A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (18 page)

She was sorely tempted to say it now. The bloody man ought to have looked ridiculous emerging from a shrubbery. He contrived instead to look like a satyr, a forest God, tiny green leaves in his gold hair and scattered over his coat.

“Perhaps I’m getting accustomed to you leaping out of nowhere. I feel, however, I should ask why you were lurking in my shrubbery.”

“I wasn’t lurking. I dropped something, and it rolled in, and I had to go in to fetch it.”

“Are you certain it wasn’t just because you saw Miss Amy Pitney departing my house and decided to plunge in before she saw you?”

“It was serendipity, I’m sure, that I dropped something which rolled into your shrubbery just as Miss Amy Pitney was departing.”

“God was on your side.”

He offered her a crooked smile here. “Ah, but I have proof.” He held out a jar. “It’s plum jam. The women of Pennyroyal Green are generous with their … what did you call it at the auction? ‘All that’s best of womanhood, all that our great country is.’ My larder overfloweth.”

Evie took it graciously. “So delighted you can foist one of them off on me.”

He laughed, and it was just what the day needed, that laugh, to make it completely beautiful. Her heart squeezed helplessly, and she went silent, blank and abashed.

She’s a clever girl,” she said carefully, after a moment. “Amy.”

“She is,” he agreed neutrally.

“She likes you,” she added slyly. Irrationally, she wanted to watch his face when she said it.

He sighed at length. “She does try much harder than she needs to. She doesn’t need botany to fascinate. She’s a lovely person in her own right.”

“I’m beginning to suspect as much.” She detected no yearning in his face and was ridiculously relieved.

“I have, in fact, had two callers today. And I’ve you to thank for it.” She presented this with a certain triumph.

He paused. “I’m pleased to hear it.” The softness in his voice threatened to make her blush. His face reflected her own pleasure.

“In fact, it may not surprise you to know, Reverend Sylvaine, that the young women of Pennyroyal Green have been coming to me for advice on men.”

He froze in the brushing of leaves from his coat.

“Have they now?” he said slowly, with great trepidation.

“I’m not at liberty to tell you who the other one was, and you hid in the shrubbery from one of them. I’ve told each of them that they merely need to be themselves to be admired. It’s the most versatile advice I’ve ever received.

“And possibly the most dangerous I’ve ever given.”

She smiled.

“I’m here because I’ve brought something else for you.” He reached into his coat pocket and fished out a book. She heretically hoped it wasn’t a Bible.

“Greek Myths,” she read when he handed it to her.” What a pity. I thought it might be conversational French.”

She tested the results of this little statement with a flick up through her eyelashes.

He just shook his head slightly, with a slight smile. “I thought you might be particularly interested in the trials of Hercules.”

She studied his face and found it inscrutable. Her heart sank just a very little. “Why do I have the suspicion that you’re trying to tell me something, Vicar?”

“Nothing much eludes you, Lady Balmain. Mrs. Sneath confides that while you just may have purged your wicked impulses through hard labor and sacrifice—”

“Are you disappointed?”

“—but I’ve just come from a meeting with her regarding the Winter Ball. And I’m informed that the ladies have another project in mind for you. This afternoon, in fact. If you’re available.”

“Before I’m construed as ‘acceptable.’ ” She tried to disguise the faintest little hint of aspersion in her voice.

“I’ve no doubt you’ll make it look like child’s play.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“I do. I’d call it … the Nemean lion. If we’re comparing this Herculean labors, that is. The Nemean lion posed as a beautiful woman to lure warriors into a cave, whereupon she turned into a lion, devoured them, then gave their bones to Hades.”

There was a silence.

“How very thoughtful of the lion to share her spoils with Hades,” Eve said faintly.

“She likes me,” Adam had added mildly. “Lady Fennimore does.”

This was the name of the lion, apparently.

His eyes glinted wickedly. And then his hand went up to brush a few more little leaves clinging to his hair, and she saw a flash of brilliant red.

Her heart stuttered.

Blood. Trailing into the cuff of his shirt.

“Rev … are you aware that you’re bleeding?”

His face blanked. He pulled his hand away from his forehead and stared at it, surprised. “I suppose the hawthorn fought back when—”

She was next to him an instant. “Show me,” she demanded.

Surprised, he obeyed immediately, pushing up the sleeve of his coat, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt, peeling it back a little. “It’s my arm. I scratched it through my shirt, I suppose.”

“Excellent. Then we won’t need to amputate.” She flashed a smile up at him. “Hold it up just so, try not to do any more bleeding on your shirt, for I doubt you’ve a dozen spare ones, and come with me.”

She turned and had no doubts he would follow, for when she used that voice, people obeyed, even the vicar.

And he did. Silently.

She led him past a small garden patch planted with winter vegetables and through a kitchen door.

The kitchen was empty, but the ghost of Mrs. Wilberforce’s scones hovered in the air. Cloud-filtered sunlight pushed through the window, muting and blending the colors of the cupboards, the great stove, the table and chairs, into shades of mauve and gray and pearl and charcoal. It was as though they’d entered one of the clouds outside.

“You’ll need to take off your coat,” she ordered softly.

He hesitated. And then never took his eyes from her as he slowly shook out of his caped greatcoat, and folded it over a chair. And then he shrugged out of his coat.

It seemed absurdly intimate, standing in the homely kitchen, watching the vicar divest himself of his clothes. And she stared at him, flustered as a girl for a moment.

She swiftly turned her back and rifled through a row of labeled tins on the shelf and found the one called St. John’s wort.

She brought a basin of water with her to the table.

Without a word, he settled his long body into a sturdy wooden chair pushed up against the old oak-board table.

“Let’s have the sleeve of your shirt rolled up, shall we?”

She settled in across from him with a basin of water.

He rolled up the sleeve, unveiling his arm a little at a time, and she waited, as breathless as if this were the unveiling of a public monument. And she was held still. Why hadn’t she been prepared for how it would feel to be this close to his bare skin? Because he was so guarded, his arm, bare and vulnerable, seemed unduly significant. It was toasted a pale gold by the sun; he would never brown. The broad, strong wrists, the long elegant fingers, callused palms of a man who labored, the pale blue road of veins in which flowed that stubborn blood of his, the crisp gold hair—it all seemed unduly fascinating.

In large part because she could instantly imagine him unveiling the rest of his body.

At least he revealed a gash across the pale underside of his arm.

She cleared her throat.

“Have you a handkerchief? Or do you give them away to parishioners, the way you do cravats?”

“I haven’t a handkerchief.” His voice was subdued, too, amused.

And like a magician, she slowly drew slipped the fichu from out of her bodice and dipped it into the water.

This silenced him.

And as she leaned forward, she knew his view was into her cleavage.

“Your cravat sacrifice was an inspiration,” she told him. Casting a glance up at him through her lashes.

He said nothing. His senses had likely been clubbed senseless by an eyeful of bosom.

Gently she cleaned the blood from his scratch, while he submitted, humble as a boy.

“ ’Tis a mere flesh wound,” she told him. “No stitches necessary.”

Knowing this formidable man, even her own admittedly fine bosom wouldn’t conquer his faculties. He’d find a way to rally his senses soon enough. And yet his pulse gratifying thudded beneath the surface of his untenably silky skin covering the shockingly hard muscle of his arm. There seemed no give in that muscle. So like the man, those contrasts. She felt a wayward surge of protectiveness. Of gratitude, that she could do this much for him.

“You’ve done this before, have you?” His voice was a little frayed. Faintly amused.

“Oh, countless times, Reverend.”

“For you … needed to mind your siblings.”

“Yes.”

A hesitation. “Was it difficult, minding them all on your own, without your parents?”

She paused her fichu on his arm. She knew at once this wasn’t an interrogation, but there was a thrum of urgency in it.

He wanted to know her. And that little sunburst of joyous fear pierced her breathless.

“I suppose I didn’t view it as difficult or easy or … it was simply my life, and I did what needed to be done. They’re all I have, my family. And I would lay down my life for them.”

He simply nodded.

She knew he was watching her. She kept her eyes on his arm, but she felt warmth over the back of her neck, her arms.

She looked up at him. “Mary O’Flaherty told me about her baby, Reverend Sylvaine. The one who died. She was very grateful to you.”

His face went abruptly closed. “Ah, well.”

It was the thing he said when he was moved, she realized. When he didn’t want to accept thanks for an immeasurable kindness. What he’d said to her when he’d bought the ginger cake.

Perhaps all in a day’s work, for him.

“Is it difficult, being a vicar?” she asked softly.

He gave a short rueful laugh, surprised.

Then breathed in at length as if to fuel the answer. And exhaled.

She realized her own breath was held, and her heart thumped in anticipation. She was ravenous in a way she’d never been before to know anything about this man.

“I suppose I don’t think of it as difficult. It’s my life.” They both glanced up, exchanged small smiles acknowledging he’d echoed what she’d just said.

“There’s the blood gone. This next bit may sting a bit.” She laid her ruined fichu aside and took up the St. John’s wort. Dipped her finger in and laid it gently on the scratch. His skin was warm, and she slowed. I’m touching his bare skin.

He didn’t flinch.

“Lady Balmain?”

“Mmm?”

“Why two?”

She froze as if he’d yanked the floor from beneath her. She felt herself plummeting in surprise. And then she caught herself abruptly.

Why two men, was what he was asking.

He wanted to know.

She wanted him to know.

“I needed the money to take care of my family. And the theater isn’t the road to wealth, Reverend Sylvaine.”

“Why?” There was an urgency in his voice again. A demand. It wasn’t quite desperation. More like a need bordering on impatience.

She felt pressure welling inside her. In her way she was as contained as he was, unaccustomed to laying her burdens down or sharing her thoughts with anyone. Reflection, regrets—those had always been a luxury for someone whose every action had been considered, a contribution toward survival. And they were so guarded, so much a part of her, the confidences were like shy beasts. Reluctant to be coaxed forward.

“Why those two men, or why wasn’t I a respectable seamstress or housemaid—or a flower girl instead?” she heard the edge in her own voice.

“Both.” Clipped.

She exhaled. “I hadn’t the skills for the first, and we would have starved if I were the second.”

“And the men?” he pressed. Still the suppressed urgency. But his voice that was like a path she wanted to walk down, simply to see where it led. She understood then in that moment that she was safe with him.

To a degree, that was.

She composed herself. “Well, you see … Seamus was in trouble you see—not his fault, of course; it never seems to be.” She said this dryly. “He’s a charmer, has a good heart, my Seamus, but he can be a bit … impulsive. He was jailed briefly. And the MP promised to get him out if I retired from the theater and became his mistress. He made good on his promise, for Seamus roams the earth free to plague me yet. And the second man … I suppose you can say he wooed me with more wealth, better connections.”

She glanced up to see if the vicar’s thoughts on any of this were reflected on his face. Of course they weren’t.

But he appeared rapt.

“The first released me from our agreement very amiably; he was getting older, you see, and wanted to retire permanently to the country. And after that, I was able to send more money to Cora. I worry about Cora, you see. She’s my sister, and she has so many children, and … Well, the second man introduced me to the Earl of Wareham, whom I married.”

They were both utterly still. Utterly silent.

His expression was unreadable,

A flush heated her cheeks.

“I know it’s the sort of thing that would horrify nearly everyone you’re acquainted with. It isn’t so different, Reverend Sylvaine, from how many young women begin marriage. I could have fared so much worse. Think of Mary O’Flaherty. They were decent enough men. And I preferred survival, my own and my family’s, to near-certain death on the streets.”

And she supposed, in the silence that followed, with her finger slowly, delicately stroking the balm over his wound, she awaited a verdict. A judgment, though he claimed not to judge.

He gave nothing away of his thoughts. There was no tension in his arm. The muted light of the room seemed to pillow them in a peculiar safety.

And the silence went on long enough for her to realize that his presence, the warmth of his skin beneath hers, worked on her senses like laudanum. And again she felt that perilous urge toward surrender, of wanting to melt, vanish into him.

“Sometimes the only choices we have, even the ones made out of love, isolate us.” He said this quietly.

She looked slowly up at him.