Chapter 15- Multiple Rage
EDITED.
"They shattered my heart, but from the fragments, I have forged a weapon; now, their downfall is inevitable."
~
NANETTE HAD come down from her office after hearing Ser. Chandler screeching voice. But what she wasn't expecting was to see a rebellious Luella slap Ser. Chandler across the face.
"How dare you, you disgrace of your family"
"Try a better insult. I have heard that so much that it's like noise in my ears" She rolled her eyes at his stupidity.
'That look again.' Ser. Chandler cursed as he noticed the belittling eyes Luella was given him.
She didn't need to settle with worldly childish insult like he did. No! She didn't even need to insult him. He knew he was below her. Just her, not Louisa.
Regardless of what he said or did, Lady Luella would always be better than him in more ways than one. And that was a fact he could not refute.
He was too stunned to speak. After all, he was just slapped across the face by Luella.
"Respectfully speaking, you utterly disgust me." Luella said, her face folded in the same expression as her words.
Stepping forward, her mother Nanette voice broke their fight. "What is going on here!!" Nanette yelled, her old, lofty voice broke through the walls of the night.
The three said nothing to soothe their mother's rage. They all looked at each other, expecting their other to talk.
"I believe I did not have a deaf and dumb girls," She inquired again.
Ser. Chandler squeezed Luella's arm tightly while glaring at her. "Answer. Your mother is asking you a question." He fumed. "Why don't you tell your mother how you were throwing your pathetic self on another man in front of your husband?"
"What do you mean by that, Ser. Chandler?" Nanette asked, glaring at her 'daughter'.
She could not believe that her 'daughter' would do such a thing. Luella, who would sacrifice anything and everything for her family would cause such humiliation to the family's name and pride?
"Explain yourself"
Rather than facing her mother and answering her question, she turned her attention to Ser. Chandler.
Snatching her arm away from his grip. She glared at him. "Never touch me again without my permission" With that as her last statement, she turned around and continued her travel to her bedroom, ready to retire for the night.
"I believe I asked a question, young lady," Nanette called out again. The nosy servants who had poked their heads through the corners of the walls to listen in on the situation and their mistress, were all shocked by the action of Lady Luella.
Luella flipped her hair as a response. "Why don't you ask your whore of a precious daughter? I am sure she has a lot of lies than truth to tell."
"We kept saying nothing happened between us? It is not our fault that you are completely delusional and want to believe everything your brain tells you too," Louisa yelled, stepping closer to her mother for maternal support.
Luella stopped her travels as she turned around and met theirs with her cold eyes. She looked at everyone, like how they were, that was how it has always being.
Louisa and her mother always in close relationship and support with each other. Then those lowly servants that would support her mother and sister, and would go around spreading false rumors about her, Luella.
Her eyes landed on her pathetic excuse of a husband. He was a foolish man all in all. Deceived by the woman he loves and hated by the wife he was forced to marry.
How pitiful.
How sad and poignantly pathetic.
Nanette gritted her lips as she looked at her daughter. The daughter she hated. The daughter she wished was never born and wished she had killed.
Those cold and distant eyes were what she was using to stare down at her?
Those eyes were one of mockery, they were one of power and dominance. Luella has visibly deemed herself as a superior above all of them and that was why she could look down at them.
With a steady voice, Luella responded to her sister's claims, "I saw both of you with my own eyes. And you dare say it's all in my head?"
Noticing that the servants were around them, she feigned shock. Her voice dripped with false truth.
It disgusted Luella.
"Luella, you are mistaken. It wasn't what it seemed. You must have misunderstood the situation, since the room was barely lit."
Ser. Chandler stepped forward, following the same falsehood that Louisa was trying to put forth.
"Luella, my love, please listen—"
Luella's gaze hardened, her eyes flickered between from each one of the people present, but steady on Ser. Chandler.
"This is between Van-Rensselaer sister. Outsiders should stay out of it."
"It concerns me too!!"
"Oh? How does it concern you? Did you do something?"
"I–I"
"I—I, What? Do complete your statement," She chided heavily. Luella had him cornered, all he had to do was to confess his atrocities.
But he would not.
Louisa rubbed on her mother's arm, and Nanette took initiative to curb the situation.
"That is enough Luella… Ser. Chandler"
"Mistaken? I saw you with my own eyes. There is no misunderstanding here and you both know it"
"Luella, since you are smart, you always jump into conclusion and only believing in yourself and not hearing what others would like to say and this is nobody's fault but yours."
'Ah! This level of gaslighting is making me sick to my core' Luella thought to herself.
'~Ah! It is bothersome to be around them. I need to pat my herself on the shoulder and award myself with a golden medal for this amount of nonsense I have endured from them'
'THAT LOOK AGAIN!!!' Nanette, Louisa, and Ser. Chandler all thought to themselves as they looked back at the disgusted and belittling eyes Luella stared at them with.
"I am tired. I will retire for the night," Luella stated. She was not ordering, she was not asking. All she did was tell them what she was going to do now. Whatever they wanted to do with what she just uttered was their business.
Rather than face the situation at hand head on, she opted to sleeping the dreaded night away.
But it is not the sleep she so dearly wished for but rather, the sleep of a few hours.
Regardless, it was better than none.