And then Phoebe, the woman who had sworn to honorand obeyhim 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 notme,” Aaron reiterated. “And I’ve beenshowingher that, but she doesn’t seem tolisten.”
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’ orwhatever 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.
“ButI’mnot 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.Sheis 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 façade that only just covered up his obvious delight.
