It was the sensual look she was giving him that had him raising his brow with interest. “You do? Quite some time, eh? You, ah, wouldn’t consider delivering that present first, would you?”

“I could be persuaded to.”

His lips came to her cheek again, and then moved down her neck, sending shivers over her shoulders. “I’m very good at persuading,” he said in a husky whisper.

“I had a feeling you would say that.”

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

AMY CLOSED THE JOURNAL FOR THE LAST TIME WITH a satisfied sigh. It had been more than she could have hoped for. She was now fully at peace with her “gift.” It could just be incredible coincidence, how lucky she was with her wagering, but she preferred to think she had inherited her luck from her great-grandmother.

Not everyone had stayed for the full reading, which had taken three days. Roslynn and Kelsey took turns seeing to the children, so they only heard every other chapter or so, though they would catch up, now that they could have the journal to themselves.

Amy’s older sisters had decided to wait and read it at their leisure. Though they did pop in every so often to find out how the story was progressing, they mostly kept Georgina company, who was entertaining her visiting brothers elsewhere in the house. The rest of the Andersons didn’t come to England frequently enough to suit her, so when they did, she liked to spend as much time as possible with them.

James and Tony, those rogues, had interrupted repeatedly with droll comments about Christopher Malory, whom they had immediately likened to Jason. Jason had sat through the entire reading in pensive silence, not even bothering to scold his younger brothers for their drollery.

Amy’s mother, Charlotte, had been unable to sit for such long periods, and so like her other daughters, she decided to read the journal some other time. But her father, Edward, had stayed for all of the readings, and now came to kiss her brow before he took himself off to bed.

“I don’t look like her, as you do,” he told Amy. “But like you, I used to wonder why I was always such a good judge of people. That ‘insight,’ if you want to call it that, is what has aided my investments and made this family incredibly rich. But never being wrong makes one feel deuced unusual, indeed it does. Glad to know I’m not the only strange one. Indeed, much nicer to know there’s a good reason why we’ve been so fortunate in our many endeavors.”

Amy was amazed. Her father might have been the most jovial and gregarious in the family, but he was also the most pragmatic and realistic. She would have thought he’d be the last one to believe in a Gypsy’s gift.