Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Hmm.
“I know I felt something when he was gone, and not just annoyance that I had to deal with the press frenzy of how he went,” he continued.
“Just…something?” I prodded.
He rolled into me and kept rolling until he was on me, resting some weight in a forearm under my shoulder blade so he could stroke my jaw with his thumb.
“For your book?” he asked.
I didn’t understand the change in topic, so I repeated in my own query, “For my book?”
“We’ll call it a kind of research,” he stated, then explained, “My telling you that isn’t a thing in aristocratic families. That distance. The unemotionality. That boys are hoped for to continue the line and not much else, and girls are used to form or strengthen alliances, and nothing else. Perhaps that used to be the way, but it isn’t anymore.”
I nodded.
Battle kept talking.
“Rally’s an example. He has a big family, they’re very close and loving. I have many friends in the peerage, and all of them are the same. Perhaps not always as close, or some siblings don’t get along, some parents divorce. But familial love is there.”
“And it wasn’t there from your parents?”
He shook his head, but said, “Mum, no. Dad, I think he was so invested in getting her not only to love him, but to see him as the man who loved her and not the title she wanted, that for the most part, he forgot us.” His tone changed to one where it sounded like he was talking to himself. “Though, I could be making that up to give him excuses.”
“I hate that for you. For all of you,” I stated vehemently.
He came back to me and ran his knuckles along my jaw. “I’m not tremendously thrilled by it either.”
“And this is a sucky part,” I declared. “Not the sucky part. You four not having even decent, much less loving, supportive parents is the sucky part. But a sucky part is that it might be the reason why you’re all the awesome that’s you.”
His lips quirked. “All the awesome that’s me?”
I wasn’t finding it amusing.
“All you are to your sisters. Thoughtful. Observant. Clicked in. Not many dudes are as clicked in as you, Battle.”
He smoothed his free hand down my side. “I’m delighted you think I’m clicked in, darling. But shall we return to the ‘might be’ in your comment?”
“Pardon?”
“You said it ‘might be’ the reason why I’m as completely and utterly awesome as I am.”
I squinted at him. “I don’t recall using the words ‘completely and utterly.’”
“It was subtext.”
That made me roll my eyes.
“I know you’re being serious, sweetheart,” he said, and now his tone was serious too. “And I cannot express how much your compliments mean to me.”
“Well then, I’ll share that the reason I used the words ‘might be’ is that I think you’re so much who you are, you’d be this man anyway. I just think it sucks you were forced to be. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely.”
“Does it suck for you?”
“Being placed in the position, well before I was fourteen, to look after my sisters in all ways, including emotionally?”
I nodded.
“Not in the slightest,” he answered.
Ugh.
Every day it was becoming clearer and clearer.
He was perfect in every way.
“Oh, all right,” I grumbled. “So the words ‘completely and utterly’ were subtext.”
He burst out laughing.
When it was down to chuckles, he brushed his lips against mine before he said, “It’s my life. If I could change things, I would change Prue being bullied. I’d obviously stop Chassie from being assaulted. I would wish for all three of them to have a mum who was around to give them the things I couldn’t, which would mean Tempie wasn’t forced to become that person for Prue and Chassie after she was forced to find her own way. But other than that, I have no complaints.”
I was about to kiss him to share how his statement made me feel (which was ever-increasing levels of fond) when that movement of a bed made only by a cat jumping on it happened.
I looked to the side and gasped.
There was a chubby, thick-short-haired gray cat there with tawny eyes.
“Oh my God,” I whispered excitedly. “Is that Greystoke?”
“One in the same,” Battle replied, reaching a long arm to the cat and further extending a long finger.
Greystoke sniffed it then butted his head against it.
Battle started scratching behind his ears.
“I haven’t met him yet,” I said. “He’s so chonky.”
“He’s around Prue the most, and she has copious cat treats stashed throughout The Downs, so he’s usually the beneficiary of those.”
“Hence why he sticks close to Prue,” I deduced.
“Hence, that,” he replied, his voice shaking with humor.
Greystoke took a chance and came closer to cuddle with us, doing this at my hip.
Which meant I got to start stroking.
Oo, his thick fur was so soft!