Meet Madeline

England, 18^th Century

                “Crash!”

                “Madeline!”

                Madeline flushed at her Aunt Thilde’s voice. The shrill could be heard throughout the house. She bent to pick up the fragments of the pot and tea cups her clumsy hands broke and in the process, composing herself. She could hear her Aunt’s shuffling steps hurrying towards the stair landing and she knew an earful would follow.

                “The pot and the cups, is it now?” her Aunt’s shrill of a voice penetrated her haze. She looked up to see the wrinkled face red with anger.

                “I am so sorry, Aunt Thilde, I did not mean to let the tray slip – “she started to mumble an apology but was cut off.

                “I did not mean to! I did not mean to!” Thilde continued to shrill fanning herself with her hands while pacing back and forth over her niece who quietly went back to picking up the rest of the broken shards.

                “You’ll impoverish us in no time with your clumsiness! Why do I ever have to put up with you? If not for the memory of my poor sister, Anna, I would have sent you to the Coventry as no man bothered to ask for your hand!” Thilde dramatically placed the back of her hand on her forehead, a poise she had mastered by watching too many plays of women in despair. “Such a dim-witted, plain creature like you is better off a nun! And, clumsy, too, I daresay!”

                As soon as these words came out of her mouth, Thilde pointed a last one sharp look at her niece and left with haughty airs. Madeline heaved a sigh. Her Aunt always calls her that, dim-witted and plain. Time had eased the pain that the words bring but still, they were quite annoying to hear.

                After taking the broken pottery to the kitchen, Madeline went quietly to her room. The small hole at the back of the mansion’s library had been her home for five years now. It was dark and a little airless and her only consolation was it was warm on winter and she could stay in the library and read to hear heart’s content.

                She faced the mirror in her small drawer and tucked a wisp of her raven-black hair behind her ear. Limp mane, so different from the wavy curls that were the high fashion among the ton. Black pools stared back at her from the glass. She was not ugly, or so she thought she was not. Her complexion may be a little fair but it was due to her not being able to venture out except when she accompanies her Aunt or cousin on walks. Her features were something on the middle, not appalling but not beautiful, either. Maybe that was why her Aunt calls plain – safe and unnoticeable.

                Her musings turned to her mother. “What did mother look like? Was she plain like me? Did we have the same hair and eyes? Was she also a left-behind that was why she had to settle for less –“

                The ringing bell jolted her back to reality. A guest.

                She hurriedly went out of her cocoon to see who it was. Her Aunt did not want to keep visitors waiting.