With This Ring
By: ChocolateEclar
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own Chrestomanci or the Related Worlds. I only own the random children that appear to mess up things every once in a while. Everything else but the plot is the property of Diana Wynne Jones.
Review Responses:
To Rowana S: As I am, well, American, I don't find it too surprising that I went American-esque in some spots. I am trying to give this as genuine a feel of something written by an amazing British author such as DWJ as I can. Let me know if I do better in this chapter. Thanks for reviewing.
To Artemis Obscure: You have my response already. And of course it's dedicated to you! You're the one who is always here to get my butt in gear, and you're probably the first DWJ fanatic I met on this site.
To anon: Your update is here. Thanks for the review.
To JB Van Laan: As you'll see in my author's note, I figured out who Jason is by accident yesterday. Thanks a lot though. I was worried about him because I was sure there had been a Jason somewhere. I thought myself that maybe Miss Bessemer was Henrietta too, but in one part she's mentioned as Maud and that's her official first name on DWJ's website, so I'm back to square one. I looked for a Henrietta on the site as well, but she seems to be nowhere to be found. So for now at least, Henrietta is a short, red-haired girl with glasses. Thanks a bunch for reviewing!
To Demonprincess81, Moonlight at Midnight, and Lovely Acid: Isn't Millie/Christopher great? Too bad there is so little of it in the actual series.
To Skep: As you'll see in my author's note and my response to JB Van Laan's review, I did figure out who Jason is as well. Thanks a lot though. He finally actually appears in this chapter… and so does his ferret of course.
A/N: This would have been posted sooner, but it was being beta-ed. Here it is though. I have the next several chapters written, but I am going to be on vacation for a few days, so until then, read on and review please.
Chapter Two: Secrets, Schemes, and Smiles
Millie ran into Christopher the day after he vanished again, while she was still trying to find her scattered books. He looked, if possible, worse than he had last time he had returned.
"You didn't go to Series Seven again I hope?" she asked, while peering around the library looking for Millie and the Spring Holiday in London. It was the only book of hers that she had not found yet and she loved it almost as much as Millie and the Passionate First Kiss.
"No, Series Six," Christopher said, as he leaned against a bookshelf.
"Aren't they in an Ice Age?" Millie asked absently.
"Most definitely so," Christopher replied. "You would have hated it." He tried to say something else but it came out more like a hacking cough than anything else.
"If you caught a cold, you had better stay away from me," Millie warned, as she went to stand on a ladder and look at the higher shelves.
"Just a chill," said Christopher. "Now, what are you looking for?"
Millie explained how she had told the children to bother Elizabeth. He grinned and hack-laughed again. "I'm sorry I missed it," he said. "Are my parents still here, by the way?"
"Yes, Gabriel had them taken to a room on the other end of the castle," Millie said. "Your mother says that you have two months to get used to the idea of your new fiancée because that is when Gin Leiko is coming from Japan," Millie continued with disgust.
Christopher grimaced and said, "If they ask for me, I'm still on Series Six."
"Where are you going?" Millie queried, while staring down at him from her perch on the ladder.
"To see Mordecai, I need a chat with someone with a sound mind right now," Christopher stated.
"What am I then?"
Christopher just hack-laughed and said, "Your book is on top of the bookshelf by the window right over there," and then promptly vanished.
Over the next two warm summer months, Christopher was very seldom around. He seemed to spend a lot of time with Mordecai Roberts and Miss Rosalie in their pretty little cottage miles and miles away. Millie had a feeling that Christopher needed Mordecai's company to keep him from screaming at his parents.
Miranda and Cosimo Chant, Millie thought, are the single most-annoying people I have ever met. They remind me of Mr. and Mrs. Lilac in Millie and the Art of Courtship!
Meanwhile, Antonio, Millie decided, was a good match for Elizabeth. Elizabeth loved music and had a pretty singing voice that Henrietta and Millie longed to have. Being born of a spell-house in Caprona, Antonio had a love of music just as strong. He had to have a nice voice for Italian spells were mostly sung and Millie thought his voice was just as beautiful as Elizabeth's. It did not surprise her much that after Antonio had been in England for two months, Elizabeth announced he had proposed to her.
In her room, she showed Millie, Henrietta, and some of the little girls the simple white gown she had bought and how she had put a spell on it to add beading to the bodice and to make it shimmer even in total darkness.
The wedding was held in the church in Bowbridge and was to be fairly private. None of Antonio's family members were invited because he knew they would object to him marrying an English girl.
Millie and Henrietta, the Brides' Maids, wore matching blue gowns with purple irises (that Millie had managed to beg and plead with the castle gardeners to allow her to pick) in their hair, while ten-year-old little Rachel, the Flower Girl, wore a yellow dress and threw blue flower petals down the aisle.
Christopher was chosen to be Antonio's Best Man. Millie thought he looked very nice in his expensive blue-black suit and shiny shoes. He was a very tall, dark pillar who stood behind Antonio just like Millie and Henrietta stood behind Elizabeth as she reached the altar. Spending two months mostly away from the castle must agree with him, she thought. She knew that it had more to do with avoiding his parents than anything else though.
Sitting in the front pew, Gabriel looked like he always did, if not a little pleased by what would become of one of his young pupils now. Elizabeth had told him that she would be leaving soon enough for Caprona to announce her marriage to her new in-laws.
Also sitting in the front row were Bernard and Jason and ten children of varying ages and genders. Miranda and Cosimo Chant and most of the staff of the castle had been seated behind them in their finest clothes. Miranda looked stunning as always in pink frills and lace and glossy curls.
Millie wished they had not been invited, but Christopher had explained that if Elizabeth did not let them come, then his mother would have been deeply offended. Millie thought that she did not care much if Miranda was offended. Christopher might not have wanted to argue with his mother, but Millie had no such qualms.
Millie felt a smile break out on her face and her eyes fill with tears, as Elizabeth started to say her vows, "With this ring, I thee wed…"
Millie glanced at the others to see if they found the vows as wonderful as she did. Henrietta was wiping her spectacles with her sleeve as she cried, and in the pews, Jason and Bernard were grinning.
Across the altar and over Antonio's shoulder, a tall figure was staring right back at her. Christopher gave her the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. For a moment, she did not hear anything but the vows and all she could see was that smile. She noticed dimly that the gold ring made with one of Christopher's lives was visible in public outside his shirt for once. It hung from its gold chain and rested on his blue silk cravat.
She finally looked away when Antonio and Elizabeth kissed with a great cheer from the crowd.
The party after the wedding in the front yard of the castle was one to be remembered for quite a while. There were children like Peter, his four brothers, and other boys pulling pranks on the adults until Christopher rounded them up and announced, "All right, young lads, who is set to play cricket?"
Then, the boys, tons of the girls with their skirts tied up, and a great majority of the staff broke into two teams. For a reason she could not fathom, she was chosen as a captain of one team with Christopher as captain of the other.
Millie's team, even with good players such as Jason and Bernard, were trounced by Christopher's. "You cheated I bet," teased Millie, as she walked alongside Christopher up the pathway to the castle from the cricket field.
"Not at all," he said. "I gave you a fair chance at least, even though I worried about you holding a cricket bat. I've already lost one life because of getting hit with one. I did not think Gabriel would forgive me if I lost another."
"I don't play that poorly," Millie claimed, as she shoved him lightly with her shoulder. As they entered the castle, Millie tried not to notice the look Miranda Chant gave her from where she sat beside Cosimo. Millie glanced down at her dirty feet (for she had taken off her shoes to play) in her heels and the muddy patch at the front of her dress where it had come unpinned and tracked through the dirt, as she had been trying to run the bases.
A woman like that will never accept someone like me, she thought. I don't need her to though. I'm not the one marrying her son.
"That was probably the worst attempt at spin bowling I have ever seen," Christopher said with a grin.
"Why thank you," said Millie dryly, but she did not mind much.
It was then that Miranda and Cosimo Chant suddenly sprung to their feet and hurried towards the front door where a young woman Millie had never seen before had her bags taken away by the footman. Millie suddenly felt ill.
"Why hello, Miss Leiko! What a pleasure it is to see you again, dear," said Miranda as she greeted the young woman.
"It is a pleasure I gladly receive," said the woman with no accent at all or even any emotion in her brown eyes. She had a very smooth voice that flowed from her cherry red lips. Her hair was straight and black with a cloth flower pinned in it. She wore a kimono with long, flowing sleeves with gold flowers upon a red background and looked absolutely gorgeous to Millie. She tried to hide the muddy spot on her skirts, as Miranda turned to Christopher and said, "Christopher, this is Leiko-san."
Christopher, who seemed to have developed a greenish hue to his skin now, greeted Gin Leiko. He then proceeded to do something that made Millie squirm. "This is one of the other students here under Gabriel de Witt, Miss Millie." He said this so formally that Millie felt as grand as Gin Leiko for a moment before those cool brown eyes of hers fell upon Millie.
Millie tried to smile as she said, "How do you do, Miss Leiko?" but she ended up with a pained grimace. I'm not anywhere near that pretty or grand, she thought.
Millie bit her lip. What is wrong with me lately? she wondered.
"I am fine," said Gin coolly. She then turned back to Miranda and Cosimo, and they talked as the footman took Gin to her room.
"What does she have stuck up her – " began Jason, as he came up behind Christopher and Millie with his pet ferret Hugh on his shoulder. He was tall and had a middle-build with brunette hair and a roguish smirk. He had come a long way from being the castle boot boy to being an enchanter and student of magic in his own right.
"Jason," said Henrietta warningly. Jason's foul mouth was Henrietta's pet peeve. She would glare at him from her five feet up to his head a foot and three inches above hers. "I think she's very pretty in any case."
Millie felt that was a bit of an understatement. She glanced at Christopher to see what he thought. His face had gone greener than before.
It's the silver, Millie realized before long. She wears gobs and gobs of silver jewelry.
Millie, who had long ago locked away her silver bangles, felt this was terribly unfair to Christopher to make him go for strolls with his fiancée when she was wearing silver earrings and necklaces and bracelets. It seemed to have a strong effect on Christopher at that. Whereas her bracelets had only affected him if they touched him, just walking beside Gin made Christopher ill.
This did not anger Millie as much as what they did on their walks. Gin spent the entire time showing him all her foreign little spells.
"I mean, come on, Henrietta, she showed him a silver polishing spell today!" Millie shrieked. "Is she that dumb or has no one told her that Christopher is allergic! For that matter, why hasn't he told her himself?"
Henrietta gave Millie a secretive little grin and said, "Why don't you ask him?"
"He's out on one of the walks right now though," hissed Millie. "I can't face that woman. She's horrible."
"I haven't seen her doing anything too terrible," Henrietta claimed. "It's not her fault she's ignorant about Christopher's allergy. Stop acting like his keeper."
"His keeper?" said Millie, raising an eyebrow. "Where did you get that idea?"
Smiling wider, Henrietta just walked away. "Henrietta!" Millie called after her. "Henrietta, what do you mean? Stop grinning like that!"
It was then that Christopher appeared in the hallway arm-in-arm with Gin. Christopher gave her a vague look, while Gin asked grandly, "What is the yelling for, Miss Millie?" After her first day at the castle, she had stopped wearing kimonos and instead worn beautiful gowns that Millie suspected cost one of the diamonds a piece in the chest Mother Proudfoot had left her for tuition. The one she was wearing at the moment was emerald green with black lace trimming.
Millie went red, but privately she was pleased to see that Christopher was using his actual bored looks on Gin. It meant he had given up on using his I-am-pretending-I'm-in-a-world-far-away expression on her. He had never given Millie a bored expression before.
"Come and walk with us, Millie," said Christopher. She could tell by his face that it was more of a plea than anything else. Christopher unfastened Gin's grip on his arm and strolled in between Gin and Millie.
"Christopher tells me that you are from another world," said Gin Leiko sweetly with a cool smile.
How can anyone sound so sweet and have as much expression as a block of ice? Millie wondered as she said, "Oh, yes." She felt horribly dumb just saying that, so she added, "A world in Series Ten, you know."
"Why did you come to Series Twelve?" asked Gin in the same polite tone that made Millie want to forget all of her schooling and throttle her. It was just too cultured and perfect!
There were a million ways Millie could have responded, such as "I was going to be sacrificed" or "Well, I was the Living Asheth and…" or something at least close to the truth, but instead Millie found she could not bring herself to reply to the young woman with anything but a vague answer. "Things weren't working out," she said.
Christopher bit his lip to keep from laughing. "That's a bit of an understatement, don't you think?" he whispered in her ear. She could see the faint outlines of that beautiful smile on his face.
Gin Leiko, who Millie realized must have thought Christopher and her had a private joke or something, smiled slightly, while still looking totally emotionless, and said, "You have the look of someone who was subjected to servitude years ago. Were you some kind of unhappy servant under a cruel master that Christopher met on his world travels?"
Millie did not think Gin could have picked something farther from the truth, but it was Christopher who said, "She was a goddess."
"Oh, how we do fall from grace," said Gin Leiko pityingly.
Millie saw Christopher's eyes widen in alarm on top of his vague look, so that he looked rather as if he had been dosed with water while snoozing in class. He knows me too well, she thought, but I won't blow up on this high and mighty… snob! She's as bad as that prissy girl Lisa in Millie and the Fight for Love!
"Actually, it was quite a bit different from what you might think," Millie said calmly with a cool smirk to rival Gin's on her face. "I'm afraid it's too long a tale to tell, however, and I must be off. I have an appointment to keep."
"Of course," said Gin. "Some other time then?"
"I suppose," said Millie. "Until then, good day."
Millie swept away feeling Gin's cool gaze on her back, as she hurried away down the hallway. She could hear Christopher coughing to hide his laughter.
At the far end of the hallway and out of sight of Christopher and Gin, Henrietta and Elizabeth were hiding in a doorway. They both jumped out at Millie as she strode by. "What are you doing?" yelled Millie, as they both led her with their arms threaded through hers out of a side door and into the gardens.
"It's a lovely day for a stroll. Don't you think so, Millie?" asked Henrietta.
"I suppose so, but where are we going?" Millie asked. She was a little alarmed by the grins on her friends' faces.
"Oh, it's just time for one unmarried woman of your age and one married one to give you some advice, dearie," said Elizabeth with a smirk.
As Millie protested, Henrietta and Elizabeth sat her down on a stone bench in a garden surrounded by high hedges. "First off," said Henrietta, "what do you think of when you think of Christopher?"
Millie found a lot of unflattering terms came to mind, such as arrogant and overconfident, but then words like funny and caring and handsome surfaced. "He's the first boy I really knew," she explained. "We've known each other so long that I just think of him as him really."
"And you accept his faults?" asked Elizabeth anxiously.
"When there are so many," Millie said laughingly, "you have to accept something otherwise there would be nothing to like."
Henrietta grinned and said, "Well, that's that then. Let's go, Elizabeth."
"What were those questions for?" Millie asked suspiciously.
"Sorry, Millie," said Henrietta. "We promised ol' Gabriel that we would help Flavian teach some of the younger, rowdier children." They vanished before Millie could shout at them to tell her the truth.
"Sometimes, I think you're the only one around here who doesn't make me feel like an idiot, Proudfoot," Millie told her white cat. The feline was sprawled across her bed yawning, while Millie prepared for supper. It was to be Elizabeth and Antonio's last evening in England before they would be off to the Casa Montana in Caprona.
Millie smoothed her red gown and frowned at her reflection in the mirror. "I don't care much for appearances, Proudfoot," she sighed, "but I do not look anywhere near as pretty as Gin Leiko. Can you imagine her children with Christopher? They would be blindingly gorgeous!"
Proudfoot mewed and arched her back. "I know I should stop comparing myself to her," Millie said with a frown, "but it's hard not to when I'm such a plain little thing and those two are more beautiful than anyone has the right to be!"
A knock sounded at her door. Millie opened it and peered out at the usual tall dark figure that had always waited for her to come down to dinner with him until Gin had arrived. "What are you doing here?" Millie asked. "What about – "
"Gin's father has arrived, so she is already downstairs with him," Christopher said. "Now, who were you talking to in there? Don't tell me you have smuggled in some strapping warrior from another world and have been hiding him in your wardrobe."
"Strapping warrior?" Millie repeated. "Hardly. I was just talking to Proudfoot."
Christopher nodded politely at the cat on the bed, as if this were something he saw everyday, and said, "You have such a nice cat. Why did I ever get Throgmorten?"
"Besides the fact that your horrible uncle was having you steal a cat for parts, Throgmorten and you deserved each other," Millie said, as Christopher threaded his arm through hers and led the way down the stairs.
"At least I do not tear bits off of people," said Christopher.
"That is wonderful to hear," said Millie.
When they entered the drawing room, Millie found that her best friends were all grinning at her like they knew a wonderful secret. Jason, Conrad, Henrietta, and Bernard were in one corner whispering, while Bernard chewed on the end of a pencil and Henrietta cleaned her spectacles, and Antonio and Elizabeth were in another corner giving each other knowing, loving glances.
Millie felt four more pairs of eyes on her and tried to give the impression that she had not noticed. Gin Leiko apparently looked quite like her father in that he too was cool and brown-eyed. He was wearing a suit that looked just as natural on him as Gin looked in gowns of petticoats and lace.
Beside the two guests, there were Miranda and Cosimo Chant. Miranda looked a bit stricken at the fact that Millie was with Christopher, and Cosimo looked surprised as if something had gone against his horoscopes.
Well good, thought Millie. They should know better than to think that Christopher's going to wait on that woman all the time.
As they sat next to the four other young enchanters in the one corner, Henrietta winked quite obviously across the room at Elizabeth. What is going on? Millie wondered with alarm.