Proper Princess

Chapter Thirteen

"What could possibly be all the way out here?" Robert laughed, calling to me from the outside of the carriage. Due to the scandalous nature of us being about without one of my relatives coming along as a chaperone, he was driving the horses himself, so there was no footman or driver to bear witness and begin a rumor.

"You shall see," I teased, leaning just slightly towards the window to be heard. Really, there was no reason to hide any longer- we were well past any civilization, and the warm summer day had melted into a humid rain that had no doubt forced people indoors. I looked out at the crumbling businesses and shops of Old-London that had been abandoned, vendors and merchants and storekeepers choosing to move closer to the center of the city as it expanded. "Stop just here."

Robert tugged on the reigns and climbed down from the drivers seat. As he came to open the door, he had shrugged off his cloak, and held it out to offer to me in the most dramatic of fashions. "For your reputation, Miss."

I laughed aloud at that, and despite the incredibly low chance of us being spotted so close to the very edge of the city, I pulled the hood over my head and face. "Follow me."

Leading the way up to one of the buildings, I stepped gently on the stone steps- they were old and falling apart, and I was surprised that they did not crumble entirely under my weight as I felt them shift uneasily beneath me. 

Feeling almost as if I was floating through a dream, I knelt down, pushing away the loose board which had been shoved against the bottom part of the door that had been kicked out. "Follow me."

Crawling through the little hole in the door, I stood on the other side, brushing the dirt off my dress from where it had rubbed against the ground. In childhood, I had not needed to crawl like that- I had been short enough to simply duck down. But I made it through, and with a bit of a struggle, Robert did, as well. He did not bother to wipe his knees clean, and came to stand beside me, glancing about the old and crumbling building.

His turned to gaze at me. "Amelia, where are we?"

Tears built in my eyes as nostalgia hit hard . "My home."

I saw his confusion mingle with intrigue as I stepped forward, running my hands over the fraying rope that hung in the center of the room, suspended from one of the support beams above us. "This was the swing. Me and all of the other street-children loved to take turns on it. They would push me so high that it felt like I was flying."

The memories were flooding back to me now, though I had not been in the old and abandoned factory in almost a full decade. Once my Father had opened the charity school, all of the children I had once stolen with and starved with and survived with had flocked there, in search of the promised shelter and food and education.

Even now, I could so vividly recall the commotion of my childhood within these walls that it was as though it was taking place all around me. I could hear the chatter of young voices, the laughter and banter echoing off the walls. I could smell the stolen bread warming over the fire, see the phantom shadows cast across the floorboards by children whom had long-since grown up, I could picture their small faces so clearly in my mind.

They had been my first family. This place had been my first home. 

I ran my hand across a block of wood that Eli had drug in himself once when he was scarcely seven years old, so proud of his find, which had been abandoned down by the river. "This was our bench. The children who were crippled and had a hard time getting up from the ground would sit on it rather than on the floor. Sometimes we even used it as a table, and we would pretend that the stolen bread we had was a feast fit for a King. John loved to play pretend, especially."