Scandal Meets Its Match (The May Flowers Book 7) by Merry Farmer

Author:Merry Farmer [Farmer, Merry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The entire room seemed to freeze as though they would all be trapped in that moment of time forever. For a moment, Phin couldn’t breathe, wasn’t sure his heart was even beating. Gladys might have been prone to fits of fancy, but she wasn’t a liar, and she held what looked like some sort of official document in such a way that Phin could just make out the names on it.

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.

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