"What the hell is that...? Is it a pony...?!" Geoffrey spat out when he stood waiting in the paddock and Miles finally appeared from the stables, leading a very small and furry black horse that was almost as round and broad as it was tall. The sun was blazing high in the sky since it was noon on a clear day, so they had both got rid of their jackets, but were obviously still semi-respectably dressed in waistcoats and shirts.
"This is your noble mount, Charlotte's old dressage po- horse. He is a horse! At least by a couple of inches..." Miles smirked and halted the horse in front of Geoffrey. "Geoff, meet Dewdrop. Dewey, meet Geoff." He made the introductions with a wave with his free hand that was not holding on to the reins. Geoffrey petted the animal's soft muzzle a bit warily.
"Dewdrop, could as well be 'Fairydust', or something..." He muttered in a disapproving tone.
"Come on, I could not throw you up on one of our racehorses either." Miles chuckled and glanced softly at Geoffrey. "And, as a matter of fact, I do believe his name is Dewdrop because of this white drop-formed star on his forehead..." He continued and whisked away the horse's thick fringe to show what he was talking about. "There is no chance you will fall off this lazy bastard. Also, he is a gelding, so he is nice and calm."
"A gelding...?" Geoffrey wondered.
"A castrated stallion. He has no balls." Miles explained, stroking Dewdrop's long nose, before turning towards Geoffrey with an embarrassed expression. "Oh, I am so sorry... I did not realise... I know that is only one of the many possible punishments, if you are condemned of being -"
"It's fine, I still have my balls left, thank you very much." Geoffrey snorted. "How do I get up on this thing?" He snapped annoyedly, mostly because of the fact that he was blushing, again. Miles handed the reins to Geoffrey and went to fetch a sturdy stool from the gate to the paddock, raising up small clouds of dust where he trudged in the sun-scorched sand.
"Climb up on that, put your left foot in the stirrup..." Miles began, but took a deep sigh when Geoffrey looked utterly confused. "This is a stirrup." He pointed at a metallic partly bended loop hanging from a leather strap in the saddle. "Then, throw your right leg over the horse and sit down softly on his back. Do not crash down like a bag of stones."
"Alright..." Geoffrey muttered nervously, but got up on the horse relatively well.
"See, it was not that hard! You are looking great, how do you feel?" Miles grinned and attached a long lunge line, in other words a several metres long rope, to the horse's bridle.
"Not so great..." Geoffrey sighed, but felt now grateful for the fact that the horse - which was only barely a horse - was not a single bit bigger and taller than it was.
"Have you truly never ridden a horse before?" Miles enquired, running his fingers through Dewey's fringe.
"I have, during my first year at Harrow... I fell off and gave Percy Lumley one more reason to torment me..." Geoffrey almost whispered.
"Let's not think about that now!" Miles quickly replied. "Take a couple of deep breaths for me, alright?" He said gently and looked Geoffrey encouragingly straight in the eyes from where he stood by the horse's head, which of course made it even harder for Geoffrey to calm down, but after a few very deep breaths he finally felt a bit better. "That's it." Miles smiled and stepped closer until his chest almost bumped into Geoffrey's knee. "Now, take the reins into your hands, like this... Between your little finger and ring finger." He instructed and Geoffrey found it once again very hard to concentrate on anything else when he felt Miles' warm and surprisingly soft hands on his own. "The reins need to be so short that you can feel the horse's mouth, but not so short that you keep pulling at him all the time. Also, you need to hold a firm grip on the reins, like you are holding a little bird in your fist. Not too tight so you kill it, but not too loose so it will fly away. Can you feel his mouth now?" Miles asked when he had helped Geoffrey to gather up the reins.
"I... I think so..." Geoffrey stuttered, astonished over how good a teacher Miles seemed to be, even though Kate and Eddie had clearly thought otherwise. Or, perhaps Geoffrey's pathetic helplessness had simply awakened some kind of need to nurture in him...
"Good. Do not hold your arms straight down like that, keep an angle in them all the time. Like this." Miles continued his instructions and his warm fingers wandered up to Geoffrey's elbows, but at least there was now the sleeve of his shirt between their bare skin. "I believe you are ready to go, then." He stated and backed away a few steps. "Press your legs gently against his sides and let go immediately when he starts walking. Just like that, there you go. Do not lean into the reins, if you need to grab a hold of something, grab his mane instead." Miles said, a bit more sternly this time, as he walked backwards next to the horse, a couple of metres away from it.
"Alright, this... This does not feel so bad..." Geoffrey exhaled, but his mood was quickly spoiled again.
"Dear lord..." Miles chuckled. "Why are you sitting there like that? You look like a ridiculous potato sack!" He grinned and Geoffrey was beginning to understand why Hyacinth's young daughter Isabella had given up on her riding career because of her cousin Miles.
"How am I supposed to sit then...?!" Geoffrey snapped back at him.
"Um... Imagine that there is some sort of invisible line that keeps pulling you towards the sky. Fine, that looks a bit better." Miles commented when Geoffrey straightened up his back a little, the lunge line hanging loosely between them. "Ride a circle around me. Pull gently on the left rein when you want to turn left... Good, but do not let go of the right rein, either. Very nice, it was more of a square than a circle, but it is a start." He smirked amusedly. "Give him a bit of your legs, he looks more like a snail than a horse." He urged, but the horse did not move any faster. "Geoff, did you hear me?"
"I did press him with my legs, but he does not move!" Geoffrey complained from the saddle.
"Are you nervously squeezing yourself around him all the time?" Miles asked in a pointy tone that suggested he already knew that was exactly what Geoffrey was doing.
"No." Geoffrey replied bluntly, though it was probably a lie.
"Halt the horse, now. Sit down heavily in the saddle and pull gently on the reins until he stops. Good." Miles commanded and walked back up to them. "Look, you are squeezing him with your knees all the time. Stop that, you need to have a relaxed seat in the saddle." He said while sliding his hand in between the saddle and Geoffrey's knee. "If you are squeezing your seat around the horse it means you want him to collect himself and go slower, so you are sending him very mixed signals if you do that while pressing him forward with your legs."
"Alright, I get it..." Geoffrey sighed, thinking that it was Miles who was sending him mixed signals when he was being curious about his orientation and looking at him like he did during the dance, but then again throwing that 'you do not fancy me, right?' question at his face.
"You are slumping again. Remember the line that keeps pulling you upwards. Also, your core needs to be working all the time..." Miles went on and Geoffrey's abdominal muscles immediately tensed up when Miles pressed his fingertips against his belly and spine. "Yes, like that. Working, but not nervously squeezed together. Your hips need to follow the movement of the horse, so this part needs to be relaxed too." He advised and patted Geoffrey on the hipbone, making him quite awkwardly remember what Amelia had joked about their riding lessons. "Very well, walk on then." Miles stated and backed away from the horse again.
***
"Alright, I believe we are done for the day. You even managed to trot, about... Five steps." Miles grinned after roughly an hour. "You can halt the horse and come down now."
"How...?" Geoffrey breathed out, all sweaty and out of puff, but feeling surprisingly good and almost a bit empowered by his relatively successful first riding lesson.
"Well, there are many ways to get down from a horse, but I believe the safest one is to remove your feet from both stirrups, swing your right leg over the horse and jump down on the left side of it... Whoops, there you go." Miles chuckled when Geoffrey thumped down so hard on his feet that he almost fell on his behind. "It was not that far to the ground, you jumped down as if you were on top of one of our actual horses." He teased, beginning to coil in the lunge line.
"Piss off, Miles..." Geoffrey laughed a bit offendedly, brushing some dirt off his trousers.
"You did really well." Miles smiled when he had walked up to the horse's head again, quite close to Geoffrey. He smirked softly back at Miles and suddenly there was a short but sweet moment when they just kept on looking at each other's smiling faces in silence.
"Uh, I..." Miles quickly cleared his throat and glanced away. "I want to see if this old pony still knows some tricks... Move aside, please." He requested with another little cough, removed the lunge line from the bridle, handed it to Geoffrey and jumped up on the horse with feline smoothness.
"Oh, sorry..." Geoffrey blurted out and scurried away to sit on the wooden fence that surrounded the paddock. He strung the rolled up lunge line around a pole and tried to find a position where his already aching behind would not trouble him too much. Then, Geoffrey's jaw dropped, as Dewdrop looked like it turned into a completely different horse when Miles was riding him. Its walk turned brisk, balanced and collected and soon it had jolted into an equally exemplary trot around the paddock. "Alright, I am impressed...! How the hell are you doing that?" Geoffrey yelled when the horse was trotting sideways across the paddock, its legs zigzagging in a steady rhythm.
"It takes years of practice, dear Geoffrey!" Miles hooted back at him.
"Oh, come on! Now you are just showing off!" Geoffrey laughed. "How do you make him dance like that?"
"I am not making him dance, I am just asking him to change the leg he is cantering on..." Miles chuckled as the horse cantered past Geoffrey, who tried not to think about how Miles looked like some fairytale prince or a gallant knight on top of the horse, his dark hair billowing in the wind.
"Change the leg?" He wondered loudly, interrupting his daydreaming, but winced and almost fell down from the fence when he suddenly heard a female voice behind him.
"Yes, do you see how the horse's left front leg is now, like... Leading the movement. Now it switched to the right front leg doing the same, did you see that?" Sarah Cranleigh smiled prettily while leaning her elbows against the fence. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!"
"I am fine." Geoffrey grunted, a bit too harshly, while Miles slowed the horse down to a walk and steered it towards him and Sarah, finally halting in front of them.
"Impressive." Sarah smirked at Miles and Geoffrey felt every inch of his skin flare up with jealousy.
"Well, he is no Lipizzaner, but he is doing his best." Miles replied and patted the horse's sweaty neck.
"That's right, I heard you spent over a year at The Spanish Riding School in Vienna! I am so envious, I wish I could travel there one day and at least see those white stallions, although I would never be allowed to ride them." Sarah smiled a bit melancholically.
"You can ride Dewey, if you want." Miles offered and jumped down from the horse as elegantly as he had got up on it.
"Maybe later, I do not have proper riding attire on me." Sarah replied politely. Geoffrey cast a sour look at her indeed very figure-hugging and flattering tight turquoise dress.
"Alright." Miles said and whistled to get the attention of a stablehand who hurried into the paddock and took the horse from him. Once Dewey was taken care of, he ran his fingers through his raven hair that had got messed up during the ride, strolling towards Geoffrey and Sarah.
"You have some really nice-looking yearlings at your stables." She commented, still leaning relaxedly against the fence and Geoffrey was starting to feel like a third wheel while sitting on it. Miles was now leaning his back against the fence too, a bit away from Sarah.
"I think so too. Any in particular?" He asked her, beginning to sound more interested in the conversation than he usually was with strangers, Geoffrey noted annoyedly.
"Hmm... The black colt with the stripe on his head." Sarah twinkled, her blue eyes sparkling.
"Impressive." Miles smirked back at her over his shoulder, quoting her previous statement about his riding. It was the last drop for Geoffrey, who quickly turned around on top of the fence and jumped down on the outside, the same side Sarah was standing on.
"I need a bath, I will see you at dinner." He declared dryly, without looking at either Miles or the young woman who had come and ruined everything. The fence between the two of them would not hold for long, soon they would be all over each other - at least verbally if not physically - and Geoffrey did not want to be around when that happened.
"Geoff, wait...!" Miles hooted after him, but he would have been forced to either run around the entire paddock or crawl through the fence in front of a lady to get to him, so apparently he gave up quite easily and let Geoffrey continue his march back up to the house, past Violet who was pretending to tend to some rose bushes, but was in reality carefully chaperoning her husband's granddaughter.
***
The dinner was served outside in the gardens again, like it usually was in the summers if the weather was good enough and there were many guests in the house. The Bridgertons, the Cranes, the Cranleighs, Geoffrey and this time even the Davies couple - Charlotte and Jack - were seated by the same long table, although Charlotte had requested to be seated as far away from Miles as possible. Geoffrey, instead, had his usual place next to Miles, but much to his disdain, Miss Sarah Cranleigh had been placed to sit opposite to the viscount's only unmarried son.
"I saw the doctor leave the house just before dinner. Is everything alright with dear Lavender?" Anthony wondered in a worried tone once everyone had sat down.
"Yes, Lavvie is fine, he was not here for her..." Eddie beamed while spooning up some purée for his daughter, who was sitting on his lap and eagerly enjoying her evening snack. "Do you want to tell them or shall I?" He asked Amelia, next to him. She was in the middle of wiping away some food that had dripped down on Lavender's pink modiste-made dress.
"Go ahead." She smirked at him and sipped on her water.
"Well, we have exciting news -" Eddie began happily.
"Oh, dear lord..." Miles sighed loudly, dropping his forehead against the table. "Why...?!"
"Why...?" Eddie blurted out. "I don't understand, are you unfamiliar with the process, or...?"
"Ha-ha, brother. No, I mean why can you not stop procreating? Your daughter can barely walk and now you will have another child! Just when we were about to get some peace and quiet in this house when our cousins are getting a bit older, you two have to come and fill it with your screaming and crying children." Miles declared sourly, lifting his head only to glower at his brother.
"Well, what can I say, Miles? I guess it's just the circle of life." Eddie replied equally venomously. "So... Like my dear little brother here already figured out and put it so eloquently, my wife and I are procreating, again." He smiled strainedly at the rest of the table, before continuing to feed his daughter while the congratulations started and Violet broke into tears.
"Oh, wonderful...! Did you hear that, Lavender? You are going to have a little brother or sister!" Anthony grinned broadly and grabbed her tiny slimy hand over the table.
"It is wonderful news indeed, do not listen to Miles." Kate smiled warmly at Amelia and Eddie.
"We are so happy, but it will be a long seven or eight months for me... Due to Lavender's premature birth the doctor forbade me from doing any physical activities during this pregnancy. That includes riding, hiking in the woods and..." Amelia cast a quick look at a mischievously smirking Eddie. "Every other sort of even slightly athletic thing."
"You'll be fine! I will buy you a ton of new books and all you have to do is relax and enjoy yourself." Eddie smiled and kissed her forehead. "Alright, Lavender. Bedtime for you." He then stated, turned around on the long bench and gave the child to the nurse.
"I hate it that we are not the ones putting her to bed..." Amelia muttered, piercing a piece of boiled potato with her fork.
"She has to get used to spending more time with the nurse. Soon we'll have a baby in the house and before we know it, Lavvie will start her lessons with a governess." Eddie replied matter-of-factly, but gave her hand a gentle encouraging squeeze.
"Miles, perhaps you could show Dashwood to Miss Sarah tomorrow?" Kate quickly chimed in when Miles had opened up his mouth again and judging by the look on his face, he was not going to say anything nice.
"Why would I show Dashwood to her? There is nothing to see. He is just an old broken down horse now." Miles snapped back, making Kate take a deep sigh as she realised that she should have suggested something - anything - else.
"So, how many horses do you have?" Sarah asked with a polite smile. Kate cast her a grateful glance.
"Fifty... Eight, I think?" She pondered. "With both the racing, riding and carriage horses."
"Soon fifty-nine. The first Dashwood foal will be born any day now." Miles filled in, pushing some peas around on his plate.
"It is quite amazing that he is still holding the national record." Sarah smiled warmly at Miles, making Amelia shoot a worried look over the table at Geoffrey, who was staring angrily into his food.
"I do not give a damn about some national record. That horse could have gone on to break every world record if my brother had not ruined him..." Miles snarled, not even looking at Sarah.
"Miles..." Eddie sighed.
"And yes, sure, I would have understood if ruining Dashwood had somehow saved your daughter's life, but no... Ruining him just took you home to see your living and breathing, already born baby, an hour or two faster than the carriage would have done...!" Miles spat out in Eddie's direction.
"I didn't know if either my wife or daughter was living and breathing at the time...!!" Eddie retorted, slamming his hands flat on the table. "All I knew was that a messenger rode up to us halfway to London, telling us that Amelia was already in labour and it didn't look good, so yes, I raced the goddamned horse back home at a much faster speed and longer distance than was good for him, but what would you have done in my place...?!" He yelled and would have jumped up if Amelia had not grabbed his arm.
"Well, I don't know Eddie, because thanks to you, I do not have a wife...!!" Miles roared and stormed away from the table, even if Geoffrey tried to stop him.
"Miles...!" He hooted after him, but the furious man was already marching halfway towards the stables.
"Perhaps it is better to let him cool down a bit..." Kate smiled apologetically at Geoffrey.
"Or perhaps you should go and talk to him, Sarah?" Violet suggested with zest.
"Definitely not, Mr Bridgerton is clearly still in love with his former fiancé...!" She exclaimed, evident shock clinging to her pretty face.
"It does not matter, she is already married to another man." Violet huffed and rolled her eyes like the girl was making no sense at all. "How is your sister, Geoffrey? Is she happy?"
***
Slowly, the dinner turned into supper while the sun was going down in the west, draping the world in peachy hues. Drinks were flowing and the several main courses had changed into equally numerous desserts. After Miles had left, the mood at the table had become more relieved and laughter echoed in the warm summer evening. Kate had volunteered to go and escort the Crane children to their bedrooms and Geoffrey had gone to bed too, claiming he was exhausted from the riding, leaving Amelia and Anthony alone at their end of the table.
"How do you think Lavvie will react to getting a sibling?" Anthony enquired with a smile while pouring himself some more Scotch and Amelia some more lemonade.
"Ah, I don't know... I'm sure it will be a bit of a shock for her at first, as she's used to being our only little princess, but I think it will do good for her to share our attention with someone else." Amelia smirked. "She has met Gregory's twins, Augie's son and Geoffrey's daughter, but she did not seem terribly impressed by any of them..."
"I know that she is going to love her little brother or sister, take this from a man who has seven of them." Anthony chuckled and turned to gaze at Eddie, who had moved a bit further away by the table to talk with Eloise, Phillip and Oliver. "Your marriage has done good to him, Amelia. I feel like he has grown more during these past two years than during all the rest of them." He suddenly said, making Amelia look at him in surprise. The relationship between her and her father-in-law had of course improved a lot from their difficult start and Lavender had made their bond only deeper, but Anthony Bridgerton was still a man who did not succumb into emotional and sensitive speeches too often.
"Oh?" She blurted out.
"I must admit that I was a bit worried about him before he met you. He did not seem to take the role of a future viscount seriously, so I was afraid he would run away to Europe to play the piano and ditch the title entirely. Miles, on the other hand, would have been good with the numbers and accounts, but I would have feared to leave the poor villagers in his hands..." Anthony grimaced and cast a meaningful look at Amelia, before turning back to look at his eldest son again. "He keeps surprising me, my Eddie. I have always known that he is a clever and sweet young man, but I am still in awe everyday over how good a father he is for Lavender."
"Well, from what I've heard, he has had a very good role model in that question... For two generations already." Amelia smiled fondly at Anthony, who had turned towards her again instead of Eddie, looking evidently moved by her words.
"And I was just about to say that it is you who bring out the best in him, Lady Amelia Bridgerton." Anthony smirked back at her. Amelia gave out a laugh, but lowered her gaze to the table at the same time, making a more melancholic smile spread on Anthony's face. "He used to do that too, your father. When he laughed, he often looked down at the ground at the same time, somehow maybe trying to curb his joy. I know that is what society tries to force us to do, curb every emotion that surfaces, but you should not. You should let joy bubble up, as well as anger and every other emotion." He pondered - surprisingly wisely.
"I didn't even realise he did that, but now that you said it, I believe he did..." Amelia replied with a bittersweet smile, now gazing somewhere into the distance where the setting sun did its best to paint the surrounding fields and forests with the loveliest shades of red and gold. "Does it ever go away, the pain of losing one's father...?" She asked silently, thinking about the first time she had sat by this table in these same gardens a couple of years ago, with the wound left behind by her father's sudden passing more fresh and hurtful than it was now.
"I am afraid not, to be honest..." Anthony sighed. "But the pain changes, it gets softer and less dominant. More and more tolerable, until something stirs it up again."
"Like... When you receive children of your own and realise that your father will never see them, or be with them when they grow up...?" Amelia spoke softly, glancing at him.
"Exactly..." Anthony agreed with a sad smirk. "Or when your mother meets a new man." He added with a grunt, twirling his glass in his hand.
"Ah, I know that feeling..." Amelia exhaled, before bursting into laughter. "Oh God, I was behaving like such a naïve little brat when I had just returned home after my first visit here at Aubrey Hall and my mother was going to meet up with some man... I screamed at her and ran away into the night like some madwoman, foolishly stomping through the dangerous streets of London by foot to get to the other side of town and stay with... A friend." She finished, but the slightly amused look on Anthony's face told that he clearly understood which friend she had ended up spending the night with.
"Do you think she will ever get remarried, your mother?" He asked and sipped on his whiskey.
"No, I don't think so." Amelia replied without hesitation. "My mother doesn't need anyone to tell her that she cannot get drunk with Genevieve on a Tuesday." She concluded, making Anthony chuckle.
"No, she does not." He grinned. "But if she nevertheless does, be ready for when your children start calling that new man their grandpa, because that hurts too. Even if he is a good man, he can never be as good as their real grandfather would have been." Anthony sighed, looking at Violet and Michael who were walking slowly back to the house, followed by Miss Sarah. Amelia could only hope that Miles' outburst had startled the girl enough and she would let him be, so that he and Geoffrey could figure out their perhaps altered relationship in peace.
"What are you two plotting?" Eddie suddenly asked when he plopped down next to Amelia again.
"Nothing, just discussing our dead fathers and finding similarities in our situations." Amelia said with a lopsided smile.
"Ah, good. Or, not good, but... You know." Eddie uttered, a bit awkwardly. Even though he always tried his best to listen to his wife and help her with her grief, he knew that he could never truly understand what she had gone through. But luckily, his father did. As did his mother, of course, but Viscountess Kate Bridgerton had never seemed to be as badly traumatised about her father's death as her husband was.
"Do you have any clue what is going on with your brother, Eddie? I mean... He has always been a bit crude, yes, but he has never lashed out at everyone like this, with both his fists and words..." Anthony muttered, swirling his glass around in his hand again.
"No, I don't. Apart from the fact that he is apparently still mad at me and Amie for ruining his chances with Emily, as well as at me for ruining his favourite horse. And frankly, I don't think it helps that grandmother keeps pushing some girl at him, though Miss Cranleigh seems nice and knows a lot about horses." Eddie replied unenthusiastically and wrapped one arm around Amelia's shoulders.
"I think so too, but your grandmother has a mind of her own..." Anthony sighed, relinquished.
"Well, then again... I think it would help if Miles would finally get properly laid, not with some occasional harlot, but with someone he actually loves." Eddie declared and sipped on his drink.
"Eddie...!" Amelia hissed at him scoldingly and slapped him on the arm that was still looped around her, while Anthony tried to hide away his chuckle in a cough.
"What? He could become a completely different man! Not this damned sourpuss he has been for the past twenty-three years... Except for when he is with Geoffrey, of course. I wonder what on earth is the reason for that, too..." Eddie mused with a contemplative look.
"Yes, I wonder why..." Amelia muttered with a faint smirk, mostly to herself, while leaning her head against his chest. A fond smile spread on Anthony's lips while looking at them over the table.
"Oh! That reminds me, seeing the two of you still being so blissful together... Simon wrote to me today, they will probably be here tomorrow evening with Augie and David." He said, now with a bit more serious expression on his face.
"Just the three of them? Back already, so soon after the ball? Has something happened?" Eddie wondered.
"Well, apparently after they got home today, Augie had got into a huge fight with his wife and threatened to leave for London and stay an entire week at a brothel, so... His father thought it would be better for him to come here, away from all temptations of the city." Anthony explained and emptied his glass with one long gulp.
"Ouch..." Amelia grimaced. She did not know Augie's wife Roberta very well, because they mostly spent their time on the Hastings lands or in London, while she and Eddie had not visited the capitol since their wedding day, but she still felt sorry for her.
"Clearly, your cousin Augie is not coping with being a husband and a father to a young child as well as you are, dear son." Anthony hummed and stood up from the table. "Maybe you can try and talk some sense to him? But now, I must call it a night for me. Your mother is evidently not coming back, so she has either been locked up in some closet by Eloise's wildlings, or then she is already waiting for me in bed... Goodnight and congratulations one more time." He smirked and left towards the house in the descending dusk, while Eddie and Amelia murmured their thanks and goodnights to him in unison.
"When did I become the one who has to 'talk sense' to everyone? First to Miles and now to Augie, too..." Eddie sighed and wrapped both arms around his wife.
"And then, when you are the viscount one day, you will have to listen to the problems of all your tenants as well..." Amelia commented with a teasing smile.
"Great..." Eddie muttered with a huff. "But I'll be fine, as long as I have you by my side. And our ever growing flock of children..." He chuckled softly and kissed her auburn hair, while Amelia burrowed herself tighter against him. "We'll make so many children that we'll drive Miles straight back to Vienna."
"Eddie..." Amelia sighed a bit tiredly, but the corner of her lip twitched nevertheless.
"What? I'm tired of him behaving like a douchebag all the time. Mother and father have always coddled him - and apparently they still do! If I would talk to other people like that and beat up our guests at the ball, father would scream his lungs out at me... But when it's him, they are just like 'ah, but it is Miles, he has always been difficult'..." Eddie growled sourly.
"Except for when he is with Geoffrey..." Amelia pointed out, absentmindedly caressing the still quite flat curve of her belly, contemplating and piecing together everything she had witnessed today.