"I am exhausted," Ciel says, from where he is hiding in between a dresser and the wall. He takes back everything he always thought about wanting to run and play like a normal child. No thank you. He'd rather sit down and get to eat a proper chocolate cake any day. The week—for he has been accosted at the Midfords' for that long—has dragged on interminably, and Elizabeth, helpful, thoughtful 'Lizzy', as his brother had always called her, made sure that the family made cake with strawberry. Ciel's favorite. And he'd eaten it, and said, oh, thank you so much, and dourly wished Elizabeth hadn't been quite so good of a future wife-to-be. Sebastian looks down at him with an amused smile, and Ciel glares back. "Tell me she's off in the other wing, searching in—oh hell," he says. He can hear her coming now. "Disappear!" he hisses. "Go away, or she'll know I'm here."
Sebastian bows, politely, and walks out the other door.
"Oh! Sebastian!" He can hear Elizabeth's cheerful voice in the hall. "Have you seen Ciel?"
"Even if I had, my lady, I couldn't tell you… you are playing hide and seek, are you not?" Sebastian replies. Elizabeth giggles.
"Yes. You don't know that, though, do you?"
"Ah, I am afraid I must plead ignorance in every particular," Sebastian says. "Good luck hunting your quarry."
Elizabeth skips off, opening door after door. When she comes into the room he's hiding in, Ciel stiffens. In less than a moment, the girl's eagle-eyes have pinpointed his hiding place. "Found you!" she says.
Ciel stands up from his awkward crouch. "Your turn again."
"Oh, do try to be quicker this time. You took just ages to find me last time!" Elizabeth complains.
"You hide too well," Ciel says. Actually, he had gotten Sebastian to tell him where Elizabeth was from the start, and then spent ten minutes or so doing absolutely nothing, before he finally decided he ought to put her out of her misery and "find" her.
Elizabeth spins around in enthusiasm, her dress twirling out in an orange arc as she does. "Go on, count!"
Ciel closes his eyes. "One," he says. "Two," Elizabeth takes off running. Ciel finishes counting, and sits down on the floor.
"Sebastian," he says, "find her."
Sebastian, who has walked up beside him, chuckles. "Yes, my lord," he says.
Ciel spends the entire ride home sleeping. He awakes when Sebastian informs him they've made the station, and then stares out the window of the cab until the townhouse rises into view.
Aunt Anne is waiting in the townhouse, sipping Grell's badly-brewed tea, having apparently claimed the place, and Ciel stalks past, in no mood for talk.
"Ciel, don't be angry," Angelina says. "Your aunt has been pestering me about your wellbeing for weeks. If I hadn't arranged for them to find you there, they would have come here, and I'm quite sure you'd have liked that even less."
That may be, but Ciel is still in no mood to admit it. He grunts, flopping limply over a couch in the parlor.
"So, what were you up to all this time you were away?"
"Nothing," Ciel says, closing his eyes.
"You can't ask me to research information about a monster and then tell me it was nothing," Madam Red says. "Do you know how much work it was to find that on such short notice?"
It's Sebastian that explains—diplomatically leaving out the part where Ciel was, himself, attacked. Still, Anne gasps and seems properly awed about the whole adventure. Grell, who had been sitting beside his aunt when they arrived and who hadn't been able to stand up and vacate the seat until the moment had already become awkward—and had seemingly taken that as a cue not to get up at all—lounges back and watches Ciel critically. Ciel looks back from under half-closed lashes, before he finally sits up properly and admits to being present.
Anne has that twist to her smile again. "So, do you plan to follow your father's footsteps?"
"That's not up to me," Ciel says.
"I saw you had notes for your toy company," Anne continues.
"You saw quite a lot while I was away, didn't you?" Ciel says.
"Don't make insinuations, Ciel, it doesn't look good on you," Anne says. "And of course I did. Who do you take me for?" She smiles at him, insincerely. Ciel returns the motion, feeling infinitely sarcastic, and Anne laughs. Ciel relaxes, leaning back, and Sebastian offers to make chocolate cake.
"Mm, chocolate," Grell says. "How delicious."
"Michaelis is a sweetheart," Anne says. "He knows I like chocolate. Ciel, too bad, you'll have to live with it."
"I'll manage," Ciel says.
He does, in fact, manage to get three pieces of chocolate cake while Aunt Anne has distracted Sebastian with talks about the medical journals he has apparently subscribed to. While they talk lengthily about germs and diseases and surgeries, Ciel eyes the cake, wondering if he might possibly be able to sneak a fourth piece. He and Grell reach forward at the same time and stare at each other, neither one willing to let go of the serving knife first. Finally Grell lets go with an air of exaggerated unconcern.
What's gotten into him? Ciel thinks, surprised at the butler's forwardness. He usually seems like such a timid sort.
He's already looking awkwardly down at his hands, his shoulders drawn down together as though he is trying to take up less space, but the effect is ruined by the fact that he is still sitting down. It's not ignorance; it's a disregarding of the social rules. Of course it is not like Ciel is one to talk, as Aunt Francis had been so keen to point out. Even Sebastian has finally been persuaded to sit down across from his aunt as they continue their heated discussion about the latest advancements in medicine.
Ciel takes an extra large piece of cake, and watches Grell stare after it with longing.
"I thought you didn't care for dessert," Ciel says, having a distinct memory of the butler's lack of opinion on the subject of food.
"That was before I tried Sebastian's chocolate cake," Grell says, with a sigh. "I never knew food could taste so delectable."
Ciel eats a piece. "Mm. It's not bad," he admits.
There's something about the butler that makes Ciel question. He supposes it's not a new thought, but coming back from the Midfords' house just makes the difference so obvious. Grell seems utterly inept as a butler. One wonders why Aunt Anne keeps him around.
Actually, one doesn't wonder so much as have thoughts that one wishes one hadn't. He's fairly certain that the man is her lover, although what his aunt sees in him is hard to imagine.
"Are you going to eat the whole thing?" Grell asks, drawing Ciel out of his thoughts. Ciel stares from his almost-finished piece to the small wedge of cake that remains on the salver.
"There will be none left-over for tomorrow if the young master does that," Sebastian says, interrupting his conversation as he turns their way. He stands up and takes up the plate before Ciel can get to it, and Ciel stares after the retreating concoction with consternation. He sighs, and gives Grell a dark look.
"You just had to ask," he says.
After dinner, the three move back into the parlor and Aunt Anne decides it is time for music. She sits down at the piano, shuffling the sheets as she sets them up.
"Grell, why don't you sing?" she asks. Grell looks nervously at the floor.
"Are you sure, milady?" he asks in his soft, quiet voice.
"Why not?" Anne says. She's in fine form; the wine she'd had at dinner being apparently more congenial than the weak and watery tea they'd been subjected to beforehand. "We're among friends, aren't we? Michaelis, can you accompany?"
Sebastian smiles in her direction. "I have some talent in the violin, if that would do," he says.
"Wonderful," Anne says. "Ciel?"
"I'll just watch," Ciel says.
They strike up the first song. His aunt's playing on the piano is fair, but it is Sebastian's talent on the violin that really draws the song up from one of those ordinary nights of parlor entertainment into something that is almost breathtaking. Even Grell, though he didn't look a likely candidate, transforms when he opens his mouth to sing, losing his nervous awkwardness and carrying a tune with a surprisingly strong and mellow voice. They get through a number of songs like that, until Anne decides they ought to change up the programme.
"Ciel, play the next song for us!" she says. "I'm going to dance."
There is something about the lightness in her manner that makes him loathe to refuse her, and so he takes her place on the piano. His aunt persuades Sebastian to accompany her first, and they enjoy a dance or two, though Ciel notices how Grell's voice falters almost imperceptibly as he watches them. But then Sebastian begs out (it seems he has had enough of his Aunt's less than subtle groping) and offers Grell to take his place, going back to the violin.
For a moment, Ciel concentrates on settling into a rhythm with the other instrument, but soon he is able to glance up again to see Grell and his aunt spinning each other in turn. His aunt is laughing, and even Grell is smiling a small smile as they improvise, taking up the leading role one after the other, effortlessly. They are unguarded, vibrant. Ciel finds himself lagging behind the violin, which slows down a moment to allow him to keep his place, and he looks back to the music with more concentration. Perhaps I might know what she sees in him, he thinks at last. They both dance the same; somehow wild and mischievous, and with only the four of them together the rules and everything that is proper lags into the background.
I could never live with the Midfords, Ciel thinks again. He thinks of Elizabeth's obsession with running around (and making him run after her) and Edward's ambivalence, Uncle Alexis's fatherliness and Aunt Francis's exactness in everything being as it should be, and he realizes, though it is not something he didn't know, that this dance could never take place there. Could not, perhaps, take place anywhere else but here, in this protected moment. He plays until the evening draws to a close and at last his aunt throws herself onto a chair, laughing and saying that her feet are killing her. Ciel gathers up the music and puts it away in the bench while Sebastian tends to his violin. A weight seems to have been lifted from the air, and he realizes that the oddness behind his aunt's eyes is entirely absent, and all she seems is free.
.
.
.