The House of Lesslie

I.

The mansion hadn't changed, not all that much, from how I remembered it.

If at all, it had aged gracefully, as only English mansions can ¬ a massive Edwardian building that had served Lords and Ladies, had housed masters and servants for centuries. Around it, at a respectful distance, were smaller buildings that rose up from the moist English ground and lining the road to my right and left.

There had been a village here, once, so my mother had told me, but as my family's wealth and influence had grown, so had the mansion, until the grounds owned by the Leslies had simply swallowed up everything around them.

It was private property, now, all of it, starting at the iron gate we had passed almost three miles further down the road, walled in and separated from the world outside, just as my family had intended it to be.

I watched as it passed me by. My past. And my future. Sitting in the back of the Rolls Royce that had picked me up at Heathrow, finally allowed to smoke after over having been caged in the first class of a flight from Hong Kong, forced to find topics of conversation with those who had money, but no taste, influence but no class.

My family's money was old, and just like the mansion it built, it had aged gracefully, knowing its power and dominance. It had bought kings and queens, had fucked prime inisters and enslaved parliaments, had changed histories and people.

And was now mine, and mine alone.

That had changed.

The thick smoke from a small cigar rolled over my tongue as I sucked it in, let it stay there to savour its taste before I forced it down into myself, feeling it expand into my lung and lifting my breasts. It felt good. It felt right. To come home. To see that it had been waiting for me. To see that it was the way I remembered it.

The driver had changed. He was new. He was young. He was watching me, glances that were reflected in the Rolls's rearview mirror, watching me every now and then as I made the back of the car my own, dressed in a white fur coat that enclosed my body.