NB toda esta resposta é um grande spolier. Leia o seu risco!
Sua postagem diz que você leu e desprezou uma história de Tanith Lee de Red as blood , embora você não diga qual foi a história. No entanto, o enredo que você descreve é uma correspondência exata para A razão para não ir ao baile de Tanith Lee Esta história não estava em Red as Blood, nem em qualquer outra antologia de Tanith Lee.
Esta história é, como você diz, uma carta da madrasta para Cinderela. A madrasta se casou como uma noiva infantil com um marido abusivo que ela eventualmente envenenou para escapar. Ela se casa com o pai da Cinderela, mas rapidamente percebe:
To you, innocent and gracious and loving his arm about you, his hand on your waist, the pressing of his lips over and over to yours — yes, even pressing with the lips a touch parted and moist — these were the normal attentions of a gallant father. But I had heard, I had heard and I had learned. How your mother had been privately dressed, and I was privately dressed, as a very young girl. How he liked best when we whispered girlish rhymes to him, and pretended surprise, even alarm, as he unlaced himself. That is no matter. There is nothing bad in that. But he had bastard daughters too. He had abused them all. There were three, and none a virgin, for each had had to endure him. He did not like them too young, that was the only saving grace. About fourteen, that was the age he relished the most.
Como você diz, a madrasta não tem recursos:
But what could I do? I had no money, and so no power, of my own.
Então ela:
I had you dressed in rags that stank. I had you smeared with filth. I let the sluts of the kitchen teach you dirty ways and words. I had them smother you up in that place below, among the greasy spits and smoking hearths. I made you as unappetizing as I could, and oh, my dear, that was very difficult, but in the end, I had succeeded. And so I invited him to spy on you, just once. And you were no longer to his taste, the madman. “No daughter of mine.” These words he actually vocalized. He liked his women clean and couth. Educated and gentle. Never swearing, perfumed with roses, not the cinders of the fire.
Tudo sem o conhecimento da Cinderela sobre por que isso foi feito:
But you, too honorable to speak ill of me, you pined for him. You pined for your loving father who, if he had had one clear thought, would have rescued you, bathed you, dressed you in silk — and raped you over and over.
Cinderela se casou com o príncipe, mas o príncipe também se revela um marido abusivo:
So as our path went upwards, lovely girl, sad, lost girl, yours declined. When did he begin to hurt you first? The female servant who has helped me says that it was on your wedding night. She says he chained you in a spiked collar like a dog, and used his boots. And worse. Much worse. Does she lie? How I hope so. Maybe they are even lies about the scars upon you. Though once I came back, yes, hidden in my own disguise, and I watched on the street as you passed in the glass carriage. And you were like a bird in a cage. Your hair so pale a black — is there white in your hair? Your eyes that looked about, seeing nothing. Just a glimpse, then gone, like a spring flower, the snow-drop, that is swallowed by the mud.
A carta termina com a madrasta arrumando a Cinderela para escapar do palácio.