A lady must only read suitable tales. These include a dainty, polite, charming heroine with the perfect family who somehow gets into trouble, but comes though using her daintiness, manners, and charm to snare some poor soul into marriage.
If real life is like that, then I must become crazy at once.
Mother and Father suffered from an arranged marriage. Or they would have, if they had been at all intelligent about the matter. Their parents told them they would be getting married, so they both decided to run away. As it happened, they fell in love at some dinner party and decided to run away together. Then they found out they were to marry each other, so they decided to not take the trouble of running away and risk family and fortune. Of course, they could have just asked their parents the name of the girl, but that would have been too easy.
Unfortunately, mother died after giving birth to my self. Strike one against the perfect family. But while I wish she hadn't died, I would be lying if I said I missed her. I barely knew the woman. And Father never talked of her, being too deep in grief to mention her name without unbelievable sorrow.
But then a lady he met at court managed to cure all his woes and give him new life. Lady Victoria Teresa was quite a character. I was only eight when she joined our household through the inconvenience of marriage, but she made her presence known.
Before she even entered the house, you smelled her. It was a heavy stench of body odor covered with very fragrant perfumes and lotions. Probably one of the most vividly etched smells in my memory. I suppose I should be kind, after all, we were miles away from her former home. It had been a two-day journey. But you would think she would have done something…
When she entered, it was a large cloud of pink. I had never seen a true lady's gown before, let alone an overdone one. It was certainly a sensation, though probably not of the kind the lady wanted. Behind her came a smaller ball of fluff, this one in a strange shade of yellow I had only ever seen in my mush at breakfast. The smaller ball was seen to have matching yellow hair, elaborately curled.
While the smaller ball stood in the corner, the pink lady came up to me and gave me a huge, enveloping hug. "And this must be the young dear!" She cooed. She didn't talk like every servant at the house, or yell like the farmhands. She cooed like a pigeon, except that she didn't sound as nice. She continued cooing as she said,
"Why, aren't you the little lady! Keeping this house so nice while your papa's away with me! Why, you must be positively lonesome here in this big fancy house! You are such a doll."
I was choking from a combination of the stench, the frills, and he words. I had been stealing books since I was six. And I had never, never been talked to that way before. Let's see-my social circle had only ever consisted of my father and the various people he hired to do his work for him. Father talked to me, but the servants were the ones who made sure I ate, slept, and kept my hair brushed-no small task. Between them, I had all the society I wanted.
Anyhow, the pink lady continued to state her name, insisted that I call her Mama, and that the yellow fluff behind her was my new sister, Alexandria Lily Rose Eugenia. If Victoria (I refused to call her mama) wanted to name her kid ridiculously, then why didn't she name her Al?
The next part of my life was full of fluff, "finishing lessons," and new decorations that served no purpose. Father believed that the household belonged to the ladies, and that meant Victoria. The house went from a Spartan house to a cushy marshmallow. Even my room did not escape unchanged- it was redecorated to a shade of blue that looked remarkably like robin's eggs, but not nearly as interesting.
At one point Victoria even hired a governess. Miss Sarah was a tall, angular old spinster who firmly believed in the values of being a lady. Al got along with her very well--poor Al wanted nothing more than to be a lady and marry the prince. I thought that was silly, and told her so. After all, we were only ten. Love was icky stuff for grown-ups.
I, however, did not get on at all with Miss Sarah. While I wasn't a tomboy, per say, I was certainly never going to be a lady. I liked the outdoors and books that didn't coat everything in syrup. Heaven forbid, I was good at figures. I also didn't like getting prettied up. Everything was pointless, this stichery and manners and dancing. Someone thought they were important, so I learned them, but that didn't mean that I liked it.