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“I know.” Their arms locked around her. “I want to say it. I’ll just…say it, then. I’ll say it. She’s alive.” Their heart was beating faster. “My mother is alive.”

—

Georgie had said it. The words floated free. My mother is alive. There was no taking them back.

“It’s not true, the story about the spring tide, that she was swept out to sea. I believed it, though, like everyone. I mourned her. I would sit under the willow by the fishing pond and sob. When you weren’t there, that is.” They sensed rather than felt Elf’s movement, it was so infinitesimal.

“That’s how you came upon me reading? You were going to the willow yourself, to…”

“I always loved that tree.” It had felt odd, and oddly fated, seeing her there, bent over her book. Each time, they’d back away, silently, letting the fronds fall into place.

“Your mother…” There was confusion in Elf’s voice, a hesitant hope, an undercurrent of apprehension. But how was anyone to greet such news, the details as yet obscure? And even then.

“She might not be alive, I suppose.” Anything could have happened in the decade since she’d disappeared.

“All I know is that she didn’t die in Scotland that day.

She wrote my father a letter, afterward, saying she was sorry.

Saying goodbye. I found it in his study, in London, but not until he’d died. I couldn’t ask him to explain.”

Ask him to explain. How reasonable it sounded. How measured. They’d wanted to scream in their father’s mild-eyed, sweet-tempered face.

“Most of the letter’s illegible,” they said, when they were sure none of that shattered fury would poison their tone. “He must have held it over the candle, then changed his mind and waved out the flame. But I could read enough.”

Elf was caressing them, fingers moving lightly, soothingly, along their collarbone. It felt better than good. It felt like a miracle, her tender touch, the way she fit against them. “There was only the one letter?”

“Only one.” They stared up blankly at the bed’s carved tester, shadow-formed faces leering down in the struggling candlelight.

“I tore his study apart. That one letter—I found it by accident.” They exhaled shakily, aiming for self-deprecatory humor but landing instead on something bitter: “I can’t find a damn thing on purpose. ”

“You can,” said Elf at once. “What about those pages of my grandmother’s manuscript?”

“I knocked those pages from your hands during an attack by a disgruntled ungulate, which I caused.” They laughed and were grateful for the easing of pressure in their chest. “I don’t deserve credit for finding things I made go missing in the first place.

” They thought of her amulet and grimaced.

They thought of their mother and shut their eyes.

They hadn’t made her go missing. She’d spent her days, and nights, mostly with her friends, with Lady Beverly, but she’d enjoyed their company in bursts.

She’d liked to ride with them, fast, taking fences.

She’d applauded with unfeigned enthusiasm when they acted out their favorite scenes from The Busie Body in the drawing room.

They hadn’t driven her off. But they hadn’t given her reason enough to stay.

“What about the hoard?” asked Elf. “The hoard of the Great Heathen Army? That’s a damn thing.”

“We haven’t found it yet.” They opened their eyes.

“We will, though.”

“You believe that? Despite this past week?” Of course she did. Once she committed herself, she was tenacious. They sighed.

“Yes,” they said. “We will find the hoard of the Great Heathen Army.”

Elf’s fingers stilled. “You want to find her . That’s what you meant.”

They rocked their head slowly from side to side. “I want her to find me . And nothing could be easier, if she wanted. I’m right where she left me.”

Elf hugged them, her grip so sudden and so fierce, they lost their breath. She was far too small to have any right to be so strong.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No reason to be sorry.” They grunted. “She’s alive. It’s reason to rejoice.”

“Yes,” said Elf. “But it can hurt too.” She hesitated. “Her leaving.”

For an instant, the hurt was there, tearing through them. They were glad she couldn’t see their face.

“Shall I tell you why she left? It’s all right.

” They arrested her quick gesture of demurral with a squeeze to the shoulder.

“I started down this road.” They could hardly believe they had.

But they’d taken the first step in the cave, another in the lightning, and here in the dark with Elf, safe in her arms, continuing felt imperative.

“It was love,” they said. “She paid the fisherwoman for her lies and absconded with Lady Beverly. How can I grudge her that happiness?” They cleared sudden hoarseness from their throat.

“My father never grudged her anything. He was classical himself. Theirs was the sort of marriage I thought to have with Phipps, only they saw fit to reproduce.”

“They told you all this?” Elf lifted her head.

“There wasn’t any need. I kissed Jane, and the scales fell from my eyes.”

Her eyes had a faint shine, reflecting the light of that dying candle. “But why would your mother abscond, if she could see Lady Beverly within the confines of your home?”

Anne’s claim marched through their mind.

“The compromise was too great,” they said. “That’s how I felt as well, with Phipps. I realized sooner than she did.”

She lowered her head slowly. “Does the Major know?”

“No one does. I’m afraid to tell Harry. What if he tried to track her down?

I thank God I found the letter before he did.

My father built model ships. His study was filled with them.

The King George was my favorite, a cutter.

When I was eight or nine, I painted over the lettering.

Made it the King Georgie . He never noticed.

” A laugh caught in their chest. “I was moving the ship to my bedchamber, and the letter slipped out. He’d tucked it into the mainsail. ”

“King Georgie.” Elf surprised them by kissing their cheek. A moment later, she was snuggling into their side. “You cried under the willow tree because your mother was dead. Did you cry when you discovered she wasn’t?”

“No,” they said, too sharply. “I regret the circumstances. I regret the method. But I respect her choice.”

Elf made a small sighing sound of acknowledgment, if not affirmation.

When they spoke again, their voice was thin as smoke. “I don’t wish that she stayed. I only wish that she’d trusted me. Or that my father had trusted me. I’d imagined they understood that I understood, about them. And that they understood what that understanding signified, about me.”

“Maybe they did trust you.” Elf’s speech was slow and almost too soft to hear. “Maybe he was waiting for the right time to tell you. Maybe she still is.”

Before they could respond, she was asleep.

They lay awake, listening to Elf as she breathed. The tenderness ballooning in their heart made its wall too thin and fragile. They half hoped the feeling would vanish at dawn like fairy orbs and field dew. They half hoped it was a spell. That the spell would break before their heart did.