Irene was a realist. Realism was a survival strategy for slaves and she was forever a slave. She didn’t expect Lord Fortson to sell all his slaves. And she knew that he would begin using them again before long. But she also knew that she would never be ignored again.
She was the best lay in the kennel.
When sex with her began to feel routine, and it would sooner or later, she would suggest threesomes with the other slaves. That, too, was a survival strategy. Including a rotation of slaves as partners would ensure that he would never grow bored of her. She was confident that she could provide enough pleasure that threesomes would be only spice in their relationship and never become the main course.
Wives had advantages over slaves. As both wife and slave, Irene knew how to ensure that she was always James’ first choice. Even when they were as old as Lord and Lady Cranford.
Two weeks into their torrid, resurrected love affair, James raised the issue of the edict that Irene had requested; the one that would establish trust funds to be fueled by slave fees so that slaves might purchase themselves when they grew too old to please their owners.
“I’ve met with about just about all of the lords and floated your idea of slaves having trusts.”
She hadn’t realized that he’d been so busy. “And?”
“I expected that I’d get shut down by all of them. It hasn’t been that bad. Not bad at all. About a third have said that they’d support the edict; about a third said that they’d oppose it with everything they’ve got, come hell or high water; and about a third said that they didn’t like it and would probably vote against it unless something changed their minds.”
Irene’s heart sank. “You mean that two thirds of the Assembly will vote against the edict?”
“They would if it were proposed today. But the softness of so many of the opposition is encouraging. We only need to change half of those minds and the edict will pass. Figure seventy-five lords so we need thirty-eight yeas to have a majority. We already have twenty-six votes solidly on our side, so we need only twelve more votes. There are four lords that I haven’t been able to meet yet but I’m guessing that only one of them will be hard against us and the other three will be soft opposition That’s a total of twenty-eight gentlemen who are potential votes for us if we can make the right kind of argument. We just have to figure out what that is.”
“Can you give me the names of the gentlemen whose minds might be changed?”
“I can give you a copy of my complete list and notes on what they said in discussion.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do with it? I really don’t think that you should try talking to them. If you and I both talk to them and we don’t say the same thing, then we could end up shooting each other down.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to argue with them. I’ve got a completely different approach. One that’s completely independent of the fine work that you’re doing for me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t planning to offer them blowjobs for votes, are you? I know how you pleasure slaves think. Maybe I don’t own you, but I’m still your husband and I’m not going to stand for any more shenanigans. Either you’re faithful to me now or you don’t belong in this manor.”
“If you think I belong in your kennels, then I’m happy to move out there. I don’t mind living at the center of the sexual action. But don’t worry about me being unfaithful. Blowjobs might be involved, but I won’t be down on my knees in front of any man but you.”
She was no longer giving favors to any other man. She was still meeting with Professor Cable, but now it was all work and no play. In addition to the academic articles that she and Mike were co-authoring with Professor Preston, he was helping her start writing an autobiography of her experiences as a slave. It would be a popular work presented in five volumes. They had decided to write it as a narrative in the third person using fictional names so that the aristocracy wouldn’t feel so much like their private business had become titillation for commoners – a concern because she had decided to be as blunt and explicit as necessary. She wouldn’t pull any punches. Because she had been a daughter of the aristocracy and a wife of the aristocracy, she had decided to call the series, A Slave of the Aristocracy.
Suddenly James grew pale. “You aren’t thinking of trying to organize a union of pleasure slaves, are you? Don’t even think about anything like that. You would only get them crucified and get yourself nailed to the wall along with them.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not an idiot. If I tried something like that, not only would the courthouse wall fall over from the weight of all the slaves nailed to it, but the only lord that would vote in favor of my edict is you.”
“Not even me. Not one lord would vote in favor of an edict if he thought that a slave was trying to extort his vote by withholding sex from him. Not a one.”
“Don’t worry. I’m never going to withhold sex from you. Anything you want is yours for the asking.”
“I’m going to ask for a lot.”
“You’re going to get it.”
And he got some of it right there in his study.
* * *
Irene never knew what woke her in the middle of the night. Was it the sound of the door between the billiard room and the corridor to the slave kennels being forced open? The thump of the guard’s body hitting the floor at the base of the stairs? The creak of the floor outside her bedroom?
The manor was normally silent at night. Much quieter than slave kennels. And, after a year of being awoken at odd hours for sexual use, Irene was a light sleeper.
As soon as she was awake, she realized that something was wrong. She grabbed her straight razor from under her pillow as she rolled out of bed and crouched on the floor on the far side from the door, staring into Stygian black and listening for clues about what might be happening out there.
She saw a flash of light stop at the crack at the bottom of her door and then heard the latch click open.
She ducked down as a flashlight swept the bed and illuminated the wall over her head.
Someone was looking for her and hadn’t found her where she should have been. She could tell by the shadows on the wall when the light swept out of the room
Without hesitation, she padded across the room. She slept nude and her bare feet made no sound. She crouched down to peek out her bedroom door and scan the corridor. A shadow holding a knife was at her husband’s bedroom door. The man put his small flashlight between his teeth to free a hand so that he could slowly turn the knob, easing the bolt open.
She didn’t know whether to scream and alert her husband or to remain silent and keep the advantage of surprise.
She chose surprise.
As soon as the intruder stepped into her husband’s bedroom, she sprinted down the hallway.
The man was halfway to her husband’s bed, raising his knife as he stepped forward.
She flicked on the lights. “Hey, asshole. You better take care of me first. I’m the one who’s going to cut your throat.”
Her straight razor flashed in the light when she flicked it open.
The assassin tossed the flashlight, whirled about, and rushed toward her. He said nothing, made no sound, didn’t hesitate, just bounded at her like a tiger.
“Wha?” James opened his eyes and tried to understand what he was seeing.
The two combatants ignored him. He was too far away and too groggy to make a difference.
Her left hand was still on the light switch. She flicked it off before the assassin reached her. His little flashlight must have broken when it fell to the floor because there was not a glimmer of light in the room. She threw herself down at his feet.
He tripped over her in the dark, his deadly knife passing harmlessly above her back as he fell.
She was not as harmless. She rolled and slashed upward as his body passed over her. The razor connected with flesh and cut deeply. She didn’t know what part of his body she had injured.
He didn’t cry out.
His head thumped hard into solid wood when the door stopped his fall.
She kept rolling and then scrambled sideways so that he rushed the wrong place when he recovered his feet.
He moved like a cat and came back fast, looking for her where she had tripped him.
She didn’t retreat, but sprang toward the sound of his footsteps, her left arm outstretched. She grabbed his black jacket, pulled him off balance, and slashed wildly back and forth, cutting him again and again.
His knife connected and stabbed into the upper part of the arm that was gripping his light jacket.
Pain shot through her body like lightning but she didn’t relent. She dropped to her knees and slashed at the back of his legs by feel, the resistance of his flesh to every cut outlining the shape of his body in her mind.
He stabbed down at her, piercing her scalp repeatedly, but couldn’t get the leverage to penetrate her skull.
Suddenly he collapsed. Her razor had severed two of the hamstring tendons in the back of his knee and his leg would no longer support him. The snap of the big thigh muscles contracting unconstrained was excruciating, and he howled. It was the first sound that the assassin had made.
Irene staggered away from him and felt along the wall to the door. She snapped the lights back on.
The entire combat had taken only a few seconds but the room looked like an abattoir. The floor was flowing with blood. The walls spattered all the way to the ceiling.
The assassin looked about, saw Irene by the light switch and pulled himself up on his one good leg. He was relentless. A damaged machine still determined to accomplish its single directive. He hopped once toward Irene, his knife extended in front of him.
Irene was deafened by the blast and the assassin’s remaining good knee exploded.
James was sitting on his bed. The drawer to his bedside stand was pulled open, and he held a smoking pistol steady in both hands.
The assassin had no means left to fight.
James was shouting something.
Through ringing ears, Irene heard, “Freeze! Don’t move! My next bullet will be in your heart.”
The assassin dropped his knife and stretched his hands away from it.
His back was cut to ribbons. His thighs carved like raw roast. Bone protruded from his leg above and below the knee that was destroyed by the bullet. He was likely to bleed to death or die of shock before medical help arrived.
Irene was barely in better shape. Her scalp was bleeding from a dozen wounds. Blood was flowing down her face, obscuring her vision, and the tattoo on the back of her neck was hidden beneath tide of viscous burgundy.
Her left arm hung limp. The knife had stabbed through her bicep to the bone. She could move it, but it hurt too much to try.
James stared at her in horror.
“I’m going to be all right,” she said. “Nothing is critical. Give me the gun. I’ll keep watch on this asshole while you call the sheriff.”
“You’re sure?”
“Hey, I’ve been tortured for hours by real sadists. This is just a couple of pinpricks. Go call the sheriff.”
“But–“
“We’ve got no choice. We can’t hide this. Do what you have to do.”
James handed her the gun and then picked the assassin’s knife off the floor. “He might have more knives on him. If he so much as twitches, empty the gun into him.”
“I’d be delighted.”
He didn’t twitch, or die, before the sheriff, ambulances, and reporters arrived.
The assassin lived, but he required almost three hundred stitches and would never walk without crutches again.
Irene spent the rest of the night getting stitched up and answering questions. There was nothing to be gained by trying to hide what she had done. It was obvious.
Irene was a slave and she had injured a free man. Self-defense didn’t matter. Defense of her husband didn’t matter. The law never permitted a slave to attack a person under any circumstances. There would be no trial. Just crucifixion as soon as the sheriff came for her.
Drake couldn’t prove that she had murdered his son, but he knew it in his heart. He would come and watch when she was nailed to the courthouse wall. Then he would insist that she be kept alive for as long as possible to suffer hellishly.
She wanted to use her razor on herself and cheat her fate, but she couldn’t. She had to stay alive for as long as possible to help save James from Drake.
* * *
The sheriff came to the hospital in mid morning. “The law is clear and permits only one course of action at this point. I regret that there is no other possibility. I will have to take you as soon as the hospital releases you. In recognition of having saved Lord Fortson’s life, you will be drugged beforehand so that you will be unconscious throughout the procedure. Lord Fortson has asked that you be dispatched immediately. Strangulation is traditional. You will feel no pain. In fact, you will not even be aware of what happens. That is the best that we can do for you.”
“Sir Drake?” was her only question.
The sheriff smiled wryly. “Sir Drake has a different opinion about what should happen to you. He spent a good deal of time in my office this morning throwing what I can only describe as a temper tantrum. Be assured that he will not get his way. You are Lord Fortson’s wife and that carries considerable weight. More weight than all the money in Westmouth.”
That was the nature of the aristocracy. Most gentlemen were not driven by greed. They had more wealth than they needed and they didn’t judge their worth by their bank accounts. So money, while important, was no more important that intangibles like status, honor, and loyalty.
Even Sir Drake’s enormous wealth couldn’t buy most lords.
His business complete, the sheriff departed. He had neither the time nor interest in engaging in small talk, even with the most notorious pleasure slave in the city.
Irene mused that he had not used the word, crucifixion, even once. There was no need. They both knew exactly what they were talking about.
It was a blessing that she wouldn’t have to cut her own throat to avoid a prolonged and agonizing end. A prick of a needle and she would drift into oblivion, never to return to consciousness. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad end to her story.
Except that she didn’t want to die. She loved James more fiercely than she thought she could ever love any man and she knew in her heart that he loved her just as much.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. A long life, not the few brief hours that they would be allotted by cruel circumstances.
Circumstances that Sir Drake had engineered from the outset.
She waited all day for a nurse to come to her room and tell her that she had been discharged. Then the sheriff would enter, the nurse would give her the merciful injection, and her life would be over.
She didn’t know why she hadn’t already been discharged. The wounds in her scalp had been stitched closed. The much deeper wound in her arm had been carefully repaired with more stitches, inside and out. She was in pain, but not so much pain that she couldn’t have walked all the way back home on her own.
The greater puzzle was that James was not here with her. She had so little time left in her life, she expected that he would want to spend every minute that he could with her.
She was damaged but fit enough to fuck him one last time. Or two. She wanted so badly to feel him inside her again.
A nurse brought her lunch. Then supper. Then, when she came again to turn out the lights for the night, Irene asked, “Why haven’t I been discharged? I don’t need to stay in bed this long.”
“Doctor’s orders. We have to monitor you for infection. If your temperature is normal tomorrow morning, then he’ll sign the discharge papers.”
Irene felt like laughing. Infection? When she was going to have huge dirty nails pounded through her wrists, knees, and ankles within an hour of her release? There’s no bureaucracy as rigid as a medical bureaucracy.
James finally came to see her the following morning. He looked like he’d spent all night tossing and turning on a bed of nails.
“You’ve come to say goodbye?” Irene asked.
He shook his head, wearily. “I’ve been up for thirty-six hours. I’m sorry but I lost my sense of humor some time ago. I’ve come to give you an update.”
“You look terrible.”
“My lawyers look worse. They were camped out in the law library all yesterday, looking for precedents and spent all night last night writing motions. We just got the first one an hour ago. A judge has issued an emergency injunction against the destruction of property – you – until the next two motions can be adjudicated. That will take a couple of days. Probably not as long as a week.”
“Are you telling me that there is a precedent for a slave almost killing a person and not being crucified?”
“No. Absolutely not. A slave has never before escaped crucifixion for injuring a person and you won’t, either. Even the governor wouldn’t dare proclaim an edict to free you. That would open the door to a slave revolt. Maybe the pleasure slaves wouldn’t rise up, but the labor slaves would. They have a lot less to lose. Only the threat of crucifixion keeps them from attacking their owners.”
“So I’m going to die, just like the sheriff said.”
“Not if I can help it. My lawyers are a lot more innovative than that. Their minds work in mysterious ways.”
Irene felt a surge of hope. “So tell me.”
“The assassin has been convinced to confess.”
“To trying to kill you? That will get him beheaded but it doesn’t give me any defense for injuring him.”
“No. I mean, sure, he confessed to the attempted murder but that’s not the confession that matters. He confessed to breaking into Lord Cranford’s kennels and damaging Cranford’s property. He cut the face of one of Cranford’s slaves and that reduced her estimated value by four thousand plaqs. He confessed to felony vandalism.”
Irene was amused that James was more concerned about an act of vandalism than attempted murder. “And that’s important to me, how?”
A League of Ladies (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 5) Page 15