Crossing his arms, Weston watched in tightlipped silence as his sister leapt to her feet, nearly toppling her easel in the process. She whirled in a circle, then spun back, before glancing down at her own hand still clutching her paintbrush.
“There it is,” she said in relief before she swished the bristles clean in a cup of water and carefully returned the brush to its rightful box. Then she untied her painting frock, straightened her hat, and all but skipped up the stone steps to the terrace where Weston was standing. “I suppose we won’t have time to visit the furniture maker after all.”
Weston smiled pleasantly at his sister.
She smiled back at him.
His mouth flattened. “You’re going to march yourself out there and explain that you made a mistake. Tell her we don’t have the room to accommodate a last-minute guest.”
“But wedohave the room. Hawkridge is enormous.”
“Then tell her we don’t have the means to get her there.”
“She is sitting in our carriage as we speak.”
He threw his arms up. “Then tell her the bloody sky is falling! I don’t care. Evelyn Thorncroft isnotattending this house party. And that’s final.”
Now it was Brynne’s eyes that narrowed. Although renowned thetonover for her ladylike demeanor and quiet grace, his sister possessed the same spine of steel that he did, and when she put her foot down on something she rarely removed it. “Don’t you dare take that tone withme, Weston Weston.”
He grimaced. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”
Why his parents had seen fit to give him the same moniker twice, he hadn’t the faintest idea. It was an embarrassment he’d overcome by referring to himself as Hawkridge to his peers, and the more familiar Weston to his personal friends and family. Only Brynne dared bring up the unusual name, and every time that she did, he couldn’t help but wince.
“AndIhate it when you treat me as if I were your subordinate!” she retorted. “Just because I happened to be born the female twin and you the male does not make me less than you.”
“According to British law it does,” he pointed out.
“You’re just trying to make me angry enough to forgo the party entirely, so that you can tell Evie she has been disinvited.”
“Yes,” he admitted unabashedly. “Is it working?”
“You’re a cad, Weston.”
He shrugged off the insult. “I’m much worse than that, sweetling.”
“Oh, I am aware. But as a lady, it’s the only word I can use.”
Shifting his weight, he skimmed his nails, filed to blunt edges, along his jaw. “Why is this of such importance to you, Brynne? You didn’t even know wehadanother sibling until a few weeks ago. We’ve gotten along fine until this point. Why complicate matters unnecessarily?”
“I’d hardly call being raised by an army of governesses and sent away to Cheltenham Ladies’ College for a year of my life asfine,” Brynne retorted, referring to England’s most acclaimed boarding school for young women of distinguished families.
Weston’s experience had been similar, except he’d attended Eton for four years instead of one. From fourteen to seventeen he’d only seen his father and sister over Christmas, and even then, the marquess had rarely made an appearance, abandoning his two children to celebrate the holiday in the company of servants.
He and Brynne couldn’t complain, and they never had. Not when they’d been blessed with a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and more money than either of them could spend in a lifetime. Money that Weston had increased tenfold with a variety of entrepreneurial investments that expanded far beyond the passive income brought in by tenant farmers.
But while he and Brynne had never wanted for anything of a materialistic nature, there were other ways to starve a child, and they’d both longed for love. For affection. For even the simplest gesture that would indicate their father considered them as more than just another obligation to be met.
As Weston grew older, his paternal expectations had grown lower until they’d all but disappeared. But Brynne, he suspected, had held out hope that their sire might suddenly turn into the father-figure they’d yearned for all those years spent alone in a vast, empty house.
Hishope had been that things would change when he went off to boarding school. While Brynne had dragged her heels, afraid to leave him, Weston had secretly counted down the days until he could start a new life far from the loneliness of his old one.
Instead, he’d learned two valuable lessons he’d carried with him into adulthood.
That he could be surrounded by people and still feel terribly alone.
And the only person he could depend on was himself.
“Given our upbringing, I understand why you might have an…attachmenttowards the Thorncrofts,” he allowed begrudgingly. “But they are not our family, Brynne. They’re nothing like us.”
