"Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
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III.
Adam had kept to his word, and sure enough, Joe Parish was seated opposite Perrie at dinner that evening.
Perrie was seated in between her two sisters. Her father and grandmother were at either ends of the table. Her mother was beside her father. And there Joe was, in what usually would be Charlie's chair, as though he were one of the family.
Perrie wondered how many times Joe had joined her family for dinner without her knowledge. Just had far had he ingratiated himself into her family without her knowledge?
As the footmen placed the first course of soup in front of each of them, Perrie suddenly smiled rather wickedly. While she hadn't looked properly in the library for anything on poisons yet, that did not mean that she would not be able to convince Joe of something amiss.
"Eat your soup, Mr Parish," she encouraged, smiling politely. She didn't like how formally she had addressed him, but she knew that her parents would have expected nothing less now that he was an adult, and she was one in waiting according to her father.
In childhood, Perrie had usually referred to him by elongating his name with dramatic flair or a murderous growl.
Joe's brown eyes flicked up to hers, and his gaze narrowed suspiciously. She could see his lips pressing together firmly, as though he wanted to accuse her of something, but he dared not in front of her parents.
Oh, this was a good game. Joe had informed her himself that he did not want to spoil whatever it was that he was doing with Adam, and so he would not risk making a scene at the dinner table.
Perrie collected her own spoon, deliberately choosing the wrong one. It was a shame Mrs Liscombe was not there to scold her about the shame she would bring to her husband's family with her incorrect silverware etiquette. She scooped a spoonful of the soup onto her utensil and delicately pressed her lips to it, allowing the warm, flavoursome broth to enter her mouth.
Joe did not tear his eyes away from her, his jawline tightening with ever second that passed.
"Lily, I've yet to hear of your school tale," Cecily announced, capturing the table's attention as well as directing the line of conversation. "How did you find it?"
With her family suitable distracted, Perrie reached for the salt on the table and elegantly sprinkled some over her bowl. Her soup did not need it; Mrs Reynolds had prepared it perfectly, but Perrie was wanting to be theatrical.
"Sometimes I find that a good soup often needs a little special something added to make it truly perfect. Don't you agree, Mr Parish?"
Perrie's own eyes narrowed as she watched him with a smile that dared him to challenge her. Serves you right for entering my house! she thought.
"What did you do, Imp?" he mouthed to her subtly.
Perrie merely smiled, before she reached for her wine glass and turned in her sister's direction, pretending to have listened to Lily's response to their grandmother's question.
"Before we enjoy our meal any further," Adam said after Cecily and Lily's conversation had concluded. Joe, meanwhile, had not touched his soup. "I would like to propose a toast. Would everyone please charge their glasses?"
The entire party, including Joe, lifted their glass, looking to Adam.
"I'd like to properly welcome my darling Perrie and Lily home. The walls of Ashwood House are entirely too quiet without you. We have missed you greatly, and I forbid you from ever leaving me again." Adam grinned.
The table laughed, but Perrie and Lily both had colour in their cheeks as they looked to their father.
"To a future spinster," Joe toasted, as he looked directly into Perrie's eyes, though he laughed as though he were jovially joining in on Adam's joke.
Adam chuckled, before saying, "It would be wrong of me to hope."
"Papa!" cried Lily.
"Adam, don't utter such complete hogwash!" Cecily scolded. "I don't even want that word mentioned in this house after what I had to ensure with Susanna. My daughter, Mr Parish, was nearly four and twenty when she married. Perhaps she was already four and twenty?" Cecily paused in reflection. "I seem to have been so traumatised by the shock of having such an elderly bride, I cannot recall. I thought I was going to have to marry off a grey-haired daughter." She shook her head with a roll of her eyes. "No," she said firmly, "Perrie is an absolute diamond. Certainly, she has a few ... dozen ... rough edges. Nothing that a lovely dress and a tiara or two won't hide."
The colour that had filled Perrie's cheeks from her father's sentimental toast turned completely crimson at her grandmother's comments to the table. Ordinarily she would not have cared, but there was a certain smirking bloodhound sitting opposite her who was enjoying this all too well.
"I am one for a challenge, Grandmamma." Perrie decided to take back control. She would not allow Joe Parish to see her embarrassed. "If I happen to be five and twenty before I find a gentleman who does not make me want to vomit at the sight of him, then I will have beaten Aunt Susanna's record." She put on a smile, before saying, "Aren't you hungry, Mr Parish?"
"I ate a particularly large midday meal. I am saving myself for the meat course, my lady, but I thank you for your kind attention." Joe had managed to unclench his jaw to speak to her in a somewhat cordial tone.
"But the soup is so delicious! I insist that you try some!" Perrie urged, her grin returning as it was no longer her squirming in her seat.
"I hardly think anyone wants to eat when you speak of such things as sickness, Perrie," Grace interjected, putting down her own spoon. But in saying that, her mother had inadvertently given Joe permission to acquiesce to Perrie's request.
"I don't mind, Mama," Alice replied, shrugging, as she continued to slurp her soup in a way that would have given Mrs Liscombe a nervous complaint. It was practically symphonic to hear.
"But I must say, it is refreshing to hear you interact with our guest so kindly, Perrie," Adam said proudly. "You two must have settled your differences today and for that I am glad. It will make for a much more peaceful household."
Perrie and Joe briefly glared at one another before they both turned to Adam.
"Weren't you going to explain why he is here, Papa?" prompted Perrie.
Adam nodded with a knowing smile. "Yes, I haven't forgotten. Mr Parish's father and I were at school together years ago. The Viscount wrote to me –"
"Viscount?" Perrie exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock as her head snapped back to stare at Joe.
Joe Parish, the stupid boy who had been her mortal enemy for most of her life, was the son of a viscount? How had she never known this? And what on earth had he been doing at a church school in the Ashwood parish?
"What of it?" Joe muttered.
"I never knew ..." That meant that Joe Parish was a peer, and that technically he would be styled as 'Honourable'. Perrie did not know if she would ever be able to stomach the idea of Joe being honourable.
Was he to inherit?
Perrie's wondering thought was answered quickly by her father, however.
"Mr Parish's father is the Viscount Evesham," Adam clarified. "In short, he asked if I would mentor Mr Parish for his eventual role in his elder brother's household, just as I once did for your Uncle Jem."
The words 'in short' rang in Perrie's mind, as she knew that there was much more to the story. Why on earth would a viscount call upon a duke for such a favour? And why would the son of a viscount take up a role in his brother's household? Perrie had not known that Joe had indeed had a brother, but didn't the sons of peers usually go into the clergy or into military service?
Her Uncle Jack was a second son, and Perrie had heard her grandmother mention of several occasions that he had been meant for the church, and that he was fortunate to have found success in publishing as he would not have been very dedicated to leading a flock.
It seemed like quite an odd vocation for the son of a peer to end up as a steward.
"Mr Parish has been and will continue to stay with us while he learns what it is to manage an estate," her father concluded.
Perrie had been in the midst of taking a sip of her wine when her father had added in that little tidbit of information, and it so shocked her that she choked the burgundy liquid down her windpipe.
Lily hit her in the middle of her back as Perrie coughed loudly. When she was recovered enough, she exclaimed, "He is staying with us?"
Joe had a wry smile as he reached for his own glass.
"So, when you suggested inviting him to dine with us tonight in your study, he was always going to because he has been living in our house for months?" Perrie had not meant to sound so accusatory, but she could not help it. Her parents had had ample opportunity to tell her about this, and though they assumed that Joe Parish had grown up, he clearly had not. "The next thing you will tell me is that you have given him my bedroom!"
"The bed's not long enough."
Perrie's neck cracked at the velocity in which her head snapped backward to glare murderously at him, and she was seconds away from lunging across the table when she saw the shock on Joe's own face, as though he hadn't meant to let such a comment slip out of his mouth.
Perrie did not give her parents a moment to register that Joe had made a snide remark. Perhaps, were she thinking logically, she would have pointed that out, but in that moment, her instincts were to fight fire with fire.
"Do you know where a really lovely place to live is? Australia. I hear they send all the nicest heathens there," Perrie snapped poisonously. "You would fit in perfectly."
Joe, similarly, seemed to forget himself in that moment as he abandoned his glass. Brown eyes met blue as he retorted, "You would know, of course."
Perrie let out a hiss. "I didn't know you had a brother. Is he handsome, or does he look like you?"
Joe's eye twitched. "I am told that we look similar, just as some might say that you share a likeness with a garden gnome."
Perrie screamed with frustration, and before anyone could do anything to stop her, she threw her bowl, which was still half filled with soup, directly at Joe's head. Joe ducked out of the way, and the bowl and its contents splattered all over the footman standing behind him.
Perrie gasped just as her father shouted, "ENOUGH!"
Everyone was frozen with shock, and Perrie was immediately filled with shame as to what she had done. If only stupid Joe hadn't moved, then she would have been very satisfied despite what her father would have to say.
"The pair of you!" cried Adam. "That is quite enough!"
"Oh, Stewart, I am so sorry!" Perrie cried as she leapt up from her chair and hurried around the table to assist the footman. Her hands fluttered over the startled footman's dirty livery before she had the idea to collect a napkin from the table. Perrie had just enough nerve to push her family's boundaries one last time as she darted back to the table, leaning over Joe in an intrusive fashion to collect his napkin from his lap. She deliberately whipped him across the face with it, before she rushed back to the footman to assist him.
"It's quite alright, milady," Stewart rebuffed as Perrie attempted to wipe at the soup stains on his jacket. By this point her mother and grandmother had arrived to assist as well. "These types of ... accidents ... can happen."
"Please go downstairs and change, Stewart," Grace encouraged gently. "And could you please have a scrubbing brush and bucket sent up? Perrie will be cleaning up this mess."
Perrie would accept that. She would have cleaned the dining room while dancing had the soup bowl hit its intended target.
"It seems that I have overestimated the both of you," Adam surmised just as soon as Stewart had left the dining room. Looking back at the back of Joe's frame, Perrie could see that he was very still. He had lost control, just as she had, but at least her father had seen that he still was just as horrid as he had been as a child. "You both need to find a way to co-exist. I will not have another one of my servants serving as collateral damage in this war you seem determined to fight."
"My most sincere apologies, Your Grace," Joe offered immediately, his voice filled with contrition.
"Do not apologise to me, but to Perrie. And Perrie, you must do the same. Immediately."
Joe rose from his chair and pushed it back so that he could step away from the table. He turned to face Perrie, and he took a deep breath, the contrition still startlingly evident. "I apologise, Lady Perrie. My comments were unnecessary, and they were certainly said thoughtlessly. I do hope you can forgive me."
Imp. Where was it? Where was the 'imp'? His sincerity was unsettling. There was no way that Joe Parish was offering her a genuine apology. Pigs would fly before that happened.
Perrie would not mean a word, but she needed to appease her father. Perrie subtly hid one of her hands in the folds of her skirt as she crossed her fingers. "I am sorry, too."
"Good. Now we may eat in peace!" Adam declared, before he signalled the servants for the next course to be brought out.
Cecily and Grace returned to their places, leaving just Perrie and Joe standing. Before he turned back to his own chair, Joe produced his right hand, which he had been concealing in his pocket. His index and middle fingers were crossed, and he winked at her.
The war had only just begun.
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Hope you enjoyed it!! You guys know me, there's always so much more than meets the eye when it comes to my stories. I love a bit of drama, some suffering, both necessary and unnecessary, let's be honest! Joe's got a tale, don't you worry. He's being a dick, and there's never any excuse for that, but there's a tale to go with it.
Meanwhile, Perrie's a react first, ask forgiveness later type of lass and I respect it.
I talk like I've got no control over these people when I have all the control and it makes me laugh. But honestly, sometimes these people write themselves. I can hear some characters super clearly in my head, some more than others, and it makes them easy to write because I just know what they would say or do. And at that moment, I wrote that Perrie threw the bowl of soup. I didn't feel like it was me who decided that, but Perrie did. Does that sound mad? hahahahaha
Anyway, have I just uploaded three days in a row? When was the last time that happened? Hahahah, I wrote tonight because I think I'm going to be too sore to write tomorrow. I did my first reformer pilates class today and loved it! But my god it was hard!!
It's a long, bumpy, winding road, with a few loop-the-loops before I get us to the ending ... stick with me, trust me, I get you there in the end, don't I? Hehehee
Alright, bedtime. Pray for my muscles in the morning. Apparently I have them, they were just hiding and pilates hunted them down like a bloodhound.
Nighttttt! Vote and comment xxxx