“But–”
“Not another word, Drake!” For the first time, the governor lost his soft tone.
Drake’s mouth slammed shut.
“The time for negotiation is over. The deal is done. You will sell Irene for twenty thousand. The auction house has generously agreed to register this second change of ownership at the same time as they register the first.” He smiled wryly. “I’m getting special consideration from them for all the commissions that they’ve earned from my purchases over the years. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a new slave of my own who is waiting for my attention.”
The governor walked toward cars idling at the curb. His retinue of a dozen men – guards, assistants, and advisors – followed him.
Llewellyn Smith finished writing the cheque and held it out to Drake.
When Drake failed to take it from Smith, the assembled lords moved toward him, looking like a pack of wolves closing in on their prey.
Drake glanced at them and snatched the cheque from Smith’s hand.
“Done.” Lord Fortson gestured toward the door that led back into the auction house. “The clerk is waiting for your signature on the bill of sale and the transfer of ownership.”
Only Lord Fortson followed Smith, Drake, Geoffrey, and Irene back inside. The other lords stayed under the portico and chatted with each other.
This transaction was even quicker than the previous one. A handler took the end of Irene’s leash from Drake. The clerk wrote the final selling price on the bill of sale. Drake signed the two documents, and the paperwork was done.
Drake glared at Smith and Fortson for a moment and then turned to leave.
“Sir Drake,” Smith said, “the keys if you don’t mind.”
Drake ignored him and strode out the door.
“Those are auction house locks,” the clerk said. “They’re all keyed the same.” He pulled a key from a box under the counter and held it out to Lord Fortson.
Lord Fortson shook his head. “Give it to Smith. I didn’t buy her.”
The handler took that as his cue and passed the end of Irene’s leash to Smith and said, “Congratulations on your new slave, sir.”
Smith smiled and shook his head. “I’m just the agent. I don’t own her, either.”
Lord Fortson walked out of the room without casting a glance at his enslaved wife.
Irene watched in shock. If her husband hadn’t bought her, then she wondered who in hell owned her now.
* * *
Llewellyn Smith unlocked the cuffs and leash and laid them on the clerk’s desk. “We won’t be needing these.” He shrugged at Irene. “I didn’t think to bring a dress. I’m afraid that you’ll have to come as you are.”
Irene was accustomed to being nude indoors but she disliked being nude in public. However, there was nothing to be done about it. It was traditional that a slave be taken to her new owner’s kennels this way.
She followed Smith to the car that was waiting under the portico.
No one watched her leave. The auction was long over and the commoners who liked to watch the parade of newly-purchased slaves being taken to their new owners’ cars had disbanded. The lords who had assembled to bully Sir Drake into selling his new slave had gone back about their business. Even Lord Fortson had not waited to see her leave the auction house.
Irene wondered about her husband’s claim that he loved her. She didn’t see how that was possible. She had only been alone with him one time since she had sold herself and he had used that opportunity to cane her. She still bore the marks of that punishment on her ass. The scars would fade but they would never disappear completely.
She could only conclude that he had spoken of love merely to gall Sir Drake.
Smith drove his own car. He opened the rear door to admit Irene to the back seat and then took the wheel and drove her downtown.
He said little, except, “I’m taking you to my office to finalize our business.”
Irene found it hard to believe that she wasn’t going to be decapitated today. It required an adjustment in her attitude after she had accepted that fate as inevitable.
Instead, she would be fucked like any other recently-purchased pleasure slave.
She wondered who would do that. When she had been taken to the auction house, she had expected that someone would buy her – probably a gentleman – take her to the pleasure room in his kennels, and fuck her good. As well, many owners would give a new slave a whipping on the first day just to ensure that the slave was in the right frame of mind.
She had been mentally preparing herself for whipping and fucking right up to the moment that Sir Drake had told her that he intended to buy her and cut her head off.
For the remainder of the auction, she had ceased to think about sex and had been mentally preparing herself for death.
Now she had to forget about death and plan to live again. Plan to get fucked again.
But she had no idea who would be doing it to her.
She would fuck Llewellyn if he asked, out of gratitude if for no other reason, but he had said that he was only an agent of her new owner. He would soon turn her over to someone else who would demand the service that a pleasure slave owed to her owner.
She couldn’t understand why someone had sent an agent to the auction to purchase her instead of coming himself. Slave owners loved auctions. They loved to examine each and every naked slave during the pre-sale viewing; loved to see the beautiful women with their shaved crotches displayed on the block; and loved to compete with the other buyers to win the bid.
What kind of man would send his solicitor acquire his slave for him?
She couldn’t guess; she could only wait and see.
It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime, and the downtown sidewalks were thick with office workers leaving for home.
Llewellyn parked in an aboveground parking structure that was attached to the building where he had his office. Irene didn’t have to walk nude through the crowded streets. That was a small blessing. A few people who were going to their own cars stared as she walked past. Llewellyn ignored them, so she did the same.
As though she were still a lady, he held doors open for her as he escorted her through the building and into his office. A secretary sat at a desk in his outer office. “Jacqueline, would you find a dress for Irene.”
“Yes, sir.” She frowned. “What kind of dress? What size?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at Irene.
“You can get a slave’s housedress from a kennel service,” she said. “There’s a couple in the phone book. I don’t know the name of the one that serviced me before, but I think it’s the first one listed. You’ll have to give them my registration number. They have my records on file.”
Llewellyn set a file folder on her desk. “These are her slave documents. You’ll find her registration number in there.”
He led Irene into his inner office and closed the door.
She waited for him to tell her to bend over his desk so that he could fuck her from behind.
Instead, he said, “Have a seat.”
She sat in one of the leather chairs and he sat behind his desk.
“I have some papers for you to sign. First, though, I have to explain your situation so that you’ll understand what these papers mean.”
She waited.
“Let’s start at the beginning. You sold yourself at auction a year ago. Your first owner, Mr. Dodge, paid a hundred-thousand plaqs for you. A considerable sum. It’s only a coincidence that it’s the same amount that Sir Drake paid today.” He grinned. Though he did not personally benefit from his victory over Drake, he enjoyed winning. “Did you ever wonder what happened to the hundred thousand that Dodge paid for you?”
Irene hadn’t given it the slightest thought. “I assume that it went to James.”
Llewellyn shook his head. “No. The auction house couldn’t give it to him. He didn’t own you. He had no right to the money.”
“But he was my
husband. The money would be jointly owned by him and me. Except that I couldn’t own money any more because I was a slave. So it would logically revert to him.”
“The money was not jointly owned because your body was not a marital asset. It was something that you brought into the marriage and, therefore, something that Lord Fortson had no claim on. That was the decision of the court that heard that argument last November.”
“So the auction house must have kept the money.”
“No. They kept their commission, but they had no claim on the money whatsoever.”
Irene was intrigued. “Okay. So who got the money?”
“Lady Irene did.”
“Me? I can’t own money. I’m a slave.”
“That’s right. But you weren’t a slave until the money was paid and accepted. It took more legal wrangling than you can imagine to get that sorted out. The final ruling was that there was an instant, just an instant, when you had to be Lady Irene to accept the money before you became a slave and lost your legal right to own it. The logic boils down like this: if you were not able to accept the money that was paid to purchase you, then you could not have sold yourself and would not, today, be a slave. For the sale to be legal, you had to remain Lady Irene for exactly long enough to accept payment. That was another decision handed down in another court in March of this year.”
Irene’s head was spinning from the convoluted logic. “Okay. So I had the money for an instant and then I lost it. So where is it?”
“Ahh. That takes us to yet another case in yet another court. All property, including money, has to be owned by someone. But there are circumstances in which a person is unable to possess the money that they own. The most common case is a death. During the period between when a person dies and when their heirs inherit, the deceased’s wealth is in financial limbo. The same can happen if a person is declared temporarily incompetent, or is lost at sea, or in a number of other rare circumstances. The law provides a mechanism for managing an owner’s money in his or her absence. This is called a trust. In May of this year, yet another court put the ninety thousand – a hundred thousand less the auctioneer’s commission – in trust for Lady Irene.
“Actually, that’s not quite accurate. It was put into a trust immediately after the auction and kept there while the courts took their sweet time deciding that the trust was an appropriate mechanism for holding the money and, more importantly, that the trust could continue to hold the money indefinitely. That was the tricky part because you can never stop being a slave. Therefore, you will never again be able to own the money, nor can it ever be inherited because a slave can’t have heirs. Trusts sometimes hold funds for a long time, but there always has to be an end in sight. Your trust is unique in that it will never end. That was the court’s actual decision in May. Actually, the biggest miracle in all this is that we managed to get so many decisions from so many different courts in less than twelve months. It was possible only because there was no one arguing against us. No one else had any hope of claiming any part of your hundred thousand plaqs.” He paused and waited to see if she understood what he had said.
“Okay,” she replied. “So what? There’s a hundred thousand plaqs stuffed away in this trust but nobody can ever own it or use it.”
“You’re only half right. Now that Lady Irene no longer exists as a legal entity, nobody can own it. But every trust has a manager and the manager can use the money any way that he or she sees fit. Generally, that means putting the money in safe investments to ensure that it does not lose its value until the money reverts back to its rightful human owner.
“I’ve been managing your trust while I was navigating the legal labyrinth of establishing it in its final form. I’m pleased to say that I’m not a bad money manager. You began with ninety thousand plaqs after the auction house took its commission. Then my management fees and various legal fees consumed another fifty-eight thousand plaqs. However, the trust began earning a considerable return on its investments before most of those fees became due. Because the trust was created by a titled member of the gentry, Lady Irene, it was able to invest in real estate. Currently, it has little cash in it, paying forty thousand plaqs to buy you would have used almost all of the available cash, but the value of the property owned by the trust is more than a hundred and twenty thousand plaqs. Not including your value.”
“Wait a minute.” Irene held up her hands. “Wait a minute. What do you mean when you say ‘including my value’?” Are you telling me that I’m now owned by this trust?”
“Exactly. I thought that you understood what we were talking about. An hour ago, you were bought by your own trust.”
* * *
Irene stared at Llewellyn. “Are you saying that I’m not a slave any more?”
“Lord, no. You are definitely a slave. You will never stop being a slave. There is no legal mechanism by which any slave can ever become a person again.”
“Then, are you saying that I own myself?”
“No. You are a slave. You can’t own anything. The Lady Irene Trust owns you.”
Irene stared at the solicitor for a time.
He waited for her next question.
“Then who decides what will happen to me?”
“Aha! That is the question, isn’t it? Who controls you? It’s pretty simple. The trust owns you and it controls you. The manager of the trust decides what the trust does. Therefore, the manager of the trust decides what happens to you.”
“And that’s you.”
“At the moment, yes, but that’s about to change. As the Lady Irene Trust owns you and as I am the manager of the Lady Irene Trust, I have directed the trust to issue the following order to you. I hereby order you, in the name of the trust, to assume the entire duties and obligations of managing the Lady Irene Trust.” He slid a document across the desk so that Irene could see it. “This document attests to that order.”
She stared at the paper. Then at Llewellyn. Then at the paper again. “Did you just say that you’re making me the manager of the trust that owns me?”
“Exactly.” Llewellyn smiled happily. “You’re not my problem any more. From this moment on, the only person that has any right to give you any order is yourself.”
“Can a slave be the manager of a trust?”
“Of course. A slave can be assigned any work that its owner wishes. And this trust wishes that you be assigned the work of managing the trust. Unless you direct the trust to issue a contradictory order, that will never change. From this moment forward, nobody, not even I, can stop you from continuing to manage the Lady Irene Trust for the rest of your natural life.”
“What does that entail?”
“Everything. You have complete control over investing the assets of the trust. The trust will buy whatever you wish for yourself or for whomever you wish. I strongly recommend that you invest wisely, spend modestly, and maintain enough wealth in the trust to support you comfortably for an indefinitely long period. You currently own – I should say, the trust currently owns – partial shares in a number of buildings and collects a share of the rents paid on those properties. The trust’s income was seven-thousand plaqs last month, mostly in rents. If you keep investing a portion of that in further property rather than spending it all, you will see that income increase. You should soon have enough to buy entire properties in the trust’s name, not just partial shares. In time, if you manage your trust carefully, it could be as wealthy as any other member of the aristocracy.”
“I’m a free woman.”
“I’ll leave that discussion to the philosophers. Legally, you are not free. You are property owed by the trust. You have no legal right to own anything, including your own body. You have no legal right to enter into any contract. Basically, you have no legal rights whatsoever.”
She stared at Llewellyn for a minute, trying to understand all the ramifications of what he had done for her. She found it all quite overwhelming. “What am I going to do now?”
“You’l
l do whatever you order the trust to order you to do. In practice that boils down to you being able to do whatever you want to do.” He pushed a small purse toward her. “I took the liberty of drawing two hundred plaqs from the trust account this morning to satisfy your immediate needs. When the bank opens tomorrow, you can withdraw however much more you require.”
She took the purse in amazement. She had money that she could spend on anything that she pleased. She never thought that she would have such a thing again. “This really is freedom.”
Llewellyn frowned. “There is a rather serious caveat to your situation. Don’t ever forget that you are a slave under the law. Don’t do anything that will get you crucified. When you were Lady Irene, you could slap a commoner across the face with relative impunity. As a slave, that same slap will ensure that the sheriff nails you to the courthouse wall without a trial. Be careful that you don’t revert back to thinking like an aristocrat. That would be perilous in the extreme.”
She grinned. “I know what I want to do next.”
“What would that be?”
“I’m still a pleasure slave. Apart from the few hours when I expected to be killed, I spent most of the day expecting that my new owner would use my body for pleasure. I want to feel the physical pleasure that comes from being alive. The trust can’t give me that. As the previous manager of the trust, I would like very much if you would do me the honor of letting me service you. On the floor, in this chair, or bent over your desk. Whatever would most please you.”
Taking her on her hands and knees on the floor pleased him immensely.
Almost as much as it pleased her to be taken.
Taken twice, in fact, while they waited for the kennel service to deliver an introductory slave kit that included a new housedress as well as a few necessary personal items.
* * *
The next morning, in a room that she was renting at the Red Swan Inn, she leafed through the files that Llewellyn had given her. These documents included copies of all the contracts of which the Lady Irene Trust was a party.
A League of Ladies (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 5) Page 2