Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Eloisa James

  “Excellent,” Ward said, with the heartiness of a man who has no interest in or knowledge about England’s greatest playwright.

  “Benedick is one of my favorite characters. ‘I will live in thy heart,’” Eugenia quoted, grinning at him, “‘die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes.’”

  “‘Live in thy . . . die in thy lap’? Wait. What did he mean by ‘die’?”

  “What do you think?” She was still laughing as she closed the door behind her, laughing so hard that she had to lean against the wall.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The night had turned chilly, and after Eugenia’s bath Clothilde laid out an evening gown of rose-colored velvet.

  The fabric clung to her curves and turned her skin the color of milk, so she drifted downstairs feeling luscious and ready to be seduced, and was disappointed to find the drawing room empty.

  “Mr. Reeve has been temporarily delayed,” Gumwater announced. “May I offer you a glass of sherry?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Eugenia said. When he was gone, she positioned herself on a sofa before a great mirror and tried out various postures. If she sat with her ankles crossed, her waist looked appealingly small. If she bent forward, her bosom appeared more ample than it already was.

  Gumwater reappeared with a tray on which a crystal decanter and two glasses were balanced. He wordlessly filled her glass and disappeared again. With a rush of nervous energy, Eugenia surged to her feet, picked up her glass, and began surveying the sparse furniture.

  At length the door opened, and she turned to see Ward enter. Despite her wait, she couldn’t stop smiling. He was devilishly handsome, with hair tumbling over his brow.

  “Please accept my apologies,” he said. “We had something of a crisis upstairs.”

  “What happened? Can I help?”

  “Thank you, but Ruby and I seem to have brought things under control.” He went to the tray and took up the remaining glass with the enthusiasm of one greeting a long-lost friend. “Jarvis was not happy to discover that Ruby believes even rats need nightly baths, so he retired under the grate and would not come out until lured forth with cheese. Once he’d emerged, I helped Otis negotiate a weekly bath for Jarvis.”

  If Eugenia were not a lady, she would walk over to Ward and run her hands down his shoulders. And perhaps even farther. His silk breeches left nothing to her imagination. She tipped up her glass so he didn’t guess where she had been looking.

  “I have been thinking about our meeting with the vicar tomorrow,” she said untruthfully. “What can you tell me of him?”

  “Very little. His name is Howson. According to Gumwater, the bishop’s visit is the result of complaints arising after the man accused an elderly woman of running a brothel when, in fact, she was raising orphans at the expense of the county.”

  “Rash at the best and dangerously irrational at the worst.” Eugenia set her glass down. “Does tomorrow worry you?”

  Ward shrugged. “He sounds as cracked as a walnut, but I’m confident that between the two of us we will knock some sense into him. Figuratively speaking, of course. I believe that our supper awaits us.” He held out his elbow. “May I?”

  He ushered her to a small room, paneled and appointed, though it had the same empty feeling as the drawing room. It held a table, a sideboard, and a few chairs, but nothing embellished the walls or the floor.

  When they entered, Gumwater was fussing with dishes on the sideboard. “Everything is as you requested, sir,” he said. “I’ll return to—”

  “Thank you,” Ward said. “I’ll ring if we wish for anything else.”

  The butler withdrew, glancing at Eugenia from the corner of his eye in a way that suggested he knew her to be a woman of easy virtue.

  She wasn’t.

  But she couldn’t blame him, since she fully intended to become one.

  Mrs. Snowe of Snowe’s Registry was a woman of impeccable moral rectitude. But Eugenia was discovering more clearly every second, that Eugenia Snowe, née Strange, was not.

  As evidence of which, she was having a meal alone with a man with whom she had determined to have illicit relations. Susan would be proud.

  “What are you thinking about, Eugenia?”

  “I was wondering if I am the sort of woman who will take to debauchery,” she admitted. “Perhaps I will surprise myself and become adept at depravity.” She couldn’t help but laugh at the appalled expression on Ward’s face.

  “What depravity?” he demanded. “We have done nothing more than kiss. You and Lizzie traded ribald speeches, but I hardly think that qualifies.”

  “According to all the ballads I’ve heard on the subject,” Eugenia said, “a widow is halfway to moral decline once the chimes ring after midnight for the first time.”

  A laugh rumbled from his side of the table. “What on earth do chimes have to do with it?”

  Eugenia threw him a naughty glance. “Once a man has kept a widow awake after midnight, she sees no reason to go to bed alone again.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

  The need in Ward’s eyes was so potent that she looked down at her soup bowl. The soup was pale green, with an aroma of new peas and delicate herbs. Eugenia gave an involuntary moan upon tasting it. “This is superb.”

  He slid his bowl across the table. “Have mine. I haven’t touched it.”

  “I couldn’t,” she protested.

  “Please do. Frankly, I would happily give up my meal to watch you eat.”

  She took another spoonful, and since he was observing her, she let the spoon slip extremely slowly from her lips. “You have a wicked side,” he muttered. “I may not survive the next course.”

  “Pooh,” she said. Then, changing the subject: “How long do you wish Otis and Lizzie to remain in mourning, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I had thought to take them out of blacks after six months, but if you think they ought to be in mourning a full year, I’m happy to follow your lead.”

  “Given Lizzie’s veil, I think your instincts are correct. It would be good to ease the children away from outward expressions of grief as soon as possible.”

  She took another spoonful of soup, glancing at Ward from under her eyelashes. He was wearing an exquisitely cut tailcoat, cut from a dark blue kerseymere. “You decided not to wear black?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I scarcely knew Lady Lisette; it felt hypocritical to claim grief at her death. How long did you remain in mourning?”

  “Oh, I was very conventional,” she said, taking another spoonful of soup. “Full mourning for a year. After that, half-mourning.”

  “Half-mourning is gray, am I right? And violet.”

  “Gray,” she agreed. “Who knew there were so many shades of gray?”

  “Five? Ten?”

  She smiled at him over her wine glass. “There are forty at least. No, likely fifty. Fifty shades of gray.”

  “I have a gray cravat,” Ward said. “My valet went through a brief infatuation with French fashion, during which canary-yellow, gray, and aubergine cravats entered my closet. Alas, I refuse to be the dandy that he wished me to be.”

  “I can picture you in a gray cravat,” Eugenia said. “But not for mourning,” she added. “Merely because gray is au courant.”

  “You wore gray for how long? Two years? Longer?”

  Her eyes fell under his gaze. “I found it difficult to counterfeit joy. Color is a language, after all. A statement.” She took her last spoonful of soup. “What time are we expected at the vicarage tomorrow morning?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “Ought we to have a plan?”

  Ward removed the cover from a serving dish holding fragrant lamb stew. “I have a plan. If Howson makes any sort of fuss about my sister’s foolery, I’ll have him removed from his position.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Only two things matter in this country: money and rank. I have both, even as a bastard, and if that’
s not good enough, Lizzie and Otis do as well.”

  “Are you referring to Lord Darcy’s estate?” Eugenia asked.

  He glanced at her, and back at the stew. “That, and I settled thirty thousand pounds on Lizzie. I want to ensure that her dowry will overcome any hesitancy owing to her parentage or to my guardianship.”

  Eugenia felt a pinch at her heart. He was such a good man. He’d given up his independence, his freedom, his place at Oxford, and now a significant fortune, for the sake of a brother and sister he’d never known.

  Her father always insisted that titles and blood didn’t matter, that the only important thing was what a man did with his life. Watching Ward from under her eyelashes, Eugenia had no doubt but that her father would approve.

  Later, at her bedchamber door, he took her hand and brought it to his lips. For a dismaying moment, she thought he would walk away without even kissing her. But at the last second, he bent his head and kissed her greedily, every stroke of his tongue making it clear that he planned to make her his.

  There was sensual possession there . . . and restraint too. “Eugenia,” he said, voice low and rough. “It’s time for bed.”

  “Very well,” she gasped. She turned to open the door, to guide him inside, but he stopped her, a kiss gliding over her throat.

  “Alone.” He drew back. “I don’t want to seduce you before you’ve had a chance to recover from the journey. It seems less than gentlemanly.”

  She opened her mouth to protest.

  “Tomorrow,” he continued, “I mean to abduct you once again—straight to my bedchamber.”

  It was a vow, a promise.

  Chapter Twenty

  Wednesday, May 27, 1801

  The following morning, the library served as the gathering place for the trip to the parish church, St. Mary the Virgin. Ward was already there when Gumwater ushered in his sister, whose black dress was relieved only by a snowy white collar.

  “You look beautiful, Lizzie,” Ward said. “Given the circumstances, I’m very grateful that you chose not to wear your veil.”

  “I wanted to wear it,” Lizzie said, sitting down on the sofa. “But Ruby stayed up most of the night making me this new dress, so I thought it would be ungrateful to wear the veil. It covered the collar.”

  Ward made a mental note to increase Ruby’s salary before he remembered that Ruby came with Eugenia, so she was paid by Snowe’s Registry. Perhaps he could lure her away; Otis hadn’t even complained at the idea that he should stay home with Ruby while they all set off for the church.

  Just then Eugenia walked through the door. She was wearing a dark plum gown that made her skin glow like a pearl. Hell, she glowed. The sight of her plump, rosy mouth made him want to kiss her, not bow.

  But bow he did. Kissed her hand and asked all the right questions about how she’d slept, all the time thinking that he wanted to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder, and take her straight to bed.

  Lizzie hopped off her sofa and bobbed a curtsy, smiling up at Eugenia. It abruptly occurred to Ward that a gentleman wouldn’t allow his young sister near the woman he fully intended to seduce.

  It was too late now.

  Eugenia bent and kissed Lizzie’s cheek, and then she set about teaching Lizzie to be just like her. “I want you to pretend that you’re greeting a bishop,” she said.

  “What’s a bishop?” Lizzie inquired.

  “He’s an authority in the church,” Eugenia said. “Have you ever been to church on Christmas?”

  “I’ve never been to church at all,” Lizzie reported. “That was one of things that bothered Miss Midge.”

  “Well, just pretend that your brother is a king and curtsy to him. No, don’t bob up and down as if you were a jack-in-the-box, Lizzie. Bend your head slightly, take your gown in your fingers, very delicately, and slide your right foot forward and shift all your weight onto that foot.”

  It took four or five tries, but Lizzie was an excellent mimic. Ward leaned against the mantelpiece and watched. Lizzie was ordinarily a somewhat reticent child, but this morning words poured from her.

  “I didn’t like her because she fainted,” she was explaining.

  “I expect that Miss Lumley didn’t have the fortitude to deal with a dissected rabbit,” Eugenia said.

  “We have guts too,” Lizzie said. “A cow’s insides could stretch all the way down the drive.”

  “Ladies don’t say guts,” Eugenia said.

  “Why not?” Lizzie demanded.

  Ward had the distinct impression that Gumwater’s entrance rescued Eugenia from a question she wasn’t prepared to answer. Though how could that be, if she was once a governess?

  Somehow, now that he knew her better, he simply couldn’t accept that she was ever a governess, or indeed, an underling in any household.

  Once in the carriage, Lizzie kept Eugenia entertained by pointing out all the sights—a tumbledown house supposedly haunted by the ghost of a nun, the great oak that housed a family of owls, and then, when they reached the village of Wheatley, the shop belonging to the irascible butcher, Mr. Biddle.

  When they arrived at the parish church, Ward stepped down, turning to assist Eugenia. Once on the ground, Eugenia held out a hand and Lizzie jumped to her side as if she were iron and Eugenia a magnet.

  “I’m ready!” Lizzie said cheerfully, and they marched toward the church without looking to see if Ward was following.

  Was this what it was like to have a family?

  He strolled behind, thinking about that.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Parish Church and Vicarage

  of St. Mary the Virgin

  Wheatley

  “I don’t believe in magic,” Hirshfield Chatterley-Blackman, the Bishop of Oxford, grumbled at his manservant, Rowland. “I never have. All that business about getting naked out on the heath in the rain. The women I know wear at least ten articles of clothing at any given time.”

  Rowland was kneeling at Hirshfield’s feet, buttoning up his gaiters. He coughed an assent.

  “In fact, make that twenty. You wouldn’t catch my sisters going around in puris naturalibus, would you? No one would do it, not even imbeciles like Howson. Do you know how much trouble that man has caused me?” The grumble escalated to a bellow.

  “England is full of nice, quiet parishes, thick with vicars who do no more than shag the occasional parishioner or fall into the ditch, cock-eyed on drink, but I am the one who ends up with Howson. The man won’t listen to reason. Not a bit of it. This is as mad as that supposed brothel he discovered a few months ago.”

  Rowland murmured something before he came to his feet with a slight creaking of joints.

  “I suppose he thinks that the gal is out at night lopping off toad fingers and hedgehog whiskers and all the rest of that rot that’s supposed to go into a cauldron,” the bishop—known to his intimates as Chatty—moaned. “At nine years old!”

  Rowland said something, the clearest word of which was “earl.”

  “That’s bloody right,” Chatty said, twitching his tippet out of his man’s hands. “Let go, that’s good enough. Reeve may be illegitimate, but he’s the by-blow of a peer and that makes all the difference. That’s the sort of thing Howson doesn’t understand. You don’t interfere with nobility.”

  He tramped gloomily along a passage leading from the vicarage to the church’s vestry behind the chancel, trying to remember where he’d hidden his flask the last time he had to visit, during the orphanage debacle. It was in the vestry room somewhere.

  Hurried footsteps sounded in the passage, and Rowland interrupted his search. “My Lord,” he panted. “You forgot your cross.”

  “Right,” Chatty said testily. “I’ll put it on.” Whenever he had to face a mad churchman, he always wore a great Palatine cross that some long-ago ancestor had brought back from the Crusades. It had a ruby at the top that winked in the light.

  He fancied that it gave him an air of authority.

  There
was no getting around the fact that Howson had a way of commanding the stage. Taking up all the air in the room.

  It was all that bloody zeal of his. Zeal was a dangerous thing. Howson’s brain sizzled like a pan of sausages. That energy gave him authority, not to mince words.

  “I’d like to mince him,” Chatty muttered to himself.

  He headed toward the side door that led into the central nave. The curate stood at door, looking nervous. “Is everyone present?” Chatty asked testily.

  “Yes, My Lord Bishop,” the curate said, nodding madly. He pushed open the door and announced, “The Right Reverend Hirshfield Chatterley-Blackman, the Lord Bishop of Oxford.”

  Chatty marched to his velvet-cushioned seat looking neither left nor right. He’d just realized that he’d never found his flask after the distraction of putting on the cross, and brandy was the only thing that might make these proceedings bearable.

  Before he got his bottom settled on the cushion, Howson leapt in front, blocking his view of the pews.

  The vicar looked lean and greasy and full of zeal. Chatty would be the first to admit that he himself had a chin or two too many, but he disliked men who were as thin as pencils on principle. It was indicative of an inadequate diet, and that sort of thing was bad for the brain.

  “What did you have for breakfast, Howson?” he asked.

  “Cabbage,” Howson replied, and started babbling on about witchcraft.

  Cabbage. That explained a lot. Probably gave the man wind, which made it particularly objectionable that he was standing so close.

  Unless Chatty was mistaken, Howson was starting to hint at satanic possession. Pretentious ass. As if the devil didn’t have better things to do than run around dressed like a nine-year-old.

  If he were the devil, he’d possess a nubile young woman with buxom thighs.

  “Stand aside, Vicar,” Chatty said, cutting him off. “I suppose I’d better speak to the girl’s brother, but I’ll tell you freely that I don’t believe there is such a thing as magic in Oxford. Or in England.”