Three years ago Noel had learned that she had a cousin by the name of Gemma. She had also learned that Gemma's mother had died when she was sixteen and that she had attended a school known as Spence academy. All the stories Gemma had told Noel were full of adventure and romance! The type of stories Noel loved most, but was not allowed to read about in books.
Noel's father was outraged that Noel was hearing such nonsense and he had told her to stop asking to be told the tall tales.
"Tales are for babies. You need to focus on your school work darling. Next time we go to visit your cousin, you will not ask for the stories, do you understand?" Her father had commanded.
"Yes, Papa," Noel had answered, lowering her had to look at her hands resting in her lap. He had called her in to speak with her about her school grades which were dropping. On a letter that a teacher had sent home it had stated that she had been telling some of the other girls stories that gave them nightmares. Some of the parents had complained and had wanted to know that they were being taught in school. The teacher had assured the parents that they were being taught all the ways to be a proper young lady and that there was no storying telling in her classes. This was when one of the parents had asked her daughter where she had heard such a horrifc tale, if she had not heard it at school. The girl had sworn she had heard it from Noel Bianchi. Thus a letter was sent to the teacher and the teacher sent a letter to the Duke. Now here she was being told she was never allowed to hear her favorite stories ever again.
After her father had dismissed her she went to the only person she felt would understand, her Aunt Clare. Before her mother died Noel and Aunt Clare had been very close. Even though her Aunt looked after her when her mother and father were out, Noel never looked at her Aunt as a care taker, only as a friend and play mate.
The after noon she was told not to listen any more stories she went to talk to Aunt Clare. After walking up two flights of stairs and down a long hall with walls the color of cotton, she found her aunt in her room, putting the finishing touches on a bun in her hair. The door was wide slightly cracked. Noel pushed gently to open the door a few more inches, then she knocked on the doorframe.
"May I come in Aunt Clare?" Noel asked, smoothing out some wrinkles in her red satin dress that complimented her red lips.
"Please do." Clare said with a wide smile. She pat the cream colored chair that sat in front of a small vanity table.
Noel smiled and walked into her aunts room and sat down in the chair. After a moment of silence Noel glanced up at her Aunts reflection and stated. "I wish I had blonde hair like yours Auntie."
Her aunt smiled and said, "Noel, don't you ever wish you were any different than you are. You are beautiful. Every part of you is special and perfect." She said, trailing off with a disant look in her eye, almost like the look Gemma and her friends got when they told Noel the stories, only Aunt Clare's look had a touch of sadness buried within her glazed glassy greens. Before Noel could ask what she meant Aunt Clare shook her head and looked at Noel on the mirror and said, "But I can give you the same type of up due" she lifted a small strand off Noel's shoulder and smiled.
Noel nodded and settled into the chair. "Make it look just like yours Auntie."
Clare gave a light laugh and said, "You bet."
Noel let her aunt brush her hair for a few moments before she thought of a way to ask what was on her mind.
"Auntie. Why doesn't he like the stories?" Noel closed her eyes, as Clare brushed her long curly black hair.
"Because, they scare him. He doesn't want to lose you in a world he thinks is false." She answered back, tugging lightly on one of the curls.
"What do you mean Aunt Clare? I thought the stories were false? Just tall tales right?" Noel asked opening her eyes and tried to catch her Aunts gaze in the mirror. Instead she saw the side of her aunt's face, looking towards the door, as if she expected someone to enter at any moment.
Aunt Clare pulled Noels hair into a tight bun. She had to stick forty pins into Noel's hair to make the bun would stay. After she had finished fixing Noel's hair, Clare kneeled down beside Noel in the chair. She took Noel's hand in her own and looked up into Noel's grey- blue eyes.
"Noel. Gemma's mother was a very special person and so is Gemma. Even your very own mother is special in a way that would scare most people in today's world..." Clare trailed off as she heard footsteps coming down the hall.
"Aunt Clare?" Noel asked. She was starting to worry about her aunt. What was she talking about? Her own mother was what?
Aunt Clare looked as if she were about to say something else, but before she could say anything Noel's mother came in. Marie looked at Clare and Noel and scowled.
"Clare. I need to speak with you." Marie had stated in an icy voice.
Noel had never heard her mother sound so forceful. She stood up and walked quickly and queitly out of the room her dress rustling as she hastened out of the open door. Marie closed the door behind her daughter. As Noel walked down the hall to her own room she heard raised voices coming from the direction she had just come. Noel was never a very nosy girl, but she wanted to know what had upset her mother so much. She turned around and crept back to her aunt's room and stood outside the door.
"-Almost told her!" Noel heard her mother shout at her Aunt.
"She needs to know! Look what happened to Gemma! Mary never told Gemma about what she could do and she never told Gemma what would happen when she turned the proper age! She was terrified and she didn't know what was happening to her! The poor girl probably thought she was some type of freak! We're just lucky she found out about us and we're also lucky that her friends didn't turn her in for being mad!" Clare shouted back.
What was going on? What were they talking about? Was wrong with her cousin Gemma? Noel pressed closer to the door to listen some more.
"Clare, I know she needs to know! But we aren't going to be like that pig headed, brainless, careless sister of ours. We will tell her! We still have time-"
"A year Marie! We have a year!" Clare stated.
Noel stepped back from the door. 'A year to tell who what? Me? Am I sick? Mom has another sister? Why haven't I met her? 'She thought. She shook her head and stepped back to the door.
"Clare." Came the voice of a calmer Marie. "She will have me and you and sometimes Gemma to help her get through this. Trust me, Okay? She will be strong and she will get through this with us to guide her."
Noel heard her aunt sigh, and then there was a brief pause, where her mother and sister could have been hugging or staring at each other with an unbreaking understanding gaze, like she had seen them share other times before when her aunt said something that Marie hadn't wanted her to say. Then Noel heard the sound of the floor creaking as someone walked towards the door. She knew she shouldn't have been out there eavesdropping. She looked around and found a small door behind her. She pulled it open and slipped inside just as someone was coming out. She left the door open a crack. Small enough not to be noticed, but large enough to watch her mother leave her aunts room, wiping her eyes. She waited for the rustle of her mother's dress to be far enough in the distance before she slipped out of the room.
Noel had never learned what her aunt and her mother had been talking about. A year went by and they never told her anything. Soon Noel forgot all about that mysterious conversation and moved on with her life.
Then her mother died, and her life came to a grinding, screeching halt. When she learned that her Aunt Clare had been with her mother in her last moments, Noel felt a pain in her chest that she could only described as pure hate and betrayal. This was when Noel and her Aunt no longer shared laughs like they used to, when Noel stopped going to her aunt for advice, when Aunt Clare and Noel stopped being friends.
Only a month and six days after her mother's death and everyone was acting as if Marie had never lived. As if life were still normal without Noel's mother around to spread joy to those whose life she had touched. Life was no longer the "normal" she had known it to be a month ago. For example, her father stayed locked in his study during the day, crying and drinking until he passed out. He would let no one enter, not even if it was business related. Another example was the fact that Noel was sitting pressed against a glass window while she world still turned and she was expected to act as if she weren't wearing black for mourning her dead mother. She wasn't supposed to be upset about the fact that she was leaving her home where her mother and father had been born and raised as close friends.
Noel could still hear her mother telling her stories about how her mother and father had met. Marie used to tell about how her and Griffen used to have so much fun taking walks and when they were older he would take her on boat rides. Her mother even told her that once they had visited London England together. When Marie had told Noel this Aunt Clare had been in the room and had made a strangled sound as if she were about to bust out and say something, but she quickly put an hand over her mouth and looked down at the ground. Noel had given her aunt and odd look, but shrugged it off, figuring her aunt must have had a cough or something.
Nothing was right. This whole bloody world was twisted and wrong for snatching her mother away from her. When Marie had died it felt as if she had taken Noel's feelings for love, hope, faith and every other pleasant feeling with her to the heavens. Now it felt as if Noel were leaving all the good memories as well, behind in her Italian home. She was being forced to come live at Spence Academy. At one point she had wanted to come here, she had wanted to have the same adventures as Gemma. After her mother died she realized she needed to grow up, she realized she could no longer believe in childish nonsense.
Her Aunt Clare had come to live in England and would watch over her as she attended Spence Academy. Noel would live at her aunt's house during the major Holidays and she wouldn't see her father for another two years.
As Noel thought about not being able to see her father tears sprang to her eyes and she tried to wipe them away as quickly as possible so that her aunt wouldn't see them. Too late. Aunt Clare had noticed the tears and sighed, letting Noel know that another lecture was building behind her aunts perfect rose red lips.
"Noel."
'Oh great.' Noel thought, 'here goes the whole "you're a becoming a women now" speech.'
"Noel, I know that losing someone so close to you is really tough. It's happened to me...several times. But that is one lesson you must learn as a young lady of today's world. People die and we live on. We wonder why they were taken from us so soon. Men, have a habit of breaking down and they seem to have a harder time with it. They can drink freely and cry as much as they want. Women, though, women must learn to cry, and then suck it up. Hold back your shoulder, puff out your bosom and stick that nose in the air." Aunt Clare smiled as she took Noel's chin and lifted her nieces head. She let go and continued saying, "You, Noel Marie Mary Bianchi, are a daughter of a Duke."
Noel almost felt as if she and her aunt could be friends again when suddenly Aunt Clare straightened her back to the point it looked as if she were about to bend over and touch her heels. Her head tilted up and she looked down on Noel with her eyes half closed. That's when Noel knew that the bonding was over and her Aunt had morphed back into the new steel fisted aunt she had turned into after her mother died.
"You will attend this school and you will be the best young lady that you can be. You will wear your corset and stockings every day, you will tie a board to your back to learn how to walk proper! You will attend all classes, French included and you will NOT, I repeat, NOT, get into any trouble." Clare said sternly.
Noel let her head fall back down like a dead weight. She looked at her hands for some time before asking, "Aunt Clare, why am I coming here. I thought Papa hated this place. After all the stories Gemma told and-" Noel stopped when her aunt held up a hand.
"Your father and I had a long dissection about your future and we both agreed that you need female guidance in your life. After your mother died, I had planned on moving back here. Your father was worried that without the proper guidance you would grow up to be a ruffian. So I offered to bring you along as long as you attended the right school. In the end he agreed. Now, Sit up straighter, that's it, and hold your head high. We are here. The head Mistress has agreed to greet you herself. Now your father worked very hard to get you into this school, I do not want you to give him a bad name."
Noel mumbled, "Wouldn't dream of it." She turned her head to look out the window, and she they came over a small hill she saw a large ominous building looming over head. As they passed under a grey stone archway and the iron gates opened to let the carriage pass, the school drew nearer. It was grey and dreary looking with frightening gargoyles on the roof, baring nasty fangs at any that dared to enter their domain. The claws that gripped the side of the school were sharp and sinister, threating to slash a person's throat if they closed their eyes for one moment in the dark. The dark depressing prion like school had a lush green gardens and a large green lawn, perfect for taking strolls in the late afternoon, to catch up on gossip. The closer the carriage drew to the school the more of the layout Noel could see. She saw the entire school was surrounded by trees and that there was a chapel on a hill not too far away.
In contrast to the dull greyness of the building and the snarling creatures positioned for attack up above, Noel could saw six other girls about her age and an older women standing outside, all with hands folded neatly in front of them. All of the student girls had on the same white flared white skirt; with puffed out sleeves white boots; and the same false smile. Had they all had the same skin color, eye color, and hair color, they could have been clones. The older woman was dressed in a grey dress and had grey hair pulled back into a tight up due. Her eyes were a startling blue color and they popped with all the grey and white surrounding her.
The carriage came to a jerky halt, Aunt Clare put on a false smile to match the ones outside the window, and Noel took a deep breath.
'My life in perky hell begins now.' She thought as the black velvet door slowly opened.
"Welcome, Miss Bianchi, To Spence Academy! I am Head Mistress Ester," Said the older woman standing in front of the white dressed clones.
Noel took the cabby's hand as she dismounted the carriage. She stood for a moment in an awkward silence. Her head held high and her shoulders held back she mimicked they're crossed hands and fake smiles.
"I am accustomed to strangers bowing to me when they are in my presence." Noel said in the snottiest voice she could muster.
Aunt Clare climbed out of the carriage just in time to hear this command and stood still with the same shocked expression on her face as the ones that looked at Noel.
"Noel. Darling, this is England. They do not have to bow to you here. They would only bow to your father if he were here. Here you are just a normal girl." Aunt Clare said stepping up behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Noel felt her heart skip a beat and she looked at her Aunt, it was her turn to be shocked. "What? Normal? No one bowing down to me? All the other girls at the other academy were important. Their fathers were Noble men and their Mothers ladies of high society!" She could feel heat rising to her face in anger. Finely she let it all lose. "Bloody Hell? What type of damned place are you sending me to?"
Everyone, including the cabby, gasped at her language. Their eyes grew wide and the girl students took a step back, as if standing anywhere within two feet would cause them to spontaneously bust into cursing as well.
The Head Mistress cleared her throat, "Miss. We do not use that type of language here. You would do well to remember that. Now, please gather your belongings and follow me inside." Head Mistress Ester turned on her heel and walked up the grey steps to a black door.
Noel cast one annoyed glance at her aunt and followed the old lady dressed in grey. She lifted her black dress up so as not to step on it as she climbed up the stairs. Her black boot heels clipped-clopped on the hard stone steps as she filed in behind the clones.
Suddenly she noticed that the white dresses were growing blurry and their voices around her were growing more muffled as she got closer to the school. Her head began to feel light, her limbs grew heavy. Noel's knees gave out and she crumpled to the ground on the last step before the door way of Spence Academy.