This post is part of StoryADay May (https://storyaday.org/) #StoryADay #StoryADayMay @storyadaymay #freeshortstory #Caturday #cats #catsofinstagram #cats_of_instagram #calico #calicocats #scottishfold #scottishfoldlovers #Adi #AdiLadyFluffington #FrauleinProfessorOverknocker
Fluffington On The Skids
The beautiful Lady Fluffington was not accustomed to being turned away from any door, but the card parlour’s footman bowed deeply and refused her entrance along with his most sincere apology.
“I demand to see your mistress!” she growled.
The footman went in while she waited in the shadows, her cloak pulled around her, its hood down, lest anyone should see her cooling her heels at the door of a gambling den. He returned, Mademoiselle Chickie la Silk behind him. La Silk caught the glint of Lady Fluffington’s eye and came to her.
“My Lady,” said the parlour’s owner, “I deeply regret turning you away, but you’ve lost a great deal here already.”
“I’ve paid my losses. Do you dare accuse me of not honoring my debts?”
“Indeed not, My Lady. But even card parlour owners can have honor, and I make it my business to know how much my ‘guests’ can afford to lose. Forgive me, My Lady, but you are skating perilously close to thin ice. Fortunes have been won and lost at card tables, but never at mine.”
“How dare you?” Lady Fluffington hissed. “My fortune is my own! If I choose to risk it, I needn’t ask anyone’s permission to do so, certainly not from a low creature like you!”
“Nevertheless, My Lady,” said la Silk with a shrug.
Lady Fluffington swept away into her carriage and gave another address.
Nights passed, and hands were dealt and played. All the polite world knew Lady Fluffington had fallen into the clutches of moneylenders and card sharps. Every society event saw her with fewer jeweled ornaments, less fashionable clothing and accessories, then gowns and cloaks and hats she had worn before.
The most exclusive ladies stopped inviting her their balls, fetes, and routs, for one simply couldn’t, could one, with her dressing like that. She’d come with bedraggled hems or imperfectly hidden stains or some such. One wouldn’t know where to look, would one?
The day came when the bailiffs came and turned My Lady out of house. Her maid took pity on her and gave her a dress suitable for her new station and offered to let her stay in a corner of her mother’s house in exchange for helping with laundry and mending.
Lady Fluffington drew herself up to a height of dignity she thought she had long since lost and declined the offer.
That night and for many nights thereafter, Lady Fluffington, now calling herself simply Adi, slept in the roughest of circumstances, eating only scraps of leftover fish. She had no way of knowing that, although her old “friends” had abandoned her, her “enemies” were setting their henchmen to guard her sleep and to make sure the “scraps” she “found” were fresh. Even as she snarled at anyone who greeted her as a long-lost acquaintance, Lord Snowbottom and his foster sister, Mademoiselle la Silk were plotting to return her to her former glory.
To do so, they would have to beg the assistance of a strange old recluse by the known as Senorita Peanut.
MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: Adi in a bag
MA
