A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (6 page)

She took a bolstering breath.

My dearest Evie Green-Eyes,

London is a drear place without you. Even the nectar of gossip fails to sustain me, but this could be because it isn’t nearly as interesting when you aren’t the center of it, if you’ll forgive me, given that the last bit that went round naturally wasn’t much fun for you. I am bored to distraction and hungry for the sound of your laughter, and I am unfashionable enough not to cut you should you deign to return to London. Unless you forbid it, I will visit you in Sussex—you! In the country! How quaint!—a fortnight hence. Send me a letter to tell me I’m welcome. I still enjoy lamb and all of the other things we’ve discussed at length in our acquaintance. I harbor the fondest hope you’ll make me the happiest man alive and indulge me in them one day.

Yrs,

Frederick,

Lord Lisle

Lisle

It was so alive, his letter, so very Frederick, in all his elegant, wry, self-important glory. Something flickered in her, possibly hope or familiarity. Or perhaps it was simply hunger—oughtn’t Henny ring for supper soon? It was undeniably pleasant to know she was wanted and remembered. By a staggeringly wealthy viscount, who was invited to dine with the King, no less.

Take that, Reverend Sylvaine.

Although the impenetrable Reverend Sylvaine, he of the blue eyes and towering cheekbones, would likely be unimpressed, as he seemed impervious to everything else: insults, flirtation, her very best unblinking gaze. And then she recalled again the casual gift of the cravat and felt another wash of shame at her gracelessness. Not her finest hour. If only she could undo it.

If only she could undo him.

Because something about the man—the stillness, his calm confidence, the see-through-her blue beam of his gaze?—made her itch to unravel his control. Though to what purpose, she didn’t know. To prove that she could? To prove she could gain the upper hand over someone who was better, as Henny had put it, and who had so effortlessly, through doing almost nothing at all, reduced her to breathlessness today? More likely it was to see why he was wrapped so very tightly. Because once she uncovered that secret, undoubtedly he’d lose the power to unnerve her, the way a revealed magician’s trick lost the power to awe. She couldn’t recall a man ever scrambling her wits with just a few words.

She’d vowed long ago to never allow herself to be at the mercy of a man. She had made certain she was in control of whom she chose and whom she left, that the choices were all hers to make.

For look how surrendering to a man had turned out for Mama.

She absently rubbed the foolscap of Frederick’s letter between two fingers. Perhaps she should write to Frederick and tell him that she had sworn off men, that no man on the face of the earth could every again possibly inspire desire in her. That she’d decided she’d never again be a commodity for men.

Knowing Frederick, he’d consider it an aphrodisiac and come running straightaway.

At least then she wouldn’t be alone.

She placed his letter carefully aside. She would perhaps write to him later. But her thoughts shied away from London; her memories of it were edged all around with razors, now. They had all turned on her so thoroughly, so relentlessly, and with such vicious glee, all while she struggled with loss.

The silence of the place enclosed her again. She tapped the feathered end of her quill pen against her chin and gazed out the window. The view offered nothing to distract her, just more of those rolling Sussex hills and small, bushy, green trees, which likely meant everything to a boy like Paulie, for instance, who would grow up knowing all of them by heart.

And it was this she wanted, she realized suddenly. An opportunity to create her own history. To begin again. To decide what she wanted rather than allowing the needs of survival to dictate her life. But damned if she would be bored in the process.

She refused to languish here, like the Queen of Scots in exile (things certainly hadn’t ended well for her, regardless). Enough wobbling about directionless, like a spun top. There was no undoing what was done: The people of Pennyroyal Green seemed to know about her. Or at least some of them knew something about her, which meant that in all likelihood all of them would soon enough. So remaining incognito was out of the question.

Then again, perhaps this was all for the good. Because now she had an opportunity to do what she seemed to do best, at least whether it was on the stage at the Green Apple theater, or Covent Garden, or captivating just the right man: win people over.

But she would need an ally. Someone who could be a liaison between her and the women of the village.

Perhaps even someone who had their rapt attention every Sunday morning.

Perhaps someone who was in likely duty-bound by his role in life to be compassionate and diplomatic toward his parishioners, regardless of whether they shrieked incomplete insults at him in a long-dormant Irish accent.

Someone, in other words, who was missing a cravat.

She hesitated only a moment before reaching for a sheet of foolscap. But he would need winning, too.

She dipped the quill and set out to do just that.

Chapter 5

“OH, REVEREND. YOU’VE returned from Lady Fennimore’s house.” His housekeeper, Mrs. Dalrymple, all long face and tremulous mouth and enormous woebegone eyes, hovered in the doorway. He heard the warning in his housekeeper’s voice even before she said her next words. “You’ve … a visitor … waiting in the parlor.”

Wave upon wave of meaning and portent rippled out from the way she said “visitor.”

“Does my … visitor … perhaps have a name?” he coaxed.

“She did not give it.” A slight meaningful emphasis was given to “she.”

Mrs. Dalrymple knew better than to allow female interlopers in to trouble the vicar. She was the soul of discretion and discernment, a deceptively powerful impediment to female attempts to infiltrate his haven. She could stop an army with her passivity.

He sighed. “Thank you. I shall be in directly. You’ve made—”

“Tea. Yes, sir. The silver service, sir.”

So it was the sort of visitor Mrs. Dalrymple considered worthy of tea in the silver service.

Despite his weariness, he began to feel curious.

“You are a wonder, Mrs. Dalrymple.”

“I do me best, sir,” she said placidly.

HE STOPPED BY the mirror, smoothed his hair, gave his armpit a sniff since he’d been walking hard all day, decided he wasn’t terribly offensive, and was momentarily startled again by the absence of his cravat, and when he remembered how this came to be, his thoughts tugged at their tether—they wanted to surround the countess again. He frowned the thought away.

He would do well enough for a visitor, whoever she might be.

It proved to be the very nearly the last person he expected to find. He stopped in the doorway, saw a beautiful young woman dressed in heavy blue silk, the veil she’d likely worn as a disguise pushed up to rest on the top of her head

“Lady Ardmay. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

Until very recently, Lady Redmond been known as Miss Violet Redmond. Otherwise, that Redmond chit, as Lady Fennimore called her. Speak of the devil.

“Good afternoon, Reverend Sylvaine. I am not here, you understand. You’ve never seen me at the vicarage.”

He understood. “I do not engage in gossip, nor do I ever reveal a confidence, if that’s your concern.”

She gave him a slightly conciliatory smile. “Forgive me. I did not mean to imply that you ever would. It’s just … no one knows I am here. I took certain pains to ensure I wasn’t seen entering the vicarage. It may not surprise you to learn that I’ve never consulted with a member of the clergy. I’ve come on a matter of some sensitivity.”

This was rather implied, given the drama of the veil and the refusal to give her name to the housekeeper. As if the housekeeper wouldn’t recognize Violet Redmond by voice or stature or sheer sense of entitlement.

“Perhaps you’d do the honor of pouring for the both of us?” He gestured to the tea.

She did, and they sipped a moment, and sugar was stirred into cups with little clinking sounds, before she spoke.

“I am with child, Reverend.”

He composed his face into neutral planes and braced himself for a confession that would shave years off the life of an ordinary man. Given that this was Violet (nee) Redmond, he would not be surprised to learn the father of the child was the Archbishop of Canterbury, but he pitied the Archbishop if the Earl of Ardmay ever learned the news.

“Congratulations. Babies are wonderful,” he offered carefully.

She nodded her thanks. “It’s because of the baby that I’m here. Indirectly. Something … has come into my possession. I might have been inclined to hurl it into the Ouse a year or so ago, as I am hardly impartial in the matter. But I’ve since learned a thing or two about … love.” She glanced up at him almost defiantly, as if love was blasphemy or too indelicate a subject for a vicar. If only she knew the conversation he’d had today. “And I believe this is about love. I … I want to do the right thing. I would like to have it off my conscience before the baby is born, and I wish to bequeath it to someone who, shall we say, is required by duty to exercise his conscience and judgment about what to do with it.”

Trust the former Miss Redmond to arrive at that interesting definition of a vicar’s duties.

She extended her hand and uncurled her fingers; he leaned forward and looked down into her palm.

It was a moment before recognition settled in. The woman in the miniature was younger, more radiant, softer, more innocent. And hopeful.

“It’s my cous—it’s Miss Olivia Eversea, isn’t it?

“Yes.”

He stared down at it, puzzled: Why would Violet possess a miniature of Olivia?

And then all at once he thought he understood, and the little hairs rose on the back of his neck.

“May I …” He took it from her palm, turned the miniature over, and saw the girlish script there.

“Yours forever. O.”

He thought of the Olivia he knew now—still lovely, but brittle, too thin, too glib, deflecting suitors so skillfully they scarcely knew they were being rejected. There was only one person in the world to whom Olivia would give a miniature signed Yours Forever.

He risked a question that was likely unfair, but Violet had come of her own accord, and in truth he didn’t care whether it was fair. He thought only of Olivia.

“Did your brother Lyon give this to you?”

He watched her closely. It amused him distantly to think that Violet was struggling both with the fact that he was related to the Everseas and that it would likely never do to lie to a vicar.

“Yes.” A hush, that word.

The silence in the room beat like a heart.

He knew his next question wasn’t necessary, or even fair. He didn’t care. He asked it anyway, for Olivia’s sake. His voice was steady, almost disinterested, even as his heart slammed in his chest, steady and hard, like a soldier’s boots coming down.

“Recently?”

He watched Violet almost like a predator. She breathed in and out. In and out. In and out. Any moment, she could answer the question that haunted Pennyroyal Green. All of English Society. And the Everseas and Redmonds in particular.

She reached for her teacup. The surface of the tea ruffled; her hands were trembling.

“I think he meant her to have it. I hoped you would decide whether to return it to her.”

He knew then, definitively, that she’d seen him. If she hadn’t seen him, she knew where he was.

The knowledge slammed into him. He drew in a breath, held it. No one had seen Lyon Redmond in years. He’d disappeared. No one knew where he’d gone. Only that the golden child, the eldest Redmond, had allegedly disappeared when Olivia Eversea broke his heart, breaking the hearts of his family, stirring old wounds and animosities between the Everseas and Redmonds that always festered beneath surface politeness.

But not one person knew the whole truth of what had happened before he disappeared, either.

Unless it was Olivia, and she never said a word about it.

“Is he alive? Is he in Sussex? Where is he?”

His voice was still steady. But the questions were quick, and they were demands, and when Adam demanded something, he invariably got it.

He fixed her with an unblinking stare, neither sympathetic nor judgmental. It willed the answer from her even as it drove her nervously to her feet.

His manners reflexive, he stood, too.

“I can tell you truthfully: I don’t know,” she said. She was in a hurry to be gone, he could see.

They watched each other warily.

“Please keep it, Reverend. I leave you to decide whether she ought to have it. She doesn’t seem happy, does she? And she’ll only get older and older. Then again, who can say whether she doesn’t deserve whatever penance she’s now paying?”

A faint hint of bitterness. Whatever had happened had cost her a brother.

“Thank you for entrusting me with it,” was all he said.

AFTER THE DAY he’d had, Adam thought he could be forgiven for thinking the door of the Pig & Thistle looked like the entrance to Heaven. His cousin Colin hailed him—he was sharing one of the sturdy, battered wooden tables with his brother Ian—Adam sank into a chair across from them. They were watching Jonathan Redmond thunk darts into the board with exquisite precision.

“Which Eversea do you think he pictures when he hits it?” Colin asked idly.

Ian snorted.

Adam said nothing at all by way of greeting. He stretched out his legs, leaned back, and closed his eyes, and for a blissful minute felt only the warmth of the fire and pub, heard only the buzz of conversation, felt the wood of the chair beneath him, all of it allegedly carved from Ashdown forest trees. He allowed himself the luxury of experiencing only his senses. Every conversation he’d had today, everything he’d experienced, had reminded them they’d been too long denied.

When he opened them, Polly Hawthorne, Ned’s daughter, was standing next to him.

He smiled at her.

She flushed scarlet to her scalp. “I enjoyed your sermon about loving thy neighbor, Reverend Sylvaine.”