AN: Sorry I didn't get a chance to update this over the weekend. I hope you like this chapter and I'll try to update again soon.
The scorching summer heat had already begun on the day that Edmund and Lucy had to take a train to Cambridge where they're aunt and uncle lived. The only shade was from a small tree that towered over one of the lower benches. Two elderly grandpas had completely collapsed; draped over the spinster-inducing wood leaving only the butt-burning seats for everyone else. Lucy had never been so thankful for her wide-brimmed sun hat. It seemed to be more than anyone else traveling that day remembered to bring.
"Edmund, is the train late?" Lucy asked, knowing Peter had given him a new pocket watch as a parting gift when he and his young bride went off to America.
"No, Lucy, it isn't." Edmund answered, reaching up to wipe the beats of sweat off of his forehead. "Everything just feels longer in this heat."
"Are you sure?" Lucy asked.
Edmund sighed and pulled the silver watch chain out of his pocket; he glanced down at the time. "Yes, I'm sure."
"Eustace is going to be even nastier now that the piece of wedding cake we saved him is spoiled." Lucy said, thinking of the goopy napkin-bound mess tucked away in one of their bags.
"It's best to say we didn't save him any." Edmund decided. "If we say it got spoiled he'll call us liars and make beastly jokes about us all night. We pretend we forgot all about him he may just turn up his nose at us and go away and sulk for a bit."
"It was a splendid wedding all the same." Lucy sighed happily.
And indeed it had been. It had been very small and the main celebrations after the ceremony had been held at their own small home. Of course Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had, at first, tried to talk Peter and Susan out of having the wedding at all. They were both too young, they said. But in the end, they let them have their own way; although Mr. Pevensie had muttered, "But if you ask me it's a terribly rash thing to do." until everyone had grown sick of it. But the wedding went off well and never had their been a more beautiful, happily, absolutely beaming, bride that anyone in all of London could remember.
Lucy would never forget the look on Susan's face when Peter slipped the gold wedding-band on her finger. She thought she had never seen anyone look so pretty. Even if Susan hadn't been beautiful by nature, she would have been at that moment, no one who wears an expression like the one she'd had on could ever been considered ugly in the least. Shortly after, Peter and Susan hugged and kissed Edmund, Lucy, and their parents goodbye before leaving for the inn they were staying at (They said it was so they could catch their boat on time the next day but Edmund always thought it was mostly because they wanted some time alone although he never said this out-loud)
"It was alright I suppose." Edmund agreed. "The bride and groom were happy."
"Happy doesn't seem to be the right word." Lucy said, her facial-expression suddenly more grown-up and distant than before. "I hope if I ever get married, it'll be as wonderful."
"I hope I'm the groom." Edmund blurted out thoughtlessly in a low almost inaudible tone of voice.
"What?" Lucy hadn't completely heard him but she could have guessed what he had just said if she'd had to and was taken slightly aback.
Edmund, suddenly realizing what he'd just said, turned very red in the face and quickly added, " Nothing, I was er...um...uh...singing...to myself...." He invented lamely.
Lucy crinkled her brow in confusion. "Alright, then."
After that they both stared at their own hands until the train chugged in with a loud roar and then a screech.
"Look, the train's here." Edmund said, quickly grabbing their things and getting ready to board. Lucy smiled and followed him on.
When they were little, they used to fight for the window seat. Now he simply didn't sit there, knowing she would. He freely gave it up not because he had to, because he wanted to. Somehow this made Lucy feel slightly awkward as if part of their relationship had changed. They had acted slightly different around each other ever since their last trip to Narnia but not noticeably so. Now though, it seemed to be changing again. They were maturing so much faster than either of them had expected. Neither knew how to feel about this.
Lucy spent the ride watching the black shadow of the train running along the ground below until she felt dizzy and had to look up. Then they came to a stop and the conductor told them they had arrived in Cambridge.
Stepping off the train, Lucy and Edmund saw their aunt and uncle. Both looked bored, hot, and distracted as if this was the very last place they wanted to be. Eustace was standing about a foot behind them and ran forward when he saw his cousins approaching.
Knowing it was not because he missed them and was happy to see them again, they felt very irritated even though he hadn't said a word yet. Of course formerly being a king and queen, they smiled with complete grace and said hello.
"The train was late." Eustace said sullenly
"No it wasn't." Lucy looked puzzled. "It was right on time, right Ed?"
Edmund shrugged and nodded. He preferred not to argue with the little know-it-all but sweet little Lucy had always been honest about these sort of things.
"Course you don't know as much about railways as-" Eustace started before Alberta called him over and asked if he would like a vitamin water to after being in the heat all that time.
Harold remembered his manners and told his wife to offer one to Edmund and Lucy as well. They were so thirsty that they accepted it; gulping it down so quickly that Eustace started on about health facts on swallowing too much air when you drank.
"You're so lucky to have a room of your own." Edmund whispered to Lucy when he was sure Eustace wasn't listening. They were entering the small house which rather than being cooled by fans like any other house might have been, was just as hot as it was outside. "I have to share with him."
Lucy nodded. She would have gladly offered to share her room and bed with Edmund as they had done in Miraz's castle but of course that wouldn't have been appropriate. It seemed that in the course of one year, she was becoming a lady whether she liked it or not. You couldn't share a room with a boy without grown-ups looking disgusted and staring at you in horrified wonder; never knowing how innocent your request was. Her own parents had stopped letting them sleep together at night. Perhaps even though Edmund never told them how he felt about her, they suspected it on their own or else, seeing Peter and Susan, understood it was a possibility now that they were getting older.
Later in the evening, the heat let up just a little and there was a slight but very refreshing breeze in the air. Eustace refused to go out saying the night air was bad for him and Alberta agreed, not even wanting to let Lucy and Edmund out to begin with but Harold-who being Helen Pevensie's brother had just a little more sense than his wife-talked her into it.
"Just for an hour then." Aunt Alberta gave in at last. "It is their first day here after all, I suppose it's alright."
"It's hardly nighttime." Edmund whispered to Lucy as they left the door. "I can still burp my lunch."
Lucy giggled as they walked out to the small square-shaped back yard. It was small and prim and there was very little exciting about it. At home, their own backyard always had a comfortable place to have a cookout and a swing all set up. Here there was nothing.
Or so it at first seemed. In a small trash pile that Alberta hadn't gotten hauled off to the dump yet, Edmund discovered a small smooth wooden board with holes on the sides. And with a little bit of scrap rope and a little help from his pocket knife, Edmund fastened these to a thick low-hanging branch on the one large tree in the yard.
Lucy watched him work, smiling. "But wont Aunt Alberta be upset?"
"Why?" Edmund asked, tightening the rope so that it was firm and didn't wobble. Peter had done this for all three of them when they were younger-both in England and Narnia-and Edmund had paid close enough attention to remember how. "I can just take it down when we leave."
"Is it ready?" Lucy asked, noticing he had stopped making knots in the rope.
Edmund placed his hand on the hanging board to double-check it for firmness. "Yes." He stood back and admired his handy work. A simple but appealing-looking swing was now set up. Looking over at Lucy he added, "Is it too high up for you?"
"No, I don't think so." Lucy answered, taking his hand as he helped her up onto the swing anyway.
"Want me to push you?" Edmund offered.
"Sure." Lucy stopped pumping the air with her legs so that the swing went back towards him.
Slowly and gently, he pushed her back each time it came towards him. They fell into a sort of comfortable rhythm and it seemed like only a few seconds until the hour they were allowed outside was over and they had to come inside.
"You shouldn't have hung that ugly thing from our tree." Eustace said nastily, leaning back on his dinning room chair; looking out the window as he spoke.
"It's called a swing." Edmund said shortly, picking at the vegetables on his plate.
"As long as they remember to take it down before they leave." Harold said, taking a big bite of some sort of crape that both Edmund and Lucy thought tasted rather like cardboard.
"I suppose neither of you remembered to save me a crumb of wedding cake." Eustace grumped, scowling at them.
Edmund and Lucy glanced at each other and choked back a laugh.
"I didn't want any cake from an unholy wedding anyway." Eustace's tone changed and became dangerously spiteful.
Edmund stopped with his fork now half way to his mouth. "Beg pardon?"
"You know, brothers and sisters marrying and all that." Eustace said curtly, with an annoyingly cool shrug of his shoulders.
"They aren't related." Lucy reminded him.
"So? It's still bound to start some sort of uproar in your community if people in the same household go running off to America together, living in sin and what not." Eustace said stupidly.
"You don't know what you're talking about." Edmund said. "It's not living in sin if they're married."
"Not now it isn't." Eustace said smartly. He leaned back on his chair; smiling smugly. "They haven't always been married."
Edmund stretched out his leg and kicked his foot against Eustace's chair so that it fell back.
"Whoa!" Exclaimed Eustace, falling over.
"How many times have I told you not to lean back in your chair like that?" Alberta gasped, rushing over to her son's side.
The next morning, Lucy was unpacking in her room when she happened to look up at the picture that hand been hung on the opposite wall. It was the only painting in the house she, Edmund, Peter, and Susan liked. The rest were dull and uninteresting. She'd of course seen it during her many visits since she was a small girl but now she noticed something different about it. It looked sort of Narnian. She felt a pang of home-sickness for the land she had once ruled over and looked away. A half second later, she looked back deciding that even looking was better than nothing.
"Lucy?" the door creaked open and Edmund walked in.
"How did you sleep?" Lucy asked him.
"Awfully." Edmund shuddered. "Eustace talks about grades and school marks in his sleep. I swear the little beast is going to drive me mad."
"He didn't need to be so nasty about Peter and Susan last night." Lucy said, clearly offended. "What does he mean 'living in sin'?" Although she had been a grown-up queen in Narnia, she wasn't terribly familiar with that phrase because none of the Narnians or Archenlanders used it and their parents didn't use it either.
Edmund's face went a bit red. "You might want to ask that when you're a little older." He paused for a moment. "But just for the record, it's all lies."
"Of course it is." Lucy said, taking a seat on the bed.
Edmund sighed and took a seat beside her. He opened his mouth as if to say something but then closed it again.
Lucy leaned closer to him and his hand curled around her own. Leaning forward, his lips came closer to her's; when they'd almost made contact, the door swung open and they heard a bratty little gasp followed by, "Alberta! Alberta!"
Bother, Eustace! Edmund thought pulling away from Lucy. He ruins everything.
AN: Please, please, please REVIEW!