Halfway through the viewing, when there were few gentlemen in the room, Sir Drake and his son, Geoffrey approached her cage.
Drake barely looked at her body. He leaned close and said, softly so that no one else could hear, “I’m going to buy you. I don’t care what it costs. I can outbid any man in Westmouth. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most expensive slave that’s ever been sold on that block. When this auction is over, I’m going to own you. Geoffrey and I are going to drive you straight to the city dump and we’re going to remove that collar from your neck. And you know what? We aren’t going to cut the collar. I swear that an hour after buying you, that collar will be sitting on my desk, whole and intact.”
Geoffrey piped up. “We brought a butcher knife in the car.” He grinned over her shoulder at her as he followed his father back out of the room.
There was only one way to remove her collar without cutting it. Irene was never going to see another sunset.
Her legs refused to support her any longer. She sagged against the bars of her cage and abandoned all hope.
* * *
Irene was to be the last sale of the day. That was planned. The auctioneer always kept the most interesting slave for the last sale to encourage the crowd to stay for the entire auction. The more men in the room, the more active the bidding.
It was all about the money.
But for Irene, it was life and death. If Sir Drake won the bid, she was dead. It was that simple. She had humiliated him in front of his son when she had snatched Adele out his hands. His pride was the only thing that mattered more than money to him. He would have his revenge at any cost.
Was it worth her life to have saved Adele from slavery?
It didn’t matter. She had done what she had done and she had done it for the best reasons. She would die with her head held high.
With her head pulled back to expose her throat to Drake’s butcher knife.
She barely paid attention to the auction. One by one, the slaves were cuffed and collared and led to the block. The auctioneer described the merchandise and then asked for bids. He shouted numbers. Gentlemen raised their hands and shouted numbers back. When a price was decided, the slave was led to her new owner.
One slave was sold for eighty-two thousand plaqs to Lord Granger, the husband of one of Irene’s friends from her previous life. The slave was the young, beautiful daughter of a knight. Daughters of the aristocracy were rare and always fetched a high price. This one, like most aristocrats who become slaves, had been adjudicated into slavery when she had tried to flee rather than honoring her engagement contract to marry an aging baronet.
Irene thought her a foolish girl. As a slave, she was likely to end up fucking that baronet at entertainments more often than she would have serviced him as his wife.
Another slave, thirty-one years old, was sold for twenty-one thousand plaqs to a grubby-looking brothel owner. Even though that was a relatively low price for a slave at auction, she’d have to service an awful lot of sailors in the next few years to turn a profit for her new owners.
The slave looked like she was going to collapse on the stage. She didn’t, but she had to be dragged, forcibly, by the chain around her neck to her new owners.
Irene felt sympathy for the unfortunate slave. Then she considered that her own fate would be worse.
The gold collar felt tight around her neck. She could already feel the knife sawing into her throat while Geoffrey grinned down at her.
The Governor of Arctus was present. He bought a lovely-looking slave for his stable. Nobody dared bid against him, so to be fair, he always waited until the bidding was complete, and then before the auctioneer declared the slave sold, cast one last bid at a substantially higher price.
For a few brief, shining moments, Irene hoped that he would wait until the end of the auction and then buy her, too. He was the one person, the only person in Westmouth, that Sir Drake wouldn’t dare bid against. Nobody ever bid against the governor.
But that hope was dashed when the governor’s aide took possession of his new purchase, the third sale of the day, and the governor’s entire entourage left the room.
When Irene was the only slave left in the cages, the auctioneer said, “Our final sale of the day, gentlemen.”
All the men in the room turned to watch as two handlers in red tank tops opened her cage door. One pinned her arms behind her back while the other cuffed her wrists together. Then the first snapped a chain about her neck above her collar.
She bravely raised her chin and bared her white throat to give him easy access to her neck.
The handlers led her through the crowd. She didn’t resist, but walked to her fate with the considerable dignity that a woman born to the aristocracy could marshal. Being naked and chained, being nothing but a piece of property to be sold to the highest bidder, couldn’t erase her heritage.
Clovis had been right about one thing. In her heart, she would always be an aristocrat.
Climbing the two steps to the stage felt like ascending to the headsman’s block. Because, essentially, that was what she was doing.
“Irene is collared in gold,” the auctioneer said, his voice amplified to fill the room. “She was the wife of a lord. Last year, she made the extraordinary decision to have herself sold into slavery. Having enslaved herself voluntarily, she has made an exceptional effort to train herself in the ways of pleasure. She is twenty-nine years old, in good health, and eager to please her owner.”
Irene noticed that she was twenty-nine now. It was the first time in her life that a birthday had gone uncelebrated and unremarked. Her twenty-ninth would be her last birthday.
While the auctioneer described her, a handler led her back and forth across the stage so that every man in the room had an unobstructed view of her beautiful, naked body. Then he led her to the raised block on the center of the stage.
“Do I hear thirty-thousand plaqs for this unique slave?” the auctioneer called. “Thirty-thousand?”
It was the highest opening bid that Irene had heard all day, but a handful of gentlemen were willing to pay it.
Her owners would turn a tidy profit on their wise investment.
“Thirty-five thousand?”
Three hands. Sir Drake, a heavy-set gentleman that Irene didn’t recognize, and a mousey man that she did. It was her ex-husband’s solicitor, Mr. Llewellyn Smith – the man who had arranged the nine-thousand plaq loan for Adele.
She felt a surge of hope for the first time since Sir Drake had told her that he intended to buy her for immediate slaughter.
Maybe her ex-husband had forgiven her and wanted to acquire her. Even if she had to take a caning from him every day before breakfast, it would be worth it to see Sir Drake thwarted.
“Forty thousand?”
Only two hands, Drake’s and Smith’s went that high. Irene suspected that, if Drake were not bidding, others might compete to raise her price higher, but everyone knew that they couldn’t outbid the wealthy knight.
“Fifty thousand?”
Drake glared at Smith and shouted, “A hundred thousand plaquettes sterling.”
There was a collective gasp from the room. It was not unheard of for a slave to sell for that much, but it was unprecedented that a bidder would advance from forty thousand to a hundred in a single step. Sir Drake was telling everyone that Irene was to be his at any price.
Smith turned and left the room, abandoning Irene to her mortal enemy.
“Any advance on a hundred thousand? Do I hear a hundred and five? A hundred and five? A hundred and one? Who will offer a hundred and one thousand plaqs for this exceptional slave?” The auctioneer didn’t expect anyone to outbid Drake, but he hoped that someone would be willing to drive the price up a little more. Every plaq of commission was a good plaq.
No one was willing to bid against Drake. He looked like he was determined to pay as much as necessary, but that might be a ruse. Bidders had been known to bluff, drop out unexpectedly, and leave a challe
nger holding an overpriced slave that they hadn’t expected to purchase.
Drake’s canny deals were legendary. Gentlemen who put him to the test always felt pain in their pocketbook.
No one in the room was going to pit himself against Drake today.
“Sold to Sir Drake for one hundred thousand plaqs.” The auctioneer slapped his clapper.
The report of Irene’s doom echoed from the walls.
Irene’s previous owners were going to be thrilled. They’d each get more than eight thousand plaqs for selling her to her executioner.
The handler brought her down from the stage and led her to the middle of the crowd.
“Are the cuffs and chain good and tight?” Drake asked the handler. “I don’t want her to escape.”
“Yes, sir. She’s not going anywhere.”
Sir Drake barely looked at her as he led her from the room.
Geoffrey couldn’t stop grinning.
A slave’s owner had the absolute power to dispose of his slave as he wished. And there was no doubt that Drake wished to dispose of her immediately.
In an hour, her decapitated body would be cooling in the town dump, gourmet food for the rats.
She held her head high and followed her new owner with dignity and courage.
Even a slave had a human spirit.
END OF BOOK FOUR
Owners by the Dozen (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 4) Page 17