I hadn’t spent a great amount of time with Lily and decided to look in on her before I left.
She was not in her bedchamber. I followed a familiar sound and found her in the Sword Room. The sound was her rather aggressive practice with one of our ancestors’ weapons, a very fine rapier that I had used in the past.
I waited beside the mat Aunt Antonia had acquired for my practices with the blade as Lily parried, thrust several times at the target which was a large bag of sand suspended from the ceiling to recreate an opposing duelist.
Of course, it was less of a challenge than a living opponent, as the bag of sand did not strike back but instead swayed back and forth as sand fell from a series of ‘wounds’ that she had inflicted.
She parried and thrust once more, then returned to the beginning stance, somewhat out of breath. I did wonder who her ‘opponent’ might have been with all of those cuts.
I was certain she had no idea I was there until she turned, hazel-green eyes darkened from the intense ‘battle’ she had just finished.
“You’ve much improved,” I complimented her. “It could be dangerous if I were to challenge you.”
She gradually returned from wherever it was in her mind she had gone, driving that blade, absent the cork tip, into the target over and over again.
“I have had a very good instructor.” She complimented me on the hundreds of hours we had shared in a mock duel, familiarizing her with the weight of the rapier, then the various moves that I had learned.
She had then spent hours more at the gymnasium, training with one of their instructors well-schooled in that ancient discipline, after it seemed she had far exceeded my ability to teach her more.
And now, where was it that she had gone as she quite furiously attempted to ‘kill’ the sandbag?
I went to that bag and inspected it. It was not the one we had last practiced with, but had obviously been replaced, no doubt after the demise of the previous one.
She stood apart, hands folded over the hilt of the rapier as if at the ready.
“I’ve decided I do not want to go to Paris,” she announced with a side glance in my direction. “Mr. Munro said that I am an ungratefulamadán. It means ‘fool’ to the Scots.”
I was somewhat familiar with the word.
It was obvious that she was waiting for something similar from me, but as I had in the past, I saw too much of myself in the young woman who stood before me as if prepared to do battle.
Willful, headstrong might be a better word, most certainly intelligent, and with wounds of her own from her earlier years in Edinburgh.
Then, before I could respond, as if she was afraid of what I might say, she asked, “How did you feel about what happened with your father?”
I added ‘direct’ to the list of qualities. However, that was part of who she was.
She knew somewhat about my early losses, a brief conversation we had when she first arrived from Scotland, but not about what I had felt at the time.
I did suppose this, too, was part of sharing my family with her—questions with difficult answers, much as I had asked them of my great-aunt.
She had not swept them under the rug as others would, preferring not to discuss difficult ‘family’ matters, but had been quite direct.
I had not perished from the answers but chose to believe that I was strengthened by ‘difficult truths,’ as she called them. Quiteremarkable actually, and one of the many reasons that I adored my great-aunt.
I did understand that Lily being my ward, as it were, was more than a proper education, finishing school in Paris, proper dress, and proper manners.
How now to respond was the question. I would not simply sweep her decision to forego Paris under the carpet as a foolish notion.
“I was quite young at the time,” I began, going back through the pages of memory. “I encountered many new things, different ways of looking back on what had happened, new experiences.
“I learned that I was strong, stronger than what had happened. I also learned that I could make my own way, be my own person, make my own decisions. I suppose that I have Aunt Antonia to blame for that.”
There was a faint smile.
“She has said the same,” she replied.
“You are a great deal like her,” I said then, as I caught the pensive expression on her face. “With your own strengths and qualities.”
