Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

Gabe did so, passed his bishop by, sat beside Lace, and took her hand.

  “I see you know your place,” the bishop said. “You are hereby stripped of the parish your ancestors served before you.”

  “The parish his ancestors destroyed,” an elder shouted. “Which our vicar rebuilt.”

  The bishop chose to ignore that truth. “You may stay Vicar Kendrick, in Rectory Cottage, for one more week.”

  “Or not,” Gabriel said, standing, lifting Bridget and taking Lacey by the hand to leave.

  “Be glad I do not begin proceedings to have you defrocked,” the bishop called as Gabe’s household followed him out, Mac and Ivy, with the sneaked-in Tweenie clicking down a silent aisle that seemed to grow in length.

  As the bishop began his sermon, a goodly number of parishioners followed them out, offering their hands, their thanks, condolences on the loss of his parish, and their congratulations on his upcoming marriage.

  Except that the firm-lipped Lacey beside him, Gabriel noticed—looking grateful for their good intentions—had notagreed to marry him. Yet.

  “Where will we go?” Cricket wailed, voicing all their worries, Gabe was sure, when they reached the safety of Rectory Cottage? “Will my new Uncle Nick let us live with him at the Towers where you grew up, MyLacey?” Her little eyes were big and round.

  Gabriel barked a laugh, but beneath Bridget’s innocence, he found the smallest seed of hope when in his heart he worried. Some provider he had turned out to be. No hearth or home for his family. And yet, he wanted so badly to enlarge it.

  He must be a daft as his sire and grandsire after all.

  “I have to see Nick,” he said, and off he went, leaving Mac, Lacey, and Cricket stunned and silent.

  Daventry, Gabe thought, would probably expect to be leveled in one punch, and so said his cautious welcome as he stepped into his drawing room to greet the man he’d betrayed. But Gabe didn’t feel betrayed today, just hopeful. Daventry owed him.

  Gabe offered his hand, and the two shook, tentative at first, then strong, with an extra shake that called for a silent peace. “I’ve come for your help, Nick. I want to marry Lacey.”

  “Then it seems that I’m finally out of it. Finally came clean did she?”

  Gabriel ignored the trip of his heart. “I’ve just lost my church for choosing her over the moneyed Prout’s daughter. Worse, I stated my belief that the crofters’ children need a new school more than St. Swithin’s needs a new church. I’ve lost my living. We have a week at Rectory Cottage. I need to find a new living.”

  “Funny, I thought I chose the vicar for my estate,” Nick said. “Aren’t I the new Duke of Ashcroft?”

  “You can offer me the living but I don’t think my bishop would approve.”

  “Ah.” Nick rocked on his heels. “Then what can I do to help? If you’re out of a home, so are NannyMac, Bridget, and Lacey. We can’t have that. You could all live here, separate wing, but I don’t think you’d like that.”

  “No. No, I wouldn’t. I’d like—” Gabriel huffed. “Well.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  Nick raised a brow. “Get it out, man. Caught in your craw, is it?”

  “Well, as to that, I wanted to beat you when she named you as her child’s father. Are we clear on that?”

  “They were only words, man.”

  Gabe ran a hand through his hair. “To you, who ran off and left her stranded.”

  “I was leaving anyway, that’s why it worked so well.”

  Gabe fisted his hands. “You always were a heartless bastard.”

  Nick grinned. “You were always the most thick-headed among us. But you need this bastard, do you not? Cry peace, because God knows there’s naught— Just tell me what I can do to help.”

  “I need you to invite the scoundrels to our wedding, mine and Lace’s, and let them stay here for the duration.”

  “What does Lace think of this plan? A fast wedding smacks of need, and she’s already been through enough spec—”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “You haven’tasked her to marry you yet?”

  “Oh, I’ve asked her, but she always says no. I thought faced with wedding guests, she might change her mind.”

  Nick barked a laugh. “Faced with wedding guests she might make a permanent dent in your brain. A man of the world, you are not. No woman wants to be surprised with a wedding. You have to woo her.”

  Gabriel coughed and cleared his throat. “There’s been a bit too much wooing, and we know what that leads to. A wedding is our smartest bet, or we’ll . . . she’ll . . . you know.”

  “Indeed I do. And the bit about me fathering her child?” Nick asked.

  “I can be the bigger man. I’ve forgiven her for that.”

  Nick chuckled. “Big, heart of gold, generous to a fault, but dumb, Vicar Kendrick. Big and dumb. No wonder she refused you. And now you’re giving her a surprise wedding on top of your thick-headed forgiveness? I can’t believe she hasn’t already taken an iron skillet to your head.”

  “She gave me a black eye. Does that count?”

  “That’s mild for our Lace. She’s not going to marry you, no matter how much wooing has been going on . . . until you stop forgiving her.”

  Gabriel brows furrowed. “That makes no sense.”

  “It would if you thought about it. Stop looking at what you think are the facts and start looking at the possible reasons behind the facts as they have been stated.”

  “Sure. Sure,” Gabe said. “I’ll do that. Meanwhile, it’ll be harder for her to say no to marrying me with our friends here waiting for a ceremony, don’t you think?”

  “I think that when they were handing out social graces, perception, and self-confidence, you were chasing Lace to the old Abbey ruins.”

  “That doesn’t bother you? You being—or having been—”

  “Whoa,” Nick said, “you haven’t changed at all, Gabe. Pardon me, but you were also absent when they handed out common sense, or is it self-esteem? She loves you, not me.”

  “Why would she love a vicar’s son, a big, poor, clumsy beggar, when she could have the rich, fair-haired, fair-skinned son of the manor, Nick Daventry, Duke of Ashcroft? I think you’re missing the point, Nick. Except for the fact that I love her and you don’t seem to, or you wouldn’t have spent so many years in America, she has every reason to want you more.”

  “I offered her marriage, back then, I’ll grant,” Nick said, “but Lacey loves you, Gabe. And only you. Always has. Always will. She told me so.”

  Gabriel stepped back, pole-axed by Nick’s words.

  Daventry touched his shoulder with the tip of an index finger and near knocked the shocked vicar off his feet, he was so stunned.

  “Onlybecauseshe lovesyou,” Nick said, “will I go along with your fool notion of a surprise wedding, but don’t expect it to go well. It’s been an age since I’ve seen the scoundrels we went to school with, so no loss to get together for a ball, if nothing else. Besides, I’ve come home, and I’ve missed you all. Well,” Nick said, looking Gabriel up and down, “I’ve missed most of you. I’ll send the invitations to yoursurprise wedding, on Friday, say, since you have to be out by Sunday?”

  “I would appreciate that.” Gabriel turned to go then he turned back. “But don’t send a wedding invitation to Lace. Send us an invite to your ball, will you? Let me handle the rest.”

  “You mean, you’ll get her here, then get her to agree to marry you on top of it?” Nick asked as Gabe opened the drawing room door.

  “Invite her to a ball. I’ll take care of the rest,” Gabriel replied as he shut the door behind him, going over the conversational discrepancies in his muddled mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Two days passed with him sending letters seeking a new living and with no invitation to Nick’s ball.

  Could Nick Daventry do nothing right? Gabe groused inwardly as he slammed the mulberry jam so hard on the table, he broke the jar.

  Mac harrumphed. “Look
at you, grumpy as a cock in an empty hen house,” she said, and Cricket giggled, which made being the brunt of Mac’s ire worth everything.

  “Seems Knickerbocker’s back from the Americas,” Ivy said as he came into the kitchen for breakfast from the front of the house where they’d heard him answer the bell. “Here’s a note from him for each of us,” Ivy said, handing one to Gabriel, one to NannyMac, one to Lacey, and keeping one for himself.

  As they tore open their notes, Bridget slapped her hands to her hips with a good pout. “Did Uncle Nick not send one for me? Why ever not? And why hasn’t he come to visit me? Can I go up and meet him by myself?”

  “No!” Gabriel barked. Then he was forced to raise his chin against all the looks he got, most of them chiding, though Lacey seemed hurt by his reaction. Gabriel cleared his throat. “I’ll bring you to meet him after I do my parish rounds today.”

  Cricket jumped and applauded and he couldn’t help compare her the sullen little girl that Lace met that first morning.

  After cleaning up the jam and glass, NannyMac read her note, then Lacey’s note over her shoulder. She stole Gabe’s from between his fingers, read it, mumbled an oath, and slapped her bonnet on her head. “I’m going to the Towers to have a talk with that foolish man.”

  After a second of indecision, Bridget followed Mac out to the back porch at a run. “See if you can get an invitation for me,” his little one called after her, and Gabriel found he had to rub his hand down his face in order not to laugh and risk offending his Cricket as she returned, scowling because she had to ask.

  Gabe went to Nick’s right after breakfast. “What took you so long to send the invites?”

  “I know our Lacey.”

  “My Lacey,” Gabe snapped, aware that he sounded like Cricket, as in: just as young and sullen.

  “Yours, then, though she and Iare related by blood . . . just distantly . . . enough.”

  “I’m sick of this blood business. Now what took you so long to invite us to the ball? It won’t give the Scoundrels half enough time to get here.”

  “I sent their invitations ten minutes after you left. I sent yours today. I figured that’d give Lace less time to question my motives.”

  “She’s got me skittish, she does. I don’t seem to care that I lost my livelihood, my heritage and home. I only care that Cricket and I could lose Lacey.” Gabe ran a hand through his hair. “Thinking it through, Nick, your tactic was prodigious kind. Thank you.”

  “She won’t like it, being forced to say yes, or not, in front of witnesses.”

  “Oh, sounds dreadful,” Lacey said as she invaded the Ashcroft drawing room. “Who won’t like it?” she asked, but when Nick opened his arms, she jumped in. “Nicky!”

  He twirled her in circles, the two of them laughing, which made Gabe smolder—though they seemed more like old friends than former lovers. Still, Nick had been a good distraction from what she heard.

  He was right. In front of all those guests, Lacey could very well say “No,” to his proposal, given the fact that he was practically forcing her to be polite and say, “Yes.” Being forced set Lace up to be contrary every time. Now why had he not remembered that?

  She smoothed her skirt, and they stepped back, she and Nick, still holding hands just looking at each other, grinning like children in a schoolyard. It all looked so . . . innocent?

  “I was just telling Gabe,” Nick said, “that as the new Duke of Ashcroft, my first order of business, before I took possession of the Towers, was to head straight to London to reinstate your rightful title and the inheritance.”

  “Oh, Nick, you didn’t have to do that. The money is yours, and I don’t give a fig for the title. Besides, I just received an inheritance—from Clara, I think, though it was couched in secrecy. Anonymous and all that.”

  Nick beamed. “Congratulations. Frankly, I feared both had beenunlawfullystripped from you, but your mother didn’t file any paperwork, Lace. Shesaid she was taking them, but she didn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t have known if you didn’t look into it. So thank you, Nick, for reinstating my mother into my good graces. She seemed awfully cold back then. Once again, you’ve come to my aid.”

  Gabe remembered a conversation he’d had with Lace. “Who else could you count on?”he’d asked her. And she answered: “Nick, for getting me out of trouble.”

  By the time he looked up, it seemed they’d forgotten his presence, but there were no secret touches or taut need in their expressions. No static if silent lightning passed between them, such as happened with him and Lace. With the realization, his fears for their future eased.

  “Did you want something special?” Nick asked. “Like that invitation for Bridget that Gabe asked for?”

  Lacey laughed, and Gabriel’s heart lightened the more. “She’s mighty insulted that you didn’t send her one.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want her up that late.”

  “Oh, she won’t be,” Lace said. “She’ll fall asleep in the middle of it, but at least she won’t be able to say she wasn’t here. She just wants a big-girl invitation in her hand and she’s picked up MacKenzie’s sweet way of getting her way that carries the devil’s own guilt to it.”

  They laughed as Nick saw them to the door.

  After a last wave, Gabe and Lace meandered down a well-worn path toward home, remembering the times they’d done it at a laughing run, when neither of them was as tall as Ivy’s puppet theater.

  “I learned something about you this afternoon,” Gabe said, taking her hand in his, pleased she let him.

  She gave him a coy look. “What’s that?”

  “You love me more than you love Nick.”

  “That’s not news and it’s not true, exactly. I love you both, but I love you differently than I love Nick. I love you deeper, soul deep. I love him like a brother.”

  Gabriel tripped himself up and came to a complete stop. “Then how could you. How . . . how—”

  “Indeed . . . how? Howcould I?” she asked, tugging her hand from his to walk backwards facing him. “If only you’d remove your blinders and shove your questions up your conclusion.” She huffed, turned, and ran ahead, gamboling down the hill in a childlike rush, leaving him far behind. But the usual rolling laughter that normally accompanied her romp was absent today.

  Truth was, she’d probably never laugh on this hill again.

  He couldn’t, either, not when he watched her reach the bottom and cut a swath through the church cemetery to land on her knees at the small claret marble memorial he knew to be her child’s. The rich pink headstone stood out among the flagstone and slate, and in beauty stood second only to the larger specimen marking her mother’s final resting place, that erected barely a year after the daughter Lace lost.

  Curled now upon her stillborn babe’s grave, Lace wrapped her arms around the stone, her cheek against the veined, sun-warmed marble, and closed her eyes.

  By the time he stood there, tears clung to her lashes. “I had imagined that her little hands would be soft as silk,” Lace whispered.

  He curled himself behind her and became her strength, slipping a comforting arm around her waist, while she mimicked hugging the child she’d lost, except that she cuddled stone, without heartbeat, like her babe.

  They remained that way for some time, quiet, one in purpose, seeking comfort and solace from each other, and the grace to move ahead with their lives.

  “Gabriel, we’re at peace now, right?

  “I’d like to think so. I’m much more at peace now that you’re home.”

  “So am I, amazingly. Then I can ask. Was the service beautiful?”

  “Which service, pet?”

  “My baby’s funeral. Did you make it wonderful? Tell me about it.”

  “Ach, Lace, your mother asked for no service. The babe never lived. She was stillborn.”

  “Do you want to hear a secret?”

  “I’d be honored.”

  “I heard her cry. Mama said I didn’t, but I
remember.”

  He remembered too, sitting below Lacey’s window while she labored to bring forth the child of another, her pain like a knife to his heart. It most certainly did enter the world with a cry . . . which meant that it had not been stillborn at all. Odd that her mother had lied.

  Perhaps she thought it would be easier on Lace to think her child had been stillborn, which seemed preordained, in God’s hands. If it had actually taken a free breath, its second had rested in a midwife’s hands. Hard to make peace with that.

  And if the child had been his, he would probably have spent the rest of his life agonizing over his inability to coax a second breath, then a third, and more, from the babe.

  “No life and no service to send her to God, the poor thing,” Lace said and smoothed the headstone. “It hurts my heart to know.”

  “Your mother ran me like she ran us all. But your little one could have a service now, Lace.” Gabe wiped her cheeks with his thumbs. “We’ll sing hymns, and I’ll pray that we get to parent her when we all meet in heaven. Set your heart at rest and name the date for her service.”

  She clasped one of his hands and held it to her heart. “Who would come?”

  He could see how much she wanted it. “You, me, Bridget, MacKenzie . . . and Nick.”

  “You’d do that for me? With Nick?”

  He settled her head on his chest, set his lips in her hair. “Aye, love, I’d do about anything for you. Even stand back and let you go to Nick, should you wish it, though I’d rather keep you for myself.”

  “Which is why you came looking for me? Because MacKenzie said I’d gone to see him?”

  “Yes, I did, but it’s occurred to me since we spent time with Nick that you came home tome. You did not take ship to America, did you?”

  That did it. “You’re almost right.”

  Stricken, Gabe reared back.

  “Icame for Bridget.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The day of the ball dawned bright and sunny, but Lace paced her room till the middle of the afternoon. She knew only one Scoundrel’s wife, her dear friend, Jade, who owned the Benevolent Society for Downtrodden Women in Peacehaven on the Sussex coast. Oddly enough, during Lacey’s four years there, Jade had married Marcus Fitzalan, one of Gabriel’s Scoundrel school friends. She also knew Abigail who married Marcus’s brother Garrett. But she knew none of the other Scoundrels, their wives, their titles. She should have had Gabe make her a list, but it was too late for that now.