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“I’m telling you to—”
“Morning, darling.”
Lia froze as her mother waltzed into the breakfast room, wearing a simple yet elegant suit of red trousers and a black blouse with a bow at the neck.
“Oh, um...morning, Mum,” Lia said. “You remember—”
“Morning, Lady Godwick,” August said. He held out his hand to her to shake.
“Mr. Bowman.” Mum smiled. “What brings you out here so early?”
“I slept over,” August said.
“August,” Lia hissed again.
“Oh, of course,” her mother said. “Glad you could join us for breakfast.”
“Thank you. Starving.” He piled his plate high with food and sat down at the table next to Lia’s usual chair.
Lia poured a cup of coffee she had no desire to drink. Her mother walked over to the sideboard wearing a smile Lia did not appreciate.
“I knew it,” her mother whispered.
“Mother, I swear,” Lia said.
“What are we swearing about?” It was Daddy who asked that question, as he walked into the breakfast room in his favorite gray suit and blue tie. No one answered it.
“Morning, Lord Godwick.” August leaned back in his chair and raised his coffee cup in a salute.
“Bowman?” Lia’s father said. “What are you doing here?”
She answered before August could.
“He wanted to ask you some questions about the kylix you bought me. So I invited him to breakfast.”
“He spent the night, Spencer,” her mother said. “Coffee?”
Daddy went silent. Lia mentally committed matricide.
“What was that?” her father finally asked.
“I spent the night,” August said. “Thanks for breakfast. Wonderful spread.”
Did he have to call it a “spread”?
“You spent the night?” Her father walked to the table and stood across from where August sat.
“With Lia,” August said. “And Gogo. He was there, too.”
“Daddy, don’t—”
“I didn’t catch your age, Bowman,” her father said. “Aren’t you a little old to be dating my twenty-one-year-old daughter?”
“I’mmuchtoo old to be dating your twenty-one-year-old daughter.”
“That’s it.” Daddy slapped the table.
“Spencer,” her mother said. “Sit down and eat your breakfast.”
