The Rosy Hours

Chapter Two - Education

My bitterness and resentment towards my mother only grew.

I was a troublesome child. I got into everything, tearing apart clocks and fitting them back together, drawing on the walls, scratching things into tables. Fingers itching to create. As I grew older it was becoming clearer that what my mother wanted from me and what she would end up getting were completely different things. At the tender age of 12 years old I was taught manners.

"Every lady should have manners Kiera, proper manners are the cornerstone of perfect brides."

And so I had my manners lessons. And I was taught French of course, and when I finished that mother thought it wise that I should learn English too, then Latin, then German, and Spanish. Though I suspect at this point she was just trying to keep me occupied. She taught me piano, though I quickly out-learned her on that, and when Marie bought me my first violin I taught myself that too.

I was even given a rudimentary understanding of maths, and of course reading, which I could do in the many languages. All of this, and only being thirteen. Yet, still I could not impress my mother.

I was still ugly.

As far as my mother was concerned that meant I was completely un-marriageable, which was to her, the ultimate crime...

"Unmanageable! Unmarriageable! Well perhaps we can find a nice blind man for her!" I'd heard her exclaim more than once.

I climbed like a monkey. Read everything I could get my hands on. Understood things no child my age should. I'm not bragging, just telling the facts.

So, to keep me occupied, books were acquired from my father's library. The only real thing left of him... besides me, I mean.

I never knew my father, he died before I was born. I was glad for that. It was a mercy. But sometimes, I'd take one of the well loved volumes from his little collection, and I'd smell it. I like to think that my father always smelled like books. Books and sawdust. A smell I would later come to love.

But I digress.

My education was an odd one. Eclectic. Built out of the bricks of books and the mortar of Marie.

As it was, Marie was the one who first gave my mother the Idea.

"She already draws on everything. What's the harm in giving her some paper and crayons? At least that way you'll save your walls."

Then...

"She's already drawn the papers up, what would be the harm in sending some in? Surely Charles has some colleagues that could take a look at them."

She was speaking about the architectural pictures I was so fond of drawing. Encouraging my mother to send them to one of my late father's work friends.

So my mother did, and soon a very amused man was let into our house.

He must have thought this to be some clever ruse.

I was only 14 at the time, and surely no child could have drawn what was sent in. Let alone a female child.

What an imbecile.

My mother told me very clearly what to expect of this man.

"He used to work with your father. He is a good man, you sit here and... well just behave,"my mother sighed.

I had been wrangled into yet another impractical dress. This one a bright summery blue, and I had sat, semi patiently, as my mother brushed out my tangled hair, then took the curling rod to it. Lord! How I detested the smell of burning hair!