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Chapter 2
Robert charged through the house, stopping in all of his sister’s usual haunts, but to no avail. He knew she would be hiding out in the open, waiting to gleefully gloat in his face. Finally, he entered her private sitting room and found her luxuriating in front of the fire with a book in her hands that she was only pretending to read. Louisa hated reading as much as their father did.
“Is that one of them, then?” Robert shouted at his sister.
“Good evening to you too, you louse,” Louisa said, not looking up from her book. “What gives you the right to think that you could speak to me like that? Need I remind you of your place within this household for the hundredth time this week?”
Louisa was quite an attractive young woman with long, flowing blonde hair currently piled in curls atop her head. She had icy blue eyes that seemed to pierce through one’s soul when she looked at you, and everything about her was very angular. She had a jaw that could cut glass, her nose was quite small but very pointed at the tip, and even her fingers seemed to jut out of the ends of her hands like shards of glass.
This, combined with her naturally sharp personality made her one of the most feared people in society. No one ever dared to say a rude word about her, lest they be subjected to her wrath. Just last month, Eloise Chamberlain was attending her first ball in society and whispered to a friend about how Louisa’s bow on the back of her dress was tied.
Robert hadn’t been able to step in quicklyenough to rescue Miss Chamberlain from the fate his sister dealt her. She subsequently had a bowl of molasses ‘accidentally’ poured on her dress, which happened to be the only fine one she owned, effectively ruining it.
“How dare you ruin me like this,” Robert continued, ignoring Louisa’s horrible comments. “I would have told Father straight away that it had, in fact, been you that had bought all of those books, only to blame it all on me.”
“What stopped you then, dear brother?” Louisa asked, closing her book with a snap and looking at him with venom in her eyes. “Did you realize that everything was stacked against you? You’re the runt of the litter; Father absolutely despises you, and you’d never be able to prove what I’d done to you.”
Robert fumed, but he knew that Louisa was absolutely right. He was the youngest of the three children, the least handsome, and the most hated. The main reason behind all of these factors was that Robert was born to the Duke of Gloucester’s second wife.
Before being with his mother, Lord Graham had been married to a well-bred woman who society felt was ‘worthy’ of him because of her social status. Lady Euphemia Graham had been a well-respected, highly-revered woman, and with Lord Graham, she’d had two children: George and Louisa.
Lady Graham was naturally relieved that her first-born had been a boy, but there was a problem. Louisa had been a hearty young thing from the moment she was born, but her older brother hadn’t been quite so lucky.
George had been quite sickly his whole life. Doctors could never exactly figure out what was wrong with him, and so he was given the nickname ‘the pale Graham boy.’ There were so many times that the family thought he was going to die that they began making contingency plans for who would claim the title of duke when the time came, for you see, the rest of the family had been plagued with nothing but girls for a very, very long time.
It was decided that Louisa would marry early, so that hopefully she would bear a son and he would take over his grandfather’s position. This had greatly pleased Louisa from a young age, as that meant that she, through her eventual son, would get all the glory of the family’s inheritance.
Unfortunately for Louisa, a major problem arose: her mother passed away quite suddenly of a fever. Even worse, her father wanted nothing more than to re-marry, which meant there would be potential for another child to be born, and if that child were a boy, her claim to the family fortune would be snatched from under her.
Which, of course, was exactly what happened. Lord Graham married Agnes Ilworthy, Robert’s mother, quite soon after Euphemia passed away. Agnes was a very practical woman, and she knew that marrying the duke would be a very intelligent move. When they were courting, she seemed very obedient, rather meek, and she, of course, was at the same level of societal importance that Euphemia had been. It seemed to be the perfect union.
However, once they were married, Agnes showed her true colours. She was outspoken, openly defiant, strong-willed, and everything that the duke did not want in a marriage. Lord Graham was furious with her every moment of every day, but there was nothing he could do to subdue her... or stop the arrival of their son, Robert.
Sadly for Robert, Agnes had died in childbirth. In the duke’s defence, he had called upon all of the best doctors to come and attend to her despite his rage, but nothing could be done. Agnes died without ever having held her son, and that broke Robert’s heart to this day.
After Agnes was gone, all of the duke’s rage became directed at Robert. He was a legitimate son, but he may as well not have been in his father’s books. On top of that, Louisa hated him from the moment he was born because it meant that the family title would be passed down to Robert if George passed. Lord Graham hated that fact as well, but it got lost amongst all the other things that he despised about his son, whereas it was always at the top of Louisa’s list.
Thankfully for Robert, however, George had matured into a perfectly healthy and genuinely quite kind young man. He was the only member of his family that Robert had an excellent relationship with, and he couldn’t have been more grateful for it. But George was nearly ten years older than him, and so he had found a lovely wife many years ago. He was now living off on one of the family’s properties with her and his three children.
“Louisa, your behaviour is absolutely despicable. This is a new low, and you will come to regret it,” he finally settled on.
Louisa tilted her head back and cackled. “Is that a threat, little brother?”
“No,” Robert replied emotionlessly. “I would never threaten anyone, not even you. I won’t ever stoop to your level. I believe that the best revenge is being able to move on with one’s life and be happier than the person who tried to bring you down ever could be.”
Louisa raised her eyebrows, walked over to her brother, and patted him on the cheek. “That’s a very inspirational speech for such a small man. Do you say that to yourself every morning as you’re struggling to put on your clothing?”
Robert rolled his eyes. “Is that really the best that you can do, dear sister? I thought that you would have something far more caustic to say to me.”
“I’m only getting started, little brother,” Louisa replied menacingly. “You see …”
“I do not have time for your cruelty, Louisa,” Robert interrupted her tirade. “For you see, I have the perfect plan for how to recover from such an injustice, and I shall never tell you what it is. Even better, you won’t be able to find me quickly enough to discover what I have done.”
Robert turned on his heel and waltzed out of the room, quite pleased with himself.
“You’re acting as if I would care enough to try and see where you’re going, brother,” Louisa called after him. “Wouldn’t that mean that I would have to …”
But Robert slammed the door to the sitting room too quickly for her to get another word in. He could hear her muffled shouting through the door, and he chuckled delightedly to himself as he walked away.
The only way this moment could be made better is if I actually had a plan of what to do with myself now, Robert thought. I suppose that I will just have to pack my things and hope that something comes to me!
