Lost Heritage

Sorry about how late this chapter is in coming. Even authors need to go to school and work to afford the newest fashions, the imagination only takes you so far. How you like this chapter, and thanks for the positive reveiws.

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I didn’t even remember going to bed, but I must have at some point for I awoke under the red velvet covers to sunlight streaming through cracks in curtains. Shielding my eyes with my hand I stood up and opening the curtains all the way to light the room. It seemed larger than it had the day before. Other than the bed there was a large mahogany wardrobe and matching vanity as well as a desk, bookshelf, and full-length mirror. While more than slightly gothic, this room was definitely the finest I’d ever been in, finer than even Philippe’s. Come to think of it, everything I’d seen of this house was finer than Philippe’s. To think I had thought that there was nowhere grander.
Then I looked down at my old and disheveled attire. I seemed so out of place in this palace of luxury, surely there was something I could do to become more presentable. Pulling open the heavy wardrobe doors, I was ecstatic to find an assortment of outfits suitable for the establishment I was now to call home. Reaching in, I ran my hand over the material of the clothes, running the silk and linen through my fingers, sliding them over the soft suede of the shoes.
I hurriedly dressed myself in a high-collared dress of blue cotton that was closed at the waist by a plain black satin corset. I yanked my hair back into a messy bun and secured it with a few hairpins I found in the vanity. Posing and turning in front of the mirror I declared myself a true beauty, like the ones I’d seen in paintings. But I was forced to pause in my narcissism to think. ‘Since when have I cared so much about my appearance? I have always wanted to appear presentable, but never to this extreme.’

Before I could continue my line of pondering, a woman walked through my door. I estimated her to be in her late 40s, judging by the slight grey appearing in her hair. This woman gave the appearance of respectability and hardness in everything from her crisp grey dress to her tightly pulled back hair to her hands clasped neatly in front of her. She turned her stern steel grey eyes toward me and said, “You must be the new girl, Celeste.”
“I respond to that name,” I cautiously replied, still unsure of her intentions.
“I am Marie, the keeper of the servants…and slaves,” she stated, adding the last part with a dirty look aimed to belittle me. “I am to show you around and give you a list of your chores in the household, as well as teach you how to behave around the lord’s guests. You may address me as Madam Marie, or simply Madam. Now follow me, child.”
With this brief monologue she turned on her heel and walked out the door. After a moment I followed her. I was curious about the rest of house and staff, and after all, what choice did I really have? I could stomp my foot and say no, but I would eventually be forced to do so no matter what.

Madam led me down a long hallway filled with doors identical to my own. I couldn’t help but wonder how I was to find mine when the time came. When we came to the end of the hall we turned right and immediately came upon a room full of trunks. Each had a number on it. She stopped in front of the one with the number 258 scratched upon the top of it.
“This is yours,” She said. “It holds the things you will need when you are working, such as your uniform.”
“My uniform?”
“Of course, you did not expect to work in that did you?”
‘Yes,’ my mind responded.
“Put it on girl, we don’t have all day.”
I opened the trunk to find a white handkerchief surrounding a folded piece of red paper. Unfolding it, I saw scrawled in black ink, “My dearest slave- Welcome to my household. Try not to get into too much trouble on your first day, though I must admit that I look forward to punishing you and silencing that tongue of yours. –Master”. ‘How delightful’ I sarcastically thought. ‘I wonder if he does this for all his servants, or if I’m the lucky one?’ But then my thoughts began to wander to how his body had made mine feel the night before. The heat that his touch had caused, and the sensations, god the sensations.
Looking on past the note, I saw the uniform. The first thing that came to mind was, ‘why is everything here so bloody gothic?’ The uniform consisted of a high-necked, long-sleeved short red dress, black stocking and heels, and a black satin apron and gloves. Donning the outfit as quickly as possible, I noticed that clothes were actually quite comfortable, more so than my early choice in attire.
“Ready?” required Madam impatiently. “Then let’s continue.”

I was to be one of the visible household slaves. Many of them were unseen, but the ones who were seen were few. I was told it was one of the easier and pleasanter jobs of the house. Yet it required a lot of training, so I spent the rest of the day being told when to curtsy, how to serve and mix drinks, how to set a table properly, and how to clean and prepare a bedroom. Prepare a bedroom, but for what, I was never told, but I got plenty of ideas on my own after seeing the slaves who emerged from those rooms.

As the sun began to set, my work was interrupted by the loud growl emanating from my stomach, so I back-tracked my steps to see if I could find a dining hall of some sort. It wasn’t long before my nose led me to the smell of food and a room filled with people dressed in a uniform similar to mine sitting at a table. Taking an empty seat, I gladly helped myself to one of the deliciously golden rolls and a bowl of steaming stew. Before I could take a bite however, a haughty voice behind me interrupted my meal.
“Get out of my seat, dog!”
I turned around to see someone who could only be described as a dark goddess. She had the perfect figure shrouded in ebony silk, hair blacker than anything I’d ever seen, but her eyes were the blue of ice, so light they were almost white, surrounded by kohl, making them even lighter, and her lips were plump and rounded, standing out from her pale face with a coating of red paint. I was snapped out of my admiring trance by her voice once again cutting through my thoughts.
“Did you not hear me the first time? I said GET OUT OF MY SEAT!”
Her pale perfectly manicured hand grabbed onto my shoulder and flung me out of the chair with amazing power for a woman not much taller than I. As my body collided with the floor and pain tingled through my being, the anger hit. ‘Who is she to treat me so? How dare she injure me!’ I stood up and whipped around, my hair caressing my face and sticking slightly to my lips, to face my new enemy.
“I am not a dog, nor am I anything else to be ordered around by the likes of you!” I snapped, staring into those pale blue eyes of hers to prove I wasn’t afraid.
The not entirely unexpected sting sprung from my left cheek, which I knew would leave a mark. Instinct and pride told me to deal more damage then she had blessed my face with. So my hand moved from its previous place at my right side and struck her across the face, dragging my nails across her perfect porcelain cheek. The look of utter shock on her face was worth the beating I knew I was going to receive, either by her hand or my lord’s, I had not expected one from both.
She launched herself at me like a large black cat, her nails tearing into my arms as I tried in desperation to keep her from my face. I could not get her body off mine and desperation set in as I realized she was by far my better when it was to physical battles. But as she was striking me I felt overcome with an unusual feeling of the need to retaliate physically rather than verbally. More specifically, I felt the need to bite her. To silence her blows and nonverbal screeching by having her crimson blood flow across my lips. To see her lying on the floor with blood flowing from her into a dark reflective pool of death. So I did. I felt my teeth puncture her soft, creamy skin and the warm liquid encased below ooze forth onto my lips and tongue. It’s salty flavor titillating my taste-buds and arousing all my senses, yet again giving them warm sensation I had experienced only the night before when my lord touched me. My body sunk into a trance of pleasure as I felt her weaken beneath me.

I was shocked back into reality by a set of strong guards pulling me off the woman’s body. I was still slightly doped from the sensations I had been experiencing prior, but I could understand some of the chaotic shouting.
“She BIT her!”
“Take her to the medical rooms!”
“Notify his lordship immediately!”
“Get that other one out of here!”
I could feel myself being dragged urgently and unceremoniously through the house, back to my fine gothic room. As we approached my well decorated and luxurious cage, the wooziness began to wear off. ‘Wait, did I just bite that woman?’ my shocked mind asked. ‘How could I have bitten her? What’s wrong with me?’
I was thrown into my room and the mahogany door was slammed behind me, only to me reopened almost instantaneously by an irate looking Ryan. His anger didn’t mar his handsome features as one would have thought; it only made his look darker and filled with danger. His eyes bored down without blinking into mine, as I sat on the floor, like a startled doe, afraid to move for fear of activating his rage. We stayed in this stalemate for what seemed like forever, unblinking, unmoving, voiceless. He was the first to break the silence, and when he did it was calm and collected, which scared me the more than anything I had ever experienced before.
“I hear you got into a fight with Sylvie in the mess hall. May I ask what this was over? On second thought I have no wish to know which petty thing sparked your temper this time,” he said, he eyes never leaving mine. “This type of thing may have been common in the slave house, but you need to understand that this kind of behavior is unacceptable in my household. I run a civilized home where servants are expected to behave like civilized beings, and if they can’t then they are punished.” At this he finally broke his pose to lean forward enough to pull me from the floor, my back to his chest, his arm around my waist, and whisper harshly into my ear, “I told you I would enjoy punishing you,” then fling me into the well wrought bedpost and lash my wrists onto it.
He ripped open the back of my dress and tore it off me. My mind was racing with what he was going to do to me as I futilely struggled against the binding on my wrists. I heard the door open and close again before the cracking sound of a whip cut through the air and was followed by the appropriate sensation on my lower back. Then another and another and another in quick rhythmic succession like a dancer’s steps. The fifth blow brought with it the trickle of blood from my right shoulder down over my shoulder blade and my spine to slow to a tantalizing pace at the small of my back. All of my nerves were on end and all the sensations in my body where coming from the irritable yet pleasurable drop of blood. My lord must have noticed it as well for he had stopped his lashings. ‘Maybe he doesn’t like to draw blood,’ I thought, ‘Maybe he is adverse to the sight of it’
But I was wrong, for the sensation on the drop of blood was replaced by a warm, firm, moist presence tracing the trail of the blood slowly up my back. I released a moan at the more than slightly pleasurable sensation before I could stop myself and the pleasure from pooling between my thighs. This earned a chuckle from the owner of the presence as he completed the trail and whispered in a sinister way, which managed to cause me to yearn for his touch more as opposed to wanting it stopped, “I told you I’d enjoy punishing you.”
A knock on the door interrupted him from saying more and he strode over to answer it with a frustrated groan, but not before quickly licking behind me ear, causing me to try to think of the least sexy things I could think of. While I was trying to imagine Philippe naked to calm the heat and throbbing between my legs, I could hear Ryan having an intense conversation with someone. Suddenly he shouted, “She did WHAT?” Then strode over and forced my mouth open and inspected my teeth. His handsome features were set in a mask of concern and his deep blue eyes were full of unreadable emotions. He tossed my head aside when he was done with his inspection and turned to the other man and simply said “Get her isolated, now” before leaving me to be untied by the guards outside and dragged out to an unknown destination.