"My next entertainment will be in a little over two weeks. What day is today?"

"Wednesday. July fifteenth."

It took Irene a moment to do the calculation. "So two Sat.u.r.days after next should be the second of August, right?"

"I think so."

"I'll design an entertainment that could accommodate a lady or two. If you get back to me at the end of the month, say on the thirty-first, I'll confirm it and make final arrangements."

"I will."

"Make sure that the ladies understand about stretching their rear orifices. The gentlemen won't mind tearing them open sometimes new slaves don't know to prepare themselves but the ladies really won't want to suffer that injury. If nothing else, it would be pretty hard for them to explain why they need a surgeon to repair their a.n.u.s." She smiled. "A lady's husband might not be satisfied with a story that is even more outlandish than the truth."

"Don't worry," Linda said. "Slaves don't get maimed at entertainments so the ladies will make sure that they aren't either."

Linda returned to her car and her driver drove away.

A minute later, Irene's driver returned to take her back to Lord Snow's kennel.

Designing the next entertainment had just become a great deal more challenging. There would be three days of starvation if she failed to please. But that would be pale in comparison to what would be done to her if her entertainment went badly for the ladies.

Execution by crucifixion was a real possibility.

Most annoying, she now had a more important consideration than making Nickel the center of attention. She would have to wait to balance the scales of justice by giving the whiphand the fate that she deserved.

After Irene finished giving Nickel her daily o.r.g.a.s.m with her talented mouth, she returned to the kitchen and found Peach sipping a cup of tea.

When she sat at the table, Peach raised an eyebrow at her.

"Mind if I join you?"

"It's a free world."

Irene thought it was funny that Peach, of all people, would call the world free. "I was told that you were born into slavery."

"That's what they say. Personally, I don't remember being born. That was a long time ago."

"I'd like to know what it was like to grow up as a slave."

"I'd like to know what it was like to grow up as a lady, but I'm never going to have a chance to find out."

Irene thought about that for a minute. "It was good. I was happier growing up than I was after I was married. There was a lot to do when I was young but married life was the same boring stuff every day."

"So you sold yourself into slavery because you thought that would be more exciting?"

"It seemed so at the time." Irene looked around the kitchen. "Of course, I thought that men would be using my s.e.x a lot. And I thought that I'd get to serve in the manor and be sent on errands. It's not so nice being stuck in a kennel all the time and being forced into celibacy. This wasn't supposed to be the deal."

"The deal is that an owner does whatever he wants with his property. Even a lady had to know that much. Surely you didn't think that you were going to get to tell your owners what they could and couldn't do with you."

"No. But I didn't think that they'd pay a fortune for a slave and then not use her."

"Lord Snow uses you to organize his entertainments. He seems to think that he's getting his money's worth out of you."

"If he doesn't, then I'm going to starve in my cell for three days. That would be a misery."

"If you do f.u.c.k up and get fasted, I hope they bring you out during meals and make you watch the rest of us eat."

Irene thought that was an unnecessary sentiment. "If the entertainment failed because you didn't follow instructions, you'll be eating no dinners for me to watch because we'll be fasting together."

Peach stared hard at Irene. "You wouldn't dare make us fast, too."

"I'll be absolutely fair. If it's my fault, I'll suck it up and fast alone. But any slave who f.u.c.ks up and ruins my entertainment will be fasting along with me."

Peach smiled. "Like Nickel did."

"Nickel got what Nickel earned. No more and no less."

"Oh, I think she earned quite a bit more than a three-day fast. If I had my way, I'd lock her in there until she ate her own hands off. Then she'd never tenderize another c.u.n.t."

Irene shrugged.

"You, though? You're in there every day, licking her c.u.n.t like a b.i.t.c.h in heat, giving her the best time of her life."

"I do what I'm ordered. Slaves don't get to choose their service. I don't like it, but I signed up for slavery so I do the job."

Peach bristled. "Don't you lecture me about what a slave does, Lady Irene. I've lived through more slavery than you'll ever know."

"So tell me."

"Tell you what? What it was like to go to a labor auction when I was nine years old and see my worn-out, broken-down mother get bought by a farmer? See her get taken away to pick lettuce for sixteen hours a day until she died of exhaustion? To see her so beaten down that she didn't even look at me as they led her off? Hear about my owner telling me that he took me along to make sure that I understood what happened to slaves who weren't useful any more. It was a lesson well-learned. I've made sure that I was useful ever since.

"Or do you want to know what it was like to watch my mother give birth to a baby boy when I was five and hear the owner tell her to get rid of it. She was ordered to kill her own baby because he didn't feel like doing it himself. It was an unpleasant task and slaves are expected to take care of unpleasant tasks. I learned that lesson pretty well, too. Especially when it was repeated a year later when my mother was unlucky enough to have another boy. It's just business. A boy isn't worth the money it would cost to raise it for the labor market. Slaves are property so their issue is property. That's the law. You must know about the law. It's fine, n.o.ble people like you who run the government and make the laws." Her voice dripped with bitter sarcasm.

"I didn't know about those laws," Irene said. "Ladies are never told about the laws that govern slavery. I don't know if my husband or his friends are experts about all of it, either."

"Ignorance is bliss. Sorry that I'm making you feel a little less blissful now."

"I'm feeling a little less ignorant now. What else don't I know about slavery?"

"How in h.e.l.l would I know?"

"How old were you when you were first sold?"

"Fifteen. A slave can't be sold until she's fifteen. The law is a little squeamish about making children service gentlemen. It's not squeamish about much, but it's squeamish about that. It's not because of the slaves. It's because it would make the gentlemen look bad."

"So the first man who bought you took your virginity?"

Peach looked shocked and angry. "h.e.l.l no. Don't you know anything? It's illegal to sell a virgin, even in a private sale. It would be barbaric to auction off someone's virginity. When I was taken to the auction house, they tattooed me, vaccinated me, and deflowered me. One stop service, all needs satisfied. The doctor's needs, especially. I think he got into the auction business because he really liked the deflowering part of his job."

"So when you were sold... "

"I wasn't a virgin. By about three hours."

"I never dreamed that people could be treated that way."

Peach snorted. "I'm not a person. I'm property. Always have been, always will be. I knew that as soon as I was old enough to know anything."

"I don't think that it's right. If a person gets pressed into slavery or adjudicated, that's fair enough. They did something wrong. Committed a crime or spent too much money. It's their own fault. But not children. Not babies. Babies should be born free."

Peach barked. "Yeah, how would that work? A piece of property giving birth to a person? The baby is a free soul but has to be suckled by a piece of property? And what happens when the five year old throws a tantrum and tells her mother to go jump of a cliff? Be a lot of dead breeders at the bottom of our cliffs because a slave has to obey a free person's orders."

Actually, that last wasn't true. A slave has to obey only her owner's orders. An owner orders his slaves to obey kennelmen, whiphands, and invited guests but he wouldn't order a mother to obey her child. But Irene understood Peach's point. It would be unnatural for a child to have a parent who was so much lower status than her. If an owner could give orders to the mother but not to the child, a number of unfortunate situations could arise.

Irene had heard enough for now. She could only take so much horror in one sitting.

But Peach wasn't done, yet.

"I can tell you one thing for sure. Getting sold at that first auction was a big step up. Being a pleasure slave was is far superior to being the child of a breeding slave. Lord Snow can take his strap to my a.s.s every morning before breakfast and I'll still be happier than I was when I was growing up."

Irene didn't ask why. She changed the subject. "Do you think that Nickel is satisfied with making me eat her out on my knees every day or do you think that she's going to try to do something else to me."

Peach glanced toward the door to make sure that Nickel was nowhere in sight, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "I think that you better never take your eyes off that b.i.t.c.h. She's never going to be satisfied as long as you're Lord Snow's favorite little suck-up. She was top b.i.t.c.h in the kennel before you arrived and now she's second tier. She's got to be careful. She can't take you on, face-to-face because she can't risk Lord Snow taking your side against her. But she'll stab you in the back, first chance she gets especially if she thinks that you won't find out that it was her. Or if you do anything, and I mean any little thing, that she can claim is disobedience of a direct order then she'll wale on your c.u.n.t so bad, you'll be waddling like a duck for a month."

"You think that she'd cause me permanent injury?"

"She'd sure as h.e.l.l like to, but she can't risk lowering your value at auction. If you can't f.u.c.k a man any more, you'll only be fit for labor. She might try to hurt you bad enough that you can still get f.u.c.ked but so that it'll hurt like h.e.l.l every time you do. I knew a slave once who had some kind of nerve damage down there and that was what it was like for her. Her owner got tired of hearing her scream her head off every time he f.u.c.ked her so he sold her to a brothel to get f.u.c.ked all day long, every day, for the rest of her life. She brought him a good price. There's certain kind of man who enjoys feeling a slave suffer at the end of his c.o.c.k and will pay a premium for that kind of fun."

Another horror story. Peach was fountain of joy.

"I hope I never get sold to a brothel," Irene said. "Even if the alternative is getting sold directly into labor."

"A brothel's not the worst. It's bad, but it's not as bad as the professor."

"Someone else told me about the professor. They said that he's a s.a.d.i.s.t who loves to torture slaves."

"That's about the size of it."

"Why does everyone around here keep talking about him?"

"Don't you know? He's one of Lord Snow's favorite guests. He gets invited over a couple of times a month."

Irene was shocked. "You mean that we've been entertaining him?"

"Not you. He doesn't come to the after-dinner entertainments. He comes over for private game nights. He loves games even more than Lord Snow. Cards. Dice. He's a fiend about backgammon. Of all those gentlemen who spend so much time in that billiard room, I think he's the only one who ever actually played billiards."

"So you've seen him?"

"Often. I've never known him to want to be serviced by a slave, but he loves looking at us so Lord Snow brings us in for decoration. It makes your skin crawl when he looks at you. You know that he's thinking about what you'd look like if you were suffering some terrible torture. Every time I'm in the room I'm terrified that he's going to offer to buy me from Lord Snow. I heard that he gets all of his slaves in private transactions. He never goes to the auction house."

Now Irene had something else to worry about. If the professor never took s.e.xual services from Lord Snow's slaves, then he could order her to attend their game nights without worrying about her celibacy.

"There's another thing about the professor."

"What's that?"

"He sells his torture devices. We're all scared that Lord Snow will see one that he likes and put it in the pleasure room." Peach frowned. "Lord Hoffman bought one. It was a crucifixion frame. A slave is suspended with her arms stretched wide and only her toes touching the floor. It's supposed to be one of the most painful punishments that a slave will ever feel."

Irene nodded. "I believe it is. I was lent to the Hoffman's for an entertainment once, and lost a game. The penalty was a half hour suspension in the frame. I still cringe every time I think about it. Every minute was a new kind of h.e.l.l."

Peach's eyes narrowed. "You aren't thinking about borrowing it for one of your entertainment nights, are you?"

"I hadn't thought about that, but I guess I could."

Peach didn't reply, just stared.

Irene laughed. "Don't worry. I couldn't bring myself to do that to you. Not when I know from experience how horrible it is."

Peach brightened. "You know, we wouldn't mind if you borrowed it as long as you fixed the game so that Nickel was the one who lost. The rest of us would like seeing that."

"No. I wouldn't crucify even Nickel."

"Why not? She wouldn't hesitate to crucify you if she could. And for a lot longer than half an hour."

Irene knew that was true. And that was a good reason for never bringing the crucifixion frame within a mile of Nickel.

She retired to her cell to plan the next entertainment. It had to be something different. But also, something that would allow a couple of ladies to be smuggled in but still remain anonymous.

She didn't want to do masks again. That was too obvious. She needed something subtle.

Maybe she could find a way to satisfy the gentlemen, the ladies, the slaves, and do something good for herself at the same time.

Slowly, bit-by-bit, an idea began to gel. If she could work out the bugs, it would be fantastic.

Fifteen men stared at Irene. She didn't know all of them, but the handful of faces that she recognized were lords or earls; and she was pretty certain that the man with the goatee was Marquette Kelly. She doubted that there was a lowly knight or baronet in the crowd.

She looked splendid in a black catsuit. It looked like patent leather but was an elastic fabric that she could wriggle into without needing zippers or other closures. It helped that, like the previous gold catsuit, it had a scoop neck and low cut back.

Where the gold lame outfit had camouflaged the gold collar that proclaimed her the slave with a lady's name, the black outfit highlighted it. The gentlemen looking at her couldn't tell if she was reveling in her humiliation or taking pride in rising above it.

The truth was that, because she couldn't remove it, she had decided that there was no sense in letting it restrict her. She was resolved to ignore it and wear what she wanted.

Once that decision was made, it was a simple matter for her to submit a requisition for a second catsuit for Lord Snow's approval.

And, judging by the way he was staring at her body now, he was silently approving her purchase all over again.