Thanks to anyone who made it past that bad prologue. Just to explain it, the art historian is meant to be genderless and a base character for you to self insert. And I'm so sorry for my long hiatus between chapters. School and life just ground me down. (also in terms of story recommendations: I do just want to recommend 'Nose to the (coffee) grind stone' by smoltinypumpkinchild (there is another recommendation at the bottom!)) But anyway this is the proper start of my story, so meet Karlotta Lafayette...

Sayonara from Kitten.

1; A Journey Just Beginning

21/05/1808AD

"Hurry! Fetch the doctor. His fever's risen again." I order my maid Fleur, while quietly I mutter to him: "Please Stay with me." She bobs her head and scurries off as I wet a cloth with cold water and attempt to cool his reddening face as he thrashes, delirious.

"Jeanne. Jeanne ma chere." Of course he is asking for my mother, talking to her. She's been dead ten years yet everyday we feel her presence in this house. Our family house, meant for a large noble family. Yet all that is left of that dream is me and my father. My mother died giving birth to my little brother. The twins which had come before and died in infancy had weakened her. "Alex...Alexander..." Wait who is this man, Alexander? It's not a French name. It must be from his days of the American Revolution.

But before I can contemplate this anymore, the doctor walks in and shoves me to the side. I hear him call me 'emotionally weak and fragile'. Sexist bastard. Then again, they've never put me down. And neither will this.

"Sir, my I help you with caring for my father?" I ask the Doctor. He looks to be around forty, with greying hair and a harsh face. But instead he gestures to the footman who led him in, Pierre, and says:

"Get her out."

And just like that I'm dragged from my fathers room by Pierre. He apologises profusely as he half drags and half carries me to my room on the other side of the house.

29/05/1808AD

For the last week I was a prisoner in my own home. They prevented me from going to dinner or meeting other people besides from Fleur. And barred me from my fathers bedside. So after three days of fretting, like the fragile fool the doctor called me, and trying to plan a fiendish escape. (Not that that will ever happen!) I took to damaging various old farming objects with the pistol father gave me. However it does mean I now aim a lot more accurately. Maybe next time I duel somebody I'll slice through their sleeve and graze their skin; a clear win.

"My lady, your father wishes to see you." A voice says from outside my door, the voice of Tobias (one of the three footmen managing this manor). I hear the key turn in the lock and I abandon my now emptied pistol on my small 'vanity desk' which I only use for writing and sitting. I'm not very taken by the deadly cosmetics the other women shroud themselves in.

As the door opens I smile, a veil on my turbulent feelings of worry and anger, and immediately make for my father's room; my old hoop-less dress allowing me to speed through the often slim hallways of my family's ancestral manor. Not that either of us wanted this life. I wait patiently (just kidding anxiously) outside my fathers room for the full minute it takes Tobias to catch up with me. Then slowly push open the door to see...

04/03/2016AD

I'm at the library ready to check some census' from the first two decades of the nineteenth centaury. Surely if I check uptown New York I'll find the name Karlotta somewhere. Upon finding the census check portal, four iPad's on stands in what is essentially a corridor, I sit down at the most secluded removing my old black double breasted coat to reveal my brown button down shirt and blue jeans. Carefully I type the dates 1800-1820 into the census checker or whatever you call it and begin to look.

29/05/1808AD

"Father." He's sitting up in bed and attempting to speak to Pierre despite his speech being a little garbled; a far cry from the dying man receiving his last rites as I had believed him to be.

"My little dove. I-" but before he can continue he's cut off by a hacking bout of coughs that seem to shake him to the core. And finally my father's mortality reaches me. No matter what happens, he will die eventually, I guess we all will. But his candle is nearly extinguished. "I h-have a mission for you." He begins again shakily and rasping.

"What is it father, I will do anything that you wish." and as I speak I walk up to him and sit softly on the edge of his bed.

"I want you t-to take a document to America for me. A-a account of the revolution for a friend. S-so he can write more."

"You want me to go that far?"

"Yes. Stay with his family-they are great people."

The rest of my time with him for today was cut short by another brutal coughing outburst and the insistence that he should rest. But no more than an hour after I had left his sights, I was visited by Mathieu, his pet lawyer. Also the only man besides from Father and Tobias on a first name basis with me.

"Look Karlotta, his mind is gone, and he will be soon as well. You don't have to America. Someone else can deliver the message." He's always been the protective sort, kind of like a big brother. No doubt this is negotiation for my own safety!

"What message? He asked me to deliver it, so I will."

"As he said its an account of the American Revolution. And a eulogy for his friend A-"

"Alexander." I blurt in. I knew those words meant something. Even if it is that he's now so close to the other side that he can see his long gone friends.

"Yes, his wife, Eliza, was collecting the accounts of him and of the war from his living friends."

"So I need to deliver it, as a surrogate for him. Eliza should wish to see him again no doubt, but there's no way she can."

"Ughhh, you put up a convincing argument. I wish there was a way to stop you, but you're on your way to another hurricane warpath so I can't for fear of my own life!"

"Stop being melodramatic, and show me the papers. I'm going to America in the next two weeks if it kills me." Haha. Karlotta 10 - Mathieu 0.

05/06/1808AD

As the sailors raise anchor and begin to direct the ship down the Seine I smile and wave to Mathieu, Fleur and My Father in a bath-chair. With his weak legs they refused to let him walk. Off I go to New York, two sealed copies of the document in my trunk along with a what can only be described as a ball gown, a pair of wholly insensible shoes, my duelling pistol and a few more of my simplified dresses like the one I'm wearing right now with my old supple riding boots.

And then suddenly a phrase my father told me pops into my head: In New York you can be a new man...

So how's that? Also please read 'The Bloody Babe of Cape Hatteras' by tribbletrash when I publish the next chapter as I am borrowing her version of Angelica jr for next chapter's action packed adventure. Review if you liked or if you didn't, shout outs will be given. And so long farewell, we hate to say goodnight...