Very inappropriate.
Especially if the man was now dedicated to speaking to the Man Upstairs about her little problem. Well, not so tiny, really.
But quite deadly!
She didn’t want him playing down her problem. He could. Didn’t her father? So of course, the vicar did, when he gaped at her and stifled his laughter at the idea she’d kill anyone with her acceptance of a proposal.
But she was not the cause of this catastrophe!
No. Papa was!
If he would only give her what she asked for. Her dowry. Yes, she’d make use of it, go away to the north…or perhaps the seashore. Yes, there. She’d buy a little house, make friends, embroider, bake bread, and take her rascally Spaniels, Whistle and Thyme, and settle into a quiet life.
Killing no one.
Nor even thinking about what it might be like to stand near to the Reverend Charles Compton, inhale his intoxicating bergamot cologne and calm her fingers as they itched to outline the perfection of his lips and…oh, my.
Compton! She put two fingers to her lips. The vicar was of that family of the Duke of Southbourne, one of her father’s political opponents. A man with new and outrageous views, or so said her father.
“Lady Willa!”
She halted in her tracks. He had come after her? Oh, chills ran down her spine and she wiggled at the thrill of her nipples hardening. My, my, a vicar could excite her, could he? Did vicars have any sexuality? She hadn’t seen it, felt it. Wasn’t that against some heavenly law?
“Lady Willa!” The vicar in all his tailored black splendor caught up to her, grinning. “I say! I’m walking up to the Hall. I shall accompany you.”
“You needn’t.”
“But I wish to. It wouldn’t be proper for me to allow you to go yourself.”
She considered the slant of the sun in the sky. And the mild breeze that ruffled her hair.
“And I’d like your company,” he told her with solemnity. “A friend of Miss Harvey’s, I should think, could become a friend of mine.”
“Aren’t you afraid of that?” She asked though she smiled at him in encouragement. Foolish girl.
“Should I be?” He arched his brows, a merry light in his grass green eyes.
Weren’t men of God supposed to be surly or blue-deviled? This man was…effervescent! “After what I told you, yes.”
“Oh? Do you kill just any man who escorts you on a walk?”
She could play at flirting, too, although heaven knew, she shouldn’t. “Heretofore, only those who have asked for my hand and been accepted.”
“I see. So there have been many then?”
“Four asking. Two having been accepted. Those two dying.”
“Terrible for them. A burden for you.”
“Especially because I liked them!” And I do like you, but then you wouldn’t want a woman who killed others. No, no. She wished to stand here and admire him, but she minded her manners and resumed her walk.
“Did you love them?”
Persistent cuss, wasn’t he? A true cleric, then. “No. What is love? That kind of love. I’ve no knowledge of it and if I had—”
“You would have known it was worthy of marriage.”
“That,” she said with precision, “is what I think.”
He clasped his hands behind his back as they strode the path toward the Courtlands’ expansive Palladian manse. The wind tossing his hair. The spring sunshine accenting the swarthy rose of his cheeks and the way his dark frock coat hugged marvelously sculpted shoulders. “I gather then that you do not wish to marry at all?”
“Not any longer, no.”
“What then will you do?”
“With my life?” She tipped her head and considered the broad green lawn and the yawn of her future before her, quiet—and lonely.
“Exactly.”
If she told him, he would argue with her as her friends did. Or to be exact, the two friends she had told of her plans. “I shall engage in worthwhile charities. Train my two dogs to be obedient servants. Grow roses.”
“And what will you tell your family?” For marriage was the practical means for a woman to live out her life. Without a husband, she would have no status, no income, no property, never anything of her own. Not even daughters of earls could avoid the call of the altar, upon which many claimed they were sacrificed to an economic order as well as a society that did not recognize their service.
And she took umbrage at his question. “You are rather intrusive, sir.”
“I am. But you see I have the right. I am to negotiate with…” He pointed to the sky. “Him. For you. I need to know the particulars.”
“I will tell them that I am grateful for the gifts they’ve given me. Health. Education. A fine living. Books and dogs.”
“And yet?”
Damn, this vicar was nosey. “Yet the one thing they cannot grant me by largesse is a loving husband. A fine marriage. And now it seems to me that…” She pointed to the sky. “He will not allow it.”
“Many women take what their family gives them and go on to build a new life with those tools.”
She sighed. Why was she surprised that he advocated for the status quo? “Yes. But I cannot. Or will not marry a man I do not love, just to ensure that he lives and I live not so well beside him. And there is the matter of God’s change in plans for me.” She paused, pensive on that point.
“Go on.”
She mused a moment on this, her most important reason for not marrying just anyone. “How am I to know that the man I could love madly might not appear when I am thirty or forty or sixty-two?”
“You would wait for a love for that long?”
She stopped, her brows high, her expression shocked. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Frankly, I had not considered that issue. I simply thought He would present me with the right woman, if there is a right woman.”
She walked on. He must be terribly busy, busier than she by far, not to have considered such an occurrence. “But if you knew—knew in your heart, in your soul—that someday love would come to you, would you not wait for the right person? Would you not argue with Him? Would you not barter? Or trade anything you had to meet that person with a full heart?”
He opened his mouth to answer.
But she was offended by his delay to respond. She halted. Hands to her hips, she scolded him. “You of all people, sir, should know the value of love.”
“I do. I can count the ways that love fills a life with delight.”
“Well, then, sir, I ask you, what will you do for love? Will you wait as long as it takes to find the perfect mate? Will you build your stamina? Avoid the lures of lust? The deceptions of beauty? The illusions of wit? What will you do for love? Love of other?” She stepped near to him and oh, my, that bergamot was pure enchantment. “Furthermore, what will you do, what have you done for love of self?”
He arched his brows, his expression pensive. “I appreciate your insight. Your determination. No one has ever asked me that.”
Had she surprised him? Stumped him? Offended him? A man of the cloth? My, my, she must offer him balm or he’d hate her. And she did not go about the world creating unnecessary enemies, especially those who talked to God. “I’m here for the May Day house party for a few days. If you decide to share with me what you will do for love, please come and tell me. Will you?”
“Indeed.”
“Good. And let me know if you get any answer from…” She pointed to the sky.
He chuckled. “I will.”
Chapter 2
“What will you do for love?”
He rose early the next morning, her words ringing relentlessly in his head like bells on Christmas day. He wanted facts and answers. Who had been her suitors. How had they died. When. By what reason could she possibly believe she was to blame. Certainly, logic would destroy her superstitions.
Last night, he’d given up his tossing and turning and decided to end his misery and quiz her about her superst
ition.
He’d been invited up to the main house, as he always was, for any meal or tea or party. So not unusually, he arrived promptly at seven, ready to partake of breakfast and catch her dining. However, Ralston the butler told him she’d already come and gone, leaving with friends at dawn for a ride along the Avon. Lest he appear to Ralston and the staff to be stalking her, he gave his thanks, then returned to his work…and his pondering of her rare but intriguing question.
At one, he’d run up to the house for luncheon. But she’d beaten him to the draw there and sat with a few friends to dine. There was, sadly, no more room to sit at her little table. But he caught her glimpsing him, shrugging her shoulder in apology and offering a smile. Afterward, she’d gone off to the card room to have a go at her luck there.
Odd to think she’d believe she could win at cards but be unlucky in love. But he had learned long ago from contretemps with his mama not to argue with a woman, especially if it involved money or men.
He’d sighed, and retired to his cottage to write his sermon for tomorrow. Only words about superstition appeared on the page and he thought them too pointed to be used. After all, she would attend the service, hear his views on the subject and not appreciate his use of her challenge to instruct others. Indeed, Lady Willa did not appear to appreciate too much logic on this particular subject of curses.
At dinner that night, his own luck to get next to her ran high. A buffet had been laid out for the guests and he took the opportunity to maneuver his way next to her in line and at table. She wore a gown of pink and cream that gave her complexion a glow that made his mouth water. He was convinced that if he could savor the perfect sweetness of her skin, he’d be nourished for the rest of his life. Plus, he had a devil of a time keeping his mind on her words, her plump bowed lips the purest aphrodisiac to his heart and inspiration to his loins. Indeed, his mind long gone to spicy matters, he prayed she said nothing of any import. As a footman came round to their little table for two with a selection of small cakes, Charlie could wait no longer.
“Come stroll with me around the conservatory?” Lady Courtland had announced the party was to adjourn to her large glass hot house to enjoy the fragrances of the viscountess’s skills with roses and camellias. One of the guests was to play the violin.
Lady Willa beamed at him and the flood of his appreciation for her smile did nothing to lessen the problem he had with breeches that seemed even smaller than before. “Oh! You’ve heard from…?” She lifted her brows.
“Not yet.” He hadn’t formulated his appeal to Him yet. One needed more information before one hared off to ask for special favors, true? “I must learn more of this.”
“He needs details?” she joked, as a bit of pink icing clung to a corner of her mouth.
“Indeed.”
“Odd, don’t you think?” Her luminous eyes caught his attention to the corner of her lips where icing beckoned his own lips and even…yes…his tongue. But she frowned. Then she examined Charlie so closely, he wondered if she might put her lips right up to his as she whispered, “He knows, does He not, what has occurred?”
“One would think so.” He fought the urge to bend down and lick the sweetness from her lovely lush mouth. “But He is busy.”
“Busy. Yes. He must be.” She pulled away. Her tongue darted out to swipe away the icing. “Preoccupied with the war, I take it?”
“The price of wheat,” he supplied, shifting as his cock rose to unbearable fullness. His mind went blank. Should not the Good Lord be concerned about the nothingness in his head and pull his concentration from the words and lips and breasts of divinely tantalizing Willa?
“Very well. I will tell you all.”
Minutes later, he led her to pause amid the branches of the red and pink flowers while someone ran a bow over a few strings of an instrument. Amid the foliage, she and he stood too far from the crowd to be overheard, but better still, far enough away to wince at the screeching from the poor violin which was so horribly abused!
She closed one eye. “Whoever that is, they must take up embroidering.”
“Lady Courtland should hand out earmuffs!”
She grinned. “Then I would not hear you.”
“Why would that be a problem?”
“Your voice,” she said in the rush of confession, no maidenly embarrassment accompanying the statement. “It resembles the rumbles of summer storms.”
He was the one who was flustered, opening his mouth, but snapping it shut. He’d never been so ardently complimented before by a lady, but for her to praise him had him fighting the impulse to haul her against him and kiss her senseless.
“I’m certain the ladies come to hear your sermons because they like the sound of your baritone.”
He curled his fingers into his palms, lest he carry her off then and there. “They have not said.”
“Nor will they. Coo, perhaps. Preen, most likely.” Her molten gaze resting in his told him more of her own desires than her words.
He went blind in a fog of his enchantment.
She shivered…or so it seemed. “Why are we here among the flowers? Hiding, are we?”
He recovered his senses. “Not even, I’m afraid, escaping the violin’s cries for help.”
She chuckled, and as her laughter died, she bent near. “Well, then? What is it you wish to discuss?”
“Your proof.”
“My…proof? Of?”
“What in the world leads you to believe that you have contributed to the death of two gentlemen who loved you?”
A frown took over her mood. “I do believe that touches the problem. They did not love me.”
“They did not proclaim it, perhaps?”
“Nor know me well.” Now she scowled. “I count them proper not to have made any grand proclamation of undying love.”
“But they offered for you, so surely they cared enough to—”
“To want my dowry? Yes. To like my…eyes? Hmm. Or my…lips. Other parts of me?” She swept a hand before her firm breasts. “Why not? But me? Me, sir? I never asked. Did not learn. And one should learn, test the appearances, don’t you agree?”
“I do.”
“But I am harsh. I am to blame as well because I did not love either of them. I was swayed by order. What was expected of me. Of any woman. But then I must also excuse the men. The first gentleman who asked for me had little time to acquaint himself with me. He was kind. Sweet. Funny. He was to go to war, but he was no trained soldier. He should not have died upon that field.”
Charlie had counseled men who had charged into the chaos of canon and shot, others who’d been maimed in it, more who’d been about to die in it. Grief washed over him in a scalding wave for those he had not saved in any way, spiritual or physical. He struggled not to drown in it. “Where?”
“Albuera. Spain.”
Charlie had been there. Known many who fought. “A dreadful siege.”
“Aren’t all battles?” She asked, her sorrow tinged with anger.
“They are.”
“Why did you go? Violence is not what you’d condone. Why fight?”
“I did not take up weapons, but served as a chaplain.”
She exhaled, appearing flummoxed. “How could you go? How does any man?”
He gave the simple answer he knew so well. “Because it is expected. Much like you with the marriage proposition. It is what is done.”
“Not you. Not a clergyman.”
“I was raised by my father to be an honorable man who upholds his country and his king. I went.” He focused on the blood red roses. “I went.”
“Most of us do what we are told.” She set her jaw. “If we choose well within those parameters, we never regret our decisions. I agreed to the rules, the restrictions and it brought me no joy. I am asked to do so again.”
“You are to marry?” He froze. “Who? When?”
“Someone. Anyone. My father says soon. Before I am twenty-five and a spinster.”
“And y
ou? What do you say?”
Tears sprang to her lids. But she blinked them away. “I say no.”
He had let her go. In his bed that night, he lay awake hungry for a woman, for her. That sensation was so new, he laughed at himself and his naiveté to believe he’d have to wait for many years to feel the pull of a woman’s charms. Silly, he knew it was, to want her so badly after only a few days, a few conversations, but he was committed. He vowed to not let her leave this house party without hearing his views on her predicament—and having proof of his growing affections for her.
Her reluctance to marry did not mean, however, that she lacked attention of many men. She was too appealing for anyone to ignore. The next morning, she sat in his church, a vision in apple green, a bonnet of white straw strewn with apple blossoms perched on her black hair. She was rapt, her eyes flashing in the reflected greens of her pelisse. God, she was lovely and he congratulated himself for having written his text. He would have mumbled like a school boy had he not the script before him. After the service, he hurried to the doors. His heart pitter-pattered like a youth as she approached and shook his hand in thanks.
“You develop a good theme, sir.”
Relief swept through him that she took no umbrage as his topic. “I’m pleased you enjoyed it.”
“Instructive, I’d say.” She nodded, an imp’s wicked smile on her lips. “For some.”
“For you?”
“I think it over. Are you up to the house later?”
“I am invited, yes.”
“Then I look forward to seeing you again. Good morning, sir.” And off she trod, amid a group of her former school friends and two gentlemen who were also house guests for May Day.
Up at the house for luncheon, Charlie found her fully engaged by a myriad of gentlemen who were all too ready to converse, dine or stroll with her. They seemed intent upon imitating prancing peacocks who spread their feathers to display to her.
She—he happily saw—was not enthralled.
Lady Willa’s Divinely Wicked Vicar: Four Weddings and a Frolic, Book 4 Page 2
