A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (2 page)

He knew he’d need to be faultless beneath their scrutiny. So he was. He’d charmed them; he liked people, so he did this effortlessly, in the way of all Eversea men. He sent not so much as a wayward twinkle or lingering glance toward any of the town’s young ladies (and there were dozens of comely ones); each of them received an equal measure of regard. He’d decided to be the best bloody vicar in creation. Which was comical, he saw now in retrospect. For unlike target shooting, this turned out to be quite out of his control, formidable though his control was. He hadn’t anticipated that his duties—immersion in the joys, griefs, deaths, births, weddings, secrets, poverty, and petty concerns of his parishioners—would tumble him like a gem, knock the corners from him, humble him, distill him to his very essence. Thus uncluttered with expectation, somehow he could now see even more clearly into the heart of their concerns. He worked ceaselessly. He scarcely had time to even daydream about ravishing anyone. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped wanting to be the best vicar and simply prayed to do as much good as possible. He’d begun to feel equal to the job, but privately, he didn’t know if he would ever truly feel worthy of it. He just knew he would never stop trying to be.

And at least he now dreamed less often of standing stark naked at the altar before his congregation.

His female parishioners continued to have this dream with regularity, however.

And now he stood in the sunlight outside the church while his parishioners filed by to thank him and shake his hand. Mrs. Sneath, that worthy woman, now stood beaming before him. She’d raised five sons who’d gone on to be spectacularly successful both in marriage and in trade, as they wouldn’t dare be anything else under her watch. She now headed a battalion of women known as the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor, dedicated to good works and reformation of lost souls, whenever she was able to get her hands on one. Her fondest wish, she’d told Adam, was to witness a miracle, a true miracle, one day. She’d privately pronounced his character “exemplary,” which was all that was needed to remove any lingering doubt about his tendencies in the minds of the remaining skeptics.

“Marvelous sermon, Vicar. Loving thy neighbor is always wonderful advice, and often such a challenge. I hope you plan to come round to supper this week so we can discuss plans for the auction and the rest of the Winter Festival?”

A series of events to raise funds for the local poor were planned—an auction, a small assembly, a larger ball—and she and her committee were coordinating them, but his approval and opinion was solicited. The ladies were indispensable, really, given the endless nature of parish duties.

Indispensable and maddening. A piquant combination.

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything, Mrs. Sneath,” he assured her.

“My niece will be visiting from Cornwall and joining us for supper.” She added this slyly.

Ah, but of course, she would. “How lovely it will be to meet another member of your family.”

“Her needlework is unparalleled.”

“You must be very … proud.”

Because that was when he saw her: the petite woman flanked by another woman roughly the size of a bear. She was blinking in the sun, like a creature emerging from a cave. And well she might. An accusing shaft of celestial light had illuminated her during the sermon, and that’s how he’d noticed she’d been fast asleep, slightly slumped against the bear of a woman. Not only that, but snoring a bit, too, if the fluttering of the net on her hat was any indication.

Not once before had anyone slept through one of his sermons. He’d directed nearly the entirety of it to her, out of incredulity and indignant pride.

Fragments of their low and heated discussion floated to him as Mrs. Sneath spoke.

“Funny how you’re suddenly an etiquette expert, Henny, when the vicar looks like …”

“ … ’aven’t the faintest idea what a ‘donnis’ might be, but fancy words aside, I’ve been starved for scenery since we’ve arrived, if ye take me meaning, me lady, so if ye’d be so kind as to …”

“ … don’t want to make myself conspicuous, Henny, and you know …”

“Did you enjoy the honey, Vicar?” Mrs. Cranborn had slipped past Mrs. Sneath and was now aiming a radiant smile at him.

“The hon—oh, yes, thank you so much again for the kind gift.”

He was forever being given jars of things, honey and jam and apples and ointments, which he supposed was a way of reminding him how much more pleasant his life would be should he ever decide to give a woman the run of it. He remained “dangerously unmarried,” or at least this was how his aunt Isolde Eversea put it. But then she would, given the nerve-taxing his cousins Colin and Ian had given her. Mercifully unmarried was often how Adam viewed it. The dreams of standing naked at the altar had been supplanted by dreams of swimming through the vicarage up to his neck in blackberry preserves, only to find the door neatly embroidered shut by the word “Bless Our Home.”

To his surprise, the small woman and the bear approached.

Mrs. Cranborn glanced up at the large woman in dark bombazine, recoiled in rank astonishment, and reflexively stumbled a few steps back.

And so Adam took his first look at the woman he’d clearly bored. She seemed comprised entirely of vivid contrasts: black curls at her temples and alabaster cheeks and eyes like the proverbial jewels, so green, they seemed, even through that scrap of net that fluttered from her hat. Her pelisse hung and swung and clung flawlessly, a fit only the most exclusive of seamstresses could accomplish—this much he knew about women’s clothing. She seemed unreal, like something out of a storybook. He supposed she was beautiful. But he was moved by women who seemed touchable, unwrappable, like Lady Fennimore’s daughter Jenny, whose soft hair was forever coming out of its pins. This one seemed entirely contained, as sealed and gleaming as a jar of preserves.

“I hope you don’t think it inappropriate, Reverend, since we haven’t been properly introduced. But I wanted to thank you for the sermon.” The glance she slid over to her bear-sized companion said Satisfied? as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud. “I am the Countess of Wareham. This is my maid, Henrietta La Fontaine.”

The Countess of Wareham … the name echoed in the recesses of his mind. He was certain he’d been told something about her. Given her appearance, he was unsurprised by both the title and her accent—he secretly thought of those etched consonants and indolently elongated vowels as The London Ironic Dialect. It was as though nothing, nothing in the world could ever possibly divert her again, so she indulged the world by viewing it with detached indulgence.

He was, however, surprised a countess would introduce her maid. There had in fact been the slightest hesitation before the word “maid,” as though the countess wasn’t entirely certain what to call her.

He bowed graciously. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Wareham. I’m the Reverend Adam Sylvaine. How kind of you to attend the service.”

Henrietta dipped a graceful curtsy. “Yer sermon was a balm to me soul, Reverend.”

She had a very fierce gaze, did Henrietta. Eyes like bright little currants pressed into dough.

“As soothing as a lullaby, some might say,” Adam said pleasantly.

Lady Wareham stiffened. Her eyes narrowed so swiftly one might almost have missed it.

He didn’t.

But then a distant little smile drifted onto her face, the sort a queen might offer a peasant child who held a daisy out to her.

“Thank you, again, Reverend, and good day. Come along, Henny.”

“Good day to you,” he said politely, and bowed elegantly.

He bit back a wry smile. He suspected she’d exhausted the novelty value of church, and he wouldn’t be seeing her there again.

Henrietta winked at him as she walked away.

Chapter 2

IN THE CARRIAGE, Evie gloomily entertained the possibility that her soul really was impermeable to moral repair or renewal. Clearly it was resistant to sermons. An inauspicious start to her exile—that was, new life—in Sussex.

Cheeky vicar. The nerve. Lullaby, indeed.

“You were snoring,” Henny said.

“Surely not,” Evie said idly.

“Quiet-like,” Henny conceded. “But you were.”

And then Evie listened with half an ear as Henny planned aloud about supper “—cold roast, I think there is, and didn’t you ask Mrs. Wilberforce to get in some cheese?” She’d hired a housekeeper by the name of Mrs. Wilberforce, but Henny was in charge of her staff, as her capabilities were far-ranging, her roles and titles as diverse and subject to change as Evie’s had been: maid, housekeeper, Abigail, advisor, scolder, dresser at the Green Apple Theater (which was where Evie had met her), frightener of unpleasant suitors, visitor of apothecaries in the dead of night. She viewed Pennyroyal Green as penance, of a sort. For Eve had all but saved Henny’s life many years ago by employing her as her dresser when Henny was penniless. She would follow Eve to the ends of the earth, but she reserved the right to complain.

Suddenly, the coach lurched to a halt, and they were both thrown forward, nearly knocking their heads together.

The coach rocked a bit as the driver clambered down. Eve unlatched the door and peered out just as he was about to peer in.

They both reared back.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lady, but seems summat is awry wi’ one of the horses. Team’s gone balky. We beg a moment to have a look to see if we may find the trouble.”

And thus the utter disintegration of my life continues, Eve thought wryly.

“Certainly. If I may just step out for a moment … ?”

Because all at once she wanted air. Being transferred from the enclosed little church to the enclosed carriage merely enhanced the sensation of her life shrinking to the size of a cell.

He assisted her down from the carriage, and she landed lightly on the road, bordered by low grass and other greenery not yet killed by frost.

She inhaled and inspected what was now her new view and would be for the forseeable future: soft hills mounded like a messy blanket; stubby, needled trees, oaks, some of which still sported leaves despite its being the brink of winter. Smoke spiraled from the chimneys of the few cottages scattered in the middle distance. She moved off the road and stretched and peered: The gray line on the far horizon was the sea.

Henny followed her out of the carriage and stretched and inhaled mightily.

And then her driver returned to her and gave a little bow.

“Lady Wareham, I fear we may have a dilemma. One of the horses has lost a shoe, and it would risk laming him if we continue on the journey.”

Of course they had a dilemma. Life had become nothing but dilemmas of late. “How far are we from Damask Manor?”

“A good twenty minutes or so by carriage.”

Which meant at least double the time walking. She wasn’t incapable of it—God only knew she’d been a country girl a lifetime ago—but it was unthinkable for a woman of Henny’s age and size to undertake that journey on foot.

Henny took command. “There’s smoke from that chimney.” She pointed. “I’ll see if I can fetch some help, will I? Perhaps a farmer will lend a cart. I’d like to stretch me legs, anyhow, after those torture pews.”

Evie hesitated. “Well, if you insist. I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

Henny insisted and trudged off, crested a rise, then disappeared over one of those small hills into the little valley, following a narrow beaten path to one of the picturesque little houses with the inviting chimney smoke.

All was silence. Apart from the shifting hooves and murmurs of her driver and footman, they were entirely alone. Evie scanned the trees again and gave a start.

Alone apart from a small blond boy leaning out from behind a tree. He was staring solemn-faced and unabashedly, the way children do.

She crossed her eyes good and proper, taking care to make her expression hideous. Little boys loved that sort of thing, and she wasn’t above reaching for an easy laugh.

He quite gratifyingly giggled. His front teeth were missing, which for some reason charmed her to her core. He must be seven or eight years old, then, she thought. Seamus at that age had been a devil in short pants. Then again, long pants hadn’t done much to reform him.

“Spiders aren’t pretty,” the boy said.

She was accustomed to small boys and non sequiturs. “Well, I don’t know about that. I suspect girl spiders are pretty to boy spiders.”

This the boy found uproarious. His eyes vanished with mirth when he laughed.

She smiled along with him.

“Are girl cows pretty to boy cows?” he wanted to know.

“Undoubtedly.”

“And are girl dogs pretty to boy dogs?”

She pretended to consider this. “In all likelihood, yes. Some girls dogs to some boy dogs, anyhow.”

“All dogs are pretty to me, too,” he confessed.

“And to me,” she agreed solemnly.

The boy went silent, bashful and delighted with their accord.

“Have you a dog?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. A hound. Her name is Wednesday.”

“A fine name for a dog. A fine day of the week as well. Why is she called Wednesday?”

“ ’Twas the day our neighbor brought her to me to keep forever.”

“It must have been a special day.”

“Pauuuuuuuulie! Paul ! Where the devil are you?” A frantic woman’s voice echoed all around them suddenly.

“Ah. And you must be Paul,” Evie guessed.

“ ’Twas a special day,” the boy agreed, without even blinking, evidently entirely deaf to his mother’s voice.

The woman huffed up the hill and sighed with relief when she saw him. “Paulie! What have I told you about running off? Your blessed dog is chasing the chickens and Grandmama is expecting us for—”

She clapped her mouth shut when she saw Evie. She froze midwalk, stiff-legged as a hunting dog pointing out prey.

Then her eyes frosted, and her mouth became a tight, horizontal line.

“See, Mama?” Paulie said cheerfully. “She doesn’t look like a spider. She’s pretty. And spiders aren’t.”

Oh God.

Evie’s breath left her in a painful gust.

She stood, cold in the gut, hot in the cheeks, feeling foolish and utterly blank.