Page 52 of The Betrothal

I groaned. This was something I would never get to grips with, Seb’s tone told me he knew that, but still I argued. “I need to protect him from it.”

“And that’s your trauma, Alex.”

I whipped up as if he’d slapped me.

“Don’t play naïve. Between your mother’s death and your father’s decline into the bottle. You picked up too many pieces.”

I groaned, a sharp prickling behind my eyes. It’s the headache.

“Alex.” Seb shifted to the edge of his seat. “You cannot carry people’s pain for them.”

I shook my head at him, that wasn’t true.

“Don’t make me say it again.” His voice was a command, a side I rarely saw from the puppy-dog that was Seb. “You can only sit with them and offer a safe space.”

I rolled my lip between my teeth, bearing down into it until the pain distracted me.

“You are Benji’s safe space, and you offer one to Eli, and Ellie. And Matty, Dan, Val, and all the others at the home who come to work with you on the manor. Instead of spending money on the property you pay them, you’re trying to give them skills, a nest egg. Anything to try to secure some kind of future for them.” He listed these things back like they were virtues.

I coughed at the emotion and anger clogging my throat.

“Stop lashing yourself over things you can’t control.” He sat back and gave me his best ‘you idiot’ glare.

“You think you’re so smart.” Internally I conceded that he was but like fuck would I tell him.

“I know I’m so smart, because my honorary family paid a small fortune to put me through medical school. Ben wasn’t the only person your lot took in. I just don’t have the surname.”

I frowned at him.

“Good job too. Saves a shit-ton of explaining about Ben and my relationship.” He wiggled his brows.

I snorted at that and didn’t reply, as entertained as I was uncomfortable.

He was right about everything else. But knowing and feeling were completely different things. I knew what he said was true, but it didn’t change how I felt.

“So, what else can I help you with, Mr Cavendish?” Seb interrupted my pouting.

“Cute.” I huffed. “The manor needs sealing as soon as possible. There are more storms on the way but I can’t get there.”

“Lie.”

I glowered at him and continued. “And by my calculations, I’ll run out of money, save for running the cottage, in about two months. Well before the manor is repaired.”

“Hmm.” Seb rubbed his chin in thought.

Got him. He wouldn’t be able to offer a quick solution to that one so easily.

“Money’s simpler than you’d like to admit.” He didn’t even really pause, the fucker. “Grants and such exist for restoration of landmark properties.”

“They can shove their money; I’ll die before I take a penny from the government.” My growl had him moving straight on.

“Then there’s work? Plenty of opportunities exist for the eldest son of Frederick Cavendish. You know as well as I do that politics was a low bar for your father, a passion project at the easiest end of your family’s influence. And you don’t even have to do that. Minimum effort, maximum return. A book perhaps, you are the poster child of ‘when a linchpin of government oppression sees the error of their ways’.”

“I’m not washing my family’s dirty laundry in public,” I rejected him outright.

“Fuck. Prostitution then?” Seb’s smile was filth.

“Nice.” I smothered my snort. “Can you stop trying to get into my boxers, Sebastian?”