A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (27 page)

“Do you like the decorations, Reverend?” Mrs. Sneath dodged answering his question specifically.

“They’re quite handsome. I fear the … atmosphere … leaves a bit to be desired. Is there aught amiss?” He said it mildly.

“Oh, I hesitate to tell you, Reverend, but I fear I must. Miss Pitney is terribly upset. I suppose we should be grateful to Lord Haynesworth for making such a confession, but, honestly, such things were never part of our discourse before the countess came to Sussex, and you can’t expect a young girl to hear them without distress. Miss Pitney had begun questioning him on some of his other proclivities, and it all came out.”

“What came out, Mrs. Sneath?” So Miss Pitney had been questioning. Good for Miss Pitney.

“I fear it has been said that the countess …” Mrs. Sneath cleared her throat discreetly. “Recently offered a certain type of companionship to Lord Haynesworth in exchange for money.”

Adam suddenly couldn’t feel his limbs.

“Isn’t that how it is with courtesans?” Mrs. Sneath sounded genuinely curious, if saddened. Gazing up at the silent vicar.

A haze of red swept before his eyes.

“I honestly don’t know, Mrs. Sneath. Why? Are you considering a new way to raise funds for the church?”

Mrs. Sneath reared back. I hope this doesn’t distress you unduly, Reverend,” she stammered.

“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Sneath. I’ve a number of pillows I can turn to for moral support.”

It was his tone as much as his words that froze her in shock.

“Let me ask you this, Mrs. Sneath. I know you to be a sensible woman. A fair woman. A genuinely good woman. Why do you suppose Haynesworth would claim such a thing when Miss Pitney began to question his past? Do you really believe such a thing of the woman you’ve seen hold the O’Flahertys’ baby and read to their children? Who has welcomed you into her home and leaped all your hurdles? Or perhaps “Love thy Neighbor’ is just a pillow to you.”

He abandoned her to ponder this in open-mouthed astonishment while he went in search of Haynesworth.

The way a bullet seeks a target.

HAYNESWORTH HAD REMOVED himself to stand near the punch bowl.

He was watching Eve.

Who was an island unto herself in the room, standing against the wall, alongside an urn bursting with flowers. The other ladies eddied about her as if she were an iceberg, and they were ships that could be dashed upon it if they came too close.

She wore a small, faint, regal smile that neither welcomed nor rejected, and a dress of garnet silk that made her look like a flame.

Against it, her face was unnaturally white.

She looked up and saw Adam. His heart lunged toward her with the abandon of Molly, the O’Flahertys’ fetid dog.

And feeling idiotic, he firmly called it to heel.

And with an effort, turned his head away. He stood casually near Haynesworth.

Who didn’t turn to look at him when he began to speak in that bored London drawl.

“She’s quite something, isn’t she, Reverend Sylvaine? The countess? You can’t afford her, I should warn you. Best spend your time pursuing that yon sweet thing, whose dowry is likely two cows. The one with the roses in her cheeks and bosom out to here.” He illustrated with extended arms and fanned hands. “Miss Charing.”

“Why did you do it, Haynesworth?” Haynesworth didn’t realize it, but Adam’s words—low, even, abstracted—were the equivalent of the soft snick of a sword drawn from its sheath.

His fury, quiet as it was, rare as it was, disturbed the air around them.

For heads, one by one, began to turn, as if alerted by a distant battle cry.

They were being watched.

“Do what? Plow the countess?” An ironic smile flattened Haynesworth’s mouth.

“Lie to Miss Pitney about her.”

Haynesworth made a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a yawn. “What on earth makes you think I lied?”

“Because the countess enlightened Miss Pitney as to the true color of your character. Thus threatening your search for a fortune.”

Haynesworth was quiet for a time. And then:

“The things courtesans learn. If ever you come into money, Reverend, allow me to recommend that as a way to spend it. Though I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She might let you have a go for no charge at all, for the novelty of saying she’d taken a man of God to Heaven.”

Rage splintered everything into crystalline detail. Adam’s world narrowed to Haynesworth’s moving mouth and, across the room, Eve’s white face and her eyes, unnaturally brilliant eyes, fixed on the two of them.

“Oh! How about this, Reverend?” Haynesworth turned to him in a hideously, falsely jovial hush. “I’m sure you can afford the tuppence I’d charge to describe to you how it was when I did have her. And she was worth every pound I paid for the privilege. Shall I tell you about her tits, how high and firm they are, and about how I flung her legs around my shoulders when I fu—”

Haynesworth’s head snapped back, and he went down like a ninepin, with an impressive smack on the marble.

Adam stood over him now, holding the fist he’d launched into the man’s perfect, square jaw. “Apologize to Lady Balmain, and tell everyone it was a lie.”

“Lady!” Haynesworth managed to gasp contemptuously.

“Apologize to her now, or I’ll lower the heel of my boot into your larynx until you do—you do know what a larynx is, don’t you, Haynesworth? My boot is hovering over it right now—and I walked through a pasture full of unhealthy, incontinent cows to get here.”

Never had a man spoken so quickly. “I apologize to Lady Balmain.”

“And everything you said about her was a lie.”

He took his time with this one.

And Adam was certain he did it to allow the crowd to swell and gather about them.

“It was a lie, Haynesworth.”

“I lied about it all,” the lord ground out resentfully

“And you apologize to Miss Pitney for lying to her.”

“I apologize to Miss Pitney.”

Adam lifted his boot.

He doubted anyone would believe a statement extracted under duress.

And he felt the emptiness of the gesture heavily. He stood over the man, his eyes burning down into him.

“Get up.” He didn’t extend a hand.

Haynesworth lay flat another moment longer. Then, turning on his side, gracelessly pushed himself to his hands and knees.

Adam didn’t offer to help and didn’t wait. He didn’t look up at the astonished faces of the crowd.

He just sought the exit like a trapped wild thing.

EVE TRIED TO push through the crowd to catch up to him, but his long legs made it nearly impossible; he vanished within seconds. And so she hiked her skirts in her hands and ran. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t already conspicuous.

She heard him before she saw him, breathing in, breathing out, the sound of a man wrestling with this temper. He’d stopped to lean against the house.

He didn’t turn. He didn’t even lift his head.

For a long time, neither of them said a word. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence. His mood seemed as dark and impenetrable as the night.

“Thank you,” she tried.

He didn’t turn toward his voice. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, as if he wished himself over the sea. “For what?” His voice was flat and distant.

“For … defending my dubious honor.”

“Of course. Then again, it’s probably only the sort of excitement you’re accustomed to from men.”

More flatness, this time shot through with irony. Her sense of unease grew. She cleared her throat.

“Your hand. Are you hurt? Is it—”

“No.” A guillotine chop of a word.

And now the unease began to churn in earnest.

“Adam … “ she tried softly. “Please tell me what’s troubling you.”

Another of those silences. Not a man for superfluous words, Adam Sylvaine.

“Is it true, Eve?” The words were quiet, but edged with something like pain.

“Is what true?”

And that’s when he finally turned to look at her. Each ugly word measured out slowly, punishingly.

“Did Haynesworth pay you for sex?”

Shock momentarily destroyed all thought. And when she could speak, her words were broken, awkward.

“I … please tell me… . you can’t possibly think …”

“Did. He.”

“No.” She whispered it hoarsely.

He simply stared at her in the dark.

“Adam … Please tell me you believe me. He’s lying, if that’s what he said. He pursued me once, and I rejected him. He’s punishing me for it.”

He took this in. “He fought a duel over you?”

“Yes,” she admitted on a near-anguished whisper.

“Chaos’s muse,” he muttered bitterly amused, half to himself. “How many other Haynesworths are in your past?”

Shock gave way to a low, simmering anger. She bit out the words.

“You’ve no right to these questions.”

“How well I know.”

And now fury sizzled between them.

“Do you really believe him, Adam? Or are you just jealous of someone who isn’t afraid to touch me?”

The barb found its mark. She heard him hiss in a breath..

“Eve … I do not think we should see each other again. Not unless I’m standing at the altar, and you’re in the pews. Ever.”

Everything stopped. Time. Her breath. Her heart.

“You can’t mean it.” she almost whispered. “Adam. We’re … why?”

He turned to her and said it slowly and coldly, as if he was explaining it to an unintelligent child. “I’m their vicar, and I just struck a man in the face. Because of you.”

“It was … glorious. He deserved it.”

“It was shameful. And I realized standing there that I would have enjoyed hurting him even more. The ass. It solved nothing, and I feel like hell. I should apologize to every person in that room. That’s not who I am. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“I would wager everything they’ve already forgiven you. They’ll likely erect a monument to the event in the square.”

“They might forgive me once.”

The implication being that since she was controversy incarnate, it was bound to happen again.

“And you … I doubt they’ll ever forgive you. I did your reputation no service, believe me. I merely compounded it. Although perhaps this pleases you.”

She could find no way in to this man. He was a cold and furious and implacable stranger.

Tentatively, she stretched out a hand. “Adam, surely we can talk about—”

“Please don’t touch me.”

Her hand dropped as though he’d shot it out of the sky. And she fell along with it, in an endless, sickening plummet. She couldn’t speak through the vertigo.

“The church was nearly empty on Sunday, Eve. Can you guess why?”

She knew why. She answered this with silence.

Which stretched like a prisoner on the rack.

“Are you sorry you did it?” Her words had the ring of accusation.

She meant the necklace. She meant knocking Haynesworth to the ground. She meant the kiss. She meant everything.

“No.” His voice was weary and dull.

And final.

All at once, a caustic loathing burned her throat. She hated him then for his inability to speak anything but the truth. She hated him because she knew he was right, and she hated herself for being selfish and wanting him to stand by her anyway. She hated him because everything she was and the life she’d lived jeopardized everything he was and the life he wanted.

She hated him for that nearly chaste kissed that had seared her soul. For nothing that followed after could possibly compare.

And she could never, never change any of it.

She wrapped her arms around her body to keep herself from doubling over from pain. To keep herself from screaming from the injustice of it.

“It’s cold. Go inside, Eve, before you catch your death.”

“Ah, but if I did catch my death, then you’d come and sit beside me and hold my hand and murmur prayers, wouldn’t you, Adam?” she said bitterly. “Because that’s what you do. You’re not afraid to do that. You could bear to see me then. For I’ll no longer be a risk, and you’ll no longer be afraid to touch me.”

He jerked as though she’d struck him. For a moment, he stared at her, as rigid as a crouched wolf, his blue eyes blazing. She could feel the intensity of his gaze even in the dark.

She flinched when he advanced upon her. He stopped when he was so close his thighs nearly brushed hers; the wounded hand he cradled was a scant inch from her breast. Distantly, she heard the revelry inside, a low hum of voices and laughter, a universe away, naught to do with either of them; and then she only heard breathing, his and hers.

And with just his nearness, her entire body—her lips, her throat, her breasts—sang like a note touched, until her body hummed with need, bittersweet, frightening, total, irrevocable.

She understood then how much it had always cost him not to touch her. How much he’d wanted to.

She suspected that they would both likely incinerate if he did.

He whispered, each word slow and flat and measured and bitterly amused:

“Do you really think I’m that bloodless, Eve?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He backed away two steps, three steps, taking what felt very like his last look at her.

And then he turned and walked up the road to the vicarage.

And she watched him go. Of course, a man who knew himself, who was only himself, wouldn’t doubt and wouldn’t look back.

He didn’t.

Chapter 19

ADAM FLEXED HIS hand as he reached for his quill. Every word he wrote punished him a little for hitting Haynesworth because his knuckles had been split. A nice little form of penance, that. But the swelling in his hand had eased quite a bit, and now he could use it for usefully violent things, like chopping wood. Which he quite looked forward to these days.

He flung his quill down.

He stripped off his shirt and flung it aside and went outside to attack the woodpile with an axe, turning big logs into manageable logs into kindling into splinters. He’d done this at the same time every afternoon for a week now, and word had gotten out. He’d drawn in the process a surreptitious audience of women who took up the hobby of gravestone rubbings for the first time in their lives. Crouched behind ancient buried Everseas, Redmonds, Hawthornes, and the like in the churchyard, they rubbed the stones and watched. They didn’t know why the vicar needed so much wood but were prayerfully full of thanks that he did.