Lucy Ansley's confession undoubtedly pleased Henry Ronan.
He looked directly at the girl in his arms, a pleasant smile tugging at his lips, as he calmly guided her with his words, "How much do you like me?"
Lucy had initially meant to just say something nice to appease him, not expecting there to be more to come.
Sitting dazed in Henry's embrace, she began for the first time to seriously ponder the question of how much she liked him.
The man was in no hurry, watching her contemplative face with eyes that shifted through many expressions before settling into calmness.
Though he wasn't exactly resentful about Lucy praising Hugh Ronan over him, he couldn't help but feel a tangle of complex emotions.
Lucy, barely in her early twenties, was a young girl just experiencing her first blooms of love, inevitably throwing her passion into relationships, which was understandable and unavoidable.
