The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(72)
“Damn it, Free. This isn’t the time to chop logic. We need to get you out of here.”
Free only smiled. “Oh, that’s so lovely. When I induce you to swear, it’s because I’ve argued you to a standstill. Cut line, Oliver. You know I’m right even if you refuse to admit it. And stop being ridiculous; I’m not leaving. If the crowd turns to violence, I’m safer surrounded by a hundred women who have discussed the finer points of safety than I would be all alone with you. What would you do if we were attacked by a mob?”
“I would—” He paused.
“You would be ripped limb from limb.” She gave him a beatific smile, completely at odds with her words. “Don’t worry, big brother. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Damn it, Free,” he repeated.
She laughed and looked back to her friends. “This is my brother,” she said. “His name is Mr. Oliver Marshall. He likely won’t leave until everything is over. Where should he stay and glower?”
“You can’t cross the perimeter,” one of the women said to him. “Only women inside the circle, and I hope you can understand the reason for that. But my brother is standing against that tree there, watching out for us in case anything goes wrong. If you’d like to go join him, you’d be welcome.”
Oliver shook his head at his sister, and she grinned at him. “Enjoy yourself, Oliver. The Reform League has promised Miss Higgins the chance to speak, and I’m sure you’ll love what she has to say.”
There wasn’t much to say after the rally. The constables intervened only so far as to suggest that people vacate the park before dusk fell, and by then, nobody seemed to object to this suggestion.
The mood was jubilant. The government had promised to quash the demonstration with all its might; the people had promised to quash the government’s quashing of their demonstration.
The people, it was generally agreed, had won. Decisively.
Free’s friends relinquished her to Oliver’s care with reluctance. The cabs were overrun; the streets crowded with foot traffic. There was no chance of taking a carriage.
Instead, they walked. For the first fifteen minutes, Free was cheerful, burbling about the crowd, the mood, how much fun she’d had and how she couldn’t wait to do it again. All her energy made him feel old and weary.
“Where are you taking me?” Free finally asked after they’d traipsed through a handful of dingy streets. “It looks like we’re going to Freddy’s.”
Oliver blinked and turned to his sister. “I thought you liked Aunt Freddy. You write to her every week. You’re her namesake.”
Free rolled her eyes. “For the last four years, Oliver, I have only been writing her angry letters, and she has been answering them with just as much vituperation. You never pay attention to anything. We are arguing.”
Had it been four years since he’d last spent any significant time at home? Oliver totted up the time…and then swallowed.
“You argue with everyone,” he finally said. “I didn’t pay that any mind.”
“She’s going to lecture me. Do you know what Freddy will say when you tell her what I was doing?” Free’s eyes narrowed. “Is that why you’re bringing me to her? Because you want her to say—”
“Honestly, Free.” Oliver looked skyward. “I was bringing you to Freddy’s because I thought you would like to see her. I can take you back to Clermont House, if you’d prefer, but the last time you were there you complained that you didn’t know anyone and there was nothing to do. I hadn’t thought about Freddy’s lectures, and if I had, I wouldn’t have brought you. I don’t know what it is about Aunt Freddy, but the instant she tells me not to do something, I find myself most wishing to do it.”
Free’s lips twitched up reluctantly.
“And she never used to lecture you, in any event. Not like she did the rest of us.”
Free sighed. “That’s changed. I told you, we are arguing. We’ve spent the last Christmases pointedly talking about each other, loudly, to other people so that we can be overheard. How did you not notice?”
Aunt Freddy was so prickly that it was difficult to tell when she was actually upset and when she was just making noise about something or other to try to make some ridiculous point. She’d been making dire predictions of gloom as long as Oliver had known her. None of them had ever come true.
“What did you argue about?” Oliver said. “Or do I want to know?”
“She needs to go outside.”
Oliver took a deep breath. “Oh.”
If Freddy knew what they were doing now—walking on regular city streets—she would have complained of palpitations of the heart. If she’d known they were doing it with crowds about, she would have fainted.
When he was younger, he’d accepted as fact that his Aunt Freddy refused to leave the tiny flat that she inhabited. His mother said that she had once gone out—briefly—to the market, but even that had ended once she’d found someone to deliver the necessities of life. It had just been the way of things, an immutable characteristic inherent to Freddy.
“She didn’t like my manner of telling her to go outside,” Free said, “and she told me to apologize. So I told her that I was very sorry for my hasty words, and what I had meant to say was that she should be going outside every day.”