Chapter 20: The Child

[Undated entry]
Martinique / Oxford, Oxfordshire

RAPE WAS INEVITABLE. On the island of her birth she knew this hard truth from the moment she entered the salon at her first master’s invitation to greet his guests after their dinner. It wasn’t really an invitation. Slaves are instructed, they are ordered. They are not invited.

This would not be the first time Sandrine had joined her master and a guest or two. She accepted it because she had no alternative. Her master was an attentive lover, and most of his guests made at least some effort to please her. This did not alter the reality. Her participation may have been eased by the attentions of those she was obliged to serve, but the attentions did not make the encounter consensual.

On those evenings when Juliette was summoned with her the presence of a fellow slave and friend made the evening almost bearable. Truth be told, Sandrine did not find all sex unpleasant. Her master had been her first partner and he had introduced her to pleasure she’d not thought possible.

This night, she saw three of the four guests were men she’d never seen before. Her fear showed in her eyes, in her posture, and she held her ground only because to run would lead to a whipping and because the smile on her master’s face seemed to tell her everything would be OK.

Everything was not OK.

She never understood her master’s actions. At his urging the guests took each woman repeatedly and roughly. They paid no attention to Sandrine’s cries and the entreaties by Juliette. One of the men who had taken her more than once that evening returned to dine with her master a few weeks later. After the meal they summoned Sandrine to the small parlour where the two men sat in front of the fire with their whiskey.

Inevitably Sandrine was invited to join the visitor on the small sofa he occupied, and it was but a moment until the visitor put down his whiskey and turned to her and kissed her. What made his overture less unbearable was her memory that he’d made some effort to return her pleasure on the occasion of her gang rape. Tonight he was gentle, and with the encouragement of Sandrine’s master he undressed her and kissed each part of her as it was revealed.

Their encounter was vigorous. Sandrine climaxed more than once, and she found herself gripping her lover as tightly as she could between her thighs to keep him inside of her for as long as she could after he orgasmed. His parting embrace and kiss were sweet.

Two weeks later, Sandrine knew she was pregnant. She was confident the father was the visitor who had returned for a second visit and had taken her on the rug in front of the fire while her master watched and pleasured himself, because she’d not been called to her master’s bed between her last menses and this second encounter with the visitor, nor had she been summoned since then. To her surprise and dismay, however, her master refused her request to visit the old ladies who made the herbal potions used to prevent a pregnancy or stop one.