A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (28 page)

Mr. Eldred stopped by the vicarage full of glee. “I was right there when ye done it, Reverend! Smack! Nivver heard a sound quite like it.. Down he went! That’ll put the fear of God into a fellow, eh? Forget about the sermons. Just go about hitting a bloke when ’e get up to no good and the like! Haha!”

Everyone somehow assumed he’d primarily been defending Miss Pitney’s honor when he’d knocked Haynesworth to the ground. He’d been forgiven promptly, as Eve had predicted.

The countess hadn’t fared quite as well, naturally. There might be some confusion regarding the nature of her transgressions, but it had been tacitly decided she wasn’t worth the trouble she was bound to cause. She had been officially cut.

If only she wasn’t so determined, he thought. It would have been so much easier. If only she wasn’t so herself.

“I’m sorry,” the first message she sent over with a footman said. “Perhaps if Mrs. Sneath prayed harder for my salvation?”

He crushed it and threw it on the fire.

She sent a jar of honey to him. Which was meant to be funny. In another circumstance, it might have been.

He gave it to Mrs. Sneath, who gave it to the poor, who would never know it was from the countess.

At last she sent over a tiny package. Wrapped in paper and tied in string. He unfolded it, holding himself very still, willing emotion to stay at bay, willing anticipation to quiet. And still his fingers trembled.

In it he found a silk handkerchief.

Embroidered at one corner were an awkward but completely recognizable collection of Sussex wildflowers. And his initials, A.S.

Do you see what you’ve driven me to? I’ve taken up a hobby in earnest. You can see that things are desparate indeed. And I know you likely gave yours away.

It was the “desparate” that nearly destroyed him. There was something so very her about the word: unapologetic and open, sophisticated yet innocent.

So … dear.

The Eve she showed only to him.

It tears a hole out of you, Colin had said. When he’d thought he’d lost Madeline.

Adam tipped his head into his hand and crushed the handkerchief in the other. For a long time he sat that way, breathed in, breathed out.

He wanted to believe her.

He had no right to his feelings of betrayal. Or even of doubt.

Knowing this didn’t help.

And then he smoothed the handkerchief flat. With a deep breath, he folded it neatly and tucked it into his pocket.

That was the day he asked Lady Wareham’s footman to wait for him in the parlor under the watchful eyes of Mrs. Dalrymple.

He returned to his desk and scrawled two words on a sheet of foolscap, flung sand over it, folded it. And for a moment he simply couldn’t move because his heart felt as leaden as one of Mrs. Lanford’s tea cakes.

He abandoned thought. He abandoned feeling. He pretended he was made only of reflex and handed it to the footman.

Who, he swore, looked him full in the face with something like entreaty before he took it away.

But after that, the messages stopped.

Ah. But at least attendance at church was restored.

PLEASE STOP.

She read the words over and over, searching out some softness, some give, some chink through which she could insinuate charm and persuasion. But he was a bloody fortress, the man was, and he’d known what he was about when he’d written just those two words. He knew her. He’d given her no way through them.

He hadn’t even signed the message, as if he was so exhausted, so thoroughly exasperated with her, he couldn’t be bothered

She understood why he was doing it, and she had the grace to feel ashamed.

She was torn between hurling the scrap of foolscap across the room and salvaging it tenderly. She opted for the latter. She laid it aside as gently as if it were his injured hand.

And sat motionless, feeling as hollow as a bell without a clapper.

She hadn’t slept well in nearly a fortnight. She’d had no callers in that time, either. She visited the O’Flahertys twice; she’d once watched through their windows as Mrs. Sneath’s barouche stopped in the drive and turned around and departed at the sight of her own carriage.

She held her breath for a moment so she wouldn’t feel the hurt of it all over again.

She exhaled.

How she hated the silence. She wasn’t meant for it.

And though it felt a bit like admitting defeat, she finally sat down to reply to a letter.

Dear Freddy—

I should be happy for a visit from you. Come as soon as—

A mighty sneeze behind made her jump, sending her quill smearing across the foolscap. It was followed by a cough so violent and wracking, the porcelain vase on the table rocked to and fro. She thrust out a hand to still it.

“Lud, Henny, I hope you have a handkerchief the size of an apron, the way you’ve been going about.”

Henny gave a mighty valedictory sniff when the fit of coughing ended and did indeed produce a handkerchief roughly the side of a bedsheet from her apron pocket. “ ’Tis but a cold in the head. The man who delivers the coal … well, he had a bit of a sniffle, ye see …”

Evie narrowed her eyes at Henny. She suspected she’d made yet another odd romantic conquest.

Henny’s eyes were nonchalantly wandering the room.

“You sound horrible. I’m a bit concerned you might jar your organs loose with a cough like that. Perhaps Mrs. Wilberforce can prepare another tisane for you?”

“Ack, I willna be choking down one of her poisons made of leaves and twigs and whatnot. Tea and a rub of goose fat on me chest, and I’ll be right again. And maybe a spot of rest.”

Eve wrinkled her nose at the notion of goose fat. But then she looked at Henny. Really looked at her for the first time since Adam Sylvaine had stomped away from her in the dark.

Her heart gave a lurch. Her eyes were too bright in a face gone frighteningly pale.

Apart, that was, from a faint green cast about her mouth and two pink spots on her cheeks.

Icy little tendrils of dread crept over her limbs.

She forced herself to ask lightly, “Don’t you think we ought to send for the doctor, Henny? Just for an opinion? I’ve seen you looking more in the pink of health.”

Henny spent the next minute or so coughing before glowering fiercely. “He’ll only bleed me. I needs all me blood. Just look at the size of me.”

“Well, perhaps we can visit the gypsies on the outskirts of town and have our fortunes told. They have potions, too.”

It was the kind of enticement Henny normally couldn’t resist. She was superstitious as the day was long and thought gypsies were easily as wise as vicars or doctors any day.

She hesitated. “I think a spot of rest in my bed will do me right.” She sounded nearly conciliatory.

And this, more than anything else, frightened Evie.

“You rest straightaway. Go up to your room, and I’ll have some soup sent up to you, and Mrs. Wilberforce will see to the goose fat. And a … and willow-bark tea! For fever.”

And not even a token resistance. “Verra well, yer majesty.”

Not even a “I always knew you wanted to poi-son me.”

“YOU’VE GONE AND done it, haven’t you?”

Adam gave a bit of a start; the room was so warm and close, he’d begun to doze. Lady Fennimore was growing weaker by the day; he spent as much time sitting with her in silence next to her as he did speaking now, but neither of them minded.

“What have I gone and done, Lady Fennimore?”

“You’ve a bit of a hunted look. You’re thinner, which makes you look a bit like one of those martyrs, which isn’t a terrible look for a vicar, mind you. It’s persuasive. Your eyes are a bit too bright. And you move slower up the stairs now, as though you carry a great weight, or you haven’t been sleeping. Either you’re constipated, or you’re in love, the hopeless variety. They’re often indiscernible. Ask Jenny for a tisane if it’s the first—an old family recipe works a treat. I fear there’s no cure for the second except for what you might expect.”

He was speechless. He stared down at her, and her eyes snapped open suddenly. A trap! She took a good long look at his expression. Satisfied, she closed them again and smiled.

“Fire and flood and jealousy, Reverend,” she murmured. “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”

The Song of Solomon. It sounded like a prayer, but for what? He wanted deliverance from all of those things.

He hadn’t seen Eve in three weeks now. She’d stopped going to church. He’d seen Henny once, from a distance, as she shopped in town. But then Henny was as visible as the cliffs of Dover from a distance.

Lady Fennimore was quiet for so long, her breathing so even, he thought for a moment she’d drifted off. But then she smiled slightly again. “D’ye know, Reverend Sylvaine … he died twenty years ago, Jenny’s father did. But I think about him still. I still see him as he was. And I’m looking forward to seeing him again soon. My heart always had two chambers, one for him, one for my husband, and for most moments of my life, well, my heart was in two places with two different men. No one knows this except you. I think you may understand a bit of this now. Indulge a dying woman and nod yes or no, there’s a good lad.”

“Now, Lady Fennimore, it’s unfair to bargain that way.”

“What’s fair about life?” she asked reasonably.

And for the first time he said aloud what amounted to a confession. “Would you be satisfied with an “I don’t know?”

“As good as a confession.” She confirmed and opened her eyes and smiled at him, with a hint of the old wickedness. “Sometimes, the only way out of the fire is through the fire, m’boy.”

He drew in a long breath, exhaled. And then he indulged in a moment of closing his eyes, since hers were closed, too. When he did, he felt weariness sink straight through his bones. He thought about what it might be like to live every moment of a life divided. About sharing his life with someone who could never know him fully, or own all of his heart, but who would mean peace, who fit his life. Someone like Jenny.

And then he thought about Eve and …

He couldn’t think about Eve.

And he thought about Olivia, and Lord Landsdowne’s quiet determination, that daily bouquet of flowers, and wondered whether Olivia still had a chance for happiness.

Or if her heart was now a husk.

He decided then and there what he would do about the miniature of Olivia given to him by Violet Redmond. There was little he could do about his own circumstance, but he might be able to affect hers.

“Of course, it’s possible it’s only lust,” Lady Fennimore mulled. “And if it’s only lust, mind you,” Lady Fennimore added practically, “well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? And then again, lust has a way of passing. It’s the love bit that tortures you. Can you pass the laudanum to me, young man? Works a treat, the laudanum does. I sleep and have wonderful dreams. It’s almost as good as listening to one of your sermons.”

He sighed. Her hand simply lay in his now; she didn’t grip it. She was relinquishing a little more of life each day, and she didn’t feel the need to hold on to him or to secrets, to any of the petty concerns that keep humans so tethered, so entangled.

“You choose the prayer, Reverend.”

He remembered St. Francis then.

He prayed as much for himself as for her, for Olivia, for Eve, for everyone in Pennyroyal Green.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

“You’ll be lucky if you ever write anything near as good, m’boy,” Lady Fennimore commented drowsily. “Read that one at my funeral.”

Chapter 20

HE RODE OUT to Eversea House that afternoon. A light rain had settled the dust on the roads, and his horse’s hooves thudded softly. He liked the sound of it; he’d missed it. He decided to run for it, to let the wind lash his face and hair, to scour from him everything consuming him, if only for a moment.

He arrived invigorated, perspiring, and mud-splashed. He waited in the foyer while the footman went to fetch Olivia and watched as two other footmen carried in an exquisite arrangement of hothouse flowers, all vivid reds and purples mingling with a profusion of spiky greenery.

“Adam!”

Olivia’s slippers clattered across the marble; she put her cheek up for a kiss.

“For you, Miss Olivia,” the footman told her. Halting in the delivery of the bouquet to inform her.

She was given a card to inspect.

“From Landsdowne,” she reflected, idly. Her mouth quirked as she cast her eye over the blooms.

“What else does the message say?”

“It says he wants to call on me. But then he says the very same thing every day. Some people never do know when to give up.”

“A quality he shares with you.”

Olivia looked up at Adam sharply.

She pinned him with a fierce gaze, eyes narrowed, suspecting quite rightly he meant that in more than one way.

It would take more than Olivia to unnerve him, however. He was so weary he thought every emotion would skate neatly over him without sinking in.

“Is this a social call, Adam? You work so hard, I’m honored to merit a little of your leisure time.”

He wasn’t certain what kind of call it was. “As you should be,” he teased. “Would you care for a walk outside? It’s just that I’ve spent an hour inside with Lady Fennimore, and her rooms are heated to tropical temperatures, and I fear I may begin growing moss on my left side.”

“I’ll fetch my shawl!”

She ran upstairs to get it, then they burst out into the filtered sunlight again.