Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

  After a few moments, moments that Anne had assumed meant that they had gone to sleep, Mary asked, “Do you think Henrietta will break up with Charlie and go after Derek?”

  “I think Etta,” he replied pointedly, “will do whatever she thinks is best for herself. However, I think Isa might have a chance with Derek.”

  “Louisa,” Mary pointedly countered, “is a bit young for Derek. She needs a year or two to mature. I think Henrietta will realize that Derek is steadier than Charlie and go after him. I saw the way she was looking at him when she came over and he was going over your history notes with you.”

  Charles didn’t say anything, but he had also seen the way Derek had been tracking Anne throughout the night after his first, and what could only be described as heated, exchange with Anne.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Waiting for Charles had become a habit. If only the guy would be reasonable and agree to have his tutoring sessions in the library like most of the other people who requested Derek’s services.

  This put Derek and Anne, and occasionally Charlie, in interesting positions.

  One afternoon it started to come to a head. She had let Derek in, telling him that Charles was running late. When she returned to the living room to play with her nephews, he followed her, settling into one of the sofas where he could watch for Charles to get home.

  Ten minutes later, Charlie knocked on the door. “Is Etta here? She told me to meet her here.”

  “She went shopping with Isa and Mary. They’re upstairs looking at their bounty now. Just go to the living room and hang out with Derek and I’ll let her know that you’re here.”

  “Derek’s here?” Charlie’s face blanched. He was the last person Charlie wanted to be stuck in a room with even if Anne was acting like a buffer.

  Anne, moving towards the stairs, didn’t see his reaction when she confirmed it and then called up the stairs to Etta.

  Returning to the living room, she didn’t notice the guys were carefully avoiding the other. Instead, she noticed the smell coming from her youngest nephew. “Oh great,” she mumbled. Looking up at the ceiling, she was tempted to call out to Mary to take care of her offspring, but she also knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  Reaching for her smelly nephew, she held him within arm’s length as she carried him over to the corner of the room where somebody had dropped the diaper bag. “Please don’t have escaped the diaper,” she whimpered. “Please don’t have escaped the diaper.”

  Kneeling on the floor, she pulled out the portable changing mat and situated everything around her. She even pulled the nearest trashcan towards her.

  “Anne!” Little Charles called from his place in the playpen. “Play!”

  “I’ll play with you in a minute,” she called back. “I have to change the baby.”

  “Play!”

  She didn’t know that he had figured out how to escape the playpen until she felt the little hands climbing on her back as she attempted to change Baby Henry’s diaper.

  “Little Charles, get off my back,” she sharply commanded, trying to turn her head to get her nephew’s attention. It would be so much easier if Mary didn’t pitch a fit every single time somebody tried to call the toddler ‘Charlie’.

  Wiggling around on her back, his tiny hands managed to snag in her hair, pulling it. Anne once again cursed not pulling it back in a ponytail, but she’d stopped trying to tame the mess as soon as she grew tired of being the meek and quiet Anne Elliot. “Ouch! Little Charles, that hurts! Get down!”

  Trying as she might, she couldn’t move her head enough to look at where Charlie Hayes was playing on his phone with his headphones in, steadfastly ignoring both Anne and Derek’s presence in the living room.

  She had thought, originally, if she had gotten out of their line of vision that she could change Baby Henry’s diaper without grossing either of the guys out. Anne had not taken into account that Little Charles – why couldn’t that kid have a nickname, even if it was his middle name! – could escape his playpen and did when her sister, Etta, and Isa were upstairs giggling over the haul from their shopping trip.

  A shopping trip Anne had not been invited to join in on as somebody needed to watch the boys and Allie Grace already had plans.

  “Charles!” Anne snapped, about ready to cry as his combined weight pulled on her head. “Get down!”

  A moment later, the weight was lifted as somebody, she assumed Charlie had finally looked up from whatever it was he was doing, removed her elder nephew off of her back. It wasn’t until he had passed in front of her to return the boy to the playpen that Anne realized it had been Derek who had helped her out.

  “Thank you,” Anne said, unable to turn around to fully look at Derek as she still had Baby Henry in front of her.

  It didn’t matter; Derek had taken to playing with her nephew in an obvious attempt to avoid having a conversation with her. She could hear the train sounds he was making as he rolled the toy around the top of the playpen in an attempt to keep the toddler’s attention.

  Later somebody would have to figure out just how that barely two-year-old child had escaped.

  Finally becoming aware that something had been going on, Charlie looked up from his phone. Noticing that Derek was no longer sitting on the sofa and that Anne was still kneeling on the floor, Charlie started to glower at Derek and barely said a word until Etta had walked down the stairs from raiding Anne’s closet.

  “Hey, Anne?” the girl asked, “Can I borrow your dress?”

  “Didn’t you just go shopping?” Anne retorted instead of giving Etta a yes or no answer.

  “Well, yes,” Etta drawled, smiling at Charlie and then at Derek. “But I didn’t buy a dress.”

  Only it didn’t have the reaction that Etta was expecting, and Anne could have warned the younger girl that she was playing with fire if she thought that trying to make Charlie jealous was going to help her situation any.

  “You know what,” Charlie said as he stood up from where he had been sitting. “I just got a message from one of my friends. I have to go. He needs me to help him do…something.”

  Derek and Anne both quietly watched the exchange.

  “But…” Etta stumbled. “I thought… I mean… We’ve been planning this date for a week.”

  Shrugging, he grabbed his jacket and looked at Etta. “Sometimes things change. People change their minds.” And with that parting shot, he got up and left.

  Isa, her timing perfect as always, then came down the stairs, Mary close behind her. “Was that Charlie?”

  “Oh, did Charlie leave?” Mary innocently asked. She still favored Derek for Etta, even if he had never shown a preference for her.

  Come to think about it, Anne idly thought as she watched the calculating expression passing over Mary’s face, he didn’t actually show a preference for Isa either. It was the girls who were always approaching him.

  It didn’t take a very long time for Etta to realize she had made a huge mistake when it came to Charlie Hayes. After unofficially dating for about six months, including the time they spent apart during Summer Break, she wanted to shake herself for letting her eye wander in Derek Worth’s direction.

  She wasn’t a complete twit, unlike her sister-in-law and on occasion her own sister. She liked talking to Charlie about anything and everything. They’d even had some interesting conversations a few times when Isa wasn’t interrupting them and Mary wasn’t begging for attention.

  Etta was very much aware that she had majorly screwed up with Charlie.

  Later that night, Sophy found Derek working out on the treadmill in the exercise room. She couldn’t know that he had already used the barbells, the bench press, and the elliptical all in an attempt to get his brain to shut down and let him get some sleep.

  “What’s the matter?” she inquired from the doorway.

  “How do you know something is the matter?” he asked back, not even out of breath as he ran on the treadmill, waiting for his knee to give
him a sign that it was time to stop.

  “Because you are working out at eleven o’clock at night instead of curled up in bed with whatever history book has gotten your attention.”

  “I can’t sleep,” he admitted.

  Sighing, Sophy wrapped her housecoat tighter before sitting down on the bench. “What’s the matter?”

  “Anne is everywhere,” he admitted.

  “I thought this had to do with Anne Elliot,” Sophy stated. “Why did you have us rent this house if you knew it was Anne’s.” She moved into the room and sat on the weight bench.

  “I thought it would help.”

  “And.”

  “It’s not. And then I agreed to tutor her brother-in-law. I didn’t know he was her brother-in-law at the time. How could I know? I deleted all of my social media accounts after…”

  “After she gave you back your engagement ring.”

  “How did you figure out it was her?”

  “Bob deduced it by her reactions that day she came to pick up a box of books she had forgotten. She didn’t have a clue you were my brother and you would be staying here with us. Her father had neglected to tell his daughter that piece of information.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Derek slowed down his pace, beginning to tire out as he started getting everything off of his chest. “Charles’ little sister, Louisa, has started to cling to me. I don’t think she’s realized I’m not that interested in her.”

  “Well,” Sophy grinned, “have you told her.”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “In any words?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Anne’s always around.”

  She wasn’t really. He knew that he was being hyperbolic, but it felt as if she was always around. In his bedroom… which was originally her bedroom. In his bathroom. He’d even found a loose tampon behind the toilet and toilet paper holder the first week he was in the house.

  And of course, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago brochure was stashed away in his sock drawer. On occasion, he would pull it out and torture himself by looking at it. How much would be different if Anne had never been accepted into the art school of her dreams? The dream she had to give up because her sisters couldn’t take responsibility for their own lives.

  “Derek,” Sophy softly said, putting her hand on his shoulder after he had stopped walking. “It’s okay to forgive her. She was eighteen and you were nineteen. Most of the time relationships go south really quickly when people are that young. She might have even started to resent you for stealing away her dream, even if you would have been together in Italy.”

  “Instead she gets to resent everybody else for stealing it from her,” he bitterly mumbled, angrier on Anne’s behalf than he ever believed Anne had been at the situation.

  “I think she’s angrier about her father stealing her college fund.”

  “What?” Derek asked, jerking around in surprise at his sister’s pronouncement. “How do you know that.”

  “Mrs. Musgraves gossips,” Sophy admitted. “Margaret told me over dinner a few weeks ago.”

  “Wow,” was all Derek said, all emotion draining away from him. “Her semester must really suck.”

  “Her year, if you think about it. Margaret told me that Anne’s graduating in the Spring, same as you.” Sophy held up a finger as she started counting. “She lost her college fund, she’s living with her sister and brother-in-law and their two boys, she lost the college that she really wanted to attend, she’s having to watch Isa constantly hitting on her ex-boyfriend, who is still angry with her because she had the sense to realize that they were moving forward too quickly.” Waving those five fingers in the air, she asked if she needed to go on.

  Shaking his head, Derek admitted he got the picture. Giving his sister a hug goodnight, he returned to his room – Anne’s room – and stared up at the ceiling.

  Maybe. Just maybe. He needed to work on forgiving her.

  Avoiding her certainly wasn’t working anymore.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Much to Derek’s relief and anxiety, Anne answered the door when he rang the bell.

  “Charles is running late,” she told him. “I’m surprised he didn’t text you.”

  “He did,” Derek replied, still entering the house as soon as she was out of his way.

  “This is becoming a habit with him, isn’t it?” she conversationally asked, returning to the living room where she was camped out with her textbook. This time her nephews were passed out for their afternoon naps.

  “It’s quieter this week,” he commented, following her into the living room.

  Anne grinned. “I suggested to Mary this morning that she take the boys to the park this afternoon. She’s asleep upstairs, although she’s also claiming a headache.”

  “How’s your tutoring sessions going?”

  Anne shrugged, wondering why he was so curious. “I meet Amanda in the library on Tuesday and Thursdays. I have a break between two of my classes and instead of coming back here, I spend it in the library.”

  “Clever,” he grinned.

  “I’m surprised that Isa didn’t follow you out here.”

  Sighing, Derek shook his head. “There’s still time for her to realize that I didn’t walk over here. I drove my car over to the nearest commuter lot and parked there. I’m hoping if she doesn’t see me walking past and doesn’t see my car in front of the house, she might not come over.”

  “She’ll come over if she runs into Charles,” Anne pointed out. “He’ll tell her that you are over here. Besides, she knows you’re normally over here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “You can’t be that blind.”

  Looking at her, Derek shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You can’t not realize that both Musgraves girls are interested in you.”

  “Etta is more interested in Charlie than me.”

  “That still leaves Isa.”

  Derek released a deep sigh. He didn’t know what to say to Anne.

  Charles, and his sisters, entering the house prevented Derek from having to figure out what to say in response to Anne’s point. “Charlie invited us to a party this weekend!” he loudly announced.

  “Shhh!” Anne shushed him. “The boys are asleep!” she hissed, pointing to where they were passed out on the floor where Mary had left them.

  She probably would have moved them if she was certain that she could have done it without waking either of them up. There was nothing louder or crankier than a Musgraves Mini woken up from a nap too early. Except maybe Mary.

  He repeated, quieter, “Charlie invited us to a party on Saturday.”

  “Charlie invited you to a party,” Etta bitterly corrected him.

  Shrugging a shoulder, “And he told me I could bring somebody.”

  “He meant Mary,” Isa added. “I don’t know why.”

  “Because Charlie knows that if Charles does something fun, Mary is going to want to tag along.”

  “Mary wants to tag along even if it isn’t fun. She doesn’t want to miss anything.”

  Charles didn’t bother correcting his sisters. Anne wasn’t even certain he heard what they were saying as he started excitedly talking to Derek as the pair moved towards the dining room table to study.

  Anne wasn’t completely listening to the sisters as she watched the duo disappearing into the next room.

  “But, Isa,” Etta softly cried, paying attention to the napping nephews on the floor, “Charlie didn’t invite me.”

  “But he invited Charles,” Isa replied, a little louder.

  Attention redirected at Isa’s louder tone, Anne turned and looked at the sisters. “If either of you wakes up those boys before they wake up on their own, then you are going to take care of them.” Pausing, she added, “In fact, you are going to take care of them yourselves while I’m in the kitchen cooking.” S
oftening her tone, she asked, “Are you staying for dinner?”

  “Is Derek staying?” Isa asked, her volume softer.

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Then I’m staying if he’s staying,” Isa insisted.

  “We’re staying regardless,” Etta corrected. “It’s Anne’s cooking or the dining hall.” The expression on her face told Anne all she needed to know about Etta’s thoughts on the dining hall in the Student Union.

  “Is that why you are here more often than not?” Anne asked Etta. She even came for dinner on the days her sister stayed away.

  “I can put up with…” she started to say, hesitating when she recalled who she was talking to.

  “I understand,” Anne told her, placing a hand on the other girl’s shoulder. “We’d have a lot of take-out and delivery pizza if I didn’t take over in the kitchen. Mary can’t cook. Can’t even boil water.”

  “Where is Mary?” Etta asked, looking around the corner as Isa pretended to listen to whatever Derek was teaching Charles.

  “The boys wore her out. As soon as I came home, she went upstairs to take a nap.”

  “What did she do with them?”

  “The weather was nice and I suggested she take them to the park to play this afternoon,” Anne repeated for the second time that afternoon. She suspected that Charles would be asking her the same thing that Derek and Etta had asked already. At least he would when the thrill of the party and tutoring session was over.

  Etta merely nodded her head and went to her bookbag. “Later, if I need some help, can you help me with my English reading assignment. American Lit bores me.”

  “Certainly,” Anne nodded her head. She’d rather help Etta than Isa, not that she would tell either of the sisters that.

  Entering the kitchen, she asked Derek if he was staying for dinner. He often did on the afternoons he tutored Charles. He wouldn’t admit that Anne cooked better than his sister and dinner with her and the Musgraves was one of the brighter, if not more chaotic, meals of his week.