The grumbling sounded menacing.
Lord Snow stepped forward and faced his guests. “Irene is right, gentlemen. She can’t let Tamarind eat tomorrow.” There were groans of dismay. “But I can,” he said. “For her exceptional effort, and for the exceptional effort of all these slaves, Tamarind will not have to watch the others eat breakfast, she will join them.”
The guests applauded Lord Snow’s generosity.
Tamarind fell to her knees and kissed her owner’s hand.
When the hubbub began to subside, Irene raised her hands. “Thank you, Lord Snow. Now, the last item of business. Did any of you gentleman find the entertainment tonight less pleasurable than most of the entertainments that you have attended?”
No hands were raised.
But before Irene could breathe a sigh of relief, Sir Lawrence spoke up. “That was not quite the question that you said that you would ask. You said that you would ask if tonight’s entertainment was more pleasurable than most, not less. It’s my understanding that you need a majority vote on that question before you will be permitted to eat tomorrow.”
“You are right, sir.” The gentleman is always right when his opinion differs from a slave’s. “So let me ask you–“
“Before you call a vote, I would like to make a point. I think that we can all agree that tonight’s entertainment was out of the ordinary and we all took much pleasure in it. But our pleasure was marred just now. I think it was quite clear to all of us that we wished the rules to be bent in favor of the slave who gave so many of us so much pleasure and you refused to do it until Lord Snow intervened. I take no pleasure in being defied by a slave.
“I will not forget how you stood around in your lovely dress, untouchable, while these eager naked slaves served our every desire and then you decided that one of them should starve while you eat.
“So I, for one, will vote that you not be fed tomorrow.”
There were mutters of agreement among the guests.
Irene’s heart fell, but she mustered her courage and put the question to the assembled gentlemen. “Gentlemen, how many of you found tonight’s entertainment more pleasurable than most of the entertainments that you have attended?”
Five gentlemen raise their hands. Seven did not.
Irene would not eat breakfast or dinner tomorrow.
She wanted to weep as Tamarind had done, but steeled her courage and said, “I’m sorry to have failed you. I will starve again tomorrow, as is your wish. Goodnight, and may luck be with you always.”
When she turned toward the other slaves, she saw looks of satisfaction on their faces. She had put them through a considerable ordeal for the night’s entertainment – an ordeal that they thought completely unnecessary – and they found it just that she continue to stave while they filled their bellies with breakfast and dinner tomorrow.
Peach, in particular, looked positively gleeful.
* * *
Breakfast was a misery. Irene had told the slaves that the loser would be forced to watch the other slaves eat. But after Tamarind was pardoned by Lord Snow, she was the only loser.
Nickel took pleasure in ordering her to sit at the breakfast table in front of an empty plate while the other slaves slurped their porridge in exaggerated delight, slurping loudly and telling each other how exceptionally delicious it was this morning.
Then they commented on how wonderful the canapés had tasted the evening before, just to remind Irene that she had not been able to sample even one of those morsels.
They were merciless. For two hungry days, they had resented Irene for depriving them of food. It didn’t matter to them that she had deprived herself equally. As far as the slaves were concerned, it was all her fault. She had designed the horrible entertainment and she deserved to suffer for it.
After breakfast, Apple and Lime washed the dishes. Nickel would have ordered Irene to do them herself, just to torture her by having to watch the leftover porridge get washed down the drain, but she feared that Irene might manage to sneak a couple of bites by wiping her finger on the dirty bowls and licking it off.
She was determined that Irene wouldn’t taste even a crumb of food until another twenty-four long hours had passed.
When the dishes were finished, Nickel told Irene that she was to wait in the pleasure room for Lord Snow.
Irene waited alone on her knees in the center of the room for several minutes.
Lord Snow couldn’t be pleased by the outcome of the entertainment. The majority of his guests had decided that it was so badly handled that she, as director of the entertainment, should be starved for a third day in a row.
As soon as he entered from the billiard-room tunnel, she said, “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“For failing you. For failing to provide an adequate entertainment for your guests.”
He looked around. “Are you all alone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then stop talking like an idiot. Get off our knees and sit down in a chair.”
He stepped out of the room and then returned with a picnic basket. The most wonderful odors in the world drifted out of it. Her mouth filled with drool.
“Eat up,” he said, handing it to her.
“Sir? I can’t eat today.”
“I told you to stop talking like an idiot. I own you. I can feed you anything I like any time I like and you damn well better eat it or I’ll have my whiphand take a strap to you.”
She opened the basket.
She hadn’t seen food like this since she had sold herself into slavery. Her last owner, a commoner, ate well, but he didn’t eat like a lord.
She tried to be dainty as she devoured the roast quail, asparagus with orange sauce, roasted new potatoes, and cucumber salad, but failed. The most that she could do was to force herself to take the plate out of the basket and use the knife and fork provided. She wanted to dig into the basket with both hands and shove the food directly into her mouth.
The food was fresh and still hot. These weren’t leftovers; someone had been cooking the meal since early this morning.
“Thank you so much,” she said when the plate was clean. “That was the best-tasting food that I ever ate.”
Lord Snow laughed in delight. “Starvation would make offal palatable.”
“That was no offal,” she said. A small burped erupted from her throat. She blushed bright red at her indiscretion. “Excuse me.”
Lord Snow grinned. “You are excused. But it’s my honor to thank you for the entertainment last night. It was splendid. My friends will remember it for a long, long time.”
“I’m happy to hear you say that. But they voted against me. They voted that it had not been their most pleasurable entertainment.”
“You know damn well that was a bullshit vote.”
She knew no such thing. She hadn’t attended enough entertainments to judge them objectively.
“In that gold outfit, you were the sexiest thing that most of them had ever seen. They were frustrated as hell because they weren’t allowed to rip your clothes off and hump you like a bitch in heat. But even that wouldn’t have made them vote against you if that damned Lawrence hadn’t stirred them up. He made them feel like they had to prove that you weren’t in charge. It was a bullshit vote. Believe me, they loved your entertainment. I loved your entertainment. I can hardly wait to see what you come up with next time. Which will be on Saturday.”
Irene was barely listening. He lost her attention when he made her think about having her clothes ripped off and getting humped like a bitch in heat. God, she wanted that so badly she could barely stand it. She’d have gladly forgone the picnic basket if Lord Snow had been wiling to fuck her long and hard instead of feeding her.
She had to drag her attention back to the topic at hand. “Saturday?”
“Right. Saturday. I’m hosting a dinner for twenty-one couples. I’ll ask Lady Snow to borrow a couple more slaves if you think they are necessary to entertain that many.
It’s a special dinner so I’d like everything to go well.”
“We have five slaves, not counting me, so that would be less than one slave for every four gentlemen. I think we will need at least three more. I like to have at least one slave per three gentlemen.”
“I have six slaves, not counting you. I want Nickel included in the entertainments. My kennel isn’t large enough to justify a whiphand who isn’t also available to service my guests.”
“She isn’t going to like that, much.”
“Do I care?”
“Of course not. I’ll find a place for her.”
“I’ll inform her myself. Don’t worry. She’ll know that it’s not on your initiative that she’ll be entertaining my guests. It’ll be on my direct instruction.”
“Thank you. She’ll be more eager to participate if she understands that.” Irene knew that Nickel was going to blame her regardless, and would look for some way to get revenge. She would have to deal with that sooner or later.
Lord Snow looked at her for a time. “I’m not sure why your entertainment worked so well. It did. No question that it did. I’ve never seen guests look so content at the end of an evening. But I’m not sure that I understand why starving the slaves made a difference. Slaves are always eager to please and there are only so many ways to have sex with one. A gentleman can get a blowjob any time he wants. Any gentleman can order a slave to get on her hands and knees while he fucks her. No slave would dare show anything less than complete enthusiasm. Two days of food deprivation made it special in some way that I can’t pin down. How did you know that?”
“I didn’t know for sure that it would. I was scared stiff that the entertainment would fall flat. That’s why I was willing to endure the punishment of further starvation if it didn’t work. So that you would know that I tried my best and was willing to put myself on the line.”
“I knew that you would try your best anyway. And it didn’t fall flat. But you must have had some inkling, some instinct, that starvation would make the slaves act in some special way.”
“I had hopes. Slaves are almost always working to avoid punishment. I wanted to change that. When they were starving, the food was a reward. Slaves don’t get many rewards and it showed. There’s a big difference between falling to your knees in front of a man because you’re afraid that he’ll beat you and sucking up to him because you’re hoping for a treat.
“The slaves couldn’t help but express that difference in all kinds of subtle ways, from fawning at a man’s feet to kissing his fingers. They were more willing to be forward. To beg for favors. The gentlemen liked it because it’s something that they don’t normally see. They don’t often get their fingers kissed and they certainly don’t get much sincere gratitude from slaves.
“I guess I’d say that I tried to change the slaves from property to pets. And a gentleman has to love a slobbering pet more than he loves a piece of available meat.” She smiled. “The slaves were happy to demean themselves more than they ever had before. It was fun for me to see, too.”
Lord Snow screwed his mouth into a wry smile. “Maybe the slaves felt that the guests were rewarding them, but they must have felt that you were punishing them by depriving them of food for two days. Especially when they hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Irene shrugged. “They don’t like me much right now. That’s for sure. They’re going to be disappointed that you fed me. They were really looking forward to seeing me suffer a more wretched hunger than I’d made them endure.”
“Don’t tell them that I fed you. Let them think that you’re still suffering.”
“I won’t tell them, but they’re going to figure it out pretty quick. They’re not stupid. They’re going to notice that I smell of food and that I’m not looking quite so keenly at any crumbs left on the table after dinner.”
“It’s hell to be in charge,” Lord Snow said.
“I’ll live with it.” Irene smiled.
“Okay. Breakfast is over. Send Nickel in.”
Half an hour later, when Irene was sitting at the table with the other slaves, listening to Nickel service Lord Snow, she was thinking desperately about ways to entertain twenty-one gentlemen, less than a week from now.
If Lord Snow borrowed three, then she’d have nine slaves to work with. She should be able to come up with something interesting.
The other slaves at the table had nothing to say to her. They only glared at her while they listened to Lord Snow use and abuse Nickel in the adjoining room.
Irene wondered how she was going to work the whiphand into the entertainment without getting her own cunt tenderized on some trumped-up accusation.
* * *
On Tuesday morning, Irene found Tamarind alone in the kitchen.
“Not up at the manor?”
“No, ma’am. Lord and Lady Snow are hosting a dinner tonight, so there’s not much for the slaves to do. The others offered to work in the garden. They like getting some air.”
Since her promotion to director of entertainments, the other slaves had started calling her ma’am. Irene knew that they meant it ironically, even disrespectfully, but she thought it best not to make a point of it.
“How did you become a slave?” Irene was curious about the history of all the other slaves in the kennel.
“The usual way,” Tamarind said. “I was adjudicated.” Punished by the court when she was convicted of a crime.
“What did you do wrong?”
“I got caught.”
Irene was annoyed by her evasiveness. “What were you doing when you got caught?”
“Running. Running as fast and as far as I could.”
“Running from what?”
“The police, of course.”
Irene sighed. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”
“Okay.”
There was a strained silence for a minute.
“I heard that you’re going to organize another entertainment on Saturday,” Tamarind said.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to starve us again?”
“No. We already did that. Every entertainment has to be different. We won’t be starving again.” Irene was careful to use the inclusive pronoun. She wanted the slaves to remember that she had starved just as much as any of them. In fact, a little more. She didn’t get any canapés during the entertainment.
“What are you going to do to us this time?”
“I don’t know, yet. I still have to think of something good.”
She smiled at Tamarind but didn’t get a smile in return.
“You got any ideas?” Irene asked after a moment.
“No. You’re the director of entertainment.”
“So I better think of something good before Saturday, or I’ll be in the soup. We’re going to borrow a few more slaves because there’ll be twenty-one guests and I like to keep the ratio under three-to-one. I don’t like to see the gentlemen waiting. If they get cranky, it’ll be bad for all of us.”
Tamarind nodded at that. She’d seen cranky gentlemen before and she didn’t like it.
There were a couple minutes of silence while Irene thought about her problem. Designing a run-of-the-mill entertainment – a buffet of slaves – would be easy, but she’d already set a high bar and was going to have to clear it every time or Lord Snow would be disappointed.
“I stole a car,” Tamarind said.
Irene looked up at her in surprise.
“That’s why I was adjudicated into slavery. I stole a car.”
Irene frowned. “Was that your first offense?”
“Yes.”
“Someone told me that people don’t get adjudicated on their first offense. That it wasn’t until their third conviction that they were considered incorrigible.” That made sense to Irene. Slavery was a severe punishment. It not only deprived a person of their freedom, but it condemned them to an early death.
“It depends on the crime,” Tamarind said. “If it’s serious enough
, a person is adjudicated on her first offense.”
“You didn’t injure anyone, did you? When you stole the car?”
“No. I didn’t have to do anything violent. The doors were unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. I hopped in and started driving. I just wanted a little fun. I took a drive up along the beach. Waved at my friends. Had a good time. Until the cops started chasing me. Then I drove down the freeway. I got as far as Seagate before I ran out of gas.”
“So running from the police was why you were adjudicated?”
“No. I was adjudicated because it was an earl’s car. A crime against an aristocrat merits adjudication even if it’s a first offense. I should have known. A commoner would never leave his keys in the ignition. Aristocrats figure that no one would dare steal their cars so they’re careless about things like that. I wasn’t thinking. I should have known. It’s my own fault that I got adjudicated.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. The judge could have shown leniency. Adjudication is automatic for an adult who commits a crime against an aristocrat but judges have discretion about adjudication for minors. Judge McCray used his discretion to make me a slave. He said that he wanted to send a message so he put me on the block.” She smiled. “I got the message. If the aristocrat had been only a knight, the judge would have let me go. But he was an earl. Worse, he took the trouble to come and watch the trial. That’s who the message was for. The judge was telling the earl that he was so important that I had to pay for inconveniencing him by being enslaved even though I was only fifteen.”
“That’s terrible.”
She shrugged. “I thought so. But it doesn’t matter what a slave thinks, so I stopped worrying about it a long time ago.”
“So you’ve been a slave since you were fifteen?”
“For almost half my life. I’m twenty-nine now. I know that because I was sold three months ago. Slaves don’t get birthday parties, but they get to hear how old they are every time they’re put on the block. I’ve heard my age announced twenty-three times since I was first sold.”
It was a grim way to count the years toward the day when she would be considered too old to be a pleasure slave and be sent to a labor auction.
A Gentlemen's Agreement (Slave of the Aristocracy) Page 6
