Edward had returned to Weston for a week when the Queen sent another invitation for tea. Lizzie slumped when she heard the news, because the date coincided with when the two had made plans to go to London to visit sweet shops together. Since one simply did not refuse an invitation from the Queen unless one was about to fall off one's deathbed, they had to cancel the plans to go shopping instead.
Lizzie was disappointed, but she was smart and understood the way the world worked. She cheered herself up and promised to find Sieglinde some more books to read soon enough.
Great – she'd gone through the last stack of romance novels like they were candy. She needed more.
But that was thought for later on, when she was done her meeting with the Queen. Right now she needed to focus on meeting the monarch of the British Empire. Dressed in a simple but classic dress – in the words and works of Nina Hopkins – she stepped out of the carriage and bid Thomas, the Midford footman, goodbye as a man strode up to escort her. The Queen, thoughtful as always, had sent one of her personal men to help her – the groom.
Sieglinde took his offered arm gratefully; Charles Grey, after Ciel's warnings, made her wary, while the quieter Phipps who reminded her of Wolfram for some reason made her uncomfortable. John Brown, at the least, was a neutral presence.
He gripped her forearm a little too hard when she leaned on him for support, and she frowned. She'd grown spoiled and used to Edward, and now he'd be gone for a long time. The manor still felt emptier without him.
Mistaking the frown, the Queen's groom apologized before adjusting his grip. It was better – not as good as Edward's, but she wasn't about to start complaining to the Queen's groom about how a young man did a job better than he did. They stepped forwards, navigating through the light, lit halls to a large, spacious tea room.
The Double Charles were preparing tea as she entered on John Brown's arm. Tea cakes and scones, set up next to beautiful china cups and saucers, looked almost as delicious as the snacks Sebastian made when she and Lizzie visited the Phantomhive mansion.
The Queen smiled at her, and the crow's feet on the edges of her wise twinkling eyes deepened. Her mother, thanks to the accident, had looked like an old hag, and her features had looked twisted, deformed by the passing of time and bitterness hidden in her heart. Unlike her mother, Queen Victoria's face was round and soft with kindness and gentleness despite being old enough to be a grandmother, or a great-grandmother. There was no trace of spite or hatred twisting her face up into a hag's.
Sieglinde took a sip of her tea. "Ceylon?" she asked her guess, and was rewarded with the Queen's smile.
This was her third time having an audience with the Queen. She wasn't blind or stupid now, especially not after so many lessons from the marchioness about what drove all sorts of different people in society, including even the ones on the holy pinnacle of the empire, hidden behind veils of careful planning and double spoken words. Like Ciel had told her back in the forest when he offered her a choice, she would be useful to any large, ambitious country with her knowledge on chemical weapons. She understood that she was more valuable as a creator of destruction and death rather than solutions and medicine that could save people like magic.
Every second she was in the presence of the Queen, Sieglinde was tensed up despite the sovereign's serene appearance. She always expected for the monarch to ask about developing weapons for Britain, or giving the formula for what she had thought to be the 'Ultimate Magic'. Every second she waited for the other shoe to drop, to be taken away from her dream of making amends and saving people with medicine so effective it would almost be magical.
The Queen, this time, started off with a question that caught her off-guard. "What is your opinion of Edward Midford?"
Sieglinde paused in her reach for a pastry. "Pardon me?" she asked in German. The Queen understood – she had relatives in Germany, and loved any chance to practice her languages.
There was another smile from the old woman, but this time it was mischievous. "I've been hearing some things amongst the ladies recently," she said airily.
Uh-oh, she didn't like the sounds of that very much. Sieglinde put the cup down. "What kind of things?" she asked carefully.
The crow's feet deepened, and the old woman looked downright devious. A prankster in queen's clothing, that's what Victoria was right now. "Nothing important or credible," she said casually. "But you must admit, Edward Midford is quite the dashing young man. Why, if I was around his age, I would consider marrying him!"
Then her face crumpled. "Oh, Albert," she wailed into a handkerchief as the groom stepped forwards dutifully with his puppet in hand, prepared to do his duty. "Why did you leave me?"
"Victoria," the groom said in complete deadpan, holding up his ever-present Albert puppet, "I'm right here with you. Please, we have a young lady over as a guest."
"Y-you're right, Albert, as usual."
The first time she'd seen this, she had been a little disturbed. She had wondered if the Queen of Britain was insane, if she was grieving, even entertained the possibility that the woman saw her husband's ghost channeled through the groom (before reminding herself that magic had been a lie and she wasn't a witch). Now she knew to wait, and found it sweet how the Queen was so devoted to her marriage, even after her partner had died.
Marriage. Their hostess from the dinner party not long ago had mentioned it before. She still had no definite thoughts, but if she was to get married, she decided that she would want to love her husband like the Midfords did, like Victoria did.
John Brown stood up, the Albert puppet in his hands as the Queen wiped away the last traces of her latest outburst of grief.
. . . Maybe not quite like Victoria did. But definitely someone she could rely and depend on when she needed to, yet respect her enough to give her the liberty to do what she wanted to do with her life.
The Queen turned back to her, tears from her eyes wiped away. "But my dear girl, my point remains. What do you think of Edward Midford?"
Sieglinde had been taught how to maneuver conversations to avoid revealing unnecessary information, but the woman in front of her had literally decades of experience cornering slippery speakers and getting the results she wanted from them. As good as a tutor Marchioness Midford had been, Sieglinde didn't even have the hope of a chance against the Queen.
"He's a perfect gentleman," she said, remembering Edward and his determination to always be a good example of a British gentleman. It was an important trait in the Midford family.
The Queen nodded. "Yes, I do hear that. His father's so proud of him. It's only a matter of time until a lucky lady snatches him up for herself."
At Sieglinde's puzzled look, the Queen smiled. It was much less mischievous than the one before her regular Albert Outburst, but it still had a lot of whimsy in it. Too much for her to put her guard down just yet. "With Elizabeth engaged to that boy and all, it isn't right for the older to not be engaged as well," she explained. "I imagine that his parents are looking very hard for a suitable girl. The Bluer family, you know, has a number of daughters still unengaged. I imagine they'd just love for a marriage to be arranged between one of their girls and young Edward."
Marriage? She could barely picture it for herself, and for Edward it wasn't much easier. Would marriage change him from the person he was now?
Right now, Edward was . . . .
A prudish young man who felt shame in proxy for women who revealed their legs.
An overprotective older brother.
A student who replied to the letters sent from his family and family's ward with separate replies for each of them.
A British Knight.
A British gentleman.
. . . A friend.
Sieglinde hoped that he wouldn't change too much. Change would be inevitable, with something as big as marriage, but she was finally comfortable around him, and she didn't want to lose that as surely as she would lose the gentleman that 'escorted' (read: practically carried) her to places to let her have fun, the student that alternated between intelligent worries and teasing jokes in his reply letter.
Behind the tea cup she had lifted to her lips, the Queen smiled. "I hope the ladies with interest in him will act quickly," she said, deliberately not looking at the little witch but instead at the warm, red-tinted tea in her cup. "Otherwise he'll be gone before they can blink."
Sieglinde blinked in confusion, but the Queen merely moved onto a different topic.