Unchaining Alice

Chapter 5

Sarah didn’t want her parents knowing she was marrying for a title and not for love. Whenever he was dining at the Smiths he always had to pretend. He hadn’t minded until now. Now it was real.

He decided not to go back into the dining room, instead electing to go to his own bedchamber and lie down. The more he thought about being tied to Sarah for the rest of his life made him know that he was going to stray. There was absolutely no way he could grow to love someone who thought his beautiful mother an ‘old witch’.

Once in his bedchamber, he went straight over to the basin and poured fresh water into the bowl. He soaked up the water with a clean towel and then wrung it out. He laid it over his head as he lay down on the bed hoping it would get rid of his headache.

His mind wandered back to little Jacqueline. He’d never thought about a woman this much before. Never. He honestly didn’t remember many faces. But hers was burned in his mind. If she gave him a chance, he could see himself falling for her. That was something he’d never thought he could do. Love seemed a little out of his reach. It was his luck though. He’d been to balls since he and his twin, Kitty had both turned seventeen, and on the day he finally conceded to marry Sarah he’d met a woman who stirred feelings in him that he didn’t even know he had.

Alice was grateful when the reverend arrived to help her on the Monday morning. She’d managed to sit all the young ones down with their breakfast, consisting of a bowl of porridge, before putting them all in the room that she had converted into a schoolroom.

The reverend taught lessons as she wasn’t able to read English as well as she was able to speak it. If they wanted to learn French then she was ideal.

With the children all learning how to read and write the alphabet, she was able to quickly have some breakfast herself. She didn’t quite like the English breakfast food but it was simple to make in large quantities so she couldn’t turn her nose up at it. She’d imagine it was something like the pastries her mother liked to make whenever they had the money to buy the ingredients. It was a treat for her and Jacques. What she would give for a croissant for breakfast, just once.

When she’d finished her breakfast and the children had moved onto arithmetic, she went upstairs to start cleaning the bedrooms and to check on the infants.

She couldn’t believe how many babies were left at the orphanage. It broke her heart each time she opened the door to see a new child left there with no-one to care for it. She smiled and cooed over each of the babies as she changed and fed them, giving each one a little attention by cuddling them and singing French lullabies. The babies didn’t have names, so she liked to give them something to be known by. The children often helped name them, picking something that had to do with the day they were found. One of the babies was found on Christmas night, so she was known as ‘Christina’. Another of the boys was found wrapped in a sheep skin blanket and the older children had called him ‘Bart’ as it sounded like ‘Baa’. Adoptive parents often picked their own names, but it was nice for them to have something to be known by in the meantime.

Once all the babies were settled, Alice got back to cleaning. She stripped the beds and replaced them with clean sheets and blankets. She piled the dirty sheets into a woven basket and carried them downstairs so that she could wash them.

She set the sheets aside and went to the kitchens to start readying the children’s lunch. She sliced bread and made sandwiches using mutton. She made twenty sandwiches and cut them in fours and placed the finished product on their individual plates. It was noon once she was finished so she called the children from the schoolroom and they all gleefully ran to their plates.