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The Hothouse Flower
Date: 9/14/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: FeliciaGreene, Rating: , Source: LushStories
be the finest of their kind, and I will walk through marble halls, and have baths each day with maids to tend to me. I will have coffers and coffers full of coins and deeds and bonds and titles and contracts, for wealth is the only thing a woman can rely on. Money cannot creep into your bedroom and touch you while you sleep. How I intend to procure this wealth is packed tight beneath my floorboards, lined with silk from old dresses and pilfered cedar-wood. Alain would notice money going missing, but the real wealth, he barely looks at - with a snap of his fingers it goes to the vaults beneath the house. It is well-protected, of course, my father saw to that. Not even a mouse could get in, but a woman, a light-footed woman with a candle and a spare set of keys... she can go wherever she wants, and take handfuls of whatever she wants. The Garden of Eden lies beneath my bedroom floor. Tulip bulbs worth more than gold, saffron strands, vanilla pods a hand-span's length and wildly fragrant. A share of every seed, fruit, flower, bush or tree that my father could grow, beg, borrow or steal. A handful here, a handful there; in six months I have amassed the natural wealth of sixteen countries. Chinese tea, Indian lilies, Polynesian hibiscus, German alpine flowers that creep across the rocks of faraway mountains; I have the flowers for food, for drink, for love, for death. And ten miles from here, thanks to judiciously spent money and a gardener still loyal to my father, I have a ...