Legacy

Dakota didn't return home. In fact, she didn't even accompany Master Lockwood to the airport. He left her alone in the suite they had shared, told her that he'd enjoyed their time together and that he had the very highest hopes for her future. She smiled at him and bade him farewell, and then the door shut.

Then her smile was gone.

Then she knelt in front of the door, naked, head bowed, waiting. She didn't know for what.

Why had he abandoned her? What had she done wrong? Maybe she was too needy. She'd been too demanding on Saturday. Or maybe, in spite of all her best efforts, he'd simply been unimpressed with the way she took the caning? She wondered if she ought to have brought him a gag as well as a cane. Maybe he simply had no interest in listening to the wrenching cries of a girl. Her cunt still hurt—still ached with the bruises and the marks he'd left. She probably hadn't taken it well at all, if the women she'd met in the last few months were any indication. She told herself again and again that, if she ever got another chance, she'd do better next time. She would not be left behind again. Not be forgotten. Not be cast aside.

Dakota had spent her entire life being cast aside, first by her own mother and then by her stepfather, again and again and again. Her stepmother didn't count. If anything, her stepmother had been far better than most: at least she hadn't sent Dakota into the woods with a huntsman and a poison apple and maybe directions to the nearest Big Bad Wolf. These things were all relative. She laughed at herself as she knelt there, still waiting. Then she sniffed and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes.

It was dark out when the door opened at last. Her legs had been asleep so long she didn't know whether they would wake up. The light came on and she stared blindly up at the face of the intruder. She didn't know who it was, but she didn't know what she'd expected, either. She certainly hadn't expected the door to open.

The man and woman at the front door looked surprised. The man looked around, and the woman stared at her.

"Are you Dakota Rossi?" she said.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Oh!" The woman stood there a moment, blinking. "I'm Anne. We're here to pick you up." Anne paused as if waiting for some response. "Ah... Do you have any clothing?"

"Yes, Ma'am," said Dakota. What little she had was packed in her bag, still on her bed where it had been when Master Lockwood asked her to wait here. He never said for what.

"Slave, we've had quite a long drive," said the man who had opened the door. He ushered the woman inside and shut the door behind them, and Dakota still hadn't moved. "I've decided we're going to stay here for the evening. You will prepare a meal for us—we have no special requirements—and, while we eat, you will ready a pair of rooms where we can sleep."

It took every ounce of Dakota's strength and discipline to get to her feet without falling all over herself. Pins and needles and bears, oh my! "Yes, Sir."

They whispered something about her as she made her way to the kitchen. Dakota didn't care enough to try to overhear what it was.

Dakota sort of expected that she'd ride in the trunk or something when they left. That didn't happen. Life continually conspired to disappoint her, and the life of a slave in particular often seemed far more like the life of a girl. If she was a slave. Was she? Did slaves ride in the passenger seat next to the driver while Anne sat in the back?

"Your legs are longer than mine," was Anne's excuse. Dakota hadn't liked that excuse at all, no matter how spacious the back seat might have been.

At least Sir Richard treated her the way she ought to be treated, commanding her rather than asking her, but Dakota very quickly got the sense that he was doing that for her benefit somehow—as though he thought she would feel better if he called her slave instead of Dakota. On the one hand, she did find his manner reassuring: his instructions were clear and his expectations easily understood. On the other hand, he appeared to think that she was somehow damaged goods, as it were—that she couldn't function normally. She absolutely could; she simply didn't give a damn anymore. She decided that she would allow him to continue laboring under his insipid misapprehension at least until the trip was over.

As for their destination, they were apparently bound for Switzerland—a country that Dakota knew was in Europe somewhere but couldn't have actually pointed out on a globe without reading the labels. The trip took a little more than four hours by car, on narrow roads that wound their way through the mountains, twisting this way and that and vanishing behind curtains of stone before reappearing just in the nick of time. Dakota wondered whether this was the real reason Anne preferred to sit in back: the view, though beautiful, appeared to constantly threaten her with death by misadventure.

They came at last to a picturesque estate on the shore of Lake Lucerne—a gated manor with stables and horses and meadows and woods—and Dakota's mask of I-don't-give-a-damn very nearly crumbled as the car rolled up the long drive. She tried, at least, to make sure that Sir Richard wasn't looking when she gaped at things.

"Well, here we are!" burbled Anne from the back. "Your new home for a little while. It's not much, but it'll do, right?"

"Yes, Ma'am," she answered automatically—although she would have done anyway, because she was still playing her game.

Dakota exited the car and went to the trunk, which Sir Richard had opened from the front. Anne wasn't quite cooperating with her little game: she gave no instruction for Dakota to pick out any of the bags and carry them, and Dakota couldn't ask without looking less like some shattered husk and more like just a girl who'd been playing with them, and maybe she hadn't yet made up her mind which one she really was. Anne gazed at her, worry lining her eyes.

"This is the Court of Blooms," said the woman. "At least, this is one of several properties that belong to the Court. I think it's the nicest one." She waited a moment for a question that Dakota was never going to ask in a million years.

Anne cleared her throat and continued. "Well, the Court of Blooms is a house within the Bitter Elm. We're dedicated to the protection and cultivation of the young women of our community."

Another silence lingered.

"Is there anything you might like to do while you're here?" said Anne.

Sir Richard was carrying in the luggage, and Dakota couldn't stop him and grab the bags; she couldn't abandon Anne, who was talking to her, because that would be extremely rude. She watched helplessly as Sir Richard did the work she ought to have been doing, and finally she surrendered. It was a stupid game anyway.

"What do you want me to do, Ma'am?" she asked.

"Whatever you want to do, of course," said Anne.

Dakota wanted to wring her neck.

"I know what might cheer you up," said Anne. Dakota had some ideas of her own on that front, but now didn't seem the time to offer them. "Your friend from Bitter Creek is here. Do you remember Mara?"

The name hit her like cold water. "She's... she's alive?"

Anne looked horrified by the question. "We're not monsters, Dakota! Of course she's alive. And you can see her tomorrow, if you like."