Chapters Dollhood: A Woman's Choice Book 4 Chapter 43
Jack Collins himself stood there in the doorway, and I cried so loudly within my own head John had to wince at the noise piercing his ear. He was as taken aback as I was, for his father had arrived to the event without an invitation or a penny to his name: dishevelled, unshaven, unwashed — and John will add to my recollection that he absolutely reeked of liquor, even from across the room. The liquor cabinet is indeed the first thing he targeted, rather than my sister or I, as the societymen all gawked, murmuring that he even had the gall to make an appearance.
“You’re not welcome here, Jack.” Father bellowed, “How did you get past the household staff?”
Underneath all his swagger and machismo, Collins Sr.’s hands shook as he poured himself a gin, straight.
“You fellows must know by now, I have my ways with automatons.” He snarled around a swig and a gulp. “Besides, did you all think I’d just let you give away what’s rightfully mine?”
Sir Wainwright cleared his throat, “After your, ahem, misappropriation of our funds, Chastity has been repossessed for today’s auction.”
“She was never put up as collateral, especially not for this.” He gestured his glass toward the Doll walking in her little circles, not a care in the world, taking more time climbing over each stanchion bollard, her cheeks growing increasingly flush. “I don’t think the courts would agree with what you blokes consider ownership, if a man’s girl can be—”
“You abandoned your wife when you abducted Hope,” Wainwright corrected course. “That much is crystal clear now. Our Society doesn’t look kindly on men that eschew their responsibilities, and—”
“Oh bollocks!” Jack whinged at Wainwright’s pretentious tone. “Chastity was left in good hands! Or so I thought before I saw how my boy drives!” Jack added as a jab.
“F-father, s-s-stop!” John called out, simmering from a long-kindled flame within. “Your g-game is up. You have nothing left, stop d-digging your own g-g-grave.”
The room was quiet, and I could not look his way, but Jack was obviously glaring. I whispered a quiet, “I believe in you,” before the elder Collins’ tirade began.
“So you’re truly siding with these fucking fetishists, are you boy? Over your own flesh and blood? I made you! I gave you that little bitch to play with, and you know full well that pretty things like her don’t come cheap. And you repay me in such a dramatic fashion over simply entertaining myself with the one I take a shine to? They’re Dolls! They’ve got just as many holes between ‘em.” He paused to take a hefty swig. “Well, be pleased with yourself, Johnny boy, it’s all gone. Seychelles, Malta, all of it! Your inheritance is down to pennies and it’s all your fucking fault. How are you going to get by, ever think of that in your pansy search for ‘love’ with a piece of plastic? By God, she was just a perk of the job! A toy to throw around that couldn’t complain! And you discarded all my hard work, for a toy— a masturbator on legs! How will you survive on meaningless research that’s never going to see the light of day, while the real men change this kingdom in their image?”
John stood up and gripped my armless shoulder for stability, and for comfort. He didn’t need my voice to know I was hurt by such comparisons, and perhaps if Jack had just admonished him alone, John would have wilted again, but Jack had woven me into his tirade, and John trembled in long-repressed fury. I remember this confrontation clearly, for my gentle, honourable husband was shaking… but not speechless, not anymore. He had something on the tip of his tongue, a truth he had long known: “I’m doing just fine without you.”
“Excuse me, boy?!” The elder Collins roared.
“Speak up, darling.” I egged him on, feeding his months of earnest encouragement right back to him.
“I am more fulfilled without you in my life than I’ve ever been, Father.” John kept his chin up, and his hand locked on me. “My latest paper — if you ever cared to read them — revealed a breakthrough that might bring plentiful energy to light London’s streetlamps again, and make our Kingdom prosper. Not only that: I have the kind of companionship you never let me foster under your shadow. I have a wife who loves me, a wife you knew adored me and yet stole away all the same! I—”
He was momentarily stunned by the sheer enormity of his father’s betrayal those months before, wound fresh again, but he continued, “I am done. My carriage colliding with yours and my refusal to engage further should have been enough to say that loud and clear. Full stop. I am clean of your cons, your ploys, and your sin, and I am done!”
Jack was uncharacteristically silent, clearly hurt by the plain truth, the reaping of his own manipulations leaving only a bitter taste in his mouth. And he bit back. “Your mother would be ashamed.”
John’s grip on me tightened as he was wounded, but he stood strong. “Is that all you have left, Father? Jibes? Leave us, you failed.”
But Jack remained rooted, and a smile crooked his curmudgeonly lip.
“I wouldn’t pay all you fancy fucks out here in the sticks a visit just to air our dirty laundry. That toy girl there is mine, so says the Church of England, and so will you once we’re through here. You all think Chastity Collins is the perfect Doll, flawless within and without. None of you want that perverted little peach. Why do you think I swapped her for her sister?”
The societymen all murmured, especially the ones who had already bid on Chastity. One of them called out, “What precisely are you getting at?”
“Well see, Mr. Alan Hodgkinson over here, upstanding man you all know him to be, alas, happens to enjoy Dolls a bit on the younger side.”
The room took a heavy pause, and I noticed a few societymen’s faces pale, some of them fathers of my peers at St. Werburgh’s who had hinted at visits to their parents’ bedrooms. But we were never that sort of family! Butterflies fluttered in my compressed waist, as I knew exactly what kind of web Jack was spinning. He was going to take his attempted corruption, something we as a family had barely avoided, and turn it back on us regardless.
“Treat a girl a certain way long enough,” Jack continued, “touching places a god-fearing father’s hands shouldn’t be and… well… it’s quite natural she learns to crave that touch.” I could almost hear the grin in Jack’s voice, as he wandered out of my fixed view and wove his web of half-truths, dead-set on taking us down with him. “I’ll tell you this: Chastity was never quite ‘right,’ all things considered. She would perform avidly here in this house of untold secrets, but for me alone in our marital bed, she tantrummed like you wouldn’t believe. I strived to correct her. I put her under Werburgh’s night classes. I followed the Society-advised discipline procedures. Nothing quite stuck.
“Yet I saw a pattern emerging. The little tramp kept trying to get up and close to Alan on holidays, or on monthly visits here to this home, which Alan specifically requested in the marriage contract. Quite unusual, no? I knew something must be afoot, a sickness of the mind I couldn’t well entertain. You understand, gentlemen.”
“These are lies.” Father muttered, before saying louder for the room. “Lies alone! I have never touched my daughters in such a horrid way. Never.”
I knew then Jack had us ensnared. For even if he had been under the influence of that libidinous paste, and even if he had not completed the deed within me, Father and I had shared a moment in this household that should never have happened. He wasn’t guilty of Jack’s accusations, but he surely wasn’t innocent either.
As if on cue, waiting for that denial, Jack strolled past me and deposited a diskette upon the hi-fi. “Gentlemen, please enjoy the internal record of the attending automaid to my lady wife, from the last weekend visit Alan and Chastity shared before I put a stopper to it.”
(idle talking, sombre, unclear)
“Chastity, I do not want our ever-so-infrequent meets to be occupied with solely punishment and critique, and I’ve already let my tongue fly for the latter.” The hi-fi let out a sigh. “Actually… my dear daughter… I’ve been thinking of a proper apology.”
(rustling sounds)
“You can understand— oh m-my… why I react so poorly when I recognise rote lust in you?”
“I am unbearably lustful. Right, Pappa?”
(suckling sounds)
“It’s alright, dear, it’s alright. I do not feel the same way, but it’s wrong for me to not show you attention in the sole language I have left you with. Don’t feel bad about this, darling. It’s natural in your state… Hope asked for it too, you know. On the very day I presented you with— ah, with your engagement gifts.”
“You don’t have to hold back, Pappa!”
(suckling sounds)
The men gasped, hearing nothing but the most incriminating phrases: from how Father worried about our Mummy’s health and sanity, to his muffled words, “I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t,” before the wet slapping sounds of a Doll mouth fulfilling it’s singular purpose ended in a male groan of release, joined by the final, “I’m sorry, darling.”
It was damning enough that Father offered no response or rebuttal, aghast that this lapse in judgement, self-control, and propriety had been put on the record. The implications of Autoserve devices recording the goings-on of private residences was left for another day, as the room turned against our father, and in so too the Hodgkinson family name.
But I had John stand up in our defence. “We don’t know the origin or provenance of this recording. It could have easily been concocted or doctored. What is this Doll’s voice we hear, it couldn’t be the silent Chastity standing before you all. In truth, I do not believe Alan to have committed this act.”
Oh how I wish it had been doctored or stitched, for it would have hurt less.
Of course at this point John knew of how his own father had influenced this bit of inappropriate father-daughter behaviour, but we were in a bind. Could we refute the accusations and save my sister… without correcting them to say that Chastity was pure because it was actually I who was there offering my inflamed nethers, ruining my reputation in the process? This was all quickly erupting into a horrible scandal, and there seemed to be few doors left to our escape in the eyes of our peers in the society.
And Jack was committed to closing us in and sinking our ship like the shark we knew him to be.
“Well we do have one other witness.” I saw him rummage through his fraying pockets, paper grams and receipts pouring out like IOUs, before a familiar click of his silver remote triggered a whirring somewhere else, down the hall.
The whirring grew louder, and into the gathered throng rolled Cuddles on her ottoman, with our mother Cushions in tow, stumbling behind as the finely-woven leash pulled her along after her little companion. As Cuddles rolled in, her eyes locked on this man and that, unable to stop herself from admiring the gentlemen before her, even as I knew she must hate well-attended events such as these with a passion. Those wide eyes watered as her head whipped side to side, curvy body jostling under its strange rules, until it finally rolled past John and I, and then Father, locking with him for the longest; and in those eyes of surgically-enforced adoration I spotted just a hint of… it couldn’t be…
Fury.
Summoned by the remote, she finally rolled right up to where Jack stood, so close her focus targeted his groin rather than his face, and he laughed. “Let’s give the girl some space, no?” Jack and any nearby societymen stepped back, and suddenly Althea was… free. Thanks to Father’s own custom design, she could direct her head and eyes wherever she pleased. That remodelled face remained blank and almost-affable, and the black fleur she wore hid the permanent pout of her mouth underneath, unable to produce a peep of noise; but it was enough.
Enough for Jack’s question, after he had replayed her the sounds of Father’s fawning over me.
“Is this the sound of my wife Chastity and your owner, Alan Hodgkinson?”
Cuddles— Althea let her free eyes glance at me for a second, before she nodded toward Chas, her jet black hair bobbing in agreement.
I was befuddled, sitting there with John. She was lying! She knew it was me who visited on that unpleasant day, for Jack had told her before we kissed. Not only that, my Althea hadn’t even been there in the room when this charade had occurred. Then I remembered… Jack had spoken to her knowingly, openly. The two of them had been conspiring together to ruin my father: Jack had said as much in his ‘encouraging’ speech in the hallway. How she could assist his aims had been unclear to me then — as had much else — but now I could see it plainly.
The little Doll with a lesbian heart, the face of my mother, two massive mammaries, and no arms or legs; she’d had enough of being Father’s plaything. She had clearly never forgiven him for reducing her to even less than the object she had desired to become, and now she — like Jack — had absolutely nothing to lose.
With my obvious adoration to John, she didn’t even have what connection her and I had once shared. I had brought her home that Christmas, unwittingly ensnared her in a bitter companionship where she could only exist in eternal punishment for our youthful tryst, then continued on with my life. Not that I had been given much choice, but in a sense Althea had been abandoned, and even since my recovery I admit I had paid her little mind.
With that perspective, of course Althea wouldn’t care who got hurt, me or Chas or Cushions or anyone else: Alan had to be disgraced.
“She wasn’t even in the room when it… almost happened.” I confided in John once I had processed Althea’s betrayal, and he turned that into a question. “How could she know? Only Mrs. Hodgkinson — Cushions — was mentioned in your audio, Cuddles was never referred to.”
Jack only laughed, and I admit our defence was weak. “What societyman addresses their toys until they’re of use to him? Alan was clearly well-occupied with his daughter, he had this girl — just as young and supple, I may add — to play with every other day of the month.” Jack looked down at the plush little doll, and asked. “Cuddles, m’dear, did you see this happen yourself?”
The Doll nodded again without hesitation, and looked directly at Father, blank, accusingly.
Chastity had by now ceased her looping parade, but by design could not vouch for her own innocence when she had just polished the ring of brass stanchions clean with her quest for sexual gratification, nude and on display. She hadn’t been there on this occasion when Father had finally succumbed, but I had told her once of what happened, seeking some sort of— I don’t know… perhaps advice, maybe just understanding. Chas had offered nothing in return but rote doctrine of our many uses to the men in our life, but she had heard me. I knew it.
Chastity’s legs shivered as indecision gripped her within, yet finally she let out a single stomp of her heel on the parquet floor, reverberating through the drawing room. The Doll of great debate caused a stir among the crowd as it opened a crack in the otherwise perfect finish, eliciting gasps from the audience.
Cushions, standing closely behind Cuddles due to her tether, shook silently in what I realised could only be fear, as her daughter produced an echo of how she had once stamped and struggled in our gravel drive, warning us not to go to St. Werburgh’s, not to follow in her mincing footsteps. That brief spark of spirit had flashed bright that day, and was now so dimmed — it was of Clarice, our Mummy, and this was only Cushions. And yet she brought her foot down once again. Weakly, more a plea than a defiant protest, but it registered in her daughter’s, and her husband’s, defence.
I stamped too, though I was seated atop carpet, and I sorely missed the thunder I could’ve made if my feet were instead free and firmly planted on the floor. I rest assured that my thoughts and manipulations that day were louder than my heels clicking.
Father looked at the three of us, and sighed in thanks to our timely breaking of the silence he had imposed upon us. He knew his failings, yet all his women stood with him in this moment. In truth we stood together, but Alan Hodgkinson was our raft through this storm.
Another stamp of a high heel joined us in our limited defiance.
“It seems the Hodgkinson Dolls have established a jury of protest, and there is certainly discord.” Dame Henderson’s iconic tinny voice spoke from the doorway. “I do not consider this man Jack Collins trustworthy, what by his haggard appearance nor the way he holds himself, it seems plain to see. Excuse my tongue, but why you boys are still listening to this proven charlatan is beyond me.”
Jack’s eyes shifted, entirely unsure how to handle a woman with such determination and poise openly contradicting him.
Wainwright motioned to take her back to the drawing room with the other Dolls but Dame Henderson strutted right past him, no arms to waive him away and none required. “Not now, Henry. I saw this dirty rogue sneak in through a window but half an hour ago, amongst the maids who seemed to see nothing, amongst us Dolls who could see everything but raise no alarm, and I can attest he stopped to coordinate with Ms. Burns here on what to say to you gentlemen. The Hodgkinsons speak wisely. That little brothel-born companion of theirs is a liar, along with Mr. Collins here.”
The room devolved into a mess there and then. As Jack saw the jig was up, he dropped his glass with a shattering crash and moved toward Chastity to drag my helpless sister out of the room with his own two hands. Who called them I cannot say, but a pair of autobutlers met the shaggy shell of a man halfway to his prize, grabbing him by the arms and dragging him out of the room, as he drunkenly cried, “That cunt is mine! Mine!”
Dear Reader, you might think after that monster was dealt with, all would be well and bidding would continue, but like societymen are wont to do, many did not see our signalling of protest as meaningful, thinking us too simple to opine, or not worthy of opinion. Many dropped their bids merely due to Chastity breaking perfect form, even in her own self defence against Jack’s slander. The rest were confused. The raucous energy from before was long gone as the recording from Jack’s automaid remained something the men couldn’t unhear.
Nearly all of it remained damning in some way, and the talk of guilt and erasure, and Mummy’s mental degeneration, did no favours to the mood.
The few societymen who remained in the bidding didn’t for long, as the idea of a wildcard such as Jack Collins trying to “claim” Chastity again seemed far too high. The entire exhibition had been an attempt at tone-setting, removing the stain upon Chastity’s image, but with Jack pleading his case and dragging her through the mud with his accusations of incestuous misbehaviour, my poor sister had been reduced back to secondhand goods.
Some men shook Father’s hand as they left, many did not, but in the end only us Hodgkinsons remained, along with John by my side, Sir Wainwright, and Dame Henderson. Chastity had been freed from her rope prison and dressed again, and Cuddles had been sent to Father’s study to stare at a shelf-size replica of Michaelangelo’s David and stay out of everyone’s hair. She would be dealt with later.
Wainwright touched Father on the arm. “I’m sorry for this utter mess, old friend. I need to meet with old man Linscombe and see how Jack could have bypassed your staff. It marks a great vulnerability for our school, if nothing else.”
“Yes, keep me abreast of your findings, I don’t need any further pestering from the likes of that scoundrel.” Father rubbed his neck, wondering how this house of cards had come tumbling down in such a dramatic fashion, before he looked at my sister somberly. “What do we think is realistic for Chastity here?”
The dejected Doll had been perched on the edge of a chaise lounge, staring at nothing, her fleur-de-bouche bobbing in and out subtly as she suckled. She undoubtedly knew how much of a failure the Repatriation had been, even if she could not express herself in any way save for that nervous reflex of hers. I asked John to sit me next to her, and though our plentiful skirts bunched up around our bottoms, intent to keep us slightly apart, with a gentle lean to the side I strived to get closer, and John tipped her slightly toward me to split the difference. When we touched, I felt her bare shoulder press against mine, little twitches of those clipped wings being our only method of communication without indecent assistance. So too did our heads and breasts collide, and I felt her close, the rise and fall of a doll’s shallow breaths irregular and hiccuped. She had been crying.
Other than her choice to offer a single stomp of denial, my sister had been a perfect Doll the entire night — a Perfect Flower — and yet that hadn’t been enough.
“Well as you know,” Sir Wainwright began, “she is still your daughter, and seeing as our attempt at recouping losses failed, she is effectively without a tangible selling price. I’d say she can stay with you indefinitely.”
“As a spinster.” Father added, biting his cheek.
“Well, yes, the word will get out to the others of what happened today, I doubt you’ll receive many reputable offers, and not from decent men. But you all could be quite happy here. Unless Jack scrounges together enough money to hire a barrister and make your life a living hell. Best case scenario: she lives here with her mother,” Wainwright glanced at the hi-fi and eyed Father, “without stimulation or male attentions but in the wholesome care of her family, until the end of your days when she is bequeathed to someone else as part of your estate, or sent to Langton Grange.”
“What is Langton Grange?” I had John ask.
Whilst the two older men both looked too apprehensive to answer the question in front of us Dolls, Dame Henderson answered. “Young Mr. Collins, did you never consider where your wife might go if you became infirm or were no longer around to care for her?”
“Well I…” John waffled.
Sir Wainwright coughed, embarrassed, “What has gotten into you today, Lilyana? You never talk to men in such a brusque fashion.”
The Dame turned slightly toward me. “Today has been a trial for us all. I do not wish for any further stains upon Dollhood as there already are.”
Sufficiently reminded how emphatically she disapproved of my secret voice channel with John, and how she almost certainly knew this kind of question was from my lips not his, I listened closely as Dame Henderson turned toward my husband to answer us. “The Society has an agreement with an almshouse in the countryside, where widowed Ladies of Leisure are already admitted when their husbands and estates have withered away. From my understanding the Dolls are not treated quite as well, with four or more to a room at times.”
Sir Wainwright quickly added, “It must be regarded as a final resort, and we strive to abstain from entertaining such hypotheticals at the school. We always impress upon our Dolls-to-be that if they conduct themselves fittingly, there will unfailingly be a gentleman with inclinations to be satiated, who is prepared to both purchase their companionship and propose marriage.”
Father looked at John, “But it’s always been a white lie. I have funds set aside for Cushions to go to a much nicer home if I pass, but the concept is much the same.”
John’s eyes went wide and he looked at the other adults in the room. “But Chastity doesn’t deserve anything of the sort! She has been a remarkably well-behaved Doll throughout this whole ordeal, positively dull and devotional to your societal doctrine, I’ve heard it—” he caught himself, “I mean you can almost hear it echoing out of her with every curtsey! Honestly, the tantrums and misbehaviour near the beginning of her and my father’s betrothal were likely due to how he treated her, and what he wanted her to do, entrapping and extorting her own father.”
“I’ve come to a similar conclusion,” Henderson agreed, her tinny voice taking on a hint of affection, “Chastity was a remarkably diligent student, with her attendant maid offering only a few minor corrections in her entire time at St. Werburgh’s proper. Not only that, from my recollection she never struggled under our nightly tutelage, as some young Dolls do.” She turned toward me again.
Wainwright smiled, “Yes, when she was young Miss Hodgkinson, Chastity was a true belle, an avid pupil! Mighty remarkable too how she made her rounds nearly a dozen times whilst Jack prattled on. That was disciplined, it truly was.”
I wanted to ask Chas if she too had spent a class period or two under the headmaster’s desk, but I couldn’t. I simply felt my sister resting against me begin to silently swell with pride, her breasts warm and her breaths steadying. She swallowed and buzzed at the praise, and something came to my mind, an idea that would never have escaped it without the special connection John and I shared.
My words elicited a smile from him, which he couldn’t quite conceal. If Dame Henderson noticed, she didn’t say.
“What if Chastity was perhaps retained by the Society as a teacher at St. Werburgh’s?”
Father and Wainwright both emitted a simultaneous, “Huh?” before Wainwright clarified, “John, you must consider that our candidates are typically drawn from a… ahem— lesser stock than your sister-in-law. It wouldn’t be a position of honour but a place of servitude. You are proposing a challenging occupation for a lady of ornamental refinement.”
“I know, but Chastity was an ‘avid pupil’, you said so yourself, sir.” John began to get excited by the idea. “Not only that, my father enrolled her in months of your remedial studies. Save for her time living with me, in effect she never left your school. Chastity must know your curriculum inside and out by now. You couldn’t pick a more devoted Doll!”
“Well I…” Sir Wainwright hummed and hawed, but John wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I was only feeding him half his lines, he believed in this solution as much as I did.
“And you said yourself earlier today, sir, you have fewer teachers in your staff than ever, in this time of tribulations influencing our fair society. You need all the help you can get, and Chastity here is available practically without acquisition cost.”
Father looked at John, then at me, and — I still can’t believe it to this day — smiled. “I think that’s a marvellous idea, son. Henry, this will help us recoup the losses with Jack, offsetting the conversion cost Great Ormond Street Hospital would charge for a scholarship girl suited for the task.”
The Headmaster looked to his second in command for assistance, any argument against this impromptu arrangement, but Dame Henderson offered none. She strutted over to Chas and I, and stared at the empty air above us before Chas sat herself upright, leaving my touch. A lean forward signalled a maid to lift her to standing, whilst John lifted me up himself.
“Chastity Collins, will you join my staff and renounce your family name within the former convent that is St. Werburgh’s? Be aware you will be owned by no man, but the school itself, and entertain no suitors. You will receive food and board that is not luxurious, but appropriate. You will be paid for your diligent teachings in delicacies and titillations that other Doll wives and your students will take for granted. You will be tightly scripted for your first two years, with limited methods of expression for the next three before we fully entrust you with a voice of your own.” She turned slightly to me in that remark, before refocusing on my sister. “You will listen to our sacred words — whether speaking them or not — day and night, and use those words to carve and shape proper Dolls from the blanks of young women who enter our walls. You will be sealed for purity without exception, and likely leave the school grounds fewer times than you can count on the fingers we had disposed of for you.
“Do you accept this offer?”
Chastity Hodgkinson silently curtseyed before the Dame, having made her choice.
I sighed silently in relief, for I too had made mine; choosing wilfulness over withdrawal from the life that passed by my glassy doll eyes, once thought forever out of reach. I whispered to John my love and thanks for saving my sister and I, as Father found an old dual-pronged propriety protector in his bureau drawer and let Sir Wainwright fill, seal, and lock away Chastity’s lower holes for safe travel to her new home.
Postscript
Afterward Dame Henderson approached me alone, and told me to follow her to the window, where we could appreciate the blurry green of the gardens, hazy in our unwavering gaze. There she scrutinised me from behind her perfect doll mask of a face, before stating quietly,
“You’re welcome, Hope. I’m going to assume you truly cannot speak at this time and juncture, and surmise that you are undyingly grateful for my saving of your sweet, simple sister.
“Hmm, why did I acquiesce even if I knew the idea sprang forth from a mind which should be far more disciplined than yours is? Because now you are indebted to me, and we are entwined.
“When I was originally offered a voice I found it an affront to our way of life, but I took this important role as an exception to our society’s rules, for the embetterment of young Dolls-to-be. Your voice, however quiet, is merely an affront. But you did embetter one life today, and I respect that. Against all my desires and wishes, you are my only near-equal in this society, the only other Doll who understands.
“All this is to say: someday soon I will call on you, I may even bring your precious sister with me for a visit, and I will ask something of you: the making of a memoir. Emily Lowood has made her new voice crystal clear, and yours will undoubtedly strike a different tune, for I see in you a respect for our way of life that tells me I did not entirely fail in teaching you.
“That is all.” She concluded, and rejoined Sir Wainwright, who had just been informing Father what establishment Althea Burns had been born in, and once escaped from.
“Excellent. I shall give the owner a ring. He hasn’t met her as Cuddles yet, and I’ve no doubt he’ll be plenty interested in settling the rest of Jack’s debts, in exchange for her unwavering attentions.”
It was almost a whole year before our doorbell rang and Dame Henderson called on me to repay her and the Society, and it has taken me nearly another six to recount this entire tale, so that Priscilla’s freed hands may transcribe it for your reading pleasure, dear Reader. With John’s newfound fame, we travel often for his speaking engagements, his devoted Doll always by his side — and not always writing — but accordingly, he hasn’t stuttered in years.
Chastity has become a perfect Teacher, a role model for young dolls-to-be as our dear mother once was to us. In the end, ‘Best Mummy’ was a draw — a split we both now share. The image of Clarice as we had imagined her, the perfect Doll onto which we projected our love, is reflected by Chas. And that secret fire, that spark of spirit which glimmered only briefly on the surface, lives on in me.
I find myself twenty-five years old — nine in Society terms — with mind and bosom grown greatly since I first awoke in this elegant body. Whilst it has taken ages to recount, the separation of years does make the retelling easier; far less abrasive to the soul.
Dear Reader, you’ve been privy to my highs and my lows, but these days, I am much more content. There is little that I miss and nothing that I regret. I am still a Doll and I am still John Collins’s wife, but as you now know, much has changed.
Thank you for reading.