Sweet Vengeance

by St. Michel, Elizabeth

  “Compose yourself, Abby. You caught yourself up in your own scheme. You will marry Humphrey. He’s a fine match.”

  Abigail clamped her mouth shut and swiped at a tear. She would never marry Humphrey. He was adorable and that was where it stopped. Romantic inclinations remained nonexistent. Love had to be a powerful, soul-shattering affair.

  Nicholas put his arm around her shoulder. She looked to where he stared, outside the gardens, as if he could see beyond the horizon. In companionable silence, they stood watching a crescent moon rise as they had done when they were children. The reality of adult life brought complications. The love she held for her brothers and father carried an incredible bond that would never be broken. Her chin quivered with the disappointment she would cause them.

  “We all have responsibilities.” He turned on his heel, strode up the steps two at a time and disappeared into the house. A slight drop to his shoulders spoke volumes. The mantle of his heritage he wore like a heavy yoke. They were polar opposites. Abby refused to accept what was dictated while her brother nobly accepted his fate.

  To find solace, she sought refuge in her mother’s garden, letting her hand graze across the tops of roses. Except for a new minuet drifting over the gardens, the silence paralyzed her. How she wanted to throw her arms around her brother and tell him how much she loved him. How much she wanted to tell her father the truth, the lie of her engagement and beg his forgiveness. A wind picked up and stripped the roses, scattering petals on the ground. To ward off a sudden chill she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Abby wavered. Was she being watched? She whirled. The vicar moved off the bottom step.

  “I suppose you heard everything,” she accused.

  “Enough to offer a sympathetic ear if you are so inclined.” He sat on a stone bench and patted the space beside him. “You are confused. There is a fear of commitment and emotional vulnerability when one confronts a new situation.”

  To accept an invitation from a man who seemed more of a fox than a vicar took all the force of will Abby possessed not to squirm. But the need to pour out her personal feelings, to sort out what was inside of her, outweighed her fear. She glanced at him again. How angelic he appeared now. Wouldn’t talking to a stranger be a balm for her soul? “You are a man of the cloth and bound to keep confidences?”

  “Yes, my child. What is bothering you?”

  He leaned forward, easy in his skin. Rested his elbows on his thighs and looked deep inside Abby, or so it seemed. His probing gaze made her uncomfortable, intrigued, and almost naked. If her emotions weren’t so unbearable, she’d be less inclined. She took a deep breath. “To tell you the truth, I crave adventure. Instead I’m trapped.”

  “Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds exciting when you think about it, but it is perdition when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.”

  “Isn’t the purpose of life to live it, to reach out without fear for newer and richer experiences? To explore the forests, climb the mountains, cross the seas.”

  The vicar shook his head. “To set your life on the cast of dice is hazardous. You are a young woman of circumstance conditioned to a life of security and conformity. A young woman who must be protected and yield to her husband.”

  Abby narrowed her eyes. Of course the vicar would support her father. “It’s not fair. Men own all the possibilities. I want to discover things like my brother, Anthony, who has a scientific bent and discovers marvelous wonders. The lights are on in his lab,” she pointed. Or like my brother in America.”

  “You have a brother in America?”

  Oh, that voice of his, those resonant, powerful masculine tones most likely wooed the sheep in his flock to fling open their purses. “Joshua, my older brother told me many wonderful things about America. He’s been in the wilderness,” she looked wistfully away. His long absence worried her. Her mother’s brother, Thomas Hansford, who had moved to America was an ardent patriot and lived in Boston. He wrote them letters when he received communication from her brother, but Joshua had been out of touch for a year. She warmed with the memory of how Joshua had secretly taught her to throw a knife with precise accuracy, a skill learned from trappers he had met in the wilderness. Wouldn’t the Vicar be surprised that she could part his hair?

  “So that’s why you championed the American cause?”

  With the toe of her slipper she drew an arch in the gravel. “Not exactly. I confess I dislike Captain Davenport. He desires to catch Captain Thorne to gain promotion to relieve him of the shadow of nepotism. I had to win the debate, so I played the Devil’s advocate to provoke him. My pride was at stake. Can you forgive me for this sin?” Did she see his lips twitch?

  “You are forgiven,” he nodded. “Do you have other views on Americans?”

  Warmed by his absolution, she plopped down beside him. Her hands itched to take off the domino, to tear off the massive wig, but it gave her an air of security where no one would recognize the real Abby. She darted a glance at him. Did he really want her opinion? An irritation lay fresh in her mind. He did not support her debate. To taunt him she would give him what he deserved. “Only what I’ve heard. The colonials are a lower species, rude and sleepy gentlemen, ill-natured, narrow-minded, and absent of refinement.”

  “All that.” He stretched his long legs in front of him and a strong thigh dared to touch her gown. She pretended to be unaware of the muscular warmth emanating from her toes up to the roots of her hair. Her face throbbed with mortification. He was a Vicar, wasn’t he?

  She peeked up at him to see his unguarded mirth before he assumed a bland countenance. “Do you know anything about the notorious Colonial Captain, Jacob Thorne?” She was dying to know anything about the rebel privateer, the latest sensation that had all of England talking, and not one bit remorseful of gathering gossip to share with her maids.

  Despite the Vicar’s relaxed manner there existed nothing casual about his nature. Her skin prickled. Something wasn’t right.

  He narrowed his eyes. “What have you learned of him?”

  Flustered at being thrown off track, she slanted her head. “According to my maids, he is an ogre with a single blinking eye, a belly as round as the width of his ship, and he walks with a limp.”

  “A limp?” he choked.

  Swallowing her laughter, she held her hand up. “He gobbles children whole, drinks ale from a turtle shell and picks his teeth with fence posts. They say he’s Satan himself and a brutal commander. If truth be known,” Abby giggled, “he’s probably a pussycat.”

  “I hope you haven’t internalized your maids’ prejudices. A pussycat?” He feigned horror. This close she could not help but notice his fine chiseled features, the broadness of his shoulders nor the shock of thick dark hair that tumbled over his forehead. She yearned to smooth it back.

  She gave herself a little shake. Why was she noticing these things?

  His arm circled her shoulder. “Do you have any confidence in the ability of the Colonials to fight? You’ve heard of the rebel’s victory at Saratoga? You might like the Patriots.”

  Abby jumped up, ill at ease with his bold mannerisms. Were American vicars less constrained with their solace? And was the vicar a Patriot? Why he didn’t seem loyal to England at all. She twirled to face him. “I can imagine myself in their shoes. Americans feel like exploited outsiders.” She suppressed a smile and tilted her head in further reflection. “I might like the Patriots. I also like pedants and nitpickers.” He threw back his head and broke out into a bark of laughter, and then, his eyes settled on her…cold and stony. Abby shivered, an inner voice warned this man was not to be trifled with.

  Why had his demeanor changed?

  “Why are you marrying Humphrey?” A vein pulsed at his temple.

  Abby blinked. “I-I’m−” she stammered. “I’m sorry I began this conversation.” Humphrey had not told his cousin the engagement was a sham. She shrugged her shoulders. To recover the former lightness yielded an exercise in f
utility.

  “Is it part of the family code to keep status and power?” His scathing tone, sharp as a scythe through wheat, reverberated through the night.

  Her mouth opened and closed with a plausible explanation. She stepped back until the back of her skirts hit the garden wall. Eventually she would have to acquiesce and marry an aristocrat. Someone she did not love. An odd, twittering little laugh escaped as she remembered how wretched her situation was. “My life is preordained. The subject is something you would not understand.”

  The vicar’s face hardened. “I’m afraid I do,” he answered. “You’re willing to sell yourself, Lady Rutland. And the price is what the aristocracy dictates. It’s a bad arrangement.”

  Abby turned her back to him. She could not look at the vicar, could not expose herself to the expression she’d surely catch on his face if she did. What did he know about duty?

  “You are peddling yourself like a broodmare.”

  His assertion stung like a bitter dose of medicine. She didn’t hear the vicar drawing near, and when his hand came to rest on her shoulder, she started, gave a little gasp. It wasn’t so much surprise that had made her jump, but the unexpected, sultry charge the vicar’s touch sent surging through her body.

  “Turn around, Lady Rutland,” he said. “Look at me.” He was standing in front of her now, his eyes, searching her face, missing nothing, uncovering secrets she’d kept even from herself.

  Or so it appeared.

  Jacob Thorne fought against his anger, fought against the attraction he felt for her. Never in his wildest imagination did he believe he’d meet someone who fascinated him as much as Lady Abigail Rutland. To think she stood up to male chauvinism with that arrogant bastard, Davenport. Pendants and nitpickers? He was utterly captivated and wondered what she looked like beneath the mask and without the wig. She was an intoxicating combination of humor, of exhilarating intelligence and disarming vexation.

  And she was Humphrey’s fiancée.

  Humphrey, that dewy-eyed puppy, likeable as he was, could never in a million years keep up with this temptress. Despite his resentment, Jacob did not want to see Humphrey hurt.

  “I’m not one of your boot-licking fops to whom vague statements are satisfactory. I want to hear the entire explanation, and I want to hear it immediately. Is it, too, for status and power?”

  “Humphrey and I are best friends,” she whispered, managing a wan smile.

  He raised her hand and brought it to his lips. Her eyes never left his. “My tolerance for elitism matches my tolerance for lying. Why are you getting married to a man you don’t love?”

  But she was untouchable. Because she was untouchable−he wanted her?

  He was a bastard. How he hated aristocrats. She was as far from his reach as the ocean that divided them and how he hated that division.

  Tears blurred Abby’s vision−she tried to blink them away. “I have reasons.” How could she tell him her motivations were selfish? She was the spoiled wealthy daughter of a duke forced to face her destiny, yearning for freedom. He’d only disdain her lie.

  He dropped her hand and planted his hands against the wall, effectively trapping her between his arms. Abby swallowed. His eyes smoldering like the unblinking gaze of a hawk focused on prey.

  “There’s nothing to do about it,” she whispered. The smell of earth, and oddly, salt and sea filled her nose, and invaded all her other senses, too, and made her dizzy. “You don’t behave like a Vicar. Why has Humphrey never mentioned having a cousin in America? Release me−now.”

  Abby amended her initial opinion. He was beyond a holy man. By no means did he fit the saintly comportment of a vicar. His posture, awareness, and confidence belied a man who cut his teeth in battle. Without a doubt, he’d have Captain Davenport for his breakfast.

  He didn’t move. His voice was a rumble, low and rough, like thunder. “I’m going to tell Humphrey to end the engagement before it is announced.”

  Abby flinched, her hands pressed to his chest in self-defense. Her fingers burned. She dropped them immediately. “You cannot do that,” she cried, aghast at the prospect. “It will ruin my plans.”

  He growled and grabbed her by the shoulders. “You don’t love him.”

  Fear gnawed at her, eating away at the calm she fought to preserve. With the possibility of him carrying out his threat, Abby dredged up a drop of courage. “I think you are the enemy. You’re as bad as that privateer they were talking about.” To be a prisoner of such a man?

  He leaned toward her and her heart hammered with the veiled threat. “The nearer you get to your enemy the easier you can strike.” Abby didn’t understand a word he said as his lips hovered above hers. “Like confronting a jackal in his own den.” None of what he said made any sense at all.

  “You can’t stop me.” Her lip quivered and her hand rose. His eyes narrowed and he wrenched her hand in a vise-like grip. She refused to cry out.

  “Yes, I can,” he ground out.

  “How?” Abby challenged.

  And that was when he did the unthinkable.

  He kissed her, and not gently, not like the chaste kiss some fop had once bestowed on her. No, the Vicar kissed her hard, as a lover would, crushing his mouth down on hers—and instinctively, she parted her lips. She moaned with the taste of him, felt the kiss deepening in ways she’d only been able to imagine before that moment.

  That terrible, magnificent, soul-shattering moment.

  The Vicar drew back too soon, and Abby stood there trembling, as shaken as if he’d taken her, actually made her his own right there in the garden, both of them standing up and fully attired.

  “I’ll bet your intended never kissed you like that,” the Vicar said. He let go of her shoulders and raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sailing out tonight.”

  Before she could say a word, the vicar pivoted and walked away, heading towards Humphrey’s estate in long angry strides.

  Abby stood paralyzed. She could not go back to the ball, could not sneak up into her room and hide beneath the covers. Her feet were rooted in mortar. She simply could not move.

  Damn Humphrey’s cousin. Damn him to the depths of Hades. Humphrey would never kiss her that way; never send pleasures of awful, dazzling desire quaking through her like splintering shards of lightning. She touched her fingers to her lips. No, never again would she feel what she had before, during and after the Vicar’s mouth landed on hers. In some mysterious way, it was as though he’d staked a claim on her, conquered her so thoroughly and so completely that she could never belong to Humphrey, or any other man, as long as she lived.

  The Vicar had stirred an uncontrollable desire within Abby by merely kissing her and at the same time, satisfying that desire. In that brief sojourn to the deepest, truest part of her nature lay the harshest reality. The Vicar cultivated a satisfaction that had exposed what a man’s attentions—one certain man’s attentions—could be like.

  She pressed her fingers to her temples. He left her wanting. Desiring more of what she could never have—and for that, she hated him. Thank goodness, she’d never see him again.

  A footman rushed down the stairs, his wigged hair askew. He nearly collided with her. “I’ve been searching for you for the last half hour, Lady Abigail.” He handed her a note.

  Abigail adjusted her domino and recovered enough to open the envelope. Her father wanted an impromptu meeting with her and her brothers about her fake engagement in the laboratory. Now. She felt the blood run from her face. The lie she told. Consequences sprouted like mushrooms. Of course, Nicolas had snitched. She hated him. She hated her father. He’d never bend. He would make her keep her commitment to Humphrey.

  She tore her domino off, threw it on the ground, and stalked off toward the laboratory. She was late. Her father’s ire escalated when kept waiting.

  She walked stiffly, picking up speed along the hedgerow. Unexpected, alarming feelings intensified, cold and clammy as death. Beads of perspiration broke out on her lip. Wa
s it a result of the lie she told? A premonition? The lights of the laboratory loomed ahead. Abby picked up her skirts and broke into a flat out run.

  A bright flash blinded her. A massive explosion knocked her to the ground. Heat singed her dress and hair. Glass shattered and cut into her skin. Tongues of fire lunged at the firmament in a horrific blazing inferno.

  “No!” her scream rent the air, but was lost among the firing and crackling of timbers. Black smoke billowed. Sulfur permeated the air, an acrid acid taste. She scrambled to her feet, the laboratory gone. Greasy arms suddenly surrounded her.

  “Let me go!” She dug her nails into the interloper’s flesh. His breath reeked with liquor and something else she couldn’t describe.

  A filthy rag was thrust over her nose and mouth. She gagged, a sickening sweet scent. Bile surged in her stomach. She choked. His arm reached about her neck. Her heels dug furrows in the lawn, her slippers lost. The last vestiges of the laboratory sailed into the air, and picked up by the wind, drifted to the trees and set them ablaze.

  A thin reedy voice laughed in her ear. “Don’t bother struggling, Lady Abigail. They are all dead.” He cackled, an inhuman sound she would never forget. “Revenge against our hated enemy, the Duke of Rutland is a victory we will savor for a long time. Since you are the apple of your father’s eye, we have planned a separate, slow death for you. To pay back your family for the humiliation we have received.”

  If she had not lied, her father and brothers would not have been lured to the laboratory.

  Abby clawed and kicked her assailant. This couldn’t be happening. Pain exploded behind her eyes as he dealt a stinging blow that snapped her head back, for such a solid-sounding crack that for a harrowing moment she feared he’d broken her neck. Her hairpins fell to the ground and her hair tumbled in disarray to her waist. Fear galvanized her past the pain to struggle to her feet.

  She couldn’t keep her eyes open. The sickening odor suffocated her. Her muscles slackened. Her thrashing weakened. Lights contorted in front of her eyes as she slowly sank into oblivion.