“Vanity!”Fiona mocked scornfully.
“Truth!”
“Truth to man is a frail thing.”
“No more frail than the love of a woman,” he volleyed back.
She scoffed at that good-naturedly, reaching out to straighten her brother’s cravat affectionately.“So speaks a man with no greater experience in love than I yet he constantly criticizes me for not having found that which he has no knowledge of himself.Contrary.Such again is the way of a man.”
“And such is the way of a woman to hear that which they want rather than that which is actually said.For indeed, we spoke of truth and not of love.”He held up a hand.“Cease, wee Blossom, and keep me company, safe from the predatory throng.”
Fiona laughed merrily at that, attracting no little appreciation from nearby men herself, though she was unaware of their attention.
He, however, was not.He cast them dark glances and shifted neatly to block his sister from what he construed as their leering eyes.
“The women won’t grant you a moment’s peace, yet I might well be an old hag for all the attention I’ve garnered tonight,” she teased with artificial sorrow.Though she loved all her brothers dearly, Connor was her favorite.Of course, she would never admit it to the others, for it would hurt them.Connor knew, though, and that was all that mattered.These verbal exchanges of theirs were a challenge to her wit and tongue.She reveled in them.
“As for love then,” Connor continued, taking her hand and tucking it protectively into the crook of his arm, “how can I not believe in it when I see it in sickening abundance every day now?Our brothers have had the devil’s own luck and have left no woman as fine behind for their younger kin.”
“Spare me, please,” she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.“Perhaps I shouldn’t seek love at all but a man with the sense to occasionally keep his tongue silent.”
“Do you imply I have an overly nimble tongue?”
“Most always.”
Wafting her feathered fan lazily before her, Fiona scanned the heavy crush around her, taking in the heavily pomaded men around her, so similar in their evening dress it was hard to tell one puny Londoner from another.“It’s possible there are simply no good men left who are not my brother, and yet I am being forced to choose one!For better or worse,” Fiona complained, not for the first time.“Perhaps if I tell Francis that there are no men available as handsome and witty as he?”she raised an inquisitive brow.
“Flattering, but I doubt it will change his mind,” Connor said with a frown.
Fiona looked out over the sea of dancers, watching one brother after another waltz by with the woman he loved in his arms.Vin and Moira smiled madly at one another.Richard and Abby married longer but happy still.Colin and Ilona, waiting impatiently for a child of their own but loving one another nonetheless, and Sean and Coline, so young and in love.Eve’s sister, Kitty, and Abby’s brother, Jack, laughing with one another.Joyful in one another.
Still, her gaze drifted helplessly to Francis, who was escorting Eve around the perimeter of the room.His hand covered hers, and his head bent down.Every part of him canted toward her as if his body could not deny the pull she had on him.Fiona had been living with them for most of the past three years and had seen every day the love between them so palpable it could fill a room—adoration, tenderness, absolute and utter love.
Yes, being around her family every day had proven true love abounded, but how awkwardly one outside that love was struck by a certain sense of loneliness and despair when realizing it might never be theirs.
She wanted what they had so badly it gnawed at her, making her question every decision she had made.She wanted children to play with at the park, and a husband at home who adored them all.To wait to wed, as they had suggested, would mean continuing to torment herself on a daily basis.Marrying would spare her from always being the odd number at the dinner table.To spare her from coming upon love-struck couples kissing in the hallways.
She needed to remove herself from a situation that had become intolerably painful to bear before she became nothing more than a gelatinous massive of quivering self-pity.
Fiona sighed.“The relationships our brothers have found...they don’t truly sicken you, do they, Connor?”
“Most always,” Connor shrugged carelessly.
Before he left to explore the wilds of America, James, too, had said that he found the love-struck faces about him too nauseating to bear and couldn’t abide being about any longer.James might have been half-serious, and Connor might tease, but Fiona considered the love that flowed so rampantly around them not at all sickening but enviable.And she rather suspected deep down that Jamie felt the same way.
“It must be nice to be loved so openly.”
Connor raised his eyes to the sky.“She admits there is love.”
“For the lucky.”
Connor realized his usually sassy, sarcastic sister was serious and tempered the flippant response that leapt to his lips.“They say there is someone for everyone.If you show some patience in the matter, you will find someone, Blossom, if he does not find you first.What of Aylesbury?You seemed to like him well enough before.”
Another endless refrain.“Your chorus is in want of new material, Connor.Besides, you worry too much about my ideal match.What of yours?”
The flippant response to that question was not to be contained.“What of me?”he countered with a broad smile.“I don’t know.Perhaps yours will have a sister.It matters naught right now.I am young, handsome, charming, and...”
“Utterly conceited!”Fiona tried to contain her laughter, but it wasn’t meant to be.One could never be serious in Connor’s company for long.
