Page 55 of Sipping Seduction
It didn't make sense. If our families had been joined together in marriage, everyone would have talked about it. There was no way a wedding ever took place.
“What if it did?” Frannie asked. “What if that's what caused the feud in the first place? Maybe Mitchell was a horrible husband. Maybe he mistreated her and they separated. Abandoning a woman back then would have left her in a desperate situation.”
“I don't think so,” I said. “There would have been something on the record… a wedding date, or even a picture that would have shown them together.”
Frannie didn't reply. She'd taken a seat at the table and buried her nose between the pages of the diary. Trusting her to let me know if she came across anything important, I pulled several eggs out of the carton and cracked them into a big bowl. I was always able to think better when I had a full stomach.
A few minutes later, I slid a plate in front of Frannie. She pushed it to the side without looking up from the diary.
“She doesn't love Mitchell,” Frannie said. “Logan doesn't want to give her up, and they've been meeting in secret. Maybe she ran off with him, and that's why you haven't been able to find anything written about her in the family history.”
“Maybe her dad disowned her. As fucked-up as it was, women didn't have a whole lot of rights back then.”
Frannie picked up her fork and slid a small bite of omelet into her mouth without looking away from the page. “I've got to figure out what happens. She must have felt so alone.”
“I can ask Cole about it when I head into work tomorrow. How does that sound?”
“Do you really think he'll come up with anything?”
The hope in her eyes made me want to come through for her. “We could stop by the historical society later on this afternoon if you want.”
“You mean when both of us miraculously start feeling better?” she teased.
“Exactly.” I finished my omelet and looked down at Frannie's plate. “I'll let you bring that book back to bed with us if you finish your breakfast.”
“I thought this was lunch.” She separated another bite from the rest of her omelet and stabbed it with her fork.
“Whatever it is, it's keeping you and me from where we need to be.”
“And where exactly is that?” Frannie slid the bite into her mouth and closed her lips around the fork before slowly pulling it back out again. The woman could make something as simple as taking a bite of her breakfast look sexy.
“My bed. Now hurry up and finish before I get impatient and take you on the middle of the kitchen table.” I wouldn't hesitate to do it, especially since I’d been picturing the two of us having sex on every horizontal surface available.
She must have sensed I meant it because she finished her omelet in record time. As she got up from the table to take her plate to the sink, she grabbed the diary. “I hope Cornelia’s love story turns out to be as perfect as ours.”
Perfect… I’d always hesitated to label anything as perfect. In my experience, there was no such thing. But as Frannie smiled at me and slid her hand down my arm to twine her fingers with mine, “perfect” seemed like the only way to describe how things felt between us.
CHAPTER28
Frannie
“Evan,it says here Cornelia is supposed to marry Mitchell Stewart in two weeks. She's heartbroken because she's still in love with Logan.” I reached over and slid my fingers into Evan’s hair.
“When are you going to be done with that diary?” he asked. “I'm going through Frannie withdrawal while you finish it.”
I let out a soft laugh. “There are only a couple dozen more entries.”
“And then I'll get my girlfriend back?”
“I'm right here, silly.” I continue to trail my fingers through his hair, loving how it felt to have him snuggled up against me while I read. Yesterday, we'd stopped by the historical society when he finally let me out of bed. Mrs. McCall, who'd been running the small organization for the past thirty years, hadn't had any information to share about Cornelia Bishop, but said she would reach out to the state historical society and also search for any other related records.
I was eager to hear back from her. I'd gotten caught up in the love triangle between Cornelia Bishop, Mitchell Stewart, and Logan Scott. Charice suggested I skip ahead to the end to satisfy my curiosity, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. She was also one of those people who read the last page of a book before she started.
“Have you come across anything good?” Evan asked.
I flipped a page back and ran my finger across the curvy lines of script. “She says here that the surveyor is coming out to mark the land. I guess she and Mitchell are being gifted a section where they can build their own home. Part of it's supposed to come from the Bishop side and part of it from the Stewarts.”
“And the only reason they're getting married is to strengthen the ties between the families, huh?” Evan propped himself up on one elbow and leaned closer. “I know the agreement to form the distillery was signed in September of that year. Doesn't that seem suspect? That the only thing tying our families together was the wedding between Cornelia and Mitchell?”
