Page 31 of If The Fates Allow
“Perhaps he and Paul can have a double ceremony after the holidays.”
He was joking, but this wasn’t a joke. Her father…her father would murder Cal if he got wind of this. Women were nothing to her brother,and while he would eventually settle down when required, it would never be with someone like Jennie.
“Where is Cal?” Already hurrying ahead, she vaguely knew of the place Noah referred to as their meeting spot. When she and her siblings were children, their mother occasionally brought them to the beach to walk among the dunes. Willa had only been able to accompany the family twice, but she remembered every detail. “I must speak with him right away.”
Chapter 10
“Willa, you need to calm down.”
“A word of advice, Dr. Anderson.” Rounding on him as she reached the line in the sand where the forest met the beach, Willa pointed a finger in Noah’s face. “The very last thing you should ever tell a Fairweather woman to do is calm down.”
He held his hands in the air, his smirk firmly in place. “Understood.”
She shot forward again, finding a small, worn path through the trees. However, she didn’t get far before Noah grabbed her by the arm. “I said no, Willa. Things are happening over there that are not for you to see.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“Because I wanted to make you happy and have one of those desires of yours come true,” he said plainly. “I also wanted to talk without Bonnie attempting to listen in on our conversation. She certainly is a busybody when it comes to you. It’s almost like she’s part of the family and not a staff member.”
Bonnie.
The perfect story to make him understand how badly her father would take the news of Paul and this Katie girl.
“She is a member of the family, except not by blood. My father is in love with Bonnie. He has been ever since he was a boy.”
It was incredibly satisfying to see Noah’s mouth fall open, and she patiently waited while he wrapped his mind around the whole thing.
“I…um…didn’t know.”
“Why should you?” Willa shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not as if we air the information for all to know.”
He truly was struggling. Noah was a brilliant man but also a good one. Grasping how devious the Fairweathers could be wasn’t something people like him were forced to do very often. “So, your mother allows your father’s mistress to serve on the household staff?”
She would have found his reasoning funny if the situation were not so serious. “Bonnie is not my father’s mistress. She is as chaste as the day she was born. At least, I hope she is.”
“Then why—”
“My father hired Bonnie when he married my mother, and she accepted because she wanted to be close to him.”
“But what were his reasons for offering her the job in the first place if not to keep her as a mistress?” The cruelty behind it was finally settling over him. “Wouldn’t that just be torture for them both?”
“The long and the short of it is that Stephen Fairweather doesn’t like other people touching his things. In his mind, Bonnie is his possession, and he keeps her close so she can never be with another man. He loves her in his strange, twisted way, but his dedication to duty overrides that love. He married my mother to keep the mill going. Her dowry was exactly what he needed, so he gave up his Bonnie for stability.”
Noah let out a heavy sigh as it all came crashing down on him. Resting a shoulder against a tree trunk, he stared at her. “Which is why you think he’ll not accept this whole situation with Paul and Lucy.”
“He’ll think that if he had to sacrifice the love of his life, then why shouldn’t others do the same. It will send him into a rage, Noah. He’ll blame Lucy. I know he will. He’ll say she didn’t do enough to encourage acourtship between herself and Paul.” Willa slouched against her own tree trunk. “And with Cal and Jennie, it’ll be much worse. So much worse.”
“Perhaps I can speak with him.”
Willa opened her mouth to tell him that was the worst idea possible, but before she could do so, a faint singing carried through the trees. Above them, the branches rustled in the wind, drowning out the haunting song for a moment or two.
But then it came again.
“Do you hear that?”
Noah frowned. “Hear what?”
“The song.” She held up her hand, silencing his reply. “Can you hear the song?”
