“I think it must be lovely to have a family,” Pen said after a charged pause. There was a note of wistfulness in her voice that made him look sharply at her.
“We have nothing whatsoever in common. They tend to disapprove of me, so the less we see of each other, the better.” Alworth shrugged.
“Why on earth would they disapprove of you?” She sounded so genuinely surprised, that Alworth looked at her sharply.
Alworth pondered on it. Why indeed? It hadn’t always been that way. He remembered a time when he enjoyed romping about the forest with his younger brother, fishing and climbing and falling out of trees. His sister hadn’t been the moralising bore she was today and tugged along after them, her chubby face smeared with the blueberries she picked. Along with Serena. His childhood love, whom he’d vowed to marry. Then their mother had died of smallpox.
Everything had changed.
His father remembered he had an heir who needed to be raised for his role as future viscount. He was separated from his siblings, playmates, even from his dog. He was expected to be an adult from one moment to the next. His beloved nanny left, and he was sent to school.
When he was barely eighteen, his father died. And Serena married someone else. He learned early on it was better to keep a distance to those he loved best. Not to get too emotionally attached to people, animals, and things. For when one was too attached to something, it led to inevitable pain. Living life on the surface was best. Pleasant and easy-going. While his brother became a vicar, and his sister married a country baron and settled down in a staid life, he joined the dandy set and befriended Beau Brummel. Boxing, fencing, and shooting, now and then some easy gambling, visits to his club and his tailor. This filled his time.
To Pen he said, “I suppose as heir, my father believed I had to be raised differently from my siblings. At first, they catered to my every whim. It caused somewhat of a rift between us. Then they shoved me off to school, where they dunked my head into the chamber pot every morning and evening. It’s been most improving upon my character. In fact, one might argue that this prevented me from growing up entirely spoiled, though some people might debate that.”
Pen gasped. “How terrible!”
“Children, especially a crowd of rowdy boys, can be intolerably cruel to one another. As regards my siblings, we had nothing in common and grew apart.”
“It is not us who have changed,” his sister Beatrice had once hurled at him. “It’s you. The Archie we love has left, and you replaced him with this–this–Bond Street Beau, this charade of a dandy. You’re hiding behind your waistcoats, cravats and hats. I don’t know who you’re trying to impress. Certainly not me.”
Thus, the distance between him and his family had grown further and further. There was an unbreachable chasm between them. His sister was right. He lived in an entirely different world.
