A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (8 page)

Fire and flood and jealousy. What was it about Olivia that Landsdowne thought he must have? The fact that she could not be had? Was it purely the challenge of it? Or was Olivia Landsdowne’s equivalent of an embedded glass splinter? An inappropriate woman who’d managed to fascinate him into a bombardment of bouquets?

The Song of Solomon said nothing about foolishness. Perhaps he would be the one to immortalize foolishness in verse.

“But he won’t win that wager,” Colin said with grim certainty. “Because he doesn’t know Olivia. And that’s my point: There’s nothing heroic about futility. And Ian’s right. Getting married is the best thing I’ve ever done. Do you really want to discover whether virginity grows back?”

Adam sighed gustily, pushed himself away from the table, and stood. “Good night, cousins. It’s been edifying, as usual. And just for that, you can pay for my second ale.”

“It makes you testy if you go long between, too,” Colin called after him. “So I hear.”

“Chirp chirp,” Ian added.

It was purely an accident he trod on Ian’s outstretched foot as he departed.

Chapter 6

ADAM ARRIVED HOME after ten o’clock to discover that Mrs. Dalrymple had collected all the wadded foolscap and dumped it on the fire. Where it belonged, as far as he was concerned. Saturday was for wadding; Sunday was for burning.

“They do make excellent kindling, Reverend, and I like to think of all your words floating up to God in the smoke,” she’d told him.

“I’m certain God would be relieved that I burned them, rather than inflicted them upon my parishioners,” he’d told her dryly.

Often he welcomed the blessed silence after days filled with goat-related disputes and Lady Fennimore and the like. But tonight, after the warmth and hum of the Pig & Thistle, the quiet of the vicarage rang like a blow to the head. There were days when he felt the isolation of his job keenly; he belonged to everyone and yet to no one.

Tonight, he sat down at the table in the spotless kitchen and stared down and thought dryly: If I were married, at least I’d have someone to help me get my boots off.

He tried to imagine it. For instance, Jenny kneeling there to give a tug on his boot, her soft, fair head shining in the …

He couldn’t do it. His thoughts felt permanently dislocated in the shape of a petite brunette. God willing, it was nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head when he heard Mrs. Dalrymple’s solid tread in the hall.

“Oh, Reverend Sylvaine, I did hear you come in. Something arrived for you while you were out.”

As usual, he looked first at her face for clues to what it might be and found it carefully stoic, ever-so-slightly disapproving.

Then he looked at her hands. The missive might have been edged in flame or dipped in something foul, so gingerly did Mrs. Dalrymple hold it. He could see it was sealed in wax. In her other arm was tucked a soft-looking package bound in brown paper and string.

“I thought you might like to see this straightaway. It was brought to the house by a footman. Powdered hair and all dressed in scarlet and yellow like a bird, he was, and this package for you along with it.”

He stared at her. A scarlet-and-yellow footman?

“Reverend?” she said, a bit uneasily, after a moment.

He realized he’d stopped breathing. He exhaled carefully.

“Of course. Thank you, Mrs. Dalrymple. I’ll just see what it might be, shall I?”

She extended her arms, and he took the package and the message from her. She waited. Presumably she could cast it into the fire with great haste.

“Thank you, Mrs. Dalrymple,” he said, gently but firmly.

She backed away, apparently loath to leave him alone with it.

He wanted to be alone with it.

He examined the handwriting, as if it would provide clues to her. He in fact wanted to postpone the moment of opening it, the moment when he learned more about who she was. To prolong the unexpectedly pleasurable shock of its arrival. For what he read might undo all of it.

He finally broke the seal.

Dear Reverend Sylvaine,

While I’m assured your cravat is beyond salvaging, I’m certain our horse would thank you for the gift of it he could. I hope you will accept the enclosed by way of thanks for your kindness. It belonged to my husband, but since he is no longer alive and since he possessed forty-seven of them if he posessed one (I am never certain of the number of s’s that ought to be in that word, I hope you will forgive me that and my spelling in general), I cannot think it’s an inapropriate gift, though mind you I am no expert on what is apropriate. I hope we may begin our aquaintance again over tea on Tuesday next at Damask Manor, where I will attempt to demonstrate that I do have manners, contrary to what you likely currently believe. I understand it is the custom of Pennyroyal Green natives to feed the vicar as often as possible, and when in Rome! I shall endeavor not to bore you.

Your neighbor,

Countess of Wareham

He was charmed motionless by the poor spelling and the apology.

He read it again. His thoughts ricocheted between suspicion and sympathy. She was a professional enchantress, after all.

He’d read it three times before he realized he’d been smiling nearly the entire time he’d read it.

He slowly unfurled the cravat and ran it through his fingers. Silk, it was, and spotless as the soul of a saint.

It had once belonged to a man who’d won the right to marry her in a card game.

No, not at all an appropriate gift for a vicar. And this was part of its charm, too, and part of its danger.

He had a duty to all parishioners; he’d dined with nearly all of them. And if she intended to become one of them, he could hardly decline the invitation.

She never does anything without a reason, Colin had said.

A strategist, his cousins had described her. Who knew how to get what she wanted and always gotten it. Clearly, she wanted something from him.

God help him, he couldn’t wait to find out what it was.

“NO JEWELRY,” HENNY had advised adamantly. “He’s a vicar. He’ll likely already know you’ve been a kept woman, and you needn’t remind ’im of it by decorating yerself overmuch.”

In the intervening days, Henny had discovered that Reverend Sylvaine was related to the Everseas— a cousin on their mother’s side. And that the sister of Mrs. Wilberforce, their housekeeper, kept house for Pennyroyal Green’s doctor. Which likely solved the mystery of how the entire town had learned exactly who had taken Damask Manor.

So Evie wore no jewelry, apart, that was, from the St. Christopher’s medal she always wore. It hung warmly between her breasts, and her hand went up to touch its reassuring shape as she stood in the drawing room and craned her head to see Reverend Sylvaine hand off his hat and coat to her footman. Who seemed puzzled, as if he’d never before seen a coat that hadn’t been brushed and groomed within an inch of its life by a valet.

And then the vicar turned and took a few steps into the room. He halted when he saw her standing against the hearth, right below a gigantic portrait of a glowering, bearded, ruffed fellow, likely one of the earl’s ancestors.

How had she forgotten how tall he was?

Or how tall he felt, more accurately.

The very air in the room seemed to rearrange to accommodate him. She felt him as surely as if he’d disturbed a wave of it and it had rushed forward to splash her. She folded her hands against her thighs; her fingers laced together like creatures clinging to each other for comfort. She didn’t move to greet him; she couldn’t seem to speak. All of her faculties seemed preoccupied with just seeing him.

They in fact eyed each other as if the carpet were a sea dividing two enemy territories.

It was then she noticed he was holding a small bouquet of bright, mismatched flowers in one fist. It ought to have made him look beseeching. It didn’t. On him it might as well have been a scepter.

From the distance of a few days, she realized she’d made a number of miscalculations when she’d anticipated winning him over. A few things had paled dangerously in her memory: the impact of his eyes, even from across the room. That long, elegant swoop of a bottom lip. That palpable confidence, as if he were a man who had nothing to prove because he’d already proved it.

She wondered at the source of that. He was just a vicar. He wrote homilies about goats and read them to country people on Sundays. Likely a sheltered man, whose entire world was comprised of Sussex. While she had made the unimaginable ascent from peat bogs to Carleton House to countess. She knew what Prinny’s breath smelled like, for heaven’s sake, because he’d leaned over her more than once in an attempt to look down her bodice. If a way could be found past Adam Sylvaine’s reserve, she was the one who could forge it

She glanced down at his boots, and the creased toes of them seemed to reassure her of this.

Just as the reverend glanced down at her hands. And he looked up again, with the wry, challenging tilt of the corner of his mouth. Because there was no way the man didn’t understand his physical impact. He’d watched her hands lace, and she sensed he knew she was trying not to fidget.

“Thank you for inviting me to your home, Lady Wareham.”

And then there was his voice.

Her heart was beating absurdly quickly.

“Thank you for coming, Reverend Sylvaine.” Very elegantly, graciously said, she congratulated herself.

And with that, it appeared they’d exhausted conversation.

She cleared her throat. “Are vicars allowed to imbibe? May I offer you a sherry? Will that do for a demonstration of manners?” she said lightly.

He smiled. The dimple made a brief appearance. She eyed it, as fascinated as if the moon had risen in the room. “I’ll allow it’s a start. But I’ll take port if you have it.”

It was a contest to see who would speak most noncommittally, it seemed.

He seemed to realize the absurdity of remaining rooted to the spot and moved into the room with a few long, graceful steps. She watched his eyes touch on things: the cognac-colored velvet-tufted settee, the spindly, satin-covered chairs, the portrait of God-only-knew-who above the hearth.

What did he know about her? Did he imagine she ravished lovers on the settee? Was he smiling politely while the word “HARLOT” blazed in his mind like something fresh off a blacksmith’s forge?

“Of course I have port. And, oh, look! You came bearing gifts. How … very kind of you.”

She held out her arms, and he duly filled them with the flowers; and then, to her surprise, he fished a small jar from his coat pocket.

“Since you’re new to Sussex—native wildflowers. And the honey is … made by the bees that drink from the flowers.”

She eyed him cautiously. Flowers and what bees did to them—supped, flitted—were popular metaphors in the poems fevered young bloods had written to her. She wondered if this was an innuendo of some sort.

Or perhaps everything would sound like an innuendo until she knew precisely what the vicar knew about her past.

Once again, the footman appeared. Relieved, she deposited the gifts in his arms and told him to bring port and tea.

She turned to her guest again.

“Flowers and bees,” she mused brightly. “It sounds a bit like the beginning of a sermon. Perhaps something about the lilies of the field and how they don’t toil?”

“Perhaps. I’ll be certain to tell you if I use the idea, so you can come to church to catch up on sleep.”

She laughed.

And when she did, his face swiftly suffused with light, as if he’d heard celestial music.

And then it was there and gone, as if it had never been. And he was politely inscrutable then.

“Please do sit down, Vicar. You’re by way of towering over me.”

He perused the selection of spindly-legged chairs, likely deciding which chair he would be less likely to crush; he chose one with a tall, fanned back and four bandy, gilded legs.

She settled in the settee next to him and turned. She freed her hands from each other and deliberately laid them loosely on her lap.

They confronted each other like diplomats from two nations about to negotiate a treaty. She amused herself by imagining they ought to have hired an interpreter who could speak both vicar and countess.

He didn’t look comfortable in the chair. His back was aggressively straight, as if he was trying to avoid the embrace of its fanlike shape. It occurred to her then that perhaps his posture wasn’t so much rigid as tense.

“You have the distinction of being the first to fall asleep during one of my sermons, Lady Wareham.”

An interesting opening salvo. What would she do with it?

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, Reverend. I expect none of the women would want to miss a moment of gazing upon you.”

His silence was so instant and palpable, she nearly blinked. It was like a door slamming in a tinker’s face.

For heaven’s sake. It was baffling. She was, by all accounts, a beautiful woman. He ought to have been flattered, or at least intrigued. Surely, he possessed some measure of vanity? Despite its being a deadly sin? No man who filled a room the way he did, or possessed those cheekbones, could escape it.

She waited.

He seemed more comfortable saying nothing at all than anyone she’d met in her life.

“I do apologize for sleeping,” she found herself saying, haltingly. Though she meant it. His silence pulled the words from her. “It was impolite, to say the least. It’s just that it was very warm where I sat, and I fear I was very fatigued, and your voice is so—” She stopped abruptly. Alarmed at what she was about to confess.

“What of my voice?”

Oh. The way he asked the question … so gently, so conversationally, so confidingly, in that voice of his … she wanted to give an answer to him, like an offering, to please him.

An excellent skill for a vicar.

Or a seducer.

“I like your voice.” She said it faintly. It wasn’t frilled with flirtation. It was simply true.

She felt a bit raw saying it. And a trifle resentful. As though a confession had been extracted from her under duress.