Captured by the Count: An Abduction and Breeding Fantasy (4 page)

“Six, Sir.  She was six and I was eleven when Missus Winthrop told m
e it was my job
to take care of her.”

“Has she known a man?”

Sissy could not believe how forward he was bein
g, but the look in his eyes – a cold and calculating one that chilled her to the bone, despite how well he had treated her -
let her know that he expected an answer – a correct answer, not necessarily even the right one.

“
Not
far as I know, Sir.  She’s never even had a beau; she keeps turning all them that ask
s
down.”

Everyone heaved a collective sigh as Victor turned back
to a still very groggy Cassie, saying, “Yes,
I’m not at all surprised.  S
he is not the type of woman that you can give that choice to.”
  If her answer had been in the affirmative, he would have been severely disappointed, but he would still consider her quite a prize.  The path she would take here at
the Infirmary would have been a different one, however.

Regardless, he would know whether Sissy spoke the truth in a matter of minutes.

Then, suddenly, he
left Cassie and
came to stand near Sissy, reaching into his pock
et and producing a
n official looking paper as well as a
wad of bills,
both of
which he proceeded to press into her hand.  “You have been an invaluable help, Miss . . .”

“Sissy.  Everyone calls me Sissy.”  She said it with her head down as she fiddled with the sk
irt of one of
the dresses he’d gotten for her, inst
antly submissive
.

Tipping her chin up until she
had to look
him in the eye, Victor asked, “And what name were you born with?”

“Cecelia, Sir.”

He instantly took her hand and kissed the back of it, as if she was some fine lady.  “It is an hono
r to meet you, Miss Cecelia.  Please forgive me if I don’t identify myself or anyone else to you, but
that would not be very wise of me, considering the circumstances.  But
I am forever indebted to you for your assistance in getting your mistress here.
”  He turned and reached down to relieve Cassie of her reticule.  “But she will no longer be requiring your services, and you are hereby freed.
  The paper
with the money that states as much, and anyone with any questions is advised to contact me.  Other than that,
I would be glad to
have the coach t
ake you anywhere you would like to go, although I
might suggest that that shouldn’t be anywhere in the southern United States.”

Suddenly faced with the reality
of being something
other than the
slave
she had always been
, Sissy looked at once amaze
d and terrified.  She clasped the small drawstring purse
as if it were a lifeline, but stood
frozen
in place, as if she was afraid her dream would crumble around her if she so much as moved.

Victor’s tone was as gentle as anyone had ever heard it.  “You can stay here as long as you like, Miss Cecelia, although I must warn you that
you will see things that will disturb you.”
  He gave her an assessing look, then said, “You don’t have to answer this, my dear, but have you somehow managed to remain as innocent as your mistress?”

Sissy’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, and she opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Her reaction to his question was all he needed to know. 
“I know what Cassie’s father does for a living.  I know
everything
about it.
  And before you go wondering, I am running roughly the same type of business here – only the women I breed
here
are white.
  But believe me, they are just as unhappy at finding themselves in this predicam
ent as you must have been being
forcibly subjugated by the Winthrop family.
”

She wasn’t all that sure about what
subjugated meant, but she
gleaned its meaning from the context.

It was too much to handle.  She could never have conceived of such a place
– or being handed her freedom so blithely -
moments ago.  She hadn’t
imagined ever being free, yet here she was, with someone
practically
l
aying the world at her fe
et, going well out of his way for her.  It was stunning.

As if to prove his point, he
turned away from her
had the matrons help Cassie to her feet and began to disrobe her as if Sissy wasn’t still there.

Still somewhat befuddled by whatever it was that they had been giving her, Cassie nonetheless knew that what was happ
ening to her could
not
happen.
  Her reputation would be in ruins.
  There was a strange man – well, one she barely knew, anyway – reaching for the buttons of her blouse while one of the other women in the room – who was not Sissy, who usually helped her undress at the end of an evening
–
began to unbutton the skirt of the rough clothes he had put her into after divesting her of that entirely impractical and garish dress, which he had burned quite thoroughly in the fireplace of the f
irst lodgings they had occupied

She tried to yell at them to stop, but her tongue wasn’t working
at all well
yet, so instead she began to struggle
against them with all her might
.  Her uncoordinated movements had absolutely no effect, except that
she had caused both of them to need to hold her, at least until
one of the ladies leaned over and pulled a cord that hun
g near the wall, and seconds
later
two behemoths took the place of the women
who had been subduing
her
, allowing the two females
to devote themselves more fully to rendering her naked, which she was appalled to realize took only a few very short seconds.

All too soon she was
barely
on her
tip toes,
held so high up due to the sheer height of her captors that
her toes only now and then grazed the uninvitingly cold, rough wood floor.  She was blushing so hard she thought she was g
oing to faint from it, exposed
so vulgarly in front of everyone, even Sissy.

Once her eyes descended on the only familiar face in the room, she found her tongue.  “Help me, Sissy!  Get me out of here!  I need to go home, and Papa would want you to take me.
  I’m sure he’ll give you money for your bravery.
  Save me! 
H
ee
e
lllll
lp me
eeee
!”  Her last two words were long and drawn out and became more so as she realized that the person she had thought was going to be her savior
hadn’t reacted in any way to her pleas, remaining, instead,
stoic and silent in the corner of the room.

Sissy stared at her former mistress with
haunted but almost lifeless eyes, recounting in her mind every slight that had been heaped on her from the moment she was born to the last open palmed slap she had received from Cassie that night – that seemed so long ago – when her efforts at styling her hair hadn’t been quite up to snuff, as well as the innumerable tim
es it had happened before
, in much the same way
.  If she didn’t receive a rounding crack across the face, it was a session over the lap of a girl who was younger
than she was, nude just like Cassie
was now, getting her fanny tanned
with
a doubled up length of the
family’s favorite implement.

Only when she
’d
run through all of the insults to dignity that the Winthrops had doled out to her
over the years
did she move towards the woman who had had such iron
clad control of whether her life
was going to be at least somewhat bearable or out and out torture
, day in and day out for the past twelve years.  And there had hardly been a day she could remember – perhaps only Christmas Day itself – when she hadn’t been subject to some form of physical punishment.

So when she stood in front of Cassie, lips tight and jaw set, she drew back her arm and cracked the younger woman across the face, as hard as she could.
  And Sissy
had been eating much better lately, so she had more strength than she normally would have, making Cassie’
s head snap back until the guards shook her a bit, forcing her to face the person she had dominated for so long.

But Sissy had already turned and was heading for the door.  That’s when Cassie found hers
elf entirely unable to stop begging her to come back. 

“Come back!  You have to help me!  Sissy, please!” she pleaded, sobbing and just letting herself hang by her arms between the two men.

Sissy never so much as flinched or paused or hesitated in the least as she reached for the door knob and began to turn it.

“Sissy!  NOOOO!  YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME!”

But apparently she could
, quite easily, as the door closed with a deafeningly final click.

Cassie struggled mightily in hopes of following her
, of course, but to no avail.

Victor came to stand in front of her, right where Cassie had been, tipping her chin up as he had Sissy’s.  “You will do well to conserve your strength.  And the sooner you come to terms wit
h the fact that the life you le
d up to this point is gone, the be
tter.  You and Sissy have
traded positions. 
How strange that must feel to you. 
She is now a free woman, and you are no better than a slave.”  He looked up and nodded to the
men who were holding her, who immediately began to carry her
into another room, where they deposited her in a huge wooden tub filled with very hot water.

As soon as
t
hey let go, of course, she tried
to get up again, that was until she felt the unholy sting of something
hard and
unyielding being brandished against the tender – and now thoroughly wet – skin of her behind.

No one had ever so much as raised a hand to her before in her life, and now within two minutes or so she had been struck across the face and was now being subjected to paddling very much like what she knew the littler slaves were subjected to if they
were discovered to be misbehaving. 
She was held
fast
over the edge of the tub, unable to get all the way out or sink
deeper
into t
he water, but kept immobile
until the horrible woman who was wielding the implement of her deepest sorrow grew tired of doing so.

She screamed and
cried and
moaned and carried on with absolutely no thought to how she looked or sounded – she
just wanted the pain to stop, and it was a terribly long time before it did.  And then she was just lowered back into the nearly scalding water, her bottom already well roasted, which only added to her discomfort.
  Even when she was let go, sitting in the tub surrounded by two large women and two even larger men who were ogling her openly,
the discomfort in her posterior only seemed to grow worse as her weight pressed it down onto the rough hewn, splintery wooden bottom.

From that point on, all either of the women had to do was to show her the paddle when she did something they didn’t like – such as try to bite their fingers as they washed her face
.  The two mountainous men remained in the room,
moving with obvious reluctanct into positions just by the door,
in case something happened
that the women couldn’t handle or they were needed
in some other way
.

Cassie had never been so thoroughly scrubbed in all her life.
  She felt as if they were
actually
trying to remove the first layer of her skin
.
And they didn’t just stop at the ordinary places, either – back, arms, legs.  The two of them forcibly splayed
her out within the tub, calling the men over to hold her in the posit
ion they preferred, with wrists
at
each of
the top two corners of the tub and her ankles at the bottom two
as she fought uselessly against
being so obscenely
displayed.  Then each of them took a cloth in their hand, one of them soaping and rubbing each of her breasts, down to
repeatedly
tweaking the reluctantly peaked nipples while the other rooted arou
nd most rudely
between her legs, and even
to her bottom hole, rubbing and scrubbing
and trying to press up into
areas of her body that she had barely had contact with herself except for what was absolutely necessary.
All while two pairs of greedy male eyes absorbed every single detail of her complete humiliation.