The Blonde and the Beautiful

The Ladies Madagin and Arabella Copsire. The bane of my existence.Oh, they were beautiful girls, no doubt. With their ice cold blue eyes, and endlessly curly golden hair. Their full, petite figure and their rosily painted lips. Yet, at the same time they were hideous. Making up stories to make little children cry, spreading rumors, blaming their elder sister, Beth, whenever they slipped up. (Which, at least for Beth's sake, wasn't too often.)
The girls were vicious, conniving brats, and they were twins, 17 years of age. The same as me. And they were to become my step-sisters. But of course you've guessed that by now, haven't you? Inevitable, of course.

It began as any other ordinary day. My father was, yet again, off on another of his adventures, searching for the cure for the latest wide spread disease. My father is herbalist. Always gone, always off looking for a cure, for anything and everything. I didn't mind, really. Well, not incredibly so anyways.

I love my father, he is all I have left in the world, but, I enjoy having the manor to myself at times. No one to bug me about acting lady like, or sitting properly, or finding me a betrothed. Well, no one except Greta, our odious housekeeper. She is always in my business, and makes sure the second my father comes home to tell him of all of my scandalous doings.

Like today, when I decided that all I wanted to do was read outside in the beautiful morning sun. Greta wasn't too enthusiastic about my plans; she was disgusted in fact. Mentioned that the first thing she'd do when Papa arrived would be to tell him about how I wasted the day reading and ruining my complexion.
Any other day I would have been glad. Turns out she didn't have the chance to even greet him at his arrival. Instead her jaw dropped to the floor the moment he walked through the door…with a woman on his arm. I can't say my mouth was glued shut either.

I stared in horror as the woman came forward and embraced me tightly, exclaiming,
"Oh you must be Elsa! Darling, your father has told me so much about you! I am Catherine. I'm going to be your new mummy!" You could actually see the exclamation marks.

All I could do was raise one eyebrow, in my father direction, at the absurdity of the woman. For all the simplicity of her name, Catherine had quite a sumptuous figure. Her hair was the lightest shade of brown and her skin the palest I had ever seen. Her eyes were a cool grey, and her lips were painted a deep red.
I had seen this woman before, roaming the streets behind flimsy veils and ornate fans. A member of the kings royal court. A Duchess, I believe. She had never been the brightest of the courtly ladies, her greatest achievement coming down to bearing three children, and none of them sons.

Catherine bore no resemblance to her two youngest daughters, but Beth, the daughter of her first husband, was a more colorless copy of her mother.

Beth stood behind the Duchess Catherine; I had never met the poor girl, but had heard much about her. She was as yet, 19, and unmarried, a hopeless case, (at least that's what was said by the many town matchmakers). Her mother's full lips and gray eyes sat awkwardly on her face, and her hair was too plain a brown. She was a bookish sort, a bit like me really, which is what endeared her to me from the start. I learned she would be nothing like her two younger sisters. A silver lining if you must.

And the cloud, the big, black, thunderous cloud,...Madagin and Arabella, of course. What was it that had turned their hearts cold and black? I'll probably never know. And I probably do not ever want to know.

And so it was, at that precise moment, the twins sauntered through my door. My life in hell had begun. How could Papa do this to me? I was ready to kill him.

But that doesn't mean it was me who did.