Page 6 of If The Fates Allow
“Murder and mayhem, is it?” Opening his eyes again, Noah grinned down at her. “From a person who owns multiple copies ofThe Modern Prometheus, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Breathless from having him this close and with the irony of being in such a state not lost on her, Willa returned his smile. “I do love my monsters.”
Neither said anything for a long minute, each studying the other carefully. Noah, likely doing so for scientific purposes, while her reasons fell more along the lines of committing every perfect line of his face to memory.
“Do you wish to tame them?” he asked softly. “The monsters, I mean.”
“What’s the good in loving a monster if you wish to tame it?” The corners of her mouth tilted upward, the movement drawing his gaze. “They’re created to wreak havoc, and suppressing a monster’s nature would be unfair. Let them run wild, I say.”
“And have you ever run wild, Ms. Fairweather?”
Her mother chose that moment to sweep into the room. “Dr. Anderson, I am Margaret Fairweather, the Lady of Haven House.”
Unbothered by her mother’s glacial stare, Noah removed his hands. “It is lovely to meet you, Mrs. Fairweather. I was chatting with your daughter while admiring this lovely library.”
Margaret didn’t seem impressed, which wasn’t a surprise to Willa. “According to my son, you might be able to help us deal with Wilhelmina?”
Deal with Wilhelmina.
Her father wasn’t the only one excited by Willa’s possible betrothal to John Richards and eventual departure from Haven House. Stephen and Margaret Fairweather never agreed on anything except for this. Grace, the firstborn, had been their favorite, and Cal would forever be the golden son. Lucy was the baby of the family, but it was different with Willa. They tolerated her but not much else.
Noah must have heard the undercurrent in her mother’s statement and frowned. “I’ll do my best to help your daughter in any way I can, Mrs. Fairweather.”
“And what assessment have you come up with thus far?”
“Nothing as of yet,” he replied, brows knitted together as he took the two of them in. “We were becoming acquainted over Keats and monsters made by men.”
The heavy oak front door of Haven House slammed shut, rattling the walls of the library. The sound elicited a grimace from both Willa and her mother.
“While at Haven House, you’ll do well to remember that men themselves can also be the monsters, Dr. Anderson,” Margaret said as her husband’s gruff commands echoed in from the foyer. “They don’t always need to create them.”
Stiff from standing silently in the parlor’s corner, Willa stifled a yawn. Lucy caught her eye and, likely just as sore, did the same.
Two hours.
Every female in the room had stood at attention for two excruciating hours while Willa’s father held court with Cal and the Anderson brothers. The talk ranged from her brother’s adventures at school to the local lumber business before finally landing on Beau and Noah’srank, as her father called it, within the Anderson clan.
“As the eldest, I would think it should be you instead of Beau becoming Paul’s second,” her father stated, grilling Noah yet again on his choice of becoming something as ridiculous as a doctor. “Why waste your time? There’s no money in medicine.”
The flicker of annoyance Willa had witnessed earlier now shone deeply in Noah’s eyes. Unlike every other living creature within a fifty-mile radius of Haven House, he wasn’t afraid of her father and had sat politely, albeit irritated, through the barrage of questions.
“I don’t find helping others to be a waste of time,” Noah replied coolly from his spot on the settee next to his brother. “There are many who are unable to receive the care they might need due to a lack of people practicing proper medicine.”
Not caring for the answer, Stephen Fairweather reclined in the wingback across from the Anderson brothers. Calvin sat a few feet from their father in the secondary wingback while Willa’s mother stood behind him, suffering along with her daughters. Bonnie did the same, never leaving Margaret’s side.
“Take Willa, for example.” Noah gestured in her direction, and Willa felt herself blushing all over again. Not since they exited the library had he even spared her a glance. “From what I’ve learned, she would benefit from the aid of someone like me.”
Her father’s head rolled on his thick neck to give her a once over, and the heat brought on by Noah’s attention quickly turned to ice. “Mr. Abernathy has kept her alive this long,” he grumbled. “Willa’s care and upkeep are not a poor man’s endeavor.”
Noah’s strained, polite smile slid into a hard line, and Beau shifted uncomfortably beside him. “An endeavor I’m sure you, as a loving father, take on with the utmost reverence,” Noah said. “There is no greater gift than having the means to care for a sick child.”
Willa almost felt sorry for the poor Anderson brothers when her father’s attention returned to them. “It’s like an investment, you see. Willa is no beauty, but not as bad off as that homely Sanderson girl prancing around Hollingsdale society currently.”
Noah’s dark brows snapped together. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Stephen Fairweather was never one to mince words, and while her family often foolishly hoped for the best when he opened his mouth, Willa quickly surmised that today would be no exception.
“Even at her advanced age, Willa has caught the eye of a newly made bachelor. A man who owns the largest plot of untapped fertile land in the area,” her father explained. “If I can have it in exchange for Willa, well then, that will make up for the expense she has caused us and will one day provide a profit after I use the land to expand.”
