Courting Trouble

Scandal.

Conventionally, Malisha's parents were like good cop and bad cop. These were the roles that they had always chosen to inflict upon themselves whenever such matters arose. However and unfortunately for the girl, this day things looked a little different. Good cop was bowed down in her seat weeping, looking like she had just been rammed by a truck and bad cop was running the show unreservedly.

"What is this, Malisha?"

The General asked her, slamming a copy of the evening edition on the table that was before her. The girl flinched obviously at the loud sudden noise as she looked up to peek into the face of her father's terrifying gaze.

"That bad." She attempted to joke to lighten up the situation and probably his dark mood as well but he would not have it. The man was taking none of it.

"Look!" he growled again and the girl flinched, her gaze falling to the paper and the large letters that had been written in red and bold.

'ANOTHER SCANDAL AT LAST'

"What is it with these people?" She groaned rather pathetically, but she still read it anyway. Her eyes scanned and skimmed and after she had gotten a gist of what it was saying, the girl was finally ready to speak. "It is like they are always waiting for me to slip or something." Malisha complained. Not a great opening but a girl could hope that it could glean a little sympathy.

"Then why do you do it? Why do you give them fodder to beat you with?" The General growled as Malisha frowned deeply contemplating those words.

"Beat? Fodder?"

"I don't know. It just happens." She finally chose to go with that, her cheeky tone masking the fear that was welling up and threatening to let out. The general narrowed his eyes at her and her mother whimpered as if to herald her daughter's impending doom.

"What is it with you? Can't you be serious for once?"

"I am being serious." Malisha thought back to let her concience know.

"Are you trying to get us killed or something?"

"Okay, I am sorry." She replied as she tried to make peace with it.

"Don't tell me that! Tell them not me." It retorted, steering her back to the present which not only included a mopping mother, but a glaring General who looked like he was about to strangle her.

What followed next was an hour long lecture on manners and propriety and how she, as their eldest daughter had failed to embody both and to become a model of those two values to her younger siblings. Instead, she had once again brought shame and disgrace to the Lenton household and to their exalted Lenton name, just like she had those four years ago.

Of course she did not bother to correct them or to point it out that the words 'shame'and 'disgrace' essentially referred to one and the same thing, but like the dutiful daughter that she was, she sat through it all acquiescently and for what felt like an eternity having been denied an opportunity to defend herself or call a lawyer. Of course, in itself, the General's fearsome gaze was mostly responsible for her silence. It had a way of compelling a mouth shut and to a point that the little disciplinary committee ended up looking like the famed Spanish inquisition. And well, according to the General and in addition to being a shame and a disgrace, Malisha was both an infidel and a disappointment, callous and irredeemable in every way. But none of this was new, seeing that they had already been down that road before, more than several times in fact. It was somewhat funny really, how Malisha could predict, after so many altercations and with almost perfect accuracy, what her old man would say next.

"I should gamble, right?"

"Malisha!" the General growled.

It snapped her out of the reverie, causing the haze that had formed over her eyes to clear and exposed her to his trademark glower which he was now using to try and intimidate her. A glower which, if she had not been already immune to it, would have reduced her into a quivering mess of fear.

But Malisha. The great General Lenton's daughter who had already spent most of her over twenty years of life under his roof and if that alone had not done anything to give her immunity, then nothing else would.

Like a dear caught in headlights, Malisha swallowed gathering, from the expression that he was giving her, that she had missed something, something that he had said in the time that she had spaced out.

To get her bearings, Malisha tried to look to her mother for help, but all she got was a sob and another round of mutterings as more tears continued to flow out and down her mother's cheeks.

"Good Lord, why couldn't you leave the damned scarf alone?" The girl bowed her head in shame, even as her inner voice restarted the mental barrage. Another look at her mother and her crumpled form triggered another wave of guilt that washed over her, blaming her for being the source of her mother's present misery.

"Don't beat up yourself too much. I believe it was not totally your fault."

"How do you mean?" Malisha dared to ask.

" I mean, there was the scarf, the wind, the Duke and his little harem..."

"not the Duke!.... Oh! I get it now." she gasped, as she caught a glimpse of what her mind was going on about. Slowly her guilt left her as it was superseded by great anger as she finally acknowledged the role of her main antagonist in everything that happened to her.

"Is that all you got from that?" the voice of her thoughts chuckled.

"It's all his fault! Don't you see?Now, because of him, I am being sent to the third floor!" She replied even as that singular thought caused her mind to quake with apprehension as she anticipated the sentencing that was sure to come on next.

*****

for the third floor as it was also called was the Lenton Manor's attic and a true embodiment of the classic scary attic, complete with creaky floor boards, massive spider webs, storage boxes that no one knew what kind of spookables they concealed and of course, General Lenton's idea of a well dished out punishment. It was initially meant to be for time out but now, it had resulted to be an exile of some sort.

With no more fight left in her, Malisha graciously accept her punishment and set out to move her things from her old room on the second floor to their huge dusty attic on the third floor. This feat she knew, would probably take the rest of the evening and probably the next entire day, but it was not like she had a choice in that matter. A sentence had been passed and she was determined not to fight it any longer. As she stood up from her seat to exit from the presence of her parents, a lot of thoughts criss-crossed her mind. They were dark and violent, all geared towards a certain young man and the different ways she was going to make sure to dicapitate him. It did not bother her once that such a feat would be almost impossible to accomplish, nor how dangerous it was to follow through on such a threat. No, they soothed her wounded thoughts and that was all she had allowed herself to consider.

" Such poisonous thoughts."

"A girl can dream, right?"

"Yes... but usually it's never about such stuff."

"You are only saying that because you are my conscience and you are required to say so."

"What? You think that if I encouraged you, some kind of police would come and drag me away?"

"Yea." Malisha replied offhandedly. "Or you would die or something along those lines."

"Mmm..." the voice replied noncommitaly, neither accepting or denying the fact. "Okay, say you actually succeed with your plans. What happens to you or Thomas? You think you have it rough now, but they would crucify both you and him, and after that, your entire lineage after you would curse you, curse you as they suffer for the crime that you so thoughtlessly committed..."

"Okay, okay, I get it." She thought back as her mind filled with thoughts of Thomas, who was even now the biggest reason why the relationship with her parents was still strained.

"You know I am right."

"That's about the only thing that we agree on." Malisha replied rather caustically.

"You know, it's rather unfortunate that what happenned had to happen because things were truly getting better."

"Yea, that is until that little mishap happenned and now the media is spewing out lies about my scandalous seduction of the oh so honourable Duke Carlisle."

At that the little voice burst out laughing even as Malisha's terrible mood plummeted even further.

"What now?" she thought audibly, too exhausted to care.

"I didn't say anything."

"But you wanted to."

"You wouldn't want to know anyway." The voice replied dismissively.

"Try me." She tried persuade it to no avail.

"Mmm...No!" It responded, causing her frustration to grow tenfold and she let out another growl.

"Excuse me?" A maid asked her as they passed each other on the main hallway.

"Nothing." Malisha replied cooly before walking off briskly to fulfill the terms of her present punishment.