Chapter Three #2
“At a speed slower than a snail over sand, Leo, which you would know if you attended there as often as you should!” A point he couldn’t argue with either because the majority of the House of Lords still feared a bloody revolution that rivaled those that had happened in France and America, and therefore refused to concede an inch.
They were so wedded to their outrage and entrenched in their ways that he had long given up trying to argue with them.
Parliament gave him acid. Much like his sister was doing now.
Unfortunately, he could only avoid one of those indigestible things, and it wasn’t Abigail.
“Meanwhile, while you ignore your duty, the people are still suffering.”
Abigail huffed and, to further remind him of his unconscionable failings as a big brother, began to pace the Persian rug. Her limp was barely noticeable nowadays—but he noticed.
Leo always noticed because it was his fault she had it.
“It is a travesty how little the factory workers are paid, Leo, and you know it!”
Before this turned into a discussion on what was morally right and what was so plainly wrong, which he knew he couldn’t win, he turned the topic back yet again to the safety of his womenfolk. “Until you marry, it is my sworn duty to protect you from harm. I promised Father—”
He was cut off by his sister’s theatrical groan.
“I might have known you’d link a small knock to my head with the accident and blow it out of all proportion.
” She rolled her eyes heavenward in a god-give-me-strength kind of way.
The flippant gesture was mirrored by both his mother and his younger and sillier sister, Emilia, who all currently believed that he had mentally traveled back in time and was confusing Abigail’s first wholly avoidable brush with death all those years ago with her most recent. Which was true, he supposed, in part.
Not that he would admit it aloud.
“Is that why you are more insufferable than normal? You are being an overbearing oaf because you feel guilty that I got a little knock to the head that you should have predicted and prevented, just as you believe you should have prevented me from climbing up that tree almost fifteen years ago?”
Of course it bloody well was!
She had fallen out of that tree as a child because he had failed to keep an eye on her that day, despite being tasked by his father to watch his sisters like a hawk.
And she had got injured at last week’s protest because he had failed to diligently protect her, yet again.
“Not at all.” Both Abigail and his mother eyed him dubiously, so he continued undeterred.
“I am being insufferable because one of us has to behave like a sensible adult and that clearly isn’t going to be you. ”
Intercepting his sister’s next interruption, Leo raised an imperious palm. “A bit of time and distance gives perspective, which you currently do not have, and a few months at home here in Bath will give us all time to reflect. Besides—we’ve not spent a season in Bath together in forever.”
“For good reason,” muttered his mother, “as it pales into insignificance against the London season because nobody is here.”
“What nonsense! This city is a veritable hubbub of activity.” To prove that he marched to the window to pull back the lace curtain, expecting to see the usual gaggle of tourists wandering along the Royal Crescent in awe and wonder at its architectural splendor, only to be confronted with a street as barren as the desert.
“Such a crush,” said Abigail clutching her pearls before she rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time. “How are we to contain ourselves with so much pointless excitement going on all around us?”
“Bath is filled with nothing but old people and invalids.” That came from Emilia, who had never liked being in their second home whenever there were leaves on the trees.
“Here to take the waters in the hope that they will feel invigorated enough to be able to return to London where all the excitement actually is.” Which was why she rarely came here anymore.
In fact, unlike Leo, none of his womenfolk had ventured here much since his father’s passing. The ladies had visited only a handful of times in the last four years. Probably because there were reminders of the former duke everywhere and that made them all melancholy.
Leo, on the other hand, had no choice but to be here often.
The bulk of his estate was made up of lands surrounding Bath, and it was impossible to manage it all from afar.
However, what his sisters found boring, he found peaceful, and so this house had become his oasis.
A place to escape all the noise and nonsense of London and simply … be.
“I have no friends here in Bath.” Emilia was pouting now. “So I shall be bored to tears if I am incarcerated here all summer.”
“Neither of us have any friends here.” Abigail shot him a look that would curdle milk. “Which is precisely why our overprotective big brother has dragged us here. He wants us to be bored. Bored and dutiful because all that ruthless control makes his life so much easier.”
“Actions have consequences, Abigail, and you have brought this on yourself.” Leo gestured to his glaring sister’s bandage again and instantly felt his pulse race.
“As the head of this household, those consequences are mine to meter out.” Oh good grief, now he sounded like a bloody tyrant too and he loathed himself for it.
Loathed how out of control he felt. How unsettled and afraid he felt.
Why couldn’t his womenfolk see that he was doing this out of love?
When he was saving them from themselves and keeping them from harm at the same time.
Why did they have to keep pushing him and pushing him until the red mist descended and all his new and terrifying panic, which he still had no clue how to control, possessed him completely?