Just wanted to say quick thank you for all the reviews. I appreciate them so much! Feel free to email me if you like at hotshotslilhottie@yahoo.com
I'm going to try and post something daily, or every few days depending on what my work schedeule is.
Thanks.
"You are looking thoroughly blue-deviled, Greenleaf," Elladan commented later the following night, crossing the room to the sideboard to replenishing the contents of his glass before resuming his seat. "Foxed, are you? Or is it the eye? It has turned marvelous shades of black, purple, and yellow. Not to mention the bright scarlet slit through which you are peering out at the world."
" I tell you, Greenleaf," Elrohir, Elladan's twin brother added, " I could scarce swallow the kidneys on my plate this morning for looking at that eye – or do I mean yesterday morning?"
"If I could just be sure," Lord Lowlen said, "that this mantel would stay upright when I push away from it, I would pour myself another drink. What the devil time is it?"
" I'd venture, its half past four, nearing dawn." Elladan responded glancing outside onto the balcony.
" The devil!" Lowlen exclaimed. "Where has the night gone?"
" Where all nights go." Elrohir yawned. "Let's see – I believe Elladan and I started the evening meeting with the March Warden from Lothlorien. A deuced flat affair, where Rumil relayed a heartfelt message from granddad. What was it about Elladan? Oh yes, about the company we keep, and the nasty tendency of rakish reputations have of rubbing off on a fellow's companions. It seems we ought to stay away from you, Greenleaf, if we know whats good for us."
AUTHORS NOTE: Offcourse Lord Celeborn holds Legolas in high regards because of his role in the War of the Ring and for being one of the nine walkers, but this 'mood' change on his regards is because of the 'new personality' Legolas develops after the war and his travels with Gimli are over. In short, I'm altering things to fit my ideas. Sorry!
His friends shared the joke by roaring with hearty mirth. All except Legolas, that was, who was sprawled with casual elegance in a deep chair beside the fireplace in his guest rooms in the home of Elladan and Elrohir, gazing vacantly with his one healthy eye into the unlit coals.
" You won't have to put up with my wicked influence for much longer," he said. "I've been summoned to Mirkwood."
Elladan sipped his drink. " By your father? Thranduil himself? He asked, " A summons, Legolas?"
" A summons." He nodded slowly. " There is to be a grand house party this summer in honor of the seventy fifth thousand birthday of my grandmother."
"An old dragon, is she, Legolas?" Lowlen asked sympathetically. " Do you suppose the mantel would collapse if I stopped holding it up?"
" You are three sheets to the wind old chap," Elrohir informed him. " It's your legs, not the mantel."
"I have always had a soft spot for the old girl, you see," Legolas said, "and my father knows it. Oh, for God's sake, Lowlen, just look down into your glass, will you? It is still half full."
Lord Lowlen looked with pleased astonishment at the glass in his hand and drained off its contents. "What I really need," he said, "is my bed. If my legs would just carry me there."
"Egad," Legolas said, his gloomy stare back on the unlit fire. " What I really need is a bride."
"Go to bed" Elrohir advised him hastily, "and sleep it off. The feeling will go away by morning—guaranteed."
"My father's birthday gift to my grandmother is to be the bethrothal of his heir." Legolas said.
"Oh, I say! You are the heir"
"Jolly rotten luck, old chap."
Elrohir and Elladan spoke simultaneously.
" A pox on all fathers!" Elladan continued indignantly, thankful his father never had such ideas. " Does he have someone picked out for you?"
Legolas laughed and draped his hands over the arms of his chair. " Oh, yes, indeed." He said. "Along with everything else, I am to inherit my late elder brothers betrothed."
" Who the devil is she?" Lowlen forgot his inebriated state sufficiently to straighten up unassisted.
"Nineila." Legolas said.
" Nineila?" Elladan asked.
" I have obliged my father by withdrawing myself from travelling," Legolas said. "I'll oblige him by going back to Greenwood after almost three years. I'll even oblige him on the matter of the birthday gift. But, I will do it on my own terms. I'll take with me a bride of my own choosing, and I'll be married to her before I go so that there will be nothing he can do about it. I have been sorely tempted to pick some vulgar creature, but that would not do. It is just the sort of thing he would expect of me. I'll choose someone above reproach instead. That will gall him more than anything else because he won't be able to complain about her. She is going to be dull, respectable, prim and perfect." He spoke with grim satisfaction.
For a moment his friends regarded him in fascinated silence. Then Lord Elladan threw back his head and laughed. " You are going to marry a dull, respectable woman, Greenleaf?"he asked, "just to spite your father?"
"Not wise old chap," Lord Lowlen said, treading a determinedly straight path toward the sideboard. ""You would be the one married to the woman for life, not your father. You would find such a wife insupportable, take my word on it. The vulgar wench might afford you more amusement."
" But the thing is, that one has to marry sometime," Greenleaf explained, cupping one hand over his aching eye for a moment. "Especially when the death of one's older brother has made one the reluctant heir to a kingdom and vast last and fortune to boot. One has to do one's duty and set up one's nursery and all that. Who better to do it with than a quiet, dull, worthy woman who will run one's home competently and without fuss and will dutifully present one with an heir and a few spares?"
"But there is a very real obstacle to such a scheme, Greenleaf ." Elrohir was frowning when he spoke the words, but he grinned and then chuckled outright before continuing. "What respectable woman would have you? You are a handsome enough devil, it is true, or so I understand from the way females look at you. And of course you have your present title and your future prospects. But you have established an impressively notorious reputation as a rakehell since you returned from Gondor."
"And that would be stating it mildly," Elladan muttered into his glass.
"As bad as that , is it? What a devilish stuffy world we live in," Legolas commented. "But egad, I am serious about this. And I am Thranduils heir. That fact alone will outweigh all else when it is perceived that I am shopping in earnest for a wife."
"True enough," Lowlen admitting seating himself on an upright chair after refilling his glass. "But not necessarily the sort of wife you are looking for, old chap. Parents with lofty principles and daughters to match steer clear of gentlemen who mill with foul-smelling laborers within sight of Royal Row and then kiss milkmaids without their shirts on for all the world to witness. And men who on a wager ride along the main road in Minas Tirith past all the men and women, with a painted doxy squeezed infront of them. And men whose names appear in all the betting books in connection with every disreputable and outrageous dare anyone cares to wager on."
"Who are the possibilities?" Legolas asked, ignoring this dire prediction and returning his attention to the coals in the fireplace. "There must be hordes of new arrivals in town now that the Season has begun in earnest. Hordes of hopeful maidens come shopping for husbands. Who is the dullest, most prudish, most straitlaced, most respectable of them all? You fellows will know better than I. You all attend the evens of the other noble elves."
His companions gave the matter serious thought. Each threw out a few names, all of which were rejected out of hand by the others for a variety of reasons.
" There is Miss Cealia of Eurevnor." Elladan repeated at last, when they appeared to have run out of suggestions." But she is too long in the tooth."
" Miss Cealia?" Lowlen repeated, " Of Eurevnor? The lord Oropeis abandoned bride? Lord, my sister was at that wedding. It was the sensation of last year. The bridegroom waiting waiting, the bride on the porch of the village cottage waiting to make her grand entrance. And then the arrival of a ragged woman claiming to be Oropei's long lost wife – and telling nothing short of the truth, by gad. The Cealia chit fled from the area as if the hounds of Sauron were at her heels, according to Awenim, who is not normally prone to exageration. Is she in Imladris?"
" I had heard she was here." Elladan admitted. " But she doesn't go about much, does she. Her family is keeping her in tight watch. I daresay they are all trying to get her married off quietly—and respectably." He snickered. " She is doubtless dull enough to set one to y awning at the mere thought of her. You don't want her, Greenleaf."
"Besides" Lowlen added with what proved to be the fatal challenge, " you would not get her even if you did want her, Greenleaf. Her family would not allow someone of your reputation within hailing distance of her. And even if you did slip past their guard, she would give you the cut direct. Turn you into an icicle on the spot, I daresay. You are just the sort none of them would want for her, least of all the lady herself. We will have to think of someone else for you. Though why you would want –"
But Legolas was laughing gaily as he turned his face from the fire again. "Was that a challenge, by any chance?" he asked, cutting his friend of midsentence. " If it was, you could scarce have made it more irresistible if you had tried. I will not be allowed within hailing distance of Miss Cealia, you say, because I am the sort of rake and rogue from whom such a delicate aging bloom must be protected at all costs? And she would freeze me with a single glance from her severe, maidenly eye, would she? Because she is incorruptible and I am corruption incarnate? By Jove, I'll have her." He slapped the arm of his chair with one open palm.
Elladan flung back his head and shouted with laughter. " I smell a wager, " he said . " A hundred strands of mithril on it that you cannot do it, Greenleaf."
"And a hundred more of mine, " Elrohir added.
" She is very high in the instep, Greenleaf. Someone just last week, thought I can't for the life of me remember who, likened her to a marble statue, except that she came out the colder of the two.
" I might as well throw in my hundred too, " Lowlen said, " though I should know better where Greenleaf is concerned. It was Farwin, who is forever scouting out prospective new mothers for his orphaned brood. That's how I knew she was in town—I remember now. She told Farwin right straight out as soon as he braoched the subject of wedlock with her – when he was strolling with her on Royal Row one morning, if you can imagine it – that she has no intention of marrying anyone ever. He believed her. Apparently she is not the sort of lady whose word one doubts. That was when he made the remark about marble statues."
" And I am not." Legolas laughed again. " Well for three hundred strands of mithril and to annoy my father into the bargain I'll have to change her mind, won't I? Shall we say by the end of June, when I have to leave for Greenwood? A marriage before the end of June, that is. Between Miss Cealia and yours truly, of course."
"Less then six weeks? Done. " Lord Elladan got resolutely to his feet. " Now I am for my bed, while I can still find it and convey myself toward it unassisted. Come along, Lowlen, I'll steer you in the direction of yours at the same time. I would not begin the campaign for at least another week if I were you, Greenleaf. Any delicately nurtured female would swoon outright at the sight of that eye. That will give you approximately five weeks." The thought amused him considerably.
" A marriage to Miss Cealia by the last day of June, then." Elrohir said, summing up the wager as he joined his friends on their way out of the room. " It cannot be done, Greenleaf. Not even by you – especially not by you. This will be the easiest hundred strands of mithril I have made this year. But of course you will try."
"Of course" Legolas grinned at his friends. " And I will succeed. With what event shall I begin the campaign? What is happening a week or so from now?"
" A ball in honor of our sister, Arwen's birth all those milennia ago." Lord Elladan said after a moment consideration. " It is always the grand squeeze o the season. Everybody attends it, even though Arwen shall not yet again. Miss Cealia may well not, though Greenleaf. I have not seen her at any festivities – or any other entertainment for that matter. Not that I would recognize her if I saw her, of course, but someone would surely have pointed her out. She is still news."
" Arwen's ball." Legolas said, hoisting himself out of his chair in order to see his friends on their way. " I must find out if she will be there. Is she a beauty, by the way? Or is she an antidote?"
" Now that, " Elladan said firmly, " you must discover for yourself, Greenleaf. It will serve you right if she resembles an orc."
