were left unspoken, as Cordelia led the way across the hall to his study.

‘His Lordship will see you immediately. Afterwards I’ll show you your room.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Be warned! He’s a swine and if he can sow discord between the servants, he will. We only put up with his whims because he pays well.’

Cordelia cordially squeezed Freya’s hand, knocked discreetly, and ushered her in.

‘The new housekeeper has arrived, my lord.’

The interview that evening with Hubert Wadsworth, Earl of Camberley, was painfully memorable.

Seated at his ornate desk, the 43-year-old Master of the Camberley Hunt motioned Freya forward. She curtseyed and drew from her reticule the letter of introduction from Frau Brenner, Principal of the Berlin Academy.

He broke the seal and read the letter. ‘Have you experience of the cane?’

Such intimacy caught Freya off guard. ‘Frau Brenner sometimes caned us for slovenly academic work.’

‘Did she use something like this?’ The Earl brought out a rattan from behind the desk and laid it on the tooled-leather surface. Thanks to his correspondence with Frau Brenner over Freya’s suitability, the Earl was well aware of her background. Frau Brenner had written of the occasions she had bared Freya’s bottom for a public caning at assembly. The sight of the rattan would bring painful memories.

‘I require a housekeeper who knows what a well padded posterior is for!’ He sniggered. ‘Servants need frequent caning and Frau Irma, whose place you are taking, now she has retired, never spared the rod.’

The Earl’s buttocks tingled at the pleasant memory of Irma’s personal ministrations; when she spanked him over her knee, strapped his bared bottom in her bedroom, or, more recently, in secret caning sessions behind the locked door of his study.

‘Your principal is most fulsome about your disciplinary dominance.’

‘Frau Brenner taught me well, my lord.’

Freya thought of the plump Prussian posteriors she had bared, when, as head girl, she inflicted the canings she had herself once endured. She remembered also Frau Brenner’s secret lesbian rituals in her boudoir afterwards.

‘You will hand me a list of servant transgressions every Friday morning before parading the miscreants for punishment in my study. The stables at the back in Adams Row are not your responsibility. I deal with discipline there.’

‘I understand you perfectly, my lord,’ Freya replied, remembering Cordelia’s remark in the hallway. ‘I am an adept caner. I take pleasure and pride in dispensing discipline.’

Lord Camberley smiled. ‘Excellent! You Prussians bring such robust finesse to punishment procedures. I look forward to witnessing your expertise.’

He smirked, took a pinch of Kendal Brown snuff, snorted, and sneezed.

‘Indeed, you shall commence your duties right now. Bare Davison’s bottom and cane her before me! The arrogant bitch thinks she runs this place.’

A startled butlerine looked at Camberley’s smug face.

‘Put her over the armchair and whip some humility into her! My endorsement of you as housekeeper, together with Davison’s continued employment, rests solely upon your ability to suitably humiliate her with a sound thrashing. I venture to opine that you will find her posterior perfectly proportioned for punishment!’