Chapter 19
Lydia POV
A maid lives to serve. She has no life but that of catering to her mistresses every whim. At least that is what I was told every night as I went to bed. As a child who had never known her mother, I could never understand why a woman as beautiful as she had to serve the Weathers before my arrival.
I was unlike my mother in every way possible. I was a plain girl. I didn't posses any grand skills, or beauty. She was so enchantingly beautiful. She was the daughter of a rich nobleman. Her raven hair and golden skin had attracted every eligible suitor in all of Georgia. They offered her every mountain in the world, and every jewel of the sea, in exchange for her hand in marriage. But she only had eyes for the poor stable boy, my father.
When she became pregnant with me she was forced out of her house. My father offered to marry her, but he was killed before she could accept. No one ever found out who had murdered him. My mother spent her final days of heartache working as a maid for the Weathers. The only job a nineteen year old unmarried girl could find.
She gave birth to me on a cold winter night. As Lucy tells the story, she died only a few hours after my arrival. Seeing my face which resembled my fathers perfectly made her broken heart break beyond repair. She left me alone in this cold, dark, unforgiving world. She wasn't there for my first words, or to hold me on dark and scary nights. Instead she left for me a hard life of cleaning and serving.
Some nights I lie in bed and curse the mother who I never knew for the life she gave me. I could have had a life of luxury. I could be Elizabeth Weathers. Other nights I cry for her, to be held in her arms just once. Lucy took me under her arms from the moment I was born. She is whom i call 'mother'.
Most girls want to be like their mother when they grow up. They want to have their skill with a needle, their ability to cook, or their beauty. My mother was a runaway, and my adoptive mother is a head maid. You would say that is good enough for a girl like me. To aspire to be a head maid in a house such as the Weathers is a grand prospect.
I guess I really am my mother’s daughter. I have broken society's rules as my mother did before me. I have been caught up in a forbidden love of my own.
I am the maid who was caught in the coatroom with Jake Dallas at the Dallas Ball. As if life wasn't hard enough.