The House of Lesslie

"Welcome home," said James as I let go of his hand and took a step forward. He had also turned his face down, waiting for me to give the permission to look at me.

I didn't.

"Your hand," I told him.

He knew what to do. James, with a bow, extended his hand to me, palms open and facing me, already expecting his first duty of the day, the first duty to me. Years of serving my mother had prepared him well.

I took a final drag off my cigar, letting it flow through my body once again, now mingling the smoke with the fresh and cold air of the early English morning, before I flicked the ash onto James' open hand, tainting the perfect black leather with my ash. With my exhale I crushed the cigar into his palm.

"You were expecting this," I said.

My mother's manservant did not look up, did not close his hand around the extinguished cigar, remained perfectly still. Oh, how I had been waiting for this moment! For him to stand there before me, just like that. It had been on my mind, had been in my dreams for years, so many years that I could feel the tingling running down my spine.

James didn't answer.

"Look at me," I told him.

He looked up, and found a face unfamiliar. Too smooth, too perfect to resemble the one he had known. When he had been the one towering above me. And had been the one telling me what to do.

When I had grown up here.

And had still been a boy.

"No, Ma'am," he said. "Not this. Not all of it."

"James," I said. "It's been ten years. People change"

"Your mother would have been proud, Ma'am."

I laughed. Ten years ago was when my mother had given me enough money to last a lifetime. Ten years ago she had given me everything I wanted. The means to find myself. To lose myself. To become a Lesslie in more than name and blood.

To become a Lesslie in spirit.

"Do you like?" I asked, laughingly.

"Ma'am, it is not my place -"