No further incidents took place, but Eldon confined the women to the mansion, and detailed his staff to keep a close eye on them, Hope especially. For all that Officer Jhansi had assured Hope Pandoran jails were frightfully secure, no one in the mansion felt safe, especially when it came out that Aoife had capitalised on the staff's one weakness - their eagerness to please. "Design flaw," Eldon confessed to Hope, as they walked through the garden that afternoon. "My fault; I wanted to enable them to be as useful as possible. That's how Aoife got through to them."
"You weren't to know," Hope assured him. "But it scares me how easily she managed to convince them to let her out!"
"Oh, love." Eldon rubbed a tired hand over his face. He hadn't shaved, and silver showed amongst the stubble on his cheeks. "Believe me, I've been doing nothing but kicking myself ever since last night. But if you want to add to the castigation, be my guest." A cheeky glint in his eye belied his weariness, and Hope smiled.
"I'm not giving you a hard time," she assured him. "I'm just scared how it happened so easily."
"The staff were told, in the wake of my little test, to treat all of you, barring those three, as honoured guests," Eldon told her. "Because of their programming, they obeyed my request, but I'd neglected to specifically exclude Aoife, Emma and Daisy from that list. Which is my fault; I forgot that they don't exclude anyone unless I specifically name names to be excluded. Not a mistake I'll be making again, I can assure you. I'm also going to upgrade the staff's programming to make them a teeny bit more skeptical, so that if this sort of thing should ever occur again, they'll have the good sense to come to me and make sure they're supposed to be doing the thing that's asked of them."
Hope sighed in relief. "Good," she said. "I won't lie," I'm still scared. I know none of those three can get out, but I'm worried they worked over any of the other women in the interim before this happened."82Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlMYhPTcTtG
"Not a bit of it," Eldon assured her. "Mia was the one who told me the rest of the group don't subscribe to those madwomen's ideals. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Emma and Daisy are as fervent as Aoife, even if they didn't show it so much until the manure hit the spinning blades. That's why they're being so stubborn, but no one else agrees, even if some of the more mature ladies are still getting used to seeing silver people in the buff." He grinned at this last, and Hope laughed. 82Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8prqoFFTZn
"I didn't want to pry," she admitted, "but I did notice the men ... well, they look like Ken dolls downstairs."
"My idea," Eldon confessed. "I'm no prude, and I don't have a problem with nudity. Buuuut... I didn't want my lady guests going a bit crazy at full frontal nudity from my male staff. And it wasn't out of a desire to protect non existent virtue. None of them are programmed to give into carnal lusts, but I figured I'd keep things semi decent. And yes, the female staff have the same treatment downstairs, but that's not something you'd notice rightaway unless you were really looking." He sighed, his good humour dissipating, and Hope squeezed his hand.
"Me too," she said.
Eldon returned her squeeze with almost painful force, but she didn't care; the sensation reminded her she was free, for the moment, and that Eldon would stand in the way of any future attempts to remove her against her will. She certainly didn't blame him for being scared, and they held hands just a little tighter as they made their way back to the house.
82Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7eTmrBRiG5
