Loathing Persuasion | (Regency Romance Novella)

══ Chapter Ten ══

On the third morning after the most painful moment any family could experience, Jane threw her book to the opposite side of the drawing room. Sentences made no sense, words lacked meaning. The skin, under which a single tear ran indifferently, had lost its previous colour. She had been awakened at a premature hour by a loud slamming against the walls of the room beside hers. George was breathing heavily and his things were scattered around the place. The second he noticed Jane, sobs filled the air. Consequently, she surrounded her brother's trembling body in a tight hug, falling together on the floor. Jane caressed his back with methodic movements in silence until his emotions were at ease and contained. They laid on the bed like they used to during their bright joyful childhood, those nights that included confidentiality while eating stolen pastries from the kitchen.

Jane allowed herself to cry when she was certain George had fallen in a deep slumber. Faster than prevented, a thunderous guilt took over her mind, an evil shadow whispering in her ears how she had failed Mary, not achieving her last wish, causing suffering to establish in their family. Perhaps she deserved that outcome, perhaps she deserved to be left abandoned with no soul to trust with her own anguish and insecurities. Certainly, she deserved the affliction after treating Mr. Hardy in the most uncivilized and unsensitive way, forced by a greater power that made Jane realise neither happiness nor freedom were made for her.

━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━

At seven, the sun not yet on its place in the sky, Edmund and Henry perceived the same scent of a bakery inside their house while heading to the entrance. The purpose was to ride and practice fencing, under the eldest command as Henry had forcefully become accustomed to.

"If I am coming with you, brother, it would be sensible to consider a more decent hour," he complained.

"Two days I went all by myself. It is not as if you have better activities to entertain your time with. This will help increase your resistance and strength, little man."

The pair of brothers crossed the door, walking side by side. Edmund mounted his horse first and waited for his brother to do so as well before continuing to speak. "I presume that is the case, unless you are hiding other type of activities that aid to achieve the same result with someone else."

Henry did not dare to look at Edmund in the eyes. The temperature had increased from a minute to the next. "You use your mouth to say the most stupid things, Ed."

"Oh, but brother, you know how to use yours better?" he laughed, seeing Henry flustered by his apparent affirmations, ordering his horse to start moving.

Before twenty minutes passed, they arrived at the outskirts of town, racing to the place they frequented to practice. It smelled like wood and drizzled earth, a tingling in the men's noses. With feet on the ground and swords in hand, feeling their familiar weight, the youngest Barnes attacked first.

Though startled, Edmund adopted a perfect posture and blocked his brother's blade. "Never make evident your promptness to fight."

Turning, retreating, advancing, metal colliding, soon Henry became tired, not of the exercise and physical activity, but of the constant advice his brother threw at him, to improve. "Tense your abdomen." "Strengthen your arm, it must not doubt when receiving an impact."

"Your legs, Henry! Coordination!"

"You are insufferable!"

The situation brought to light an evident contrast between Edmund's resolute determination against a wandering mind. Neither had changed since they were toddlers, considering that the middle Barnes sibling still made decisions based on the present, on what he had in front of him; whereas Henry was always looking beyond, thus that being the source of his most bothersome persistent thought: would he ever find a place where he belonged, somewhere to call home? It was not that Henry's method of swordsmanship required polishing, he simply did not care as much.