Chapter 1
“I’m not marrying that quack.”
“You’ll marry who I say and that’s that young lady. His granddaddy has a boatload of money and… ”
” I don’t care if he has more gold than Croesus, if you try to force me to marry that backwoods hick there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
I walked across the room and dropped down in my chair. I’d said all I meant to on this subject and that was that.
I’m used to getting my way after all, have been since I was four and learned how to wrap my daddy around my little pinky. Mama is a harder nut to crack, but I can get around her well enough if I need to.
I’ve just spent the last few weeks on a roller coaster ride. Mama has got it into her head that I have to marry someone of her and daddy’s choosing, like this was the seventeenth century or some mess.
I’m fixing to show her that I will do no such thing. I have my own ideas about what my husband would look like and be like. He would come from a good family of course, have lots of money, and a good standing in our society.
He will also be so enamored of me, that he will let me have my way in all things.
I looked out across the front lawn, towards the pond that ran alongside of the property. The ducks and swans were lazing in the late evening sun, while off in the distance the call of a gator or two could be heard.
I turned my attention back to mama, who was busy picking up the clothes I’d left strewn all over the floor. I don’t see why she does that, because the maid always does it in the mornings anyway.
“Alright then if that’s the way you want to play it.”
Mama had her stubborn face on, which meant she was about to make my life miserable. I’m beginning to think that’s her favorite pastime.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my mama to bits, but sometimes I get the feeling she wishes I were something else altogether. I’m a debutante down to the bottom of my little feet yes, but I also have a whole lot of my daddy in me.
Which means I’m stubborn as a mule and I like to go my own way more than I like following the crowd.
She dropped my clothes in the wicker hamper in the corner and headed for the door with a determined look on her face.
She slammed the door and then I heard the sound of keys, before the lock was turned in my door. I flew across the room but it was too late.
“Mama what’re you doing?” Mama open this door.” I yelled and pounded on the door, but to no avail. I could hear her humming as she made her way down the hallway away from my yelling and screaming. What now? I rattled the door just to be sure, but it was just as I’d feared. She’d locked me in. I can’t believe it. I tried the adjoining door, but that too had been locked from the other side. Had she planned this when she came up here?
The only other door led to my bathroom, and the only window in there was too small for me to fit through.
Well shit, a look out my bedroom window showed I was good and truly stuck. There were iron guards on the outside, and I was a good three-stories up in this old antebellum house, that was two minutes older than dirt.
I can’t believe she would go to these lengths for that good for nothing scamp Jethro Durant.
Whoever heard of such a name in the twenty-first century? Everybody called him Jet, but so what.
He was a swamp digging Neanderthal, who had the nerve to tell me, on our last and final date if I had anything to say about it; that when we get married he would become the man of the house, and as his wife I would do as he says, or else.
Who does he think he’s talking to? I have a college education for crying out loud. But according to him, my only function as a woman would be raising his kids and keeping that old plantation house he wants me to call home clean.
He could kiss my lilywhite butt if he thought that was ever gonna happen. I hadn’t even bothered addressing his asinine suggestions, when he so seriously told me how things were going to be. As if!
Didn’t he know that I could have any man I set my mind to? Why, I had men in three states vying for my hand. Men who knew how to treat a lady like myself, men who would bend over backwards to please me.
Who did that over inflated windbag think he was anyway? So what his family had money? that just goes to show that money can’t buy class. He probably picks his teeth at the table with his fork.