Miss Millicent 's Regency Trails

When the post arrived I stood frozen with dread looking at the letter on the tray. The handwriting stirred the cauldren of fear in me that was never far from the surface. It felt as if a century had passed before I gathered my courage enough to pick the packet up and break the seal.  I stood there holding the letter wondering what she was planning to do with me at last.
Slapping the folded letter against the palm of my hand I turned down the hallway and entered the library. My old battered secretary with its comfortable chair sat in a well sunlit corner of the room. This was my private santuary where I went to scribble my thoughts down in a journal.
The desk was covered with scraps of paper and odd notes tucked here and there as I sorted through the pile to find one particular missive. I had been preparing for this occurrance for some time now. I had began my journal a few days after my injury, such as I choose to call it.

Few things are as unatural as my mother and her obsession to control every possible person within her sphere of influence. She loved to bemoan the fact that she had not been born a man that she was wasted as a woman.
After all these years I tended to agree with her she was wasted as a woman who was married to a weak man.
It had also dawned on me at an early age she would not have tolerated a man who stood up to her on principal or denied any of her high handed demands.
She considered nothing more important than her position in Society. She used every opportunity, every occasion  to futher her vain ambitions. As a child she had been given a firm belief in her vast superiority of her person and breeding. Mother's sole talent was the art of manipulation.
She had reigned for a short while as a Diamond during her Debutante Season and never let those around her forget it. Her education was adequate for a woman of her standing. She had been sent to a well respected finishing school in Bath the year before her come out "to get polished to a fine gloss" as she like to put it before she set out to take the Ton by storm.
She did not succumb to something so vulgar as a love match although she was no stranger to passion. Hers was an arranged marriage, a condition that is often the norm in order to keep the entailed estates states intact.
Mother loved Society and all the intrique that went with it, her idea of fun was a chorus of shameful gossiping with all her fellow cronies of like mind. If these tidbits of fact, rumor or fantasy destroyed some young hopeful miss's life then all the better. The juciest eating was when they tore to shreds a former member of her select circle of  friends.

I have dreaded during the past six years the very letter that lay on the desk before me.
I always knew she would remember her distasteful duty to me one day. It would be beyond her to leave me in peace although that is my greatest wish.
Of course not,  I can even hear the words over the many miles that separate us.
"Something must be done about the girl even though she is tarnished past saving." Now at long last it seems she has made plans to get me settled in a respectable life situation.
My lip curled as I muttered. "How quaint."

In the last three years I have thought a great deal about the events that ruined me for marriage. I have remembered things and they have come together in ways that have painted a scenerio that is both ugly as it is evil.
I refuse to accept this fate, but to escape this future Mother has planned for me I must reach out to an old friend.
Some one whom I hope I can convince to assist me. My greatest hope is that this time I will be the one to cut the cards and it will deal an Ace into my hand.
Settling down to compose my letter I sharpened my quill and thought how best this situation could be handled.

One of the many lessons I have learned in the past few years is that life is a deck of cards. In the game of life,  we are sometimes handed cards that have hidden value if you know how to play them.
I have been busy, I have selected a hand that must be played close to the chest.
My Uncle Bart, a brillant military strategist taught me well the meaning of covert operations. We had planned for this eventuality it was through his great kindness that I have been able to move on with my life.
A thing was done to me and I must have answers. I do not believe the events that occured where random.
Now to put the first card in play.



My Dearest Friend,
Please allow me to speak the plain truth to you with no round about to my story. I must apologize for the infrequency of my correspondance. I have been greatly preoccupied with my troubles. I have kept a close eye to my future and could not embroil you with in the scandal.
I swear few things are truely known about the night of my attack when "Hell and all its Glory" was unleashed on me.
It is also true in my anger that I have cursed God and reviled the Heavens for my misfortune. My only defense for this sin was that I was but a child, forgive me.
If I may, bare my soul to you, the memories of that night still paralyzes me with fear.
At least the things I precieve to remember although those are patchy at best.
How can I live without the truth?
I ask you what type of life is left to me?
Is it better to fear the unknown or to know the horror of the truth?
I have been skulking about as you call it and not facing Society or making them accept me. I accept your assesment my dear, as the truth I have been hiding, seeking answers and finally have some results to share with you
Few are the people in Suffolk County who would know me by my birth name. Most that do would not recognize me as her. My name here is Miss Millicent Bondsworth of the Hall in Bowling Greene.
Yes dear, I realise this is confusing but it was the only way to find the people I needed to contact and to dig in to the events that transpired.
If I reveal these ugly secrets in order to tell my story after all these years.  I will  tell you it is out of the most selfish reasons.
You are my oldest friend , my truest friend and I need you.
Dearest this has been mine toI bear and would that it would go away and trouble me no more.
  Unfortunately that is not to be for the cauldren has been set back on the fire and it does seeth and boil again.
I wish I did not have to share this burden and cause you trouble but I sorely need your help.
The time has come and I feel a great need to set my mind at ease.  I confess it will be a relief to know some one will have heard the full of it and hopefully understand.
Please join me here in Bowling Greene at your earliest convienence.







"Hell and all its Glory" had become London's most popular catch phrase. I  found to my sorrow and misfortune whenever people talked about the incident.
It was a small almost pointless incident that sent me down this trail to sorrow.
I remember that day almost like it was yesterday.

Tea, one of the Tons more popular social habits to see and be seen.
I was once again made to sit in Mother's Recieving Room "to attend civilized functions" as my Mother calls them and was told to behaved like a Lady.
While Mother's friends and hanger ons came to whisper and dare I say it "gloat" at my Mother's misfortune.
My ill fortune was that my nose had been broken in the Spring during Hell Night and my face was now scarred and whatever my hopes had been for the future lay in ruins.
Mother and I had come to an agreement.
I would sit in on her at homes and partake tea with her associates but I would not remove my veil at anytime during the course of the last few weeks of Autumn during theTon's Little Season.
Being put on public view was not my idea. "It is in the families best interest." were the words they used.
To dis-spell what ever foul rumors that had run riot as grist for the town's gossip mill.
They labeled it damage control so Mother and Father's social career's could recover.
It was a sound stategy as Mother's brother Uncle Bart put it to me.
"To break the ice and to show them I had bottom." Or to show them I was not with "child", that was three weeks ago.

Three weeks of snide ugly asides made in a soft comforting voices laden with spite.
Like Miss Ferndale of the bucked teeth and tiny pig-like eyes, " Yes, I too can be spiteful and mean spirited" thinking  her Father is going to need to pony up the loot to get that one married off.
Then there where the other of her kind believing if they say things in a genial tone openly. It makes them honest and dare I say sound "caring."
I had gotten to the point I did not care any longer and the thought worried me.

"Oh the poor girl !" Dowager Bloomington nodded into her lemonade as she nibbled on a biscuit.
"How simply awful for her family !" slightly slurping as she sipped the cool lemonade.
"I don't see how they hold their heads up in public after the shame of it all." she t'sked, t'sked.
Miss Ferndale whispered in a carrying voice. " I agree, but I am sure you too must feel as I do that the situation is of course... hopeless." She paused to allow the import of her statement to sink into the Dowager's mind.
Miss Ferndale dug into her reticule and fished out her kerchief to dab daintily at the biscuit crumbs stuck at the corner of her mouth.
As she bent closer to the Dowager, I passed a plate piled high with biscuits near to the elder woman's hand and watched her select a few more to nibble on.
I heard Miss Ferndale mutter "She's ruined no eligible party can be found for her now." with a smirk she arched her thinly plucked eyebrows at me.

"Such a terrible thing to happen to a young girl too and at the start of the Season. Oh! I would have just died had it happened to one of my girls!" the Dowager bemoaned.
Then she glanced around the tea service and asked  Mother if the Cook had prepared some Macaroons for Tea.  The Dowager seemed happy to compliment Mother truthfully for once. Promptly swearing that the way Mother's Cook maked Macaroons turns them into a treat not to be denied.

Is it possible for a simple at home tea to become a long drawn out torment?
I wonder, what they would do if I spoke to them of the horror?
Giving more grist for the mill by pandering to them and feeding their curiosity but that would just be playing into their hands.
"By God!"
The Bowlings are a stiff necked lot and have more pride than to give an inch.

  The absence of my  memory has turned into a blessing and a source of great fear to me. At times destoying what small bits of piece of mind I have been able to scratch together.
Mercifully, I have either forgotten most of what happen that night or had no memory of it at all to begin with, at best my memory was patchy.
It is the events of the days leading up to my "Doom". That have become to bugger me as the stable hands say, although I am not to know such language.
Those days have great meaning for me because they laid the ground work for what followed.
They crawled around inside my mind like fearsome spiders and disrupted my thoughts filling me with doubts and questions.
My nights still are spells of darkness laden with torment to catch me in my sleep.