"Cicerone"
Elizabeth sits in front of one of the huge bay windows of Midford Manor's front room, a spot she has chosen for its lighting. It is early morning, and the ten-year-old pushes a lock of long blonde hair out of her reddened eyes as she carefully adds another blue stitch to her embroidered flower petals.
It is then that she is interrupted, as her mother gently pushes open the door and greets her.
"Ah, Elizabeth, there you are. Put that stitching down, and come with me."
Without a word, Lizzy places her embroidery hoop down into her sewing basket and follows after her mother, smoothing down her heavy black skirts as she goes.
Francis leads them to the marchioness' study, a place that she usually keeps locked; she allow others in so seldom that Elizabeth can only remember being inside of the room twice. The girl hesitates, barely through the doorway, as her mother turns to face her.
"Come here, Elizabeth," Francis says, "Sit with me."
"What did you want me for, Mother?" Lizzy asks as she seats herself at the second chair that the marchioness has pulled up behind her desk. Her mother gives her a tight little smile, and pulls a stack of papers towards them.
"As you know," Francis says, "my brother had his fingers in a great many pots. My family has always done things that way, trying their best to spread their influence as far as they could in order to gain allies. These are several letters that I have received from an associate of the Phantomhives in France. What do you make of them?"
Lizzy pulls one of the heavy pieces of paper towards her, only to stop in bemusement upon seeing the writing.
"Mother…?" she says, "These are in French. I can't read them. Why—?"
Francis smiles another one of those strange, tiny smiles.
"Then I suppose you'll have to learn, won't you?" she says, "Look here, this mark is called a cedilla…."
Lizzy devours the French lessons, as well as the basics of Spanish and German which follow. It is wonderful to have something to put her mind to, she finds; learning a language is a much better distraction than embroidery.
A/N: Uuuugh. I'm so tired. Work utterly wipes me out, and I need to read several chapters in my textbooks, and next week I have two tests. *sigh*
But, um, I made myself a timeline for this fic. :) It's quite useful, and very pretty indeed, if I do say so myself. I even have it set next to canon dates and events for comparison. I'd find a way to make it available to y'all, but...spoilers. (Lizzy's ten here, btw, in case you skipped over my mention of her wearing black)
Anyhoo, I love you all, thank you for reading, and please leave a review (like, did anyone ever tell me what they thought about how the jack the ripper arc wrapped up?). Also, feel free to give me prompts or whatever to intersperse between major plot points. If I think it works in the 'verse, I'll probably put it in here eventually. (I have a heck of a lot of manga plot to get through, y'know?)
"Cicerone:" a scholarly guide; a conductor; a mentor
