Page 141 of A Story of Love

“Why so soon?”

Lori shrugged. “There is nothing to keep me here.”

“What about Parker? Can you just leave without giving him any notice—not that the wretched man deserves the courtesy.”

“Oh! I forgot to tell you that part. I went to see him directly after leaving The King’s Purse”—she felt her face heat at saying the brothel’s name but ignored it— “and I stopped at The Mercury offices this morning, and both times the door was locked and there was nobody there, not even his secretary. Indeed, the man seems to have disappeared into thin air.” With her manuscript, but Lori didn’t bother mentioning that.

“Shouldn’t you at least stay until you can speak to him and retrieve your manuscript?”

“I would like it back, but I had the sense to make a copy of it—a tedious process I now am grateful for—after talking to Mr. Keats.” She paused and then added the real reason she wanted to be gone so quickly, “I don’t want to be here if Lord Severn should come looking for me.”

And worse, she didn’t want to be there if Severn didn’t come.

***

As much as Lori dreaded going back to Moorcross, she was thrilled to see her family again.

All of them—her brother Jeremy, his wife Sarah, and their five daughters, from fifteen to four—were waiting at the coaching inn to greet her when she arrived on the stage.

There was squealing and weeping and laughing and Lori floated back to the vicarage on a cloud of family love and affection.

Lori’s first three days at the vicarage were pure heaven, and she spent every minute getting reacquainted with her family. She had only ever seen young Gwendolyn, her brother’s youngest child, at her christening almost five years before. Of all her brother’s daughters Gwen looked most like Jeremy and Lori. She had the same dark, wiry hair and green eyes while her other nieces were the very image of their pretty auburn-haired, blue-eyed mother.

Not until the fifth day did the outside world come crashing back in, when her brother brought a copy of the World Examiner home.

“Sir Matthew remembered how much you enjoyed reading the newspapers and sent this along after my visit today.”

Few people could afford a subscription to a newspaper, so passing the copies from person to person was common. Sir Matthew, a kind man, also had the misfortune to be Daniel Fenton’s father.

Lori glanced at the well-thumbed newspaper as if it were a fresh turd. “How kind of him.”

Jeremy laughed. “You needn’t wrinkle your nose. I know it’s not your precious Times, but it’s better than nothing, hmm?”

“Yes, of course,” she muttered.

Lori held off opening the World Examiner for a record two days. That meant she’d not read any news from London for a week. An unprecedented dry spell from news these past seven years.

“You are picking up that newspaper as if you wished you had tongs,” Sarah teased.

It was a Saturday evening and the family had retired to what Sarah called the Great Room, a name that was more wishful thinking than accurate.

Lori smiled tightly and turned immediately to the back section.

Jeremy—who was watching her rather than working on his sermon, which is what he was supposed to be doing—chuckled. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d not seen it with my own eyes.”

“What?” she rudely demanded.

“Is this really my sister turning to the society section of a newspaper?”

She scowled at him. “Shouldn’t you be busy working on words to inspire the masses tomorrow morning rather than scrutinizing my reading habits?”

“Touchy,” he murmured, but slid his reading spectacles back down and returned to his labors.

Georgie, her second youngest niece, popped up beside Lori’s chair. “Will you play a game of Spillikins, Auntie Lori?”

Lori smiled. “I’d love to. You play Clara, first, and I’ll play the winner.”

Once everyone was occupied, Lori took a deep breath and marched through the various snippets of nauseating gossip, not breathing normally until she’d gone all the way through to the end.