‘I did. I really did.’
She bit her lip then, without warning, she stood up. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
What? ‘Rose,’ I began, ‘I still don’t?—’
‘There’s something I have to show you.’ With her head held high and her shoulders pulled back, she marched to the bedroom door and opened it. Hester and Otis tumbled in.
I gave both brownies an exasperated look. ‘You were eavesdropping?’
‘Of course!’ Hester rolled her eyes to indicate that I was an idiot for thinking otherwise.
‘Sorry, Daisy,’ Otis muttered.
I tutted, just as Rose reappeared in the doorway. I glanced at the bundle in her arms, then at her face, then at the bundle again. Oh. ‘That’s a baby.’
‘Well done, Daisy,’ Hester said. ‘Your powers of observation are extraordinary.’
Everything was beginning to fit together. ‘Athair’s baby?’
Rose nodded.
‘And yours?’
She nodded again. ‘She’s ten days old.’ She gently tugged the edge of the blanket to show me the baby’s face. She was very small, very red and very crumpled. Messy tufts of bright red hair covered her scalp. ‘Her name,’ Rose added very quietly, ‘is Daisy.’
Chapter
Twenty-Five
There was a tiny part of me that had known from the moment I’d broken into the Assigney mansion and seen Rose’s portrait. I hadn’t allowed myself to form the thought into words, but I had known deep, deep down. No wonder I’d managed to force my way through the blood ward.
I was of Rose’s blood; I was her daughter.
‘Lady Daisy,’ Hester said several times, smacking her lips with satisfaction. She punched her brother’s arm. ‘This is more like it. Minor elvish royalty is exactly who we ought to be working for.’
He rolled his eyes, but from the gleam in his expression he was enjoying the news as much as she was.
We were all seated around a massive mahogany dining table – me, Hugo, both his parents, and Lady Rose. Hester and Otis were perched in the centre, slowly spinning around on a Lazy Susan. Otis looked faintly green around the gills but Hester appeared to be enjoying herself.
Baby Me was asleep in Rose’s arms. So far I had declined to hold myself – that was far too weird – but I couldn’t stop looking at Rose’s face. She was my birth mother.Mybirthmother. Finally I knew where I came from. I had never expected answers about who I was, and to receive even one was extraordinary. To know the whole truth was mindboggling.
I was a high elf – me, Daisy Carter. If I was honest, I wasn’t convinced I liked that part because I had been proud of my low-elf status. It was also distinctly odd to be seated across from my birth mother when she was a decade younger than I was because in some ways I felt more like her parent than the other way around. But despite those misgivings, I couldn’t feel anything but happiness.
I smiled at Rose. I couldn’t call her Mum, I wasn’t there yet, but she still smiled back at me.
‘Well,’ said Hugo’s dad, who was now insisting I call him Charles. ‘A lot of things are making more sense.’ He raised his eyebrows at Rose. ‘The way you’ve been hiding yourself away, firing all your staff … you could have come to us for help, you know.’
‘Gone to the neighbours who the Assigneys have been in dispute with for generations and told them that I’d been seduced by a fiend pretending to be a human and that I was pregnant with his child?’ Rose asked with a considerable edge of sarcasm. ‘Sure. That would have been a great idea.’
Hugo drummed his fingers on the table. ‘It’s more credible than time travel,’ he said. True.
Tash, Hugo’s mum, gave him a tearful smile. ‘You’ve grown up to be such a wonderful man,’ she said. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
He smiled at her before turning to me with a glint in his eye. ‘I’m a wonderful man, Daisy,’ he repeated pointedly.
‘He’s not as wonderful as Daisy,’ Rose sniped. ‘Without her, we’d all be dead now.’ It was my turn to smirk.
‘That’s fair,’ Tash said.
