By C. Disclaimer:ABC owns all the characters.
Recap: We last left the Wildwind Gang gathered around cold Dean & DeLuca coffee, pondering the meaning of a mysterious children's rhyme when Edmund saw something on the bookshelf and believed he had it figured out.
And now...
~~~
"I know where Alex is, or at least what she's trying to say!" Edmund sprang to his feet and crossed the darkened room in a hurry, his eyes scanning the shelf. "It's here, I know it's here, it just has to be..." he muttered to himself his hands reaching about.
Brooke and Dimitri exchanged a worried look, one saying perhaps the swift removal from Oak Haven was a bit too premature.
"Found it!" Edmund cried, bringing forth a few artifacts of his and Alex's happier days. Edmund didn't want them near where he spent his time, but he didn't want them gone, so he kept them here, next to a perfume Maria wore, a single earring Brooke lost many years ago and a tarnished old locket of his mother's. A burial place for all things dead in his life.
He brought the objects and placed them in the only pool of light in the vast darkness of the Wildwind study. Outside, the wind was howling. One could almost imagine Jane Eyre, or Catherine and Heathcliff or Daphne Du Maurier's unnamed heroine to be running about, heart heavy with tears and sorrow!
The objects were a single vial, small, less than an inch in height, made of clear, smooth glass, stopped with a tiny cork. Within it was a clear liquid which cast shadows on the cherry table. There was a picture of the two of them, Edmund and Alex, against a backdrop of a house very similar to Wildwind, large, rambling and far too big for a single family. They did not lean into each other as lovers do in early pictures, they held hands, Alex, tossing her head against the wind to get the hair out of her face and Edmund merely watching. Captivated by her every movement, every breath.
"This is a Lachrymatory." Edmund said, his voice catching in his throat as he picked it up and played with it. "It catches your tears. It's the greatest gift you can give someone. Alex gave it to me here." He indicated to the picture. "It's in France, a few hours away from London, nice ride. That's...that's where we thought some of her information would be hidden, but when we got there, a simple house with a simple life."
"Why would you think that's where Alex is?" Dimitri asked, trying to block out the image that suddenly invaded his mind. Alex and Edmund, happy and in love. He hated that image and he hated them for putting it in his mind!
"Because, as we were wandering through the house, we reached the nursery, and in it was a pillow with this embroidered on it in french, as Alex translated, the housekeeper informed us that that was the room that the young child of the owners had died in. After that, they moved out, never visiting, never calling, never doing more than sending cheques to keep up the care for it. Ever since then, Alex referred to it as the La Chambre de la Petit Ange."
"The House of the Little Angel" Brooke whispered.
"Exactly. Now we get a message from Alex, obviously written by her, quoting some children's rhyme...I don't know why, and I don't know how, but I know it's her. Alex is at La Chambre de la Petit Ange!"
"Edmund, Edmund, Edmund, we don't know, for all-"
"For all we know Dimitri, Alex could be in danger, cold, alone, scared and missing her family, for all we know, she could be two days from death! All I know is that if we don't do *something* to try and save her, I will not be able to live with myself, could you?"
Maybe it was the conviction in his voice, or the urgency or the fact that it was echoing throughout the room, but Brooke knew Edmund was right.
As they were arguing, half a world away, Alexandra Devane was rising from bed, still twilight. They let her have any room in the whole house. She chose the nursery. It was the closest she felt like home in. She didn't know whether or not they received her plea for help or dismissed it or even knew what it meant. Maybe Edmund didn't remember as much as she would have liked him too.
They were rather nice in here. For people holding her against her will and armed with tazers and all. They let her roam about the house, even let her out every so often, all under SWAT-team like surveillance. She had her own room, her own clothes, books and films to entertain her, but no radio, no computer, no phone. Her mother was kind enough to leave her a picture when she was first brought in. One of Edmund and her and the kids in costume from the night he had proposed. "After all," Charlotte explained later on: "I *did* raise you, clothe you, feed you, I do hold *some* compassion for you. I'm not *completely* heartless. Besides, I always liked that second one more than the first. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again darling. Edmund was much more devoted, more settled, Dimitri was a whirlwind romance at best, something best left to ponder while pleasantly drunk." She failed to mention why she was brought here, why she was held captive.
Someone else was here. The guards told her that much. Someone else held captive but they had never met in the halls or on the grounds.
As Alex rose from bed, she wished upon a star like Maddie taught her, the last star in the sky. "I wish a wish, I wish I might, dream a wish I wish tonight. Oh Edmund, take me home!"
