Alice
al-is. Origin:German. Meaning: noble, exalted.
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Alice was the perfect child, the embodiment of a perfect princess; beloved by both her mother and father from the moment they found out she was a girl; the glue that keeps her family togethe...
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Telling her brother seemed to have been harder than Alice had expected, mostly because she hadn't given a thought about actually telling William before telling their father. She loved her brother, but she didn't think something good would come come out of her telling him, especially not before the Prince of Wales had been made aware. But Alice had been pressured after William caught her off guard the same day her relationship had ended and Alice was anything but able to fake smile her way out of the situation.
She was able to keep it from him for four more days, but as she was preparing to go back to Scotland, William knocked on her door and asked if they could talk. That was too much for Alice to handle and she broke down just a few minutes in. William was clearly worried and asked what was happening, and so Alice told him. She explained everything and William waited until she was done to even let a single facial expression give away what he was thinking. But when she was done and he started talking Alice knew that she didn't have anything to be worried about.
"There's no reason for me to be pissed about it now. You're already pregnant, and David has already been a bastard, so there's nothing to be done about that."
Alice let out a sigh and looked down at her hands, embarrassed she was even in that situation and especially because she was now relying on her older brother for help and advice.
"Father needs to know, and then probably granny, but for now this stay between us."
"Bella already knows. She was the one who was here when I took the test."
William let out a sigh, looking down at his shoes as he took that information in.
"At least you'll have someone in Edinburgh who will understand. But no one else can know, Lily."
"I promise."
"Good, I love you and I trust you, but we cannot afford a scandal right now."
She nodded because she agreed. They couldn't afford any bad press at the moment. Her father and step-mother, liking it or not, had already been facing the world of people saying mean things about them, their love and their relationship, and Alice could understand how her becoming pregnant at 19 wouldn't be a way of getting her family's name, as well as her father's, out of the tabloids mouth. She could only imagine the horrible things they would say about her, about her family, but especially about her father, about how awful of a father he was for letting his barely legal daughter get pregnant by her boyfriend, whom she wasn't even with anymore.
The days managed to pass normally as Alice returned to her life in Scotland to the best of her ability. William would call as much as he could, always asking how she was feeling without actually asking if everything was how it was the last time he checked in. Everything was always the same, apart from a sudden decline in her health and weight due to her severe morning sickness, everything was perfect. Well, until it wasn't.
Alice should have learned by then that her life was never as perfect as people imagined it to be. Her current expectant situation the best example possible. But it could always get worse. Alice was returning from one of her study sessions in the library when everything went black and the only thing she could feel was the cold, wet floor of the streets of Edinburgh. Needless to say she was rescued within seconds by an undercover PPO and taken to the nearest hospital.
Her father, who had just returned from their greek adventure, and new step-mother, flew in from London the minute word got out that "Princess Alice had been taken to hospital after falling face-first near her university's library".
Of course, the press would never word it like that, but for Alice, at the time, it felt like that if not worse. She had done an embarrassing thing in front of everyone, showed the world that she wasn't the perfect princess everyone believed her to be, and as a bonus put her secret at risk of being found out by the worst type of people, the photographers and journalists who had nothing to lose of revealing her secret.
At least half a ward had been closed off when Alice was transferred into a private bedroom at the hospital, but it still didn't make the whispers go away any less, especially when a nurse would come in and when they went out there would be another ten waiting outside her bedroom door. She just wanted to go home, but she couldn't, the doctors wouldn't allow it and the royal doctors, who had been involved the minute word got around to her grandmother that she was in a hospital bed asleep for, until that moment, unknown reasons, wanted to have a battery of exams done before they would ever consider allowing her to be transferred to another hospital. Not only had she face the near-humiliating accident alone, as well as be quiet as the doctors forced her to stay in that hospital bedroom more than she would like, she would also have to tell her father and step-mother the true reason for her fainting spell.
When the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arrived at her bedroom they both looked like the worry parents they were, even if Alice wasn't Camilla's biological daughter she had seen the girl grow up from a child to a young adult and she was now part of the family. After making sure Alice was comfortable, and the Prince of Wales having a long conversation with the royal doctors taking care of Alice, the couple finally stopped and silently demanded to know what had happened. Alice took a deep breath and she looked down at Camilla's hand holding tight to her own.
"I fainted. I wasn't feeling my best these past few days and it all culminated to this."
"But you hadn't been feeling your best since before the wedding." Charles said with a serious tone in his voice, making it clear he wouldn't accept that as the reason without further explanation.
"I hadn't." Alice bit her lower lip and felt her stomach turning. "You're going to be so disappointed in me."
"Alice, dear, do say what's wrong." Camilla said, gently pressing for the truth in a way only a mother could.
"I'm expecting. It's David's."
The room went into a complete silence as Alice's hand turned icy cold and, from the shock, Camilla dropped her hand, looking back at her husband, searching for something, anything to say.
At that moment Alice wished her mother was there beside her. That Diana was the one she was telling about her pregnancy, the one who would help her through this difficult time, the anchor that kept Alice's feet in the real world even when she was surrounded by the privilege she had been born with.
But Diana wasn't there, Alice didn't even know if her mother would react the way she was expecting she would, but if her father and step-mother wouldn't help her Alice wasn't sure what her next step would be. She didn't have a plan, not one that went further than telling the people she trusted most, and if those same people didn't want to face these times of difficulty with her then she would truly be a lost soul.
