"Lovely night, isn't it?"
"Fuck!"
When Alex peered beneath the tree she could see a shadowy figure was leant against the tree trunk.
"Does your father know you use language like that, Miss?" Tate's voice was low and clear in the stillness of the summer night.
"You near enough frightened me to freaking death. What are you doing creeping around like that? You could give someone a heart attack."
"I'm not creeping. I've been here all the time. You, on the other hand…"
She placed her hands on her hips. "I couldn't sleep. I needed a walk." Alex's expression dared him to contradict her.
"A walk that required you to erase your footsteps?" said Tate, glancing back at the lawn.
She followed his gaze. "It looked so smooth. I didn't want to spoil it."
"What I can't figure out, Miss, is why you bother lying to me when you know I can hear the difference," said Tate.
She looked at her feet and then up at the shadowy outline under the tree. Even now she knew he was there he was still difficult to see. It was hard to tell where Tate stopped and the tree carried on. "Yeah, well. It's easier than telling the truth, ennit."
"Ennit?"
"Isn't it? Is it not?" She laughed in the dark. "I can't believe you're correcting my grammar."
"Where were you going?"
She looked across the moonlit meadow. "Out. This place is doing my head in."
"Were you planning to come back?" he asked.
"Sure, yeah. Got nowhere else to go, have I?" She looked at her feet again, and then up at the gnarly figure against the gnarly trunk. "Were you spying on me? Is that how you knew I was out here?"
"No."
She shook her head. "Now who's lying."
"You think anyone can walk in or out of the High Courts of the Feyre without someone knowing about it?"
"Did I trip the alarm?"
"Better than alarms," he said.
"You were following me."
"I was waiting for you."
"Are you gonna tell Dad?" she asked.
"Tell him what?"
"That I was sneaking out."
"I thought you were going for a walk?" he said.
She tried to make out his expression under the shadow of the tree, but it was impossible to read in the deeper shade near the trunk.
"Yeah, right," she said.
"Let's walk then." He separated from the trunk and walked out so that the moonlight slid across his shoulders. The bleached light made his long hair seem grey.
"How old are you?" she asked, moving out into the light alongside him. They began walking gently around the perimeter of the lawn.
"That's a very forward question, Miss."
"Don't ask, don't get. That's what Mum always says."
"Does she, indeed?"
"So how old are you?"
"Very." He said.
"How old's that?"
"What's the oldest thing you know?"
"What, like animals and stuff?"
"Anything."
"The Earth. That's the oldest thing, ennit? Isn't it?" she corrected herself. "Or the sun. That's older, I s'pose.
"I am younger than the sun," he said, "and the Earth."
"Well yeah, everyone is, aren't they."
"Not so old after all then." There was a low sound that might have been soft laughter.
"What about… that tree." She pointed to an oak with a huge canopy at the edge of the grass.
"I remember it as a seedling."
"Really?"
"Perhaps."
"What about my house? My mum's house, I mean."
"That is not even as old as the tree. There was a time before the houses were built when all that estate was farmland, much as you see beyond." He nodded at the fields laid out under the moon. "Before that, not even farms."
"That's harder to imagine, somehow," she said. "It's like my house ought to be older."
"It's what you grew up with," said Tate.
"What did you grow up with?"
"Forests. The deep woods and silent streams that were there long before mankind forced itself on the landscape."
"How old are you, really?"
"I've stopped counting."
"Very convenient."
"Age does not mean so much to the Feyre. We do not age as humans do. Once you stop growing you will stop ageing too."
"At least I won't have to worry about wrinkles like Mum does."
They reached a fence and Tate held the gate open for Alex to walk through. They continued in silence for a while.
"I was going to see her."
"Who?"
"Mum. That's where I was going. Dad won't take me, so I thought I'd take myself."
"Ah, the truth. At last."
"You won't tell Dad?"
Tate was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Why do you think your father does not take you to see her?"
"Dunno, I think he's afraid of what she'll say when she finds out I'm not dead."
Tate said nothing, and they continued walking. By now the side of the house facing them was in shade and Alex kept glancing towards the house, wondering whether they were being watched from the darkened windows.
"She's not gonna believe it to start with, is she? I mean, it's like mental. Isn't it?"
"Yes," he said quietly, "It's like mental."
"Are you taking the mickey?"
"Sorry, Miss?"
"Never mind. So are you going to tell Dad?"
"What is there to tell? We went for a walk."
Alex glanced up at him. "Yeah, we did, didn't we. Do you play tennis?"
"No," said Tate.
"Fellstamp played with me. He kept trying to look up my skirt."
"The way Fellstamp told me, you kept bending over in front of him."
"I never!" She glanced back towards the house. "He cheats."
"So do you, apparently."
"Yeah, well. He started it."
"It does not make for good tennis if both of you cheat."
There was a pause.
"Anyway, the bats are broken."
"So I heard."
"Does he talk about me?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Fellstamp."
"Not especially. Why?"
"Nothing. I mean he obviously said something, you know, about the bats."
"He said he didn't think you'd be playing tennis again."
They rounded the end of the house and turned along the frontage. For the first time Alex could see Tate's face. The individual bristles on his chin caught the light so that it looked like it was frosted.
"I could fix the bats," volunteered Alex.
"Perhaps you should. They weren't yours to warp like that."
"I never warped them. They were twisted already," she protested.
Tate's eyebrow rose fractionally.
"He was cheating," she repeated, defensively.
Tate shook his head, slowly.
"He does look kinda cute in shorts, though, don't you think?" Alex grinned.
"I don't think I've ever noticed," said Tate.
Alex looked up, letting the moonlight fill her eyes. "All that working out with swords and stuff really defines the thigh muscles, you know what I mean?"
"I imagine you see him a little differently, Miss," said Tate.
"Why do you call me Miss, Tate? Only Mullbrook and the stewards call me Miss, and they have to because they work here, but you say it like you don't mean it."
"It pleases me to call you Miss, Miss." There was that low sound again, a soft huffing that might have been laughter.
"Yeah, well, seems to me like you're taking the piss, Miss," she said.
"Then what would you have me call you?"
"My name?"
"Very well, Miss Alexandra."
"Now you're teasing me. Why can't you call me Alex like everyone else does?"
"There is power in names," said Tate.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that how you are called in some ways defines you. Miss is a title, not a name. Once you would have been Mistress Alexandra."
"Makes me sound like a floozy, or a school-marm."