A Truelove of Turtle Doves

Chpt 13 - Realisation

"What are those blasted pirates still doing here? Honestly, their presence is just a nuisance to the other town folk," grumbled my father who was, once again, peering out of the drawing room window at Le Dauphin.

"I know Benedict, I know. Why don't you come away from the window," urged my mother.

As always, my father ignored her.

I glanced up from my sketchpad. My mother and Mrs Hardinge were having a conversation about something (it was probably to do with some other friends of my parents), Mr Hardinge was 'reading' (he had a book open, and he was looking it at, but in all honesty I doubted that he was actually reading it), my father continued to stare out of the window, and Josie and Lauren were talking under their breath to each other. Edward was standing next to where they were seated, stoic as expected. I was lucky in the fact that Michael had been sent off to take care of some errands, so his face wasn't currently around for me to want to punch.

I went back to my drawing, working into it to try and get the details right. The key word was try. No matter how many times I redrew it or worked into the pencil sketch, I couldn't get the details down in a way that looked good. Were all pirates this hard to draw?

A low voice caused me to jump slightly. "Is that your pirate friend?"

I breathed out. Edward. I looked up to see him leaning over me, staring intently at my artwork. It made me feel slightly embarrassed. How had he moved so quietly? No one else in the room, save for Josie and Lauren, had noticed Edward's movement.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Josephine and Lauren were curious as to why you have barely said anything for the past 2 hours, which is incredibly unlike you. I see that it is because you have been so focused on drawing your 'friend'."

I raised my eyebrows. "What's with that tone?"

"Hm? I don't know what you are talking about," he replied innocently.

I knew that he knew what I was talking about. He had a stupid smirk plastered on my face.

"Oh shove off," I growled, "go back to your stoic.. chauffeur-ing or something."

He snickered, but headed back over to where the two sisters were, who looked incredibly curious as to what had just been exchanged by the two of us. Edward leaned down and whispered to the two of them, and after a few seconds, massive identical grins spread across their faces. Lauren wiggled her eyebrows at me.

I stuck my tongue out at them. They returned the gesture. I went back to my drawing, very conscious of the fact that they were still watching me.

What I really wanted to do was go out and visit Francis but my parents had insisted that I stayed inside so that we could all spend some 'proper time together'. Not that they were going to talk to me or anything. Unless they wanted to annoy me, they'd stay quiet. However, it meant that I was pretty much confined to the house and garden which, after a couple of hours, was really boring. After the past few adventures with Francis I'd been left restless - I didn't want to waste time sitting around doing nothing. I wanted to go out and explore, like I used to with Josephine and Lauren. I wanted to enjoy myself again.

"(Y/N)?"

I jolted slightly, looking up from my sketchpad to see everyone in the room looking at me expectantly.

"What?"

My mother huffed. "Not 'what', young man, that's incredibly rude."

I rolled my eyes, but I really wasn't interested in starting an argument. "I'm sorry, could you please repeat that? I missed it."