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The Hawthornes are introduced while having their family portrait painted.




Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.


 

 

 

Summer 1833

 

If it was a mistake to have married the man of her dreams, Therese could not imagine having gone down the right path.

 

She herself had sprawled forth from the dark alleys of New Orleans' French Quarter, daughter of a runaway slave-turned-prostitute and some haphazard patron, a waitress herself for most of her life until only very recently. How fate had brought her and the proud, noble Englishman beside her together was beyond Therese's understanding, yet she dared not question. Many a twilight she would stumble up from a seemingly sound sleep only to look at the bedecked walls about her, to run her wavering hands over the finely-threaded cotton upon her sheets. Her most favorite redeemer of reality, however, were the winsome faces of her children.

 

There were five of them; five darling little girls, all of them running amuck  and fretting about in the library. Lord Roderick Hawthorne, the sixth Earl of Somerset, presided over them in a state of disarray as she attempted to beckon each one into her place. He stood tall and regal with his khaki-dyed general's overcoat glimmering with pins and patches, finally giving a single demand for his gossamer-donned daughters to "stop that dawdling and come take places about your mother". It was the day for their grand portrait to be painted, after all.

 

Therese could hardly help but smile at the sight of their unlikely little family from her opulent chair alongside his right. One by one their girls came around, taking their places as per instruction of the artist.

 

At her skirts the youngest and fairest, Ophelia Danielle, wobbled to her own two booties before taking place upon her mother's lap. At barely a year old she was undoubtedly Therese' most pampered child, sturdy, plump as pudding and already promising to be the most attached to her parents. She looked the least like either of them and yet the most like the Dowager Countess Isabella, Roderick's own mother, with her russet-brown ringlets and light eyes. Ophelia clung to all her sisters with equal fervor, always the one to fret that her wobbly little legs weren't yet quick enough to catch up to them. Everyone looked after her with unprecedented concern.

 

In her jay blue frock of gauze, four-year old Catherine Augusta took a restive stance to the right of her mother. Though so young was the most austere of Therese's children, the heart of her light sienna face soft in complexion while her hazels watched the painter with unforgiving regard. With her taupe-brown hair finally developing a rather heavy curl pattern it had to be swept back in a barrage of forceful white ribbons, the elaborate up-do seemingly much too pretentious for a child. And yet, with her little hand thoughtlessly seeking out her mother's, Therese knew this child to be wise beyond her years.

 

"Stand still, Freddie. Let the poor man start painting us."

 

The stout toffee-tinted girl bit her mischievously dimpled grin before quieting her feet in deference to her mother's words. Nearly six, Frederica Gabrielle could hardly be kept in one place for longer than a moment, her restless soul -- much like the heavy curls of her raven hair -- forbidding she waste a moment not relinquishing to her imagination. She took her place to the left of the earl, sepia gaze apologetic to a lesser effect. With a simple shake of his head Roderick briefly leaned over to straighten the frills about her pale pink gown. "Can't be without wrinkles for a moment, I see?" was all he sighed before resuming his erect settlement.

 

Carefully propped on hidden cushions in front of their parents sat the last two girls, Rowena and Sabine.

 

At eight winters, the brunette Rowena Alexandra could inarguably be the most like her mother in spirit yet more akin to her father in appearances. She feared nothing but the loss of her siblings, the cool severity of her chestnut gaze always having a way of speaking when her mouth needn't say a word. And while she managed to sit beside her sister, fair lips wrapped in silence, it was a relief to Therese that the girl decided against letting her overzealous words find a way into everyone's ears as they often did. But the pride of her father's lineage weighed well upon her delicate shoulders, much finer than it ever could upon Sabine's.

 

There could be no denying that the eldest child had to be the least suited for her station. Therese let her dark gaze fall to the ever-so-frail Sabine Isabella. She had always been the quiet favorite of her mother, and more than any other the ten-year old relied on the unspoken knowledge as if it were her very key into heaven. While she was honest in her abounding youth and unmistakably the most obedient girl that any parent could wish for, the auburn-haired heiress was a fool to her own weak heart. She was impressionable, devoid of the talent to read others the way even the younger Rowena could. Her golden eyes were desperate to please by any account necessary, a folly Therese could not help but fear would ultimately ruin the girl in the end. And while Roderick merely insisted saving her would be as simple as finding her a suitable earl's heir the moment she was old enough to be presented for her first season, his wife could not shake that Sabine would require more attention than that.

 

If not, she feared as she held the babe from her noisy cooing, We're bound to lose them all.

 

 

 












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Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.