Read Online The Willows by Mathew Sperle - Free Book Online

safe
and song at the Willows.
    “ Here you are,” Lance said
suddenly behind her, strolling up to join her at the rail.
Half-baked in her green wool, Gwen resented him for looking so cool
and poised. From his starched white shirt and crisp linen suit, the
polished boots, to the straw hat in his hands, he was every inch
the well-groomed man. Even his hair had the good taste to stay in
place, proving itself above gentle, stirring wind.
    “ Gwen darling, why the heavy
sighs?”
    She tried to smile, but she was feeling
mightily sorry for herself. “Oh lance, don’t you ever feel
frightened about the future?”
    He frowned. “Truly, Gwen, if you must
persist in being glum, perhaps I should go back to talking with
your cousin.”
    She tried not to Bristle. “I’m not
being glum. I was just looking at all the new homes, and realizing
how much has changed in my absence.”
    “ Sorry, darling, but that’s
the risk you take when you run away.”
    “ I did no such thing.” She
protested, stung. “My parents insisted I go to Boston. And then
when mama-“she swallowed, hard. “Well, you know I had no
choice.”
    Lance mearly shrugged. “All I know is
we were to be married, yet here I’ve waited, alone and distraught,
going on five long years.”
    Gwen should be thrilled, for these were
words she wanted to hear, but for some reason, Lance merely annoyed
her. “You never told me you were waiting. I thought you had given
up on our marriage.”
    “ You wound me.” He turned to
stare out over the rail. “Did you think I could ever forget our
oath that we’d never be parted?”
    Staring at his stiff profile,
remembering that valve, she recalled a few other things as well.
“You left New Orleans right after daddy said we couldn’t marry. I
was the one waiting alone, with the definite impression that
marriage was the last thing you want to for me.”
    He turned to her then. “Darling’, you
miss understood.”
    “ All our friends said you
could ill afford to marry a pauper.”
    “ If money mattered to me,
why did I wait for you? I could have found an heiress, but I sat
tight, waiting on my Gwen, praying for the day she’d come home to
us. To me.”
    “ I am home now,
Lance.”
    She found all the longing
she could ask for in his gaze. Throw
caution to the winds , she pleaded
silently; take me in your arms and kiss
away my doubts and worries.
    But he merely sigh as he took her
hands. “And now that you’re here, I shall find some way to gain
your father’s approval. If we stay patients, he will come around,
and then we can be together always.”
    Though she stared at Lance, it was
another face saw and her mind, his features intense and compelling
as he kissed her. The man from the docks might be a rude and
uncivilized lout, but he knew what he wanted, and how to take it.
If he decided to marry her, he’d do so at once, and there’d be
nothing her daddy could do to stop them.
    But that was absurd, for the man
clearly did not want her. He cannot have made it any planer that he
thought her a silly fool.
    “ You may find your daddy has
changed, too,” Lance said he sighed her, startling her out of her
thoughts. “Indeed, time has forced him to change his mind about a
good many things.”
    It was an odd thing to say, but before
Gwen could question him, Edith glided over to join them, twirling a
frilly parasol over her shoulder. Her cousin looked so cool and
fresh in her ice-blue linen, Gwen felt more a frump than ever. Wait
until we get to the Willows, she thought; daddy will make certain I
never again suffer for the loss of those trunks.
    “ We will be stopping soon at
Belle Oaks.” Edith laid a hand on lance’s arm. “I hope your mama
will appreciate how lucky she is to have you back home. We
certainly shall be missing your company.”
    Lance turned to her with a broad smile.
“I do hope you mean that, for I won’t be getting off at Bella Oaks.
Your father has invited me to dine at the Willows, and how could