A Duchess in the Pacific

One

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Genesis 1:2

Katarina Viola Kingsley.

Duchess wrote in perfect calligraphy at the top of her lined paper. She paused, twitched her mouth to the side, then exhaled. She ripped the paper from the pad and neatly folded it as small as it could go.

Katarina "Duchess" Viola Kingsley. She wrote instead.

She looked at it with her head cocked to the side. She had always wavered back and forth in her mind whether she liked her nickname or preferred her real name. Not that it mattered. When Duchess was born her mother named her after her two favorite female Shakespeare characters. Katherina from The Taming of the Shrew and Viola from The Twelfth Night. But by the time she turned 2, her father took notice of the way she held herself. She didn't cry, nor shouted, or even laughed. She stared with a permanent look of silent judgement on her face. She naturally held her head up, with her nose actually pointed towards the sky. And so her father, who believed that you were what people called you, decided that she looked more like a Duchess than a Katarina. So he made sure that everyone called her that, stopping short of legally changing her name only because he knew that his wife still liked it.

She was 19, nearly 20 now and she still held the judgmental glare in her eyes. From looking at her, you could say she looked to be Aphrodite's daughter, for she had pools of dark sapphire eyes that glinted under the moonlight like the steel of a fabled prince's sword, and curly brown hair that fell in swirls around her shoulders and down her back and burned golden under the sun. But speaking to her, or knowing her at all, it became obvious that she was Athena's daughter. She was highly intelligent, cunning and strategic. And everyone had mistaken her pensive stare as judgement.

She had no friends in her childhood nor siblings to keep her company. Her parents were her only social interaction, aside from the boring parties and dinners she was forced to attend. And without the company of friends, she sought companionship through the characters in novels. Of which she considered Jo March and Elizabeth Bennet to be her best friends of all.

Though she had no reference, she liked it compared to the alternative. It wasn't that she felt better or less than the other children in their social circle. She just didn't find them interesting, not nearly as interesting as the heroes in the well worn pages of her books. And she enjoyed her parents company. They were particular people, but still bemusing.

Her father, Jack Kingsley, began as an oil miner in Louisiana. And managed to work his way all the way to the top of the company by the time he was only 28. Eventually, he moved north and settled in Boston, Massachusetts. Where he continued and expanded the company. Even taking stock in other good such as coal, steel, and textiles. He wasn't necessarily a smart man. But he was charming and to those who didn't find him charming, he was a bully. He was ambition, opportunistic, and overall just lucky. Duchess's mother, Frances, was a highly educated British woman, who came from old money. And was seen as quite rebellious by her family when she left England and married the self-made American.

Jack and Frances Kingsley were not only madly in love but best of friends. Jack always hated dumb girls, despite not being very bright himself. And Frances thought smart men had a tendency of being conceited. As far as they were concerned, their daughter Duchess inherited the best qualities of both of them. And they made sure of it. They never had other children, for no other reason than an insatiable desire to give Duchess everything she could ever want. Jack's business partners and friends often tried to convince Jack he should sire a son, to take over the business. And they would often gestured to their own sons. Jack would then always lean over to his daughter and whisper in her ear,