Chapter 17
“Aaron!”
Someone was… yelling his name through the house.
This was surprising enough on its own, given that he lived in a ducal house with all the resulting decorum and not, say, the hovel of a half-deaf fishmonger.
But even more surprising than the yelling itself was the person who was apparently doing the yelling.
“Aaron Warson, where are you?” demanded the voice.
Aaron wasn’t necessarily proud of this—he’d been to war after all, and he had faced much worse than this—but he briefly considered just locking the door to his study and pretending he hadn’t heard a thing.
But the unexpected arrival of his little sister wasn’t the kind of problem he could just ignore.
He went to the front of the house to find Clio standing with her hands on her hips, a rather travel-worn hat upon her head, and a frown upon her face.
“Clio,” he said politely. “How good to see you.”
Clio’s cheeks went bright red with ire.
It had been nearly two years since Aaron had last seen his sister, whom he had packed off to live with their great-aunt shortly after he’d returned from war, covered in scars inside and out.
She had grown into even more of a young woman in the intervening years; she didn’t necessarily look older at three and twenty than she had at one and twenty, but she carried more of a self-possessed air.
He had a feeling that was going to be a problem for him.
“Is it good to see me, Aaron?” She asked, tilting her chin up at him defiantly. “Because I feel as though you can see why I might wonder.”
“Of course,” he said, lying through his teeth. This was a complete disaster, which really made a great deal of sense, given that his entire life had devolved into chaos over the past several days. “It’s rather unexpected, though.”
Clio gave him a closed-lipped smile. It was quite frankly alarming. Whatever social finesse Clio had learned these past few years in Belgium… Aaron found he didn’t like it when she used it against him.
“I understand why it might be,” she said in a distressingly reasonable voice. Aaron felt the same way he’d felt when parlaying with men whom he’d been battling only moments before—and with whom he might battle again at any moment. As if the politeness was as fragile as spun glass.
“Of course,” Clio went on with that same delicately polite tone—was this how people felt talking to him? “You might have assumed I was likely to return, given that it’s Christmas.”
That felt like a trap. He made a noncommittal sound.
“Or,” Clio added, almost as if she was just thinking of it now, “perhaps you might have expected to see me since you got married and didn’t tell me.”
On these last words, the ice disappeared in favor of fire. Controlled fire, yes, but fire, nevertheless.
Aaron had met Vice Admirals who were less intimidating.
Fortunately, Aaron was no shrinking midshipman.
“Ah,” he said. “You heard.”
He was not feeling quite as sanguine about this whole thing as he appeared. He hadn’t failed to write to Clio about his marriage due to some sort of oversight.
His sister was one of the few people in his life who truly mattered to him.
He and Clio had been close when they’d been children, particularly as Peter, their elder brother, had been too busy with their parents, going about the business of being heir, to spend much time with his younger brother—let alone a sister.
Circumstances had driven a wedge between them as their parents’ disinterest had given way to orders. They’d commanded that Aaron go to Eton and excel. He’d done so. They’d sent him to Oxford with the order that he avoid scandal. He’d done that, too.
They had decreed that he would find some kind of purpose that would bring honor to the family; that would stop him from being an indolent, useless younger son. He’d joined the Navy, where he’d found that, unexpectedly, he was better at giving orders than following them.
But all of that had added up to years and years away from Clio, who had, in his absence, gone from the little girl who grinned a gap-toothed grin at him when he stole a jam tart for him to a polished young woman. It had created a gulf; one he didn’t think could ever be repaired.
And that was before he had come back from war irrevocably changed.
So, yes, he had sent her away. But it wasn’t because he didn’t love her—it was because he did, and he didn’t want her tainted by everything he’d seen, everything he’d done.
The things he’d become.
He’d married for Clio’s sake, too, but it still was his marriage.
And he’d wanted it to be on steadier ground before he introduced his sister into the mix.
But there were too many years and too much time between them for him to clearly explain this to Clio.
So, all he said was, “The decision was made quickly.”
Something flickered behind Clio’s steely exterior, and Aaron couldn’t read it. He regretted that—the distance between them that meant he couldn’t find her feelings beneath the facade.
“You still didn’t write after it happened,” Clio said in a much less fierce voice. “I heard from Xander. Not you.”
Aaron knew that he was meant to apologize. He could see the route in front of him. He should apologize and then—this part, he admitted, was a little fuzzier—perhaps tell Clio he cared about her?
But there was a difference between knowing the way forward in battle and knowing what to do when he was faced with his little sister and the fear that he might hurt her.
So, he said, “Xander always has been very efficient as the head of the family,” even though he knew it was the absolute wrong thing to say.
Clio’s expression hardened.
“Indeed,” she said, and Aaron felt a pang at the disappointment there. “Right. Well. Where is your new wife? Will she object to my arrival? I could go stay with Xander or Catherine if my presence is a problem.”
Aaron hadn’t wanted Clio to come home, but he also found that he disliked the idea of her going to stay with someone else. He was her brother. This was her home.
“Of course not,” he said. “You’ll stay here. And Phoebe… She’ll be glad to meet you.”
This was the right thing to say. Aaron didn’t need to have adept social skills to see that his words pleased his little sister.
He only hoped that his words would prove to be true. Because if his wife and his sister did not get along…
Well, that would make his earlier problems seem like nothing at all.
“Ah, Phoebe. There you are.”
Phoebe, in accordance with the poor luck that had been plaguing her recently, was gnawing anxiously at a thumbnail when Aaron found her.
It was a decidedly unflattering pose—and not at all the way she wanted him to see her, especially after he’d given her pleasure that had made her knees practically collapse from beneath her, then not taken any pleasure for himself.
The universe, it appeared, was determined to give him the upper hand in all things.
She snatched her hand away from her mouth and hid it between her skirts.
“Good day,” she said, trying to look as though she was not a person who was fretting about her sister’s extramarital pregnancy. “Fancy finding you here.”
It took all her restraint not to smack herself in the forehead at the idiocy of this observation. This was his bloody house. Goodness, she was a mess.
But Aaron didn’t react to her foolishness, not even with so much as a raised eyebrow. He actually looked more distracted than she felt.
“I have something to tell you,” he said.
At once, all thoughts of Hannah vanished from Phoebe’s mind. Oh, God. What was wrong? Was he going to annul their marriage because she hadn’t, ah, fully consummated matters between them? Was he going to set her aside?
This would cause a massive scandal, and then Hannah’s wayward lover would never convince his overbearing mother to agree to the marriage—and Phoebe had no doubt that the man would prove too spineless to defy her—and then Hannah would be an unwed mother, and Phoebe would be a spurned wife, and their father would likely throw them out, and they would starve—
“My sister has unexpectedly arrived,” Aaron said, sounding extraordinarily grave.
There was such an incongruence between her spiraling thoughts and his words—indeed, such an incongruence between his tone and his words—that Phoebe was briefly stunned.
“I—what?”
Her question did not seem to make him feel any less somber.
“My sister,” he repeated as if he were informing her about the death of the king himself. “She is here.”
“Oh,” said Phoebe. “Wonderful!”
He blinked. “It is?”
At this, a woman about Phoebe’s height pushed her way out from behind Aaron, bustling past him with a roll of her eyes and a friendly smile. She was slim, though not lacking in curves, and her brown hair was styled in a Continental manner.
“It is wonderful, Aaron,” she said, rolling her eyes in a commiserating fashion as she approached Phoebe. “Now, go away. I want to meet your wife—since I wasn’t even invited to the wedding.”
“I am so sorry about that,” Phoebe said at once. “It really was very sudden…”
“Oh please,” said the woman. “I don’t blame you.” She shot a poisonous look over her shoulder at her brother. “Are you still here, Aaron? I told you, we need to speak, woman to woman.”
To Phoebe’s astonishment and delight, her husband didn’t object. Instead, he let out a frustrated sound, turned on his heel, and walked away.
“He thinks if he leaves with purpose, it will trick us into thinking it was his idea,” the woman said, her expression finally breaking into a smile. “I’m Clio. It’s so good to meet you.”
Phoebe, feeling rather in awe of this newcomer, began to curtsey, but Clio made a tsking sound and wrapped Phoebe in a hug instead.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said. “I can’t believe Aaron got married.”
Phoebe let out a little laugh, the sound shaky with relief that didn’t seem angry—or at least not angry with her. Aaron was another matter, but Phoebe knew how it was between siblings, which meant that she knew enough not to get in the middle.