He Chose the Girl Who Tried to Kill Him novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: What Nan Was to Him

Harriet did not speak in the carriage until we were past the lake road.

Then she took off one glove, finger by finger, and laid it in her lap.

"You have embarrassed your father," she said. "I find I admire it. But you will not do it again."

"I haven't signed anything."

"You will sign at Christmas, in a church, with a ring. The paper is a formality." She patted my knee. "The Fenner girl has run off, I'm told. Langston has been so distressed."

I looked at Langston.

He was watching the lake go by and did not turn his head.

By three o'clock I was shut in my old room on Euclid Avenue, and this time the key was turned.

I sat on the bed with my cloak on and listened to the house.

I heard Harriet go out to her Mission committee.

I heard the footmen change the hall lamps.

At dusk there was a tap on the window glass.

The room was on the second floor, over the kitchen roof.

Nan Fenner was crouched on the slates in a man's overcoat with her bandaged feet in a pair of Tobias's boots.

I got the sash up.

"You are insane," I said.

"I was a laundress. I've climbed worse than a drainpipe."

She tumbled in over the sill and landed on the carpet, breathing hard.

"Tobias is in the garden," she said. "He wouldn't let me come alone. I said I would, and then I said I'd take his boots."

"What are you doing here?"

"I want my pistol."

"It's in the study."

"I know where it is." She looked at the door. "Is that locked?"

"Yes."

"On the outside."

"Yes."

She pulled a hairpin from her cropped hair, knelt, and worked at the lock from the wrong side with her lip between her teeth.

It took her a count of thirty.

"My mother took in a locksmith's washing," she said, as the bolt clicked. "He taught me for a ribbon."

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