Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

  Or maybe they would have Bridget, anyway, because Clara, at her death, surely would have made Lacey her daughter’s legal guardian, not the town vicar.

  That was the nature of their time on this earth, he supposed, choices to be made at every turn, and very often our decisions were wrong. Life does try one. No wonder he had so many parishioners to counsel.

  And if he didn’t calm down and let Lacey’s remarks go, however confusing, they’d be at it again, and only Bridget would suffer. He looked up to find Lace watching him. “She needs us both,” he whispered.

  Lace nodded and covered his hand on Bridget’s back. “I know.”

  “We’ve got to make it work.”

  She nodded. “We will.”

  Was she saying she’d marry him? He couldn’t ask, not right now, not so soon. It was enough that they would betogether for Bridget’s sake, even if it only meant living in the same house. He wasn’t certain why he was desperate to marry Lace; he knew only that he must.

  MacKenzie came to stand by the bed. She nodded her approval when she saw that Bridget slept. “News from the Towers,” she said. “Nicholas has returned.”

  A knife blade could not have slashed Gabe’s hopes more deeply.

  Nicholas Daventry; it wanted only that to complicate matters. It looked to Gabe as if Lace slept as well, so he sighed and rose, squeezing MacKenzie’s shoulder as he left the room.

  Lacey opened her eyes to regard Mac. “I hurt him badly, Mac. And not just five years ago.”

  “I know, my love. And with Nick home, our vicar’s not likely to mend any time soon. Do you know yet what you’re going to do?”

  “Live nearby, so I can help raise our Cricket.” Lace sat on the side of the bed, careful not to wake her. “I’m going for a walk. Up toward the Towers, I expect. I have a great deal to ponder. I’m thinking I’ll talk to Nick about a small plot of land on the estate nearby, where I can build a cottage.” She smiled when Bridget mumbled something in her sleep. “MacKenzie, stay with her while she sleeps, will you?”

  Mac harrumphed. “Where else would I be?”

  Lacey kissed her old nurse’s brow and left the room.

  After a night of hell, it was quite the beautiful day for a walk, she thought, as she made for the old Abbey where she and Gabriel had once played and then shared the first blossom of love.

  Ithad been love for both of them, she believed. But between her mother’s fury and her resultant betrayal of Gabriel, too much had happened for the bright innocence of it to have survived. Much in her had died with their child. And as a result of her lie, Gabriel, too, had become hard and intractable, difficult to read. Brooding.

  Yes, he loved his stepdaughter, but it was a frustrating love even so, tempered by Bridget’s consequent rejection.

  Gabriel was a good man, but he didn’t love her in the wholehearted way she needed, the way necessary for her to be able to give herself in marriage. They had first been torn by lies, then over the past five years they’d grown apart.

  From marriage, he wanted . . .her simply as his lusty bed partner for a lifetime.

  She wanted a marriage made of whole cloth, a life tapestry woven with everyday threads but made strong with the silver and gold of promise and fidelity—trustmost of all. She wanted a helpmate in hard times . . .and a lusty bed partner.

  If it were not for Bridget, Lace would leave Arundel and let Gabriel come after her once he sorted his priorities. However, after today, her choice had been taken away. She would do anything for Bridget, even grow old beside the man she loved but could never entirely have, because he didn’t believe she could be faithful.

  She loved Gabriel Kendrick; she would until the day she died. But unless he loved her in the same way, unless he understood without question that she had not betrayed him, despite her attempt to save his parish living and his dreams, then there was no hope for them.

  No hope, yet she wanted him, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Perhaps the town’s designation as sinner was appropriate for her, after all. Because if she didn’t leave Rectory Cottage soon, she would end up in the vicar’s bed more often than in her own, and that was no way to raise a child.

  It was no way to live. Gabriel was a man of the cloth, for heaven’s sake; he needed the respect of his flock. He needed to guide them down a righteous path, and how could he do so if he strayed from that path himself?

  She would move out, but stay close. A place nearby, but not so near that allshe had to do was turn a knob to climb into the vicar’s bed.

  Lacey wiped her eyes and tried not to think of her hopeless love for the big, stubborn ox.

  She entered the Abbey ruins and sat on a corner patch of grass in a circle of sunlight. She’d go and see Nick later. Right now, she needed time in which to firm her resolve to leave Rectory Cottage.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Gabriel entered the kitchen and slammed the door behind him. “MacKenzie, do you know where Lacey went? I can’t find her anywhere.”

  MacKenzie slapped the mound of dough she was kneading and turned to face their brilliant vicar, who had no clue about the depth of love he’d been given. “Last I knew, she was heading up to the Towers to ask Nicholasthe scamp Daventry for a place to live. Not a worthy notion, if you ask me, those two. I mean, after the scandal they caused a few years back.”

  Mac regarded her employer from the corner of her eye and smiled inwardly. That should shake him up a bit. And she hadn’t lied a jot.

  Gabe growled beneath his breath. “Where’s Bridget?”

  “Taking tea with the Misses Julia and Annabelle, andthree dolls, I believe, upstairs in her bedroom.”

  Lord, the vicar could be handsome when he smiled.

  “Go and give your little one a kiss, and then fetch her MyLacey for her before she starts fretting again, will you? We’ll both be here when you get back.”

  Himself nodded and ran upstairs, more alive since abducting Lacey with the gypsy wagon than he’d been for years.

  He was back down and out the door before she could turn the dough.

  Mac hummed as she shaped the bread into loaves and saw him out the window headed toward the Abbey Ruins, the Towers a half mile beyond.

  Gabriel did not know whether Lacey had been to Ashcroft Towers or not, or if she asked Nick for a place to live or not, but he could not be upset with her when he found her asleep like this on a patch of sunlit grass in the place where they’d once made love—her more beautiful than a dream, more dear than his own life. Then and now.

  He sat beside her and touched her skirt, just to make the connection.

  How could he stop her from throwing herself at Nick Daventry again? He couldn’t believe she wanted to live with the man after everything. Sometimes Gabe thought she had a blind spot where that knave was concerned. You’d think she would hate Nick for abandoning her and their unborn child. Instead, she wanted to welcome him with open arms and move into his house. What hold did Nick have over her?

  What would the parish think?

  Not much more than they did about her living with their vicar, he supposed. Then again, she and Nick had had a child together. Never mind that the child could have been his.

  It hit him then that Lacey had made certain that the village, and his parish, had never known about their dalliance. Had she meant to protect him all these years? Odd that, considering how angry she’d been at him when she left.

  Had she protected him? On purpose? That was certainly something to think about. A puzzle beyond solving, however painful.

  Gabe felt a sense of loss all over again. He’d already loved the babe she carried when she admitted itwasn’t his and turned his heart to stone. He’d actually felt his chest tighten and grow cold. He’d lost two people that day. Aye, and a part of himself as well.

  And still, look at him, sitting here worshiping her, stroking the hem of her gown. He should put a stopper in his foolish infatuation and let her do any feather-brained thing she dratted well pleased—as if he coul
d.

  He should find a woman who would marry him and give Bridget a proper mother, except that she wanted MyLacey. Who wouldn’t?

  Gabe stretched out beside Lace and slipped his arm around her waist, inhaling her rich vanilla scent. She stirred and started. “Hush,” he said. “It’s only me. Let me hold you for a bit. Here in our special place. Then we’ll talk.”

  She covered his hand with her own and held it against her heart, a splendid welcome—silent, but no less affirming.

  Gabe kissed her nape.

  She sighed and lowered her chin to give him better access.

  His body reacted instantly. “Only holding,” he said, reminding them both.

  But his body disagreed and made its eager need known.

  Lace giggled.

  Gabe huffed, annoyed she noticed that his nether regions had a will of their own. “I can’t help it,” he said. “You intoxicate me.”

  “I do something else to you, too,” she said turning into his arms. “I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep. I was on an errand and ended up here.”

  “I came to stop you,” he admitted too soon.

  “To stop me what?”

  “MacKenzie said you were going to ask Nick to let you live with him. He’d be a fool to say no, and though the man is many things I don’t like, a fool is not one of them.”

  “Mac said that? Are you certain?”

  “It’s no use in getting angry with MacKenzie.”

  “For trying to knock some sense into you? I’m not angry, though I think her phraseology could use some improvement. I’m as grateful as ever.”

  “Grateful?” His brows furrowed, and Lace smoothed them.

  He loved her hands on him, anywhere, everywhere. “Mac knows what’s best for you, Lace. I imagine that’s why she told me. Stay with us at the cottage.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  She slid her hand between them and ran her knuckles over his embarrassing erection. “This is why.”

  Gabriel closed his eyes and allowed pleasure to wash over him. “God, Lace. I’ll probably ache for you on my deathbed. How wicked will that look?”

  She opened her mouth to respond and he opened his over hers, his kiss desperate and needy. Lacey gave passion back; she always did. Her enthusiastic return of ardor had been his undoing too many times to count. Now was no exception.

  She raised his temperature with her seductive ministrations including a nip at his earlobe. “Tell me why I shouldn’t move in with Nicholas,” she said, “I’d still be near Bridget.”

  “You know exactly how to cool my fever, I’ll give you that.” And yet, he covered her hand to keep it there, where he wanted it most.

  “I know how to do a lot of things where your fever is concerned.”

  “Hmm.” Though annoyance fought pleasure, determination won the day. “Stay with us. It’s working fine.”

  “When I’m not in your bed or within touching distance, it works fine.”

  “Works better when we’re touching, andin bed, seems to me.”

  “That’s why I can’t live there, and you know it.”

  Gabe sighed. “Live near the cottage then, and Bridget can live with you. You’d both like that, and I could see you everyday. We could breakfast together.”

  “We don’t like to eat as early as you do.”

  Gabe chuckled despite himself, while he slipped a hand to below her breasts. “I’ll eat after I do church accounts and work on my sermons.”

  She looked as if she were considering it. Feigned as her deliberation seemed, it gave Gabe hope.

  “Better still,” he said. “Marry me and sleep in my bed every night.”

  “We wouldn’t sleep.”

  “We’d be happy, though.”

  Lacey laughed. “And have six more children,” she said.

  “More?”

  Lacey lost her smile and rose to dust herself off. “I’m sorry, I forgot and counted Bridget as our first. It was silly of me to pretend that she was even partly mine.”

  “Ah, Lace, I didn’t mean to hurt you. It just seemed that—I don’t know—that you meant something else, something I needed to….” He shrugged. “I’m being fanciful. Six more would be good. Let’s do it.”

  Lace regarded him so long, Gabe became uncomfortable.

  “You could forgive me for betraying you?”

  He nodded, uncomfortable of a sudden.

  “You could welcome Nicholas into our home as my friend and relative, as Bridget’s uncle?”

  Gabe nodded, but he felt the telltale heat of anger rise up his neck.

  “I thought so,” she said.

  “No, you’re wrong. I forgive him. I forgive you both.”

  At which point she turned and walked away so fast that she ended up running . . . all the way back to Rectory Cottage.

  Gabe followed and wondered when he’d lost control of the conversation. He couldn’t, by thunder, let her go to Daventry. He couldn’t.

  So why did forgiving her, forgiving them both, make her so blasted angry?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  How easy it would be to marry him as he wanted and become Bridget’s mother in truth. Easy but wrong for all of them, especially Bridget.

  Marriage should be founded on truth, not face-saving falsehoods.

  She should not have run back; she had a stitch in her side, and her stomach was doing flips. Lacey raised her hand when Mac started to speak. “Yes, the dolt found me. How thick can he be?”

  “Verra thick, our vicar. Why don’t you just tell him the truth, that t’was his bairn you carried?”

  “You know?”

  “I was your nanny; I saw the eyes you had for him, the love shining in them. Nick, the scamp, no. Gabriel the new vicar, aye. He was yours; and after a time, verra much yours.I could have named the father of your wee one, but it was not up to me.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” and Lace had no sooner said it than she was, right over the back porch rail, wretchedly ill, just in time for Gabriel to round the corner.

  He went inside and returned with a cool towel for her neck, a chair for her to sit, and a cup of weak tea for her to sip. He stooped down before her to watch the color return to her face.

  He was handsome and robust with dark curly hair and shoulders as wide as the double gothic doors of his church. And if she’d have him, pitfalls and all, he could be hers for life.

  He might mistake her returning color as a sign of physical wellness. But it was her embarrassment at this public humiliation of hers riding her.

  “I think you should lie down,” Gabriel said.

  “I agree.” Mac ushered her past him and up the stairs, removed her dress, and covered her with a quilt Gabriel’s mother had stitched. “You gonna tell himself this time?”

  “I don’t have anything to tell.”

  Mac scoffed. “He doesn’t think he’s half good enough for you, my girl. That’s why he believed your story about Nick. Nick has a title, so Nick is good enough to have fathered you child. Do you not see? It has nothing to do with trust on Gabriel’s part, but his unworthiness.”

  “He should have known that my love for him was so great that I could never have— Oh, bother. Your logic is giving me the headache to go with my stomachache.

  “That’s no stomach ache and we both know it.” Mac’s chuckle as she left the room carried a hint of delight.

  Soon enough Gabe paced next door, and that’s the sound that nearly lulled Lacey to sleep. He was worried about her, but he would let nothing happen to her . . . unless the choice was taken from him. Like with—

  “Oh!” She sat up. Could he fear her as ill as Clara had been?

  Well, they would know soon enough, one way or the other.

  This would be so simple if he would stop forgiving her for Nick and realize that there was nothing to forgive.

  To the sound of his pacing she finally slept, until she woke in time for church the next morning.<
br />
  Gabriel seemed prickly because they had not had a chance to talk before they walked to church.

  As he stepped up to the pulpit and began, he stopped speaking, because three new churchgoers had arrived. Oh, not just any churchgoers. One had a cleric’s collar, and he was accompanied by Prout and daughter, all three claiming the front pew, squishing her, Mac, and Bridget.

  Lace took Bridget on her lap to give them room.

  Without ceremony, to Gabe’s surprise, the bishop interrupted Gabriel’s talk by taking the pulpit to the left of the altar.

  The battle of the pulpits?

  The bishop said the first prayer, led the first hymn, and gave the first blessing as if he were taking over. “My dear Vicar Kendrick.”

  Oh, no, not a public chastisement, not because of her?

  “One of your parishioners has offered you twenty-thousand pounds if you will build a church?”

  And marry her daughter.

  “I will not be bought, your excellency.”

  “Commendable but proud,” the bishop said. “Are we not all called upon to make choices for the greater good? Now, which will it be? A known sinner? Or a pillar of the church for wife? The answer seems clear.”

  Lace’s heart raced when Gabriel made eye contact with her for the briefest of moments. “I love this woman you dare call sinner—forgiveness being our stock and trade, judgment being His.” Gabe pointed upward. “I would not take the pillar for a pot of gold, never mind her mother’s bribe.”

  The congregation shifted, uncomfortably, as one, the rustle of crinolines all whispers of unease.

  The bishop cleared his throat. “I cannot say I approve your choice.”

  “Thenyou take Prout’s twenty-thousand pounds and Olivia to wife. Become Prout’s son-in-law, dance at the end of her strings. See how you like it. But heed me on this; we need a school for the crofters’ children more than we need a church.”

  A rousing cheer stopped as fast as it began when the bishop’s caterpillar brows furrowed the congregation’s way with a promise of reprisal. He descended the steps from the left pulpit and nodded for Gabriel to do the same from the right.