While dinner with Alaric alone tends to be pleasant, it's usually quiet. Now, with Lenore's family at the table, there's both the joy of being together again and the weight of unspoken words that have built up over the years. Their welcome had been warm, but one moment isn't enough to erase the heartache that's grown and festered in their time apart.
Perhaps Alaric expected that there would be a measure of awkwardness between Lenore and her family, since he gave them guest rooms on the opposite side of the house from the room he and Lenore are using. They're in the same house, but this gives all of them enough distance to have space for themselves as they try to remember what it's like to be a full family again.
Dinner, however, makes the distance that's grown feel painfully obvious. Conversation is careful, never straying towards topics that are too heavy. Not yet.
"How was your trip here?" Lenore asks, trying to remember that she's the hostess of this townhouse.
"Shorter than yours, I'm sure," her dad says. "You have quite the journey to get here from the Barrowmere ducal estate."
"You know it?" While the existence of the estate is obvious, Lenore doesn't expect that anyone would be interested in finding the center of a cursed land on a map.
"Naturally, I should know where my daughter is staying." Her dad's smile as he speaks is wistful, as if knowing her location is the most he can do. And, she supposed, that was all he's been able to do since Claude took her away.
"It was a long trip." Lenore pokes at her food with her fork, uncertain that her stomach can handle more than the few bites she's already taken. She's not afraid of her family, but seeing them after so long has her stomach twisting with emotions she can't identify.
Except for Vella. Lenore's quite used to her sister after her visit to Barrowmere.
"I get horribly sick from riding in a carriage, too," Lenore adds when nobody else speaks. "Our physician in Barrowmere made me medicine before the trip for it, but—you know—it's not perfect."
Her mom has one hand over her mouth in concern, ignoring her food in favor of inspecting Lenore. "You get motion sickness?"
Lenore nods. She almost explains that she never knew this until her uncle sent her off to Barrowmere in a carriage after keeping her confined to his estate before then, so she got to learn this fact about herself on the way to her own wedding. Instead, she bites her tongue and lets the conversation die off after her dad and brother share a few instances of when they rode carriages while sick, offering sympathy for how miserable it must be to experience that every time.
She doesn't want to ruin the careful levity that's filling in the cracks between awkward silences. If she brings up her uncle now, she knows that the tone will shift. It's unfair that he gets to continue living without issues, using the people around him for his own benefit. While at his estate, she believed that he was doing her a favor by giving her a place to live and food to eat. Because of that, she didn't feel resentful towards him. But she didn't feel quite grateful either. That was simply how her life was, and she didn't know that it could be different.
For the moment, she spends time avoiding those topics and memorizing the faces of her parents and brother. It's been so long that she can't remember what their faces looked like before she left. Now, she traces them in her mind, willing them to be engraved in her memory.
Her father's face has thinned with age. The lines he carries aren't yet wrinkles, but they will be one day in a kindly way that's affected by his graying hair. Those lines show the sorrows and burdens he's shouldered over the years, but some also tell of smiles and laughter.
Meanwhile, her mother's face is all soft curves, gentle slopes of a woman aging with elegance rather than one trying to fight against time. Her eyes have a droopy tilt that makes her look sleepy, and Lenore figures that maybe that's simply how her body carried the years.
It's her brother's face that throws her off in the same way Vella's did. While Evander is undoubtedly older now, his face still has a boyish quality to it, especially when he smiles. In a way, it feels like he hasn't aged at all until the light hits just right and she can see his youth give way to the strain of adulthood for a moment.
Dinner ends with a series of yawns, and Lenore is among them. She didn't travel today like her family had, but the lingering exhaustion of her journey to the capital combined with the emotional exhaustion of seeing her family again has her struggling to find energy.
At that point, Alaric takes over for her. They say goodnight to her family, who are led by the servants back to their rooms and shown where to wash up and where they can find a small sitting room with a fireplace and books to wind down for the evening.
Meanwhile, Lenore follows Alaric back to their room, but he doesn't step inside with her.
"I have some work to handle, so I'll be back later," he says. "Will you be okay?"
He doesn't have to ask how she feels about him leaving to fulfill his duties, but she's glad he does. It makes her feel even just a little bit like a special part of his world.
She nods. "I don't plan on doing much. It's nice seeing my family, but I feel so many things all at once when I'm with them that it leaves me exhausted."
Alaric puts his hand on her shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. "That's expected. I'm sure it'll become easier to be around them as you sort through those emotions."
He leaves then, and Lenore spends her evening alone, asking for a cup of tea if only to delay whatever dreams might find her when she finally closes her eyes.
Later, when she's somewhere between the waking world and her dreams, she feels the bed shift with Alaric's weight as he settles in for the night and the warmth of the blanket being pulled back up to her shoulders before the softest brush of his knuckles ghosts over her cheek.
In the morning, she can't remember if that moment was real or just a fleeting dream.