Helplessness. The feeling infuriates me to the bone.
I am not helpless because I'm a delicate, upper-noble girl who spends her day waiting for her prince charming. Oh no. These stories lost their appeal when I turned five and my father threw me into the arms of an old man. The princes in the stories were never old. At least the artist saved black ink by foregoing drawing in the wrinkles.
My future husband and the princes had only one thing in common.
Money.
Money that my father could only dream of. Wealth, my father deluded himself into being closer to by selling me.
I am helpless because I have no money, my family is the laughingstock of noble society and I have a shitty, selfish prick as my dearest daddy.
All I can do right now is sit still at that damn table with a tiny, cloudy standing mirror on top of it and glare at its faded lacquer and chipped wood. Behind me, my maid pampers me to the best of her ability.
Her fingers shake as she applies the hair gel.
I compose myself, forcing my stiff shoulders to soften and the hard light in my eyes to mellow into soft stars. I refuse to be the source of her terror.
What real Lady makes her servants quiver?
Once upon a time, I had a real mahogany, ornate dressing table. But my father sold it. He replaced all my cute furniture with the equivalent of wooden boxes. I hate having to live like a poor commoner. Luckily, my bed stayed, the only reminder of the care my mother had given the room when I was still hidden from the world in her belly.
From the perspective of a noble Lady, it is a pitiful picture all around. It serves as a warning of what happens when the wrong family member becomes its head.
I am sure that my grandparents, bless them, planed for my father to inherit shit.
But he was the only heir left by the time my grandfather died. They tried to hide my father's incompetence by marrying him to a well-cherished daughter of a middle-class noble family, who, due to her accomplishments, was respected by the upper nobility.
Yet my mother, who was a doctor, saved so many lives, birthed so many children in my generation, and ultimately was left alone in her pain after giving life and milk to me, died because the wounds inside her womb were out of her reach.
It is my father's fault for shooing away the doctor by not paying properly.
I read it one night, crouched under his office table, in his journals, where he raged about how much that high and mighty quack doctor was unhappy about his pay and refused to return when ordered.
My mother was a strong woman.
But no matter how sharp your mind, how grand the accomplishments, or your physical strength, childbirth strips the soul naked.
Mother was left alone. The man she married and the doctor loved money more than their honor.
They left her helpless.
Father never explained to me why we slipped into poverty. I stopped asking once I found a way to get my answers. Like the story with the doctor I got from my father's journals, I pulled plenty of information out of the drawers of my father's office.
Sneaking around has become my specialty. Whenever the moon illuminated the night, I prowled through the mansion. No door, drawer, or dusty crevice was safe from me. I read about my grandparents, the honored knights of my family, my father stumbling through life, described in pages upon pages with twisted words.
Not to mention my dearest daddy's gambling addiction and other debts he raked up with his love for gold finery, savory food, and strong liquor.
I also found the price I had been sold for.
How fun to see the worth your father sees in you scribbled on black and white.
I hiss when my maid brushes my hair. She took too long wrangling my hair into a high ponytail, and the hair gel had hardened, making my scalp, hair, and the brush stick together.
Scared of me, my maid removes the brush and smooths over my hair with her palm. A stream of glistening tears falls from her shadowed eyes. She trembles. Her grip on my hair tightens and loosens, and her knees buckle. Her instinct tells her to bow, but nothing is holding my hair up but her milky white, delicate fingers. She can't decide what to do.
„I am so sorry, milady."
Keeping my voice friendly is a no-brainer. „Tie it up as is." She has no idea how little I care for my appearance tonight."Leave it be and move on. You must be finished when the bell rings for supper."
My Maid nods and quickly fiddles with the hair band she had tied around her wrist.
Its color is red.
She ties up my hair, before reaching for the compact with dark face powder of all things. She dabs the biggest brush into it, twisting the bristles around as if she wanted to whisk cream, and closes in on my face. She had never heard of the principle of contouring. I bet makeup as a whole is foreign to her. It would for me, too, if not for my fiancée's gifts.
„I will do my makeup myself."
Maybe I do care about my appearance at least a little.
I take the brush from her hands. „You have done enough, thank you." I smile sheepishly.
She understands me, and I can see the blue veins on her pulsing wildly beneath the thin skin of her neck. She is stressed. „I am so sorry." She gulps, red spots appearing on her face, and adds quickly a muttered, „Milady."
Damage avoided.
„We will go over makeup another time, and you can practice on me." I hope the offer will calm her nerves.
I can tell she has never learned to attend to a noble lady. If she had, she would have developed the pride with which trained maids carried out their duties.
Not that I could afford such a professional. My old maid would have died before letting me be seen with a crooked ponytail.
I watch her arrange my sparse makeup kit so I can reach it better. When I spy something that makes me so pale, I could save up on whitening powder.
There are bruises on her exposed wrist.