Alice Windsor | BRF Story

9.

Edinburgh, Scotland

January 2008

It was snowing, again. 

Alice had had two classes that morning and was now back home, in the flat she shared with two friends. She had already finished her homework for the day and was now getting ready to go and meet Bella at one of the local coffee shops for afternoon tea before Bella had to go back to her afternoon classes. 

While Bella had decided to follow the Law career, and was majoring at the University of Edinburg, Alice had, as expected, gone into a very different route, but as everything in her life she had her doubts. First she wanted to do International Relations, but decided that she could use something else to base her future work as a senior royal. She first decided on Art History and attending St Andrews like her brother, but then she visited the Edinburgh College of Arts and she fell in love. By the time it came time to apply for a university and major her heart had been sat in that university and its Fine Arts course. 

The five year course seemed to be getting better as the time passed, and Alice couldn't be more excited for what it would bring into her life. Her personal life on the other hand was making her dizzy just by thinking of it. 

Bella kisses her friend's cheeks and sits down on the opposite chair, having had ordered her drink before sitting down. 

"So, anything you want to tell me?"

The daughter of the Duke of Westminster didn't even let her friend greet her back before shooting her questions at the princess, and dropping the folded newspaper in front of Alice. But Alice knew she would have to tell her friend and roommate at some point, though the headlines did not make her feel any better.

"It is true. Well, half of it." 

"Explain."

"I haven't really talked to Edward since November, Bella. There isn't much that can happen when two people aren't actually speaking."

"Why?"

"Because we want different things, Bella, that is all."

The lady blinks, letting everything her friend had just said sink in. 

"He is just a few years away from being thirty, and he has made it clear before, he wants children." 

"So...?" 

"I don't want it, Bella. I'm young for Christ's sake! I still have three years at uni, I don't want to get married." 

"And did you tell him that?"

"Yes, and he said he wouldn't mind waiting, but..."

"There is always a but, isn't there?" Lady Arabella thanks the waiter and takes a small sip of her dark drink, discreetly looking over at her watch, and concluding she still had half an hour. 

"Apparently." Alice takes a deep breath and looks down at her hands, more specifically her left hand. "He proposed, last year. During our summer holiday."

"What? And you didn't tell me anything? Lily!" 

"I'm sorry, but I... Never actually said yes or no. His sister came in and he hid the ring; we didn't talk about it again until, well, November."

"Now things are starting to make sense. He doesn't mind waiting, but wants to get married."

"Yep."

Alice knew she was in a difficult situation, and the things people were saying about her in the news just didn't help. She knew she was in love with Edward, but she also knew she wasn't in love with the idea of getting married so young. 

Her parents 'love story' had been told over and over again by so many people throughout her life, and she just wasn't ready to have her own set in stone. And it didn't help that she looked so much like her mother, which just made the comparisons more difficult to handle. 

She had always loved when people said that she had a resemblance to her mother, like she was a physical piece of Diana on Earth, more than her brothers and mementos ever could be. But when the stories of her romance with Edward, Marquess of Dorset started coming out last summer, it all was just hit a little too close to home. 

"So you don't want to get married?" Alice could see her friend was trying to understand, but she had to be honest and accept that sometimes  even Alice was a little confuse with her own situation. 

"No, well, not right now."

"I mean it is your choice. But Edward is clearly in love with you." 

"I... I know. But I don't want to be compared with my mother, Bella."

"What? Why? I'm sorry Lily but who wouldn't want to be compared with Lady Diana Spencer?" 

Her mother's name and title came out of her friends mouth a little bit too laud and Alice was quick to shush her friend, who noticed in an instant what had happened. Bella looked a little red, although it could be from the cold wind as they walked out of the coffee shop, but she didn't let that stop her. 

"I don't have a problem, Bella. I have a problem when people start thinking I am my mother."

"No one thinks that, Lily." 

The cocked up eyebrow and cold stare as Alice stopped dead on her tracks made Arabella nod her head and link her arm to the princess', forcing her to continue walking. 

"OK, so maybe some people do. What is the issue in that?"

"The issue, Bella, is that I'm not my mother! Of all people you should know that." 

Alice was a little bit hurt, she had to admit. She expected her friend, her long time best friend, to understand her and agree, not question everything Alice just knew as the truth. 

"I am not my mother, Bella. And I'm more than my mother's daughter."