Slave to Love

Chapter One
Toffs and Tarts

Alice Duclos walked down a street so grand it made her feel like a child lost in a cathedral. The buildings themselves seemed to peer disapprovingly at her, arching their eyebrows haughtily at the presence of such an unfamiliar creature. Wherever she looked there were shop windows bearing diamonds, rubies, emeralds. Other windows were draped with elegant, sinister furs, some, she saw with a shudder, still in possession of their foxy little faces and shining eyes. The poised and exquisite mannequins gazing out from the fashion boutiques made her feel drab, despite the new suit that had cost more than her total clothing bud- get for the preceding four years. Her mother, Kitty, had found the money somehow-not out of generosity, because that wasn-t Kitty-s way, but because of the shame she would have felt had Alice gone to work wearing her usual ill-matched collection of garments, loose where they should cling, pinching where they should drape.

The men and women in the street all seemed so tall, so important, so confident, shining with the radiance of the rich. They all knew precisely where they were going and what to do when they got there.

For the fiftieth time Alice cursed herself for allowing this to happen. Things had seemed so clear and straightforward at university. She knew what she wanted from life, and she knew how to achieve it. But then Kitty had become increasingly eccentric, impossible, ill. Alice-s dream of research, of islands, of science, had melted away, leaving only the need, for the time being at least, to look after Kitty, and that meant a job, a real job in the real world with real money.

She stubbed her toe on an uneven paving stone. -Drat!- she said, as she saw that she had forgotten to put on her new shoes. She was wearing a favorite old pair-brown, comfy, about as fashionable as cellulite. She blushed slightly, and blushed more because of the embarrassment of blushing in a place like this, a place where people didn-t blush. She put her head down, allowing her thick dark hair to fall over her face, and hurried on.

She didn-t notice the stares of the men that she passed, didn-t begin to discern the complexity of the response she was getting. First the quick glance, poised on the brink of dismissal. Then a longer look as they approached. And then, after they had passed, the pause, eyes wide in something like wonder, something like joy. She did not notice the carpenter, perched high on his scaffolding, who raised his fingers to his lips, preparing a purely conventional wolf whistle, only to leave them suspended there as though eating a slice of invisible cake.

She arrived. Seven steps up to a door high and wide enough to admit a knight on horseback. This was not just a new job for Alice; it was her first proper job, and the fear and excitement tingled like acid rain on her skin.

-Books,- she said, to the cruel-looking woman at reception. -The Books