Chapter 1 #4
"That is noble of you, Your Grace," Felicity murmured, though not without a trace of skepticism. "But you know as well as I that the ton rarely speaks openly."
"You speak of them as though they are wolves, Felicity," Daphne replied. She seemed to have a different temperament than the rest of the sisters. She was calmer, and more level headed.
It was something that Alethea could appreciate in a person's personality, and she suspected that out of them all, it would be Daphne with whom she got along with the best.
"And are they not?" Joyce asked quietly. "Oh, I do not mean to be unkind, but you know what society can be like. And Alethea is... well, she is something of an enigma."
"She is one of us," Daphne said firmly. "She always has been. That her path was diverted does not make her a stranger."
Once again, Daphne was defending her. It felt strange to be defended, when all her life she had only been assigned blame. Alethea did not know what to make of the feeling entirely.
"Her manner is very peculiar," Joyce said after a moment. "She says things plainly, without concern for how they may sound. And she looks at people so directly. It's a little unsettling."
"That's because she was raised among women who had no need for pretense," said Daphne. "She doesn't understand yet that our world runs on it."
"And therein lies the difficulty," Joyce added. "How is she to play the part when she does not even know the stage?"
"Perhaps we ought to let her write the part herself, instead of forcing her into a role she did not choose," Ambrose said.
"She will be watched," Joyce said eventually, more gently now. "That much is inevitable and she must be prepared for it."
"Then we must be her shield," Daphne said. "Not her judges."
Alethea decided at that moment that she did not want to listen any more, for their words only seemed to confirm the suspicion she had inside of her all along. She did not really fit into this world, and adjusting to it was going to be a difficult task.
Surely, there was disagreement even between the sisters. Alethea wished for them to know her at a deeper level, but would that be possible even? She had not grown up with them, and now they were all at an age when they were well settled into their ways.
If anything, getting to know them now would feel like an imposition.
She thought back to her friends at the nunnery.
Surely, things had been difficult there but there were moments of friendship as well.
It felt like a bittersweet moment to think back to a past that was no longer hers, and she wished that she could speak to her friends again, letting them extend their help in navigating this new life of hers.
When Alethea returned to her room, she decided that it was best that she retired early. Her body was tired from the long journey, and worse still, the weight of the conversations she had overheard laid heavy on her mind.
Besides, it was habit to sleep early in the nunnery. It was discouraged to stay up to a late hour, and if anyone would be found staying up, they would be made to sleep on the floor for an entire month.
She realized that she did not have that condition on her anymore, but it was still a reflex for her to want to sleep early. Finally, she settled her eyes on the bed that had been already made for her.
Her first impression of the bed was that it was far too big for her. Surely, it could fit three people. She had been used to sleeping on a single bed, which was not long enough to accommodate her legs as she had grown so every night, she had to sleep in a crouched position.
Here, it was the opposite.
When she laid down on the bed, she knew instantly that it was the softest one that she had ever lain on. In principle, that should have relaxed her mind but it did little to make her feel at ease.
It occurred to her then that it was not the bed that was the issue, rather the invasive feeling that was threatening to spill out of her chest.
"I feel like a stranger in my own house," she muttered to herself, half-amused by her own strange fate.
She tried to will herself to sleep, but her sister's words still played out in her mind.
"She must be prepared."
But eventually, sleep claimed her and drifted away not into a land of dreams but nightmares. She had been transported back to the nunnery. She woke again, in the middle of the night, startled.
"Is someone there?" she asked, sitting up in her bed. She could have sworn that she heard a thud. Had it been the wind?
There was only darkness, and her eyes adjusted just in time to see a shadow pass across the moonlight. A figure stood beside her bed. Before she could scream, a gloved hand covered her mouth. Another drew a length of cloth across her eyes.
She jerked in protest, her limbs flailing beneath the blankets, but the stranger moved quicker than her. A thick arm looped tightly around her waist and lifted her from the bed.
"Letmego," her words only came out muffled.
Alethea did not remember much of what happened later, only that she was being taken away, without being noticed. Perhaps now for the second time in her life.