AllFreeNovel
Share Us
You utter fool,she said, over and over.You ruined everything.
* * *
One thing Grace can’t take from me, at least, thought Alicia with a smile of anticipation.After all that trouble and travel and everything else, at least now I can get into my own wonderful bed.
The routine of preparing herself for bed was at once comforting in its familiarity. Alicia washed up using her own washbasin, walked bare feet across her own familiar carpets to her own wardrobe where all her old garments were hanging, waiting for her. She changed into her most comfortable silk nightgown, blew out her candle, and slipped, at long last, into her own bed.
Mister Wentworth must have had the linens freshly changed, bless him,thought Alicia as her head hit the pillow and closed her eyes, ready to surrender to the blissful release of sleep.
But if sleep was usually a faithful companion to her, now it was an unruly, wild thing, and escaped her grasp quite completely. Alicia tossed, then turned, then tossed again within a single breath. She fluffed and refluffed her pillow, finding it overlarge and too soft in a way she never had before.
What’s wrong with the bed?she thought, trying to avoid the obvious answer waiting for her in her subconscious.Mister Wentworth must have done something to it. And it’s too hot in here by far.
She kicked the duvet off of her, then walked to open the window to relieve some of the suffocating heat of the summer evening. As soon as she did she winced at the noise of traffic from the street, then exploded in a fit of coughing at the rank air that poured in.
Tears streaming from her eyes, she poured herself a glass of water to soothe her throat and stop her coughing. Just as she drank down the water, recoiling at the stale taste, she heard a muffled “Stop that dreadful coughing! Some of us are trying to sleep!” shouted from another room in the house.
Oh, how I hate it here!Alicia thought with a snarl.
As she got back in bed, the enormity of this mental proclamation began to sink in as it rang in her ears. She stared up at the high ceiling above her, hearing herself declare her hatred for this place over and over. Whatever container had held all of her desires for so long, it had now been uncorked, and she could not restrain these wishes from spilling out over her.
I don’t want to be here,she thought, trying to ignore the ominous looming of the shadows across her bedroom floor.I don’t want to live with Grace. I don’t want to go to balls or meet new men at parties. I want to be back in Dunwood with Laurence. I ought to never have left.
Alicia’s eyes blinked open with the realization of how terribly she had ruined things.“Lord knows you would not have the sense to stay with him while you had him,” her sister had said.
Damn it all! On top of all her other aggravating characteristics, was Grace right about me?
