by Bella Bryce
"I don't want to be nineteen," she offered, quietly.
"You're not ready to be nineteen," Brayden replied immediately, pleased at her words, even if she had no say in the matter. "I do, however, think you are ready to be twelve."
Alice pulled back from his waistcoat and looked up at him, causing Brayden to meet her eyes. Although she had enjoyed being ten, she didn't want to stay there for another year.
"Twelve," she repeated, as her eyes wandered up to the ceiling and then back down to his.
"Your wardrobe will not change. Neither will any of the rules. The only difference is the addition of two years to your age in conversation and how you are presented."
In reality, nothing about Alice's appearance, wardrobe or the rules would change until she was about eighteen in Brayden's eyes. Or her chronological age. He believed everyone under the legal age of driving, voting and owning a home should be at home, behaving themselves and doing just as they are told. In this case, he was more than pleased with that belief system, because it meant he would have a lot more time with Alice before she 'grew up.'
"May I still sit in your lap?" she asked innocently, after another moment of contemplation.
Brayden kissed her forehead. "Always," he replied. "Always, always."
She produced a smile before laying her head against him, her hand resting gently where Brayden's tie disappeared beneath his waistcoat.
Brayden held Alice as if it were the first evening he met her. He thought back to how she'd run straight out of the Rolls Royce, up the stairs and into his arms for comfort. Her mother had locked her outside in the dead of winter without a coat or any of her things when Alice tried to tell her she was moving out. Sally thrust eighteen years of drunken abuse and neglect on her, yet when Alice tried to exercise her right to seek better circumstances, her mother lost her temper and attacked her. Brayden had absolutely no idea how to help Alice at first, but soon realised she really needed love. She needed someone to be the hero in her life – someone who wouldn't blame her for what she didn't know. How could a girl on the cusp of adulthood know anything about behaviour that was never taught to her? Brayden only knew how to love her like his parents loved him, to teach her the manners, expectations and behaviours which had been made important in his life. He'd been the kind of father to Alice he had in his own father, the late James Oliver. Judging by her growth, it was exactly what she needed.
He was grateful to Alice for responding to his solicitation, for being brave enough to break out of the cycle she'd become so used to in her childhood home, but most of all, for trusting him. It hurt to imagine her growing older, leaving Waldorf (if she ever chose to), or being held in the arms of a man who wanted to make her his wife. Brayden couldn't guarantee that any man would be worthy of Alice's affections, or that he would treat his daughter the way he had treated her; with unconditional love, understanding and respect. Brayden felt Alice had always been his little girl, and the idea of not having the moment he had with her there and then, and every one at her bedside when he kissed her good night, when she came out from behind the screen in her innocent dressing gown, when she arrived in the dining room every morning with her hair curled and an amusing comment – Brayden would miss those things immensely. He would grieve when Alice was no longer part of his every moment and daily routine. His heart was trying to prepare for the day when it finally happened, but all he could do for the time being was to hold her, and hope he had many years before that time.
"Don't make me have a birthday party. Please, Father?" Alice's voice sounded after a long silence between them.
Brayden couldn't help but smile. "You wouldn't like cake and presents?"
Alice's eyes travelled through mid-air for a few pensive moments. "Will Mr. Patterson be there?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Twelve is still far too young for those kinds of thoughts."
"Uncle Damian won't be there. We need someone in his place," Alice replied, innocently.
"So, now you would like a party?" Brayden asked.
"Well, maybe not a party as such. Perhaps a light finger buffet and champagne."
Brayden frowned and shook his head. "You are going to be twelve Alice, not twenty-one. Kindly try again."
Alice returned her head to Brayden's chest and sighed. "Oh, I don't know, Father. Whatever you think is best then, I suppose. After all, you do know everything."
Brayden smiled. He had indeed said those words on several occasions, and was more than pleased it had finally sunk in.
"I only have one request."
"Anything, Darling," he said, looking down at her.
"I want Miss Greyson to come."
It turned out that Brayden hadn't really meant anything. He meant, anything. But not really, anything. In terms of Alice's request, it was small. She hadn't asked for a horse, or a pool (which he would have been more than happy to give her), but instead, it was a matter of the heart. Brayden knew exactly why Alice wanted Anabelle Greyson there; because he was a man of his word, and he'd said she could have anything. She also knew her father wouldn't take back his word. Alice had seen a very rare opportunity for Brayden and Anabelle to be in the same room while she wasn't hired help. They liked each other and everyone knew it, but Brayden hadn't yet begun to pursue Anabelle. Why? Alice wished she knew.
Brayden's manner that evening at dinner was more reserved than usual. Alice ignored his quiet demeanour, refusing to feel sorry that he would have to find a way to phone Anabelle and invite her to Waldorf for something other than coordinating an event for him. Brayden didn't make his thoughts obvious, but Alice knew he was thinking about Anabelle. Alice bit her lip and held back a giggling snort. It was delicious to see her father a bit pensive. 'Serves him right for not asking Anabelle to dinner by now,' Alice thought to herself.
"I think I'll skip dessert and take a bubble bath." Alice wiped her mouth with her napkin.
Brayden's full attention returned instantly.
"You'll do no such thing, young lady. Finish your dinner, then you're having tea with Uncle Bennett and Elisabeth when they arrive. "You've not had a proper conversation with either of them recently, and it's time we sat down together. This house needs to get back to normal. All of this coming and going isn't good for you girls."
Alice rolled her eyes at her plate.
* * * * *
After tea, Bennett and Brayden excused themselves from the sitting room while the girls began a game of chess. They each carried a brandy down the long corridor toward the ballroom and straight through to the large, glass conservatory at the back of the mansion. They crossed the dimly lit room to the endless wall of French doors on the far wall onto the raised stone patio overlooking Waldorf's formal gardens.
"Is everything all right?" Bennett asked, when he saw Brayden's reserved manner.
They stopped on the stone patio and looked across the estate as the sun had dropped below the tree line in the distance.
"It's Alice's nineteenth birthday on Sunday."
Bennett's head turned straight to Brayden, wondering if he was going to say she was leaving, or something equally as horrifying. His manner suggested something as melancholy. Of course, Bennett was a rare person indeed who could see that kind of emotion beneath Brayden's genuine manners.
"Sunday also marks one year since she came into my life," Brayden added, before taking another sip of brandy.
Bennett didn't stop looking at his best friend. "What does all of that mean?" he asked, a little impatiently.
Brayden swallowed the sip and kept his eyes on the horizon. "She'll be twelve."
"Instead of nineteen?" Bennett was much like Brayden in that he couldn't imagine Alice as anything other than how he'd come to know her.
"However it's interpreted, you're niece turns twelve on Sunday. I hope that doesn't make you feel old."
Bennett exhaled and shook his head. "Nothing could make me feel older than I already do. I'm still expecting Alice to be our flower girl, by the way."
"She will be," Brayden confirmed. "She won't like it, but my job as her father is to savour every humiliating experience so that I can relay it to any potential suitors and hopefully frighten them off. Besides, I think it will be good for the girls to see a very clear separation in their companionship with one another. Alice adores Elisabeth, but she will be her niece soon."
Bennett was pleased to hear it; he wouldn't have had a flower girl if Alice weren't his niece.
"Forgive me for being far away," Brayden offered, after he swallowed another sip of brandy. "I didn't think it was going to be difficult watching Alice mature. I was wrong."
Bennett looked across the gardens and quietly mulled over his best friend's words.
"It's ridiculous. I'm the one who told her so clearly of my expectations. She's fulfilled them and I don't think I like it." He glanced at Bennett.
"You'll not hear me reprimanding you," he replied, with a small chuckle. He didn't like it either.
"How is it that one broken little girl came into my life and made me feel so utterly whole?"
"I'm not sure, but that makes two of us," Bennett replied, after a further moment of deliberation.
It was a sobering realisation; that one human being could make such a deep impression upon another so as to change one's life. Alice had never tried to impress her charm or her character or even her growth on anybody, she just trusted Brayden and it happened naturally. Brayden felt completely secure in his fatherhood and he didn't want his life to continue without being needed by her. And Alice needed Brayden. Desperately. She adored the man who'd come to accept her as his own, and without a second thought, he was the one man she would compare all other men to at every turn in her future.
On the other side of that realisation, was how terribly unhealthy it could be to allow oneself to be impressed deeply enough that their entire identity was found within that role. Brayden was Brayden before Alice entered his life, and he would carry on being so even after she matured, or married or travelled the world or made her mark on her own generation. Brayden couldn't lose himself in the new identity he'd claimed as her father because he too had a life and a path to walk. He just found the boundary between the two very difficult to walk when it was so terribly easy to consume himself in the adorable little girl who'd walked right into his life and changed it for the better.
"Keep Sunday afternoon clear in your schedule, by the way. We're having a little party for Alice."
"Ice cream, jellies, and pass the parcel?" he asked, with a raised eyebrow. Those things were synonymous with English children's birthday parties, and precisely the very things they both remembered fondly of their own childhood.
"Not quite," Brayden replied, before taking another sip of his brandy. Alice didn't have any friends 'her age', so there really wasn't an option for her to have a party with anyone except the adults she'd come to know as an aunt, uncles and her father's old boarding school friends. They cared about Alice because Brayden did, and she'd learned to be comfortable around them.
"That doesn't leave much time for me to find the present that will make me her favourite uncle," Bennett replied, flatly. "Although, Damian's done me some decent service by being a pain in everyone's bloody backside."
Brayden ignored Bennett's somewhat selfish view of how someone else's failures were helping him to rise in Alice's affections.
"I tried to forget it had been a year already, to be honest. My fault, entirely," Bennett confessed, solemnly.
"She'll always been ten years old to me," Brayden remarked.
Everyone had been invited. Everyone, except Anabelle. He stared at her business card as he sat behind his desk. Should he email, or ring her? He couldn't text her, that was ridiculous. The invitations had been designed and dispatched by a company Brayden used when he didn't want to bother Tweed Events Co. with 'small gatherings.' Completely against his character and integrity, he hadn't sent one to Anabelle because he didn't know what kind of impression that would put on her. The invitation would have had to go to her office in London, because he wouldn't ask her for her home address. It might plant ideas in her mind if she received an invitation for Brayden's daughter's '12th birthday' at work; precisely the kind of ideas that he wasn't ready to address. He wanted to, but he didn't know how.
A knock on his study door caused him to turn the business card over onto his desk.
"Yes," he said, and uncapped his fountain pen, then opened his leather notebook and carried on with the list he'd been writing earlier.
"Sorry to disturb you, Uncle Brayden," Elisabeth shyly remarked, as she held the doorknob in one hand and waited in the open doorway.
"Not at all. Come in, darling." He recapped the pen and closed the notebook as Elisabeth crossed the study. She approached the two leather chairs in front of his desk and stood behind them.
"What have you got there?" Brayden nodded toward something behind her back. She'd placed both of her arms behind her and was holding something.
Elisabeth gave a little smile and pulled it in front of her; it was the handmade, leather-bound sketchpad with her monogram on it he'd given her for Christmas. Brayden smiled.
"You've been getting good use of it, have you?"
"Yes, Sir." Elisabeth smiled. "That's what I came to show you, actually."
Brayden stood up and indicated she was to follow him to the fireplace seating area nearby. He sat on the Chesterfield sofa and Elisabeth took the place beside him, then opened the notebook.
"I've been working on some sketches for the wedding. I wanted to have some things to show Anabelle when we go in for our next meeting, since she's going to be at all the tailoring appointments," Elisabeth casually remarked. Brayden hadn't known that. Not at all.
"Let's see, then," he said, pushing thoughts of Anabelle out of his mind.
"This is Alice's dress," Elisabeth said, as she looked at Brayden.
"Oh Elisabeth, she's going to look lovely in that."
"I wanted to be sure you approved. This is all going to be ivory lace and organza, with three layers of ruffles going down from the bodice," Elisabeth explained, using her hands against her own body to demonstrate as she glanced at the sketch before them. "With a marigold satin ribbon tied at the back."
"Lovely, darling. That will suit her perfectly. Very well done." He put a hand on her back as Elisabeth turned the page.
"I'm glad. I woke up this morning and saw it in my mind and had to get it down on paper."
"Are these your bridesmaids?"
"Yes. Emma is the maid of honour, but they'll all have the same dress. These are going to be marigold-coloured satin dresses with little cap sleeves and a sash at the back. It will be a cross between Alice's dress and mine. Bennett thinks the girls should cover their arms, but I don't want them to be in long sleeves for a summer wedding. And, with all due respect, no girl ever looked good in a long-sleeved bridesmaid dress," Elisabeth digressed.
"I agree with you on that score. I'm sure Harriet can come up with something."
"I hope so, because I'm out of ideas on those ones." Elisabeth turned the page. "And this is mine."
Brayden was quiet as he turned the notebook toward him gently, to get a better look at the detail of her prolific drawing. Elisabeth was talented; they all knew that, but it was another thing seeing how she'd imagined her wedding dress. It was touching for more than one reason, the main one being that Elisabeth would be wearing it the day Brayden gave her away to his best friend.
He looked at his niece and kissed her forehead. "You will be the most beautiful girl," he said, quietly.
Elisabeth blushed a little. "Thank you," she replied, shyly. "I must admit, I'm rather stumped as to what kind of suits you and Damian will wear."
"Well, my tailor is excellent, so once you have the design approved by me, I'll be sure to pass it along to him."
Anabelle had told Elisabeth that all designs needed to be given to her, to pass to the team hired to make the wedding attire. She bit her lip and closed the notebook. B
rayden would find out one way or another that he wouldn't have his regular tailor making his suit for the wedding, and Elisabeth didn't want to be the one to tell him. Brayden was very particular about his own tailor, which was a known fact. It was also a known fact Elisabeth could be spanked by her uncle for speaking out of tone to him, but to her knowledge, Anabelle couldn't. Therefore, she would leave any kind of possible disagreement about wedding attire with the coordinator to handle.
Elisabeth smiled. "I'd best go and get ready; Bennett's already on the way. I just wanted to be sure you were happy with Alice's dress. I want to have all the sketches done before our next meeting."
"Yes, I am, very happy, Darling."
"You won't say anything to Alice? I want her dress to be a surprise."
"I shan't," he said, patting her leg.
"By the way, Bennett is on his way to collect me now. He said he'd bring me home just before bedtime this evening. We're going to get Alice's birthday present for Sunday."
"Let me give you some money." Brayden stood up from the sofa. "He bought my Christmas gift from Alice and he hasn't let me pay him for it." Brayden went inside of his desk and removed his wallet from one of the drawers. "Don't let him give it back to me, please," he said, as he counted out twenty-five £20 notes. Elisabeth tried not to gawk. She still wasn't used to how much money the Fowlers and Brayden had. It seemed unreal at times.
"That is an order." He raised his eyebrows at Elisabeth.
"Yes, Uncle Brayden," she replied, with a half-smile and kissed his cheek.
"Good girl. Have a good day, and I'll see you at bedtime."
"Yes, Sir," she replied, then let herself out of the study and closed the door behind her.
Brayden stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. Something about Elisabeth showing him those sketches, especially the one of her wedding dress, had made him think about Anabelle again. It was the latter, and the fact he would love to see what she looked like in a wedding dress of her own.
