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I’d really like to do it again sometime. Shall we say bedtime tonight? Or meet you for a light snack in my daydreams? Maybe this time, we can be on dry land, and you without any pesky fish scales in the way…
Brigid huffed a defeated sigh.
She wasn’t sorry at all, truth to tell. And if Annie wasn’t with her in the carriage, if politeness didn’t require her to make conversation, she’d snore right into a daydream now.
No one would notice anything amiss when she wore so many layers. Only she would feel the delicious wetness between her thighs.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland,” Annie was saying, looking out the open window of the carriage, sitting across from Brigid. She faced forward, while Brigid sat with her back to the horses.
Unicorns, rather. If Lord Larkin and Sai were to be believed.
“Why is that?” Brigid asked politely.
But also because she was truly curious. Her newly-made two young friends fascinated her.
“My mom and I did one of those online DNA tests—23andMe or something like that.”
Brigid didn’t know what she referred to, but she nodded anyway to encourage her to go on.
“It’s a way to find out what our ancestry is,” Annie explained. “Not surprisingly, we both have Celtic blood in us. You could have guessed with the red hair, right?”
“All redheads are Celts?” Brigid inquired.
Annie quirked her mouth in a small smile.
“Of course not. Plenty of Greeks and Romans are redheads too. But the Scottish, Irish and Welsh have the highest percentage of redheaded population in the world according to Google search. My mom Clara tested mostly Irish, while I tested mostly Scottish and Welsh.”
Now that Lord Larkin and Annie revealed their own…quirks, they often slipped into a strange dialect and spoke of things beyond Brigid’s ken. She found it fascinating. And best of all, they no longer lied to her.
“How is that possible?” she asked, sorting through the relationships Annie described.
“Oh, we’re not actually related,” the young woman said.
“I’m adopted. But to look at mom and me, you’d think we’re mother and daughter in truth. We really kind of look like each other.”
“Whereas, I don’t look like my distant relatives at all,” Brigid inserted with a wry smile that showed Annie she didn’t mind.
“When I was a child, everyone back at Castle Mar said I must be a changeling left by the fairies. My eyes were too big. My skin too pale. And apparently, I was born with a full bush of hair on my head. I have never been bald a day in my life, even as an infant.”
“Perhaps you are,” Annie said.
“Not a changeling per se, but one of the fae. You obviously have considerable magic within you. I sensed it even before Ben described what you were able to do. I have magic too, you see. The elemental magic of fire. I can even cast a few spells with the right inspiration. My friend Eveline taught me how.”
“It sounds like you are surrounded by special people from whence you came, Annie,” Brigid noted. “Does your world readily accept such fantastical phenomena?”
“Well, no,” she answered.
“Perhaps not any more than the Victorians would.”
“You mean my society here? You call us Victorians?”
Annie nodded.
“For the reign of Queen Victoria, you see.”
“Ah.” Brigid understood. “What would I call your people then?”
Annie gave her a lopsided grin.
