by Merry Farmer
Chapter 9
Pretending to sleep so that Phin wouldn’t spend the journey north tempting Lenore with things she could never have turned into actual sleeping before they were half an hour outside of London. Lenore hadn’t realized how exhausted she was or how deeply seeing Bart again had taken a toll on her until she let go of the fear that Bart would suddenly appear on the train and find her. He wasn’t and he wouldn’t. At least not yet. Releasing that anxiety took every bit of the wind out of her sails, and she fell into slumber as the train rocked rhythmically on its way to Yorkshire. She always had slept like a baby on trains.
She awoke an undetermined amount of time later to find that at least half of her problems were still staring her in the eyes. Quite literally, as it turned out. Phineas sat on the seat across from her, wedged against the side of their compartment in a way that suggested he, too, had been trying to sleep but had opted for watching her instead. Their compartment was dim, as the sun had long-since set outside and the single lantern swinging in the corner did little to brighten the space. But the moment Lenore opened her eyes, Phin smiled.
That smile was as painful as a bullet. There was nothing artful or calculated about it. The clever, rakish Phineas with whom she’d plotted on Phoebe Long’s behalf, who wrote salacious stories that bordered on ruining the lives of London socialites, who bantered with her on walks through Hyde Park, as if daring people to comment, was gone. In his place was a simple man wearing glasses who had a heart that beat for her. The transformation made him a thousand times handsomer and more desirable than he already was, and it crushed Lenore’s heart in the process. He was everything she’d always wanted—handsome, clever, a bit naughty, but good at heart—but she could never have him.
“Are we there yet?” she asked in a gravelly voice, sitting straight and stretching.
Phin sucked in a breath and straightened as well, righting his glasses with a deliberate gesture, his eyes raking her body as though he enjoyed every tiny movement and every second of her stretch. “Almost,” he said. “You slept through the entire trip, which means you won’t sleep well tonight.”
Lenore let out a wry laugh. She wouldn’t sleep well that night for far more reasons than her nap on the train. She glanced out the window, scanning the dots of light scattered through the darkness. They must have been near a city to see any lights at all.
“How far from the city is your family’s home?” she asked, turning back to Phin.
He was still watching her, his eyes bright with thought. “An hour or so by wagon,” he said, shifting in his seat as the train’s whistle sounded and its brakes began to squeal. The heated calculation in his eyes melted away into tired practicality.
“I assume we’ll be staying in a hotel of some sort tonight instead of heading straight to your family estate,” Lenore said, searching for the gloves she’d taken off when she settled into her seat earlier.
Phin laughed. “It’s charming that you think I could afford a night in a hotel, or that my family’s home is an estate.” When Lenore paused her search to raise her eyebrows at him, he went on with, “Hazel, my eldest sister, will likely be waiting for us with the wagon at the station.”
“At this hour?” Lenore asked as the train slowed even more and the city itself slid past the window. His use of the word “wagon” instead of “carriage” caught her attention.
“Hazel is a harridan who believes in punctuality, self-reliance, and frugality,” Phin said, his mouth twitching into a fond grin. “If we so much as thought of staying in the city instead of going straight home, she would march up to our hotel room, grab us by the collars, and drag us home if she had to walk the whole way to do so.”
Lenore blinked. His suggestion that they would have stayed in a single hotel room aside, she was intrigued by the description of his sister. Images of a strapping country girl built like some of the cow pokes she’d known back home came to mind. Phin wasn’t as delicate as his brother, but Lenore found herself wondering with a grin if the girls in the Mercer family had inherited the brawn while the men inherited the refinement.
“We’d better behave, then,” she said, standing when the train came to a full stop in the relatively well-lit station.
“Who said anything about behaving?” Phin stood with her, using the excuse of reaching above her to the rack that held her traveling bag to stand close to her.
As soon as he’d grabbed hold of her bag and brought it down to rest on the seat, he leaned into her, bringing his mouth to within a whisper of hers. Lenore held her breath, parting her lips in anticipation of a kiss. Her body thrummed with expectation and her heart sped up. Her reaction was so potent and so complete that when Phin pulled away, she nearly whimpered in disappointment.
“Behave,” he said in a low voice, though whether as an order or an observation, Lenore couldn’t tell. He pivoted to bring his own suitcase down from its rack, and as soon as the station porter opened the door to their compartment, he stepped out, helping her to the platform as well.
Lenore barely had time to plunk her hat on her head, let alone fasten its ridiculous scarf around her neck and face, before Phin took her hand and led her to the iron stairs that took them over a bridge spanning several tracks and down to the stationhouse. It was past ten at night, so every station shop was closed with only the arriving passengers rushing through the small building. As they stepped out to the curb, facing the ancient wall of the medieval city, Lenore’s eyes nearly scanned right over the simple wagon that waited along with a handful of carriages.
“Hazel,” Phin called out, undisguised joy in his voice, and let go of Lenore’s hand to speed toward the figure standing beside the wagon.
Lenore caught her breath and nearly dropped her traveling bag at the sight of the woman. She wasn’t brawny at all. She was every bit as delicate as Lionel Mercer and bore a strong resemblance to her brothers. Or, at least, she would have if half of her face wasn’t twisted and scarred as though it had melted. The woman’s arm on that same side of her body ended just below her elbow as well, and when she took a few steps forward to throw herself into Phin’s embrace, she moved with a distinct limp. Lenore pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes stinging as her imagination instantly filled in a story of some sort of tragedy that had disfigured the woman so badly.
“Hazel, I’d like you to meet Miss Lenore Garrett, an American Princess from the Wild West of Wyoming,” Phin said, keeping his arm around his sister’s shoulders as he beckoned Lenore to come forward.
Lenore pushed herself into motion, approaching the pair with her heart in her throat and shifting her bag to her left hand so that she could greet Hazel. “How do you do?” she asked. Immediately, she realized her mistake. Hazel’s right hand was the one that was missing. “Oh, dear,” she gulped, no idea at all whether she should withdraw her hand.
“I am quite well,” Hazel answered, seamlessly taking Lenore’s hand with her left hand and squeezing it. “And I’m honored to be in the presence of royalty.”
“I’m not really a princess,” Lenore said, her words stilted. Hazel exchanged a brief look with Phin, and Lenore winced. “You’re joking,” she said.
“Of course, I’m joking,” Hazel laughed. “Phin isn’t nearly handsome or clever enough to win the favors of a princess.” She winked at her brother. “Lionel, maybe. But he’d rather have a queen.” She took Lenore’s traveling bag right out of her hand before Lenore could react and carried it back to the wagon. “Hurry along, you two. The girls insisted on staying up until you came home, and we all know that if they don’t get enough sleep tonight, they’ll be hellions tomorrow.”
Lenore opened her mouth as though she were expected to make some sort of reply, but not a thing came to her mind.
“Come on.” Phin took her hand—which was still stupidly outstretched—and tugged her toward the wagon. “I’ll help you in. Climbing into a wagon is more complicated than entering a carriage.” He paused to lift his suitcase into the wagon’s bed as Hazel wa
lked around the far side of the wagon, approaching the driver’s seat.
“You’ve clearly forgotten that I’m a heathen from the West,” Lenore said, blinking rapidly to clear the shock from her head and hopping easily onto the wagon’s seat. As soon as Phin climbed into the seat next to her, as Hazel busied herself with the horse, she leaned in and said, “You didn’t tell me your sister was—” She snapped her mouth shut, unsure how to finish her thought.
“There was a fire when she was twelve,” he whispered quickly, leaving it at that for the time being. He edged his way past her, sitting in the driver’s seat as Hazel attempted to pull herself up. “I can drive home,” he said, taking the reins from her.
“Don’t you dare, Phineas McGuire Mercer,” Hazel scolded him, using her hip to bump him to the middle of the wagon’s seat and yanking the reins from him. “I am perfectly capable of driving a wagon.”
“You’re perfectly capable of being an arse as well,” he muttered, staring flatly at her.
She returned the look with one just as sharp, then used her one hand to snap the reins and encourage the horse into motion.
All in all, Hazel Mercer was a remarkably good driver, especially given her limitations. Lenore spent the entire journey out of the city and along the dark road that led to the Mercer estate watching her and listening to the banter between her and Phin. The two were obviously close. They chattered away as though they’d never been apart, attempting to bring Lenore into the conversation whenever they could.
Exhaustion, and the sense that she had fallen through the looking glass into some strange, new world, hung heavily on Lenore’s shoulders, though, and as the miles wore on, her spirits grew more and more depressed. She’d missed home before in the past year, but the social life of London and the excitements it held had kept her distracted enough not to dwell on it. Journeying through the countryside in a wagon, listening to a brother and sister laugh and rib each other, opened up a veritable Pandora’s Box of emotions in Lenore that she’d avoided for too long.
She missed her mother. She missed her brothers and sisters. A whole year had passed in which she’d missed birthdays, Christmas, the Fourth of July. She missed baseball in Haskell and the fierce but friendly rivalries between ranches that it fostered. She missed picnics after church during the summer and balls at Theophilus Gunn’s hotel in the winter. She missed being around people for whom class was something one did in school and not a distinction that separated people. She even missed horrible, horrible Vivian and Melinda Bonneville and the way they made everyone’s lives miserable because they were miserable themselves.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Phin said as Hazel directed the wagon off the main road and along a path toward a modest-sized house that was illuminated by moonlight. “Still sleepy?”
“That must be what it is,” Lenore said in a too-quiet voice.
“It’s them,” a small voice shouted from one of the upstairs windows as Hazel pulled the wagon toward an out building beside the house. “They’re back!”
“Did you bring Lionel with you?” a second voice asked.
“Amaryllis Marie Mercer, what have I told you about opening that window when it’s so cold out?” Hazel called up to the window even as it slammed shut. “I swear, those girls will be the death of us all one of these days.”
“I have a sister who is the same way,” Lenore said as the wagon stopped and Phin climbed over her, hopping down and then helping her down. “Daphne,” she went on. “She’s thirteen—no, she’ll be fourteen by now.” A lump formed in her throat as she jumped to the ground, then stepped away from Phin.
Damn Bartholomew Swan and his villainous ways. She’d spent so long being afraid of him, then hiding from him, then figuring out a way to stay hidden, that she hadn’t contemplated how much he’d actually taken from her. And now here she was, walking around the back of a wagon, the scent of the country in her nose—not exactly like it was at home, but far more like it than London—her heart breaking in the dark, and she couldn’t do a damned thing about it. She hadn’t realized how helpless she truly was until she’d landed in a place where she was safe.
“Something isn’t right,” Phin said, walking up to her as she reached into the back of the wagon to take her traveling bag from where Hazel had stored it. Hazel was busy tending to the horse. He rested his hand on the small of her back as she leaned into the wagon, then kept it there, nearly drawing her into an embrace, when she straightened. “I’m sorry that I didn’t warn you about Hazel’s condition before. I think so little of it these days, and I was concerned about getting you away from London as quickly as possible, that the details slipped my mind.”
“It’s not your sister,” Lenore said, then cleared her throat to dislodge the lump of emotions there. She glanced up at Phin. The moonlight reflected off of his spectacles, but she could still see his eyes and the kindness they held. Everything about him was alluring and wonderful to her, even his scent after a day of traveling. Her heart wanted to wrap herself in his arms and never let go, but that was as impossible as going home again. Still, she owed him the truth. “I’ve just come over all homesick,” she said, lowering her head and stepping away from him.
“I suppose that’s understandable, all things considered,” he said, following her.
“Phineas! Phineas is home!” a girl’s voice rang out in the night.
“Huzzah!” a second girl cried.
The owners of those voices charged forward as Phin and Lenore neared the house, rocketing themselves toward Phin and throwing themselves at him with abandon. The smaller of the two—who looked to be about nine—leapt straight at him, nearly knocking Phin backwards as she wrapped her arms and legs around him.
“Where is Lionel?” the younger one asked.
Phin dropped his suitcase to hug her, laughing. “I’m happy to see you too, Amaryllis. And you, Gladys.” He ruffled the hair of the older girl, who looked to be about eleven, as though she were a boy. “Lionel couldn’t come home this time. The queen needed him to advise her on the guest list for a costume ball. But might I introduce you fine ladies to our guest, Miss Lenore Garrett, Princess of Wyoming.”
Twin gasps followed Phin’s introduction. Amaryllis jumped down from Phin’s arms, and the two girls faced Lenore with wide eyes.
“You’re not really a princess, are you?” Gladys asked, narrowing her eyes in a way that reminded Lenore very much of some of Phin’s more circumspect expressions.
Whether it was the deep longing she felt for her own siblings, exhaustion finally turning her brain to mush, or the sly look Phin now wore, Lenore pulled herself to her full height and answered, “Why yes, I am,” with absolute seriousness.
“No!” Amaryllis gasped. “They don’t have princesses in America.”
“Have you ever been to America?” Lenore asked as Phineas gestured for them all to continue on into the house.
“No,” Amaryllis and Gladys answered at the same time.
Lenore shrugged. “Then how do you know whether we have princesses there or not?”
They both blinked at her in awe as they stepped into a well-lit kitchen. Scents of fresh bread and recent cooking filled the air, plucking hard at Lenore’s heartstrings. The kitchen was in cheerful disarray, with pots and dishes waiting to be scrubbed, remnants of supper still on the counter, and what looked like a small pile of laundry that needed to be washed in one corner. The room was instantly crowded as she and Phin and the girls bustled in. It was the first time in over a year that Lenore felt as though she’d entered a home.
“Do you want tea?” Gladys asked when she saw Lenore staring at the stove. “Princesses drink tea, don’t they?”
“Not this late at night,” Phin said, taking Lenore’s bag from her and nodding for her to move on to the hall. “It’s nearly midnight. We should all be in bed, fast asleep by now.”
“Hazel made me move in with Amaryllis so that you can have my room,” Gladys said, frowning for a moment before brightening.
“I was so vexed, but to have a real princess sleep in my bed….” She ended with a dreamy sigh.
“There are no peas in it,” Amaryllis assured her. “I know princesses don’t like sleeping in beds with peas.”
Lenore laughed out loud in spite of her conflicted thoughts as they shuffled into a hallway and toward a staircase. The girls were crowding her and Phin didn’t seem to want to move more than a few feet away from her. The result was that they all formed one comical clump as they moved through the house.
At least, until they passed a parlor downstairs that smelled faintly of camphor. Then Phin paused.
“What are you still doing up?” he called into the room in a voice that was as cheerful as it was strained.
That alone would have caught Lenore’s attention, but when he put their cases down and marched directly into the room, her curiosity was piqued enough to follow him.
For the second time that evening, her heart dropped into her gut and she found herself near tears in an instant. Waiting in the parlor was a man with straggly, white hair and a pale, drawn face. He was sitting—or rather, propped—in a chair by the fire and tucked up with quilts and pillows. His stare was blank, and his mouth sagged open. Phin marched right up to the man, taking his handkerchief from his pocket without a second thought and wiping a small trail of saliva from the man’s chin before embracing him as tightly as he could. Lenore couldn’t tell if the old man was aware of the gesture at all.
“Father, you’re looking well,” Phin said, setting his handkerchief on the table beside the man’s chair and brushing his fingers through the man’s hair. “I’d like you to meet someone very dear to me,” he went on. “This is Miss Lenore Garrett, from Wyoming. Remember, I wrote to you about her. Hazel read you those letters, I trust.”
Phin beckoned for Lenore to approach. Lenore swallowed and did as she was asked. Only when she saw a slight flicker of movement in Phin’s father’s eyes did she realize that he was at least somewhat aware of what was going on around him, though not very.
