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The Bluestocking’s Absolutely Brilliant Betrothal (The Notorious Briarwoods #6) Chapter 11 55%
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Chapter 11

T hings had only barely begun and they were already going terribly wrong. It didn’t seem possible. Weren’t things supposed to go perfectly and smoothly once the heavens had aligned?

But apparently the stars were in complete disarray because Achilles was rushing after his supposed bride-to-be, who clearly was not enjoying herself with him. Everyone enjoyed themselves with him. This was astonishing. He’d always been the best of company. He’d always been able to win people over.

And she liked him. He knew that she did.

It was the circumstances she didn’t care for, and he wanted to rail against everyone because, frankly, if there was no one else involved, surely she would be completely in heaven. He’d done his utmost this entire week to make sure that she had done things that gave her pleasure and feelings of accomplishment. Because what she wanted to accomplish was what he wanted to accomplish.

They were perfect partners.

Anyone getting in the way of that really was a tosser, his mother included, much as he loved her. But the truth was this party was simply too much. He should have known. He should have protested harder. He should have canceled the event.

But how was he supposed to explain to Lady Pritchard that the party should be canceled? It was a devilish position to be in. And just as he was about to rush after Aurelia, he spotted his sister Perdita marching through the hall with quite a look upon her face.

“Don’t follow her,” Perdita called.

He stopped dead in his tracks, something he’d only do for one of his brothers or his cousin Jean-Luc or his sisters.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because,” she stated with a wisdom that had always been far greater than Perdita’s years as she gestured towards the party, “she needs a little bit of time away from you and from all of this.”

He grimaced. “I can’t just leave her out there. She’s creating whole stories about how terrible all of this is.”

“They’re not stories,” Perdita countered, folding her arms over her cream-colored, silver-embroidered bodice. “Shame on you for insinuating that her imagination is a play.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he cut in.

“What exactly do you mean?”

He drove a hand through his hair. “She’s convinced that this is all terrible.”

“To her, it is terrible.” Perdita gave him a surprisingly sympathetic look. “I know in your head you’ve already written out how the ending is going to work and how desperately happy the two of you will be sitting on the lawn of your beautiful country house overlooking the river while your grandchildren play.”

His cheeks heated. Perdita knew him very, very well.

“So you understand?” he ventured.

Perdita nodded but continued, “But that is not her vision of the future. And right now, society’s vision of her as the grand wife of Lord Achilles is causing her distress. So, off you go. I shall sort this for you.”

He let out a note of conflict.

He did not like handing his fate over into other people’s hands, but Perdita? It was hard to gainsay his youngest sister. She really was a force to be reckoned with.

She shooed her hands at him. “Now. Go.”

He grimaced. He desperately wanted to go out to Aurelia.

Perdita rolled her eyes. “You can see her tomorrow or later, if she wills it. Now let me do my work.”

He didn’t want to, but he gave a tight nod. “If that is what you think is best, Perdita, I shall give way.”

She winked at him. “Good. Glad to know you still have a modicum of sense.”

She rushed out into the night to do said work.

He clenched his hands into fists, then started to stride off.

This was not how the evening was supposed to go. It was supposed to be a triumph. She was supposed to see how wonderful it would be to be a Briarwood. And he knew that she knew it would be wonderful. Each day had been a mark in his favor. But there was a ghost that was threatening all of it.

Her father.

Her father’s illness.

And whatever was happening with her father was doing something terrible to Aurelia, and he could not blame her. It was very easy to say that someone should be happy or grateful or appreciative of their circumstances and simply give in to a good marriage with him.

Some might say she was foolish for not embracing love, but he was not one of those of people because life could be very strange, and he wasn’t about to argue with her feelings. Feelings were powerful, far more powerful than they should be. His mother had done a very good job with all of them on that score.

Feelings were wonderful, but feelings were not always to be trusted. Feelings could be quite dangerous. And as he rushed through the hall, he caught sight of someone who was clearly having too many of them.

He strode into the side chamber and caught sight of his brother Zephyr and his cousin Jean-Luc.

Jean-Luc had had too much brandy. He was swaying ever so slightly.

“I’m returning to France.”

“No,” Achilles’ older brother, Zephyr, countered, “you’re not.”

“I am. They need me.” Jean-Luc brought his hand to his heart. “It is time for me to do my patriotic duty.”

“Even Lafayette left France, Jean-Luc,” Zephyr said kindly.

Jean-Luc pursed his lips at this argument, then gave a quick slash of his hand to dismiss it. “Lafayette? He fled and is imprisoned. If he was free, he would go back. As I must go back. I must. It is terrible what’s happening over there.”

“Indeed, it is,” Zephyr agreed. “But getting yourself an extra close shave will not help anyone,” Zephyr ground out.

Achilles fought a groan. It seemed as if the two had been having this conversation for several minutes.

He crossed into the shadowed room and cleared his throat.

Zephyr spotted him and his gaze lit with relief. “Help me out here. He wants to abscond.”

“You can’t do it,” Achilles said simply. “You know that, Jean-Luc.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Jean-Luc demanded. “Just sit here drinking brandy and dancing with silly young women?”

“Not all ladies are silly,” Achilles said, hoping that perhaps one of those young ladies might distract Jean-Luc’s wounded heart.

Jean-Luc narrowed his eyes. “Do not pick at my argument,” he said. “You know exactly what I mean.”

Zephyr let out a sigh. “I won’t argue with you. Most ladies are silly,” he said, “but then so are most men.”

Zephyr was, like Achilles, one of the last of his family who was still unmarried. His closest brothers now had wives, and Zephyr and Achilles had grown close, but Zephyr also had much more time to himself now that Ajax had married. Achilles was rather glad to be in the room with Jean-Luc and his brother.

Perhaps they could form a bastion against all the nonsense happening outside.

“Look,” Achilles started, searching for any means to stop his cousin’s descent into a terrible plan, “Jean-Luc, you already know that leaving is a bad decision.”

“The world is full of bad decisions. At least I would be doing something,” Jean-Luc declared passionately.

“And your sisters?” Achilles tried. “Will you leave them behind to worry about your fate?”

“They are safe,” Jean-Luc said, though his voice darkened with regret.

“And would you leave them with that kind of grief?” Zephyr challenged. “Knowing that you were to be executed the moment you step back on the shores of France?”

“So what am I to do?” Jean-Luc railed, the brandy making him repetitive and his argument far too simple. But they reflected the purity of his feelings. “Absolutely nothing?”

Achilles didn’t have a good answer for Jean-Luc. What could he say? Pursue love? Jean-Luc would think the answer was surprisingly French but absurd in the moment.

What was the point of all of this? What was the point of love? What was the point of life in the face of such absurdity and cruelty as what was happening in Paris?

There really wasn’t a good answer except for the fact that life simply went on, and he didn’t think that Jean-Luc would like to hear that.

And so he said, “I have no idea, my friend. It’s all an utter mystery.”

“Bollocks to that mystery,” Jean-Luc spat out, hauling back his fist and letting fly.

“Not at me!” Achilles called out.

“Why not?” Jean-Luc snorted. “You say it is a mystery! So I will hit you because it is a mystery! It is all a mystery. Nothing makes sense.”

Jean-Luc’s fist shot out.

And just before his cousin’s knuckles connected with his nose, Achilles groaned inwardly. He should have chosen a different tactic than choosing the vast unknowing motives of the cruelties of this world.

The man wanted answers.

At the last moment, he turned his head just in time. Instead of his nose bursting, his cheekbone burned with pain.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Zephyr trying to stop Jean-Luc by grabbing the fellow before he could punch Achilles again.

Zephyr dropped him to the ground as their Irish fighting instructor, Hartigan Mulvaney, had taught them. But he had also taught Jean-Luc. So Jean-Luc, drunk as he was, managed to roll on top of Zephyr and grab his hair, ready to pull his face up and slam it into the carpet.

“Not the rug,” Achilles called. “It’s not ours!”

Blood on an Axminster was incredibly difficult to get out. It was really too unfair for the servants, otherwise he might have just let it continue on.

“Jean-Luc, you’re drunk,” Zephyr groaned, trying to gain purchase on his cousin’s legs.

“I am not drunk,” Jean-Luc called out. “Frenchmen do not get drunk.”

“Yes, that’s what the English say too, but we do, and it’s a terrible, terrible inconvenience,” Achilles said as he crossed the floor and prepared to launch himself at the two men writhing on the floor. “And I really don’t want this to be the story about my engagement party.”

Jean-Luc had the good grace to let go of Zephyr’s hair at this. He stood slowly, brushed himself off, and swayed. “Engagement party?” Jean-Luc rolled his eyes. “Do you think I cannot see?”

“See what?” Achilles demanded warily.

“You are lying,” Jean-Luc said through gritted teeth. “The young lady does not wish to marry you.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Remember, I warned you. Not all Briarwoods will have a perfect happy ending.”

Zephyr swung his gaze back and forth between the two, watching as a spectator does when two roosters decide to puff out their chests and suddenly flash their spurs.

“Look, Jean-Luc,” Achilles said as calmly as he could, “you are in a state. Your nerves are deeply upset and rightly so, and so you predict darkness wherever you go.”

“Non, I do not think I am mistaken. Perhaps she is the one.” Jean-Luc gave his wrist a flourish, a decisive gesture that on another man would have seemed feminine. With him, it seemed to be like a nail in a coffin. “Like the rest of the world, this engagement will end in chaos. This particular play that your maman has arranged? It will not have a comedic ending. I think it shall have a tragic one.”

Achilles grew very still. “Take it back, Jean-Luc,” he said softly.

“I can’t,” Jean-Luc said, his gaze haunted in the shadows of the room.

“Take it back,” Achilles ground out again.

Jean-Luc looked at him seriously and then whispered, “Perhaps all my hope is gone. Perhaps yours would go too if all of your friends were dead.”

“Not all of your friends are dead, Jean-Luc,” Achilles whispered, even as his heart ached for his cousin.

Jean-Luc gave a tight nod and swallowed. “But most of them are.”

Jean-Luc brought a hand to his mouth and fought back a roar of horror and grief.

And then Achilles did the only thing he could. He strode forward and pulled his cousin into his arms and held him with all his might. And he let the great big French aristocrat who had gone into battle, who could kill anyone with a rapier or a pistol, or skewer someone with the most savagely witty word, let out his pain as Achilles held him. Held him until the big man heaved against his shoulders and let out all his agony at a world which had gone mad, completely and totally mad.

Zephyr drew in a ragged breath, then crossed to them and joined them. The wolves were at the door, but none of them were alone in the darkness.

And they had to make Jean-Luc see that.

And in that moment, Achilles knew. That’s why he wanted Aurelia so much. Because a bit of love was the only antidote to such madness.

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