Classy

Chapter Six

More adorable Thomas-ness coming. And more Caroline being a Grade-A Wanker.

Love, Cam

♡

Madeline Darcy

In which I accidentally befriend a child

I handled Francesca being in my house much the same way I handled any uncomfortable situation; I avoided it as much as possible. It shouldn't have been difficult, given the size of Netherfield, but somehow we always seemed to be in the same part of the house at the same times of day. I found myself going to places I actively didn't want to be in order to avoid her, only to find her probably doing the exact same thing.

In trying to avoid Francesca, I accidentally kept finding Gates and Jane together. I'd seen them chatting, reading together, walking in the very pretty garden, playing with Thomas, and I'd even caught them baking cookies together for her class, as she was a teaching assistant at a primary school. It seemed like every free moment they had, they were together, and that was unnerving.

It wasn't necessarily a bad thing; Jane was nice. Very nice, actually. She and Gates were beacons of polite light in our mildly sarcastic household. She was absolutely stunning as well, very pretty with golden blond hair and big blue eyes. She actually looked very dissimilar to her sister, who had dark frizzy hair and even darker eyes. Not that Francesca wasn't pretty; she was, despite her tendency to glare at me whenever I was nearby. When she smiled, forgetting I was in her presence, she was really very beautiful.

I didn't mention that particular fact to anyone for a bit. I would have happily gone my entire life without talking about Francesca Bennet to anyone, but of course, I slipped up one evening.

"Good Lord," Caroline said, once Francesca and her son had gone off to their room after a stilted half-hour of conversation after dinner. "That child is tedious."

Gates frowned. He'd been with Jane for the last hour, but she had retired to her own room and he was sat with us. "Thomas is great!" he said.

"Maybe if you like kids," I interjected, trying to diffuse what I was sure would be an argument. "I think he's great. But you know Caroline doesn't like spending time with children, Gates."

"Mm," he said, but he still sounded unimpressed.

"I don't mind some of them," Caroline said dismissively. "But that one is - ugh, so loud. Running around everywhere - our parents would never have let us get away with such nonsense."

Privately, I thought that Thomas was just being a normal kid, and he was hardly causing trouble. He was just four, and four-year-olds enjoyed running around and laughing. That said, Caroline had probably been as up her own arse at four as she was now at thirty-three.

"Still, hardly surprising considering his mother," Caroline said, oblivious to the growing irritation on her brother's face. "You know she refused the car again today? Pretty much threw it back in Gates' face?"

"She wanted to pick Thomas up without it being a whole thing," Gates said, his voice as close to snappy as it ever got. "It's a normal daycare, Caroline, rocking up in a car with a driver is going to cause some comments. Jane didn't exactly want people prying into her personal life either, she works there."

"They're disrupting the maids' work, you know," Caroline continued, ignoring him. "They keep talking to the staff and asking for their life stories - I heard them comparing salaries recently, Francesca was saying how she earns less at that shop."

That shop happened to be a shop that Caroline frequented. I wondered if she went there just to make Francesca feel uncomfortable.

"Yes, because they underpay their employees," Gates said shortly, and I could see he was getting upset; he hated arguing with his sisters. "She can talk to whomever she likes, including the staff. We're not in the eighteen-hundreds, they don't have to be silent or take the back stairs. They're employees and they can chat if they want."