Soulforged

Chapter 9

-/-

"Are you planning on sulking in here all day, only some of us actually have work to do?"

Staring down at the page he had been unsuccessfully trying to read, Armand toyed with the idea of ignoring his eldest brother. He and Henri had never been particularly close, even before his brother had left for school. Yet his brother had only grown more distant since their father's death, and the weight of being the head of the family, had fallen on his slender shoulders.

In truth he was hiding. Clara was upset, and Armand for once was making himself scarce, since he knew the reason why.

Her little amour Jean had been dismissed from the household staff; after he had been caught pilfering from the household stores...well caught wasn't entirely accurate.

It had been all too easy to start the petty thefts from the household, no one ever saw Armand when he didn't want to be seen. It was only when a bottle of good wine vanished, under Madam Robert's watch, that a search was taken up, and low and behold was discovered, hidden in the hayloft nook slept in by the stable boy.

Armand hadn't been sad to see him go. Jean had tried to take his Clara away from him, and he had to pay for such impertinence, but Armand was unhappy to see Clara so upset by it. It made his stomach, twist in a way made him feel uncomfortable...yet it was a sensation Armand was determined to squash, and in the meantime avoiding Clara made it easier to manage.

"I am reading." Armand replied, turning the page of the book, even though he hadn't finished it.

"Amusing little brother, I didn't realise that book had pictures."

Biting his lip, Armand chose to ignore his brother's jibe. Everyone in the household knew he could read perfectly well, better than well, it was only Henri who insisted on belittling him in this way. It would be easier to bear if Henri was stupid himself, but unfortunately, his eldest brother was the closest in intelligence to Armand himself. He was the only other member of the du Plessis family, who spent any time in the library, and thankfully Henri spent most of the year at school in Paris, so Armand was only forced to share it during the summer.

"Shouldn't you be outside playing with that wild little nursemaid of yours?"

"She's not..." Armand began hotly, only to stop when Henri lifted his blond head from between the pages of the ledger he was studying, to smirk at the reaction he had finally managed to provoke.

"You should learn to hide your weak spots better little brother." Henri added, before returning to his work. "You will have to learn that before you go to school...well if you go..." He added.

"Of course I'm going to school." Armand insisted, putting down the book he had been failing to lose himself in, and marching across to confront Henri. "You go to school, even Alphonse goes..." He added hotly, only pausing to blush at his faux pas. Alphonse was a sensitive subject in the family, the middle du Plessis brother wasn't stupid, far from it, but book learning had always been a struggle for him.

"Well how are you planning on paying for it?" Henri retorted, leaning back in the leather back chair, his hands steepled in front of him, as he stared down at his little brother with the superiority only a fifteen year old could possess. "It costs money to go to school Armand, and unless you are quite as a stupid, and ignorant as the rest of them, you know there is no money anymore, only debt."

Father's debts, the one topic their mother refused to discuss in front of her younger children, as if Armand was blind to the reason they had to leave Paris in the first place, and retreat to the family holdings in Poitiers. It was much cheaper to run a household here; they could use the kitchen gardens to grow some of their food, even if the estate brought in little. Armand had overheard his mother, and brother arguing about money many times over the last few years, that he supposed he had become immune to it after a while. Yet not to be able to go to school because of it...