A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (29 page)

They walked across the vast circular drive, past the fountain, where a few little islands of ice floated, rapidly melting. It was the quiet season; she and Ian were the only Everseas who lived at home anymore, and Ian was often away in London.

They talked of family, of the people in the town, of the work at the O’Flaherty house. He didn’t mention the countess. She, perhaps knowing him well, didn’t mention the fact that he’d just knocked a man to the floor with his fist in defense of a woman no one in Pennyroyal Green would receive in their homes. Which, for all he knew, she considered mundane, given the kinds of things that normally happened in the Eversea family ranks.

When they’d reached a row of benches tucked among a series of rosebushes, he stopped abruptly.

“Olivia, I did come here for a reason today.”

Her eyes widened. “You should see your expression, Adam.” She sounded so calm, so wryly amused. As though the worst she could experience had already taken place, and nothing else would ever cause more than a ripple in her composure. “So very, very somber.”

“Something that once belonged to you has been entrusted to me. I should like to return it.”

He could see that she was prepared with a bright quip. So before could say anything, he slipped his hand into his pockets and retrieved the miniature. “Olivia. Open your hand.”

With a sardonic lift of her brows, she extended her palm.

And he settled the miniature into it.

Her hand jerked as though the miniature had come freshly off a blacksmith’s forge.

He watched the color vanish from her face so quickly, he thought she might faint. Her face rippled in shock or revulsion, like she wanted to drop it.

He reached out a hand to steady her, and she shook her head roughly. She didn’t want to be touched.

And then she swallowed hard. She took a long, unsteady breath, staring at the thing, her own young face, turning it over to read her own handwriting.

She hadn’t yet looked up at him.

He put his hand gently on her arm anyway. Because he knew he could at least give a measure of peace.

She didn’t shake it off.

Her voice was scraped raw when she spoke. “Where did you get this? Did you get it from …”

It occurred to Adam that no one had heard Olivia say the word “Lyon” in a very long time. She wasn’t sure anyone had said the word to her, either.

But he would say it. He would make it real. He would make her think about it and decide. Because if he had any influence at all, he wanted her to have a chance to be happy. He didn’t know whether he would ever be, but he would be damned if he would be surrounded by martyrs if he could help it.

He spoke quickly, succinctly, impartially.

“No. Lyon didn’t give it to me. I suspect he gave it to someone else—recently—who then gave it to me. I don’t know why. I cannot tell you who gave it to me. It was given to me in confidence, and I protect all confidences entrusted to me in my role as vicar. I’ve told you all I know. I suspect you gave it to him. I don’t know where he is, or whether he’s alive. But I wanted you to have this. ”

She breathed in and out raggedly for a moment. And then:

“Why?” The word was furious. Anguished.

Her eyes glittered with tears, and her jaw was white with tension. She hated to cry, he knew—she never liked to be thought of as a baby—so the tears were likely making her furious, too. No one could recall seeing Olivia weep since Lyon had left. Not even on the day they’d almost hung Colin.

“Forgive me if I’m blunt, Olivia, but I think I need to be. We all skirt around the subject of Lyon, as though you’re fragile or a looby who needs to be coddled or a martyr. I don’t think you’re any of those things. I think when the wound was fresh, it was kindest to skirt around all of it. But I think you’ve now come to count on everyone’s avoiding it, and you’re so very excellent at being angry, so very clever and cutting, so deft about dodging the subject, that everyone has given up, exhausted. Because if you avoid it, then you don’t have to think about what kind of life you want, or the time you might have wasted pining for him. I rather wonder if it’s all become habit to you, and you’re afraid to give it up out of stubborn pride. Should I duck? Are you about to throw that at me?”

It took a brave man to say this to Olivia Eversea when she was white-hot with fury.

Her eyes were shards of ice, narrowed.

“You’ve a bloody nerve, Adam Sylvaine.” She drew every single word out, for full intimidating effect. She made his name sound like an epithet.

But he was braver than she was angry. It would take a good deal more than Olivia to unnerve him.

“Am I wrong?” he simply asked.

She glared for a good while long. And when he didn’t flinch or apologize or placate, just waited with that immovable infinite patience he could demonstrate whenever he wanted something, she sat down hard on the bench and closed her eyes.

He sat next to her.

They sat in companionable silence for quite some time, absolutely silent, a sympathetic breeze playing over them. Cooling the fever out of her face.

She turned tear-brilliant eyes up to him. Her mouth crooked at the corner.

“I loved him.” Her voice was hoarse.

And no one, no one, had ever heard her say those words aloud, either.

He just nodded.

She covered her eyes with her hand and breathed a shuddering breath. And then another.

“Love.” What a wilderness of pain, of yearning, of loss could be contained in that word. Patient and kind nonsense, is how Lady Fennimore had put it. Love wasn’t for cowards; he wondered if it was for the wise. He supposed love itself made you stupid at first, or no one, no one would ever fall in love at all.

Olivia lifted her head up, and her eyes clouded over, perhaps with memories, as she stared toward the house.

And then her face darkened; her jaw tensed. “He wasn’t perfect.” A hint of ice in her voice now.

“You don’t say.”

The corners of her mouth lifted at that.

“I learned of another dalliance of his recently.”

He made a sympathetic noise.

She was calmer now. Her voice was slow and soft. Not that crisp brittleness that characterized so much of her speech these days, like a fine coat of ice laid over emotion.

“What do you think it means, Adam? Why should he return the miniature now?”

And herein lay the risk. But if Olivia wanted an excuse to live again, she could decide it meant he was done with her.

“I think you should take it to mean whatever you wish it to mean.”

She looked hard at him, trying to read his face like an oracle. For a breathtaking instant, he saw it flicker over her features: She was daring to envision laying the burden of loving Lyon down. But then the pain settled in again, warring with the yearning that had shaped her for so long. So difficult to relinquish for someone as steadfast and as stubborn as she.

She said nothing at all for quite some time.

But he was prepared to sit with Olivia for as long as she needed him to.

The longer he was still, the more he felt his own weariness; the more his muscles, the ones he’d been abusing with wood cutting and fence building and roofing and the like, announced their grievances, reminded him that he was trying to drive love out, or at least desire out, like a demon possessing him. If he allowed it to take hold, he imagined his fate would be very like Olivia’s, for they weren’t very different: He was as steadfast, as immovable. He knew himself well.

Once he loved, the condition, he suspected, would be permanent.

A beautiful suffering, Lady Fennimore had called it. He was hard-pressed to see what was beautiful about it at the moment, unless it was, for instance, Eve’s face as she held the O’Flahertys’ baby. He closed his eyes and allowed that image to fill his mind’s eye.

Finally, Olivia straightened and tugged her shawl about her tightly. “I’m glad you gave it to me,” she said finally. She turned and gave him a genuine smile. A small, determinedly brave one. But a smile nevertheless. “Thank you, Adam.”

“Will I go now?”

“If you wish. I think I’ll sit here for just a little while longer, if that’s all right with you.”

It was.

He left her. He did glance once more behind him as he walked for the house.

Olivia was staring down at the miniature, frowning faintly. Perhaps searching for something she recognized in the face of that girl.

SHE VISITED HENNY’S rooms one last time before she went up to bed. An enormous fire roared in her sitting room; the gust of heat as she walked toward the bedroom was enough to nearly send her staggering backward.

Henny was so heaped in blankets she seemed twice the height she normally was. Her face was sheened with sweat. She muttered fitfully; Eve thought she heard the word “Postlethwaite;” the word “rats.” She murmured something about “Eve” and “rag-mannered baggage.”

Worry churned her stomach into nausea. She placed a hand gingerly on her Henny’s forehead. She pulled it away terrifyingly hot.

And then Henny made a moaning sound. Ghastly and inhuman and so unlike any sound she’d ever made, it iced Evie’s bones.

She retrieved blankets Henny thrashed from her, shook them out, tried tucking them in around her again with arms gone useless, clumsy with fear.

Henny thrashed them off again.

The weight of Eve’s life, such as it had been, settled on her, and she felt flattened, trapped, the breath squeezed from her. There was no one, no one besides Henny to whom she could reach out.

If Henny died …

She felt the abyss whistling behind her.

She’d been wrong when she told Adam she didn’t need protection.

It’s all right to let someone else look after you for a change, he’d said.

And even though he’d pushed her away, even though she was hardly lucky for him, it was all she had in the moment.

So she covered the little gold cross with her hand. And prayed. She would pray without stopping if she needed to.

But she would be damned if she’d weep.

ADAM HAD ANTICIPATED that his monthly dinner engagement at the Pitney family’s sprawling home might be a little awkward, given that it was hardly a secret he’d flattened the doctor’s daughter’s suitor with his fist a few weeks earlier. He prodded at his minted peas, wondering whether any of the sprigs he saw might be hemlock. He sampled them anyway; they were delicious, as usual; the doctor kept an excellent cook.

Amy’s hopeful mother had situated her directly across from him at the table. He anticipated spending the evening pinned beneath her accusing eyebrows. Instead, he saw much more of the narrow white part of her hair, as she bent her head and poked at her dinner, subdued.

As it so happened, the topic of Lord Haynesworth never arose. The doctor cheerfully chatted with Adam about the Cambridge Horse Faire. “Haven’t been in years, Reverend! I hope to go down this—”

A thump on the door interrupted him. There was a murmured exchange of words as the door was opened.

And then a footman appeared at the table, holding the doctor’s coat and hat and bag.

“The Grundys’ baby is coming, Doctor, and Mrs. Grundy is having a terrible time of it. She sent for you. The midwife thinks it might be breech.”

“Bloody—” The doctor stopped. “You’ll excuse me, Reverend? I know you understand. Babies do want to be born. Please stay and enjoy your dinner.”

And then he was gone.

“Oh! I must go and see about the cake!” Mrs. Pitney decided shortly, and quite transparently, thereafter, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Leaving Amy and Adam quite uncomfortably alone.

Amy spent some time dragging her fork along the sauce in her plate.

She finally spoke. “I sent Lord Haynesworth away.”

“Good,” he said shortly.

A silence ensued. Finally Amy settled her fork down.

“May I ask you a question, Reverend Sylvaine?”

“Certainly.”

He wasn’t in the mood to expend charm on a young woman who’d helped make his life a torment. Despite his responsibility to her soul.

“Do you think Haynesworth was lying about the countess?”

“Did he strike you as an honest person, Miss Pitney?” He said this mildly.

But the stare he fixed her with made her duck her head.

And despite himself, he knew compassion for her. Her pride had been singed, her hopes dashed.

“I fear I will never appeal to anyone.” The words were low and choked.

And he knew the admission cost her. For he knew how much she admired him.

Which was how he knew she sincerely wanted his help, for her pride was formidable.

“Miss Pitney, why do you suppose Envy is one of the Deadly sins?”

Her head jerked up again, eyes narrowed.

“It’s a sin against yourself. It harms you and blinds you to many things, including good intentions. God saw fit to make you perfect the way you are. Not more or less perfect than someone else—perfect as you are. You need to believe it for the right person to see it. And the feeling when you are truly seen for who you are … it simply cannot be mistaken.”

She looked out at him with her clever, dark eyes. And he saw something of mute apology in them.

“Perhaps I need to sew ‘Thou shalt not Envy’ on a pillow.”

He almost smiled. “Perhaps you do.”

Mrs. Pitney returned to the table just as another urgent thump sounded at the door.

Voices raised in urgent argument reached them.

“But she’s very ill, sir. The countess fears she might not live through the night. Can you please tell him?”

“There’s a baby being born the wrong way ’round at the Grundy house, so that’s where he is. I swear to you, sir, he’s not here.”

And Adam pushed out his chair, craned his head, and caught a glimpse of a footman.

Liveried in scarlet and gold.

He was being ushered away from the door, trailing the words: “Can you please tell the doctor to come straightaway when he returns? Please?”

Adam managed the words calmly enough, though the pounding of his heart sent his blood ringing through in his ears.

“Can you tell me what the trouble is?” he asked the footman, when the servant returned to the room.