I've decided since my first chapter was... well, it was weak, dammit-I've decided to go ahead and post Chapter 2 before schedule. I plan to post a chapter a week, and I've spent my entire vacation writing, so don't worry. It gets better as we go along ;)
Chapter Two
Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Middleford dropped her married name when her husband passed away. With a name like Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Middleford, van Regenbogen was just too much. She had happily taken over the Funtom Company that had belonged to her beloved cousin and used that to fill her time both during her marriage and after the death of her doting husband. She couldn't bring herself to hate the man, no matter how hard she had once tried. He had been good to her, after all, even if she hadn't been the sort of spouse he had desired. Perhaps it was poor planning on her mother's part, to break the betrothal to Ciel even if she couldn't have him, and force her to marry that old man that would have preferred a boy her age, and not a beautiful young woman with excessively cute tastes.
Truth be told, her tastes had long since matured, and even in her forties, she was a gorgeous woman with smooth features and bouncy blonde curls. And not a day went by that she didn't close her eyes and dream of being a child again with the love of her life. Oh, how he had spoiled her. And had he ever realized it? She knew that something supernatural had torn him from her side and she'd long believed Sebastian had been at the heart of that-though she held no ill will for the butler, because she never really could hold anyone at fault for long. She had glimpsed them on her wedding day, and at the time, had blamed it on her nerves; because her beautiful Ciel was still a boy of thirteen and his butler had not changed a bit, either. But over the years, she continued to spy Sebastian, out of the corner of her eye; while she was shopping, or leaving the storefront of the Funtom Company, or even once, as she cried herself to sleep one night, a shimmering black apparition that soothed her hair and whispered Shhhh, Darling... Lovely young ladies mustn't cry themselves to sleep. You shall wake up in the morning with a swollen nose and squinty eyes and be quite monstrous. She had thought it was a dream. She had turned to the shimmering blackness and buried her face in it and slept, smelling the memories of the Phantomhive Manor and her beloved Ciel; and when she'd awoken, it had been a dream, but for the lingering scent on her sheets.
Yet here she was, an old woman at forty-five, though most people accused her of being thirty, childless but for her loyal customers, and alone, but for her dreams of the past. She'd given her husband's mansion to his longtime lover, deeding it over to the man in a desperate attempt to forget that part of her life. She retained the deeds to her own family's property but rarely went there, for it made her apathetic, and she detested that emotion. She would sometimes find herself at the old Phantomhive Estate, with no recollection of how she had arrived, and she would visit with the servants that she had loved so dearly in her childhood; though Tanaka had passed away years before, and the others had lost some of their joviality with him. And waiting so many years for their master to reappear had taken its toll on all of them.
Elizabeth maintained a townhouse on posh Upper Brook Street now, a scant block from the park where Ciel had taken a seat on the bench to clear his mind, and where Sebastian stood before him, understanding all too clearly the pain his young master was going through at that particular point in time.
Without preamble and never questioning his master's intentions on revealing the truth to his former fiancée, Sebastian reached out his hand to help the boy to his feet. It was swatted away and Ciel stood, straightening his cropped jacket and tapping the point of his cane on the sidewalk. "This way, my young Master," Sebastian drawled, turning and leading the boy east to Elizabeth's door.
"What does she look like?" the boy asked, keeping pace with the longer-legged demon easily. "What do I expect after all these years?"
"She is still your Lizzie, I assure you. She may not be the overly-adorable young lady you remember-she has thankfully outgrown her distasteful exuberance for all things 'cute'-but she looks very much the same, or rather, very much like her mother."
Ciel grumbled about that under his breath, but did not elaborate to the butler what he remembered of his Aunt, Lizzie's mother. She had been a handsome woman, but strict and brutish, and his comments on such were what led Lizzie to be the bubbly cute girl she had been, in a desire to not turn Ciel away from her because of his impression of her mother. In truth, Elizabeth Middleford had been an intimidating personality with a deadly specialty in swordsmanship, but she had forced her true nature aside and striven to be what she thought Ciel found ideal in a young lady. She had, in fact, nearly driven him mad with her obsessive behavior and love of all things cute, but as hindsight was indeed 20/20, he found he had loved her more than he would have ever cared to admit.
Their plans for the British Museum now put on hold, Sebastian led the way to the front step of the Middleford townhouse, and glancing over his shoulder at his young charge to assess his readiness, reached out and grasped the ornate door-knocker and let it fall with a resounding crack. While there had been a lovely sound emanating from the front parlor-a lilting concerto on an antique piano-it suddenly fell flat, and then a moment of silence before the shuffling of stockinged feet made their way to the door.
Ciel's heart was in his throat and he couldn't even see the door through Sebastian's black-clad frame. He suddenly doubted his hasty conviction to see Elizabeth and his fantasy about telling her the truth. What would she think? Say? How could she possibly believe him? Or rather, how could she not, seeing him here, still a child, some thirty years after they had parted. He remembered abruptly the last time they had danced, and how unabashedly happy she had been; that he had sauntered down the stairs of the Phantomhive manor and whisked her off her feet as she had longed for her entire life. He had just been changed... He hadn't felt himself. He had felt daring and damned the consequences and if he hadn't been quite so young, or naive, he would have kissed her and watched her melt against him and for the first time in his life, his cockiness would have meant something because he would have held the evidence in his embrace. But they'd danced and whirled and she'd laughed and cried, because she knew something was not right; that this wasn't her Ciel and she was ashamed that part of her didn't care. This was the Ciel she longed for. And she'd had him one night. And then he was gone.
The door eased open, the creaking hinges breaking him out of his reverie, and a beautiful woman that did look somewhat like his late Aunt, peered out at the tall man in the entrance. Her hair hanging in honeyed curls over one shoulder, her green eyes huge and bright and ever-so-slightly lined at the corners, and her full mouth creased in sadness and gaping just a bit at the sight before her, Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Middleford-formerly Lady van Regenbogen-appeared to be torn somewhere between laughter and hysterical sobbing. Her green eyes were glistening like wet glass and she chewed at her lower lip frantically, staring at this apparition from her past.
She hadn't changed much since the last time he'd seen her, Sebastian thought, other than the smile lines at the corners of her eyes were slightly deeper and she looked as though she might be happier than the last time he'd spied her through the window of her parlor. She'd been crying then and he'd forced himself to walk away because he suspected she wouldn't believe he'd been a dream like the time before. She hadn't spoken a word yet, and though she hadn't seen Ciel yet, either, he was concentrating very hard just to remain in place behind the butler. Every fiber of his being told him to turn and flee and yet his soles remained rooted to the stone floor beneath him, his eyes trained to the seam of Sebastian's jacket between his shoulder blades.
"Mistress Elizabeth," Sebastian started, nodding politely to the woman before him. She seemed incapable of blinking. Or speaking. She opened the door fully, finally, and reached out, brushing her fingers against the fabric of his coat; fingers curling and tugging lightly at his lapel. She continued to stare directly at him and it didn't take long for her to brush the tears from her eyes and launch herself at the butler, wrapping him a painful embrace. Of course, that meant her eyes leveled over his shoulder and there stood her Ciel. His wide-eyed stare beneath his mop of dark hair, studying her with fascination and his own mouth slightly agape; neither one of them knew what to say-what would happen if either of them tried to speak.
The breath escaped her when she clapped eyes on the earl behind Sebastian, exactly as she remembered him some thirty years ago, down to the Victorian style of his suit and the leather eyepatch hugging his beautiful face. She was suddenly transported back in time, her laughter ringing through the marble foyer of the Phantomhive Estate as he held her against him and spun and spun and made her dizzy with his spinning. That was the last time she'd seen him, before Paula came and took her home and she remembered feeling very much the same as she did at that moment, during that carriage ride home; hurt and giddy, filled with incomprehensible emotions that made her heart swell and ache and at fourteen other things were beginning to ache for her beautiful earl and she was just beginning to understand those aches when he was torn from her. Oh, she had closed her eyes and imagined him, growing taller, older with her; had desperately tried to imagine it was Ciel that had climbed atop her on her wedding night and that had been the only thing that kept her cries of pain at bay. It had not happened frequently after her wedding night, but when her husband was good and drunk and could pretend she was a boy, and he'd climb atop her again, she'd bury her face in the satin coverlets and pray that she was dreaming; or better yet, that the thick bulbous frame that pressed against her back was Ciel, grown and tall and lean and beautiful, his dark hair hanging in his cherubic face and his eyes closed in pleasure and she found if she did that, she could even find satisfaction for herself in her husband's bed.
When she had confessed as much to Paula, who remained her ever-faithful servant and confidante, she had to repress her giggles and informed the young Lady van Regenbogen that she was indeed not alone in her daydreams. There were quite a few women who had to pretend in their husbands' beds because rarely were young ladies married off to the man they found ideal in their hearts. Ciel would have made her the perfect husband, Paula had said, but it was such a pity that he had disappeared with that devilishly handsome butler of his-which had brought on a new fit of giggles that Paula couldn't seem to repress and while Elizabeth knew better, it pained her heart nonetheless.
As it happened, Elizabeth was hanging over Sebastian's shoulder, caught between fight and flight, for while she had always suspected the butler of being something more than human, she had never in a thousand years believed she would see her darling Ciel again-and most certainly, not precisely as she had seem him on the night he'd left. "No...nooooooooooooooooo..." she breathed, straightening herself from Sebastian's loose embrace and stepping around him to face the young Earl Phantomhive. "Ciel..." and it seemed that was all she would say for a while, her thoughts a tumultuous storm raging on her alabaster face.
She knelt before him, which made Ciel faintly uncomfortable, but seeing this current predicament was completely his own doing, he stayed; squared his shoulders and tapped his cane against the stone and leveled his gaze at her own, silent and stoic, awaiting her assessment. He was glad on some level she had not adopted the popular dress of the other women in London. She was clad in a loose, flowing skirt with a tiny jeweled belt and her blouse was modestly buttoned and her hair falling around her like a golden waterfall. Ciel found himself leaning a tiny bit closer, inhaling the scent of lavender and maybe vanilla-wafting from her tresses like incense from a burner. Yes, he decided, she was still lovely. Lovelier really than she ever had been. It was a pity he was trapped in the body of a thirteen year old boy when his mind could rage with the thoughts and desires of a grown man.
It was many moments later when she breathed his name again, a litany upon the full lips of a beautiful woman, older than she looked, but then so was he. Ironic that, he thought, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and growing bolder, reached out to cup a handful of her curls and pull them to his face, the better to smell them. He wasn't entirely sure what had possessed him in that moment, but Sebastian smiled his crooked mysterious smile and Lizzie's eyes welled up with tears again and he suddenly realized he would have to be the adult now.
"Elizabeth-"
"Lizzie," she chirped and then, blushing, "I'm sorry. I've forgotten myself. Can that be you, Ciel? Truly?"
He cleared his throat and dropped the handful of molten gold from his grasp, placing his hand back on the handle of his cane. "It is me, Lizzie. And I think I have missed you."
Regenbogen is a German surname meaning 'Rainbow'. I thought it fitting ;p
Also, if I have offended anyone reading this with my "buggerer of boys" comment, I assure you, it was unintended. I have no personal issues with alternative lifestyles. I am completely indifferent toward them as a whole. But this (among other things) was a common occurrence with arranged marriages back in the day. And as Sebastian and Ciel speak in a Victorian dialect, this would have been the terminology used.