Mrs. Bennet – the new, seemingly younger Mrs. Bennet – jumped to her feet. “He is here? Now?”
Aelfric burst in the double doorway of the drawing room. His breeches and boots were passable, if old-fashioned, but his coat had the silver lacings and large turned back cuffs that had been stylish twenty years earlier.
“Oh, dear,” drawled Eversleigh. “Wrong decade, brother.” He waved his hand and Aelfric’s clothes melted into an outfit similar to his own. Not that it made him fit in any better, since now his disguised features had dissolved to reveal his tip-tilted cat’s eyes and flying eyebrows.
Aelfric’s eye raked the room, going past Elizabeth and Frederica, and paused briefly on Mr. Gardiner before freezing on his mother.
Mrs. Bennet stepped forward and held a tremulous hand to his cheek. “Are you my boy? You must be, with such a look of your father.”She shook her head. “If only I had known you were alive!”
“You...you did not hate me for being Sidhe?” Aelfric asked.
“Good heavens, no! I had never dreamed of such an honor, and I was grieved you would have to live in Faerie where I could only visit, but I was so proud of you! I could not wait to present you to Oberon. And then when I was told you were dead...” She turned her face away and covered it with her hand.
Eversleigh stood behind Mrs. Bennet and mimed embracing someone. Aelfric took the hint and hesitantly held out his arms to his mother. A moment later she was sobbing into his chest. A tear ran down Aelfric’s cheek.
Elizabeth bit her lip hard. Had her mother ever held her like that?
Eversleigh materialized next to Frederica. “Shall we adjourn to the library? I believe we are somewhatde trop.”
Yes, that was it. Her mother and her brother were weeping together, and she wasde trop. Lydia had always been their mother’s favorite child and Elizabeth her least favorite. Aelfric might have usurped Lydia’s position, but Elizabeth’s was unchanged.
Elizabeth turned to follow Eversleigh, Frederica, and Mr. Gardiner from the room, but before she could go out the door, Aelfric’s arm snaked out and caught her, tugging her to join the embrace. She allowed herself to be seduced into it, the feeling of her mother’s arm around her as strange as Aelfric’s. They were both strangers to her.
She gently disentangled herself. “I have been with her all my life,” she said to Aelfric. “You have not.” And because for once it was not Aelfric’s fault – he had even tried to be kind – she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
“I will never forget what you have done,” he said, a Sidhe way of thanking her without saying those dreaded words.
She slipped out of the room. A footman directed her to the library where the others were waiting.
“Was there a problem, Lizzy?” asked Mr. Gardiner. “Lord Eversleigh has assured me your mother is safe alone with Prince Aelfric.”
That was the one thing which had not worried her. “Aelfric will not hurt her.” She walked past the chair by Frederica that clearly had been left vacant for her, perching instead on a windowseat between two tall bookcases. That way the others would see nothing but her profile.
She listened abstractedly as Eversleigh answered Mr. Gardiner’s questions about Aelfric, but none of it seemed real.
Eversleigh approached her and held out a glass of wine. She took it with quiet thanks.
He said softly, “You have been thinking loudly again, or perhaps feeling loudly would be a better description.”
She took a sip of wine to cover her discomfiture. “My apologies. I will try to be quieter.”
“Perhaps instead you could tell me what the matter is. Are you sad over the years your mother spent under the spell?
Elizabeth gave a bitter laugh. “I suppose I should be, but I am not. No, I am being a selfish soul, grieving over the mother I knew and will never have again.”
Eversleigh looked pensive and then nodded. “Because she is so different now?”
“You saw her at her best. My mother was silly and nervous. She regularly embarrassed me in front of our neighbors. She had no idea of proper manners, and she encouraged my younger sisters to be ridiculous flirts. We had little in common, and she never liked me, but she was the only mother I have ever known. Now she is gone, and I am the one who killed her.” Her voice broke.
He pulled up a small chair and sat beside her. “It must seem as if she died. I am sorry for your loss, and even sorrier that you never had the chance to know the mother you should have had. The woman you remember – she was not real, just a distorted reflection in a crackedmirror, but that must be little comfort at present.”
“No,” said Elizabeth bleakly. “But as I said, we were never close. It will be harder for my sisters.”
Mr. Gardiner had approached silently. “It will be difficult for all of you. It is a shock even for me, and I knew all along she was not herself.”
Elizabeth dabbed her eyes. “I never thought past having the spell removed. I am glad for her that it is, and I hope she will have slightly warmer feelings towards me after bringing her Aelfric, if nothing else.”
“That speech savors strongly of bitterness, Lizzy,” said Mr. Gardiner. “I always wondered why your mother kept saying you were her least favorite child since you are the one most like her original self. I thought you must be a reminder of all she had lost.”
