Back home to wait

The drive back to North Carolina passed in a blur. The Diary sat on the passenger seat by my side and as I drove through the South Carolina countryside I wondered if Bianca had seen these same lands almost two hundred years ago.

Did she these farmlands and fields as a free woman, an heiress to a plantation of her own or a collared ****, subject to the whims of her masters? I had not had a chance to read ahead in Bianca's journal, so I could only imagine what her relationship with Mr. Thornton was like in the days following her disclosure that he was not her first lover.

As I drove my mind played out several different scenarios ... maybe after the southern gentleman had a day or two to reflect, he'd realize that Bianca was still the same person he had come to know in Philadelphia, it is possible that he would apologize to her and once again be her most stalworth supporter in her new home.

Too much has happened in my life to blindly accept that naïve romantic rosy prognosis. As I drove north along the interstate my thoughts twisted instead to two far more likely scenarios. There was every chance that Mr. Thornton would abandon Bianca to her own devices, that would certainly explain how the Manton family came to acquire Havenhall. As likely as that scenario was, my mind kept slipping back to a far darker possibility.

Considering the young lawyer's coarse treatment of Bianca in the last passage, I could not ignore the possibility that Mr. Thornton might use his position to take control of the young heiress in her delicate position. My mind wandered from scenario to scenario each one a little more degrading and dangerous for my distant ancestor until I pictured Mr. Thornton collaring and chaining Bianca and enslaving her against her will.

Perhaps that is how Bianca ended up on her knees in front of a roomful of buyers in that scene I saw later in the diary...

By the time I pulled into the last block I was already anticipating a big glass of wine and a torrid interlude with my biggest dildo. This was not to be as I saw Aniya's old Toyota parked at the curb in front of my house. It'd been a couple weeks since I've seen her in person, and I should be pleased that she made the time to come visit, but instead I felt an ambiguity that is hard to put into words.

Perhaps it was the explicit shot of my little angel writhing on some lover's cock that Mr. Manton sent me. It was of course, in part my concern for her safety now that Manton knew of her existence. His crude comments about stripping both of us for sale at the same time made my breath catch in my mouth even as I felt my thighs clench together.

No, it must just be I wanted a little me time with the Diary, the wine and well ... you know.

The front door wasn't even locked when I came in, and her carelessness made me even angrier. What if Manton had one of his thugs snatch her then what would I do.

"Hey Sweety," I tried to hide my irritation, but Aniya knew something was wrong.

"Are you OK, Ma?" She set down the glass of wine that I had been planning of drinking and looked at me questioningly. "You look like a mess. Did that racist bastard get to you somehow?"

"I'm fine, Honey." I lied again, "It's just been a long day, and I've got to work tomorrow." One of the things about Aniya from when she was just a teen was, she could tell when I was lying to her. Luckily, she let my deflection slide for now and poured me a glass of the red. When I set my bag down, she took the diary out of my hand and started flipping through the pages.

"So, this is the famous journal." I saw her pause to check out one of the pictures of Bianca and Mr. Thornton, "and this is what that Colonel Sanders wants so bad he's giving away cash like candy on Halloween?"

"I guess so." Now that I was back home, I was reconsidering my earlier decision to sell Manton the book, but I'm also a little irritated that Aniya took it and was flipping through it like she owned the damn thing. "Be careful, Ni, those pages are almost two hundred years old."

I realized as soon as I used it that I shouldn't have used her childhood nick name. When she was ten, it was cute but about the time she got to high school she made it very clear that she didn't like it. Her look of disdain silenced any more attempts to get her to put the book down and instead I excused myself to go take a shower. Sometimes it was easier to just put some distance between us when Aniya was in one of these moods.

When I came out of the shower, I was surprised to see my daughter with her eyes closed and hand between her legs as she rocked silently on the chair. I shouldn't be so damn judgy, but I could feel my mother's spirit surging forwards. Seeing my daughter jilling herself in my kitchen was the last thing I expected to find when I came back from my shower.

I could see the diary open on the table before her. Clearly, she had jumped ahead in Bianca's story because the picture that the book was open to was unfamiliar to me. With her eye's closed and her mind a million miles away, she hadn't noticed me yet and I had a second or two to try to make sense of what I was seeing.