Phin winced. “I based a character on the wrong lady, and now her mother has hired a private detective to sniff me out. Whether he discovers my identity or not, I’m not sure I can risk continuing to publish. Jameson has one more issue to print and distribute—which will be dangerous enough for him as it is—but then I’m afraid the game might be up.”
“With winter coming and the girls in need of everything from coats to boots to school books,” Hazel sighed. She stopped sorting laundry, and her shoulders drooped. She wasn’t judging him, but Phin could tell she was disappointed. “I suppose I could take in washing or something.”
“No.” Phin shook his head. “You will not take on more work than you already have. Lionel has his clerking job now, and I can find employment too, if it comes to it.”
She must have sensed the hesitation in his voice, because she crossed her arms and said, “If you can’t convince Princess Lenore to marry you post haste and to hand over her American millions.”
“She doesn’t have millions,” Phin said, rubbing a hand over his face. “But I do think she has enough so that you would never have to worry again.”
“Phineas,” she said, letting her arms drop and planting her hand on her hip. “I will always, always worry.”
Phin laughed and rose to hug his sister. He truly did love her more than the sun and the moon combined. So much that he picked the basket of laundry up off the table and carried it outside to the yard where the washbasin stood to help her scrub their father’s soiled sheets and clothes. All the while, he wondered what the fine ladies of society who routinely questioned him about his title would say to that.
It wasn’t that long before a whirlwind of noise in the kitchen indicated that the girls were up. Phin wasn’t at all surprised when Gladys and Amaryllis spilled out into the yard, dragging Lenore with them, moments later.
“And it’s our job to collect the eggs every morning,” Gladys was explaining as she tugged Lenore across the grass to the hen house.
“Collecting eggs is very important,” Amaryllis told Lenore, skipping ahead and unlatching the gate to the run where a dozen hens roamed free. “We don’t only eat them, we sell them too.”
“That is important,” Lenore said, following Gladys into the chicken run. She wore a blouse and skirt that were far too fine for the country, but would have been considered drab in London, and she didn’t flinch once as she stepped through the chickens to the hen house or look even the slightest bit concerned about the possibility of soiling her fine things. Phin realized why moments later when she told Amaryllis, “It was my job to collect eggs on our ranch when I was your age too. And we had three times as many chickens as it appears you do.”
“Three times as many chickens?” Amaryllis stared at her in awe. “You really are a princess.”
Phin laughed, his chest both squeezing and feeling as light as a feather as he watched Lenore bend down to reach into the hen house for eggs. Her backside made quite a picture as she reached deeper into the enclosure. But it was more than that. Watching her with the girls changed something, deepened his feelings for her. Lenore was so much more than a lithe body and a fat bank account.
“Yes, I can see how her American fortune is what draws you to her,” Hazel said with a wry grin, fastening one end of the sheet they’d just scrubbed to her hook.
Phin met his sister’s grin with one of his own as he started twisting the other end of the sheet, drawing it out between the two of them as they wrung the excess water out of it. “As I said, she’s perfect in every way.”
Hazel shook her head at him. “Have you bedded her yet?”
Phin’s brow shot up in a look of feigned shock. “Hazel Eleanor Mercer. How can you ask your brother such a question?”
“I take that as a yes, then,” Hazel said with a smirk.
Phin felt his face heat as he laughed, answering her without deliberately answering. They finished wringing the sheet, then hung it and returned to the rest of the wash. Lenore and the girls gathered an entire basket of eggs and returned to the kitchen.
Within an hour, they were all seated around the kitchen table, eating eggs, sausage, and scones, even their father, who had finally woken up when the girls went to fetch him. Phin worried that Lenore would lose her appetite at the sloppy way their father was forced to eat, but she pretended nothing at all was out of the ordinary as she made quick work of her breakfast and talked to the girls.
“What do you mean, you’ve never heard of baseball?” she asked, seemingly shocked.
“I know Americans play it,” Gladys said, sawing into her third sausage, “but what is it?”
“It’s like cricket,” Hazel said, using a specially-fashioned funnel to feed their father tea.
“It’s not a thing like cricket,” Lenore said with mock solemnity. “It’s far more exciting.”
“Have you actually been to a cricket match?” Phin asked.
“If she’s under the impression that cricket is boring, she has been,” Hazel answered.
Lenore laughed, exchanging a look with Phin that sent his heart soaring and made his trousers uncomfortably tight for the circumstances and company he found himself in. He hadn’t been lying when he told Hazel she was perfection. Watching her navigate London society was one thing, but seeing how well she blended with his family, despite their reduced circumstances, decided things. He needed her—as his lover, as his companion, and as his wife. He wouldn’t be able to rest easy until she was his, which meant he needed to solve her problems as well as his own.
“Baseball is all the rage in Haskell, my hometown,” she went on to his sisters. “We have an entire league, in spite of the town being relatively small compared to Laramie or Denver. My Papa and my brothers play for the Haskell Hawks. They haven’t won the championship for years, but they placed third last year—no, that was two years ago now.” A sudden twist of sadness filled her eyes.
Phin leaned toward her as though she’d experienced a physical injury. He remembered her melancholy the night before and her admission that she missed her home. Well, if he had anything to say about it, this would be her new home.
“Perhaps you could teach us all to play,” he said, smiling at her. That smile grew tenfold when she glanced back at him with a look of delight.
“I could do that,” she said.
“Yes, teach us baseball,” Amaryllis gasped, as though she’d offered to fly them to the moon and back.
“I want to learn too,” Hazel said. “Perhaps, if I take to it, I could have Mr. Brummel fashion a baseball bat attachment for my arm.”
Lenore blinked in surprise, sending a nervous glance to Hazel’s mechanical arm before deliberately looking away. Her gaze fell on their father. “What do you say, Mr. Mercer? Would you like to learn to play baseball too?”
He loved her. Her simple question, directed without art or malice, toward his father, was like fireworks of desire blasting through him, knocking him off his feet. He actually loved her.
“I’m sure Father would love to umpire the game,” he said, reasonably certain he looked every bit the lovesick schoolboy that he felt.
“Very well, then.” Lenore stood, patting her mouth with the edge of her serviette, then setting it on the table. “Show me to a field suitably large and find me a ball and some sort of stick we can use as a bat.”