Chapter 67
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 66
Maybe John should feel a bit strange about this, but all he feels is terribly smug and happy. Darcy hissed at the air once Llew decided to just vanish to find Arthur to ask, and then grabbed his hand and started running. While he scrambles to keep up with her, he still finds himself grinning like a dolt. How the fuck could he not? She giggled over her shoulder and told him that she doesn’t want to leave Arthur alone with the creep, but she missed him so much, so she refuses to be away from him again. Yepp, his girl! His girl missed him! He could holler, if he had the breath for it.
It turns out Arthur did not go straight to the library, which means Darcy pouts and turns wolf. That really doesn’t make it any easier to keep up with her, despite her having her nose to the ground while running around. And really, they should have guessed that he went to the stables, but at least that means John gets to catch up to Darcy while she changes back to her human form and immediately takes his hand again before they open the door.
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Arthur turns from his conversation with Llew at the sound of the door- his rather frustrating conversation. Llew just glittered into the stable and announced he needed an anchor, and Darcy said to ask Arthur about it, and then proceeded to roll his eyes a lot and huff when Arthur tried to figure out what he was talking about- what kind of anchor? Surely not an actual ship’s anchor one?
Of course not, was his answer to that, but how was he supposed to know if Llew didn’t explain what he was talking about? Some sort of magical anchor, he’s finally managed to pry out of him, something to a place so they can travel between Whitby and London faster, and if the place is associated with emotion, all the better. Arthur has no idea why it took the better part of ten minutes to pry that much out of Llew. He thought he asked very straight-forward questions about the parameters for that anchor of his, but it was like pulling teeth to get a sensible and comprehensive answer out of Llew.
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With a sniff, Darcy notices that Arthur is frustrated and goes on the attack on Llew. She wishes she could actually snarl at him, but, no, she has to seduce him and she’s noticed he likes when she gets emotional at him, so that will have to do. Cussing him out for making her poor Arthur feel like that, she decides it’s fair payback that now she’s cornering him against a wall. Also (ew, but she can do this) she adds with maybe more of a growl than the purr she tried for, that he can’t just leave her standing like that. Is he running away from her? That’s mean of him. Now, more importantly, has he found that anchor he needs? What does she need to do so he can be such a sweetheart and help her with traveling faster? After all, he’s her saviour from those useless human ways, isn’t he?
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Okay, John’s about ready to puke. He’s heard that Darcy is on the hunt, but that’s just gross. And Llew’s falling for it, wow. Fine, fine, whatever, he’s the affair; he knows when to keep his mouth shut but still, gross.
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Oh, this isn’t what he planned, but Llew can work with this, he doesn’t mind having his back to the wall, he can still feel Darcy forcing herself, can sense all the fighting emotions and the genuine revulsion when he leans forward and puts his hand on her waist directly. Just a little bit closer, with that snarl those nasty fangs of hers are so accessible; oh it would be so easy. And he’d get John’s burning hatred on top of it, oh, this is rather too tempting. But, of course, then that snooze bag Arthur has to speak up.
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Arthur really has no idea anymore what’s going on with Darcy and who she likes and doesn’t like… but either way, she asked a question, and he thinks he has an answer: There’s only one place in London he has any access to that would be private, but he supposes he can offer his father’s house? It’s… definitely an emotional place?
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That has Darcy turn around and clap her hands. “Oh, then we could visit your place more often!” An idea crosses her mind, so she whirls back on Llew, goes up on her tip-toes and leans close, even puts her fingers underneath his chin. “Llew-dear, I’ve been so diligent and you’ve been a bit mean to me. I made you that scarf and I’ve not seen you wear it. Make it up to me, extend the wards to that house.”
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That bloody woman! Llew can see that revolting vampire soul basically snap at his face and it makes him shudder. Ugh, making him feel things, that temptress. Fine, fine, he’ll do it! Under one condition: Turning his head, he taps his cheek. Payment up front.
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Extend the wards to the house? If that’s possible… Arthur absently cuddles Hannibal some more, fingers under his forelock to rub at a whirl of fur there the way Hannibal likes, and is rewarded with an increasingly heavy horse head against his shoulder. But anyway, with the wards in place, his father might not be able to enter the house… never mind any of the other people who could realize the house is empty and go take advantage…
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Enough is enough, John grunts and leaves. He can see the way Darcy is forcing herself and it makes him sick, but he knows that she will do what she feels she has to.
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Working a muscle in her jaw and not the one she can feel when her fangs come down, Darcy presses her eyes tight and leans in to put that peck on Llew’s cheek. Has to fight not to retch right after, but it seems to be enough. Llew is grinning, leering even, and tightens his fingers on her waist where they have crept back to. She wishes she’d have three more layers of clothing between them, but he tells her that he’ll go be her saviour. He wouldn’t be so generous with anybody else, so she better appreciate it!
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Arthur really doesn’t know why they need saving from a train ride, though he guesses it was tedious and it would come in handy to get to London and the south of the country quickly- so, well, he’s not complaining, even if the way Darcy and Llew stand so close and how Llew looks makes him uncomfortable.
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Darcy is long past uncomfortable, so the way Llew puts his whole arm around her waist and swoops her along on that kaleidoscope of colours down to the nexus really doesn’t add anything more to how much she just wants to snarl at him. Instead she sits down in the spot he tells her to, holds the teddy bear, and watches as he brings up… something that looks like a console made of wood and floating lights.
As he works on that, he keeps wandering over to her, touching her and chuckling every time she twitches and fights not to growl. Why does he keep calling her a flirt for that? But then, isn’t that what she’s supposed to do? She’s meant to seduce him, so it’s good. She’ll just keep letting her drac wrinkle its nose at him. As he keeps adjusting the dials of light, moving little gears and fixing something she can’t see between herself and the console, the air around her crackles. She can’t smell magic the way Arthur does, but she still can tell that something is happening. Mainly because she thinks she’s involved.
He tells her to leave the teddy in the little ring of lights she’s been in, then offers his hand all mock-gallantly. When she can’t restrain herself from full on growling as he uses her hand in his to pull her tight against himself, he giggles, not laughs, no that’s a full giggle and the way he looks at her is no better.
But he asks where she wants the door, and all she can think of is how the anchor is in Arthur’s house and Arthur reminds her of the library, so that’s what she says while she fights against Llew’s wandering hand, only gets more giggles from him, and then they are in the library suddenly. She was so distracted with not letting him grab her in terrible places that she didn’t notice that he held her for teleporting. He’s not letting go of her fully, but he tells her to go open the door on the mezzanine. Tell him if that room behind it looks right.
She tries to walk over but she can’t, he’s holding her. With another growl she plays this game and takes his hand in hers rather than leaving it on her body. Like this she can at least walk. Opening the door, she notices little swirls of light around the doorframe, there’s a shimmer to the air as if she’s looking through water. But yes, she’s seen it, from the other side; she thinks she’s looking at the door she only stood in yesterday. The desk and the bookcase are on the opposite side of where she saw them. Having to swallow hard to make herself force it out, she smiles at Llew, coos that he is being so good, yes, this is right. “Thank you!”
He’s lapping it up, then turns one last dial that’s suddenly there and the water barrier falls away, or rather, spills into the room, evaporates into glitter, and Darcy can see the house magic take hold. The dust is dancing into the air and vanishing, the books and string on the floor are putting themselves back orderly, the bedding fluffs itself.
“Are the wards up?” That’s what is important to her because she knows it’s important to Arthur, and Llew gives her a smirk that she paid for those, didn’t she? If she just keeps paying him, he’ll always be this good for her. But maybe he should ask for a little bit of a tip. This took a lot of magic; he’s being so very generous. She wants to slap him, her hand is up already, but that only has him giggle again. Emotions. It’s clearly emotions that get him. Balling her fists, yes, crushing his hand in hers, she snarls at him but presses in and leans up, kisses his other cheek before stepping back. “Any more and I’ll have to bring my husband in, though.”
That makes him laugh and stroke his fingers over her hand. Not going to stop him, he could do her that favour, as long as she pays. He licks his own canines, winks at her, and just before he vanishes again, she can hear him whisper: “You know what I want, bloodsucker.”
Stumbling two steps back and thankfully being able to hold on to the banister, Darcy lets out a long sob. She can do this. She can do this. She’s an obedient wife! She can’t cry. She can’t. She mustn’t. For Gregory. For her marriage. For being good the only way she can. She’s her husband’s whore, and if that’s how she can win him Llew she’ll have to do it. But for right now, she just wants to find John and hold on to him. Please, just for a little bit.
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Noticing how distressed his girl is, John hugs her tight and immediately goes to work on distracting her, because he gets why she is distressed, and he knows he can’t solve that problem for her. Much as he certainly wants to punch Llew into a different kind of vanishing.
Out with the puppies, she improves quickly, though, she’s always so easy to cheer up when she just can be around her friends. She always is so eager to be good for everybody she cares about. Sometimes, that leads to her having slightly questionable ideas, but fuck it. He’ll enable even those!
That doesn’t mean that he’s not cursing when he has to haul up the biggest fucking painting ever through a door in the library into a tiny house. How is he supposed to maneuver this thing around the corner so she can put up this monster of a horse painting for Arthur? But she decided she wants to put it up in the corridor, so that there’s one nice piece of interior design in this shambles of a house and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t help.
She’s bustling all over the place and debating with the house spirit, too. Then he hears her trample up from the cellar, and that look she has on tells him she doesn’t know what to do. Leaning the painting against the wall where he’s wrestled it to, he follows her down.
Well… fuck. Looks like Arthur’s father doesn’t have the proverbial skeleton in the closet. He has two real ones in the cellar instead. John feels himself blanching as he reads over the house spirit’s note asking what to do with the two buried bodies. Fuck! A Lancaster woman and a newborn girl. Fuck fuck fuck. Now he gets why Darcy doesn’t know what to do. Fuck. Would he want to know? He might not, but Arthur is all about info. No, fuck, they have to tell him.
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Hearing that that’s John’s opinion, Darcy stops fidgeting and goes to work. She tells the house spirit to please put up a nice gravestone. Maybe a small one, like the ones at the pet cemetery, those were really sweet. And flowers, but she wants to get those herself!
Leaving John to finish up with the picture, Darcy dashes back over to the library and outside. Past the rose garden and out towards the back of the estate. There wouldn’t be any flowers this late in the year anywhere else, but in her gothic fairy-tale gardens, there’s always something blooming. She wants proper wildflowers. That feels a lot more real to her. Only once she has braided two flower crowns and picked a nice bouquet, does she sniff her way back to Arthur. She wants to be there with him when he finds out.
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Since Llew glittered off with Darcy, Arthur assumed they didn’t need him anymore, and so instead saddled Hannibal for one of their riding lessons. It would really be very helpful if he had an actual teacher, but he doesn’t, so he has to make do with books and Hannibal’s reactions to what he tries out. At least Hannibal is really much smarter than a normal horse, so he knows Arthur doesn’t know what he’s doing, and can let him know with a quick look and pinned back ears if Arthur is pulling on the reins too hard or poking him with his heels. And Arthur can explain to him what he’s trying to do, and then Hannibal can let him know when he manages by doing the thing. It’s awkward, but also fun.
There’s no sign of the others by the time he finishes about an hour later. He doesn’t want to go too long, because just a few days last week taught him that riding is using muscles in his legs he didn’t even know he had, and they’re going to let him know by aching something fierce for a few hours afterwards.
He moves on to the library, to do some research for some of those requests Darcy’s tenants send her. He wonders who got to deal with all of that while there was nobody in the castle for the last twenty years… But now it’s for them to deal with, so he gets lost in a stack of books on English common law to figure out which of the two parties is right in an argument about a field border between them.
He looks up from that a good bit later, when he hears steps coming into the library, light but loud ones, and he sees Darcy approaching with… an armful of flowers?
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Darcy really hopes her smile tells Arthur that she wants to help, wants to make it better. All her stories say that losing family members is really bad. Now, she still struggles with this empathy thing she thinks she’s supposed to be feeling, but when she specifically thinks about how it would be not to have her papa, she wants to just wrap herself around Arthur and cry. That’s bad, really bad, she thinks, so holding out a hand to Arthur, she speaks softly. “Arthur-dear, I need to show you something, and I think it might be hard for you, but John says it’s important to tell you. I’ll be right there with you.”
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“Um… okay?” Arthur says, and takes her hand as he rises. That… sounds like something really bad? Apprehension flutters in his stomach as he lets Darcy lead him.
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Suspecting already that Darcy did her usual thing and ran right to fetch Arthur, John covered the painting over for the moment. Arthur should be in the right state of mind for appreciating it (for all its silliness as much as for the care Darcy shows with it). When he hears the door from the library opening again, he goes downstairs to take up an honour-guard position next to the new gravestones; he can do that much for Arthur.
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Darcy’s hand is warm and tight around his as she leads Arthur through a door on the mezzanine in the library that he knows wasn’t there before- and it goes to his house in London! So the anchor-thing must’ve worked out. Though it does take Arthur a blink to realize where he is and why it looks familiar- it’s so clean! No more dust covering everything and lurking in shadowy corners. The floors are clean, the windows sparkle in the grey afternoon light, even the walls- Arthur realizes he doesn’t remember what colour the walls were, but now there’s gleaming, dark wood panelling and warm, yellow wallpaper with a flower motive in his father’s study and the hallway. And the carpet is much redder and fluffier.
The stairs don’t even creak as much as they used to while they head down to the ground floor- and then around and through the narrow wooden door to the basement that Arthur has almost never been to. It’s dark and empty down there, and it smells mouldy, so he never bothered and just about forgot it existed.
The stairs are just as narrow as those to his attic room, but Darcy keeps hold of his hand behind her back as she walks in front of him. There are lamps lit in the basement, and John is there, too, standing to the side and looking very serious, and then Arthur sees the slab of stone sitting towards one side of the little room- upright, and with rounded corners and… it looks like a headstone? He glances at Darcy, his stomach bubbling with uncertainty, bites his lip, and then, at her nod, goes to investigate. Her expression is all concern, and it’s a headstone, so it can’t be anything good, but… but he’s still not ready for seeing the inscription that reads: Mary Anne Lancaster, nee Clarke, June 15th 1860 – August 3rd 1887
He finds himself sitting down on the floor in front of the stone, reaches out to trail his fingertips over the grooves of the words, feels their coolness, their realness. August 1887? He would have been almost four at the time… And he doesn’t remember, the name means nothing to him, but… but that must be his mother, surely? That was around the time when she died… Why would there be a headstone for her here…?
Darcy sits down next to him, keeps quiet, not sure what she could even say, but gently places the bigger flower crown on top of the gravestone, holding on to the smaller one for a bit longer.
Flowers, Arthur thinks- flowers is what you bring to graves. And of course he knows why there would be a headstone here- his father… his father said his mother died. Well, he probably did. Arthur can’t remember him ever talking about her, but someone must’ve told him at some point that she died, because he knows that, has known that for as long as he can remember- that she died when he was little, when he was three. So his father must’ve told him.
Only she didn’t just die, did she?
There’s something else, to the side, and he pulls his eyes over. It’s another headstone, a smaller one. Like the ones in the pet cemetery. But this one says: Victoria Cassandra Lancaster, September 22nd 1882 – October 19th 1882
Victoria? He had a… sister? The thought is so strange, but… he had a little sister? No, an older sister, he realizes at a second look at the dates. There was a girl before him.
His father… wouldn’t want a girl, would he?
She didn’t even get to be a month old.
Arthur isn’t sure what he feels, except… except he finds his eyes stinging, and he sniffles, because… because that could be his family, and they’re here, they’re dead and gone and he never knew them, and it’s sad. He feels pity and sorrow for them, for that little girl that never got to grow up and be her own person, and for the woman he doesn’t remember, but who had to be married to his father. He shudders at the idea, and feels so sorry for her, and wishes she’d gotten away, even if that meant he never existed.
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Darcy puts the second crown on the smaller stone, then gently pushes the bouquet into Arthur’s hands before she wraps both her arms tight around him. And because she doesn’t know what to say, she hums a soothing melody like her papa would do for her when she was little and upset.
After a short moment of hesitation John takes a step over and puts his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “Sorry for your loss. We’re here for you.”
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Arthur wipes his hand over his face, dares to lean himself into Darcy’s hug. “Thanks,” he manages to croak. “I… I don’t remember her,” he admits. “And I never really thought about it until now, but… but it’s sad. I wish she’d gotten away. I wish they’d both gotten away, and… and gotten to live their lives… It’s not fair that he got to take that away from them.”
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“No, it isn’t. I already said I’m going to bite him really badly!” Holding Arthur tighter, Darcy nuzzles her nose slightly against his cheek like she would if she was in her proper body. “I’ll chew him, too!”
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Despite having to suppress a snort, John shakes his head. “I get the vengeance angle, really do.” He falls silent for a long moment and swallows, but then shakes his head again. “But being there for the living helps more.”
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Arthur glances up at John, bites his lip. “I don’t… I don’t think I’m brave enough to face him, anyway…” Then he looks at Darcy- who, yes, already said she was going to bite him, with an implication Arthur didn’t quite want to think about at the time. Now, though, with these graves in front of him… “I’m okay with you biting him really bad,” he decides. “And it’s not about vengeance, it’s about… He doesn’t bring anything good to the world, does he? Nobody is going to miss him. He only… he only takes things away. I don’t want him to get to keep taking things away,” he decides. Then he offers John a wobbly smile. “But being there for the living sounds really smart, thanks, I’ll try to do that.”
With a chuckle, John pats Arthur’s shoulder. “I meant Darcy should be there for you. That you are our healer was a given in my mind.”
Darcy agrees with a nod, then puts a kiss on Arthur’s cheek. “Our healer and the one good thing your meanie father brought into the world, so I’ll say thank you to him for that before I chew on him.”
“Oh,” Arthur says at John’s words, blushes, feeling pleased. So he doesn’t need to do any extra-blushing at Darcy’s cheek kiss. He thinks about how he feels about being a good thing his father brought into the world, or Darcy thanking him for it. “I’m okay being a disappointment to him,” he decides- realizes it’s true as he says it. He brushes his fingers over his mother’s headstone again, and puts the bouquet Darcy gave him at its foot reverently. “I can’t have gotten any good bits from him, so they must come from you. Thanks, Mum,” he says, then climbs back to his feet.
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After thinking about what she can do to make it better for a moment, Darcy tilts her head, then offers Arthur to go look at her stuffed toys, he can have any he likes! Or would he like to go say hello to her night friends? It’s starting to go towards tea time, the first ones will be out in the November gloom.
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Arthur answers that he, uh, wouldn’t mind either of these, but since they’ve looked at his house and everything… he’d like to see her stuffed toys? Maybe she can tell him something about how she grew up, too?
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When Darcy’s eyes start to sparkle, John chuckles and tilts his head upstairs before she even has to ask. “Get yourself an afternoon nap. See you in the model of her room in a bit. I’ll bring the plushies over, too, culver.”