A League of Ladies (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 5)

by Ashley Zacharias

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody that I recognized. A big man with a knife. I assume that he was a hired assassin.”

  “Who hired him?”

  “I don’t know. I can only guess.”

  “Sir Drake?”

  “Drake’s son, Geoffrey tried to run me down in the street a couple of months ago. Then he disappeared and I’ve heard that Drake thinks that I did something to him. Killed him.”

  “Did you?”

  “It was self-defense. He handcuffed me and drove me to the city dump. He was about to cut my head off with a knife. That was exactly what Drake intended to do to me when he bought me. It seems that he’s never stopped trying to get my head.”

  James didn’t blink at her admission of murder. “Except when Geoffrey tried to run over you.”

  “I’m sure that he would have taken my head, or at least my collar, if he’d managed to get me on the street.”

  “Where is your collar?”

  “I had a jeweler cut it off a few days ago. It seemed unwise to keep wearing the trophy that Drake wants.”

  “You said that you were handcuffed and Geoffrey had a knife. How did you survive that?”

  “I distracted him and he put the knife down. Then I chewed on him until he was dead. It was a bloody mess.”

  James winced.

  “I’m not so squeamish now as when I was a lady.”

  “I can tell.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, their feelings in turmoil.

  “If I keep you here, then there’s nothing to stop Drake’s assassin from coming after you again.”

  “I thought that you might make your kennels more secure than the Cranford kennels. Fortify the doors. Maybe put in an alarm system.”

  James looked at his enslaved wife for a long moment. She couldn’t read his face.

  Finally, he said, “I’ll take you under my protection. But not here. You’ll be safer in the manor in your own bedroom. I’ll hire a guard to stay downstairs at night. I’d get a gun for you but if you shoot someone, your life would be forfeit regardless of the circumstances, so I’ll be next door in my room with a gun and I’ll do the shooting if necessary.”

  “I’ve lent myself to you, so I will do as you command.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  “That’s right. Whatever you command.”

  “Don’t you ever tire of playing at being a slave?”

  She turned her back to him and parted her hair. “This says that I am a slave. It’s not a pretend tattoo.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know what slavery means. It means that I’m available for your use. And that I will submit to punishment if you choose to chastise me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You did the last time that I was in these kennels.”

  He winced. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yes, you should have. I should have thought more carefully about what it meant to you when I sold myself. I never realized how much I was hurting you. I deserve to suffer in equal measure.”

  His eyes became opaque, as though he’d drawn drapes across them. “Go to your room now.”

  She left his kennels.

  He stayed.

  * * *

  In the manor, Sud fed her lunch. Irene no longer felt comfortable being served – she’d become accustomed to cooking her own meals – and she hadn’t eaten lunch in a year – two meals a day was standard for slaves – but Sud refused to be deterred from treating her as a lady.

  She spent most of the day napping and reading and napping again. The book that she’d been reading before she’d decided to accompany her husband to the slave auction, was still on her bedside stand, still open to the page she’d stopped reading.

  It was a romantic adventure about a young commoner, the daughter of a cobbler, who was fleeing from her parents to chase after a soldier who didn’t yet know that he loved her. The dashing object of her affection was posted on the northern border, helping to maintain the peace by volunteering to cross into Northland at night in plain clothes and photograph military installations. He would be shot if he were discovered.

  The entire story was rather farfetched, considering that Arctus had been at peace with all of its neighbors for more than a century. Worse, Irene found the attempt to create sexual tension laughable. The young woman was a virgin and was in a constant dither about whether she should allow her beau to make love to her. He was content to admire her chastely while she tried to make her mind about him. The premise implicit in the story, that the young soldier was so fixed on his one love that he would never consider getting laid by any other, more easily available woman, struck her as ridiculous. The inevitable climax required that the reader believe that, when the foolish woman did finally grace her beloved with a single sexual encounter – missionary position, of course – he would be so moved by her generosity that he would instantly marry her and then be willing to wait around indefinitely, devoting his life to her in the hope that she would grace his bed on future rare occasions when her mood was exactly right.

  Irene remembered that she had expected that life with her husband would be exactly like the one described in the book. It had been a shock for her to discover that James, being a wealthy aristocrat, never had to bother going to any great effort to seduce her to get laid. All he had to do was walk out to his kennels. She knew that other aristocratic husbands did that but had once believed that she would be such a special wife that James would never look at a slave.

  So foolish then, so wise now.

  She truly had made herself special, not by demanding great love, but by giving great sex. Instead of remaining a foolish and mundane wife, she was the most exotic pleasure slave in the city. That was no mean accomplishment.

  After reading another fifty pages, she threw the book in the trash and took up her embroidery.

  That was another thing that she’d laid down when she had decided to make her husband take her to the slave auction, expecting to return in two hours. Two hours that had turned into fourteen months.

  The project was a pair of pillows illustrating the story of the ugly duckling. She was almost finished the first one. An awkward grey cygnet was standing in the foreground with its head hanging in shame while fluffy yellow ducklings in the background flapped their wings and squawked at it. She spent the afternoon putting the final stitches in the first so that she could begin the matching pillow – a beautiful white swan swimming proudly through an abashed flock of smaller mallards.

  She decided that she would embroider a golden collar on the mature swan. It would be a fitting counterpoint to the natural green rings around the necks of the mallards.

  James did not come home for dinner. Sud said that he’d called and told her that he would be working late. That was not unusual. Irene had eaten many dinners alone in this house. When he did come home it was most often when they were hosting one of their many dinners for a dozen guests or more. Eating with her husband as her sole company was their least common arrangement.

  On his instructions, Sud had arranged the furniture in the parlor across from the stairway so that an armed guard could sit and watch the hallway and stairs. The guard came after dinner, introduced himself to Irene, and then kept out of their way for the rest of the evening.

  Sud retired to the kennels as soon as the dinner dishes were put away, leaving Irene alone in the manor with the guard.

  Irene didn’t know if she felt more or less safe with an armed man sitting in the parlor, watching her coming and going.

  Having napped for a couple of hours after lunch, Irene thought that she might find it difficult to fall asleep at bedtime, but she was so tired that she turned in early.

  After more than a year of sleeping in slave kennels, strange bedrooms, and some hotel rooms, she was surprised that her bed still felt familiar. She was asleep within minutes.

  She’d hoped that James would come to her room and make love t
o her, maybe even staying to sleep beside her all night.

  She was disappointed to wake alone and untouched in the morning.

  That was also her standard experience in this bed.

  When she came downstairs, James was seated at the breakfast table, reading the morning paper. The armed guard was nowhere to be seen.

  “You’re up,” he said. “Sud will serve breakfast shortly.”

  “I’ve learned to cook,” Irene said. “I could prepare the meals.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “If you cooked, then what would Sud do?”

  That was the question. Sud was technically a pleasure slave, but was old, around forty, and should be sold on the labor market soon. She was pretty sure that James had no intention of doing that but she didn’t know why. He had kept Sud in service for years where most owners sold their slaves after three to twelve months.

  She wondered if James still fucked Sud. She doubted it. He had three other, younger and more attractive, slaves waiting on his pleasure in his kennels.

  For the first time, she realized that Lord Fortson’s manor was woefully understaffed compared to his peers. He had a full complement of cooks, cleaners, and waiters on call when he entertained, which was almost half of the time, but the rest of the time, he made do with Sud and the other pleasure slaves. By tradition, pleasure slaves only made a token effort at housework. They weren’t expected to put their backs to it. Sud did the bulk of the real housework alone.

  An odd thought struck her. James was sentimental. She had never thought of him in that light before, but his irrational treatment of his oldest slave could only be considered an act of sentiment.

  James was saying something.

  “I beg your pardon? My mind wandered for a moment.”

  “I said that I retrieved your possessions from Lord Cranford’s kennels yesterday. They’re in a bag in the foyer. Sud will carry them up to your room after breakfast.”

  Irene wondered if he had packed it himself or if one of Lord Cranford’s busty slaves had fetched the objects from the pleasure room. Had he looked into the bag? What did he think of his wife’s butt plug, lube, and handcuffs? She could hardly ask.

  Instead, she said, “Thank you. I don’t have much, but some items are essential.”

  “There’s a straight razor in the bag.” His voice was flat but he was plainly curious about why a slave would need a straight razor.

  “I bought that when I heard that Drake was saying that he thought that I’d harmed his son. I realized that I was in mortal danger.”

  “Do you intend to defend yourself against Drake? With a straight razor?”

  “No. It’s to cut my own throat if the sheriff comes for me. I don’t want to be crucified. That’s a terrible way to die. Especially if they make an effort to prolong the slave’s suffering, and you know that Drake would insist that they did. I could end up nailed to the courthouse wall for months before I died, my sanity destroyed by the endless pain.” She rubbed her wrists where the nails would be pounded through them. Just thinking about crucifixion made them ache.

  James looked grim.

  Sud served eggs benedict.

  “Go to the kennels,” James said to her. “You can clean up the breakfast dishes when you come back to prepare lunch.”

  Sud retreated from the room without a word.

  James waited until he heard the back door shut. “We can talk. We’re alone.”

  Irene took a bite of her breakfast. It was delicious.

  “You were foolish to tell me what you did to Geoffrey,” James said. “You are foolish to tell anybody. Hearsay alone is enough to get you crucified.”

  “Are you going to report my confession?” Irene asked.

  “How can you ask such a thing?”

  “Then I wasn’t that foolish. You had to know why I was in such danger. And I’ve put you in danger, too. If Drake’s man was willing to invade Lord Cranford’s grounds, he will do the same here. I don’t know what would have happened to Lord or Lady Cranford if they had been on the grounds or in the kennel when the man broke in. Drake is likely to target you, too. He would kill you in a heartbeat if he thought that he could get away with it.”

  “I know. But you confessed to killing Geoffrey in the kennels. The other slaves could have heard.”

  “We weren’t speaking loudly. They know better than to eavesdrop on their owner. And, if they did hear anything, they know better than to spread the rumor. If I were crucified because of their loose talk, I’m pretty sure that you’d have them crucified right next to me.”

  James nodded.

  “Pleasure slaves can be nasty to each other, but they’re careful about not offending a gentleman. Especially the gentleman who owns them.”

  “Even so, your silence is more trustworthy than theirs.”

  “I won’t talk about it again.”

  “I trust that you disposed of him.”

  “Dismembered him and scattered his parts in the dump. There are a lot of slave corpses there. Nobody is going to find him, no matter how hard they search.”

  James grimaced.

  “A slave does what a slave has to do. We don’t get a lot of choices in our lives. Geoffrey didn’t leave me with any choice but to dispose of him. If he had, he’d be at home right now.” She didn’t tell her husband that Geoffrey had teased her by offering her a chance to live by letting ten thousand men fuck her in the ass. If that option had been an honest offer, she might have done it in the end.

  “I talked to Cranford’s slaves when I picked up your stuff. They can identify the attacker if they see him again, but they can’t tell us who he is.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “Who?”

  “Lord Cranford’s slaves?”

  “One was slashed across the cheek. It’s deep and bled a bucket. That’ll reduce her value by a few thousand plaqs. The others are intact. They did what the attacker told them to do: they pointed you out.”

  “They didn’t have any choice about that.”

  “No honor among slaves?”

  “They have nothing but their honor. It’s their duty to do as a gentleman asks. Even when he’s an assassin and is asking them to help him kill one of their own. That doesn’t mean that they liked doing it.”

  “I just wish that I could find him and trace him back to Drake. Then I could put an end to these attacks.”

  “Me too.”

  They ate their breakfast in silence.

  When their plates were clean, Irene said, “I’d like to ask you for another favor.”

  “This isn’t enough?”

  “I appreciate more than I can ever express what you are doing for me, but I have a political agenda that you can help me with.”

  “What kind of agenda?”

  “I’d like to get an edict proclaimed that would help pleasure slaves.”

  “You’ve gone native?”

  “I am a slave for life, but you’ve let me escape from an early death as a labor slave. I’d like other slaves to have the same opportunity that you gave to me.”

  “You want to do away with slavery?”

  “No. Not at all. I have no problem with pleasure slaves serving their owners for as long as someone wants them. But, when they grow too old to give a man pleasure, I don’t want to see them automatically sold on the labor market. I want them to have a chance to own themselves, just like I do.”

  James listened while Irene explained her scheme to have a trust created for every pleasure slave. She proposed that every slave owner would be required to contribute one percent of the purchase price of the slave to her trust every year as a kind of tax. At that rate, the trusts would never grow big enough for a slave to buy herself on the pleasure market, but would be sufficient to give her a chance to own herself when she was eventually sold for a much lower price on the labor market.

  When she finished, James said, “You not only want me to loosen the lords’ holds on their slaves, but to propose a new tax at the same time?”r />
  “What new tax? The average pleasure slave sells for about thirty thousand plaqs. One percent of that is three hundred plaqs a year. That would cost the owner less than one plaq a day per slave. You think that anyone who owns a slave can’t afford to pay a plaq a day? You’d use one plaq notes to wipe your ass if they were printed on softer paper. Maybe a commoner who is stretched to the limit might find that such a fee puts him over the breaking point, but no lord is going to even notice it.”

  “I’m going to have to think about this. About how it would work and how we could get enough lords to vote in favor in the Assembly. It’s going to be a very hard sell, you know. Lords like the tradition of owning pleasure slaves. They won’t want to change it even a little bit.”

  “If anyone can find a way, I’m sure that you can.”

  “I’m not certain that anyone can.”

  She had faith. Her husband had already bestowed two miracles on her – marriage as a slave and self-ownership. Surely he could accomplish another miracle.

  * * *

  Irene surveyed the faces of the dozen ladies sitting in front of her in her parlor. They were waiting for her to teach them how to be sexual dynamos who could compete against bevies of pleasure slaves for their husbands’ affections.

  If they wanted it badly enough and were willing to work hard enough, she might be able to do it.

  She was acquainted with about half of them. Linda Hoffman, Felice Snow, and Kaitlin Granger were the wives of lords who had been her dear friends before she had enslaved herself. Since then, their relationship had been complex. They wanted to be her friend but social convention didn’t allow ladies to socialize with slaves.

  Three others, Gail d’Angelo, Victoria Sumner, and Gabriela Vincent were the wives of well-respected lords who had been occasional guests in the Fortson manor. Irene knew them well enough to have conversations when they met, but they were not intimate friends.

  The biggest surprise was Melanie Gaston. She was the new wife of Earl Gaston. Irene had been a friend of her mother, Lady Sharp. Before Irene had enslaved herself, she had been helping Lady Sharp engineer the engagement of her eighteen-year-old daughter, Melanie, to the fifty-year-old earl. Melanie had been enamored of a young son of a knight but her mother wanted her to step up in social rank, from lord’s daughter to earl’s wife, not step down two rungs by marrying a knight.