Chapter 18 #2
Which meant that she could help Clio and Aaron. She didn’t know how to help herself, not in terms of the excruciating discomfort that was her current marital relations, but she knew she could help the brother and sister find one another.
That wasn’t nothing. That mattered.
“It will get better,” she promised Clio.
The younger woman didn’t look convinced. “Maybe,” she said.
“It will,” Phoebe repeated. Because she was going to make it so. It would be the one Christmas gift she could give to Clio and Aaron… and maybe, just a little bit, it would be a present for herself, too.
“This is a nice surprise,” Jacob said as he lounged against the doorway of the study. “You asking me to come here, I mean. Rather than you acting all huffy and mad about it.”
Aaron leaned his head against the back of his armchair, closing his eyes.
“I knew you were going to be insufferable about this,” he commented.
He might have been possibly just a little bit extremely drunk.
It was worse, by a significant margin, than the first night that he and Phoebe had met one another, back at his country estate—not only because he’d had several drinks more than he’d enjoyed that night but also because the sun was still high in the sky.
Aaron wasn’t overly proud of this, but frankly, his resolve had been worn down. He was outnumbered.
“Clio and Phoebe have become… fast friends.”
“Wait a minute,” Jacob said, which made Aaron realize that he’d said this last bit out loud—in decidedly plaintive tones. “You’re upset because your wife is getting along with your sister? Warson, I nearly died getting here! Every damn thing out there is covered in ice.”
Aaron let out a grumbling sound, the closest thing he could manage to an apology in his current state.
Fortunately for him, Jacob laughed off Aaron’s terrible manner.
“All right, then, you poor sot,” he said, pouring himself a drink of his own. “I suppose it is rather time honored for men to get swotted while complaining about being lovestruck. Give it a go, then. What’s amiss?”
There was something in that statement that Aaron knew he was supposed to object to, but he was too distracted by his own drink, which Jacob had refreshed while retrieving his own libations.
A distant part of Aaron wondered if he oughtn’t be suspicious of this—he was already rather drunk, so surely it was a sign that Jacob was up to something if he was trying to get him drunker—but it was overall too much for his brain to handle after too many fingers of scotch to count.
“Phoebe,” he said with the sepulchral tones of someone about to lay out the details of a great sin, “keeps acting protective of Clio.”
“Oh, no,” Jacob deadpanned. “Call the constables at once.”
Aaron frowned. Jacob didn’t understand.
It had started the morning after the silent dinner, during which he had remained quiet out of an act of self-preservation.
The evening of her arrival, Clio had gotten so caught up in the story about hunting for fairies that she’d almost told the end of the tale: when Aaron’s father found out that his younger son had played a prank on the elder, he’d beaten Aaron viciously.
Then, Peter, who had also been pummeled by their father for allowing himself to be tricked, turned around and walloped Aaron in turn.
Aaron couldn’t bear the idea of Phoebe hearing that story. What if she looked at him with pity in her eyes? He knew that she had her issues with being treated like a subordinate in the navy—how many times was it now that she had reminded him that she wasn’t a soldier?—but the alternative was worse.
Better she see him as the stern admiral than the little boy who had tried to do something nice for his beloved sister and gotten his face bashed in for his troubles.
What Phoebe had taken away from his avoidance, however, was the sense that he was being unfair to Clio.
He’d approached the breakfast room the next morning, only to find himself snatched by the sleeve until he was peering down into a pair of critical green eyes.
“Be nice,” she commanded quietly, darting her eyes meaningfully toward Clio.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he’d told her stiffly, trying to forestall this… whatever this was.
“You absolutely do know what I’m talking about,” she countered.
He swallowed against the lump of irritation in his throat. He had perhaps been a bit harsh with her the other day over breakfast, but she simply would not take a hint. Nor would she take things that were a great deal more than a hint.
“You were terribly rude to your sister last night,” she went on, brazenly scolding him like he was a naughty boy, and she was a frustrated nursemaid. “It hurt her feelings. So. Be nice.”
“What goes on between my sister and myself is none of your business,” he retorted.
“She is my friend,” Phoebe said. “And my sister now, too. So, I think you will find that it rather is my business.”
And then Phoebe, the woman who had sworn to honor and obey him at the altar, scoffed in his face and flounced into the room to sit beside Clio.
It was all perfectly ridiculous.
“Clio doesn’t need protection from me,” he complained to Jacob now. His head felt very thick and heavy. “I’m her brother.”
“Plenty of women need protection from their brothers,” Jacob said with uncharacteristic darkness.
“Now, I’m not saying you’re one of them—I wouldn’t be sitting here with you all friendly if you were; I might have one arm left, but I can still thrash any man who would strike a woman with it—but plenty are. ”
“Yes, but not me,” Aaron reiterated. “And I’ve been showing her that, but she doesn’t seem to listen.”
He closed one eye as he tried to focus on why showing and listening didn’t go together, but the logic eluded him. Besides, Jacob was laughing at him, and that demanded all of Aaron’s attention.
“What?” he asked peevishly.
“She isn’t stopping,” Jacob explained with all the wisdom of a man who had four sisters, “because you’re doing exactly what she wants.”
Aaron puzzled over this—which probably would be easier to do with another sip of scotch, which he took. It wasn’t even burning on the way down any longer. Nor was he currently feeling the sharp indignity of hiding in his own study from his own wife and sister.
Liquor was good for that after all.
“So, what you are saying,” he said, certain this couldn’t be correct, “is that she’s telling me to be nice to Clio… because I’m being nice to Clio?”
“Exactly,” said Jacob.
“But that doesn’t make any bloody sense!” Aaron thundered, realizing only when his head spun that he had surged to his feet. “You don’t—you don’t command someone to do what they are already doing! It’s redum—redud—oh for fuck’s sake, it’s the same thing twice.”
“True,” Jacob allowed, looking annoyingly unmoved by Aaron’s unassailable logic, interrupted by slurring though it might have been. “But you are thinking like a soldier. And she is thinking like a woman.”
“Women.” Aaron muttered it like an oath.
Jacob laughed some more. “Think of it this way. If she had come to you and said, ‘Please be nicer to Clio, I think she’s sad’ or whatever thing that Phoebe thinks she’s protecting Clio from, what would you have done?”
Aaron was too drunk for hypotheticals, so he just gestured at Jacob as he collapsed back into his seat. He was too drunk to stand upright, too.
“You probably would have said something like what you said to me,” Jacob explained, “about how Clio doesn’t need protection from you. So. Phoebe would not have gotten what she wanted. And you also would not have gotten what you wanted.”
“But that…that’s the most confounding thing!” Aaron sputtered. “Is she going to teach my impressionable little sister to be tricky like this? I don’t like that! I don’t like it at all!”
Jacob was unmoved by Aaron’s dismay.
“However,” he went on, “she was clever enough to turn your masculine pride against you. So, she acted like she didn’t think you could be nice which, of course, made you determined to prove her wrong.
And now Phoebe is happy because you’re doing as she wished, and Clio is happy because you’re making time for her. ”
Aaron needed another minute to think.
“But I’m not happy,” he noted.
Jacob gave him a sympathetic nod. “Yes, but that was never going to happen, mate. Because you—and I say this only because we are out of the navy, and also, you’re far too foxed to do anything about it—are being an idiot.”
Foxed he might be, but Aaron was not so far gone that he was going to ignore the insult.
“I am not,” he said. “I am being reasonable. She is the one who is being unpredictable.”
“If that’s the case,” Jacob reasoned, “how was I able to so easily explain to you what she’s doing?”
This was logic that was absolutely unsporting.
“Because you’re unnatural,” Aaron retorted. “I shall be informing the witch hunters forthwith.”
“This is the best day of my life,” Jacob told the ceiling with feeling. He looked back at Aaron, adopting a serious facade that only just covered up his obvious delight.
“Listen. This—” He waved his hand to encompass the whole mess that was Aaron’s life at the moment. “—is not unreasonable. It’s not even unpredictable if you take a moment to think. This is just life. It’s marriage.”
“You’ve never been married.” Aaron’s reply was halfhearted at best. He’d crossed over to the point of inebriation where it was less intoxication and more incipient headache.
He would have liked it if his return to sanity meant that Jacob’s words made less sense, but tragically, this was not the case.
“I don’t need to have been married to know what’s going on here. I know you, and I know that you are trying to manage this as a soldier. You’ve been trying to do it to me for years.”
“You were a soldier.”
Jacob rolled his eyes expansively. “I meant after that, you recalcitrant arsehole. And you know that. Stop being difficult. It isn’t going to help you resolve things with your wife.”
“There isn’t anything to resolve,” Aaron said glumly. “She is like a hurricane. All whirlwinds and chaos.”
Jacob bit his lip, but his smile was strong enough to break through.
“What?” Aaron demanded.
Jacob took a slow, leisurely sip of his drink. Aaron’s stomach clenched slightly at the mere sight. Ah. So he’d crossed over to that stage.
“Well, it’s two things, really,” Jacob observed lightly. “First,” he said, holding up a finger in point of illustration, “is that you are showing yourself to be awfully passionate about this whole ‘marriage of convenience’ thing.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Aaron grumbled. “Don’t say ‘marriage of convenience’ like you think it’s a lie. Just because I made a mistake and got an extremely inconvenient woman doesn’t mean I didn’t try.”
“As much as I would love to linger over you admitting that you made a mistake, I now turn to point two,” Jacob said. He leaned forward, resting his elbow on his knee, holding Aaron’s eyes with his own.
“You are the only man who I’ve ever seen navigate us through a hurricane without losing a single soul. You were incredible, Aaron.”
Aaron didn’t think Jacob had ever used his given name before. Aaron should have protested the familiarity, but as people kept reminding him, he wasn’t in the Navy any longer. Besides, it was startlingly effective. Theatrical bastard, indeed.
“So,” Jacob went on, his voice calmer now, “maybe this is another hurricane you can navigate. Hell, maybe it will even manage to put you directly on the path that you’re meant to be upon.”
Aaron didn’t respond—not to agree nor to argue. He didn’t know which was the right course of action. And, no matter what comparisons Jacob might draw, Aaron had never felt that way when he was commanding a ship.
“I find myself… uncertain how to proceed,” he admitted, because he had to tell someone, and his wife had stolen his sister and made an alliance with her.
Jacob’s smile was less gleeful this time; it was softer and more understanding.
“Well, first off, you can’t hide in here forever. No, don’t tell me you aren’t hiding,” he said as Aaron prepared to do just that. “You are, and it’s ridiculous, and we are going to stop it right now. You’re Admiral Aaron fucking Warson—”
“My formal title,” Aaron noted dryly.
“—and you are going to go wash, put on a fresh coat, and we are going out for a drink.”
“I have had enough to drink,” Aaron said. “And you said you almost died getting here.”
“I exaggerated to make you feel bad,” Jacob admitted. “It worked. You told me everything I needed to know. That’s an intelligence tactic I learned in the navy.”
“You did not.”
Aaron was beginning to fear that Jacob and Phoebe would hit it off phenomenally if they ever met. Given what had happened when Phoebe met Clio, this was a harrowing thought indeed.
It was that worry more than anything else that ultimately made him agree.
“Fine,” he said. “If we get a meal instead of a drink, I will go with you.”
Aaron closed his eyes briefly against the onslaught of cheer that everyone in his life seemed determined to subject him to—then opened them again because he had had far too many drinks to close his eyes without promptly falling asleep.
He’d spent too many years in a cramped ship’s berth to spend a single night longer in anything less comfortable than his massive four-poster bed.
“Agreed,” Jacob said happily. “I do love winning.”
Aaron grumbled but let himself be cajoled into freshening up and then leaving the house.
He did not plan to admit it—his friend would be intolerable with ego if he did—but he felt better for having discussed the confusing miasma of feelings that Phoebe seemed determined to inspire him.
He felt better—even if he still didn’t know precisely what to do.
It was a novel feeling, but not an unwelcome one.
It gave him hope that maybe this whole situation would turn out fine after all.
And that optimism? That was really novel, too.