You Have My Heart, Lady Illea (A Lady Illea Novel)

Chapter Four

Aymar smiled at her daughter. "You're making a mess." she said.

    Allie looked up at her with giant, shining green eyes, and blinked a few times. Her two pigtails stuck out from either side of her head and her large round face looked like the portrait of a cherub.

"No I'm not!" she whined and looked down at the bowl on her lap. "I'm doing what you told me to mommy."

   Aymar cleaned her hands with the kitchen towel and knelt down next to her young daughter. As much as it killed Aymar to say it but she hated the life of a six. When Aymar saw her five year old daughter she did not see the the well bred three her daughter was. She saw a six wearing a dreary pink dress with a bowl of cake frosting on her lap.

   Aymar's daughter should be wearing the finest silks and laces the world had to offer. Her daughter should be wearing diamond studs on her eyes and pearl clips in her dark silky hair. Her daughter should be living the same luxurious life Aymar did when she was growing up.

   Aymar was living in a house the size of her old bedroom with a damn kitchen stove that never worked and a leaky bathroom faucet. She gave up everything in the name of love and more importantly to spite her parents for always trying to control her.

   Now, she's been married a handful of years and while she wasn't deprived of love she was miserable. A gorgeous  daughter and an adoring husband isn't the only thing in the world that can make a girl happy.

  She needed money. Aymar had never lived a day of her life without money and the past five years were horrible for her. Watching Saul work himself to death and come home late every night was finally taking its toll on Aymar. It crushed her soul to see the stress finally take its course and suck the youhful beauty right out of her.

   Bags under her eyes, thinning hair, crows feet, frown lines. The only thing left is for her to be fat! All the while she started to curse the day she signed the dreaded papers that dropped her down 3 castes of where she was rightfully born. Her daughter was a three NOT a lowly six.

   And damn it her daughter should live like it too!

  Alas, it was her own fault for falling in love with the waiter that brought her her breakfast every morning. Granted, she wanted to escape a loveless engagement desperately but why choose the servant of all people?

   Aymar reached out and took the wooden spoon from her daughter's hand and smiled at her. Truthfully as much as Aymar hated being a six and hated being poor but she did adore her daughter. And let's face, the nights her husband actually did share a bed with her weren't all that bad either. In fact it was an enormous motivation to stay. She looked at her daughter.

  Alessandra was like her personal play toy.

"You don't hit the bowl with the spoon, sweetheart." she said. "You have to stir. Like this."

   Her daughter caught on quickly and while she stirred the cake contents of the cake frosting together she popped the cake batter into the oven. Aymar sat at the kitchen table and watched the clock tick.

  She watched it tick away the greatest years of her life.

   Hours had passed and Saul was still not home. The cake was in the refridgerator and it was time to put Allie to sleep. Aymar stared at the horribly bare walls of her daughters bedroom. She looked at the hideously dreary bed sheets and dull pieces of furniture. He daughter should be sleeping in a room with fine wall paper, colorful bed sheets, and enormous closet, and vintage furniture. But no. 

Of course not.

    At first Aymar was esctatic to have a child but it was not until her daughter was actually born did she realize the financial burden a child left on their parents.

"Alright, into bed." she said.

   She pulled back the sheets and her daughter's head fell onto her pillow. Her daughter's silky dark hair fell like a veil behind her head and she looked up at her with big piercing eyes. She was truly the most precious thing on Earth.

"Where's daddy?" Alessandra asked.

    Aymar gritted her teeth.

Why I'd love to know, she thought to herself.

"Working." she answered instead. "Come, I'll read you a story."

"Read the one about the three little bears!" she squealed, nearly falling out of bed.

Aymar laughed and helped her daughter back into bed. "Alright, alright." she conceeded.

    As infuriated as she was Aymar took out one of the only childhood books she managed to smuggle from home the fateful night she left and began reading until Alessandra had drifted off into blissful sleep. Aymar checked the time and realized it was time to watch the Report. Sighing heavily she stood up and looked at her daughter one last time.

"Oh dear heat," she said and touched her hair. "One day you'll be covered in fine silks and wear the finest of jewels. You'll live in the grandest palace with millions of adoring people at your feet. You will live like a Queen."

    She watched her sleeping daughter and tears burned the back of her throat. The door to the house shut with a loud thump and she jumped.

"Sweetheart!" Saul called. "I'm home!"

"I'll be right there!" she called back.

   Alessandra stirred in her bed and Aymar tried not to move. She didn't want to wake her. When Allie continued to speak Aymar sighed.

"Do not love anyone, sweet child." she said. "Love is useless and it gets you nowhere in life. All love does is cause incurable wounds that constantly open and never heal. Love destroys people. It destroys happiness. Best to keep you and your heart inside inpenetrable walls. Don't let anyone reach you. Not ever. Once you give someone your heart they have the power to destroy you and then there's no going back. You have yourself to think about first and foremost. Opening up is like opening up your skin with the sharp blade of a dagger."

  Aymar bent down and kissed her forehead. "Which is why I have to let you go. Because I'll never be anything more than the wife of a lowly six if I stay. You both deserve so much better."

    With that she walked towards the door and looked at her daughter for what she didn't know would be the last time. She shut off the lights and closed the door not knowing the kind of future she was leaving behind.