Werewolf fairytales

Coming home

*Paisley*

I lie awake until the thin gray light turns pale yellow, and Jonas stirs. I wash and dress myself and Jonas, and then a footman announces that my father requests to speak with me.

The moment I enter the sitting room, I throw myself into my father’s open arms. “I’m sorry, Papa; oh, you are worried! I told you not to be.”

For a moment, my father merely stands, his arms now tight around me. Then he sits down heavily, pulling me to his knee as if I were five years old. “You told me not to worry… and you truly believed your reassurance would be sufficient?”

“I did when I first ran away. But I’ve learned differently in the past weeks,” I confess. “I thought it would be better for you if I was gone because I didn’t want to obey you. But I know now that love is far more possessive than that.” I lean against his shoulder, as if I truly were a little girl again. “I missed you.”

“Were you treated well? I spoke to the prince, who seems a very orderly and mannered young fellow. But were you treated well?” He looks around. “I cannot countenance the fact that my daughter has been working as a nursemaid. Thank heaven my mother wasn’t alive to see it.”

“The prince and princess treat me with nothing but the greatest kindness, Papa.”

“I will give them my thanks, but then we must be away. I neglected the house, the pack, everything after you ran away.”

I come to my feet and stand as straight as I can. “I will return home with you, Papa, but I will not marry Rodney. I will never, ever marry Rodney.” In this long hour before Jonas awakes, while I lay awake longing for Theo I conclude that it is best not to inform my father that I plan to marry the butler.

“So I gather from your note,” my father says, perplexed. “But why, sweetpea? You’ve always loved Rodney…”

“No, Papa,” I interrupt. “You have always loved the idea of me marrying Rodney. And Rodney says he loves me. But no one ever asks me how I feel about marrying that fat-bottomed… fellow!”

My father frowns. “Fat-bottomed? Is he?”

“Yes.”

“I never noticed. Still, you can’t make a decision of this nature based on something as unimportant as a bottom. It’s a man’s character that counts. Rodney is a sturdy lad, in character as well as physique.”

That may be true but it is beside the point.

“Would you call him intelligent?” I ask.

My father gives this some thought. “Well, perhaps not precisely intelligent, but…”

“But?”

“A head is like a house,” he says. “If it’s crammed too full, it’s cluttered.”

“Rodney’s house doesn’t have a stick of furniture in it,” I say flatly.

My father’s shoulders slump. “I thought I was doing the best for you.”

“Papa,” I say, “I will not marry Rodney. Ever.”

“Just come home,” he says, coming to his feet and taking me in his arms again. “Just come home, please, Paisley. These last weeks have been insupportable.”

“I’m sorry,” I say softly, realizing the depth of my own unkindness, however unintended it may have been. “I was as bad as the serpent’s tooth in the Bible, wasn’t I, Papa?”

“Not quite,” he says wearily. “And it was Shakespeare’s Lear who called his thankless daughter a serpent’s tooth. But I haven’t felt so distraught since your mother died, and that’s the truth. I’ll have to speak to Sir George. I told him that you were visiting my brother all this time, but he suspects otherwise, of course. The servants have talked.”

“Please not the first day,” I implore. “Surely, we can have a quiet day to ourselves. I’ll have a posset made, and we’ll play a game of chess in your study.”

And we do just that.