Page 31 of A Story of Love (The Academy of Love #6)

“Viscount Severn is here to see Lori ?” Jeremy repeated before Lori could respond.

Sarah nodded vigorously. “Yes.” She stuck out her hand and Lori saw there was a card in her palm.

Jeremy turned to Lori, his eyes bulging. “Good Lord, Lori! You know Severn ?”

Lori was startled by her brother’s use of the Lord’s name and met his shocked gaze with a guilty shrug. “Yes.”

His eyebrows lowered and she could see that there would be questions—many of them.

But not now.

Lori lurched to her feet. “I will go speak to him.”

“But Lori!”

She stopped and turned at Sarah’s raised voice. “Yes?”

“Er, don’t you want to tidy your hair?”

Lori glanced in the small mirror beside the door and scowled at her reflection. She had a tendency to pluck at her hair absently when she wrote. She looked like she’d come away the loser in a wrestling match with a hedge.

“No, it is fine.”

Her sister-in-law gasped. “Surely you want to change your gown!”

Lori glanced down at herself, as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing. “No, Sarah; Severn can see me as I am.”

“But you are wearing your oldest dress, and it has cherry juice splatters all over it from helping me make jam and—” she broke off when her husband set a hand on her shoulder.

“Sarah, let her be.”

Lori cut Jeremy a quick, grateful look and then strode resolutely down the short hallway.

Only when she reached the staircase and had a moment to herself did she slump against the handrail and exhale the breath she’d been holding.

What in the world was he doing there? And after all this time!

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 ooof ing 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.

He sat without any demur. “I wish you’d not left The King’s Purse and disappeared that day.”

“Oddly enough I didn’t want to wait for you to come back once I’d read about your betrothal in the newspaper.”

He looked hurt, rather than angry. “It’s too bad you didn’t wait, because then you might have learned the truth, Lorelei.”

“Which is?”

“Demelza and I never planned to marry. The only reason I agreed to the betrothal was to help her.”

Lori crossed her arms and stared.

He sighed. “She is in love with another man—a clerk in her father’s counting house. But her father wanted a peer for a son-in-law and refused to approve the marriage. Moreland had already asked Pascoefor permission to court her; if I didn’t help her, her father would have applied unpleasant pressure on her to marry the earl. We—Demelza and I—decided to fake a betrothal just long enough to distract her father. Ever since she confessed her love for his employee, he had kept her imprisoned. She was sure that he would relax his guard if he believed that she’d fallen into line with his wishes.” He paused and gave her a questioning look.

“Go on, I’m still here.”

“I gave her money, because she had none even though she is a great heiress, and Gregg helped her sneak away when she was supposed to be getting fitted for her trousseau. He took her to where her lover—who is now her husband—waited for her, and the two took off to Scotland. When Pascoe was forced to admit that his daughter had absconded, I shamed the truth out of him—that she had only agreed to marry me because he had forced her.” He gave a tiny but smug smile. “I wish you could have seen me, Lorelei. I was quite impressive in my rage.

I told him he should be ashamed for trying to auction off his daughter when he knew that she was in love with another man.

I ranted about how I would be humiliated if the truth were known. Finally, once my anger began to cool, I said I would spare her—and Pascoe himself—any embarrassment and admit that the betrothal had ended amicably.

But I only agreed to do so on one condition. I told him he had to forgive his daughter as I didn’t want to be the cause of a family breach, and I babbled a great deal of claptrap about how I’d been embroiled in a fracas with my own grandfather for two decades.” He cut her a sheepish look. “And I also promised to put his name up for membership at one of the clubs I belong to.

I suspect it was really that last thing that persuaded him to forgive her.”

Hope had been fluttering wildly in her chest for at least a minute, but she brutally quashed it. “You expect me to believe that story?”

“Demelza said you’d probably not believe a word of it, so she gave me this.” He reached into his coat and took out a folded sheet of paper, which he held out to her.

Lori snatched it from his fingers and unfolded it.

It was brief:

Dear Miss Fontenot,

I would like to apologize for any trouble my deception caused you. You have been kindness itself to me on the few occasions we’ve met this past Season, and I’d hate to think I hurt you by any of my actions. When Lord Severn told me at the Countess of Mansfield’s house party that he had no intention of offering marriage to me—that he had already given his heart to you—I felt terrible about using him as my means of escape. But he insisted you would understand completely. Neither of us expected my father to make that announcement at his dinner party. In fact, Lord Severn had asked Papa to keep the matter in strictest confidence until he spoke to the Marquess of Grandon about the betrothal—which he never would have done, of course. But my father is a law unto himself and contrived that awkward announcement, making sure it was announced in the newspapers.

Lord Severn told me how you’d read of the betrothal and I can’t imagine how hurt and horrified you must have been! I cannot apologize enough. If I had not begged his lordship to keep our agreement in complete secrecy—for I knew my father had his spies everywhere—then he might have confided the truth in you and you would not have been hurt. Please forgive me and know that Lord Severn has only ever been a gentleman, friend, and savior to me.

Regards,

Demelza Lions, née Pascoe

Lori carefully refolded the letter, her emotions churning.

She felt movement and looked up to find that Fast had taken the chair next to her.

He scooted it closer and took her hand. “Am I forgiven?”

“Why did you wait so long to come here and tell me this?”

He snorted. “Not out of choice, I assure you. It’s… well, yet another long, convoluted story.”

She pulled her hand from his and crossed her arms again. “I’m listening.”

***

Lorelei hadn’t yet forgiven him yet, but she was rapidly thawing.

“Before I answer your question about why it took so long, let me go back in time to last year—just after I left here on my final voyage as the Vixen’s captain.”

She nodded.

“I was in a small port town in Venezuela when I encountered a mutineer from the Sea Ranger. ”

“You have told me this before—remember? Although you didn’t say how many mutineers. You picked up only one?”

“I did. And…this will sound astounding, but I knew the man.” He then told her, as simply as possible, about finding Joe Jensen and then discovering he was the brother of the man who’d killed Percy.

“That is an incredible coincidence. My God, Fast! I am astonished that you didn’t kill him on the spot when you found out.”

Fast looked away from her. “I… wasn’t kind to him.”

“I don’t think anyone could blame you for that. If somebody admitted to me that a member of their family had killed Jeremy… well, I would want my pound of flesh, even if the messenger was innocent.”

“I was insane with rage, but Gregg had the sense to restrain me until I could come back to my senses. You see, Jensen’s brother—Albert—had acted at the direction of another man and did so under duress.”

“What do you mean? Did somebody give him money to do it? Who?

“Jensen said his brother wasn’t paid to kill Percy, but that he did it because somebody threatened to destroy his family —specifically Jensen’s two sisters and his mother—if he didn’t comply.”

“Good Lord!”

“Jensen said he would only tell me the real killer’s identity after I’d done something for him. He said he had a signed confession that his brother had written years ago—an insurance policy against the man who made him do the murder, in case he tried to hurt either Albert or his family. As things transpired, the real murderer didn’t wait for Albert Jensen to talk.”

“He had him murdered, too?” Lorelei guessed.

“Close enough. He had both Albert and Joseph press-ganged. The last thing the killer said to them was that if they ever uttered his name to anyone their two sisters and mother would pay for their indiscretion.”

“What a nasty, nasty character.”

“Yes. Especially since he punished the three women, regardless.”

She swallowed. “I’m almost afraid to ask. What did he do?”

“It’s awful, Lorelei. Too awful for your ears.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “I work, er, worked for a newspaper, Fast.”

He held up his hands. “Fine, fine. He sold the girls to a bawd who runs several of the worst establishments in London. The mother he sold to a workhouse.”

She bit her lip, her eyes becoming glassy.

“To make a long, horrible story shorter, Albert sickened and died less than a year later. Joe knew he couldn’t go home—not with the murderer’s threat still clear in his mind—and he resigned himself to never seeing his family again. And then Pigot took over as captain. And you know how that turned out.”

“The poor man,” Lorelei murmured.

“That is not even the worst of it. Jensen had consumption and was dying by the time I picked him up. He had tried to send word to his mother using a mate’s name—so as not to alert the killer, if he were still watching Jensen’s family—but the letter was undeliverable. And then of course the crew mutinied, and he had no chance of getting back to England and looking for them.”

“So you told him you would find them?”

“Yes, in exchange for the confession and his own testimony, although I doubted he’d survive that long. I thought it would be consumption that killed him, but I was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

Fast sighed. “Everything might have gone along as planned if not for three men on the crew who overheard the conversation with Jensen and decided to stick their hands in. They must have killed him while trying to get the confession from him—although I believe Joe took one of the men with him as only two came to England.” He shrugged. “I will never know what truly happened to poor Joe. But I do know that the men found the confession because they used it to extort money from the killer.”

She shook her head. “This is just so… incredible that I don’t even know what to say. How did you ever unravel it all?”

He gave her a wry smile. “I think you might have been the key to that.”

“Me? But…how?”

“You were poking into matters that led you in the direction of the killer.”

She blinked. “So…then you were not exaggerating when you said I was in danger?”

“No, darling. I was most certainly not.” A familiar wave of nausea assaulted him, just as it did every time he thought about how close he had come to losing her. “The brute who grabbed you in the alley that night was a bloke named Carey, and he worked for the killer and—”

“ Was named?” she broke in. “Is he…dead?”

“Yes, he was murdered later that same night.”

Lorelei reached for Fast’s hand and he clutched it tightly. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Fast.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I went back and forth about telling you the truth, Lorelei. I just—”

“I understand why you didn’t,” she said, her words surprising him. She gave a wry laugh. “I would have kept digging, Fast. I know that about myself.” She paused, and said, “You mentioned somebody had stolen the confession. Does that mean you never found out who killed your brother?”

“No. I found out who it was through his henchman, Carey. It was Bevil Norman, the Earl of Moreland.”

Her eyes threatened to bulge out of her head. “ What ? That—that cannot be true!”

“It is.”

“But… why ?”

“Because Percy had found out what Bevil did to Louisa.”

She gasped. “You mean—”

“I mean that he did the same thing to her that he did to Martha and the other women,” Fast said.

It took a moment before she could seem to force any words out. “I read that Moreland died in a fire. He didn’t, did he? You never brought any of this before the authorities, did you?”

“How could I?” he asked, ignoring her first question. “I didn’t have the confession, and I didn’t have Joe Jensen. I had nothing. And then there was the fact that Bevil was holding Jensen’s younger sister hostage and threatened to kill her if I refused to meet him—alone. Jensen never got the chance to hand over the confession, but he did set me on the path to finding the killer. I owed it to him to save his sister if I could.”

“So you met a murderer…alone?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at her thunderstruck expression. “And that meeting was why I wasn’t back in time to wake up with you that morning. Or have dinner with you.”

Her face screwed into an expression of confusion. “But…I don’t understand. This all happened almost a month ago?”

“Yes.”

She huffed. “Tell me about this meeting. All of it.”

Ten minutes later, Lorelei shook her head at him. “That was quite a risk you took meeting him at that remote place. He might have just shot you before you even entered the barn.”

“I knew he wouldn’t. Moreland was too smug—too arrogant. He’d gotten away with murder for too long and wanted to crow about it to somebody. To me. Besides,” he added wryly, “he believed that I’d stolen Demelza from right under his nose at that wretched house party. He wanted the chance to tell me how much pleasure he’d take in snatching her back once he’d killed me.” Fast’s hands flexed, his anger rising. “He took great pleasure in telling me how he’d made Louisa’s life hell.”

He looked up from his unappetizing thoughts to find Lorelei in front of him. She nudged aside his knees and perched on his lap before sliding her arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry, Fast. So terribly sorry.”

He drew her soft, comforting body closer. “I should have never left her to him, Lorelei. I only wish she had told me! If I’d known then what he had done to her—” he broke off and shook his head. “I should have guessed.”