It took me forever to find inspiration to write this sequel. For anyone who was waiting for it, I hope this short beginning gets you excited for the rest of the story to come. Enjoy.

Chapter 1: the Long Trip Home

Explaining anything of great difficulty, was never a pleasant task between a daughter and her father, especially when it came to distance. It was even more difficult to explain why the distance had to be thousands of miles between continents.

Alice tried to resituate herself in her seat, replaying the conversation over in her mind…

***Flashback***

"What do you mean you're flying to England?!?! Pumpkin…our anniversary is in two weeks. We always go into the city…as a family…you're going to break your mother's heart."

Alice chewed on a cookie, turning short distances from left to right on her barstool at the island counter in her parents kitchen. She knew this conversation was going to be difficult, but her preperation never prepared her for how stricken her father sounded. She was happy that she had chosen to speak to her father alone, or the sound of her mother's sobs in the background would have made this impossible.

"Muffin…why can't you wait until the summer? We could all go…together…I'll even rent a home and we can stay as long as you like. It'll be like a vacation. We haven't had a vacation all together in years."

"Daddy…" Alice slipped off her stool, resting her cookie on her plate, her milk entirely untouched. "This is something I need to do alone."

Tom Pleasance slumped into a chair in the breakfast nook, eyeing the snow as it fell outside. His againg eyes were full of worry, and it brought great stabs of guilt to her heart. Alice had been watching the snow aswell, remembering a similar evening over a year ago, and a man in a long dark blue coat…

"Alice, I could certainly be more understanding if I knew exactly what you had to do alone."

"I just need to get away for while…that's all."

***End Flashback***

It wasn't a total lie, she did need to get away. It had never occurred to her to actually leave the country though. That little hitch had kept her from leaving in the spring, as there were passports to procure and finances to arrange.

Alice sat back in her highly uncomfortable coach seat, listening to the uncomforting hum of the very loud jet engine somewhere below them. The flight that took her away from America had thus far been long and irksome, and the dinner they had served hours ago was curently rumbling in the pit of her stomach obnoxiousely. She hated flying…

Alice hated flying and she hated keeping things from her father. She also hated packing and being away from familiar surroundings, which left her bewildered as to why she was traveling to find something she wasn't even sure could be found.

She looked out the window, watching as dawn broke over London Heathrow Airport. It had been snowing in Gotham when she left, and it brought back so many painful memories she was almost happy to see gray skies and light rain and the plane began to descend.

"Look here Charles, I know you're upset but we can't do anything now, we don't even know who the buyer is."

"Bloody hell Tom, the deal was pulled right out from under us. You aren't even concerned?"

Thomas VonTrench raised his pint to his lips, taking a long pull of stout before eyeing the local inhabitants around him. Willshyre was a quiet village, set in a quaint english country side that wreaked of antiquity. From his seat he could see the tavern's sign that read simply, "The Raven," a sign he was sure could be no younger than 1545. This is why he preferred London, atleast they tried to keep up with the times.

"No Charles, I'm not, and I'll tell you why. We have every opportunity to get it back, we just have to see the correct attornies once we get into the city. It's absolute bollocks that they found an heir. "

Charles wiped his brow, and Tom watched the stocky man's cheeks get ruddier the more he turned it all over in his simple little brain. "Well I don't like it, I don't like it at all. We were hours away from signing the papers, and Barton drowns himself in the lake and some mysterious heir shows up? Bloody hell….they won't even give us his name. It's all very mysterious to me."

Tom only nodded, turning his attention to the street outside and the rain that was beginning to fall. Unimpressed with his buisness partner's way with words, his own mind began to work through what had transpired in the last week or so. One of Willshyre's most romantic manor's had almost been theirs for the taking. The exclusive bed and breakfast they had planned would have brought this pathetic little town into the twenty first century, but the stately manor that had lovingly come to be known as Rosethorn, was now in the hands of an American whose name was barred from every document they had seen.

Tom had watched from his car for days as personal belongings were moved into the manor, but no one ever came out to check on the workers or direct them. It was as if the man who had swindled his way into the land was nothing more than a ghost.

"Hello love, I'll have…another pint…and the shepards pie…and maybe…how's the fish n' chips then?" Charles tapped his pudgy fingers on the piece of paper in front of him that served as a menu.

The waitress had most likely responded, and Tom knew the two were chatting away over the day's faire, but he couldn't hear them at all. His eyes were suddenly fixed on a young blonde woman across the street, struggling with three or four suitcases as she made her way into Molly's Inn. Perhaps his stay in Willshyre, wouldn't be as bad as he thought.

Rosethorn was sprawling manor, that spoke of fairy tales and dashing gentlemen. From the outside, the brown stone mansion looked as though it had seen its share of history. The walk way leading to the giant mahogany doors was cobblestone, lined with what was surely flower beds that would be brilliant in the spring. In fact, all the grounds were filled with gardens that lay in wait, holding their little breaths for the first sign of warmth, so that each bud could once again rise and turn its head to the english sun.

Inside, there were no servants stirring about as there had been in years past…no music….no laughter…only the clink of china against silver as a man sat in the drawing room, absently stirring a cup of tea. He had lit a fire in the fireplace, whose expansive mantle and wide stone base filled the room with an old fashioned warmth unattainable by modern furnaces.

This was a home known only to this lonely soul in his childhood, and as he stirred his tea, het let his mind wander back to memories of his mother playing the piano, his father tinkering with strange copper toys, and his siblings studying so as to please them both. It had been a lovely little façade of a happy family while it had lasted.

There had been quarrels later on, and crying…yes there was much crying in these halls. He still couldn't bring himself to enter what his mother had called the blue room. It was a room as sad as its color, and though the man chided himself that he was an adult, and hesitation was a child's game, he had locked the room up with an old key that he had tossed in a dresser in another bedroom. He was happy to have it forgotten.

The first sip of tea, usually the most pleasant, brought no smile to his lips. From within his coat, the man pulled out a picture, which he set down on a table by a ridiculousely large top hat. The site of the blonde woman trapped beneath the glass, her smile frozen in time, brought only meloncholy and no releif as its owner had hoped.

It was true, that no matter where he went, no place would ever feel like home to Jervis Tetch without his Alice.