Chapter Two
Turkey Baster
Maxine Dawes
Community Manager
Hawkvale
The Road to Pinkwick
House
Marbleborne
Region
The Parallel
Two Weeks Later
Turkey baster.
If she wanted a kid, she should have used that damned
turkey baster.
These were my thoughts as the carriage…
Yeah, that’s what I said…
The carriage…
Slowly made its way down the road, bipping
and bopping, swaying and bouncing, and serious to God, with all that movement,
it was a wonder I didn’t hurl all over my gown.
Yeah, that’s what I said.
My gown.
Women wore gowns in this world.
And corsets.
One thing I knew for certain, the kind you had to
wear was nowhere near as comfortable as the kind you bought to give a thrill to
your guy.
I looked at “my dad.”
He was a lot heavier in this world.
This might be because he was a lot richer. Or it could be
because he was a lot lazier (because when he wasn’t all up in my face, teaching
me things about this world, he pretty much did nothing but sit around and plot,
or maybe it was sulk). Or it could be God’s punishment because he was a
gigantically bigger dick than my real dad was.
And considering my dad was a colossal asshole, that was
serious.
But I had a plan.
Play his game. Pretend I was doing his bidding (and FYI: his
bidding was that I was supposed to let some royal guy marry me, have sex with
me, make me pregnant, and once I had a son, I could have my mom back and go
home, leaving said son behind—uh-huh, that was his bidding).
My plan was, while I went about doing this unconscionably
awful stuff (or going through the motions), I’d figure out where Mom was. Once
I did that, I’d get her, and that troubled woman who looked exactly like me,
who was now with her.
After that there would be the small matter of finding a
witch to send us from this Disney Movie from Hell back to the real world.
And when we were home, I’d need to sell a kidney and about a
million pints of plasma in order to afford the therapy it was going to take to
see Mom through the aftermath of this nightmare. Not to mention the ongoing
care that chick was going to need. Because I knew another thing for certain,
she seemed docile and sweet (albeit freaked way the heck out), but she was
messed up and she needed someone looking after her. And for certain this guy,
who was her father, wasn’t doing a bang-up job of it.
However, that someone looking after her should maybe have
twelve degrees that taught them how to do that adequately, and thus should not
be my mom behind bars in a fucking dungeon somewhere in this Disney
Movie from Hell.
I looked out the window at the countryside rolling past,
hating it was so gorgeous.
But it was.
The colors were ridiculously vibrant. The flora and fauna
plentiful. The air even seemed like it had glitter floating through it, and it
smelled amazing. Fresh and clean. Wherever we were right then, you could smell
the grass or the flowers. But when you got near a river, you could smell the
water (yeah, the water, I wasn’t kidding, and it smelled fantastic).
My favorite? When you rode through a village and you got a
whiff of bread baking or meat roasting.
I was Belle drifting through town (though, also going
through countryside, and not doing this dancing and reading a book, but bipping and bopping in a carriage).
Except my “dad” was Gaston grown up and a hundred times more
of a villain than he was in the movie.
Years ago, Mom and I had sat at her kitchen table, as we
were wont to do, drinking wine, as we were also wont to do, bent over laughing
so hard (again, as was our wont) after she said she should have forgone the
whole dad thing and just gotten some guy’s sperm and a turkey baster.
We then went on to make up all sorts of ways we would
respect and honor said turkey baster, with shrines and offerings, giving it a
birthday and presenting it with a cake (the baster, we decided, liked angel
food, which, obvs, was an excuse for us to make angel food cake).
Sadly, I was not conceived with a turkey baster.
Suffice it to say, Dad had broken Mom’s heart (repeatedly).
Mine (repeatedly).
And the last time he did that was three weeks ago when he
sold us to his doppelganger from a parallel universe, me to stand in the stead
of his daughter and act as brood mare to some dukeling,
and Mom to be imprisoned so I’d do what I was told.
Oh yeah, right.
I forgot a part of my plan.
Once we got home, find my father, kick him in the gonads and
spit in his face.
Only that man could discover there was a parallel universe
(I mean, really?). Trust me, I could go the rest of my life not
knowing this place existed and never, ever coming here. I didn’t care
how many flowers there were and how cute it was to see a plethora of
cotton-tail bunnies scampering through the trees. And it was cute, believe me.
Not only did Dad discover it, but he found some way to get
himself something from it (in this instance, if what had been scattered on his
coffee table along with beer cans and overflowing ashtrays was the telltale
sign, it was a bag of emeralds).
Hanging me and Mom out to dry in the process.
“You know the consequences if you should do anything
foolish,” Dad’s voice came from not-Dad-but-still-Dad’s stupid mouth.
I looked to him to see he was staring out the opposite
window.
I looked out that window.
Oh boy.
That must be Pinkwick House, the
country seat of the House of Dalton. One of, apparently, a bunch of properties
these rich, royal dudes owned.
The big one?
Dalwin Castle, which was
supposedly amazing and perched on a cliff.
But that might be for later, say, should I and my fiancé
decide to be married there.
For now, things of note about Pinkwick
House.
One, it was pink. A mellow, precious, perfect pink that was
ludicrously appealing.
Two, it was large. It was not a house. Unless you referred
to Downton Abbey as a house, which you did not. Because it was a huge-ass abbey
turned into a house where rich people lived.
Three, it was so perfect, the air liked it better than other
places in this world, because the air glittered a ton more there.
Four, there was a creek up the hill at the side of it that
broke off into four tributary streams that rushed in front of and behind the
house, the water twinkling diamond-like in the bright sun, making the
picture-perfect scene even more perfect.
Five, there were flowers freaking everywhere.
Profuse pink and white wisteria graced the arch above the front door and fell
from the eaves of the house. Lush green ivy snaked up the walls. Huge urns
filled with purple and blue blooms dotted all over the place.
Six, there were fountains flowing into baths on either side
of the front door. The front area was an elegantly curved drive, the lawn
around it manicured. But beyond that to the sides, and you could even see to
the back, was a riot of meandering gardens you could get lost in for days.
Even the quaint stone outbuildings crawling with ivy and
wisteria looked out of a fairy tale.
Straight up, on the cobblestone courtyard in front of what
had to be stables, I’d lay money down Jaq and Gus were made into footmen there
sometime in the last century.
It was gorgeous. It was exquisite.
I hated it.
“Did you hear me, Maxine?” Dad-not-Dad asked.
“I harbor a death wish for you. It is fervent. I have
embraced it with all that is me. But sadly, this does not mean I can no longer
hear your bleating. Ow!”
He kicked me in the shin.
Hard.
It hurt.
A lot.
I glared at him.
“You respect your father,” he bit out.
“You’re not my father,” I returned.
He moved his feet like he was going to kick me again.
I shifted mine and snapped, “Fine. Right. You do know, I
haven’t forgotten my mother is in that hellhole taking care of your
daughter.”
He settled back and watched the pink house get closer.
“Don’t forget it. And don’t forget our deal.”
I wound a hand in a circle in front of me. Incidentally, it
was a hand covered in a baby-blue kid leather glove with baby-blue-covered
buttons on the inside at the wrist and intricate seam-work on the outside of
the hand with delicate scalloping around the edges. They were lovely, and they
felt like butter. I loathed them.
“Make him fall in love with me. Get him to knock me up.
Produce a son. Get pat on the head. Be reunited with my mother and let out of
this nightmare. Yeah, I didn’t forget our deal.”
He turned back to me. “We say yes in this world.”
I didn’t reply.
“Remember my teachings,” he ordered. “I haven’t spent hour
after hour for three weeks molding you into a fine lady of Hawkvale,
a woman fit to be called Countess of Derryman, which you are, for you
to fall at this first hurdle.”
You guessed it.
After that trip where he took me, blindfolded, to see where
Mom and the other me were holed up, a whole lot of unfun Eliza Doolittle
garbage had been going on for three weeks.
Which was apropos, considering a number of things, including
my current outfit (baby blue, form fitting down to kickpleats
that started at my knees, a smart, knife-edged bow at the back of said knees, a
one-foot train trailing from it, a long-sleeved bolero jacket up top that
buttoned over my breasts up to my neck, the dress under had short, cap sleeves
and a square neckline that exposed cleavage, all of this made in silk wool—it
was simple, but fabulous, however the large hat with enormous rosettes that sat
at a tilt on my head was not simple, it was extraordinary, and I detested it…all
of it).
I again didn’t reply.
“You perform well,” he stated, “your mother gets the
reward.”
“And your daughter,” I prompted.
He rolled his eyes and scoffed, “She’ll be fine. She doesn’t
even know where she is.”
“She might have some issues,” I said quietly. “But she’s not
stupid.”
His gaze skewered me. “Speak not of what you know nothing
about.”
“I know that woman has no idea where she is, but she does
know she’s not home.”