Elle and the Fairy

Ch. 4 The Father

Lord Anderfield came back to the mountain village for brief time before the wedding to facilitate the closing of Anderfield Manner. Helen refused to move to the country so Elaine would just have to move into the city and Helen’s house. The little chit needed to be controlled. She needed to learn to be a lady before she became a blemish on the family name. What better and cheaper hands than those of a mother?
And if she could not be tamed then Lord Anerfield had not doubt that Helen would take care of the little problem. No one in the city would know his daughter from any other ill mannered child.
So, Lord Anderfield had come so that he could quickly marry and be on his way to the Kingdom of the Dwarves. They were about to harvest and Lord Anderfield wanted to be there to get the best prices on the best jewels in all of the world.
The Anderfield Mansion had not been used for the past six years. There was not much to do but wrench everything of value out of its inners, make sure everything in the building was secure, and pay the mayor of the town a small sum to keep it under wraps. All accomplished in an orderly manner.
Elaine or El, as Lord Anderfield learned she was called, was a completely different matter.
Finding her was one thing. It might have been easy to grab her when she was just a small girl of 6 or 7, but the forest had taught her well. Taught her to be strong, swift. How to look and how to know when to hide. And hide she did. The forest encapsulated her, and the rumors of her actually being a tree sprite began to pass with more fervor. How could one 12 year old evade even the town’s best tracker?
Lord Anderfield couldn’t believe that this could be a child sprung from his seed. He had known she was a little unruly, but this. This was just madness. Why wasn’t she indoors being productive and adding to her own knowledge for her later roles in life? Didn’t she know she had to participate in the world? Didn’t she know her place? Her position?
Eventually Lord Anderfield had to have the entire town go out into the woods in a line trying and hunt the little thing down. Even though Lord Anderfield and the townsmen had the entire forest scoured, it wasn’t until one of the townboys heard her singing on a particularly quiet night that they were able to pin her down and drag her from the stiff arms of her tree mother.
Catching her and what to do with her afterward were two completely different things. She was a wild child, hair a tangled mess, clothes like she hadn’t changed them in years. This was not a young lady. This wasn’t even a little girl. Lord Anderfield could only blame himself for allowing her to grow up with peasants. They had obviously never taught her better than themselves. And from the look of her perhaps worse. But she was not mad. He could see by looking in her big brown eyes. They were calm, level, searching the inn’s room for escape. But there would be no mistake. She would come with him, and she would learn. He could only hope that the Lady Helen could straighten her out in the few short years she had before it was time for her to raise her own children or be condemned to spinsterhood.
Lord Anderfield forced and paid Gilda’s daughter to bath and properly cloth his daughter in one of her mother’s older and shorter gowns. Her hair had to be almost completely cropped off before they could comb it. And even though Gilda’s daughter and scrubbed for hours the dark sheen to her skin would not come off, the product of too many summers outdoors. This was all to the noise of El’s screams and squeaks of protest.
How could they do such a thing to her?
Lord Anderfield dragged her into a coach and dumped her onto the back of the couch. The ride from the outskirts of the village to the capital city was as long one, but Elaine didn’t mummer one word. She didn’t even move a muscle. She just stared at him with those cool eyes that reminded him too much of the late Lady Anderfield. Posed in the corner as if she would fight with the first thing that so much as came within a foot of her.
“What are you thinking, Elaine?” Lord Anderfield attempted to lecture his newly found daughter. He, at least, felt he could now talk to this even if she was still as wild as a bobcat he had once killed as a boy. “You are a woman of noble birth. How could you allow yourself to come to this? You are never going back there. Do you hear? You will be a respectable girl from now on even if I have to beat it into you personally.”
He then leisurely turned to the window to look at the passing ranches and gardens that were increasing in number and decreasing in size as they came closer and closer to civilization.
Glancing back at his daughter Lord Anderfield decided to give his daughter one more bit of advice. “And don’t ever embarrass me.”
Lord Anderfield then took this opportunity to lean over to his daughter, take her squiring, thin and boney shoulder in one hard hand while he used the other to slap her across the face so hard that even his grip on her didn’t keep her from falling onto the bottom of the carriage.
“Don’t ever embarrass me like you did for the past week. When I call you, you come. When I say bathe, you bathe. And when I say get in the coach, you get in the coach, you hear?”
He let her go, and she quickly moved back into her corner. Looking all the more like a frightened and obedient mouse which couldn’t have pleased Lord Anderfield more.

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