The Stem of Sin Chapter One: The Early Years, a dollanganger saga fanfic

"THE STEM OF SIN" by Alessandra Azzaroni

STORY LAST UPDATED ON 10/12/2002

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Written in Australia. This story contains characters created by Virginia Andrews. There are also quotes from Garden of Shadows. Please send me an email if you would like to know when this story is updated.

CHAPTER ONE: THE EARLY YEARS

Daddy always told me that I was the most beautiful baby in the world. And I believed him. Yet I always wondered where I got my looks. They certainly weren't from Mother! She was always a plain woman, and I just couldn't see something in her that made my father want to marry her.
It must have been her strength. Olivia Winfield Foxworth was by far the strongest one of us all. Especially stronger than I was, stronger than I am now, even though she's left this world. But I suppose I've always lacked strength.
After all, I had planned to always have a strong, handsome man to look after me, to care for me, to love me and to support me. And I got that man. But he was taken away from me, and I was left to fend for myself.
Daddy named me Corinne, after his mother. She was a beautiful woman, he told me, and he said that when I was born I looked almost exactly the way he imagined his mother had looked as a newborn.
He never told Mother that she was beautiful. He rarely, if ever, complimented her. And he practically ignored my older brothers - Mal was six years older than me, and Joel was four years older than me - except for when he criticised them.
In my younger years, Daddy told me of my first Christmas, when there was a party at Foxworth Hall. Close to five hundred people came! Daddy even designed special invitations. "Corinne Foxworth cordially invites you to her first Christmas party at Foxworth Hall" was written in gold lettering. There were crystal fountains with sparkling champagne, the Christmas tree was twenty-five feet high, there was an orchestra and it was snowing outside! And there were professionally taken photographs of me, framed in gold in the entranceway.
Such extravagance, and it was because of me. Daddy pulled out all the stops to introduce me to the world. Oh, he loved me, he did! But his love was taken away from me, too.
But I was still beautiful. I had bright blue eyes that would enchant people, and my wavy hair was of spun gold. My complexion was perfect. And it always reminded my father of his mother, the first Corinne.
With all that loving praise heaped upon me, I often felt that perhaps my brothers were jealous of the love, attention and affection often given to me by my father. But Mal and Joel were always pleasant to me. Sometimes I even felt as if my mother resented me, but she always wanted the best for me. She wanted me to grow up intelligent and strong-willed, and therefore I needed discipline. "Tough love"; if you will. Though Malcolm Neal Foxworth, that powerful father of mine, continued to spoil me.
I started to grow up under the care of my mother and Mrs Stratton, my nanny. In the summer when I was almost three years old, Daddy replaced Mrs Stratton with an imported one from England. Mrs Worthington had once been the governess to the Duke and Duchess of Devon's children. I didn't like her in the beginning.
"I want to stay with you, Mommy," I cried to my mother. "I don't like that other lady."
She tried to calm me down. "Corinne darling, you know I would rather it be only the two of us. But your father insists. Your father thinks it's important that you have a governess, and even if I don't agree, your father will not back down. The best thing for you to do is obey Mrs Worthington."
I went on to deal with being under her guidance. She was to teach me etiquette, elocution, dance and how to play the piano. "We walk to the table," she said to me, "like a lady should. And remember how you take your seat," she added.
I learned quickly, and I was sent off to a private boarding school when I was ten. My family missed me dearly when I was gone, and I, too, missed them. It was brilliant when we were all together. My brothers, not just my father, spoiled me, taking me sailing and horseback riding. I seriously was under the impression that I had the world wrapped around my little finger, and that people would always jump at the chance to do things for me. Even when I was as young as eleven, I told my father during Thanksgiving holiday that my clothes were all out of date, and it was very important to me. So he took me on a shopping spree in Charlottesville.
It all continued on, until I was thirteen. One day I sat at the dining table with Daddy, and I was telling him all about something that had happened recently. He seemed captivated by what I was saying, and he hung on to every word.
He caught my hand in his. "You like your daddy?" he asked me seriously.
What a silly question! "Oh, yes, Daddy." I smiled at him.
"Then promise to stay with me forever and I promise that all this will be yours." He gestured extravagantly, and I giggled. "I mean it," he said. "Everything I own will go to my princess. Will you stay with me forever?"
"Of course I will, Daddy," I said, and he kissed me on the cheek. "But will you do a favour for me now, Daddy?"
"Anything, princess, anything your little heart desires."
"Do you know that special room upstairs, Daddy? The one that's always locked? I want that to be my room. Can it be mine? Oh, please say yes right now and I'll move all my things myself." I clapped my hands together, flushed with excitement.
"What room?" he asked with a half-smile.
"The room with the swan bed. Oh, how beautiful it is."
To my disappointment, he denied me. "No, no," he said. "You must not go into that room. It's not a room to be used."
"But why?" I was angry. This was one of the rare times when I didn't get my own way. I expressed myself through my hands, and at that moment they were clenched into tight fists, and I pounded them against my thighs.
"It's a bad room, a tainted room," Daddy said, but it just made the room more enticing to me. There was something exhilarating to me about something I couldn't have.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the ghost of my father's second wife lives in there," Daddy said, trying to scare me. It did take me by surprise. "And she was not a nice woman."
"Why wasn't she a nice woman?" I asked in an almost whisper.
"It's not important. There are some things you are too young to know."
"But, Daddy, I'm a big girl now. We know there's no such things as ghosts. I don't believe that room is haunted by a ghost. Let me move in there, and if you're worried that there's a ghost there, silly Daddy, I'll scare it away for you."
"I want this subject dropped now, Corinne. I want it dropped right now."
I was surprised. He rarely, if ever, shouted at me. "But I want that room," I insisted. "It's the prettiest room in the house; I want it to be mine." I fled from the room then, in tears. I really did want it to be mine.
Mother knew this, and when Daddy was out for the day, Mother would let me visit the Swan Room. I loved to sit at the vanity table and pretend I was preparing for a fancy ball. I would brush my hair with the brush that lay on the table. I even put on a nightgown I found in the room. I tied the lace strings of the bodice extra tight and I loved the way I felt in it. Then I fell asleep on the swan bed, wearing that silver nightgown.