Page 51 of The Betrothal

I couldn’t help the small huff of laughter. “Funny.”

“I know.” His hand clapped on my leg once before he released me. “So, are we talking family, property, legal? What’s up?”

“All the above?”

“Hmm.” He lifted a glass I hadn’t seen him bring in, tilting it in offering but I simply shook my head. I rarely drank, not with Ben in the house. It didn’t help him.

“The orangery at the manor is still missing half the glass, so the storm will be wreaking havoc through the property. Ben’s both thriving and deteriorating, how is that even possible, Seb? And then there’s the new bill.”

“The bill?” he sought confirmation.

“National Service Care Transition Act.”

“Ah, I see.”

Seb would see, he was aware of it, and how hard I was working on anything that could be done to try to roadblock it.

“It won’t be long. Seb, there was nothing I could do.”

He ran his thumb over the cut of his jaw, measuring his reply. I knew I was pretty close to flying off the handle, and Seb, being as he was, wouldn’t want to accelerate it.

“You know, even people in the political system wouldn’t be able to block it. It doesn’t matter who your family is, or was. You weren’t blocking the bill.”

My hands fisted on the wooden arms of my chair, Seb observed the action carefully.

“Even if you’d followed in Mr Cavendish’s footsteps, Alex, you’d never have stopped it,” he repeated his sentiments.

“Fred. Jesus, Seb. You’ve been around this family for years, even he told you to call him Fred.”

Seb shrugged, ignoring me. “You could go public with your disapproval. Social media and the news, it could drive a wave of scrutiny at a minimum.”

At my scowl he continued. “But it won’t stop it from happening, Alex. And it isn’t your job to stop it, anyway.”

He was wrong.

I folded over. Elbows propped against my knees, pressing my knuckles into my eyes – as if the pressure could force the headache to abate.

“It’ll destabilise him,” I voiced the honest truth eating away at me.

Seb waited at the hitch in my voice until my rage calmed to painful despondence.

“For a short while, yes. But we are all here, and he will pull through.”

“As if anyone with Ben’s history, all of their histories, needs to be reminded that the system doesn’t care. National service, Seb! What sort of system that claims to prioritise ‘the family unit’ forces all children in care into the armed forces when they age out with nowhere else to go?”

“A system built on lies?” he offered.

I groaned. A system built on fucking lies.

“As his doctor, and his friend,” Seb carried on.

I looked at him expectantly.

“And whatever else,” he confirmed. I nodded, returning to driving knuckles into my eyes while he spoke. “I will help him through it. Yes, it’ll bring back the trauma, the abandonment issues.”

“The episodes?” I asked, knowing I didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Most likely, yes. The armed forces are a hellscape for a person with Ben’s neurodivergence, mix that with his C-PTSD. He’ll hit a bump, for sure. But you aren’t giving him credit where it’s due. His life will never be about avoiding triggers entirely. You know that, Alex. It’s about how easily he can recover from them.”