Time in Love

Chapter Eleven

Every night since that funeral dream my dreams had been the same. I walk to the kitchen, and see myself only it's not me. My hairs shorter and my brows are un plucked. My lips are chapped and my eyes had large bags under them. I am dead, my skin is a pale shade of green instead of the golden tone I usually inhabit.

The dead me whispers, "Stay away from him." And then I wake up. Feeling as if I'd gotten no sleep at all even when the shine blinds me from beyond my window.

It's the worst feeling in the world and I realize it's starting to show when a maid tells me someone is at the door for me.

It's a pudgy little man with one of those mustaches men wear when they are trying to be clever.

"God you look unwell, young lady."

I close my eyes and erase all the terrible things I could respond with.

"The buyers have upped their offer." He says swiftly, as if he knows I'm about to slam the door in his face.

And when I move too, he puts a pointy boot in the space between the wall and the doorframe. I glare at him.

"We don't accept." I snap.

The pudgy man raises his chin to look down at me when he's at least two feet shorter. "That is not up to you to decide young lady."

My blood boils at the term "young lady."

"For your information I am a woman and I say we do not accept. If you have a problem with that take it up with father himself!"

It's satisfying to watch the color drain from his face. One thing about my father was that his reputation proceeded him. As a rebound fighter in the war, he had all the scars and enemies to show for it. No one wants to come face to face with my old man.

Although, now a days he stayed hauled up in his office eating soup and tea, forgetting to check up on any of us. Only caring of himself while I take charge.

"From what I've heard you are a reasonable yo- erm woman! So just hear my offer out!" The man pleaded.

Just because I knew he wouldn't leave until I did hear him, I listened.

"The buyer is offering 300,000 silvers for you to move out so he can turn this place into a hospital."

My knees shook.

300,000.

It was more than I'd ever seen. It was the kind of money only kings and government officials had. More money than I'd probably ever see in this lifetime.

Would that much money really make a difference? What would grandmama think about this? She loved this house more than herself up to the day she died. Most days, I still feel her in these walls.

She was the one who gifted us this house. Mama never told me this story but before grandmother died she let me in on my mamas secret.

When my mother got pregnant by a soldier who was destined to go off and die in the war, her mother kicked her out. Saying she was a sham, a whore.

As my mother was slumming streets with no home, doing god knows what to survive, grandmother stopped in front of her. Lifted her pearly white hands to my mother and lifted her up off the sidewalk. She took my mother in and gave her a place in the estate to work.

With the housekeeping money my mom earned she could still barely afford to feed me no less herself. So grandmother told her she'd take care of all my expenses.

My mother raised me until I was four which was when father finally came home. But it wasn't as happy as it sounds. Grandmother told me of how they would fight constantly about how he'd changed, how he wasn't the same man any more. Then they'd go to their bed chambers and my mother would be pregnant again.

I was too young to remember the fighting but I remember how Emilia was born.

I was eight, Tulip was five and Daphne was four. They don't remember it but I do.

It was a horrible year. Father left for business and didn't come back for days. Then days turned into months and months turned into a year.

My mom wouldn't eat or sleep. I'd fed her, bathed her and brushed her hair. I knew if the staff found out about my mother's condition they would let it slip to others and they'd say she was a widow. Then we'd loose everything, we'd have no home if people knew there was no man in our house. I let the staff and my sisters all believe she was sick.

I was standing in front of a brothel the day that it happened. I watched as young girls with minimal clothing and painted faces attempted to drag in men twice their age. How'd they'd flaunted their bodies not even fully grown. I remember going up to one of the women, I asked her for a job.

She'd given me a hard look, meaner than even my mother's stares. And she'd told me, "Get the fuck away from here."

And so I did. And I never returned.

When I arrived home father was standing in the foyer holding a bundle of blankets. My mother was standing in front of him. Actually standing, even without my help, for the first time in months.

My mother spoke in a cracked and raggedy voice. "Give it to me." She'd said. And that was the last words they ever spoke to each other.

—

I looked the man straight in the face and said. "No."

When the door slammed I walked up to the maid who'd called me down and told her if that man ever came knocking than to kick him into the streets.

Just as I was just settling in with a good mystery novel when a the sound of knocking brought me to my feet.

I hissed curses all the way down the hall and down the steps and as I burst the door open screeching, "I said no now go away!" Golden brown eyes met mine and I gasped.

Romeo stared at me, wide eyed and expectant.