When his lungs began to burn, he sucked in a breath and strode across the room in silence to take the document from Gladys’s hands. Not a soul in the room moved or made so much as a peep, Lenore especially. Her eyes were round with the same sort of fright Phin had seen in them in Trafalgar Square, when she’d first spotted Swan. He could feel that fear in his bones as he glanced from her to the parchment in his hands.
There it was, in black and white. The document was a marriage license issued in Laramie, Wyoming, wedding Bartholomew Swan to Lenore Garrett on the twentieth of April, eighteen eighty-six. The signatures were a bit sloppy, as if they were written in haste, but the seal imprinted in one corner looked as official as anything the high courts in London could produce. Phin suddenly understood that the fear that had been in Lenore’s eyes days before hadn’t been because she was frightened for her life, she was terrified because she knew her deception was about to be found out.
Anger of a sort Phin had never known pulsed through him. He’d understood the concept of betrayal in theory, but up until that moment, he hadn’t realized how deeply it could cut. He set the marriage license deliberately on the table and drew himself to his full height, unable to look at Lenore. He’d trusted her with his heart, with his body, and with his future, and she’d lured him along, teasing and tempting him into making a damn fool of himself when pride was the only thing he felt he had to his name at times.
“I—” Lenore started, shifting restlessly on her spot. No other words came out, though, and she pressed her hands to her stomach as though she were feeling ill. “Phin—” She took half a step toward him.
“Girls, I think it’s time you went to bed now,” Phin said, deliberately turning away from Lenore to fight the piercing pain in his chest. “You’ve been up quite long enough for one day.”
To their credit, Gladys and Amaryllis slouched out of their chairs, sending wary looks to both Lenore and Phin, and shuffled out of the kitchen without a word of protest. Phin hated how pale and distraught they looked, as if he couldn’t protect them any better than he’d been able to protect Lenore, or himself.
“I didn’t do this on purpose,” Lenore said, her voice small and thin. “I—”
Phin walked right past her when she approached him. “I’ll settle the girls for the night, and then we’re going to talk.” He turned to Lenore with his last words, meeting her eyes with a flare of bitterness that left a bad taste in his mouth.
Lenore gulped and took a step back, but Phin didn’t linger where he was to see what else she would do. Hazel stayed with her as he continued to the hall and followed the girls upstairs, but he didn’t hear a word from the kitchen once he’d left it.
The girls were too old to need much in the way of help getting to bed, but Phin needed the few minutes of domestic tranquility the task provided to gather his thoughts and calm his anger. Yes, he was hurt. He was furious that the woman he’d made love to so passionately not more than an hour before, whom he’d pledged his heart and his life to, had been married to another man the entire time he’d known her. The betrayal he felt demanded to know what kind of a woman would throw herself around so glibly.
The tiny voice of rationality that attempted to poke up through the pain he felt whispered that she was a woman who was genuinely afraid for her life. Not even the wickedest of wantons could fake the sort of terror he’d seen in Lenore’s eyes before their flight from London.
“It’s my fault,” Gladys said, sniffing and bursting into tears as Phin sat on the side of the bed she was sharing with Amaryllis to tuck the two in. “I went into my room to fetch clothes for tomorrow and I remembered Princess Lenore’s box. I wanted to know what was inside.”
“Now you know,” Phin said, his voice full of gravel and sadness as he pulled the bedcovers up over his sisters’ shoulders.
“I thought Princess Lenore was going to marry you,” Amaryllis added in a tiny voice. “I wanted her to.”
“So did I,” Phin confessed with a sigh.
Admitting as much out loud loosened a bit of the anger that had him clamped so tightly. He had wanted to marry Lenore, almost from the moment he met her, if he were being honest with himself. How many times had he lain awake at night contemplating how perfect her cleverness and boldness were? How many times had he tossed himself off while imagining how delightfully wicked she was? As it turned out, all of the things he admired most about her had their dark sides.
He stood and leaned over to kiss his sisters’ foreheads. “Go to sleep and dream of fairies and chocolates,” he told them.
“Can I dream of baseball?” Amaryllis asked as Phin took a step back.
His chest seized up all over again. Lenore could have been such a beautiful part of his family’s life, not just his life. She could have brought them the sort of joy they’d been lacking for too long. It felt as though someone had died.
“Dream of whatever you’d like,” he said before blowing out the lantern on the bedside table and leaving the room.
He took a moment just to breathe when he stepped out into the hall, before heading back down to the kitchen. No good would come of letting his passions have free reign. He was hurt, but he owed it to Lenore to let her explain.
She was seated at the table, staring at her important documents as she put them back into their box. Hazel busied herself at the stove, making tea, by the look of things. As soon as Phin entered the kitchen, Lenore glanced up at him, looking utterly miserable. Her eyes were rimmed with red, as though she’d been crying.
“You lied to me,” Phin said, opening the conversation that needed to happen the way a physician cut open a body to begin an operation, though he kept his tone calm as he spoke.
“Not on purpose,” Lenore said, rising from her chair so fast she nearly tipped it backward. “I knew I would have to confess eventually, but—”
“Eventually?” Anger got the better of Phin, and he marched across the room to stand close enough to tower over Lenore. Hazel glanced warningly over her shoulder at him, but he ignored her. “When was eventually in your mind? When we were standing at the altar? Or did you intend to be a bigamist?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t have let it go that far.” Lenore edged away from him, wringing her hands as she began pacing the room. She took several deep breaths, each one seeming to build courage within her. At last, she said, “I want to assure you right now that marrying Bart was an act of self-preservation. I did not, nor could I ever in a thousand years, love the man. And the marriage was never consummated, for your information.”
Those new facts hit Phin like drops of water hitting a hot pan. They sizzled and burned, but they didn’t cool his anger at all. “I do not take kindly to being played for a fool,” he growled.
“I never played you for a fool,” Lenore insisted, her strength nearly back to full force. “Though, while we’re on the subject, it seems awfully rich for a man who makes his living publishing erotic stories that are thinly-veiled references to real men and women of the aristocracy to complain about being played for a fool.”
In spite of everything, her sudden return to boldness as she whipped to face him, crossing her arms and glaring at him, shot pure desire straight through Phin. Dammit, but he loved her even now, knowing how false she was. She understood him, even his flaws.