My father’s reticence on the subject of his own misdeeds niggled at my mind for the entire of the following day. Well, I didn’t remember while I was out riding with him in the morning, being too happy to be astride a horse. By the end of the ride, I was trying to ignore my aching thighs.
Afterwards, I gave the ancient pony a carrot I’d tucked up my sleeve and concentrated on not hobbling as we walked back to the house for breakfast. The Duke watched me out of the corner of his eye with a faint smile that suggested he saw right through my pretence. But he didn’t say anything. I was coming to the conclusion that it would be very easy to love this father of mine!
The Duke went into London after breakfast, to make some calls. I spent some time wandering around the house, although nowhere that would require too strenuous a use of my legs. I’d already explored the enormous library and now I found myself in the picture gallery. This was a long, narrow room with windows all along the outer wall. On the inner wall hung the family portraits. I walked along, staring up at my ancestors with interest. I even found a painting of the old fashioned (and much smaller) manor house which, judging by the landscape behind it, my Grandfather had replaced.
Eventually I came to an older portrait of my father as a young man, with an equally young Warrior looking over his shoulder. The horse had clearly not finished filling out yet, and both sets of eyes were bright and almost excessively lively. Were my young eyes supposed to look that bright? I knew that they didn’t. They were dark and wary and showed little of my feelings.
There was also another individual portrait of my mother. I spent longest of all looking at this. It was perhaps not that surprising I’d found it so hard to remember my mother’s face. Most of my glances at my mother had been stolen, swift glances when she was not looking at me. It gave me a pain inside remembering how it had always been.
When I was very young, I would be playing in the room where my mother sat and I would look up to surprise my mother watching my play with a loving smile. Only, the moment I raised my face and met my mother’s eyes, the expression slid from Lady Ravena’s face and she would look away quickly, sometimes leave the room entirely. It happened over and over again. Before long, I learned never to look at my mother directly, to keep my head down when speaking to her, and to only ever look upon my mother’s face when there was no risk of my mother glancing around and looking on mine.
~+~
After luncheon my father spent most of the afternoon closeted in his study with the steward of his northern estates, those of which he was Duke. The steward had arrived that morning and by questioning Anna, I learned that he made the long journey once every six months when the Duke was in England and that many messengers went to and fro the rest of the time.
“So what are you actually Duke of?” I asked my father at dinner, after some gentle hinting about how much I’d like to hear his own confession, even in part.
Alban cocked an eyebrow at me, perhaps relieved by the subject change. “Ah, so you know that Duke of Albany is just some courtier’s idea of a highly amusing joke? First inflicted on my father, actually, who bore it with a good grace. When I became Duke, I renamed this house. My father called it Ravena House, but it was one of the few things about which we never agreed. Seeing my name carved in stone every time I came through the gates always depressed me. So I renamed it Albany House, whereby you could say I have the last laugh with regard to the nickname!”
I laughed at that. I had not yet been through the gates while awake, and I had not known what the house was called.
My father seemed to realize that he had not yet actually answered my question. “Well, I’m the Duke of Elfindale,” he said, in a tone of some amusement. “Which does not sound anywhere near so grand, does it?”
“How’s that spelt?” I asked curiously.
“Why, as in The Elfin and dale, the geographical feature. One word. It’s the name of my estate in the north, of course.”
“Hmm,” I said, eyes narrowed in thought, “so...are things like the Elfin real too? I mean, if dragonets are real?”
My father smiled a decidedly inscrutable smile. “Yes, child, the Elfin are as real as Raven, an ancient race, and generally one very uninterested in humankind.”
“But where do they live? That is, there are forts on some farmers’ land, those mysterious mounds that they leave strictly alone, but those are so small. They’re not small creatures like faeries, are they? So where do the majority of them live?”
Alban smiled at me. “You are astute. Indeed, I believe the forts found on more isolated farms are no more than cottages or manor houses are for us, isolated dwellings only. Most of the Elfin are believed to live in much larger forts, far away from humans.”
“Like towns!” I said. He nodded. “But where?”
“Why, in the wild places.”
I mulled this information over for a while. The older I got, the more a certain suspicion had been forming in my mind. I had not paid Siridean’s pointed ears much attention at the time, but his truly bizarre eyes had ensured that I had not forgotten either.
When the Duke began to direct an inquiring look at me, I pushed the thoughts away and shifted my attention rather strategically back to the previous subject. “Why won’t you tell me?” I demanded. “It can’t be that bad. The stuff I told you was awful.”
He glanced at me sharply. Raven retreated from his wineglass and started robbing mine instead. “No, it was not awful. It was awful that it happened to you, but you bore yourself throughout it in a way that was far from awful. The devil is certainly in no danger of finding himself with you on his hands!”
His dismissal of my own bad deeds stung. They had hurt enough when I was forced into them. “I still can’t see why you won’t say,” I snapped. “I told you all of mine, and you won’t even tell me your one worst. It’s not fair!”
He jerked to his feet, his hand smashing down on the wineglass and sending it flying in broken fragments into the nearest wall. “Since when is anything in this life fair?”
The door slammed behind him with a crash that shook the crockery on the table.
~+~