Angelique Boucharde's quarters

Its a very long story, well it seems like it to me anyways. But I will try to shorten it and get to the jist of what happened.

I was born in the year 1770 and grew up in a small village on the French owned Isle of Martinique to the parents of Carrie and Benjamin Duvall. It was a land with many superstitions and gothic beliefs that to all there was just normal. It was a way of life at that time there. My birth name is Amanda Duvall. Life was pretty normal for me until I was 17. My parents had been killed in a fishing boat accident and as an only child and not yet an adult, I was sent to an orphanage.
A year later when I turned 18, and no longer the governments problem, I was given a small amount of money and sent out on my own to live my life.

(she turns her head and wipes her eyes to dry the tears)

Well, I found employment a few years later as a maid/servant to a well to do family's only Daughter. It was then I took the name of Cassandra Stokes. They were lovely people and as long as I did my duties, they were good to me. That would be this portrait. (points to the one with the green maids outfit)

On what little personal time I was given, I met a very nice man, a little older than I but handsome and very sweet. In no time I found myself to become very serious about him and he for me. But it wasn't meant to be and was the turning point that would affect my whole life.

It was a different time, of course, but different culture as well. Martinique wasn't the best of the best then. It was a gothic area of Earth's past and witchcraft and voodoo were very much in vogue. And with changes in my life I experienced, I felt the need to keep my original identity to myself.  Plus with the changes that were about to happen to me, it was vital to keep changing as the years passed by.

And he broke a lot of hearts. But he always treated me with respect and cared deeply for me. Sadly, we weren't meant to be. At least he former flame didn't think so. Her name was Roxanne Drew. She was his girlfriend before I cam along. He had broken it off months before he met me, but she was a very jealous woman and when she saw that he was seeing someone else, she became enraged to the point of vindictiveness.

When she realized she could no longer have him, she decided no one would ever have him.

((photo of Roxanne Drew))

When Gerard arrived, I had already grown weak and old age began to set in. It was difficult to move, my joints ached and my hair was beginning to show signs of graying. It was awful.
Gerard asked me not to ask any questions and told me to go to bed and rest. In the meantime, he went back to his home and had a servant rush off to retrieve a friend of his and bring him back immediately.
While the servant rushed off, Gerard, a master artist himself, got out the supplies and painted a portrait exactly the same as Roxanne had done. Only this time, from memory, he painted my face as it was before the aging began. That is the portrait you saw of me in my prime. Still in my maids uniform because with his plan, all had to remain the same in the portrait.

Just as I was beginning to feel ill and felt my own skin beginning to age, it began to reverse itself. I found out from Gerard that he was playing with fire. He knew a Warlock, Giles Petofi, a man that owed him a favor and he called it in that night. That was where he sent his servant off too. To bring him back to the Mansion.
After he painted the portrait, Gerard had Petofi hex his portrait of me and make sure the spell was a binding one.
I have no idea what he did to it, but now that portrait, as long as it exists, will keep me from aging. But the spell worked to well. I stayed this age, outliving Roxanne, Petofi and even my love Gerard.
I've never been able to grow old with anyone. Eternally locked into this form.

I've come quite accustomed to it now. It wasn't Gerard's intentions to have me live eternally. It so happened that Petofi not only owed Gerard a favor, but actually despised him. The were not friends.
To get back at Gerard for whatever reason, he decided that I would stay young forever, to which one day Gerard would die and he would never be with me in the afterlife.

Those were very cruel times Vivian. No one should ever have to live like that.

My only regret is that when I find someone I want to live with/marry, I must leave one day so that they can never find out my secret. I would never want to hurt someone that way.

My beau at that place in time, 1840, wanted a portrait done of me to keep for when we grew older. He wanted a reminder of my beauty he said. I almost told him that he would always have it, but to explain to him that I would be forever young, well I couldn't do it. When he began to age and got ill, I decided to fake my death. An accident to which no one was the wiser. He passed a year later.

I have one more portrait that is kept oddly enough by Winston. Would you like to see it? It was done just a few years ago when he was going through some phase about keeping pictures of his employees to remember them by. He wanted a large portrait done. I thought he was being silly, but he was serious and had it commissioned.

Well, we have plenty of time to go see it now. Let's take a walk to the offices shall we?