Ariana

Unbroken

 “Ariana, dear, stay here while I fetch your surprise.” My mother said, smiling.

I sat stone-faced in my seat, hiding my abject terror. Now, it may seem odd, but what scared me most about this situation wasn’t the ‘surprise’.

Instead it was the happy look on the Fury’s face. A truly happy look.

The Fury never looks happy. Ever.

I don’t know, it’s some kind of rule for her.

I was interrupted in my thoughts by my mother walking back in the room with another person. A man in a navy blue tailcoat with gold embroidery and a white powdered wig stood before me, polite smile on his lips. Yet as soon as my mother looked away, I could swear his eyes turned darker and he looked me up and down with greedy eyes.

No.

She wouldn’t.

She couldn’t.

She did.

“Sweetheart this is Commodore Stengel. He will be staying with us for a while.” She said, beaming. “He has been alerted of your situation dear, but is here to help you off the wrong path.” Wrong path? Wrong path? Who was the one forcing her daughter to marry some guy she’s never met!

It took all my concentration not to scream these things at her, spewing language she didn’t know I possessed.

She hadn’t even said it yet but I knew she would. What else could’ve made her so happy?  Well. . .Should’ve seen this coming.

I looked longingly out the window, again.

A day had already passed; if I didn’t make it out by nightfall I was stuck here permanently. I was trying to think of an escape plan, I really was, but I was being watched around the clock now.

The Commodore was surprised to see the lack of security on someone that my mother didn’t want escaping. So he took it upon himself to shut me in my second story bedroom, only letting me out for meals.

My mother adored him; honestly, you’d think she was the one marrying him.

But, more importantly, I think I finally worked out a descent plan.

Around noon I opened my door to be greeted of course by my two guards. They tried to shove me back inside my room, but I quickly lied about going downstairs to cook lunch. Having never lived with me, they did not find this, ominous, suspicious, or life threatening in any way. I decided to make stew, which is probably my best dish because you put meat and herbs in a pot of boiling water.

The guards followed me to the kitchen, but didn’t accompany me into the pantry. Once down there, I grabbed a bottle of wine and stuffed it in the bottom of a potato sack, which I carried back up to the kitchen. Chopping up the actual potatoes, I put a bunch of import-looking herbs in a pot of water as it came to a boil, later adding the potatoes and some meat that I had a maid chop, as it was improper for me to get my hands dirty.

Fifteen minutes later, it didn’t look too bad. In fact, it might even be edible!

I had the maid go and tell mother and the Commodore that lunch was ready. My mother was suspicious, but I had witnesses to tell her that I hadn’t put anything shifty in the stew.

Like I predicted, the stew was edible, which, I’ll have you know, is my biggest food-related achievement to date. My mother became even more suspicious when I offered to help wash dishes, but was probably also wondering if she had finally managed to break me.

I put away all the things I had taken from the pantry, except for my precious bottle of wine in its potato sack. I tied the sack around my waist underneath my outer skirts with some twine and then headed back to the sitting room, where my mother and fiancé were talking happily about the ‘miserable low lives’ across the ocean in the colonies.

Resisting the urge to snort that they were probably happier than I was, I announced that I wasn’t feeling well, and that I would be retiring for the night.

Four wine filled hours later the two guards outside my bedroom door were fast asleep. I might have ‘accidentily’ gotten caught by them, trying to sneak the bottle into my room. And I might have told them that in return for not turning me in to my fiancé, they could keep the wine.

But they were the ones who drank until the late hour plus alcohol knocked them out cold. With silent glee, I packed up all my jewelry, meaning to sell it later, and stepped cautiously over my sleeping captors.

Having commited to memory every creaking floorboard on the way to the kitchen, I picked my way over to the window. I slowly opened it, making absolutely sure it didn’t squeak. I lifted myself onto the counter- and my knee hit a bowl, sending it to the floor with an all mighty crash.

$h!t.

I practically flung myself out the window, scraping my hands and painfully banging my knees on the cobble stones, desprate to get away from a house where I could already hear the sounds of people waking.