Page 145 of A Story of Love

She struggled to calm her breathing.

Had he brought his wife with him? Surely Sarah would have mentioned that. Or possibly not, given how starstruck her sister-in-law had appeared just now.

Lori shoved down her nervousness but kept her anger. He had some nerve showing his face after what he’d done to her.

The murmur of Jeremy and Sarah’s voices behind her interrupted her rapidly snowballing anger. It would have been nice to have a few more minutes to collect her thoughts, but that was not to be, so Lori steeled herself and resumed walking even though her legs felt like jelly.

When she reached what Sarah called the sitting room—really a glorified parlor—she took yet another deep breath and flung open the door. “I can’t imagine what you—” Lori broke off at the sight that met her eyes.

Gwen, her youngest niece, was perched on Fast’s knee and he was holding the girl’s favorite book in his hands.

Fast smiled up at her, his expression one of rueful amusement. “Hello, Lorelei.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment before turning to her niece. “What are you doing in here, Gwennie?” Lori knew that Sarah didn’t allow the children to come into the sitting room unless she accompanied them.

The little charmer smiled winsomely up at Lori, her huge green eyes blinking innocently. “Wode Sevone is weeding Miss Fwuffington to me, Auntie Woahwee.”

“Is he, now?” she asked, her gaze moving from her niece to Fast, who was trying to assume an expression as innocently charming as the tiny girl on his knee and doing an annoyingly fine job of it.

Gwen nodded enthusiastically, her black curls bouncing.

“It’s time for big people to talk now, Gwen.” Lori fixed Fast with an evil stare. “But Wode Sevone will read to you after you have your tea—as many times as you like, in fact. You should run along now as I have it on good authority that there will be cherry scones with cherry jam for—”

“Chawees!” Gwen shrieked, causing Fast, whose ear was not far from her mouth, to jolt and recoil in pain.

Forgetting all about the book, Gwen scrambled from Fast’s lap—inadvertently jabbing him somewhere sensitive, if the ooofing sound he made was anything to go by.

Lori held the door open wider for the little girl. “Walk, Gwen. No skipping in the house!” she called after her niece.

When Gwen disappeared around the corner, still skipping, Lori shut the door before turning back to Fast, who’d stood now that he didn’t have Gwen on his knee. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the door, scowling. “What are you doing here?”

He held up the book—Miss Henny Fluffington Goes to Market, whose cover had a large, speckled hen wearing a fancy bonnet and carrying a reticule over one wing——and asked, “You wrote this?”

“Don’t avoid my question, my lord.”

He lowered the book—which Lori had indeed written and illustrated and then had bound and printed for her eldest niece years before—and said, “Won’t you sit?”

“I’m happy right where I am. But don’t stand on my account.”

Instead of sitting, he prowled toward her.

“That’s close enough,” she said, not trusting herself to be any nearer to him. “I will repeat myself for the third time: what do you want?”

“You.”

Lori ignored the leaping sensation in her chest. “It is too late for that.”

“I’m not married.”

She sneered. “Came to her senses, did she?”

“I never planned to marry Miss Pascoe.”

“Oh. I see. So… was it she who tricked you? Or perhaps it was her father?”

He sighed. “Won’t you please sit? I have a lot to say, and I’d like to take my time and get it right.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll sit here.” She dropped into the chair nearest the door. “You sit over there.” She pointed to the settee when he would have taken the chair next to her.