Stephanie's Slavery (Brackish Bay Book 2)

by Cerise Noble

  "Your house would do well to have me."

  I snorted. "Our house would do well to sell you in the village."

  For the first time I could see trepidation. She hadn't known or hadn't counted on the possibility of being dismissed so easily. Not when she'd determined she'd wanted to belong here, to us.

  "And waste my sweat?"

  I came close to her, my breath on her lips. She started to reach for me, forgetting the chain on her wrists. It rankled her that she couldn't shove me back.

  "What good is sweat without loyalty? Without obedience? Without those things, gold is a fair trade for it."

  I turned and walked away.

  "Wait!"

  I turned slowly, watching her seek me in her darkness.

  "I am here."

  "I will serve."

  "The men, yes. I know quite well you'll serve those who can put you in your place as neatly as they did."

  "Yes." I continued to the door. "Wait!"

  My tongue was sharp. "Unless you kneel for me, unless you submit to me, you are not worthy of my consideration."

  Her face tensed. "Why should I?"

  I came back close, so close my lips brushed her ear even though I had to press my body against hers as I rose on my toes to reach.

  "Because you must know your place. And unless you rise to it, you are not above me."

  Heavily, she dropped to her knees. I laughed, and she shivered, a tense anger twisting her mouth. My boot caught her on the back of the neck, shoving her face towards the floor. She sputtered, outrage lending volume to her protests.

  "You will submit, or you will be sold."

  "You stupid bitch!"

  I looked up at Andy, one of the men who'd brought her in, as he watched me snarl at her. "You're the stupid bitch for trespassing."

  His voice was firm, warning. "Stephanie."

  I stopped instantly, and Zahira jerked away, lifting her face from the floor but still kneeling, every muscle alert. She hadn't realized he was there.

  "Enough."

  I scowled at him. "Yes, sir."

  He reached down and took her blindfold off, letting her eyes adjust until she could see me. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared as she realized I was one of Roy's own, one of the women who belonged to the core group. My smile was cold.

  "You recognize me."

  "Yes."

  "Do you wish to be sold?"

  Her voice shook this time. Suddenly it was a real possibility.

  "No."

  I set my nails against her shoulder and pressed in, little half circle indents. She swallowed, waiting for a cut. I started to rake them down, but Andy slapped my hand away.

  "No."

  "But, sir!"

  She watched, wide eyed, as he tucked me under an arm and began to spank me. I struggled, but the boy had grown to a hard muscled soldier, and I was helpless.

  Spank after spank rained down, turning my bare bottom the same color as the crimson dress I favored, my legs kicking as he burned my skin with each methodical slap. Finally, chest heaving, I was stood back on the ground, where I brushed the hair out of my face and glared at her wide eyes.

  His voice was soft. "Stephanie's correct. She outranks you. But you can see, she can be punished by a common soldier." He was nothing if not uncommon, but that was beside the point. I rubbed my sore bottom and pouted. "If you want to live by the laws of this house, you will swear your loyalty to Roy and you will obey, or you will be punished. Otherwise, you will be sold. Do you understand?"

  She nodded, swallowing hard. "I understand, sir. I will obey."

  Something in her eyes had heated as she watched the play of his muscles, the ease with which he held me in place. I sneered as I flounced out. As I did, I could still hear his voice.

  "You will be spanked for deliberately trespassing, for deliberately baiting one who outranks you."

  Her protests fell on deaf ears—she'd given her word. I stood in the hallway, leaning on the wall. My bottom throbbed as I savored the sound of meaty smacks, the squeals and pleas that spankings always wrung from new slaves. I was quite sure that Andy had found the slave he wanted to keep.

  Their presence at dinner proved me correct. I knelt beside Tobin, one of the less frequent times he wished to eat at the dining room table rather than have me bring his midday meal to his workshop. Eating from a bowl on the floor was not especially easy. It took all my attention, until Andy entered, with Zahira walking a half step behind, his fingers twined with hers. Her face was dark with humiliation, her whole body betraying how she ached.

  Roy looked up from his dinner. "She looks like she could be useful."

  Andy answered him, a touch of pride coloring his words. "She is. She is strong, and she has hunting skills that will be an asset to our village."

  Roy considered for a moment, then addressed Zahira. "Do you wish to belong to our House?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He looked back up at Andy. "Do you find her pleasing?"

  "I do."

  "So you wish to keep her?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He nodded. "You may keep her." I stood quickly, bringing him a chain from a drawer in the cupboard in the corner and a small padlock with a key. "Zahira."

  He snapped his fingers, and she hesitated, unsure. Andy nudged her, and she dropped to her knees in front of him. He leaned down, laying the chain around her neck and locking it with the padlock. I made a note of the number on the lock. Roy was notorious for forgetting to tell me which number was which slave if I wasn't present. Eighty-four. Good. I'd be able to write it down in our log later.

  "You belong to me, to the House of Brackish Bay. I expect you to obey every command I give you immediately, without complaint."

  She bowed her head. "Yes, sir."

  Roy put the key onto a ring on his belt. "As Andy is a loyal member of my house, I give you to him for his pleasure and use. I expect you to please him well if you wish to maintain the status his ownership gives you."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Take her."

  She stood and they left the room, her fingers twining with Andy's as they went.

  ***

  Some challenged me in a different way—Lauren, for instance. She arrived one day when Jillian was an awkward adolescent, always underfoot. Jessica wouldn't hear of her misbehavior. As a girl, and later a woman, she'd been subject to harsh discipline. I understood, but it didn't change the fact that the child was a nuisance at best, and a meddling busybody at worst. She knew far too much about the goings on of adults in the House, due to a knack for being unobserved while she was wherever she wasn't wanted.

  More than once, Tobin had caught her hiding in our wardrobe. More than once, she'd disappeared for days only to have a long-suffering Devon return her from stowing away on the boat during a fish-trading trip. More than once, she'd shown up in a group of people seeking citizenship with the House.

  Much as I adored Jessica, and Jillian had the same sort of angelic grace and beauty that lent her an air of innocence in every confrontation, I was at my wit's end with the child. Jessica petted her and spoiled her rotten. Jacqueline tried to instill discipline, but who could say no to a mistress as beloved as Jessica when she frowned at a scolding and protected her babe? Roy also doted on her, as blind to her faults as her mother, and being his daughter, no one else dared raise a hand to her.

  Until Lauren, that is.

  It was a miserable day in high summer when she announced herself at the furthermost gate to Roy's territory.

  "I've come to serve the governor."

  No one could dissuade her, and her behavior was quiet, polite, in no way a challenge to the soldiers who tried to pass her off to the councils of citizens. She didn't want to be a slave, and she'd not trespassed or otherwise broken any law, so there was no way to compel her.

  Eventually, she'd managed to talk her way to the door of our house. Jillian answered her knock.

  "What do you want?"

  Lauren had simply
raised an eyebrow, and waited. I understand she waited a long time. Finally the little blonde sprite had raised her voice and called for Jessica.

  "Mama!"

  "Yes, dear heart?"

  I heard the child's shrill voice, heard Jessica coming down the stairs, so I emerged from the kitchen. Even in those days, Jessica's breath was starting to come lighter than it should have.

  "This woman wants something."

  Jessica opened the door and blinked in surprise. I took over, stepping between my queen and the unknown person. Lauren was sturdy and calm.

  "May I help you?" I wasn't sure if she was a citizen with a petition for Roy, so I kept my tongue on a leash.

  "I'm here to serve the governor."

  My eyebrows went up. Jillian stamped a small foot.

  "He doesn't have anyone serve him unless they're a man or a slave." Her childish sneer at me inspired visions of throttling the brat. "And you're not a slave."

  "No, I'm not. I'm a free woman, a citizen, now." She turned her attention back to me. "And I'd like to speak to Roy."

  "He's not available. I can tell him—"

  She'd stepped inside the doorway. "I'll wait."

  Flabbergasted, I showed her to a chair, and then herded my lady and her spawn into the kitchen. I pointed at the spawn.

  "You. Keep your mouth shut around strangers. Don't trust people until you know them." I pointed to Jessica. "You. Sit down. You look pale."

  She sank into a chair, and for a moment, I was lost in her ethereal beauty.

  "Don't order me around, Stephanie."

  Her half-smile took the bite out of her words. I kissed her forehead.

  "Someone has to, my lady."

  I looked up, and the spawn was nowhere to be found. I sighed, long suffering. "I'll send someone to the dock for Roy."

  He'd come back and spoken to Lauren in his office. When they'd finished, he'd put her in charge of the kitchen for a day. I hovered, a sharp, un-trusting eye on her every move.

  It took all of a meal for my watchfulness to turn to eagerness to sample more of her cooking. By the end of the week, she was the undisputed ruler of the kitchen, and I was relieved of my duties there.

  Interestingly, something about her no-nonsense determination attracted Jillian, and, more often than not, her wanderings terminated in the large kitchen, learning and working.

  Until, of course, her wanderlust bit her again, and she was found in the village we traded with, alone, playing kickball with a group of street urchins. I remember how the metalworker's son Benjamin dragged her back, and how Roy and Jessica actually scolded her. But it was Lauren who waited until the storm was over before sitting her down for a careful lecture, Lauren who turned her over her sturdy lap and spanked her. I'd been horrified when I found out.

  Lauren pointed out that she knew well and good that Jillian had never been disciplined before—how it wasn't about the harshness, how she hadn't actually hurt the child—it was about underlining the lecture, about conveying her disapproval in a visceral way.

  I thought for sure Jillian would stay far away from the kitchen after that. And she did, for a time, hiding out in the garden. But soon after, she and Lauren became inseparable. I daresay our whole village heaved a sigh of relief at that. So when she gained the age of adulthood, it was only a small surprise that she married Benjamin, and even less of a surprise that Lauren stood next to Jessica, honorary other mother of the bride.

  Chapter Nine

  Jessica became ill. No one knows why, or how. All who studied health—doctors, herbwitches, surgeons—all they could say was that it was a disease. It ate at her from the inside out, turning her into a frail shadow, willow thin and beautiful, like a snowflake is beautiful as it melts.

  I hated everything and everyone.

  For a long time I tended her, gradually neglecting my other duties, immersing myself in learning all about whatever the newest quack thought might heal her. She bore it with the same tinkling laughter I remembered from our youth, gentle touches on my face as she teased me for trying this or that herbal concoction, this medicine or that, this recommendation on diet or exercise or mineral waters or sunlight or darkness—nothing mattered.

  And when there were no more suggestions, when we'd tried everything anyone could think to suggest, and nothing seemed to offer improvement or hope, I sank into a morass of pitch.

  Leaving Jacqueline to tend our mistress, I would come to, my body stiff from sleeping on the rocks by the river. Sharp shells broken to a razor edge became my friends, and I cut spider webs of scars into my skin.

  Lauren spoke to me, but I didn't hear her. Jacqueline begged me, but I didn't care. Soldiers would find me, caressing their weapons with bloodied hands, and they would take me back to Tobin, afraid for my life—and more for Jessica's, if I died before her.

  Nothing hurt so much as the thought of losing her. And so I wallowed, soaking up the pain of the thought until it blotted out the world.

  Tobin started tying me down when he had to work, terrified to find a corpse upon his return.

  Surprisingly, it was Jillian who planted the seed of light in my blind world.

  "Stephanie." She was round with child, her first. I looked at her, and the resemblance to her mother was uncanny. I wept, clutching her knees while she crossed her arms and glared at me. "You're a stupid, selfish bitch."

  Her venom being spit out of a perfect cupid's bow mouth, so like the one I'd kissed a thousand times before, the one that never had an unkind word for anyone, gave me pause. I'd stared up at her, face swollen with grief.

  "She isn't dead yet. You stupid, stupid bitch."

  "How dare you." My voice sounded hollow and devoid of substance, even to me.

  Hers was full of anger. "How dare you? You're the person she's loved the longest. She misses you every day. It hurts her when you aren't there, when you don't see her for days on end. How dare you make my mother's last days more painful than they are already. How dare you deprive her of her lover. How dare you take the coward's way out, crying and pathetic when once you were the cruel edge of the blade, the woman whose tongue was feared through the whole village? You selfish, wretched woman. You disgust me." She'd shoved me away from her, and left, her sobs echoing down the hall.

  ***

  I'd lain where I was for hours, her chiding voice ringing in my head, stirring up the memories of Jessica—all the times I'd loved her, all the times I'd lain with her, all the times I'd smiled at her, kissed her, held her hand. Jillian's own birth.

  For a long time I soaked in the pain, and then realized what I'd been seeking. I needed a way to release it, needed a way to turn it so I could use it, could find comfort in it. I raised my arms above my face, looking at the scabs and scars. They no longer satisfied me; they resembled too closely the cuts on my heart.

  I felt my flesh and realized I was no longer bruised or sore from a spanking. When had Tobin punished me last? When had any of the men, for that matter? It took a longer time for me to realize that I had frightened them, that I was a burden on them, when they should have been putting their energy and attention into Jessica, into enjoying whatever time she might have left.

  It wasn't until I'd slept in Tobin's bed, the first unbroken sleep I'd had in weeks, that I was able to think through a way to transmute the pain.

  Lauren was the first. I knew she would understand in a way the men wouldn't.

  I rose and washed, scrubbing my skin and hair of the grime I couldn't remember accumulating, rubbing off old scabs and cleaning new ones. I dried myself, smoothing oil into my rough skin. When I was finished, I walked out, nude, to the kitchen. Lauren stopped cooking, and the men I passed in the dining room stopped eating to watch me. Their wary expressions broke my heart, so I sneered at them.

  "Stupid men, scared of little old me."

  Lauren crossed her arms and raised a brow while the slave helping her scurried to stir a pot, her eyes wide. I glanced at the table, the unused cushions for slaves to kneel on un
der it. When was the last time a full breakfast had been had with many men and many slaves, cheerfully laughing and bantering? I couldn't remember.

  Lauren's voice was full of warning. "Stephanie."

  I grinned at her, a ghost of my former razor-tongued self rising from my belly like smoke behind my eyes. "I'm not here to cause trouble, citizen." I made it an insult, and her other brow rose. "I've been here longer. I am one of Roy's own. And thus I outrank you, woman."

  Her mouth turned up at the corner. She knew how highly I thought of her, or, at least, I hoped she did, and for a long moment my resolve wavered.

  But she saved me. "You are a slave, Stephanie."

  I turned haughty. "One who belongs to the governor. One who belongs to Tobin."

  Her mouth pressed tight, and I knew at once she was trying not to laugh. "And still a slave. One who damn well ought to do as she's told."

  My own eyebrows rose. "And what would that be?"

  There was a twinkle in her eye. "I've got quite an accumulation of dirty towels and napkins since you've been neglecting your duties, slave." Her smirk let me know I'd bitten off more than I could chew. "I think you ought to catch up the laundry. All of it."

  I shrugged, struggling to maintain my nonchalance. All of the House's laundry?

  "No."

  "No?"

  "No."

  She shrugged and picked up a large wooden spoon from her counter. I held my ground for a moment, and then turned to run. It was too late. Her hand in my hair snapped my head back, and I gasped, struggling a moment before she had me shoved face down over the dining table. The men were startled, watching with fascinated horror. Only a few were present. She looked them over for a moment.

  "Nathaniel? Hold her down."

  The burly young man seemed doubtful, but rose from his seat and came to the empty end of the table—empty except for me.

  "She needs a good paddling, and she's going to get it." Lauren brushed the hair out of my face when his fists closed over my forearms. "And then she's still going to do the laundry. Aren't you, slave?"

  I whimpered. I screwed up my courage just enough to whisper the word "no."