I Am Bree - Book 1

Chapter 11 - A Friend and Confusion

 I waited outside out door, holding my breath. My mouth had run dry, and my heart was pounding erratically. I wasn't sure what punishment would await me once that door no longer separated me from the 'ladies' within. My only consolation was that I wouldn't have to worry about a beating as they couldn't have me going to the ball bloodied and covered in bruises.

Finally, I summoned my back bone and pushed the door open without knocking.

"Angela," Madame purred as I entered. They were all sitting around the door as though they'd been waiting for me. "I thought we had given express orders. Did you misunderstand anything?" Annabella and Flora looked up at me over the tray of dainties they were devouring.

"No, milady, but the things were too heavy to lift without help, and when they offered their help, I didn't think it would be considered polite to decline."

I had decided on my way up that mention my accident or the meeting with the prince would be less than prudent. I had devised that I would do my best to leave that part out of the story without telling an outright lie. Perhaps, I had thought with a flutter of hope, they would be less harsh, since there was no way they could know how their finery had been spilled across the royal courtyard.

"You considered?" Madame's nostrils flared. "You were not called upon to consider but to obey. Girl, if we were home, I should have you horsewhipped for your disobedience." She had obviously been speaking to Adella. "As we are not, however," she said in a more subdued manner. "We must come up with some other kind of punishment."

I looked from one to the next of the females that inhabited the room and found no fear in myself for what they might do to me, only exhaustion. Somehow, a year under their petty brutality had killed the part of me that cared for them or when they thought and did. I had been beaten, humiliated, and forced to work like a mule, and I was surprised to discover that I had some remnant of spirit left.

Truly, they weren't capable of taking all of it from me. They didn't possess such talent. For while my body was their's to do as they will with, my soul was as free as long as I had a tiny piece of my father's memory to which I could cling.

As of now, that place was our old home and the places he had taught me to love. The menagerie and the forest, the little brook that twisted among the hills on the outskirts of Lund, and the wild flowers in the fields and the animals that made their home on our lands. These things were all parts of him that no one, no matter how hard they tried, could take from me. They were treasures, and only I knew how to unlock the padlocks that would set free the memories that were so like the songbirds I so often envied.

"Adella," Madame said. "What do you think would befit such disobedience?"

Well, perhaps not all of that was true after all. I still harbored a great fear for Adella. She was unpredictable, and her means of torture usually had nothing to do with my body being harmed. She found ways to dig into the deepest depths of my heart and thereby conjure up such punishments that made me tremble from head to toe.

"Hmm." Adella rose from her couch lazily, looking at me with her sharp eyes. I bore her gaze with all the courage I could muster but wilted slightly when a. Look of triumph cross her features. "Mama," she said smoothly, turning to look at her mother. "It is as you say: she deserves to be beaten, but polite society forbids such a thing. However, these filthy rags would also be frowned upon in our current company. We cannot allow our own relation to walk about in such things."

With these words, she reached up and yanked the sleeve of my gown so that it tore at the shoulder seam. That dress was one of the few things I possessed, and it had been a gift from my dearest friends. She had seen all of this, how much it mattered to me, and with her usual cruelty, she had decided to take it from me.