Felicity: An American Girl ROMANCE, PT3,CH9: If At First You Don't Succeed...
"Dont do that!" Forsythe half-squealed in fright, ducking as another porcelean angel whizzed past past his head, struck a wall behind him and shattered. "Those are expensive pieces of my prized collection!"
"I will stop when you stop!"
"You will be lashed severely for this, Felicity!"
"I do not care!" She snatched up two more figurines and prepared to launch them if he swayed one step closer. "You can have me lashed until it kills me, but I do not care because I have nothing left to lose except my virginity, and I'll be thrice-damned before I let you have that!"
"You are waking the entire manor and disgracing yourself in the eyes of my household!"
"HA! According to them, I was already a disgrace! Why should I care about the opinions of people who care nothing for me?" She sneered spitefully. "I am supposed to be insane, remember?"
Damn it all, she was right. Forsythe attempted to take a careful step forward, but had to throw up his arms to deflect the Roman angel figurine that would have otherwise cracked his forehead.
"Get out!" she yelled at him, hoping she was loud enough to wake the horses in the barn. "Get out of here and leave me alone!"
Keeping his head covered, Forsythe staggered to the jib-door as yet another priceless figurine smashed into bits against the wall above his balding head. He figured fast that it would probably be for the best if he did remove himself from the room, go back to his own bedchamber and think the situation through. This could not continue. There just had to be a way to break that girl!
When he flung the jib-door open, Helga was right there, in her nightcap and dark plaid house coat, candle in hand, peering anxiously into the room. Surprisingly, Lettie was standing out there, too.
"One of you-I do not care which- get in there and calm her down, for God's sake! I will deal with her tomorrow!" Forsythe slipped out, leaving big Helga in the doorway.
"You have denied your husband!" the burly woman exclaimed irately. "Perhaps a veek in Bedlam will shock ze heathen out of you, Missy! Lettie! You deal vith ze little harlot tonight! Ze household ist losing sleep!" Helga moved aside grumpily and gave Lettie an unwarranted hard nudge as the dark girl went in with her candle. As expected, the door was slammed shut.
Felicity's breathing was rapid despite having powders in her system. With dark humor she had believed she had become used to them. But her anger level had soared to an all-time high tonight. She wanted to get out of here, away, to go home. Most of all, she wanted all of this to just end, and so she snapped. Completely ignoring Lettie, who was quickly setting down her candle, Felicity grabbed the silver hand mirror off the vanity and smashed it on the corner of the dresser. Shards of glass indeed littered the floor, some oof them small among larger pieces.
Felicity dropped what was left of the hand mirror nad picked up a good-sized shard of jagged glass. Her emotions were roiling, her desperation rapily seeping through the cracks in her determination to remain rational. She gripped her shard of glass in one hand and studied the underside of ehr other wrist blazingly for the correct place to cut.
She had learned of this way of self-destruction in a tragedy-play once.
"What do you think you are doing?" hissed Lettie suddenly, slapping Felicity's trembling hand so fast and hard that the shard of glass was knocked out of it. "You must not do that!"
"Why not?" Felicity snapped ragefully. "I will not let him consumate this play-act marriage of his, and there is no hope of my ever getting out of here! Because of him I have lost my best friend, the man I have loved ever since I was a child, my family is unable to locate me, and my father may not even be alive now! So I am asking you, Lettie, why must I refrain from ending this wretched situation once and for all?"
Lettie's eyes were wide, but burning with an intense resilience that could only be described as dark fire. "Becuase then the suffering of your soul would be eternal! Then he will have had complete domination of you!"
"What is that supposed to mean?" Felicity's eyes burned with intensity as well. Tears filled them but had yet to fall.
"He will have driven you to your death! He will not have had his way with your body, but he will have driven you out of it and into the fiery hell that the white people speak of. If this 'hell' truly exists, do you truly wish to go there?"
Felicity gulped. In a lower tone she asked, "Are you suggesting that I just give myself to him, Lettie? Because if you are...I simply cannot...I can't...I was not brought up to just-just-"
Lettie was savagely unblinking. "It does not matter what they do to your body, woman! Your spirit is your own and they cannot touch it!"
Felicity sniffed helplessly. "Yes, well, however true that may be, Lettie, as long as I am still attached to this body I am going to feel whatever pain that is inflicted upon it. A woman has very little to call her own in this world, so thank you just the same, but I think I will do whatever I can to keep my virginity my own." She started to pass Lettie in favor of throwing herself down on the bed for a good cry, but the dark girl's hand clamped upon her arm and stilled her immediately.
"I am not saying you should allow that man to bed you!" Lettie stated relentlessly. "What I am saying is that you must be smarter than him!"
Felicity cocked an eyebrow cynically. "And just how am I supposed to do that, pray tell?"
Lettie glanced at the jib-door, then drew Felicity close. In her low and deadly serious tone, she said, "By means of delay. Let him believe that you must be courted in order to be won. If he is to have you, he must open your heart through acts of devotion." When Felicity opened her mouth to protest this, Lettie quickly added "This will perhaps buy you time to plan an escape."
This made Felicity's eyes widen. "Does this mean you...you are willing to help me?"
Lettie sighed stiffly. "Yes. I will help you."
Felicity closed her eyes in overwhelming relief. "Thank you...so much. And I meant what I said about taking you with me. You will come with me, won't you?"
After a moment's tense silent hesitation, the mysterious slave girl nodded slowly, her face showing that trust was still something she was uncertain about. She had every right to be, Felicity understood.
"So what do we do?" Felicity asked worriedly.
"As I have told you; make him believe that you wish to be courted. I will try to find a way for us to sneak out and away. It will not be easy, for he has very strict control over the slaves; we go to the basement when we are not required to be present."
"The basement?" Felicity was genuinely appalled. "That is abominable!"
Lettie's voice was low and smooth. "He revels in control."
"So I have noticed."
"If you are allowed out to the gardens with me as your companion, can you climb?"
A ray of light that was the old Felicity briefly returned, for she grinned brilliantly. "Can I climb? Why, from the time I was little I made it a goal to climb as many trees and spend as much time up on the roof of my house as possible!"
Lettie nodded approvingly, her stony expression remaining set. "Good. Now you must control your anger and be convincing that you desire courtship. This could spare you the whipping and buy us time to think of alternative means of escape. I cannot help you if are confined to this room."
Felicity nodded her understanding, inhaled as if she were about to leap off a dangerous cliff. "Very well, then. Tell me more about what I must do."
So it was the following morning that Felicity was sitting at the white tripod table clad in a clean, blush-colored dress, eating her assumedly-powdered-up porridge and ham when Forsythe strode in, attired in a sky-blue and green paisley ensemble, complete with polished walking stick and tightly-rolled wig, freshly (and thickly) powdered. He was stiffly austere, striding right up to Felicity's table with every intention of informing her of her impending punishment today at noon. His mouth came open, but before a sound could come out of it, Felicity gazed up at him placidly and said: "I wish to be courted."
"I-you-wha-?" Immediately, Forsythe was taken off guard, as Felicity already assumed he would be. He blinked at her, shocked and shaken, his bewigged head cocking to the side. "Wh-what did you just say?"
Naturally, Felicity cringed inside, loathing the way she was forcing herself to behave, but she swallowed her bile and repeated pleasantly, "I wish for you to court me, Reginald."
Forsythe's mouth dropped open.
"After our little...'disagreement' last night, Helga left me alone with Lettie, who advised me 'twould be in everyone's best interest if I were to change my attitude."
"Le-Le-Lettie advised you?" Completely taken aback, Forsythe's head whipped around to look at the slave girl, who was indeed present in the room, picking up pieces of shattered angel figurines to put into her apron. "This Lettie?"
"Yes," replied Felicity smoothly. "The things she told me made sense to me, so I have decided to follow her counsel."
"Indeed!" Wildly intrigued by this totally unexpected turn of events, Forsythe snatched up the white chair at the vanity table and plopped himself into it directly across from Felicity at the little table. "And what kinds of 'things' did our Lettie advise you on? As long as I have had her, she has only shown a violent contempt for the whites, and I have never known her to utter a word of her learned English unless it was 'yea' or 'nay.' How come you to elicit such interactions?"
Felicity glanced calmly at Lettie, who nodded briefly from where she was stooped and unseen by Forsythe. "Lettie has become very wise in the way of white society and her role as servant. In essence, she knows the ways of seeing to a well-tended household. She has learnt manners and discipline, and has offered to assist me in accepting the role of a wife now that I am-" She had to swallow down her nausea. "-married."
"Truly!" Forsythe had to twist and look over his shoulder again at the quiet dark girl in astonishment. Turning back to Felicity he exclaimed, "A slave giving instruction to her white mistress? How very uncommon! But I simply must know how this came to be!" He was neither irate nor bothered, but absolutely impressed and mesmirized.
"Unlike your bossy Helga and that snobbish Genevieve, your mild-mannered slave girl spoke politely to me and treated me with respect, so naturaly I was responsive to her." Felicity folded her hands delicately in her lap. She had not like referring to Lettie as 'your mild-mannered slave girl,' but she and Lettie knew those words were empty and planned. 'Twas like having rehearsed lines for a play.
"And just what did our good slave girl have to suggest about me?" he wanted to know.
"That I should be civil and calm to begin with, and that there ought to be-" Lord give me strength AND stomach! "-romance between us. If you will stop to think about it, Reginald, you have not courted me at all. Not one bit."
"Oh my dear, dear angel," Forsythe chuckled mindfully. "We are already married!"
This is not going to be easy. Though she was absolutely raging on the inside, she merely sighed and gave him a wearied look. "Legally, I suppose so. But a lady wants to know that her husband is capable of loving her. I have yet to see that you are. I am thinking that I can make myself more...available to you if you can convince me that you love me. Can you?"
Forsythe rested both of his hands upon the polished greyhound-head of the walking stick and eyed her with suspicious amusement. "The act of physical intimacy is proof of love,Felicity. We are married, and though you should instantly take to the position of wife without question, I suppose there is some logic in what you are saying."
"Did you not love Miss Elswick?"
Yet again he was stunned. Behind Forsythe, Lettie paused in her purposefully slow gathering of porcelean angel pieces to await the white lord's response.
Forsythe's astonishment quickly turned to all seriousness. "My dear girl, I loved that young woman more than life itself. I was determined that she should become my wife just as soon as I came of age. Had she not-not-perished..."
"Did Miss Elswick not know of the intensity of your affections, even as young as you were?" Felicity's gaze, too, was suspicious.
Forsythe sniffed haughtily. "Of course she did! I told her that I loved her and that she must never ever leave me or I would suffer the most wretched of devastations..."
"So if you loved her and expressed it so, can you not do the same with me? You say I am exactly like Miss Elswick in my appearance and spirit, but yet you have treated me abominably. I assume that if she had lived you would have courted her, correct?"
"Ye-yes, that is correct," he stammered, again taken off guard by this line of unforseen questioning. He blinked at her, somewhat startled.
"So can you not court me, Reginald? Can you not show me that you possess romantic capabilities? 'Twould work out to everyone's advantages, you know, as Lettie has pointed out to me. Show me how we would have courted had my father allowed it, and I will willingly and happily take my place at your side. I will neither run from you nor rebel if you can show me respect and compassion."
Forsythe's mouth had come open, his face bearing a look most like that of a child who's favorite candy in the world was being dangled in front of it. He stared at her wonderously, obviously in the process of absorbing her request, her line of reasoning. Though Felicity gazed back at him, she could see Lettie nod urgently, which was the cue to keep going, so she said "And as long as I have Lettie to guide me, I can be as willing to adapt to your way of life as you wish."
Oh, it was agony to say such a thing, when the latter part of that statement went against everything she felt and believed in! But her mind exerted control, she clenched her teeth inside her mouth, and held her peace. This was for show. An act. A role in a play, she reminded herself firmly.
Like his so-called 'marriage.'
When he had yet to respond, Felicity cocked her head and inquired calmly, "Well, Reginald? Will you court me or shall I go back to being impossible? Am I not worth winning?"
He inhaled quickly, as if he had just been snapped out of some awe-induced reverie. "A-And if I prove my love to you, you will be willing to be my wife in every way?"
"Yes."
"In every way?"
She curled the fingernails of one hand into its palm to maintain control. "Yes."
"Well, then!" Forsythe cried out so giddily that both Felicity and Lettie fliched in surprise. "I say a feast is in order!" He was up out of his seat, all but leaping to Felicity's side as she stiffened in preparation for self defense. But he was down on one knee, clasping one of her rigid hands in both of his clammy ones. "Indeed, we had no opportunity to court properly, my angel! Your father's stubborness and the meddlesome apprentice prevented it! But now that I have you here for my very own, I certainly can indulge such requests- and you truly, truly desire a closeness beginning with courtship, my little angel?"
"I truly, truly do," lied Felicity pleasantly.
"Oh you do not know how it gladdens my heart to hear you say so, dearest angel!" He rained a plethora of damp kisses upon the back of Felicity's hand he was holding, which resulted in her lips quivering nauseously, uncontollably as her disgust threatened to errupt. Lettie's dark eyes widened fiercely, a clear signal for Felicity to keep control. The sickened red-head smiled forcefully not a moment too soon, for Forsythe's overly-powdered bewigged head came back up, revealing his yellow-tinted teeth in a broad grin.
"And will you allow Lettie to assist me?" Felicity asked, doing her best to keep her composure.
Forsythe looked over at the suspicious expressioned slave girl, then back to Felicity. "If that girl can enable you to take your place as my devoted wife, then I insist upon giving her to you! Lettie is yours henceforth!"
Felicity smiled thinly.
"I shall arrange a grand dinner this afternoon in clebration of our marital courtship! Do wear the silver and maroon gown for me, my dear. Wear your hair up, no loose strands. Lettie, you will see to this. To think that I came in here with every intention to have you punished! How fortunate it was my previously sulking slave girl was left with you!"
Fortunate, indeed, agreed Felicity mentally. But not in the way that you think!
"Well now! Let us mark our new beginning with a kiss, shall we?" Forsythe rose eagerly and leaned toward Felicity, who on instinct pressed herself hard against the back of her chair, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Lettie repeatedly flicking the back of a hand at her. The gesture to "just do it!"
Forsythe's thin puckered lips came at her. Felicity had to exert more will-power than she had ever had to thus far in this whole revolting situation, and puckered back, looking for all the world like she had just bit into the sourest of lemons, complete with eyes squeezed shut. But Forsythe, not having had any experience with women, kissed her dry lips with his wet ones with a loud smack.
As he drew back happily, Felicity's eyelids fluttered, but 'twas not from near-swooning, as Forsythe thought it to be. She was trying not to vomit. "Now!" exclaimed he, enthused, "I shall make our dinner arrangements!" He turned to Lettie. "Since you have finally proven yourself to be of some value here, you are to be Lady Forsythe's maid starting this moment. See to it she is dressed accordingly to attend dinner."
Lady Forsythe? Felicity's gut felt twisted into dreadful knots.
He bowed low, tempting Felicity to punt his head as she would have a pig's bladder ball, but an ankle twitch was the only indication she wanted to revolt. After all, that would not do if she and Lettie were to be allowed out of the room together. She curtsied properly, against her own will when he straightened.
"You have finally made progress, Felicity," Forsythe told her with prideful approval. "And you will be rewarded for it. I shall see you at supper." With that, he spun on his unnaturally high heel and exited the room, beaming.
Immediately Felicity began a violent succession of disgusted spits. "Puh! Puh! Puh puh puh!" She roughly swiped her mouth with the back of one arm, then the back of the other, wishing madly that she had some of her grandfather's peppermint mouth-rinse. Lettie quietly came over and waited with almost eerie patience for Felicity to cease the spasmodic spitting. Felicity turned round to the dresser and splashed cold water from the white porcelain basin into her face and mouth, then hastily grabbed the drying linen beside the basin to bury her face into it.
"You are a strange white woman," commented Lettie, her face stoic even though her words were not.
"Ick! Ugh! He has a mouth like a fish! He makes me want to purge every single bite of food I have taken in my life!"
"Is it not a small price to pay for your freedom?"
Felicity lowered the hand towel and stared at Lettie, relenting to the dark girl's sensibility. "I-I suppose not. But I do not have to like it."
"Of course not. But you must convince him that you do." Lettie stared back at her passively. "It could always be something worse."
Felicity was stricken with curiosity as to what those last words implied, but she did not get a chance to pursue them, for Lettie was already beginning to discuss what was to be mentioned and discussed at dinner that evening.
Lettie helped her into the tight-fitting, low-cut gown, which was of the open-robe style, silky maroon over silver, with trimmings of dark grey lace and embroidered leaves on the stomacher and petticoat. It might have been a lovely dinner gown in felicity's eyes had she not come to hate the color of maroon and firmly set in her mind that there was absolutely nothing of beauty to be found here. She was escorted down to the the long rectangular dining hall, which featured little more than a magnificently huge black stone fireplace in which a fire was going and the long dark rectangular table itself.
The table looked like it could seat fifteen on either side. Three silver candelabras sat at well-balanced positions upon the table. The end nearest the fireplace was where Reginald Forsythe sat. The only other place set for dinner was at the corner on his left. It would just be the two of them at the table, much to Felicity's disappointment, even though a tall, skinny, elderly black man dressed in the fine but drab colored butlers' uniforms of the manor stood against the wall nearby, gloved hands folded in front of him, awaiting the instruction. He answered to the name of Pompey.
The sight of Pompey having to just stand there, waiting to be summoned for any reason great or small gave Felicity such deep pangs of guilt that she tried to hurry through the meal just so the poor man would not have to stand there so long without moving.
But Forsythe, however, wanted to talk, even after the dessert of a rich rice pudding. Unfortunately, Felicity had to indulge him, listen to him prattle on about his collections of angellic paraphrenelia he wished to show to her upstairs. As he went on, her gaze could not help but wander over the room's dark panelling with a brass, mirrored sconce in the middle of each panel. She could not help but to have noticed the large painting of a man who looked like a fifty year-old version of Reginald Forsythe hung above the wide mantel of the big black fireplace. The man had black hair pulled back in a queue, grey temples, and beady hazel eyes like Reginald. That, Felicity thought sourly, must be the fop's father. The portrait unnerved her. It seemed like the eyes followed her moves since she entered the room.
"That is my late father, the Lord Maxim Alastair Forsythe," Reginald explained, having seen Felicity's uneasy glancing at the painting. "He was a very proud man. Shrewd in business. I was seventeen in the year that he passed away from his ailment."
"What ailed him?" Felicity asked blandly, actually curious about what other sordid details about the Forsythe family she could learn.
Reginald actually seemed uncomfortable with the subject of his late father. 'Twas he who had opened up the topic, but he had not expected to go into any details about anything. "Mama and I were told his drinking had affected his liver, among various other inside afflictions he had. He did prefer the company of his drink to that of any living person."
There was definately bitterness in his tone, Felicity noted. She had been listening while she poked at her peas with a silver fork, reluctant to eat them, for she was sure there were powders in their butter sauce, and she did not want to ingest any more of the vile drug than she had to. Lettie ahd sdvised her not to eat everything she was given; meats and dry breads were safest, for the powders required a certain amount of liquid in which to dissolve.
"Why did he enjoy gambling so much?" she asked, hoping to squeeze an answer out of him.
"My father loved money," Reginald muttered unapprovingly. "He loved spending it. Making bets he lost one too many times. He once made a wager upon a horse in a race and lost his finest ship..."
Ah ha! "A slaving ship," Felicity added, unable to resist. She wanted him to know she knew what the Forsythe empire was built upon.
Forsythe looked at her uneasily, but his voice remained flat. "Yes, so it was. Look, Felicity, I did not choose my family's occupation. I was born into it and inherited it-"
"But that does not mean you have to continue it," she interjected pointedly, with a hint of her underlying rages slipping out in her accusatory tone.
" 'Tis rude to interrupt, Felicity. Very unbecoming in a gentlewoman. But perhaps I needn't continue my father's business. Nonetheless, management is my life. You needn't worry your pretty little head about it either way, for a woman does not have a mind for business. Your world is your home." He paused, watching her frown deepen moodily. "Correct me if I am wrong, but your family maintains the keeping of slaves, do they not?"
Felicity's face felt hot with humility, but she swallowed it down with fierce determination. "Yes they do, and I deeply regret it! And if I ever get to see my family again, I shall demand that they free Marcus and Rose at once!"
Forsythe chuckled slyly. "Still clinging to your old passions, I see."
Felicity sighed, clenched her fist beneath the table and got a hold of herself firmly. He is testing me. I cannot afford to lose control again! I'll never be allowed outside and I will have disappointed Lettie. "I do appologize, Reginald," she said, her voice softening despite the ferocious urge to knock his yellowed teeth down his throat. "I meant what I said about becoming a refined wife. 'Tis hard to forget where I come from." That ought to help! He loves to criticize the colonies, so let him chew upon that!
"All is forgiven, my dear," Forsythe told her easily enough, resuming the heaping of food onto his fork. "Old habits are hard to break, are they not? Besides, this is our first official dinner as husband and wife! Let us speak of only pleasant things."
Felicity felt frustrated and moody again, but this time she was careful not to show it. If she had to endure sitting at an uncomfortably long dining table in a gloomy dining hall, then she wanted to hear more about the Forsythe business going bankrupt. So far it seemed well enough to assume their slaving business was dying because of the late Lord Maxim's gambling debts. Adding to that was the son's excessive spending on transporting her here, buying ridicualous dresses in London, redecorating a room she loathed to be in, and donating repair money to desperate clergymen so that he could marry her in secret. It seemed to Felicity that the son was gambling on her, and she was deternined that he should lose.
And so the following two weeks saw Reginald Forsythe spend even more on her in his attempt to court her and win her affections, which had by now turned to solid ice. With Lettie's help, she was able to endure the hell of having to sit two hours a day perfectly still so that the painter from London Reginald hired could paint her portrait, which was to be hung in the main hall beside his own. Each evening saw him appeal to her if this was "the night," which she put him off of by saying "Nay it is not! For I have yet to finish the gown I will wear for you!" Disappointed but relenting, he was held at bay by her allowing him to kiss her. When he was gone, she either gagged or rinsed her mouth out.
With soap.
Forsythe would only be kept waiting for so long. And little did Felicity know that things were about to go from bad to worse.
Author babble: Been to Stolen Breeches yet? I'm going to continue to yak about it until it gets MANY joiners. It is, afer all, a wonderful place to gab with your fellow Benicity shippers. In other Felicity-related news, if you do not know already, The Official Shailene Woodley fansite is undergoing a BIG re-do, or a revamp, as the website's alert says. It will be fabulous to see what all Veronica and friends will have done to the best Shailene website on the 'net! Seems like there was something else I was going to say, but damned if I have already forgotten what it was. Crap. Oh well, maybe next time!