Great. She was pretty much furniture. Had there been a table with the clothes brush on, it would have received roughly equal attention. And she knew that was as it should be. She was the chaperone, the sister. But it still hurt, after all those times they’d sat together in the library, or eating together, to have Duncan look straight past her, barely registering her existence. She wished it didn’t - that she could just let go, and be happy that it hadn’t completely ruined everything - but it was hard.
“Let’s go through to the parlour,” she offered, after Duncan and Araceli had made their hellos. “Our mother is very sorry she couldn’t receive you. She isn’t well this morning,” she explained, as she led her sister and their guest through into a pleasant morning room, decorated with rich reds. A tea table stood in the window, with two chairs facing each other. Against the back wall was a chaise longue where Delphine could stretch out and read her book, supervising without intruding, as much as it was possible not to intrude when one was sitting in on someone else’s date. The tea table was, unfortunately, bare, save for the lace cloth.
“Oh. Tully, our elf, was supposed to prepare things. Perhaps she had to go and attend to mother. I’m dreadfully sorry,” Delphine hesitated, neither wanting to summon the tea things, lest the elf was midway through preparations with them, nor summon the elf, lest it was busy looking after their mother. “Perhaps I should-”
“I’ll go,” Araceli volunteered, ducking out of the room before anything further could be said to stop her.
“Perhaps she thinks it would be improper to be alone with you,” Delphine supplied a little uncomfortably, resting her hands on the back of Araceli’s chair. She surveyed Duncan across the tea table. “You know how shy she gets.”
It wasn’t like she wanted him to know. Not really. There could be no good from his knowing, except that it would stop feeling like they had defrauded him. He’d probably run a mile, of course, and then where would either of them be? But she wondered… All the times they had spent together, what had seen in her? Not just in the romantic sense, but what of herself had he seen? She had done her best to be Araceli but it had been an impersonation. Something of herself must have remained, some trace. And now… Now it was presumably on show, not that he knew to look for it, but surely it was still there. Did he notice anything passingly familiar, in her turns of phrase, or the way she held herself, the way her fingers lightly fidgeted on the back of the chair? And, if he did, what did that mean to him? Would he write it off as family resemblance, shared habits from a shared environment? She didn’t want him to realise, but she wondered what he would see if he really looked.