“Frankly, I want to go to bed,” Phin growled, taking another step back from Lenore. “Alone,” he specified, although that was a bald-faced lie. If not for his sisters and their habit of prying where they shouldn’t, he would have dragged Lenore up to his room and made love to her in a dozen different ways that would have shown her precisely who had the upper hand in their relationship. He would have been a rake and a cur for doing so, but he had a feeling they both would have enjoyed it, no matter how many bruises they each ended up with.
“I think I’d better go to bed too,” Lenore said in a hoarse voice, her eyes alight with fire, as if she could read Phin’s thoughts. She turned and marched swiftly out of the room.
As soon as she was gone, Phin let out a breath and rubbed a hand over his face. And here he’d thought whisking Lenore away to the country and the safe bosom of his family would make the stars align and everything come clear.
“You certainly do know how to pick them,” Hazel said, pouring herself a cup of tea after bringing the teapot to the table.
“Aside from the lying, being married to another man, engaging herself to Freddy Herrington with no intention of marrying him, and cockamamie plot to flee her homeland, Lenore is a perfect angel,” he growled, stomping to the table and sinking into a chair, then reaching for the teapot and one of the cups Hazel had waiting.
“Be patient with her,” Hazel said on a sigh, pouring milk into her tea. “She has a lot to sift through.”
“If she’s telling the truth,” Phin growled.
“Oh, she is.” Hazel reached into the box of Lenore’s documents and took out a small newspaper clipping. She slid it across the table to Phin.
Phin reluctantly picked it up and read it. “Range Wars Heat Up As Five Killed,” the headline read. The article went on with, “News from the wild frontier has taken a deadly turn after a confrontation between the Swan gang and owners of the Waverly Ranch last week.”
Phin frowned and sped through the rest of the article. The clipping showed that it was from a New York newspaper, though there was no telling when it had been published or how it came into Lenore’s possession. She might very well have read it while waiting for a ship to take her across the Atlantic. However Lenore obtained it, even though Bart’s name was not specifically mentioned, it seemed to corroborate her story.
“She still should have said something,” Phin growled, setting down the clipping and taking a sip of his tea.
“Be patient,” Hazel repeated, as if scolding him. “If you truly love her—and I’ve known you long enough to see you do—things will work themselves out.”
Phin stared at her over the lip of his teacup but didn’t say anything. Things had better work themselves out, because he had more at stake where Lenore was concerned than he’d ever had in his life.
Chapter 13
Lenore didn’t sleep a wink. Instead, she tossed and turned through what felt like an interminable night. One minute, she was wracked with guilt about hiding the truth from Phin—not to mention Freddy and Reese and her family on top of that—for so long. Fear had made her cowardly, and time and an ocean between her and Bart had tricked her into thinking that horrifying chapter of her life was behind her. On the other hand, Phin was a hypocrite for being so angry with her for concealing the truth when he had secrets of his own. Lady Hamilton or not, the consequences of him coming clean about everything he was trying to hide would only be embarrassment and social disgrace, not death.
Every time she’d determined to stay angry with him for being a boor, however, she’d flipped over in bed and had a change of thought. Phin was only human, just as she was. They’d each made mistakes. Everyone made mistakes. And the way he’d kissed her in the kitchen with so much emotion had left her head spinning. Even if the emotion behind his kiss had been anger. There was a very fine line between anger and passion to begin with, and Lenore was certain that line was now hopelessly blurred where she and Phin were concerned.
Her sleepless night meant that she felt wretched the next morning. She didn’t bother lolling around in bed once the sun rose. Instead, she got up, washed and dressed, made her bed, and wandered downstairs to the kitchen, hoping the tea Hazel had made the night before had steeped through the night and was as strong as an ox now.
She wasn’t at all surprised to find Phin already seated at the kitchen table as she dragged herself in. Nor was she surprised that he was blatantly reading through everything in her document box. It was such an obvious move that it didn’t even warrant a comment.
Phin glanced up at her as she slogged her way over to the table and tested whether the contents of the teapot were warm by resting a hand on the pot’s side. Her eyebrows lifted a fraction as she discovered it was warm after all. With only a brief flash of a look at Phin—who continued to stare at her as though he expected her to say something—she plunked herself into a chair and poured tea into one of the mismatched collection of teacups on the table.
She didn’t say a word as she sipped her blessedly strong tea. Not when Phin continued to stare at her and not when he went back to reading her most personal documents without a shred of remorse. She stayed silent as a breeze blew through the trees outside the open kitchen window, as chickens clucked on the other side of the yard, and as a cow of some sort mooed in the distance. She did nothing more than drink her tea when Hazel came in from outside with a rasher of bacon she must have fetched from some cold cellar. And she only finished her tea in silence when Gladys and Amaryllis shuffled into the kitchen, scrubbed and dressed for the new day, but looking as miserable as she felt.
The two girls made their way over to Lenore with drawn, penitent faces.
“We wanted to say that we are very sorry indeed for snooping through your things,” Gladys said in a voice that made her seem far younger than her eleven years.
“It was very wrong of us,” Amaryllis added. “Looking through other people’s things, especially a guest princess’s, is very bad.”
They were so sweet that Lenore couldn’t help but smile, though she doubted her smile did much to improve her haggard appearance. “Take it from me, ladies,” she said on a sigh. “No good ever comes from putting your nose in where it shouldn’t be.”
Phin glanced up from reading her passport, then deliberately returned it to the box. A faint flush painted his cheeks as he reached for the teapot to refill his cup.
“I want to tell you something,” Lenore went on, reaching for Amaryllis and drawing the young girl closer. “I mean it when I say that looking through other people’s things will only ever get you in trouble. Believe me, I know. That is precisely why I find myself in the mess I’m in now. If I hadn’t looked through someone else’s things during a conference in Laramie, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“But we like having you here now,” Amaryllis said, blissful innocence in her large, blue eyes.
“Yes,” Gladys rushed to add. “We’re so happy to have met you. We wouldn’t have met you at all if you hadn’t come to England. And we wouldn’t know anything about baseball.”
Lenore’s brow shot up. Leave it to the youngest amongst them to point out the obvious. She glanced across the table to Phin—who was pretending not to pay attention. If she hadn’t nearly gotten herself killed by meddling in Bart’s affairs, she never would have begged her father to bring her to England. And if she’d never come to England, she never would have met Freddy or Reese or any of her other friends. Or Phin. And she wasn’t sure she could bear the thought of never meeting Phin.