“He is.” Alice breathed, round-eyed with awe.
“And the last impossible thing I believed before breakfast,” he said, “was that I have the smartest, prettiest, bravest, most well-behaved daughter in all of London.”
“That’s not impossible!” Alice protested, giggling again.
“Oh, it was by far the most difficult of the six,” Charles assured her. “I had to try terribly hard to believe it. It took me ages and ages. My tea had gone quite cold.”
“Father, you’re teasing me!” Alice said. She poked the satiny waistcoat over his stomach.
“But the good news is that I believed it at last,” her father said, hugging her close. “I believed it so well that it came true, and here you are!”
“Very well,” seven-year-old Alice had said, snuggling into his chest. “You may eat your breakfast now.”
Nearly twenty-year-old Alice laughed again, remembering her father’s stories. She didn’t notice the pained expression on Hamish’s face. He wished she could be like other Victorian girls: quiet, restrained, predictable. None of this peculiar talk about impossible things and breakfast. He glanced around and saw his mother hovering at the nearby tea table. Lady Ascot waved impatiently, fixing him with a “hurry up” glare.
Ahem. Hamish cleared his throat and turned to look down his nose at Alice again. “Alice, meet me under the gazebo in precisely ten minutes,” he said.
Alice gave his retreating back a curious look. She didn’t much like being ordered around. Precisely ten minutes! And how was she supposed to achieve that precisely, without a pocket watch of any sort? A real gentleman would have given her his, but then he wouldn’t have been able to glare at it impatiently when she was late.
Amused by her own wayward train of thought, Alice stepped toward the refreshments table, but found her way blocked by a pair of giggling girls in gaudy pink and green dresses. The Chattaway sisters were notorious gossips, and from the looks on their faces, they were simply bursting to reveal something they shouldn’t.
“We have a secret to tell you,” Faith said eagerly.
“If you’re telling me, then it’s not much of a secret,” Alice pointed out. She was not particularly fond of gossip herself.
Fiona clutched Faith’s arm. “Perhaps we shouldn’t.”
“We decided we should!” Faith cried, looking betrayed.
“If we tell her, she won’t be surprised,” Fiona observed. Alice’s interest was piqued. The secret involved her? Perhaps she did want to know after all. She enjoyed surprises even less than gossip.
Faith turned to Alice.
“Will you be surprised?” she demanded, clearly wanting the answer to be “yes.”
“Not if you tell me,” Alice said. “But now you’ve brought it up; you have to.”
“No, we don’t,” Faith said. She drew herself up huffily.
“In fact, we won’t!” Fiona agreed, looking equally indignant.
Alice sighed. Why did the Chattaways have to be so maddening at all the wrong times? Luckily, she had a trick up her sleeve. She folded her arms. “I wonder if your mother knows that you two swim naked in the Havershims’ pond.”
The sisters gasped simultaneously.
“You wouldn’t!” cried Faith.
“Oh, but I would,” said Alice. “There’s your mother right now.” She took a step toward Lady Chattaway, one of the women cooing over the flowers, and Fiona seized her elbow in a panic.
“Hamish is going to ask for your hand!” she blurted out.
Alice stopped dead. She blinked at Fiona and Faith, too astonished to speak. The two girls beamed and giggled, but their smiles fell as a hand landed on each of their shoulders. Alice’s older sister Margaret stood behind them, looking very displeased.
“You’ve ruined the surprise!” she scolded them. With a push, she sent them off toward the river and pulled Alice aside. “I could strangle them!” she whispered, tucking her hand through Alice’s arm. “Everyone went to so much effort to keep the secret.”
In a daze, Alice glanced around at the other partygoers. Now she spotted how people kept looking at her, then away again quickly. Now she noticed how their whispers stopped suddenly as she passed. Now she saw the half-hidden smiles of glee on most of the women’s faces, the knowing looks on the men. She felt a flutter of panic in her chest.
“Does everyone know?” she asked.
“It’s why they’ve all come,” Margaret said brightly. “This is your engagement party! Hamish will ask you under the gazebo.” Margaret looked as if she couldn’t imagine anything more thrilling. “When you say yes—”
Alice interrupted her. “But I don’t know if I want to marry him.”
Margaret’s face was disbelieving. “Who then? You won’t do better than a lord.” They both looked over at Hamish, who was standing on the outskirts of the party muttering to himself, rehearsing his proposal, Alice realized. As they watched, he blew his nose vigorously, studied the contents of his handkerchief, then folded it and put it back in his pocket. Alice shuddered.
“You’ll soon be twenty, Alice,” Margaret said in a no-nonsense voice. She patted Alice’s pale cheek. “That pretty face won’t last forever. You don’t want to end up like Aunt Imogene.” She nodded at their middle-aged aunt, who was cramming small sweet cakes into her mouth. Imogene’s cheeks were covered in a thick layer of rouge and her yellowing white dress was in a style much too young for her.
Margaret turned Alice around to face her. “And you don’t want to be a burden on Mother, do you?”
Alice looked down. “No,” she said quietly.
“So you will marry Hamish,” Margaret said, satisfied. “You will be as happy as I am with Lowell, and your life will be perfect. It’s already decided.”
Alice felt as if she were suffocating. The weight of everyone watching her, knowing she had no choice, pressed down on her. Would this have happened if Father were still alive? Surely he would never have made her marry Hamish . . . but he was gone, and there was nothing Alice could do about that. She had to marry Hamish.
It’s already decided.
She was trapped.
Chapter Two
Lady Ascot suddenly loomed in front of Alice. Her sharp face leaned down, her features pinched.
“Alice dear,” she said smoothly, “shall we take a leisurely stroll through the garden? Just you and me?” She seized Alice’s elbow and propelled her away from Margaret. Alice cast a pleading look back over her shoulder, but Margaret only smiled and waved. Her face seemed to say: that’s your future mother-in-law! You’d better get used to it!
Alice was out of breath by the time they entered the maze of rose gardens. Pink, red, and white roses bloomed all around her, filling the air with their sweet perfume. Lady Ascot kept them moving at a fast clip, and Alice wondered what the hurry was. Her long blond hair was coming unpinned. She thought of how Hamish would disapprove and then gave her head a shake to dislodge a few more pins.
Lady Ascot spoke suddenly. “Do you know what I’ve always dreaded?”
“The decline of the aristocracy?” Alice suggested, but Lady Ascot did not acknowledge the joke. She carried on as if Alice had not spoken.
“Ugly grandchildren,” she said, answering her own question. “But you are lovely.” She beamed at Alice’s porcelain skin, her lustrous hair, her elfin features. “You’re bound to produce little . . . imbeciles!”
Alice jumped. That wasn’t where she’d expected that sentence to go. But then she realized that Lady Ascot had gotten distracted in the middle of her speech. The aristocratic lady had stopped to glare furiously at an innocent-looking bush of beautiful pearly white roses.
The rosebush shook as Lady Ascot tore off one of the roses and peered at it. “The gardeners planted white roses when I specifically asked for red!”
A glimmer of a dream-memory tiptoed through Alice’s mind. “You could always paint the roses red,” she offered.
Lady Ascot gave her a strange look. “
What an odd thing to say.” She pushed Alice forward again along the neat gravel path. “Come along.”
As they hurried forward, Alice lifted her head. Was that . . . jingling that she’d heard? It was hard to tell over the incessant sound of Lady Ascot’s voice.
“You should know that my son has extremely delicate digestion,” she was saying, but Alice missed the rest of the sentence as something large and white darted past them. She whirled around, blinking, but it was gone again.
“Did you see that?” Alice asked.
Lady Ascot looked displeased at the interruption. “See what?”
Alice gazed around at the dark leaves and brightly colored flowers of the rose garden. “It was a rabbit, I think.” She felt a strange prickle along her skin.
“Nasty things.” Lady Ascot sniffed. “I do enjoy setting the dogs on them. Don’t dawdle.” She dragged Alice toward the gazebo, but the younger woman didn’t notice. She was still looking for the rabbit as Lady Ascot continued her lecture about Hamish’s digestion. “If you serve Hamish the wrong foods,” his mother said, “he could get a blockage.”
This time it was unmistakable. A large white rabbit was just off the path, standing on its hind legs and staring directly at Alice.
And it was most definitely wearing a waistcoat.
Alice blinked. The rabbit darted behind a tree.
“Did you see it that time?” Alice asked.
“See what?” Lady Ascot said again.
“The rabbit!” Alice cried, getting frustrated.
“Don’t shout!” Lady Ascot said snootily. “Pay attention. Hamish said you were easily distracted.” She patted her forehead with a white silk handkerchief. “What was I saying?”
“Hamish has a blockage,” Alice said, edging away. “I couldn’t be more interested, but you’ll have to excuse me.” She dove into the wooded area off the path, escaping Lady Ascot’s clutches. For a moment she blundered through a thick cove of trees, but she saw no sign of the white rabbit. She stopped, her mind reeling.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and she jumped. But it was only Aunt Imogene, her bright pink cheeks disturbingly close to Alice’s face.
“Aunt Imogene!” Alice said, leaning back a little. “I think I’m going mad. I keep seeing a rabbit in a waistcoat.”
“I can’t be bothered with your fancy rabbit now,” Imogene said, patting her ridiculous curls. “I’m waiting for my fiancé.”
This was strange enough to distract Alice from the rabbit for a moment. “You have a fiancé?”
A sudden flash of white darted past her and she whirled around. “There! Did you see it?” she cried. Her gaze searched the tangled shrubbery frantically, but everything was still again.
“He’s a prince,” Imogene simpered, ignoring Alice’s last question to go back to the story of her fiancé. “But, alas, he cannot marry me unless he renounces his throne. It’s tragic, isn’t it?”
Alice gave her a skeptical look. “Very.” Perhaps Imogene had lost her mind. She certainly sounded madder than Alice right now. Alice smiled and nodded politely, backing away from her aunt. Imogene had her hands clasped under her chin and was gazing off into the distance, waiting for her imaginary fiancé to appear. Alice was able to duck behind a tree, and she ran right into her sister’s husband, Lowell.
To her surprise, Lowell had his arms around a woman and was kissing her passionately. That woman, however, was not his wife, Margaret. Whoever she was, she took one look at Alice, let out a little shriek, and ran off into the woods.
“Lowell?” Alice said disbelievingly.
“Alice,” he said, highly flustered. “We were just . . . uh, Hattie’s an old friend.”
Alice lifted her eyebrows. “I can see you’re very close.” Not ten minutes earlier, Margaret had been extolling the virtues of married life and explaining how being married to Hamish would make Alice’s life as perfect as her own, married to Lowell. Was this what she meant? Did she really have no idea what was happening behind her back? Could Margaret be happy with a man like this?
Lowell adjusted his cravat. His face was bright red.
“Look, you won’t mention this to your sister, will you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Alice said, stepping back. She didn’t want to cause Margaret pain—but shouldn’t she know the truth about her husband? She didn’t know what the right thing to do was. “I’m confused. I need time to think.”
“Well, think about Margaret,” Lowell said, half-pleading, half-commanding. “She would never trust me again. You don’t want to ruin her marriage, do you?” He ended with a threatening tone in his voice.
“Me?” Alice protested. “But I’m not the one who’s sneaking around behind her back. . . .”
“There you are!” Hamish’s voice interrupted. He popped out of the trees and seized Alice’s hand. Without a word to Lowell, he dragged her away.
Alice stumbled on the rough ground. It seemed far too soon to find herself standing with Hamish under the statuesque gazebo that adorned the garden. The shadows of the pillars fell on her like prison bars. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling cornered. As she glanced around, she spotted a string quartet discreetly positioned in the shadows. Their bows were already lifted and poised to play . . . just waiting for her to say yes before they added some swelling music to the dramatic moment.
Hamish dropped to one knee. Alice’s heart sank with him. She’d been hoping that Margaret was somehow wrong, that this wasn’t really about to happen.
“Alice Kingsleigh . . .” he said, taking her hand.
“Hamish,” Alice interrupted him.
“What is it?” he asked, frowning.
“You have a caterpillar on your shoulder.”
Hamish jerked backward and began frantically brushing at his shoulder, wriggling in disgust.
“Don’t hurt it!” Alice cried. She stepped forward and let the caterpillar crawl onto her finger. Then she lifted it gently onto a tree branch.
Hamish curled his lip at her hands as she came back to stand in front of him again. “You’ll want to wash that finger,” he said, edging away from her. Alice didn’t mind. She much preferred it when he wasn’t touching her.
Someone cleared her throat nearby, and the two young people in the gazebo glanced around to see Hamish’s mother gesturing eagerly at them. In fact, a whole crowd of people was watching them. Alice felt the weight of all their eyes on her, and apparently Hamish did, too, for he blurted out: “Alice Kingsleigh, will you be my wife?”
The question hung in the air for a long moment.
Unsure of herself, unsure of her future, unsure of her own sanity in that moment, Alice began to stammer. “Well, everyone expects me to . . . and you’re a Lord . . . and my face won’t last . . . and I don’t want to end up like . . . but this is happening so quickly . . . I, I . . . think . . . I . . .”
Something caught her eye.
It was the white rabbit, leaning against a pillar of the gazebo, glaring at her with undisguised impatience.
Maybe she was crazy. But she couldn’t exactly ignore him.
“I need a moment,” she explained, backing away. She seized the skirts of her long dress, turned, and ran.
Cries and murmurs from the crowd bubbled up behind her, but she didn’t look back. She ran with her golden hair flying out behind her, chasing the rabbit, just as she had in her dream, over and over again.
They ran across the manicured garden, into a thicket of woods, and out into an open meadow that Alice didn’t recognize. Small yellow butterflies darted over the tall grass, and hedgerows rose up along the edges.
Alice ran as fast as she could, but she’d lost sight of the rabbit in the grass. Gasping for breath, she stopped and looked around. She peeked over the hedgerow. The rabbit was nowhere to be found.
Suddenly, a white paw reached up and grabbed her by the ankle. With a quick jerk, it yanked her off her feet. Alice threw out her arms and screamed.
She was falling
&nb
sp; down
the rabbit hole.
Chapter Three
Alice’s screams echoed as she tumbled head over heels down the enormous, dark hole. Her hands reached out, searching for something to stop her fall, and she realized that the walls around her were lined with odd things . . . things you would never expect to find in a rabbit hole. Hanging on the dirt walls were crooked paintings, ancient maps, cracked mirrors, demonic masks, and bookshelves crowded with bizarre paraphernalia.
She grabbed the first thing her hand touched and found herself holding an empty jam jar. Frustrated and terrified, she let that go and grabbed for something else—a crystal ball. Growing frantic, she scrabbled through object after peculiar object, finding herself holding books, more jam jars, a badger claw, a monkey’s hand, and finally a human skull. With another shriek, she flung this last terrible thing away from her and kept falling, down and down and down into deeper darkness, where there was no longer anything to hold on to.
Still she fell, as day passed into night, down and down, still falling.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Alice landed on a hard wooden floor, smacking her head as she hit the ground.
“Ah!” she cried in pain as the wind was knocked out of her. She gasped for air for a moment, then sat up, rubbing the bump on her head.
She was in a circular hall with closed doors all around her. There was something strangely familiar about it, although she couldn’t imagine when she would have been in a round room at the bottom of a rabbit hole.
Alice got to her feet and tried one of the doors, but it was locked. She tried the next—and the next— but they were all locked. What was the use of so many doors if you couldn’t go through any of them?
Finally she took a step back and glanced around the hall. That’s when she noticed a three-legged glass table nearby. Had that been there before? She didn’t understand how she could have missed it.
There was a tiny gold key sitting on top of the glass tabletop. Alice picked it up and tried it in a couple of the doors, but it was far too small. She paused and studied the key for a moment, then glanced around at all the doors in the hall, wondering if any of them were small enough for this key.
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland Page 2
