by Merry Farmer
“How do you do?” she asked, putting on her best smile and reaching for his hand as it rested on top of the quilts covering him. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”
He didn’t reply. He barely moved. A sound of some sort came from his throat. Lenore assumed that was the best the man was capable of. It was heartbreaking, particularly as Phin gazed down at his father with a combination of adoration and utter grief.
“Miss Garrett will be staying with us for a while, Father,” Phin said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I really should show her to her room, since it’s terribly late. You two.” He turned to his sisters. “Can you help Father to bed?”
“Can’t we stay up and get Princess Lenore to tell us stories of the Wild West?” Gladys asked. “That’s the least we deserve, since you didn’t bring Lionel home with you.”
“Are there wild Indians where you are from?” Amaryllis asked.
“You can ask her all those questions tomorrow,” Phin said, shooing them away from Lenore. He squeezed his father’s shoulder as he passed his chair, gesturing for Lenore to follow him. “For now, help Father to bed.”
The girls groaned and complained, but did as they were told. As they worked together to shift Mr. Mercer out of his chair, Lenore noticed a narrow bed in the corner of the room.
“I should have warned you about Father as well,” Phineas said once they were alone in the hall.
“I remember hearing that your father was ill,” Lenore said, overwhelmed by it all, “but I had no idea he was this ill.”
“The doctors have no idea what it is or how long it will last,” Phin said, running a hand over his face. He took a deliberate breath before saying, “I sometimes forget how dire the situation is, and then I come home.” He glanced toward the parlor’s doorway.
Lenore couldn’t help herself. She stepped into him, throwing her arms around Phin and hugging him for all he was worth. She needed to feel his solidity and strength, and she needed him to see that she cared.
The worst part of it was, there was so much she could have done. She saw it now as clearly as if the sun had come up and illuminated every part of the house. Her inheritance could have changed the lives of the Mercer family in innumerable ways. Unlike the fortunes of other Dollar Princesses, if she had had the freedom to marry Phin, her money would bolster a family, not just a flagging and outdated estate. And she knew with painful certainty that she could, and likely would, fall madly in love with Phin’s entire family the way she’d fallen head over heels for him.
Yes, love. She had to admit it to herself now, after seeing Phin at home. What she felt for him wasn’t mere lust or overheated friendship. She didn’t just want him as a bedmate or a co-conspirator. The more she discovered him, the more she was certain what she felt was brilliant, beautiful, inconvenient love.
“That isn’t the reaction I expected,” Phin laughed, closing his arms around her in return. “I rather expected you to—”
She silenced him by lifting to her toes and slanting her mouth over his with all the hopeless passion that boiled away inside of her. Her heart and soul longed for him so deeply that it made every part of her ache. He was quick to kiss her in return as well, holding her close and parting her lips with his to tease his tongue against hers. The passion between them was undeniable. It was enough to make her believe she could do wild, risky, utterly mad things.
“I’m overwrought,” she said, stepping back and pressing a hand to her chest. “I miss home. I really should go to bed.”
The twitch of his kiss-reddened lips told her he wanted to joke about her going to bed with him, but the sound of the girls helping his father to bed in the parlor and that of Hazel marching into the kitchen, presumably after taking care of the horses and wagon, meant they wouldn’t be able to get away with anything inappropriate.
“I’ll show you up to Gladys’s room,” he said instead, nodding toward the stairs.
Lenore followed him, knowing full well she would never be able to sleep, as full of turmoil as she was. But underneath the despair and heartbreak, a new urge had filled her. It was an urge to be brave, to do something that would either get her killed or start her life anew. Bart was in England now, after all. And though she was certain he was after blood of one sort or another, maybe, just maybe, circumstances had changed enough that, instead of being content merely to stay away from him, she would have the courage to ask him for a divorce.
Chapter 10
Phin was up with the dawn, in spite of his body and mind being so weary he could have stayed in bed for another week. There was something bittersweet about being home. His childhood had been a happy one, in spite of the difficulties of his family’s circumstances and his mother’s death when Amaryllis was born, so the house held more happy memories for him than painful ones. It was the present that gnawed at him the most. Between the strain of his father’s decline and the burning flame of hope, desire, and love he had within him for Lenore, he couldn’t have slept past sunrise even if he’d tried.
“What are you doing up so early?” Hazel asked when he strode into the kitchen, intent on making a strong pot of tea and assessing what needed to be done around the house.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, pausing briefly in the kitchen doorway to reevaluate his plans.
Hazel already had tea made and was in the process of shaping scones out of the dough on the counter in front of her. She wore a contraption affixed to her arm and shoulder that looked like some sort of macabre cage of metal and wood that she’d had the village blacksmith build for her. It came with various interchangeable attachments that Hazel had designed herself, though currently she wore one that looked like a blunt club that enabled her to knead dough. His talents were of a literary sort, Lionel’s were for knowing everyone in London and half of the rest of the people in England at large, but Hazel’s talents were of a mechanical bent.
“Someone has to keep this place running,” Hazel answered, nodding to the pot of tea on the stove. “Especially since we have a guest.”
Phin smiled in spite of himself as he crossed to the stove to pour himself a cup. He added cream and sugar from the creamer set on the kitchen table, then took his tea back to the counter where Hazel worked, plucking a sultana from her scone dough and making a point of eating it in front of her. Hazel smacked him with her mechanical arm.
“How has Father been, truly,” he asked on a more serious note, taking a sip of his tea.
“As well as can be expected,” Hazel sighed, finishing with the scones and transferring them to the oven. She had become an expert at using her left arm, even though it hadn’t started out as her dominant hand, and compensating with her invention. “He declines a bit every day, but I don’t believe he’s unhappy.” When Phin arched an eyebrow at her, she went on with, “Well, any unhappier than a man in his condition would be.”
“Do you want me to get him out of bed?” he asked. “Bathe him, perhaps?”
“Let him sleep late,” Hazel said, moving to the table and unscrewing the club from her arm attachment. “He shouldn’t have stayed up as late as he did last night,” she went on, replacing the club with something that looked more like a classic hook that a pirate would wear, “but he knew you were coming and insisted on waiting for you.”
Phin sent her a flat look as he sipped his tea. “Are you sure of that or are you making things up to put a good face on things?”
She glanced his way with a look of melancholy. “Does it matter? Whether he’s aware of anything going on around him or not, it helps the girls to pretend he’s still in there somewhere.”
Phin took another drink of his tea to swallow the lump in his throat. “And how about the girls?” he asked. “Are they keeping up with their schoolwork?”
Hazel sent him an even warier glance as she tightened her hook, then moved to the pile of laundry to sort it. “When they actually make it to school.” She paused, then added, “The truant officer has been around three times already this autumn
.”
Phin grunted. “I should really pressure Lionel into paying a visit. Those girls would walk to the moon and back if Lionel asked them to.”
“Have him write a letter instead,” Hazel suggested. “You know what happened last time he was home.”
Phin’s mouth twitched into a grin. They had all been together as a family at Easter the spring before. Hazel had entreated Lionel to strike the fear of God into their unruly younger sisters. Instead, the three of them had ended up letting the chickens out, frightening the neighbor’s pigs, and causing so much of a disturbance in church that they were summarily cast out of the Easter service. Lionel was the biggest child of their entire family.
“And that brings us to you,” Phin said, moving to sit at the kitchen table while Hazel worked. He reached across, taking her good hand and interrupting her work by holding it for a moment. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m delightful,” Hazel said, sharpness in her voice. “I am the queen of all I survey. I spend my days eating French pastries and sipping champagne. And I have an entire string of handsome suitors lined up out the door just begging to marry me, all of them wealthy as sultans.”
Phin’s chest constricted. Hazel had been a popular beauty, in spite of her young age, before the fire, and before their father’s health was shattered. She put on a brave face, but he knew her well enough to know she longed for love as much as anyone else did.
“Mark my words,” he said, leaning back in his chair and pretending to be as casual as she was being. “You’ll have to construct a stick attachment for that clever arm of yours, because you’ll be beating young men off with it soon.”
She laughed, though she couldn’t hide the pain in her eyes. “I’m not the one who has a beau,” she said, then paused her laundry sorting to grin at him. “Or is a female sweetheart called something else?”
There was absolutely no point whatsoever in hiding his emotions from Hazel. There had never been any secrets between the Mercer siblings, except, of course, for the younger ones. Phin knew all of Lionel and Hazel’s secrets, and they knew all of his.
“I adore her,” he said, as silly as a schoolboy, no need to mention Lenore’s name. “Hazel, she is perfection. She’s witty, intelligent, and doesn’t give a fig for the opinions of others.”
“And I’m assuming she’s wealthy on top of all that.” Hazel flickered her eyebrows to tease him.
“As it happens, she is,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the corner of the table. “But I’d adore her even if she was as poor as…well, as poor as us.”
“Were you raised by wolves?” Hazel scolded him, catching the toe of one of his boots with her hook and dropping it to the side so that he was forced to scramble to stay upright.
“You and Lionel are rather wolfish sometimes,” he replied, chuckling.
“And does Princess Lenore know this?” Hazel arched one eyebrow.
“She knows that I am progressive in my opinions and that London society has greatly underestimated my prowess.”
“Does she know about Nocturne?” Hazel asked, leveling him with a flat stare.
“As a matter of fact, she does.” Phin sat straighter, setting his tea on the table and leaning forward. He searched for the right words to say what he needed to, but all he could come up with was, “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep that up.”
Hazel was smart enough to look worried. “Why? What’s happened?”
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.
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“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.