And then they stood to look at each other, quietly. His face was sheened with sweat. He’d pushed his hair back.
And Henny breathed evenly in the other room. Evie glanced at the clock.
Only fifteen minutes had passed since last she looked.
Someone would need to say something.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” she said almost formally.
Oh, God. They both heard it precisely the same way at the same time.
And for the very first time, she saw the vicar blush.
And then, so did she.
He didn’t reply. He was studying her almost somberly, disguising awkwardness and uncertainty with his usual self-containment. The two of them knew the language of tension and longing very well, they’d done the dance of desire and banter, but now that they’d come apart in each other’s arms, tasted each other’s sweat, been inside each other as deeply as two people ever could, neither of them had the language for what happened next. Everything she considered saying seemed too inadequate or too fraught.
At last he stepped toward her. And then gently hooked a finger about a strand of hair clinging to her lips. Drew its silkiness out, that look of faint wonder visiting his face again.
And then he almost whimsically tucked it behind her ear.
A tenderness that was in some ways more intimate than the lovemaking itself.
Everything in her being rushed toward him then; she was suffused with light.
And then, like a wave, it swelled into a terrible panic.
She suddenly wanted to him to leave immediately.
Her mind was too full and her body too sated, and fear throbbed at the edges of her very soul. When she’d been a mistress, a man might bid her farewell with a slap on the bottom or an affectionate buss. Never had she given herself to a man simply because she wanted him: never had she felt the need to be joined with him or perish. Her entire survival had depended upon her ability to plan. Not on her ability to feel.
And never, never could she afford to allow herself to be at the mercy of any man. Particularly a man with whom she could never have any sort of future.
The nameless enormity of what she felt, the beauty and totality of it, was in direct proportion to the pain it could bring.
“I’ll just go in to see Henny now,” she said quietly.
And turned for the room, knelt next to Henny’s bed. Crouched down behind it as if it were a fortification.
Resting her head against the bed, in an attitude of prayer, though she didn’t know what she’d pray for.
She’d left him standing next to the fire. She looked up from her place of protection and saw him looking in at her, the expression on his face as though he’d at last seen something truly holy.
It was the last thing she remembered before she fell asleep.
Chapter 22
EVIE WOKE WITH a jerk and a stifled shriek when she realized her pillow was undulating beneath her cheek.
A rat! The damned rats are at it again! She heaved her body backward back and prepared to give the bed a good pounding.
A blinking, disoriented moment later she realized she’d nodded off not in her old rooms above a St. Giles whorehouse but kneeling on the floor next to Henny’s bed, her head resting against Henny’s great round blanket-covered calf, which was rotating as Henny turned in her sleep. Rats were of her past.
She supposed it was useful to know her reflexes were still alert, however.
She squinted in the pallid light squeezing between a gap in the curtains and shoved the weight of her hair from her eyes. It was then she smelled him: on her hands, in her hair. She froze. Male, musky, overwhelmingly erotic and unnerving, so him her heart contracted. Desire spiked through her again, fresh and shocking, as her body awakened to a new craving; now that she’d given it a taste, it wanted more. Now. She indulged the craving for a dangerous second, allowed in memories: his hands threaded in her hair, then reverent and demanding and so confident on her body. His eyes burning into her, his face buried in her throat, the fierce pleasure of possession and searing pleasure in his blue eyes, how it felt when he moved in her.
Joy and panic rushed at her again. She batted the joy back sternly.
Mother of God, what had she done?
She became aware of a weight about her shoulders; she reached up and she touched wool, not lawn. She brought his coat down into her arms.
He’d covered her and gone home in the cold dawn without it. She cradled it, eyes blurring.
“I didn’t die, then?” came a croak from the bed.
Evie instantly whipped the coat behind her and propped her elbows up on the bed to get a look at Henny. She was pale as kneaded dough and none too fresh-smelling, but her eyes were bright and shrewd.
“Do I look like an angel to you, Henny?”
Henny scrutinized her. “Well, I’m not certain at all ye’ll be goin’ to Heaven,” she said quite sincerely, if apologetically. “And I would have thought the same was true fer meself. But an angel sat next to my bed last night, and held me hand, and I canna say I would ’ave been sorry to die then, for I knew I was going to Heaven of a certainty. A beautiful angel, mind you. A man,” she said with relish. “Ye should try nearly dyin’ just once in order to see what I saw.”
“That was no angel. It was Ad—the vicar.”
Henny pondered the implications of this. And then her eyes widened. “Ye’re quite certain of this, now.”
“Yes. Unless an angel came and joined the two of you whilst he was in here with you.”
“There was only the one cove,” Henny confirmed. And then it dawned on her:
“If the vicar was here, then it was … I was …” It seemed not even Henny could add “going to die.”
To her horror, Evie felt her eyes beginning to well again.
Henny saw this, and her jaw dropped. She stared at Evie, so horrified and fascinated that Evie’s tears evaporated instantly in indignation.
“I willna have ye weeping like a ninny over me, now,” Henny ordered uncomfortably. “I lived.”
Evie sniffed with great dignity. “More’s the pity.”
Henny patted her hand, then squeezed it hard, and they both pretended nothing of the sort was happening.
“The vicar, he held me hand?” Henny smiled dreamily. “D’ye know, I knew everything would be all right when he touched me. I just knew. I may never wash it again.”
“You most certainly will if you ever hope to ride in a carriage with me again.”
Funnily enough, this wasn’t far different from how Evie had felt when he’d touched her. She’d been unaware of the weight of her life until his arms had gone around her, and suddenly she was … a river flowing into the sea. It had seemed the most natural, necessary, inevitable thing she had ever done in her life, and for the first time in her life, searing pleasure had launched her from her body
It had been disastrous, in other words. What now would he expect from her? What did he think of her?
What did she want from him? How could any other moment in her life compare from now on?
What could possibly happen next?
“And ’e prayed over me. I heard voices saying “Oh, God’ again and again.”
“Part of your fever dream, I imagine,” Evie managed steadily enough.
And there was that. She wasn’t a shouter or moaner in the throes of passion; she left that to the men. She’d never before called upon the deity with any sincerity since she’d never before lost herself, given that her existence had depended upon ensuring that the man in question lost his own mind in passion.
Henny’s eyes were narrowed now, inspecting her the way a bird inspects a worm.
“I imagine I’m not a picture a’tall, but you look dreadful. Yer eyes are red and ye’ve crusty bits at the corners of ’em, and a bit of a rash on yer cheek, looks like, and yer hair is like a tower of snakes. Isn’t Lisle arriving today?”
Oh, God! Frederick! And a rash? Evie brushed the back of her hand a
gainst her cheek. Tender from where the beginnings of his whiskers had rasped her. She tasted again, relived ravaging kisses. Another little bonfire of desire lit; she ruthlessly stamped it out.
“Frederick does arrive today. I can dress myself and do my own hair. Not as well as you can, mind you,” she hastened to add, “but I forbid you to leave your bed. We’ll have broth and bread and tea sent up. But tell me, what shall I wear?”
Henny mulled it. “White. Wicked innocence is the trick, you see. Something a bit drifty, like fog. And be sure to wear that cross.”
“You are a genius,” Evie acknowledged in a rare compliment. She didn’t say “And I will never take off the cross.”
“I do me best with the tools what God gave me,” Henny told her humbly. “Though Lord knows ye don’t make it easy for me.”
“I’ll show myself to you before Lisle arrives.”
“Verra well. I’ll just sleep then, won’t I?” Henny said, and promptly did just that.
HE SLEPT LIKE the dead. Or, more accurately, like the newly born.
He was already smiling when he opened his eyes. It was another few moments before he realized why: He became aware of a loose-limbed languor, the noticeable absence of the ever-present tension that had pulled the very fiber of his being so tight one could have plucked a note from him.
He’d had explosive sex with Evie Duggan the night before.
The smile grew.
He closed his eyes again, just for the pleasure of seeing only her in his mind’s eye, of filling his hands with her breasts, of her gasps of pleasure, of her soft mouth crushed against his, of the way his hands slid over the silken contours of her as she rode his—
His cock was stirring to attention again.
It had been … a culmination, a miracle. Bloody fantastic, thoroughly satisfying, bone-melting. Though he doubted it was the sort of miracle Mrs. Sneath sought.
He simply didn’t know what it meant. Had it been an extension of the moment, the dark, the firelight, the fear of death? Did she regret it?
Did he regret it?
He didn’t want to think it away; he only wanted to feel.
But he was never casual or careless; he was never frivolous. And he was not a coward. He would need to think about it.
He sighed and rolled over, tipped himself into an upright position, sat on the edge of his bed. And he wondered if she was still asleep, what she looked like in the morning. What it would be like to open his eyes and see her.
He wanted to know—he needed to know—what she was thinking this morning. She, after all, had been an experienced courtesan. Perhaps it had all been a bit of a yawn to her.
And then he smiled with smug satisfaction at his own private joke.
He knew she’d been out of her mind with pleasure, too. And no matter what, it would remain one of the privileges of his life to know he had given that to her.
The thought of seeing her was a spiked pleasure. The freckles, eyelashes, silken spirals of hair, eyes lit with a smile …
He was dressed and bathed and shaved and out the door before noon.
He stole the wildflowers from the vase in the vicarage entry, the way he had before his first visit to Eve.
If he did it one more time, perhaps Mrs. Dalrymple would begin thinking of it as a miracle.
BY NOON EVIE was pacing the downstairs drawing room.
The white muslin dress she’d chosen featured puffed sleeves, a generous but not tartish expanse of bosom, and a single flounce. Her gold cross dangled just above the shadow of it. The fire had been built up high to accommodate the sheerness of her gown, and though she might pass once or twice before it—she wore only the one petticoat, and the line of her body would be a delicious, tantalizing hint.
She inspected the room one final time, trying to see it through Freddy’s jaded London eyes. It was spotless, gleaming—the maid had seen to that.
But for some reason she hadn’t let them take away the wildflowers drooping in the vase on the mantel. The ones Adam had brought to her the first time he’d visited. They seemed like a talisman.
Freddy was announced at half past twelve, and he swept in, bringing London with him from the top of his sleekly groomed hair to his ruthlessly barbered chin to the flawless toes of his boots. His coat was the color of chocolate, which did splendid things for his eyes, and the buttons appeared to be silver and stamped with his family crest. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen anyone so scrupulously groomed in a while. He seemed a bit out of context in this room, but he was so sure of himself, so certain of his welcome everywhere he went, that he transferred something of his own ease to her.
“Freddy. You’re looking dashing.”
She held out her hands to him, and he seized them and brought them one at a time to his mouth to kiss lingeringly in a very French way that would have alarmed everyone else in Pennyroyal Green.
“Alas, I know ‘dashing’ is the compliment you bring out when you’re feeling noncommittal, my dear.”
“I notice you haven’t produced a compliment of your own, and you’ve already been here for two minutes.”
“Well, then …” He stood back and studied her suspiciously. “I scarcely recognize you without your fashionable London pallor. The country has put roses in your cheeks. Or is that rouge? What’s the occasion? My visit? I’m flattered.”
She knew, by the way he faltered a little that he was not unmoved by the white muslin and the bosom display and by everything else about her he’d once claimed he needed to sample lest he die unfulfilled. But that was the way Freddy talked. All hyperbole interspersed with innuendo punctuated by wry moments of awareness.
“If my cheeks are rosy, I fear it’s from the unbearable excitement of coming down the stairs and ordering the servants about in preparation for your visit. There’s really naught else to do in Pennyroyal Green. Apart from healthful walking.”
He snorted. “If God had meant us to walk, he wouldn’t have made me rich enough to buy a barouche and the cattle to pull it.” He lowered himself into the nearest Chippendale chair. Stiffly—the motion was in fact perilously close to a topple—and she reminded herself that they were all getting older, and Frederick’s one abiding love was excess. She examined him, too: he’d thickened a bit in the few months since she’d seen him. The elegant lines of his face had blurred, his body was softer. His buttons didn’t strain at all across his waistcoat, however. Oh, no: Frederick could afford a tailor to adjust his clothing to the minutest changes in measurement, and he would tolerate nothing ill-fitting.
“I must warn you, there’s very little else to do here in Pennyroyal Green that doesn’t involve walking. Naught that you would consider entertainment.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say there was naught to do. I might enjoy a hand of cards this evening, for instance, particularly if an interesting wager is involved.”
Freddy never leered. He simply fixed her with his admittedly fine dark eyes and his eyebrows, as lively as spaniels, gave an upward twitch.
“I’ve grown fond of Faro,” she said cagily. “The popping sound of the box interrupts the eternal silence of the country.”
He gave a short laugh and nodded, as if acknowledging a dodge and a parry. “Perhaps a game later, then. We can discuss the stakes.”
“Perhaps.” The smile she gave him promised both everything and nothing, which, she could tell, charmed him fully. He liked everything to be a sport, Freddy did. He wanted to stalk and toy, just like an overfed, bored house cat.
“Silence you say, hmmm? Do I detect dissatisfaction with your new circumstances, Eve?”
“You detect flippancy.” She wouldn’t like Frederick to think she could be easily had or that she was desperate for escape. “I’m quite comfortable, all in all, and the villagers haven’t yet stoned me for a harlot. There’s the title, you see, mine until Monty’s heir marries. And they’re quite afraid of Henny.”
She saw no need to mention the revived scandal.
And she glanced at
the wilting wildflowers and felt like a traitor.
Frederick stretched out his legs, booted in Hoby and polished to such mirrorlike brilliance, she surreptitiously tucked her skirts more snugly about her ankles lest he use them to get a peek up them. He patted his palms on the arms of the chair absently and gazed about the room, his strong Gallic nose turning this way and that like a weather vane, taking in everything—the unadorned mantel, the wilting wildflowers in the vase, the portrait of she-hadn’t-the-faintest-idea-who but was likely related to the earl, the admittedly fine but a haphazard selection of furniture, much of it French, as if the earl had kept the best of his revolutionary plunder for London and stuffed the rest into this house.
“So! This is what remains of your meteoric good fortune, eh, m’dear? This … dear little manor? ”
She saw the glint in his eye. She knew he was watching her carefully and weighing his loyalty to her versus the deliciousness of describing her new and considerably humbler circumstances to the broadsheets and the rest of the ton’s vultures. He had said they were growing bored.
“It is dear, isn’t it”?” she agreed blandly. “Will you have a drink, Freddy?”
“I’ll have many drinks if the evening progresses as I hope. I’ll begin with a sherry, if you have it. Are you certain you wouldn’t rather come over here and have a seat on my knee?”
“The settee will do for now, thank you. Though it’s tempting, given that your knee is bit more padded than last we met.”
He was amused and unperturbed. “I eat when I’m sad and lonely, dear Evie.”
“You’ll be happy to know I’m serving dinner fit for a tragedy. Your favorite, lamb with mint.”
“Perhaps I’ll achieve ecstasy before dinner and be unable to eat a bite.”
She gave him another small, enigmatic smile. But a wayward surge of impatience clenched her teeth. She recalled another man threading his hands up through her hair and taking her mouth with his, without question or preamble or innuendo or bargaining.
“Eve, do you recall the evening of the opera—Le Mistral, I believe it was? With Signora Licari?”
A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series Page 25