On the Auction Block (7 page)

Normally, the ladies in the house avoided the
areas where the slaves worked during the times that they would be
working. Irene had almost never seen James’ slaves. And she
certainly had never seen them nude.

What kind of woman would visit her husband’s
kennels? No lady. Well, maybe Lady Fern, the sadistic lesbian who
was as likely to use her husband’s slaves as he was. But Fern was
no lady, despite her title.

Maybe old Dodge was punishing his wife for
something and that was why he had ordered her to bring food to the
slave.

If so, it was certainly a cruel and unusual
punishment. For both Mrs. Dodge and her.

When she was gnawing the meat off the
hambone, she suspected that she was also eating Mrs. Dodge’s
saliva. She smelled it carefully, but couldn’t detect the odor of
urine of feces.

At least Mrs. Dodge was that much of a
lady.

Some hours later, Mrs. Dodge returned. This
time she was carrying a green print dress and flat shoes. She
hurled those at Flame – the dress fluttered ineffectively through
the air but the shoes struck her solidly in the chest – and said,
“Report to the back door of the house in five minutes for your
afternoon duties.”

The dress was a standard cotton housedress
that slaves were given when they were required to come to the
house. The shoes were the usual low flats.

There was no underwear.

As a lady, Irene had always seen the slave’s
housedress as a demeaning garment that covered the slave’s body
with a shapeless, poorly-tailored sack that made the slave almost
sexless.

Now, as a slave, feeling the housedress from
the inside, Flame saw it entirely differently, though no less
demeaning. It was nothing but a curtain to hide rampant sexuality
from public view. And, like a curtain, it could be raised in a
flash to bare the naked flesh underneath for quick and convenient
use.

She had never realized that if James had
cornered one of his slaves in the laundry or pantry, he could have
raised her skirt, fucked her, and dropped it back over her in less
time than it would have taken Irene to unlace the bodice on her
dress.

She wondered if James had ever done that.

She wondered if Dodge were going to do that
to her this evening.

The life of a slave was far less predictable
than the life of a lady. That’s what she had wanted and that’s what
she was getting. Unpredictability by the shovelful. Which included
getting a rock-hard cock shoved into her hot, steamy cunt at any
time without warning.

The standard layout for houses with kennels
was for slaves to move between them by one of two paths. For daily
activities, the slave exited the kennel by a door to the outside
and entered the house through an exterior door – in this house, a
door directly into the kitchen as opposed to James’ manor, which
had a kitchen courtyard with doors to both the kitchen and the
service hallway.

For special events – slaves providing
entertainment in the drawing room after dinner, for example – they
used a covered corridor between the kennel’s pleasure room and the
drawing room or parlor in the house.

In James’ manor, that corridor had been
sunken below ground level; in the Dodge house, it was above ground
and had the appearance of a high stone garden wall.

Because Mrs. Dodge had requested Flame’s
presence for “legitimate” service, Flame was expected to go outside
and enter directly into the kitchen.

There were no windows in the kennel. When she
opened the door to the outside, she was surprised to find that it
was raining – not a drizzle, but a downpour.

She sprinted from the kennel to the house as
fast as she could but she couldn’t avoid getting wet. When she
entered the kitchen, the light cotton was clinging to her legs,
breasts, and buttocks.

Mrs. Dodge looked at her in disgust but
didn’t deign to comment.

“You’ll butterfly a chicken for dinner. You
will serve it with asparagus with orange sauce, roasted new
potatoes, and a tomato-sweet pepper-onion salad. We’ll have crème
caramel for desert. We eat at six.”

Flame stared at Mrs. Dodge in horror.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Get that
chicken marinating.”

Flame shook her head slowly.

“Are you refusing to work?” Mrs. Dodge’s
voice was low and menacing.

The punishment for refusing to work could be
as severe as the owner wished. Disfigurement, mutilation, or even
death was not unheard of.

Flame fell to her knees in terror. “Please. I
want to do it but I can’t.”

Mrs. Dodge kicked her, swift and sharp, in
the ribs. It hurt. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I can’t cook. I don’t know how to cook. I’ve
never cooked a meal in my life.”

Mrs. Dodge kicked her in the ribs again.
“Useless cunt.”

Actually, Flame’s cunt was the one part that
Mr. Dodge found most useful.

“What can you do?”

“Embroider. Tat. I can paint in watercolors
and oils. I play the flute and clavier. Some of my lyric poetry is
pretty good.”

“Useless cunt.” Mrs. Dodge kicked her a third
time.

“Please. I want to learn to cook. Please.
Show me how so I’ll be able to do it the next time.”

“You don’t know how badly I want to cut your
tits off and make you fry them in butter for your own dinner.”

Flame knew. She had wanted to do horrible
things to James’ slaves, too. But Mrs. Dodge wouldn’t do it. She
wouldn’t destroy property that was worth a hundred-thousand plaqs.
Or so Flame hoped.

“However much Frank paid for you, it was way
too much, I’m sure of that.” Mrs. Dodge kicked her again.

Flame’s ribs were suffering acute pain. If
Mrs. Dodge kicked much harder, she might break them. It could
happen. Flame realized that Mrs. Dodge had no idea that she was
kicking a hundred-thousand plaq slave around her kitchen. She
probably thought that her husband had paid ten or fifteen thousand
for her.

Flame should have guessed that Mrs. Dodge
would be ignorant of her value. James had never told her how much
he paid for his slaves, either. Irene never knew that a slave could
cost more than a hundred thousand. If the cost of Feather were any
indication, James might have paid nearly half a million for his
stable.

Flame’s mind boggled at the thought.

Her more immediate concern was that Mrs.
Dodge might kill her if she thought that she wasn’t worth very
much.

“Please let me learn to cook. Please. I’m
begging you.” She was begging for her life. Literally.

“I’m not teaching you to cook. You need
something to do? You get a bucket and a scrub brush from the
laundry and you scrub this floor. You start scrubbing in here and
you keep scrubbing until every inch of tile in this whole house is
clean enough to eat off. And it better be because you’re going to
be eating off it tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” The servile
gratitude in Flame’s voice was sincere.

Flame didn’t rise to her feet, but scrambled
across the floor to get out of the kitchen as quickly as she
could.

Mrs. Dodge hurried her on her way with a
parting kick to her butt. She connected hard. It hurt because Flame
was still bruised from Mr. Dodge’s paddling last night. Flame
squealed in pain.

She found the bucket and filled it with hot
water in the set tub.

When she returned to the kitchen she asked,
“Do I just use water, or should I put some soap or something in
it?”

“Stupid, useless cunt. Put in a cup of
vinegar.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Flame returned to the laundry
room and found a bottle of vinegar under the sink. She didn’t have
a cup measure, so she poured a generous amount into the bucket.

The tiles were hard on her knees but she
ignored that and scrubbed with vigor. While she was scrubbing, she
kept an eye on Mrs. Dodge’s boot.

Recipes. Of course. Mrs. Dodge had laid out
recipes on the counter and consulted them as she cooked. If Flame
had realized that, she would have tried to follow them rather than
admitting to Mrs. Dodge that she was helpless in the kitchen.

She saw Mrs. Dodge add spices to oil in a
bowl and then put the chicken into it and leave it there. That must
be the
marinating
that she had mentioned.

Next, she chopped vegetables. Two tomatoes, a
long red pepper, and half an onion went into a bowl. Mrs. Dodge
poured oil and vinegar into another, smaller bowl and whisked in
various herbs and spices. When it was well mixed, she poured it
over the vegetables.

Then she left the room.

It was easier for Flame to clean the floor
when she didn’t have to dodge around Mrs. Dodge’s kicks.

Her knees and back were aching by the time
she finished the kitchen floor but she couldn’t stop. She still had
the service hallway, laundry, and bathrooms to clean. The remaining
rooms had rugs over wood flooring. She was sure that she’d be
cleaning those, too, before long. But not with a scrub brush and
vinegar water. Most likely with a vacuum cleaner.

In James’ manor, they had machines to clean
floors and chop vegetables. She had assumed that everyone had the
same and was surprised that the Dodges scrubbed their floors on
their hands and knees with a brush. Surely they weren’t that
poor.

When she opened a closet in the service
hallway to clean the tile inside, she found the floor-cleaning
machine. Mrs. Dodge didn’t scrub her floors on their hands and
knees. Only Flame deserved that special treat.

When Mr. Dodge came home and found Flame
scrubbing the bathroom floor, he said nothing about it. Housework
was his wife’s business.

But he did reach down and fondle Flame’s cunt
for a minute while she continued to scrub. That was his
business.

When he went to the kitchen to greet his
wife, Flame had to go back down the hallway and clean up his dirty
boot prints.

She could hear the Dodges speaking in the
kitchen but their voices were too low for her to make out the
words.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Dodge told her to
get cleaned up and serve them in the dining room.

Flame’s back and knees were stiff but she
forced herself to get moving as quickly as she could. She had never
served dinner before but she knew exactly how it was done because
she had been served her whole life.

It took her a few minutes to find a
tablecloth, dishes, and cutlery because she didn’t want to bother
the Dodges with her incompetence any more than absolutely
necessary. She set the dining room table for two and then announced
dinner.

She served the wine and then returned to the
kitchen.

She was hungry – lunch had been her only meal
in more than twenty-four hours – and working with the food made
her mouth water. But she dared not sample even a bite. There could
be hidden cameras and the punishment for stealing food would be
severe.

She plated two salads as neatly as her own
staff would have done and carried them to the dining room. Serving
from the left was automatic.

While the Dodges were eating their salad, she
carved the chicken and put the potatoes and asparagus in serving
dishes. As soon as the Dodges had finished their salad, she cleared
the salad plates from the right and then served each of the main
dishes in the proper order.

She stood in attendance until the dinner was
done. Watching the Dodges eat was a torture in itself. When they
were finished, she cleared the dinner service and returned to the
kitchen to fetch the crème caramel. She found them in the
refrigerator. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to serve them in
the ramekins in which they’d been baked.

Turning them upside down on a dessert plate
accomplished nothing. The crème caramel remained stubbornly in the
ramekins. Casting about in desperation, she saw the recipes stacked
on the counter. The crème caramel recipe was on the bottom. It said
to loosen the custard from the side of the ramekin by running a
knife around the edge.

Flame cursed herself for not thinking of the
obvious.

Again, she stood in attendance while the
Dodges ate. When she was clearing the dessert plates, she asked,
“Would sir and madam like coffee, tea, or an aperitif?”

Both wanted coffee. Decaf.

Flame lowered her eyes. “I beg your
indulgence, ma’am, but if you would be so kind as to show me how to
make coffee this once, I promise that I’ll never have to ask
again.”

Mrs. Dodge glared at her husband. He grinned
and shrugged. “Just this once, dear, if you would be so kind.”

She rose and marched into the kitchen.

Flame scurried to keep up.

While she was filling the pot with water,
Mrs. Dodge said, “I should scourge every inch of skin from your
back for this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Flame said. “I deserve no less
and will endure any punishment that you wish to inflict upon
me.”

“You certainly will.”

Flame was afraid of what Mrs. Dodge would do
to her, but forced a brave face.

When the coffee was ready, Mrs. Dodge said,
“Serve us,” and returned to the dining room.

Flame served the coffee with cream and sugar
on a silver tray that she found in a cupboard.

Mr. Dodge instructed Flame to stand before
him while he sipped his coffee. “Tell us how this dinner differed
from the way dinner is prepared and served in a lord’s home.”

“Obviously, the lord’s wife would not have to
cook the meal,” Flame said. “That was my failing. I will learn to
cook as quickly as I can and Mrs. Dodge will not have to cook
again. Your food was not served as hot as it should have been.
Again that was because Mrs. Dodge had to do the cooking. With
experience, I will be able to time the dishes so that they finish
cooking just before they are served and you will have more
enjoyable meals.”

“Anything else.”