a small shelf beside one window. She couldn’t delay her departure forever, though, and all too soon, she carried her bag downstairs.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs when she heard Phin’s voice coming from the parlor.
“…not entirely certain what to do, Father,” he said. “It’s not the sort of situation one finds oneself in every day. The trouble is, I’m in love.”
Lenore’s heart leapt in her chest, even as a sheepish sort of heat filled her face. She tiptoed down the last few stairs and over to the parlor doorway, making certain she remained hidden from Phin’s view. He must have transferred his father back to the parlor after breakfast. She caught sight of him sitting on a chair he’d pulled up close to the one where his father sat, tucked in blankets and staring into nothing near the fireplace.
“I’m sure you would tell me to stop being such a prat and to help her,” Phin went on with a weak smile, holding his father’s limp hand. “She’s a woman in need, and when it comes to the fairer sex, it doesn’t matter what sins they’re guilty of, we love them all the same. I just wish she would have told me sooner.”
A guilty lump formed in Lenore’s throat. She wished she’d told him sooner too.
His father made the slightest grunting sound.
“I know,” Phin said, as though he’d interpreted an entire speech from the small sound. “Love gets all of us in trouble eventually. I never thought I’d actually fall for it,” he added with a smirk. “I know that I have never been able to keep my wicked ways from you entirely. How you managed to raise five such irascible children is beyond me.”
His father made another grunting sound.
“Oh, so you’re taking credit for all of our wickedness then?” Phin’s face brightened slightly, and he closed his other hand around his first as it held his father’s hand. “Just one hedonist raising a gaggle of others? Well, if you insist, Father.” He laughed gently, then sighed. “I just wish I didn’t feel so hurt. It seems ungentlemanly, somehow, to feel as though I’ve been betrayed when Lenore is in danger. But I have feelings too, pitiful as I feel for admitting it. We all do, when it comes down to it. And perhaps what I’m feeling most is disappointment that the lovely future I painted for myself won’t be able to happen the way I envisioned it.”
Lenore pressed a hand to her stomach, tears stinging at her eyes and guilt gnawing at her insides.
Phin’s father made another, small sound.
“I know, I know,” Phin sighed. “The future never turns out the way we plan it. But perhaps it will turn into something even better, right? Isn’t that what Mama always said?”
The pathos in Phin’s voice as he mentioned his mother—someone Lenore had never heard him talk about before, but who she could see had had a profound effect on Phin’s life—was too much for her to bear. She turned away, but in the process, she knocked her traveling bag against a table in the hall.
Phin jerked around and spotted her. His face was pinched with emotion, but he quickly smoothed it away. He cleared his throat and stood, patting his father’s hand before letting it go.
“And so, it is goodbye, Father.” He leaned over and kissed his father’s forehead. “I’ll try to make it back as soon as possible to visit. And I’ll drag Lionel with me, if I can. I fear the girls will mutiny if I don’t.” He squeezed his father’s hand one last time before leaving the parlor and joining Lenore in the hall.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Lenore said, feeling awkward and wrung out and rather like she wouldn’t mind falling through a hole in the ground and into a storybook world.
“I see you’re ready to leave,” Phin said, his expression betraying nothing about what he thought of her in that moment.
“I am.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“So am I.”
For a moment, they stood there facing each other without saying anything. Lenore wanted to say so much, but words seemed inadequate to express her thoughts. She just wanted everything to go back to the way it had been before Bart showed up and ruined her life once again.
In the middle of that thought, Phin raised a hand and brushed his fingertips against her cheek. The sudden, sensual, affectionate gesture sent a jolt of electricity through Lenore, reminding her that she was