Page 32 of The Fighter who Needed Me
Persephone
Somewhere in the country, England Jan 1813
Trying to leave her parents’ home in the middle of the night was a feat she could not accomplish.
Because her parents must have somehow gotten wind of her trying to leave.
But this time, they were taking no chances. She had shut her eyes, trying to make the time go by faster while waiting for the household to go to bed, but it was the biggest mistake she made.
She didn’t see or hear her father sneak into her room, his hand holding a cloth soaked in chloroform, and had it held to her mouth and nose, making her suck in the strong scent and falling into a deep, drugged sleep.
When she woke, they were in her parent’s carriage and her head was spinning, and her stomach was nauseous.
She started to gag, and retch, but a bucket was placed under her mouth as she retched the meager contents of her stomach into the bucket.
When she lay back, she blinked a few times in the dim interior of the carriage, “What is going on? Where are we?”
Her eyes lit on her parents, sitting across from her, anger and hatred glaring from their eyes, “It doesn’t matter where we are going. You do not get to know where. All that matters is that you can’t try to escape again.”
“I wasn’t trying to escape.”
Her mother scoffed, the sound loud in the quiet of the carriage, “Please. We knew about you wanting to leave. Your maid told us everything. You were going to go to that man, weren’t you? He was going to defile you so you could not marry Reginald. Well, we hate to tell you that Reginald does not care if you are defiled or not. And you will be marrying him, sooner now rather than later because of your actions.”
Persephone shook her head slowly, but the action made it spin, and she put a hand to her head to stop the motion. “I told you that I will never marry him. I do not want him, and I never have. You were the ones to push him onto me and I have tried to tell you that I do not want this. I hate him.”
Then she looked her mother in her eye, “And you. You never wanted me. Not from the start. I have only been an inconvenience to you. A thorn in your side. Please let me go. Please. I beg you to let me go. I promise you will never have to see me again. I swear it. I know this is what you truly want. I can pay you what I know Reginald must be paying you. Please.”
Her father sat forward, and then slapped her across the face as hard as he could, making her spinning head spin more, and her stomach to lurch again as she was thrown back onto the seat.
“Do you hear this Kitty? The insolent way she speaks to us. I knew that the moment she had a small bit of freedom she would act this way. You lost any and all respect the moment you dared to choose that life over the one we gave you. We have done everything for you, provided for you, sheltered you and fed you. Cared for your endless sicknesses and kept you alive through it all. Even though it would have been so easy to let you die. You will not be our problem much longer, and I can guarantee the money we are getting from Reginald will set us up for life. We will be saying goodbye to the stone around our neck.”
She held back a sob, “I don’t understand you. I never have. I thought you would love me because I am your daughter, but you have always treated me like I am nothing but a problem. I am begging you to let me go. To let me go to the man who loves me. He can pay you as much as Reginald for my hand in marriage. He is very rich and it wouldn’t hurt him to do so. Please. If you loved me at all, you would let me leave and live with him. Please.”
She finally let the sob go free after the last please, and once again her father sneered at her, “We have waited to tell you this, and now you deserve to know. You have always been a problem. We should have let you die at birth, but for some reason you stayed alive.”
He curled his lip in disgust at her, the look of hatred on his face clear, “My brother and sister by law wanted you, and were so happy when she finally got with child. But my brother was cocky, had the fortune to be born first, and had the funds I so desperately needed, and I hated him. With a passion. When I messed with his saddle before his last ride, I hoped and didn’t know it would end up the way it did, but his life was lost and the shocking news made his wife go into premature labor. The baby was small and sickly, barely holding on and then my sister by law also died from complications after giving birth. We had to take their child whether we wanted her or not and you have been the thorn in our side since that day. Even after you survived your birth, you were small and sickly. And we didn’t like it.”
Kitty nodded along with him and he went on, malice in his voice.
“You had endless problems, with endless doctors and medicine to keep you alive. We hated everything about you. You disrupted our lives in the worst way and we did not like the noise, the problems you gave us. So, you were given the medicine we were told you needed no longer to keep you quiet. We did not care that you were well. That they told us that you were fine and that if we gave you the medicine and did not need it, that it could harm you. You were not our child. We did not care. We just wanted the silence. We had to resort to drastic measures to keep our lives from being too interrupted. Had to keep you tied to your bed because we did not want you to learn to walk, we did not want to add that noise to our life and eventually you stopped. You were the child we did not want but had anyway. You didn’t question our wants or needs for you, not until Alice that is.”
He sneered the name and Persephone felt so sick to her stomach and it felt as if someone had ripped her heart from her chest, hearing him speak about her life and that of her parents in such a way like he was. That she had not been their child at all.
And that they had hated her their entire life since she had been born.
Bruce gave a little laugh, and it brought her back to the conversation she did not want to hear any longer.
“We killed her you know? Alice. She gave you ideas, made you want and hope and dream when you had been the perfect child up until then. Because of her interference you asked questions about your life. Wondered why you were not like the other children out there. Wondered why you needed all the medicine you needed, and you fought with the maids and refused to take it. When you had for your entire life through. That bitch lost her life because she could not leave it alone. That she filled your head with the poppycock she did and could not keep quiet. Like she had been told to do.”
He gave her a sick smile, “She is buried in the yard by your window. We knew you would never see her grave.”
He gave a sardonic chuckle and then went on, “But she had changed you. You were no longer acquiescent. You questioned us constantly and made us regret ever trying to give you the education you needed. We thought we had taken your need to question us away, but apparently not. Your endless questions about your life drove us to take her life. We haven’t been afraid to kill to get what we needed.”
Kitty looked at Bruce and he continued, “When you were taken, we hoped secretly that something would happen to you and you wouldn’t return, but Reginald refused to accept that and reminded us of the money he had already given us, so we went to the docks every day for a month waiting for you to get back. And the insolence you have given us since you returned has proven too much. Reginald wants you at his house and will have you. After everything is approved and you are wed, we wash our hands of you. Of the child we never wanted. The child we hated from the second you were born. The child we resented from the start.”
He sat back in his seat and Persephone looked at who she thought was her mother, but Kitty refused to look her way.
Biting her lip to keep from crying, she sat in the seat and felt her heart wither and die in her chest.
