Alice Windsor | BRF Story

17.

Clare Hall, Dorset

September 2012

Hellfire broke out the minute Edward stepped into their bedroom. Anastacia was already ready to go to bed but she definitely wasn't ready to actually go to sleep, and it showed. Edward's wife hoovered around him as he took a shower and got himself ready for bed, not saying one word towards her husband but making it clear she was far from happy. He was nearly in bed when his wife looked back at him from her vanity table, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed in a way that they were barely visible from afar, which was hard since Anastacia did have fuller lips. 

Edward didn't say anything, and neither did his wife. It was a staring contest, the first to break would be the first one to actually open their mouth to say something and finally, maybe, put an end to the misery that was becoming that relationships. 

The loser was Edward. 

"I'm not apologising for anything, Ana."

"I didn't say anything about it." The way she said it made it very clear she cared about this situation more than she was letting on, and more than Edward had been aware of until now. 

"Of course you didn't." 

It was sarcastic, an awful way to deal with the situation, but a coping mechanism he had found to deal with his wife's moods over the last two years. 

"I just don't understand why." She turned around, now fully facing her husband who was still standing on his side of the bed, a book in hand with his phone away from his hands. "Why do you still care about her? She is your ex, someone who you weren't even serious about."

"You truly don't know what you're saying, Ana. And she isn't just my ex, she is a Princess. She isn't just a girl I had a liaison with during university." 

"She is fourth in line, in a decade she'll be nobody. Why do you care about her?" 

"Because I do, Ana! Because she was and still is a crucial part of my life and who I am today." 

"I am your wife! Do you know how humiliating it is to be completely ignored by your own father-in-law because his son's favourite side woman is staying in my house? Sleeping under my roof, the same roof we sleep together every night?"

"Don't make this all about you, Ana."

"Yeah, because you weren't humiliated the minute she stepped foot in the estate. 'I would like to be called by my title, if you wouldn't mind.' Well, I would bloody mind, princess." 

Edward's blood was boiling, and he was starting to get hot. He held to the book on his hand like it was the anchor keeping him from sailing into waters he wasn't completely sure he would be able to get out from. Waters that would have hard consequences to everything he was so desperate to say to his wife. 

"I think it's best if we end this conversation here. Or else we'll both say things we can't take back."

He started to march away from the bed and towards the door when a vase hit the wall next to him, shattering the glass, spilling the water on the carpet and scattering the fresh flowers around the room. 

"I won't regret anything I say. And I'm not drunk, before you accuse me of being."

"I wasn't going to." 

Edward turns back and stares at his wife. He truly did not recognise her anymore. Maybe she had changed like he thought she had, or maybe he had changed as well. Maybe he had seen and started to understand that Ana was just a temporary fix to a much bigger wound, one that would only have one actual fix. Maybe this had been a mistake just like his father had said throughout the months that preceded his wedding. 

"Make her leave." 

"What?" 

"You heard me, Edward. If you love me, make her leave." 

There were only two answers to that request, one was actually agreeing and letting Anastacia win. The second, which was much more complicated not just for Edward, was denying and letting Alice stay, but if he did do that it would mean accepting defeat over his wife's belief and confessing that he still had feelings for his ex girlfriend, something Edward knew wasn't far from the truth. 

"I'm gonna talk to her." 

"Good." 

Edward didn't wait one second longer before leaving the bedroom and walking to Alice's room. He knocked, lightly at first, against the wood of her door, but after what felt like a few minutes had passed he knocked again. And again there was no answer. Fear began to control his body and he turned the doorknob, opening the door just enough to see if Alice was inside. He couldn't see her, but her bags were around the room and her window had been opened just slightly, letting in a late summer breeze inside the bedroom. Edward walked inside the room, looking around before stopping in front of the bathroom door; it was closed but Edward could hear the water running through it. He knocked, once then twice, and when he knocked a third time a quiet voice reached his ears. 

"Go away." 

"Lily, it's me." 

There wasn't an answer for a few minutes and panic took over from Edward's rational thinking. He turned the doorknob and the door opened, differently from what he thought previously, and revealed the blue and white tiled floor of the bathroom. The water he heard running was from the sink, but Alice was nowhere near it, instead she was seated beside the toilet, her head resting against her forearm on the toilet seat, while her eyes were closed and her mouth was slightly open. Edward's heart sank, and he immediately knew something was wrong, not simply because she was seated on the bathroom floor after leaving her meal in the toilet, but because Alice's wasn't like this. Something was wrong and something had happened to leave her in such a state. 

"Oh, sweetheart." 

Edward picked the princess up, one of his arms behind her knees while the other held her tight against his chest. Alice murmured something that Edward didn't quite understand and walked to the side of the bed, depositing Alice as carefully as possible on top of the comfortable bed. Edward then went back to the bathroom and closed the tap before turning the light off and closing the door behind him. Alice was still with her eyes closed and he wondered if she had taken something to carry her off to a full night of sleep, but if she had then it would have come off with the rest of the food she left at the toilet. 

The Marquess took the vanity's chair and sat down beside the bed, making sure not to wake Alice as he stood guard beside her bed. After a few minutes she turned around and Edward could see the beautiful colour of her eyes before she closed them again, but before she could be carried off to sleep her hand reached for his and held it close to her heart until she fell asleep again. 

This was what Edward had envisioned a marriage with someone he loved would look like. Being with that person for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Anastacia had never let Edward get near her when she was sick or help her when she wasn't feeling well. And helping Alice like he had just done, even if he didn't know what had made her feel that way, only forced him once again to admit that maybe he wasn't as over her as he thought he had been.