Chapter 15
Harry told me today that I am nothing but a spoiled, willful child! I don’t understand how he can say such a thing when I’m nothing of the sort. Even if it were true, what should he expect when I have ten older brothers who all insist upon doting upon me? Who treat me like a child?
He certainly didn’t seem to be thinking I was a child when he caressed my cheek so tenderly just before saying such hateful things. Indeed, I had thought he was on the verge of kissing me...
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Residence of the Earl of Harrowby
9 Belgrave Square
Belgravia, London, England
The following night
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“What are you doing standing here all alone?”
There was little chance Fiona would give any credence to Ilona’s playful accusations in the park by admitting, even to her brother, Connor, that she had been covertly watching Aylesbury dance the Galop with the widowed Lady Billings.
Or that she’d followed his movements through the polka with the mousy Miss Bradford just before or paid more attention to his waltz with the perpetual wallflower, Lady Meredith Ansley, than she had to her own with Lord Temple.
Aylesbury had always been one to seek out ladies who otherwise might not be invited to the dance floor.
According to Abby, it had been his habit since the first days she had known him, and in all truth, Fiona considered this habitual kindness to be one of his finer qualities.
But even knowing that his efforts were most likely conducted for those reasons, she couldn’t help but wonder if Aylesbury had a care for any of them.
If he had a care for her.
Their unexpectedly intimate conversation in his carriage had raised a wealth of questions and doubts in her mind. It had her rethinking the past, wondering about the future, and pulling at the bandage of her aggression, opening that wound even further.
When she spoke to her sister-in-law afterwards, Eve assured her that she believed Aylesbury was pursuing her with honorable intentions. However, Fiona knew the proverb about good intentions. The road to her own personal hell might be paved in them if she relaxed her guard around him.
She was not a child any longer, Fiona reminded herself. A child who tossed her affections away willy-nilly and waited with bated breath for them to be returned. Lessons hard learned were also the hardest to forget. She couldn’t find the courage to entrust him with her heart again.
Moreover, she couldn’t trust herself not to fall for him anyway. Fiona felt doomed either way but wasn’t going to mention that, either. Instead, she arched a brow at her brother and responded with a pert retort along the lines he would expect from her.
“Alas, I no longer stand alone but stand instead in unfortunate company.”
Understanding that he was to be the unfortunate company, Connor grinned in appreciation. “I will not join you then.”
Fiona turned her back but could feel his presence lingering behind her. Glancing back, she saw him staring fixedly at the ceiling, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets, rocking from his heels to his toes in an exaggerated motion.
“Are you still here?”
“Aye, much as you are, what a surprise, and I shall stay here, I think, ’til you have gone as well,” he parried neatly.
Her lips twitched reluctantly. “Here? All but attached to my side? A good thing for the women of London to be spared your company then while you keep mine, but woe on me.”
Connor threw back his head and laughed, drawing the eyes of many young women who clearly wouldn’t mind his company. “Spared of I? Sister dear, for all my wealth and most truly for my handsome face, the ladies all love me and love all of me.” He sighed dramatically with his hand over his heart.
“Vanity!” Fiona mocked scornfully.
“Truth!”
“Truth to man is a frail thing.”
“No more frail than the love of a woman,” he volleyed back.
She scoffed at that good-naturedly, reaching out to straighten her brother’s cravat affectionately. “So speaks a man with no greater experience in love than I yet he constantly criticizes me for not having found that which he has no knowledge of himself. Contrary. Such again is the way of a man.”
“And such is the way of a woman to hear that which they want rather than that which is actually said. For indeed, we spoke of truth and not of love.” He held up a hand. “Cease, wee Blossom, and keep me company, safe from the predatory throng.”
Fiona laughed merrily at that, attracting no little appreciation from nearby men herself, though she was unaware of their attention.
He, however, was not. He cast them dark glances and shifted neatly to block his sister from what he construed as their leering eyes.
“The women won’t grant you a moment’s peace, yet I might well be an old hag for all the attention I’ve garnered tonight,” she teased with artificial sorrow.
Though she loved all her brothers dearly, Connor was her favorite.
Of course, she would never admit it to the others, for it would hurt them.
Connor knew, though, and that was all that mattered.
These verbal exchanges of theirs were a challenge to her wit and tongue. She reveled in them.
“As for love then,” Connor continued, taking her hand and tucking it protectively into the crook of his arm, “how can I not believe in it when I see it in sickening abundance every day now? Our brothers have had the devil’s own luck and have left no woman as fine behind for their younger kin.”
“Spare me, please,” she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t seek love at all but a man with the sense to occasionally keep his tongue silent.”
“Do you imply I have an overly nimble tongue?”
“Most always.”
Wafting her feathered fan lazily before her, Fiona scanned the heavy crush around her, taking in the heavily pomaded men around her, so similar in their evening dress it was hard to tell one puny Londoner from another.
“It’s possible there are simply no good men left who are not my brother, and yet I am being forced to choose one!
For better or worse,” Fiona complained, not for the first time.
“Perhaps if I tell Francis that there are no men available as handsome and witty as he?” she raised an inquisitive brow.
“Flattering, but I doubt it will change his mind,” Connor said with a frown.
Fiona looked out over the sea of dancers, watching one brother after another waltz by with the woman he loved in his arms. Vin and Moira smiled madly at one another.
Richard and Abby married longer but happy still.
Colin and Ilona, waiting impatiently for a child of their own but loving one another nonetheless, and Sean and Coline, so young and in love.
Eve’s sister, Kitty, and Abby’s brother, Jack, laughing with one another. Joyful in one another.
Still, her gaze drifted helplessly to Francis, who was escorting Eve around the perimeter of the room.
His hand covered hers, and his head bent down.
Every part of him canted toward her as if his body could not deny the pull she had on him.
Fiona had been living with them for most of the past three years and had seen every day the love between them so palpable it could fill a room—adoration, tenderness, absolute and utter love.
Yes, being around her family every day had proven true love abounded, but how awkwardly one outside that love was struck by a certain sense of loneliness and despair when realizing it might never be theirs.
She wanted what they had so badly it gnawed at her, making her question every decision she had made.
She wanted children to play with at the park, and a husband at home who adored them all.
To wait to wed, as they had suggested, would mean continuing to torment herself on a daily basis.
Marrying would spare her from always being the odd number at the dinner table.
To spare her from coming upon love-struck couples kissing in the hallways.
She needed to remove herself from a situation that had become intolerably painful to bear before she became nothing more than a gelatinous massive of quivering self-pity.
Fiona sighed. “The relationships our brothers have found...they don’t truly sicken you, do they, Connor?”
“Most always,” Connor shrugged carelessly.
Before he left to explore the wilds of America, James, too, had said that he found the love-struck faces about him too nauseating to bear and couldn’t abide being about any longer.
James might have been half-serious, and Connor might tease, but Fiona considered the love that flowed so rampantly around them not at all sickening but enviable.
And she rather suspected deep down that Jamie felt the same way.
“It must be nice to be loved so openly.”
Connor raised his eyes to the sky. “She admits there is love.”
“For the lucky.”
Connor realized his usually sassy, sarcastic sister was serious and tempered the flippant response that leapt to his lips.
“They say there is someone for everyone. If you show some patience in the matter, you will find someone, Blossom, if he does not find you first. What of Aylesbury? You seemed to like him well enough before.”
Another endless refrain. “Your chorus is in want of new material, Connor. Besides, you worry too much about my ideal match. What of yours?”
The flippant response to that question was not to be contained. “What of me?” he countered with a broad smile. “I don’t know. Perhaps yours will have a sister. It matters naught right now. I am young, handsome, charming, and...”
“Utterly conceited!” Fiona tried to contain her laughter, but it wasn’t meant to be. One could never be serious in Connor’s company for long.