1. The Hothouse Flower


    Date: 9/14/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: FeliciaGreene, Rating: , Source: LushStories

    'They say she's a whore. 'The Austrian whore.'' Alain smiles piggishly. 'If you ever look at the cartoons in the paper, you'd see what she does. You might even find them instructional. ' 'I have no time for leisure at present,' I say quietly, lowering my head so he won't see the disgust in my eyes. So far my father's dying words have kept Alain at bay, but I am a woman and his gaze lingers. He has begun watching me sleep. I've seen his shadow on my bedroom wall at night. Soon he will try and touch me, and I mean to kill him if he does. Two highly prized Madagascan orchid specimens recently vanished; relics of the last seed-finding voyage my father undertook. One flower, ground and tinctured appropriately, could kill three dogs - or one large man. I have five flowers ready. My father raised no fool. 'You'll be busier yet before the week is over,' Alain roughly sweeps a patch of table bare, sending a pile of lists and letters fluttering to the floor. 'She may be a whore, but she's a fastidious one. Every part of that damned palace needs to be decked out like' - he wrinkles his nose, affecting courtly vowels - 'a corner of Paradise. A corner that'll stink like shit by the end of the night if the sun keeps on thus.' He laughed. 'Maybe Our Lady'll sling it all on the muck-heap. She's probably got a golden shovel.' 'They have extensive ice houses,' I say, rising from the table and making my way to the stove. 'We'll put all of the most delicate blooms in there while the fruit ...
    arrangements are being made.' The water is boiling now; I make sure Alain sees me reaching for the usual tisane blend before quickly substituting my own. Alain has designs on me, with all the lust of a fat nobleman gone to seed, but said lust falters before a mixture of valerian root, lettuce, mulberries and a touch - the lightest touch - of mandrake. He will sleep like the dead, and if I am a little heavy-handed with the dosage, may well sleep for days. Today is not the day to exaggerate, however, and I brew for three minutes instead of four. Someone has to talk to the tradesmen, after all. They don't listen to me. 'Jonquil, you spoil me.' He drinks a big, indiscriminate gulp, just like I knew he would, and I stand demurely by his side and hate every atom of him; his soft pink hands that have never turned earth, that moth-eaten wig he never washes, that belly grown fat off my dead father's money. I think about taking the heavy rolling pin from its hook on the wall, raising it above my head and - no. I will not hang for him. Later that night, with Alain snoring loudly in his room, I lie in bed considering. Considering is usually more constructive than weeping, although lately I've been doing a good deal of the latter. I consider my bedroom; a barely tended pile of the usual embroidery silks, paints, cosmetics and underpinnings that constitute the modern Parisian almost-gentlewoman. The starlight makes my things look luxuriant; they are not. In the future all of my possessions will ...
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