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Chapter Eight
Florent watched Lady Constance drift from the room. It was quite a fascinating feat. He had never noticed a person drift before. To his mind it seemed quite deliberate, as though she didn’t want to be noticed or seen as leaving. Florent only witnessed it because he had been watching her attentively. He was trying not to. He had no interest in being accused of courting the woman. Not that there would be anything wrong with doing so nor would anyone try to stop him, but he felt an aversion to being pressured.
And there was the small fact that he needed to ensure his sister found a match. He couldn’t consider Lady Constance to be a good influence upon Daisy, and that needed to be taken into consideration.
Perhaps it was because he did find her so very attractive that he was somehow fighting the impulse. Whatever the case, he had his eye on her and he knew she was uncomfortable and trying to hide it. He also knew she had exited the room with stealth. There was no other word for it. She had reminded him of a cat, to be frank. That image brought a smile to his face.
“What are you up to?” his sister asked him suspiciously, startling him.
Florent had been so busy thinking about Lady Constance that he hadn’t even noticed Daisy sidling up to him. Another cat reference. Perhaps Florent was losing his mind. Being stuck at Alcott for his entire life had finally turned him into a simpleton just as he’d always feared. He was a crazy cat gentleman. What was he to do?
The droll thought kept him from snarling at his sister so he would have to be glad about that.
“I might very well ask you the same thing, Miss Alcott,” Florent said with significant emphasis on the formality of her name. “I would have expected to see you right in the center of your dear friend’s social event being held seemingly in your honour.”
Florent watched his sister blush with chagrin but still lift her chin in defiance of his views. She was often such an independent little soul. She wasn’t going to appreciate his admonishment, but Florent couldn’t ignore her behaviour.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Flor,” Daisy insisted. “I’ve been right in the center of it for days. You have just arrived. You haven’t a basis for such a judgmental opinion.”
Florent stared at his sister and wondered for a moment if his suspicions of her were misplaced but then there was a flicker at the back of her gaze as though she couldn’t quite hold her nerves steady, and a grin bloomed on his face.
“You forget that I’ve known you longer than you’ve known yourself, little sister. I have been well aware of your tells, especially the ones on your face that you’ve almost grown able to hide, since you were able to speak. You’ve always been saying a different thing with your face and eyes than with your mouth. And right now, I know you’re trying to hide something from me. And I don’t like it in the least. Are you courting scandal for some reason? Are you resisting the one thing you claim to wish for?”
He watched his sister stare at him with her mouth slightly ajar as though she wished to say something but hadn’t a clue what that was. Then she laughed. It was such a sound of joy that for a moment it reached his heart, and he was glad for her even if he didn’t understand her.
Florent wanted his sister to be happy. This sister in particular. He was the closest with the youngest child in the family. It had seemed to Florent that his parents had left her to him to care for. He had missed her immensely when he had been sent to school, but they had always picked up where they’d left off whenever he'd returned home. And then, of course, she’d learned to write and had nearly bankrupted the estate with the amount of paper she’d used sending him lengthy tomes filled with all her childish thoughts and the goings on at home.
He probably had never expressed to her how much those letters had meant to him even as a boy. Of course, things had changed when he’d become so preoccupied with the estate. He only had himself to blame. Wanting to protect Daisy from the reality of their situation had put a wedge between them. But he couldn’t allow that to stop him now.
Because he loved her so much, he couldn’t allow her to get herself into a bind.
“Why won’t you tell me what you’ve been doing, if it isn’t anything questionable?”
“Do you really want to hear about the picnics and the strolls to the village and such things that you’ve missed when you were dealing with the livestock at home?”
When she put it like that Florent almost questioned his own judgment for the briefest moment. Which was exactly her intention, the little imp. He saw it in the crinkle in the corners of her eyes that she just couldn’t hide form him.
“I would really like to hear all of that. It will help me feel like I haven’t missed out.”
A twinge of guilt swept through him when his tender-hearted sister appeared suddenly dismayed. No longer defiant, she stepped closer, tucking her small hand into his elbow, she demonstrated her affection easily.
“I’m so sorry, Flor, I shouldn’t be grumbling at you. Of course, I’ll tell you everything. Amelia has been a talented hostess, and everyone has been having a lovely time. But you haven’t really missed out because it took a few days for everyone to arrive. Even today, you aren’t the only arrival. That gentleman over there named Henry Wagner, he just arrived today, too. So don’t feel as though you’ve missed out. Or at least don’t feel that you’ve lacked because even though it has all been quite lovely, it hasn’t been extraordinary, so I am quite convinced that the best is yet to come.”
Florent had almost missed the change in his sister’s inflection when she mentioned the other gentleman who’d arrived, as he had his own reaction to that man’s presence. As far as Florent could tell, he didn’t know the man, but he instinctively had a guarded reaction to him. And he suspected Daisy did, too.
“Why don’t you like him?” he had lowered his head as well as his voice in order to ask his sister the question as privately as possible in the room full of people.
Daisy stared at him and briefly sputtered for a moment before a grin broke over her active features. “You do know me well, don’t you, big brother?” She allowed her gaze to sweep the room before returning it to her brother’s face. She lifted one shoulder in a gesture that looked slightly helpless. “I cannot truly say why I don’t, as I have just barely been introduced to him, but he gives me a creepy feeling as though he is something different underneath his seemingly handsome exterior. Which is why I say seemingly handsome, because for me he doesn’t look handsome due to that feeling I get, but I suspect others might consider his appearance appealing.”
“I think it’s the eyes,” Florent agreed with a smile. “They are definitely shifty.”
Daisy laughed. “And small. Almost beady. Like those of a rat or some other sneaky rodent.”
“Exactly,” Florent agreed immediately, relieved to be restored to his usual comfortable relationship with his sister. “Now carry on with your expository of all the good things you’ve been doing.”
Daisy’s delightful laugh sounded, bringing the attention of some in the room to rest upon them momentarily, but then everyone else resumed their own conversations, and Daisy began her list.
Florent only half listened. He wasn’t in fact terribly interested in the details of what he had missed, but he had sensed something in his sister’s demeanor when he’d first seen her. That and the fact that she hadn’t been present when he’d arrived had both conspired to raise the hackles of his suspicions. As he had told her, he’d known her longer than she’d known herself. As the oldest sibling to her youngest, he’d been a boy of ten when she’d been born. Most would expect that a ten-year-old boy would take no interest in a newborn girl child, but Florent had taken one look at her and his heart had been seized. As the oldest, he had always felt all his siblings were his responsibility, but this youngest one all the more so.
