"I love my sister, Will; I always have and I always will." Elizabeth began with a firm set to her shoulders, and an even firmer tone of voice. Will wondered who she was reassuring with that statement. "This has always been considered to be incredibly poor judgment on my behalf, and asserting it in public was inconceivably bad taste. After Kate …" Elizabeth took a very deep breath and continued determinedly. "After she left, it was … much more pronounced. Much more obvious." She hesitated after that, and Will knew her next words would be painful, for her if not for both of them.
"Have you ever been told, with a grand total of six whole years of age under your belt, that the one person in the world you admire and love the most is a disgrace to her family and to Society as a whole, and that there is no possible way she will ever come to any good?" Elizabeth sighed, and snuggled closer to Will. "Of course you haven't – forget I asked that. I got angry when people said that – what right did they have to call her a disgrace, they who never left their estates except to go to parties, and who lived in constant fear of assassination? They were weak, and foolish." Elizabeth sneered, leaving no doubt as to her contempt for these unknown nobles. "They were the disgrace, not her, yet whenever I dared to speak up for Kate, they looked at me like … like I was some sort of contagious disease, or something really nasty you might find on your bootsole!
"And that wasn't even the worst part," Elizabeth sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly – in what, Will couldn't tell. "The worst part, the absolute crowning shame was that my father agreed with them! He never said anything outright, oh no, that would be Poor Form, but he never even once tried to say anything against them. Not once! And there were some who, if they had insulted him and not Kate, he wouldn't have thought twice about challenging! But now, when it was his eldest daughter they slandered, he twiddled his thumbs and pretended not to hear." Elizabeth gave a sound that might have passed for a laugh, with faulty lighting and a cursory inspection, but wasn't. "That was when I learned a very important lesson: no matter what you believe in and no matter how strongly you believe in it, you'd best keep shut if no one else feels the same."
Will pulled his beloved closer to him and tried to mentally square the picture Elizabeth was giving him of Weatherby Swann as a controlling, intolerant, pompous noble as opposed to the kindly and wise old man who Elizabeth still made weekly visits to that he knew. There was no way the man who had accepted his daughter's engagement to a common blacksmith with – relative – calm and good-nature could possibly be the man Elizabeth was telling him about.
"My father … was a very different man when we lived in England. It … took losing his eldest daughter to change him into the person you know now."
Well, if that wasn't a tale that needed telling, his name wasn't William Turner.
"An unwed noblewoman is a mockery – that is slightly true here, but much more so in England. When Kate was still unattached at nineteen, Father began to get a bit … desperate. That's when Robert Longfellow made an appearance." Elizabeth grimaced and shifted slightly; as if the name was something dirty she wanted to stay far away from. "He was a very respectable – and very rich – Duke with a very sizeable estate. Furthermore, he was well-spoken, mannerly, handsome, and not at all put off by Kate five minutes after he met her – which is more than any of her other prospective suitors could claim. Father thought he was a gift from God. Kate despised him.
"They spent hours fighting about it – Kate and Father. Father was adamant that she marry the Duke – a wonderful match for anyone, but nigh on miraculous for Kate – and Kate was equally determined that she wouldn't. I don't think she ever even saw a need for her to get married – I certainly can't see her happily married to anyone. Also, she just didn't like her future fiancé. She thought he was a … what were her exact words again … ah, that's it … she thought he was "an egotistical, chauvinistic, spoiled brat who wouldn't know a refusal if it came up and bit him in the … ahem …nether regions."
Elizabeth said the last quite primly, and Will didn't need her to tell him that that was the edited version – he knew Elizabeth's views on swearing.
"Beyond that, she was mortally afraid of him, and with good reason, too. The "good Duke" had had four other previous wives, and not one of them had lived for more than three years once they married him. 'Difficult childbirth' people said, or 'terrible accident.' 'Such a shame,' they said, and 'He must be devastated.' They would smile sympathetically, offer their condolences, and then turn their backs and say 'murderer' and 'did you see his face at the funeral, when he thought no one was looking?' 'Black-hearted killer' and 'I hope he never so much as looks at my Susie,' but my father never paid any attention to them. He said they were just the jealous rumors of petty nobles who hadn't got anything better to do."
Elizabeth's stance had gotten progressively tenser, and her words had started to take on a slight hysterical tinge as she spoke, leaving Will to hug her tighter and whisper wordless reassurances that he wasn't sure she even heard anyways. Her shoulders were quite literally shaking, the muscles were so tense, and if her voice got any more strained, it would break. Overall, the impression of a dam just seconds away from splitting asunder was put across rather well, and if he knew 'Lizabeth, the breaking would come just about …
"WHY!?"
… now. Elizabeth was crying now, dry sobs that made his heart break and his eyes blur in sympathy. Her hands were clenched in his shirt, and if Will held her any tighter he would probably hurt her. Ever since he had met her, Will had devoted his life to protecting Elizabeth from harm – but he couldn't protect her from memories, especially memories it was better she remember. There was absolutely nothing he could to other than wait for her to finish her story, and offer whatever support was needed afterwards, but that didn't make it any easier to hear his Elizabeth in such pain.
"The one time those stupid, petty, barnyard hens were right, and he didn't listen to them! Why couldn't he have just gone along with them on that like he did everything else? Why couldn't he have at least seen that his daughter was terrified of marrying that … that … bastard? He put it down to 'female hysterics,' but Kate was the last person to get hysterical over things – I've never even seen her have hysterics. Didn't he know that Kate wasn't afraid of anything?"
After this not-unexpected outburst, Elizabeth seemed to deflate, the fire of her resentment damped, the river of her anger dammed. She spoke her next words quietly, her voice not soft, but small.
"One day, they started arguing and then they just … didn't stop. They argued throughout the entire afternoon, and argued the night nearly to dawn. When Kate came out of the study – where most of their arguments took place – she was … different. Angry. She said things that night; did things that I didn't think about but I probably should have. That … that was when she asked me not to forget her. She said she'd have to go away for awhile, but that everything would be alright. It wasn't, not at all, and when I woke up the next day, she was … was gone! No note, no letter, no little secret message, no word of any kind, she just … wasn't there anymore. Later, I found out that Father had sent her away to marry the Duke as soon as he could, before I woke up.
"That was the last I ever heard of Kate. She'd sad that she'd have to go away – she must've known that she wouldn't come back."
Well. How does one respond to a story like that? Will held Elizabeth for a few moments longer, and then titled her chin up to him. How could she have possibly managed to keep that bottled up for – what, fifteen years?
"Elizabeth." Dear God, he hoped this was the right thing to say, he hoped he wouldn't screw this up …
"Y-yes, Will?" Again that barely-noticeable stammer, eclipsed by the mingled hope and trepidation in her eyes. Will cupped her face in his palms, sent one last prayer that he wouldn't make too much of a mess of what he was going to say, and took his turn to speak.
"Elizabeth, I know you love your sister. I would have to be blind, deaf, dumb, and about as emotionally sensitive as a piece of pot metal" which he wasn't – not quite, or so he hoped "to not know that. Furthermore, I believe you are quite justified in loving your sister, as from all you've told me about her she sounds like a person I would very much like to meet. I also doubt that anything Kate does in her life will come to absolutely no good whatsoever as these English nobles seem to think, because the impression you have given me is not of a woman who will sit back and let everything fall to pieces." Will had been looking in her eyes for the entire time he'd been talking, and now he smiled to see that the worry was almost completely gone. "Kate sounds like a fine woman, Elizabeth. You should be proud to call her your sister."
Will stared into Elizabeth's eyes and hoped the message had gotten across because he didn't know if he could say it any better … and why was she looking at him like that?
"Elizabeth, love?"
No answer, but there was a … calculating look in her eyes that he couldn't quite make sense of.
"Darling, why are you looking at me like that?"
Some of the calculation in her eyes had been replaced by something else, something a good deal more … feral. And that smile looked far too secretive to be comforting …
"Was it something I sa-mmppphhh!"
When Elizabeth pulled back and Will could breathe again, she simply looked at him with what he secretly called her "Governess Look", where she would have that all-knowing, slightly superior expression and the single raised eyebrow, and said "Yes, Will. It was something you said."
And then neither of them said anything intelligible for … quite some time, really.
**********************
Okay. Here it is, finally. Whew. Hopefully I can get back to my regular pace now. Now … let's see … additional thanks to: Lord Lanceahlot, AgentBloom, ElvenRanger13, and legolaslover for the new reviews, to NiM and empress and Starbrow for putting me on their Favorite Author list, and, if (s)he happens to read this story also, to me, who reviewed A Bit of Fun.
That's all, really. I hope to get ch 8 out in a few days, and much love to all you who continue reading this.
Ta!