Chapter 1
The sea was just as angry and intractable as it had been six years ago, when Alice had crossed it the first time as a scared, twelve-year-old girl sent from home by her stepmother, a woman whom her father married only a few months prior.
It was no wonder though, neither the condition of the English Channel, typical for early November, the girl mused while she observed the high waves rushing towards the ferry as they ran from the impetuous wind, crashing against its hull, rocking the entire vessel as if it were a mere walnut shell, nor her stepmother's behaviour towards her new husband's daughter, who looked so much like her deceased mother. It had been a good strategic move from a woman who wanted to carve her place in Alice father's heart, to send his only daughter out of his sight; she could understand it now, in the hindsight.
She looked at the travel companion, or rather the chaperone her father sent for her with an encouraging smile that the older woman struggled to return-- her fair face framed by a multitude of stray dark curls escaping her bonnet had become white as soon as they had boarded the ferry and was now acquiring a greenish tinge, well visible despite the falling twilight. Alice sighed in empathy and drew her into her arms once more. The best thing, or, more precisely, the only good thing about returning home from her beloved school, where she had already envisioned herself as Madame Souvestre's-- who at some point started to feel almost like a mother to her-- assistant at the end of her studies, while she would continue to write her tales, a childhood pastime becoming a need she now couldn't live without, was that she got to see her old governess, Miss Anne, again.
"Go in the cabin, Anne. I'll join you shortly," Alice told her, forcing her voice to surpass the constant murmur and howling caused by the waves and wind. She enjoyed standing on the deck, at the mercy of the elements, filling her lungs with oxygen and the waters' indescribable scent and... the hint, the faintest taste of... a promise of an adventure she wasn't expecting to encounter on her way home, a... whisper of inspiration, something she could weave within one of the tales she still had to plot and write.
When the woman only shook her head stubbornly, her gloved hand pressed to her tightly closed lips in a vain attempt to stifle the nausea, Alice insisted, "Please, Anne. I understand that you were sent to watch over me, but there's no one here except for the two of us, I hardly need a chaperone now. Save your health and energy for when they'll throw us to the London's society in February."
Alice sighed. There, she finally admitted to herself the reason why they had suddenly remembered her at home.
There had been no love between Alice and Lady Charlotte, or Mother, as she had been expected to address the stranger, the haughty, heartless widow who had wreaked havoc in Alice's life from the first moment they had laid eyes upon each other. Charlotte had two daughters from her first marriage, twins almost three years younger than Alice, who always treated their stepsister just as unkindly as their mother.
Alice had welcomed her new family into her world with open arms, knowing quite well despite her young age that her love alone would not suffice to fill her father's mourning heart, to help him not to forget the woman he still loved, but to learn to live without her, to move on and fulfil his own destiny in this world before they would be reunited again in afterlife. She had always been polite to Lady Charlotte; she had introduced her stepsisters to her real as well as imaginary friends.
But they had appreciated none. They had ridiculed her beloved friend, the only son of the neighbouring marquess for his a little too large ears prone to an easy blush, and had failed to ever see her even closer, imaginary friend, a boy who had always appeared in a slightly different body and set of clothes-- once as an orphaned gypsy, then like an apprentice thief or a chimney sweep, or, the way she loved imagining him the most back then, a ragged powder monkey from a pirate ship-- but never as anyone noble, like those young people her age she had been obliged to make friends with in real life. However, despite his changing his appearance to the whims of her boundless imagination, Alice had never failed to recognize him as the same person, her best friend, for the black rabbit who preceded him every time he appeared.
Alice hadn't seen him in years, she realised with a pang of nostalgia. Actually, she had glimpsed his rabbit the last time on a ferry similar to this six years ago, the one taking her to France, she mused, observing Anne's finally retreating figure. She would join her governess soon. The two hours' voyage would last much longer in this weather, she couldn't possibly stand on the deck with her back pressed to a sleek wooden wall for support, her hands clasped tighly around the slippery railing, under the rain that was just beginning to fall the entire time.
Distracted by a sudden, swift movement across the wet deck, as if that of a shadow cast by a seagull flying through the sun rays above, Alice frowned. There was no sunshine and no birds following the ferry. Even the always hungry seagulls knew not to defy the awful weather today. Alice squinted into a distance where, she was certain, she had just spotted a black rabbit in the place where Anne had vanished belowdecks.
No. It was impossible. A sudden fit of hiccups made her gloved had fly to her mouth. This used to happen to her all the time when she was a child-- bursting into hiccups every time someone scared or something surprised her, or when she was simply too nervous. But she was almost sure that she didn't give one single hiccup ever since she had left home and the boy with the rabbit behind, having convinced herself that she couldn't take her male friend into the finishing school for girls.
What was happening? Alice wondered, trying to subdue another hiccup, forcing her eyes to glean a rabbit form in the fast falling, misty dusk-- Goodness, it was bizarre to think that she had only left Boulogne-sur-Mer this morning in plain, almost summery sunshine. Crossing the English Channel was like entering a different world, one filled with clouds, driving winds and endless fog, and a prospect of a gloomy, loveless future. For a writer of romance tales, as she liked thinking of herself, it was the worst possible outcome.
Alice sighed again, her breath entering her lungs with difficulty she hadn't felt since childhood, forcing her to cough, thus finally interrupting the insupportable hiccups. She had been a sickly child, suffering from pneumonia each winter. It was that fact that her stepmother used as an excuse to send her away from home 'for her own good', to a milder climate of a seaside school which, in all honesty, cured her-- or, apparently, only stalled her problems until she set foot on a home bound ship. Alice coughed again and drew her woolen coat, courtesy of her family just like the pair of winter boots and the elabourate, fashionable, travel gown they sent her to substitute the simple and comfortable, yet elegant dark gowns used as a uniform in Les Ruches, which she already missed. The progressive French Institut did not oblige the girls to wear corsets prescribed by the London's society, one of which was making Alice feel short of breath since she donned the new gown hours ago.
Coming back home... felt like returning to a prison, Alice concluded as she let her eyes trace the grey, wavy outline of the all encompassing heaving sea again, offering her face to the cool salty spray carried on the wind for a long while, hoping that it would wash away her gloomy thoughts, before she, with a drunken step, finally moved in the direction Anne had taken to reach their cabin.
However, all the water flying from the blurry surface of the sea, mingling with that falling from the fast darkening sky, didn't help. Try as she might, Alice could only see one reason why her family, her father who hadn't bothered to visit his only daughter more than six times in as many years, suddenly realised that she still existed. They needed their eldest daughter to marry well, so her younger twin stepsisters would find even better matches next year, when they would be introduced to society.
It meant that, in a few months, Alice would be shepherded into her first season, at the end of which she would be expected to marry her richest and most noble suitor, a man who would marry her for her her father's title, land and fortune, shattering her dreams of love.
Alice despised the idea with her whole heart.
