Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

  “Your passion frightened Clara?”

  “So badly, she wept on our wedding night, proof I was out of control.”

  “Clara was a fool.” In that moment, Lacey was as jealous of her cousin as she’d been the day she learned Clara’s daughter lived, when two weeks before, her own had died.

  Gabriel shook his head, denying Lacey’s words. “Your cousin had good cause to be afraid.”

  “I doubt it. She had many fears, our Clara.”

  “Don’t talk ill of her. She loved you very much. When she was sick, she . . . ”

  Lacey sat up, holding the sheet against her. “What? Clara did what?”

  “She told me she would never forgive me if I didn’t go to you after she . . . passed.”

  Ah, Clara. “Were you going to heed her words?”

  “One year from her death. I had three months to go.”

  “So you were coming for me?”

  “I have been counting the days, but I didn’t know if I would go.” He raised a hand, touched her face. “We’ll never know. You came to me instead.”

  “I came for Bridget,” she said, moving farther away, needing to be truthful about this, at least. “I think I wanted to take her away from you, to raise her myself.”

  He sat up at that, his back straight, his hair in disarray. “I would never have let you.”

  “You are only her stepfather, Gabriel, no relation at all.”

  He rounded on her. “You make me so angry, I swear, Lace, if I were her real father, I would disappear with her so fast, you would never find her.”

  Lacey tugged the sheet close around her, a dagger of panic stabbing her, but reason pulled her from the pain of it. “You are a good and decent man, Gabriel Kendrick. Ultimately, you will do what is best for Bridget, as will I, and we both know it. It simply has yet to be determined which of us is best for her.”

  “She has been mine for two years. I know what’s best for her,” he all but shouted.

  “You don’t. She plays you like one of Ivy’s puppets, to get your attention, like I used to do, but it just makes you sad and sick with worry. She had no say over losing her mother, so she tries to, to . . . buttonhole you. Not being able to keep her mother must have given her the sense there was nothing, no one she could . . . keep . . . where she wanted them. When I was a child, I could count only on two people. One of them was you at my heels, or wherever I wanted you to be!

  “As I used to do, Bridget is holding you by an invisible tether—call it love—pulling your lead taut or letting it go slack at whim. Just watch her. You can practically see her consider in which direction she will tug. Two years, perhaps, but you haven’t figured her out yet.”

  “Do not pretend to know my daughter better than I do.” Gabriel rose to put on his dressing gown, then he turned to her, tying it with a vicious yank, and his ire vanished. “Lace, I can’t stay angry with you in my bed, a sheet between my mouth and your body, your hair a veil I want wrapped around me.”

  Physically, Lacey responded to his words. She wanted what he did. She didn’t want him angry or broken. Neither did she want him to think passion was wrong. He needed to accept it as natural. The physical expression of their love for each other had been right and good, even if a future together was impossible.

  Aware of her power, she raised her hands above her head to stretch like a cat. “I like your passion.”

  He stood firm, though she saw him waver. “Had I caused your fall, I could not have lived with myself,” he said. “I don’t like my passion, not when it becomes wild, almost savage, as it does only with you.”

  “But you said you were passionate with Clara.” Lacey embraced the jealousy beating in her breast.

  Gabriel walked to the night-dark window to gaze out. “I was trying to recreate whatwe had. Some months later, I realized that. It was a mistake. It never happened again.”

  Lacey sat up. Jealousy disappeared and sorrow replaced it. “So you will never . . . be with a woman again, never share your body with—”Me, she wanted to shout, but that would sound too much like begging. Besides, she’d known before leaving Peacehaven that there could be nothing more between them.

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, she wrapped the sheet close about her then she rose to approach the door to her room.

  “Lace, who else could you count on when you were a child, besides me at your heels?”

  She looked straight at him. “Nick, to get me out of trouble. Think about it.”That was as close as she dared get to telling him the truth.

  Back in her own bed, tears coursed down Lacey’s cheeks for the love she had destroyed. ’Twas not his passion but her decision to deny his paternity that hardened him, and there was nothing she could do to change it. The rift between them could never be repaired.

  When she went downstairs the next morning, Mac said that Gabriel had gone away for a few days and wouldn’t be back until Sunday in time for service.

  Lacey wondered where he would go for two days, and whether he despised her, or himself, more?

  On that next Sunday morning, sitting in the front row between Mac and Bridget, Lacey saw that St. Swithin’s needed attention. She’d once heard her father describe this as a Perpendicular Gothic. She didn’t know what that meant but whatever it was, Gabriel really needed to repair its ceiling.

  If ever he returned.

  Already its pews were crowded with people speculating as to why the vicar was late.

  “Where’s Papa . . . Gabe.” Even his fidgeting daughter, too stubborn to drop the Gabe from his title, wondered.

  Mac leaned close, surprising Lace. “Pray hard, young lady,” she whispered.

  Lacey furrowed her brows. “Why should I?”

  “Because I found your missing slipper.”

  Lace reared back in confusion. “So?”

  “Found it changinghis bed.” She pointed toward the front.

  Gabriel stood at his pulpit, and Lacey hoped he wouldn’t think her blush had to do with the other night. Well, it did, actually; it had to do with Mac’s assuming it had been more than it was.

  He spoke with eloquence, his message as magnetic as he. He spoke of generosity for the sake of giving—not to get a husband for your horse-faced daughter, she translated inwardly, though he paraphrased it better.

  She watched his every expression and gesture, and still Gabriel looked like Lucifer even at a pulpit in a cassock—devilishly handsome.

  Mercy, she was as much in love with him now as ever, which got her to imagining some serious machinations, so there might be a future for them, like when hell froze over.

  Lady Prout didnot get the point of the sermon. On the church steps after service, as Gabriel bid a good morning to his flock, Prout elbowed Lacey from his side and pushed Olivia before him. “I realize you were looking for contributions this morning, vicar,” she said, settling herself at his left, “but I must tell you that given the company you keep of late, I fear donations will be few.”

  Mac swept Bridget away fast. Lacey watched her loved ones cross the churchyard, a forced smile in place.

  Gabriel saw as well and gave her a reassuring look, which calmed her and made her dig in her heels to remain stubbornly near at hand, no matter what Prout said.

  The vicar wished a good morning to the last of his flock and turned back to malevolence personified. “Lady Prout, may I gently remind you that Christian charity is a virtue.”

  “Yes,” said she, “and charity is exactly what you need to build your church. Honestly, I don’t know why you persist in keeping around a woman whoyou insisted, vicar, be sent away in the first place for decency’s sake.”

  As a keen-edged blade pierced Lacey’s heart, she turned on her heels and walked with purpose along the outside of the church to make her inconspicuous way to Gabriel’s stable far behind it. Hopefully, that had been Ivy’s returning wagon she heard at the end of service.

  “Lacey, Lace,” Gabriel called from behind her, his long black cassock unbuttoned and f
lying in the breeze behind him, and despite the way it hampered him, like charred wings against the wind, he gave chase.

  His devilishly handsome face and broad shoulders, the memory of that dark curly hair between her fingers, collaborated to make Lace ache. She wanted nothing more than to run into his arms instead of away from him.

  So she picked up her pace and ranfrom the man she considered her port in a storm, except ’twas he who had sent her away.

  That hurt. God, it hurt.

  “Lacey, listen. That’s not what happened.”

  Ivy’s gypsy wagon sat near the stable, still hitched to its two-horse team, her friend beside it. “Ivy, I don’t belong here.” She threw herself foolishly into his arms, but managed to swallow her tears. “Please take me away.”

  “Ah, little girl.” Ivy stepped back and lifted her chin to look into her eyes. “I think you know where you belong.”

  Lacey shook her head, her gaze moving from her friend to her winded betrayer, not certain what or who she wanted.

  “If you went, what would we tell that little one with her nose pressed to the window over there?” Ivy asked.

  Shaken by the reference, Lacey looked over in time to see Mac pull that sweet little face from the glass and out of sight. “I have to . . . I have to—”

  Gabriel grasped her shoulders so she would be forced to look at him. She stubbornly regarded his black cassock instead, realizing with disappointment that hedid wear trousers beneath it.

  When her face warmed, she lowered her head and focused on his shoes.

  “Lace, please look at me?”

  She shook her head.

  “No? Well it doesn’t matter; you’ll hear me anyway.” His sigh, heavy with regret, got her attention despite her stubbornness. “Back when you lost the baby, I wanted you gone, Lace, so you wouldn’t be hurt in the exact way you were just now—by ignorant, callous fools who have nothing better to do than criticize everyone else. People like that put others down to raise themselves up, Lace. You had just lost your child; you didn’t need to be flogged any more than life had already done.”

  Lacey faltered, but she couldn’t let him turn her up sweet. Not this time. “You wanted me gone, Gabriel Kendrick,” she snapped, looking right at him. “Because you didn’t want those same fools to know thatyou had been so wicked as to succumb to my wiles.”

  Ivy whistled, turned on his heels, and walked away.

  “Don’t go, Ivy. I need you to get me out of here,” Lacey called after him, but he kept walking.

  Gabriel knew a panic, frightening in its power. “Lace, don’t be a fool,” he said, desperate to get through to her. “There’s too much between us to allow ourselves to be torn apart by spiteful words.”

  “Torn apart by you, you mean.”

  Gabriel tried to take her into his arms to calm her and show her he cared, but she fought him, which angered him all over again, blast it! “Ivy,” he shouted, “Is the wagon locked?”

  Ivy turned. “It’s open.”

  “Good.” Gabe swiftly swept Lacey off her feet before she realized what he was about and set her in the puppet wagon. Then he shut out her righteous indignation by closing the door and locking her in. Ignoring the sound of her pounding fists and oaths of retribution, he climbed up on the box and flicked the reins.

  The window behind him on the gypsy wagon opened before they cleared the drive. “You’ll go to hell for this, Vicar Kendrick,” Lacey shouted.

  Gabe laughed where she was concerned for the first time in months, now absolutely certain he was doing the right thing.

  Grin wide, Ivy waved. “Bye, little girl. Bye, Gabe.”

  “Take care of Bridget, you and Mac,” Gabe called. “It could take years to knock sense into Lacey’s stubborn head.”

  Their friend all-out laughed while Lacey tossed a threathis way.

  With no other choice, Gabe headed toward St. Swithin’s, Lady Prout and Olivia still there, burning gullible ears. They didn’t look too happy when they spotted him.

  He looked behind him, and sure enough, Lace stood at the big side window, her fury of a moment before replaced by a wide happy smile as she waved at her detractors.

  Gabe barked a laugh and urged the horses faster.

  On the church steps, the stunned gossips scattered when a dark cloud scudded by, split open, and poured its contents in a torrent.

  Gabe hunched forward against the water pouring down his neck and kept driving.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The beating rain made Gabe reconsider his extemporaneous flight, but drat, he had to make Lace listen. Yes, he’d been furious at Nicholas five years before—he remained furious to this day. Yes, he’d been devastated that Lacey betrayed him with another man. But he’d never wanted to hurt her.

  Having her leave Arundel had made him feel as if every vestige of goodness and hope departed with her. He had not had her banished in retaliation. He had not had her banished at all. If she’d stayed, she would have been eaten alive, which would have hurt her, and him, worse than it did this morning.

  Go home, go for Lace? Or let her go? The questions ranked right up there with, “Give up and die?“ or “Fight for life?“ He’d discovered over the past few days, as he endlessly pondered their relationship, that Lacey Ashton had not been expunged from his blood, despite the agony of the process. She dwelled in every drop that pumped through his body.

  So what if she’d had a dozen lovers, if she’d betrayed him with his former best friend, he wanted, needed—he must make a life together work for them.

  Bridget needed her. By God,he needed her in the same way he needed his next breath. Even if it was only physical, or mostly physical, between them—No, they enjoyed each other a great deal, even out of the bedroom. He enjoyed her company more than anyone’s. And he could talk to Lace as he could to no other. Blast it, Lace could read him. Of course, that wasn’t always a good thing.

  Turn back? Keep going?

  The devil’s-talk dragons in his flock wanted more than ever to destroy her, and he was her only hope for survival. Why couldn’t she see that?

  Thunderation! He mustmake her see he was on her side or die trying.

  Fight had always been his only answer. For life. For love. For Lace.

  Lacey paced the wagon endlessly. They’d been driving for more than an hour. She tried to break the lock a dozen ways without success. Rain poured from the heavens from troughs now, not merely buckets.

  The idiot on the box must be soaked.

  For the second time since they set out, she threw open the casement behind him. “Mercy, Gabriel, get some sense into your thick head; stop the wagon and get the dratted devil out of the rain.”

  It annoyed her no end that he didn’t so much as turn his head or scold her for her wicked words.

  Wait. Were his shoulders shaking? “How can you laugh at this . . . entanglement you’ve gotten us into? So help me, when I get my hands on you, Gabriel Kendrick, I’m going to beat some sense into you.” She shut the casements as loudly as she could . . . without breaking Ivy’s windows.

  Who knew a vicar could be so much a nodcock as to steal a member of his flock beneath the judgmental gaze of its most outspoken members. Cackling hens the lot of them. No, worse, they reminded her of a literal murder of crows. Deadly.

  And Gabriel. “Of all the half-witted, impulsive….”

  Lacey stopped at the thought, her gaze fixed on one of Ivy’s favorite pieces of pottery, a wall-pocket of Chinese lanterns. Gabriel Kendrick had never been impulsive a day in his life . . . except for the day he came home from seminary for good.

  Lacey gave up pacing and lay on her side in the narrow cot tucked along the left of the puppet wagon, head on her arm, gazing toward the bunks opposite. She, Clara, Nick, and Gabriel used to do sleepouts sometimes beneath the stars—her personal favorite—or in this very wagon. Girls squeezed into the bottom bunk; boys on the top, “tight as piglets at the trough,” Ivy used to say.

  Boys, in Ivy’s op
inion, could fall from a top bunk, crack their heads, and survive. Today, for the first time, Lacey understood that males had particularly hard heads.

  One certain male did, at any rate.

  Their favorite haunt, hers and Gabriel’s, besides this wagon, had been the old Ashcroft Abbey. The ancient cathedral, all broken stonewalls and no ceiling, stood now like the skeleton of a church overtaken by nature.

  When Gabe had been away at school, she went there when she missed him. That’s where he found her the day he returned. Had he suspected she would be there?

  He’d approached her, the single most important being in her universe, handsome, dashing, as dark and dangerous as he was smart and dear, his black suit and bright white collar proclaiming him a man of dignity. Finally.

  The fire that engulfed them in that sparkling moment had burned brighter than his collar, bright enough to create new life . . . a life snuffed, like the pyre of their love, leaving nothing but charred hearts and a cold headstone to mark its passing.

  Lacey remembered dreaming of the day Gabriel would come for her, after she’d left Arundel. He would sweep her off her feet and carry her away, saying that he realized she could no more lie with another than he could stop loving her.

  Could this be that day? Did he finally see her prevarication for what it was?

  Perhaps.

  And perhaps Ivy’s horses would turn into pigs and fly the wagon above the clouds where the sun shone still.

  Lacey opened the window, quietly now, as furious with her abductor as she’d ever been. He should have known back then that she would give him up before she would cause him to abandon his dream of breathing new life into his home and parish. She would never have destroyed him before he could earn the dignity and respect he’d craved and deserved.

  A generous, understanding, and dignified cleric now, Gabriel lived in a well-appointed home. He ran a parish of healthy, happy, and well-guided individuals . . . good and happy people because of Vicar Gabriel Kendrick. She’d heard from one that he’d helped thatch her roof, from another that he purchased the children’s schoolbooks from his own pocket for that makeshift school. When her cousin Victor traveled, Gabe apparently let the schoolchildren meet in the Ashcroft carriage house where they’d held the puppet show.