“Shall we take a turn about the room?” Francis asked, offering his arm.
Lorrie stared at his arm, hesitating. And then with a shake of her head at her own foolishness, she slid her gloved hand into the crook of Francis’s arm. What was wrong with her? This was what she had been waiting for—the chance to speak to her intended alone.
“How have you been?” Francis asked as he led her along the wall, away from the Viking. He walked with his head held high, his gaze moving from one corner to another as they walked.
“Very well, and you?”
He paused in his perusal of the room to glance directly at her. “Horrible. I pine for you every minute we are apart.”
“Oh.” Lorrie’s mouth suddenly felt too dry. Why hadn’t she thought to say something similar? Now Francis would think she hadn’t missed him at all.
“I’ve missed you too,” she said quickly. “I tried to write to you, but my father must have threatened the servants with dismissal if they delivered any more letters for me. I had hoped you might write.”
“Oh, but I did,” he said, his gaze flitting about the room again. “I wrote you a dozen letters, at least. You didn’t receive them?”
“No. My father must have intercepted them.” Except that her father was often away at his club or the Lords when mail arrived. Lorrie frequently leafed through the letters and invitations before anyone else. Her father might have intercepted some correspondence, but a dozen letters? It did not seem possible.
“Your father or my damned cousin.” Francis peered over his shoulder at the Viking. Lorrie looked as well. He was still in conversation with the dark-haired woman. Well, he was not talking, but he was listening as she spoke.
“He hasn’t let you out of his sight. I’m certain he’d like to thwart our marriage so he might have you.”
Lorrie almost laughed, until she realized Francis was in earnest. “Darling, Mr. Mostyn has no designs on me, I assure you.” Exactly the opposite, unfortunately. “He is merely doing his duty, the one my father hired him to perform.”
“The son of an earl, hiring out his services like a common tradesman. It’s embarrassing to the family. And surely he can keep you safe without filching my letters.”
Lorrie opened her mouth to argue that the Viking couldn’t be taking Francis’s letters to her because he couldn’t read well enough to know to whom the letters were directed. But she closed her mouth again. The Viking had not instructed her to keep it secret that he could not read, but she felt as though she was entrusted with a confidence she should not share. But surely Francis knew or at least suspected his cousin was illiterate. If the two had spent their boyhoods together and had been taught in the same schoolrooms until Francis was sent away to school, then wouldn’t Francis know his cousin couldn’t read?
It hadn’t taken Lorrie very long to puzzle it out. And if Francis knew this, had he merely forgotten, or did he think making the Viking a villain in her eyes was to his advantage? For the first time, Lorrie wondered if perhaps Francis had not been altogether truthful with her. He always claimed to write her letters, but she did not receive half so many as he supposedly sent. He’d told her his cousin was a bully as well. But the letter the Earl of Pembroke had sent on his nephew’s behalf was more in the spirit of bullying that she had ever seen from the Viking.
“You don’t like your cousin, do you?” Lorrie asked. A few weeks before she would have immediately turned the conversation to elopement, but now it was a topic she was not so eager to broach.
“Why would I? He’s a big brute, dumb as an ox. When we were children, his favorite pastime was using his fists on my siblings and me. He didn’t think we were good enough to live under the roof of the Earl of Pembroke.”
Lorrie’s gaze darted to the Viking, but he was no longer standing in his corner. She wondered if the brunette had lured him outside. “That does not sound like the Mr. Mostyn I know,” Lorrie said.
“Yes, well, he’s a good pretender,” Francis said.
Lorrie lapsed into silence as they continued their circuit. Francis was lying. She wasn’t sure where the truth ended and the lies began—it was very possible that the Viking had beat Francis when they were children—but she knew the man well enough now to know that he didn’t care a fig about being the son of an earl.
He also didn’t pretend.
But perhaps Francis did.
“I couldn’t bear to wait another day for an opportunity to speak to you,” Francis said, finally turning to face her and give her his full attention.
“We are fortunate an opportunity arose.”
“Not fortunate. I paid that woman to distract my cousin.”
Lorrie felt her jaw drop. “You what?”
“I paid her. She’s the sister of my landlord, and I told her if she kept the big brute distracted for a half hour I’d take her to a ton fete and pay her two pounds.”
Lorrie supposed there was nothing illegal about what Francis had done. Neither was the woman a tart from the nearest corner, but the very idea that he had paid a woman to lure the Viking away bothered her.
“You must have been quite desperate to speak to me,” she said, her voice faint.
“I didn’t know if you had received my letters.” Francis’s eyes scanned the room again. “And I want to be certain you know how much I still love and admire you.”
Lorrie watched his face as he spoke. The words might have meant more to her if he had looked at her as he said them.
Finally, his gaze flicked down to her. “Do I still hold your affections, my darling Lorrie?”
“Of course,” she said as though by rote. “You know I want nothing more than to be with you, as husband and wife.”
Francis’s mouth tightened as though he had heard this refrain one too many times. Lorrie’s chest felt tight. Was the Viking correct? Did Francis only want her money?
“I want that too.” But his eyes were on the other people in the room again. “But we must wait for your father’s blessing.”
“No.”
Francis’s gaze snapped back to her with a satisfying intensity. “I beg your pardon?”
“No,” she said again. The Viking spoke simply and directly all the time, and it seemed effective.
“I must say, my lady, this new behavior of yours is quite unbecoming.”
Lorrie couldn’t care less. If Francis really wanted to marry her, he would have to take the becoming with the unbecoming. And he would have to prove he really did want to marry her—not her money. “I don’t want to wait for my father’s blessing,” she said.
Francis gave her a patronizing smile, as though she were a child. “It is hard to wait, darling, but I’m afraid we have no other choice.”
“Of course we do. We can elope.”
He sighed. “Not this again.”
Lorrie clenched her fists. “I’m terribly sorry I annoy you with my constant demands for you to marry me. Perhaps I should cease making them.”