The Fragile Affair of Lady Locke

Alice Guinevere Locke could not tear her eyes away from the thing in the sky.

Whatever it was, it fluttered on the spring breeze with the grace of a gliding bird, and the lady was positively enraptured by it.

After a narrow escape from her mother and maids, Alice darted through the throngs of Hyde Park, chasing the boy and his flying contraption. The thing was a mess of faded fabrics patch-worked together and strung taut over what appeared to be a handful of strategically secured twigs.

He was lovely.

No, no, it was lovely.

The kite was.

It was a lovely boy—kite! It was a lovely kite!

Of course, it was a lovely kite. Alice had never seen a kite before. She’d read about them and understood them in principle, but she’d never actually seen a kite. Though, in all fairness, she really hadn’t seen a boy in person either.

Wait, no, that wasn’t right. She’d seen a boy. There were plenty of boys on her family’s estate, naturally. But Alice had never been allowed to play with them. It was most unfortunate since she was now fourteen years of age and would soon be past the stage in a young lady’s life where it was appropriate to play anything other than instruments and croquet.

She hated croquet. At least, she told herself that if her parents ever allowed her to play it, she would probably hate it. The point was that Alice Locke had never seen a boy up close, and she’d certainly never seen one with a kite.

The boy turned, his eyes meeting hers.

Was it even fair to call him a boy?

He seemed at least two years older than her, with golden-brown hair that was a little too long, framing the too-sharp lines of his face and strong jaw. His green eyes were sharp and observant, and the scrappiness of his appearance was oddly charming.

He was, perhaps, a bit gangly for a young man, but there was a strength to his lean build and a quiet grace that probably came from moving through the crowded streets and back alleys of London. His clothes were rather worn and somewhat ill-fitting, but that wasn’t nearly as distracting as his grin. It was boyish and a little awkward around the corners, making him seem young despite the hint of stubble he hadn’t quite grown into, or perhaps it hadn’t quite grown onto him.

He caught her gaping at the kite. Of course, he caught her. Alice was many things, and subtle was decidedly not one of them. She could be discreet if she needed to be, but that wasn’t really the same thing. His eyes darted to her open mouth, reminding her to close it as she refocused her entire being from the kite to its owner.

The boy, well, the young man, was staring at her with a self-satisfied little smirk. She could hardly hold the arrogance against him. If she held a string to the sky, she’d be cocky too.

But then he took off running, and Alice’s breath hitched.

She hesitated for only a heartbeat before giving chase.

“Wait!” she called out, her blonde hair streaming behind her.

He glanced back but didn’t slow. Instead, he zigzagged through the park, weaving between trees and startled picnickers. The kite bobbed and swayed, mirroring his every move. Alice’s cheeks flushed with exertion and excitement.

Had she ever run like that before? Honestly, she couldn’t remember herself running at all.

Everything about this was new, the pounding against her ribs, the soft earth and grass kicked up by her feet, the air rushing past so fresh and forceful it made her feel like she was being clawed at by the sky.

She loved it.

At last, he slowed as they neared a little grove of trees. Alice stumbled to a halt beside him, panting for breath. The boy was laughing.

“Do… you….” she started, but her chest was tight, and her ears were ringing.

Running was wonderful, but doing wonderful things was annoyingly painful.

“…always run… from… ladies…” she didn’t have enough breath to finish the question, not that she had any idea how it would end, even if she could muster up enough air to do so.

Was running always this hard?

Maybe it was easier for boys.

Men.

Gentlemen.

No, that wasn’t right either. He didn’t look like a gentleman.

Bent over at the waist, resting her palms atop her legs as she waited for her head to stop spinning and her muscles to stop buzzing, Alice supposed she didn’t look much like a lady either. The boy had stopped laughing and was watching her curiously.

“Only the ones who try to catch me,” he replied with a roguish grin.

He didn’t look even remotely winded.

She would have been offended by the injustice if not for the distractingly beautiful kite. Who could be angry about something as dull as breathing when they stood below a thing that could fly? There would always be better things for air to do than fill the lungs of Alice Locke.

“But you stopped… running from me…” she pointed out, finally straightening.

“Naturally. You weren’t getting any closer.”

She huffed, brushing off her gown as she managed to compose herself. “So you let me catch you?”

“Either that or I caught you.” He tilted his head to the side, surveying her with the curiosity of a cat measuring up a mouse or maybe a spider examining a butterfly caught on its web. If spiderwebs were made of kite strings, Alice would probably fly headfirst into such traps. Wasn’t that exactly what she had just done?

The young lady squared her shoulders, her chin jutting up slightly. She was not a butterfly.

“You made it?” Alice gestured at the kite.

He nodded.

“How?”

“Scrap fabric, string, and twigs,” he said nonchalantly.

She stepped closer, her neck craning back as she stared up at the tattered ribbons that looked like they’d been pulled from a modiste’s rubbish bin.

“It’s beautiful.”

“I could make one for you.” His tone was playful, but his emerald eyes showed too much eagerness for it to be a taunt.

He wanted her to admire his handiwork as much as she wanted to admire him—it! She wanted to admire it.

“You could show me how to make one myself,” she countered.

His eyebrows shot up, and that smirk returned to his lips. “Very well.”

“Truly?” Alice’s heart did a little flutter-kick against her ribs.

She couldn’t bring herself to mind it much. It was probably just the excitement of the day. She’d never been allowed to wander so far from her mother’s watchful eye before.

Actually, allowed was a generous term.

“Truly.” The young man extended a hand towards her, offering the string. “Here. Practice, for when you fly your own.”

Gingerly, she reached out and took the string, her fingers brushing against his. His skin was rough, calloused, so different from her own soft hands.

She wrapped the string around her palm, marveling at the way the kite tugged and pulsed with the wind. It felt alive, somehow, and suddenly, holding it wasn’t enough. She envied the thing in the sky so fiercely that her grip tightened.

The kite dipped and swayed overhead. Her stomach lurched.

“I’m killing it,” she said, panic creeping into her voice.

“You are not. Pull the string,” he instructed, his eyes twinkling as he watched his creation lose altitude without batting an eye. “Now, run.”

Alice blinked, surprised. “Run?”

Again? But she had already caught the blasted thing.

But the boy smiled with twinkling eyes.

So, she ran.

She looked at the kite, then back at him. Then she took off.

With a burst of nervous energy, she drove one leg in front of the other, the string taut in her hand. The wind whipped through her hair, and the kite soared.

She could hear the young man’s laughter behind her, and it spurred her on. She could feel the breeze tugging her hair, the sinking grass beneath her delicate-soled shoes.

Higher and higher, it climbed, fluttering steadily above. She ran along the side of a small hill, her eyes fixed on the kite, cheeks aching from her smile. In fact, it took Alice a moment to realize she was laughing as well.

Her foot caught on uneven ground, and her ankle twisted with a sickening pop.

Her laughter was strangled into a scream and suddenly, she was tumbling down the hill. The string slipped from her hand, burning her palm. The world spun around her, a blur of green and brown and blue, sky swallowing the grass as the grass swallowed her.

She scraped her arm against something as she tumbled forward, rolling down the hill in a painful, chaotic jumble of limbs and skirts.

When she finally came to a stop, she was lying in a heap at the bottom of the hill. Her ankle was throbbing, and her arm was scraped and bleeding. Somewhere in the distance, the kite became smaller, fading into a speck in the sky.

She could make out the silhouette of her mother, Silvia, racing toward her. For a moment Alice wished her vision would remain blurry, if only so she would not have to see the look on her mother’s face as she arrived with their maids, Jenny and Molly.

A small crowd had begun to gather, their curious faces forming a dizzying ring around Alice as she lay sprawled on the grass, her eyes absently trained on the sky.

“Alice! Oh, my poor child!” Silvia’s voice trembled with hysteria as she knelt beside her daughter. “Always were so fragile. What were you thinking? What was I thinking? I should never have agreed to come here. I should not have let you wander off.”

As she recalled, her mother had not let her do anything. Alice had very cleverly gotten away. She felt decidedly less clever now, though. She blinked up at her mother, forcing herself to focus enough to recognize the worry on her mother’s face.

“I’m fine... It’s just a scratch.”

Lady Silvia turned to her maids, barely registering her daughter’s words. “Help her up! We need to get her to the carriage.”

Alice winced as Silvia’s maid, a round and red-faced older woman named Molly, and her freckled daughter Jenny positioned themselves at Alice’s side. They lifted her carefully, avoiding her injured arm. Alice’s ankle protested with a sharp jolt of pain, but she bit back a cry, not wanting to give her mother more reason to fuss.

“She’s been difficult since birth,” Silvia fretted almost to herself as they made their way toward the hastily summoned carriage. Alice frowned, already sensing the direction of her mother’s wandering thoughts. “I thought she would outgrow it, but here we are.”

Ah yes, here they were.

Alice had worked so hard to appear well, hiding any trace of her otherness, of how she was simply made wrong... Her mother had begun to believe in it, even planning for Alice’s debut in society within a few years.

This outing in the park had been a test of sorts—a chance for Alice to prove she could handle herself outside their sheltered home. But given an inch, Alice had taken a mile and, in doing so, wrapped the noose around her own neck.

“Mother, please,” Alice implored, wincing again as she shifted her weight from her injured foot. “I’m not fragile.”

At least, she’d never felt that she was. She’d never really thought it either, though her body seemed to disagree. But Silvia’s frantic gaze only darted between Alice’s wounded arm and the crowd gathering around them.

“Look at you,” she whispered fiercely. “One day in the park, and you are already bleeding. Bleeding, Alice. Bleeding!”

Alice was familiar with the term. She knew what the word meant, knew why her mother’s eyes widened when she spoke it. Even the maids exchanged worried glances but continued supporting Alice toward the waiting carriage. Everyone in the Locke and Taitman households knew what bleeding meant for Alice. They existed in perpetual fear of it.

The crowd parted slightly to let them pass, murmurs of concern and curiosity trailing behind them. As they reached the carriage, Alice cast one last look around the park, hoping for a glimpse of the young man from before, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps he’d chased after the escaped kite or melted away into the crowd amidst all the commotion. Clever boy. Alice wished she could fade away or fly away. She wished to be anyone doing anything. But she was Alice Locke, and she was bleeding.

The carriage door opened, and Silvia helped guide Alice inside, seating her gently on the plush cushions. Blood smeared across everything she touched—the seats, her gown, even Jenny’s hands as she tried to stanch the flow from Alice’s arm with a makeshift bandage.

“Stay still,” Silvia ordered sharply as Jenny pressed firmly against the wound.

It wasn’t like Alice had much of an alternative. Where was she going to go now?

The illusion she’d worked so hard to maintain was unraveling before her eyes. Her mother’s belief in her recovery, her own hope for a semblance of normalcy, were slipping away with each drop of scarlet staining the carriage.

“I’ll be fine,” Alice insisted, more for herself than anyone else.

But she wasn’t.

Hours later, Alice lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling and wishing it was the sky. Her ankle throbbed, and her arm burned where the wound refused to close. Weakness settled over her limbs like a leaden blanket, clouding her thoughts and making every movement sluggish. She glanced down at her arm, wrapped tightly in bandages that were already soaking through.

The family physician cleaned and covered the wound, applying pressure to try to stem the flow of blood. Her stepfather had called her current predicament “the consequence of a young lady’s improper behavior.” He had glared at his daughter as if she were an errant child who had broken a vase. Only she had broken something far more valuable.

His icy disapproval was strangely preferable to her mother’s warmth and bubbling sorrow.

“We shouldn’t have come into the city. We’ll stay at our country home from now on, where you’re safe.”

Safe.

Alice knew her mother meant well, but the word felt like an insult. Before she could even think to protest, dizziness washed over her again like an unwelcome tide pulling everything away except weariness itself; even speech seemed too great an effort now. Everything was pushing down against her, closer, tighter, harder...

Her vision blurred again before finally darkening entirely into oblivion. Before she succumbed to it, her last thoughts were of calloused hands and a string tied to the sky slipping through her fingers.