“Titania does love her human followers.” He said it with the scorn of a faerie prince for a mere mortal. “Tell me about your mother.” Not his mother, nor our mother, but her mother.
“My mother is...” Should she tell him their mother was a silly, ignorant country gentlewoman, or could she even say that? “I cannot truthfully tell you anything about her beyond her appearance and that she likes raspberries and dislikes currants, but I do not think that is what you are asking. I learned recently that everything I thought I knew of her may be wrong, and she is not now the woman she was before your birth.”
“That sounds remarkably like an excuse. I do not like excuses, Libbet.”
She stiffened, as much at his menacing tone as at his use of her name without any of the usual formalities of Miss and her last name. That familiarity was the risk of using her fay name, since the fay had little use for rules of that sort. “I will answer your questions, but pray give me a moment to collect my thoughts. This has been a great shock.” To say the very least. How could it be true?
“A moment, then,” he said grudgingly.
Something about his tone reminded her of Mr. Darcy. Not the man she had come to know recently, but the proud gentleman whom she had first met in Meryton. Why did the comparison seem so amusing when all else was nightmarish?
“Very well,” she said slowly. “I recently learned from my uncle – my mother’s brother – that once she was clever, witty, and loved all things fay – quite unlike the woman she is now. She changed abruptly after the death of her son, by which I mean what she believed to be his death, ifthat is the case –”
“I understand what you mean,” the prince said coldly.
“The next time my uncle saw her, she was different – silly, nervous, and completely uninterested in magic and the fay.”
His lip curled. “Is that common to mortal women after childbirth?”
“No, of course not. But it is characteristic of a woman who has been bespelled by a mage to bind her magic so that she cannot use it.” Did the fay even have binding spells?
“Is that what you think happened? What mage would dare to lay such a spell?”
“I do not know for certain, and I am basing this only on my uncle’s word –”
“The truth, Libbet,” he snapped.
He was right; she had not been telling her own truth. “I believe that is what happened, and that my father set a spell on her,” she said in a rush. “I have been trying to understand why he would bespell her, but now I wonder if perhaps it had something to do with... you.” She did not want to admit that this unpleasant, haughty Sidhe might be her brother, but the pieces fit together. If her mother had given birth to a fay child, her father would have reason to hate the fay and to keep her mother from them by any means.
Lady Aislinn interposed herself between them. “Libbet, Titania wishes you to dance.”
The prince grasped Elizabeth’s wrist in an iron grip. “I am not finished with her yet.” It was a warning.
“My lord, she belongs to the queen, not to you.”
Belonged? Elizabeth belonged to no one, but it seemed unwise to say so. “My lord, perhaps we could speak further after the dancing –”
“No. We will speak now.”
Lady Aislinn grasped Elizabeth’s other wrist, as if she were a ropein a tug-of-war. “My lord, you have no right –”
“I claim blood right.”
Lady Aislinn froze in consternation, but her voice remained dulcet. “My lord, you cannot. She is a stranger among us and does not know our ways. You have just met her.”
He shot her a look of disgust. “Not that sort of blood right. She is kin to me. We share a mother.”
“You do?” This time Lady Aislinn’s astonishment could not be contained as she stared at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth licked her dry lips. “I... I did not know, but it seems it may be true, if what the prince has told me is correct...” She gazed pleadingly at Lady Aislinn.
Carefully Lady Aislinn removed her fingers from Elizabeth’s wrist. “Then I cede to your blood right, my lord, but I urge you not to make an enemy of the queen. This girl has great value to her – as I understand her mother did before her.” She turned and walked away.
“Your mother was one of Titania’s followers?” the prince demanded.
“It is the first I have heard of it, but as I said before, despite living with her for twenty years, I clearly know nothing about my mother. Our mother.” With luck, the prince would not be able to tell how close she was to hysterical laughter – or to outright fury.
“But why would your father punish your mother for bearing me? Giving birth to a Sidhe should be a matter for rejoicing.”
