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Alethea nodded, and bowed her head and pressed her hands together, murmuring a brief prayer under her breath. She had done it before every meal for as long as she could remember. When she looked up again, the table had gone quiet.

Joyce stared openly. Felicity's brow creased, and Daphne's lips were parted.

"I wasn't aware we prayed before meals," Charles commented, trying to ease the moment.

"We don't," Felicity said, too quickly. Then, catching herself, she added, "But of course… it's perfectly fine if you do."

Alethea straightened her back.

"It is what I have always done," Alethea explained, finding it rather strange that this not the norm for them. "One should always say grace before a meal."

"Of course," Daphne said gently, offering a smile to the others as though to smooth it over.

"It was beautiful," Joyce said after a pause, though she still looked mildly startled. "Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from you as well."

Alethea served herself a small portion of the steamed vegetables.

It was the one familiar thing she found on the table.

At the nunnery, meat was only served on rare occasions and she had never developed a taste for it as a consequence.

As she ate, she could feel several eyes on her, watching her closely.

"So how does it feel?" Ambrose broke the silence, "You have returned home after such a long time. I imagine this must be an emotional time for you, as it is for your sisters."

"It doesn't feel emotional," Alethea replied in a steady tone. "I would argue instead that it is strange, if anything."

"Strange in what way?" Daphne asked gently, her eyes searching her sister's face for something more.

"Everything is too much," Alethea said, casting her gaze briefly around the table. "Even the silence feels different here."

"The silence?" Joyce said, making no secret of her curiosity.

"At the convent, silence was the rule, not the exception," Alethea explained. "Here, it feels like people don't know what to do with it."

"I suppose we don't," Felicity murmured, glancing at Charles as if seeking reassurance.

"I do not say that as judgment," Alethea added quickly. "Only as an observation. You asked me what it feels like."

"It's an honest answer," Ambrose said, watching her closely. "Not many people are so clear-eyed after such a change."

"I was taught that emotion clouds reason," Alethea nodded. "We were discouraged from indulging it."

"That might serve you well," Daphne said after a moment. "You'll find that in high society, reason is in far shorter supply than appearances. You'll need all the clarity you can manage."

Others on the table seemed to nod in agreement.

"Is that needed?" Alethea asked, a flash of panic in her voice. "Must I really re-enter high society? I feel fine here, as I am."

"Of course," Felicity said. "You are a Carter. People will want to know where you've been and who you are now. We must go shopping for dresses soon, in preparation of the balls ahead. I'm certain that you will be quite the topic."

Alethea felt her throat tighten. She had never been to a ball before, though she had heard of them. Nor did she have many dresses. Her attire, for most of her life, had been simple and practical. Fashion was not something that was considered, rather modesty was the point of clothing.

"Why?" Alethea asked, setting her fork down. "What does it matter what I wear or who sees me wearing it?"

"It matters because that is the world we live in," Daphne said carefully. "And because you deserve your place in it. You're not hidden anymore, Alethea."

"And what am I meant to do at these gatherings?" Alethea asked. "Smile and pretend the past twenty three years did not occur?"

"You are not expected to pretend," Ambrose said. "Only to carry yourself with the dignity that your name affords you. That, in itself, says everything."

"I was not raised for this," she replied. "And I have no idea how to begin."

"No one does," Daphne said, her expression warming. "That's the secret of it. We all begin somewhere. You simply begin now."

Alethea glanced down at her plate, her appetite waning beneath the weight of expectation.

She opted not to speak for the remainder of the dinner, already feeling as though she had been spread too thin.

While her sisters tried to encourage conversations, they too stopped after they saw that she was simply not in the mood anymore.

When dinner was over, Alethea stood to return to her chambers. It felt like the one place inside this strange new house where she could afford a sense of comfort. She made her way down the corridor, but right as she exited the door, she heard them speaking amongst themselves.

Her cheeks reddened when she realized that they were talking about her.

"She is… very different," she heard Felicity say, "I do not say it as a criticism, only as fact."

"Well, what else could she be?" Joyce answered. "She's lived a life none of us can understand."

"She barely spoke after the first few questions. I could not tell whether she was offended or merely overwhelmed," Joyce added.

"She has every right to be overwhelmed," Daphne said. "She's been thrust into a world she was never prepared for, among people she cannot possibly remember."

"But Daphne, you must see the point that I am trying to make here," Felicity countered, "how is she to survive in society if she cannot speak freely at her own dinner table?"

"She does not need to charm the ton all at once," Daphne replied. "She only needs to be herself, and that will be enough."

"But will it?" Joyce asked. "You know what they will say, once word spreads. That she is a Carter by birth but not by breeding. That no one knows what became of her in all those years."

There was a pause, and then it was Ambrose who spoke up.

"Let them say what they will. There are few with the nerve to speak openly, and none who will dare while I am present."

"That is noble of you, Your Grace," Felicity murmured, though not without a trace of skepticism. "But you know as well as I that the ton rarely speaks openly."

"You speak of them as though they are wolves, Felicity," Daphne replied. She seemed to have a different temperament than the rest of the sisters. She was calmer, and more level headed.

It was something that Alethea could appreciate in a person's personality, and she suspected that out of them all, it would be Daphne with whom she got along with the best.

"And are they not?" Joyce asked quietly. "Oh, I do not mean to be unkind, but you know what society can be like. And Alethea is... well, she is something of an enigma."

"She is one of us," Daphne said firmly. "She always has been. That her path was diverted does not make her a stranger."

Once again, Daphne was defending her. It felt strange to be defended, when all her life she had only been assigned blame. Alethea did not know what to make of the feeling entirely.

"Her manner is very peculiar," Joyce said after a moment. "She says things plainly, without concern for how they may sound. And she looks at people so directly. It's a little unsettling."

"That's because she was raised among women who had no need for pretense," said Daphne. "She doesn't understand yet that our world runs on it."

"And therein lies the difficulty," Joyce added. "How is she to play the part when she does not even know the stage?"

"Perhaps we ought to let her write the part herself, instead of forcing her into a role she did not choose," Ambrose said.

"She will be watched," Joyce said eventually, more gently now. "That much is inevitable and she must be prepared for it."

"Then we must be her shield," Daphne said. "Not her judges."

Alethea decided at that moment that she did not want to listen any more, for their words only seemed to confirm the suspicion she had inside of her all along. She did not really fit into this world, and adjusting to it was going to be a difficult task.

Surely, there was disagreement even between the sisters. Alethea wished for them to know her at a deeper level, but would that be possible even? She had not grown up with them, and now they were all at an age when they were well settled into their ways.

If anything, getting to know them now would feel like an imposition.

She thought back to her friends at the nunnery.

Surely, things had been difficult there but there were moments of friendship as well.

It felt like a bittersweet moment to think back to a past that was no longer hers, and she wished that she could speak to her friends again, letting them extend their help in navigating this new life of hers.

When Alethea returned to her room, she decided that it was best that she retired early. Her body was tired from the long journey, and worse still, the weight of the conversations she had overheard laid heavy on her mind.

Besides, it was habit to sleep early in the nunnery. It was discouraged to stay up to a late hour, and if anyone would be found staying up, they would be made to sleep on the floor for an entire month.

She realized that she did not have that condition on her anymore, but it was still a reflex for her to want to sleep early. Finally, she settled her eyes on the bed that had been already made for her.

Her first impression of the bed was that it was far too big for her. Surely, it could fit three people. She had been used to sleeping on a single bed, which was not long enough to accommodate her legs as she had grown so every night, she had to sleep in a crouched position.

Here, it was the opposite.

When she laid down on the bed, she knew instantly that it was the softest one that she had ever lain on. In principle, that should have relaxed her mind but it did little to make her feel at ease.

It occurred to her then that it was not the bed that was the issue, rather the invasive feeling that was threatening to spill out of her chest.

"I feel like a stranger in my own house," she muttered to herself, half-amused by her own strange fate.

She tried to will herself to sleep, but her sister's words still played out in her mind.

"She must be prepared."

But eventually, sleep claimed her and drifted away not into a land of dreams but nightmares. She had been transported back to the nunnery. She woke again, in the middle of the night, startled.

"Is someone there?" she asked, sitting up in her bed. She could have sworn that she heard a thud. Had it been the wind?

There was only darkness, and her eyes adjusted just in time to see a shadow pass across the moonlight. A figure stood beside her bed. Before she could scream, a gloved hand covered her mouth. Another drew a length of cloth across her eyes.

She jerked in protest, her limbs flailing beneath the blankets, but the stranger moved quicker than her. A thick arm looped tightly around her waist and lifted her from the bed.

" Letmego, " her words only came out muffled.

Alethea did not remember much of what happened later, only that she was being taken away, without being noticed. Perhaps now for the second time in her life.