The Charlotte Series: Book 1: The Pirate's Treasure

chapter 05

London 1854

Millicent looked in the hand mirror and tenderly touched the puffy area around her eye. Her father's fist caught her squarely puffing up her cheek and closing her eye. The bruise was beginning to color now and she knew from her mother's many bruises exactly how many shades of purple it would turn before it turned green, then yellow, and then slowly faded entirely.

Millicent closed her good eye and relived the moments of heart-pounding terror.

Mother fell and struggled to her feet. Millicent willed her to stay down but she realized as her mother did that his boots hurt worse than his fists. Father battered her down again with a blow that sent Mama stumbling backward. Her heels got caught in her skirts and she fell hard. Her head struck the floor and she passed out. Father grabbed her collar and raised his fist to strike her again.

Millicent's fear for her mother over-rode the fear that stayed her feet. She ran toward them and pulled at the hand that held Mother's collar. She never saw the other fist coming. She hit the floor with enough force it rattled her bones and she felt her head spinning. Her hand flew to her stinging face.

"Serves you right." He growled. "And clean up this mess." He waived his hand toward Mother before he turned his back and stormed out.

Millicent touched her face again and shook her head. She promised Mama she wouldn't provoke him. She would follow his ridiculous rules of submission and obedience, rules which changed frequently and without prior notice on his many whims. She promised. She even sat civilly through supper and behaved as though her mother wasn't lying battered senseless upstairs.

She sighed. That was last night. Now it was morning. She needed to go down and see to her father's breakfast. She checked on her mother on her way to the kitchen. Her mother was still unconscious. Millicent kissed her mother's forehead and closed the door quietly. She frowned as she took the servant's stairs and went to the kitchen.

It took longer and longer for Mother to recover from the beatings. Millicent recognized with an aching deep in her bones that her mother was not much longer for this world. In her many quiet moments, she had come to terms with that eventuality. She even figured out how to deal with the way she felt about her father that would honor her mother's edict not to hate him.

It occurred to her one morning that her father was simply too small a man to waste the energy of working up a good and proper hatred. With that realization her hatred shifted to disgust. While disgust was still un-ladylike it wasn't enough to blacken her soul and damn her to the eternal company of the monster she had the misfortune to call Father. Mother would agree.

Disgust was perfectly acceptable, she reasoned further...disgust and a teensy bit of loathing maybe. Millicent smiled. She smoothed her skirts before she left the kitchen with the breakfast tray for her father. He always took his breakfast in his office. She couldn't remember a time he'd ever taken breakfast in the breakfast room with her and mother. She quickened her step. She couldn't be late with the tray.

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For the past few days the servants fell quiet when she entered a room. No doubt they were discussing Mama's death. She'd once heard the milkman murmur "Don't want to upset the poor child". Millicent knew it was an attempt at kindness, but it frustrated her to be called a child!

Does a child repeatedly nurse her battered mother back to health after a beating? Can a child take over the household because her mother is too weak? Would a child hold her mother's hand as she drew her last breath?