Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

  “Must we?” She rose too fast at that, placing certain parts of him in perilous danger of extinction, until she got herself free.

  Safe to love another day, Gabriel expelled a relieved breath and tried not to be distracted by her pert breasts and fine bottom. He watched her rummage and blush until she covered herself to her thighs with one of Ivy’s shirts, so worn Gabe could practically see right through it.

  Then he had to raise one knee to keep her from seeing how alluring he found her in it, or she’d find something else to wear, for certain. She seemed that annoyed, though he didn’t know why. Oh, how cork-brained was he? Of course he knew why.Must. No one told the Lady Lacey Ashton that shemust do anything.

  “Lace, listen. Bridget needs a mother. You’re her cousin; you love her and she loves you. Who better? And if you marry me, you can save me from a tittering empty-headed wife and a motherin-law who carries a pitchfork.” He’d thrown that in to make her smile, but it seemed, rather, to bring a thunderous frown to her brow.

  “I know,” he said, rising to look for food, “that we’d have to get Prout on our side.”

  “When hell freezes over.”

  He scratched his lush, man chest. “Aye, most likely.”

  She regarded his rampant desire with an annoyed frown.

  He followed her gaze down to the evidence of his randy self. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “You can forget something that large? Doesn’t it get in your way? You should be tripping over it, for heaven sake.”

  “Why, thank you. But one gets used to what one has always had.” He scratched his hairy chest. “I’m . . . hungry.” His body rose as he regarded her.

  She scoffed. “For food, even?”

  “That, too. Splendid idea. Ah,” he said looking into the round tin from which he’d pried the cover. “Irish soda bread.” He took a bite and offered her the can but she shook her head. He made a face. “It’s dry; it could use some jam.”

  Lacey searched the floor and stooped, carefully, to pick up a jar. “I saw it rolling around before, before we….”

  Too many silent minutes passed, them facing each other, her thighs beneath that shirt looking perfect and welcoming, his body jumping up and down, shouting, “Let’s go, I’m ready.”

  Gabe raised a brow. “Before we what? Hit the tree? Took off our clothes? Laid hands on each other? Burned each other alive?”

  She made a strangled sound deep in her throat, her cheeks strawberry-bright. “Before any of it, blast it!” she snapped. “Will youplease put on some clothes?”

  “They’re wet.”

  Lacey huffed and grabbed them from the floor to throw them over the encroaching branch. “There, now they can dry. Ivy must have something in here that you can wear.” She searched frantically and finally gave a great sigh of relief. “Here, put this on.” She handed him a second old shirt, just as worn but not so sheer that she’d realize what hers revealed, thank goodness, because he liked the view.

  The shirt she chose for him fit his wide shoulders well enough, but it didn’t meet in the front to button or cover his chest . . . or anything.

  He couldn’t help laugh at her, standing there half-dressed, half-exasperated, and totally appalled. “At least it keeps my back warm. You could come closer and warm my front.”

  That raised her chin and snapped her back ramrod-straight. “I will not marry you, Gabriel Kendrick. Not to give Bridget a mother or to save you from the greedy Olivia. Drat you for suggesting they were good enough reasons to spend the rest of our lives together.”

  Yes, raising Bridget with him would be like a dream come true, but his reasons were not good enough to make a life together, or even a life for Bridget.

  She couldn’t live with a man who couldn’t sort his emotions and neither could Bridget. “It might be better if I take Bridget and raise her alone.”

  Her unexpected assault threw him, coming on the heels of intimacy, bearing the revelation he dreaded hearing most in the world. He picked up her clothes and turned his back on her to hang them over the branch beside his, so she could not read his pain.

  He couldn’t lose her again. He could not. But what—

  “Hello the wagon? Anyone inside?”

  “Hello,” Lacey shouted. “We’re locked in. Can you get us out?” Her voice had wobbled as if she might cry, but when Gabe looked, she stood with her back to him, stepping into her wet crinolines, still covered by Ivy’s shirt.

  More than forty-eight dreadful hours after they left town in full view of the gossips, Gabe drove Ivy’s quickly repaired puppet wagon, Lace sitting beside him, down Arundel’s High Street, people stopping to point and conjecture as they passed.

  Gabe pulled the wagon up to the door of the carriage house behind Rectory Cottage and helped Lace get down. Nothing had passed between them since they’d left the Kingsley’s crowded cottage. They’d spent the night there, in Amberley, he in a bed with two strapping boys, Lace with three little girls.

  It had been the longest night of his life, for Lace had not spoken a word to him from the moment Adelard Kingsley broke into the wagon until they parted at the top of the stairs, in the man’s wattle and daub cottage, to enter different bedrooms.

  He’d paid the Kingsley family handsomely to help him clean and repair Ivy’s wagon all that day and late into the evening. Ivy’s horses, Chatsworth and Eccles, had been grazing beside the wagon when he and Lacey were set free around mid-morning. The bolting steeds had been found to have little more than a few paltry cuts, but very large and expensive appetites.

  As he followed Lacey down the drive toward Rectory Cottage, Gabe determined that once they were inside, they would have this out. MacKenzie would take his side, if she knew the possible consequences, like another unmarried pregnancy for Lace, though he was loath to produce that knowledge unless left without choice.

  And he would not let her say it wasn’t his this time!

  Gabe stilled as the thought settled, the sentiment stopping him in his tracks. But like a badly carved puzzle, the pieces did not fit properly. And why that should make him shiver, he could not say.

  “Lacey,” passing through the kissing gate distracted him. “Lacey, you have to listen to me.”

  The front door opened and they both froze as Prout and Olivia stepped from Rectory Cottage. Snob-the-elder’s nose could not have risen any higher were it attached to a French hot-air balloon. “I will make you pay” were all but inked on her judgmental brow.

  Despite her disdainful regard, she was loving the entire scene. Gabe could almost see her mentally rubbing her hands in glee. The daughter, to give Olivia her due, seemed acutely uncomfortable and wishing herself elsewhere.

  I suppose,” said Prout, regarding him, “that you must have an explanation for a two-day journey alone with such a one as this, though I’m not certain dear Olivia will be up to hearing it. One cannot sully the ears of the innocent with tarnished tales, can one . . . vicar?”

  That arrow hit its mark. A vicar and the town “sinner”—Prout’s word—returning two mornings later. Wait till his bishop got wind of the tale. With Prout’s help, it wouldn’t take long.

  “Alone?” said Ivy, from behind him with a chuckle, surprising the devil out of Gabe “Not likely. Sorry I couldn’t wave when we went by Sunday, but Lace wouldn’t give me a turn at the window.” Ivy chuckled. “Wasn’t that fun?” He put an arm around Lace and escorted her into the house, not giving the disbelieving women so much as a nod as he passed.

  Gabe offered Prout a nod before following them silently inside, then he turned and shut the door on the gaping mouths.

  MacKenzie insisted Lacey be swept upstairs to wash and rest while Gabe insisted she step into the parlor to hear him out. “Right this minute, if you please!” he demanded.

  Bridget, barreling into Lace and bursting into tears, put period to the debate, so MacKenzie won by default as she’d moved the duo forward while shushing Cricket.

  “One hour,” Gabe shouted from the botto
m of the stairs. “One hour, Lace, and we discuss this down here, or I’m coming up and we’ll discuss it up there, locked in again, if we must.”

  Lace appeared in the parlor entrance seventy-four clock-ticking minutes later and Gabe wished he, too, had gone up to bathe and change. She had him at a disadvantage as things stood, and he hated it.

  MacKenzie pushed Lace into the room and shut the double doors behind her, tossing him a fearsome Scot scowl of warning.

  “Sit down, please,” he said as he took his place, elbow on the mantel, prepared to be patient and reasonable and explain all the advantages of a marriage between them.

  “You sit,” she said, setting his back up. “And let me lord it over you.”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I need a bath first.”

  “Go and wash, then, and leave me alone, why don’t you?”

  “Devil it a bit, Lace, why?” He half-expected to read loathing in her expression—she should despise him, by God. He was begging and couldn’t stop. Nothing in his life had ever seemed this important. “Why won’t you marry me? We could raise Bridget together. We’ve been a good team in the past, Lace. Bridget would benefit from our guidance. You love her.”

  “I love her,” Lacey repeated.And I love you, too, you dolt of a thick-skulled, halfwit.“But frankly, Gabriel, since I wouldn’t marry you if you came roasted with an apple in your mouth, I’ll have to take Bridget and raise her myself.”

  He stepped back at her rancor and the repeated threat and he gathered his scattered wits before he could form a reply. “You cannot,” he said, after too long, cursing his lack of brilliance.

  “Watch me.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to her.”

  “Do what to her? Give her tenderness and love and a life of joy and laughter?”

  “No. You wouldn’t give Cricket a life where everyone looks down on you both because of your sordid past. She’d be tainted by association. No man would court her, much less marry her, withyou as her parent.”

  The barb hit, dead center, its shaft imbedded in Lacey’s heart so she bled on the instant. With a deep, shuddering breath, she thought she might be ill and wished she could melt into the floor. She raised her chin instead. “Thank you Gabriel, for firming my resolve. I am decided now. I shall raise her alone. We’ll be out of here as soon as we’re both packed.”

  “To go where?” He hadn’t quite masked the panic she saw in his eyes before he spoke. Small comfort.

  “So far away that no one will know anything about me,” she said. “As far away from you as I can get.”

  That broke him. He folded, and her heart went out to the pale shadow before her, yet her words had been taken from his own supply of poison darts. “Don’t go,” he said. “I have to be able to see y—her. Therewill be talk if you stay, here or nearby,—you know that—but I’ll stand in the way of it; I promise.”

  “Like you’ve stood in Prout’s way? I don’t think so. It’s over, Gabriel. I’m going.” She opened the door, needing to run, because she wanted so badly to weep. She would hurt him and herself and Bridget as well if she managed to take the child. But, Lord, staying with him, here, yet apart from him, would finish her.

  She had barely vacated the room when her tears began.

  “You won’t go, Lacey Ashton!” Gabriel shouted after her. “Because you haven’t a feather to fly with. You’d both go hungry. You’d end in a ditch, Bridget beside you.”

  Lacey’s knees nearly buckled and she couldn’t see where she was going, but she kept walking, skirting both Mac and Ivy as she headed for the stairs. To think that Gabriel had actually asked her to marry him yesterday. Fortunately for her, she had not answered, for she refused to live with a man devoid of emotion. Upstairs, in her bed, Bridget curled beside her and patted her shoulder. “Papa makes growly-bear noises sometimes,” she said. “But he never bites.”

  Lacey might once have laughed at that. Shades of Clara, she thought, and almost lost the fight with tears then and there.

  They could hear Gabriel shutting drawers and cursing beneath his breath in the next room.

  Mac came in and sat in the chair by her bed. Ivy followed and stood staring out her bedroom window. They were all the support anyone could hope for, except that the man she most needed took his stand as far away from her in spirit as anyone could get.

  “He’s right about the money,” Lacey said to no one in particular. “I don’t have any.” Besides, she thought, Bridget needed her father as much as she needed anyone. She turned into Bridget’s embrace, pulling her close. “We’ll do just fine right here, won’t we, darling? You’re right about Papa. Lots of growl but no bite.”

  Bridget slept with her that night. In the morning, Lacey didn’t remember who’d suggested or approved it. It had just happened.

  Life at Rectory Cottage became strained and quiet. She and Gabriel talked in company when necessary.

  Long after Victor’s memorial service, sometime during the third week after her falling out with Gabriel, they broke the silence with one-word answers. They did not make polite, if abbreviated, conversation when they were alone until the next week.

  Feigned affability, for Bridget’s sake, warmed over the second month. She and Gabriel had almost regained a semblance of their old ease in each other’s company whenthe letter came.

  “It’s from Arkwright and Albion, my mother’s solicitors,” Lacey said, sitting at the breakfast table while everyone waited for her to open the missive. Nervous, she rose and left the room.

  They were still there, waiting, quiet, pensive, when she returned. “I am summoned to appear at their offices in Horsham tomorrow. Ivy, can you take me?”

  “Can’t. Sorry. Two performances in Amberley tomorrow. I can take Cricket with me, though. Gabe, you can take Lace, can’t you?”

  A combination of quivering fear and raging hope gripped Lacey, until Gabriel regarded her with a nod. “I’d be happy to.” He didn’t seem happy at all about anything.

  Thus, she found herself sitting beside him in his carriage on a gray August day. He set out to entertain her with stories incited by this residence or that along the way. “In that ramshackle lodge lives a chatterbox,” said he. “She claims one new malady a day. Say hello and you’ll hear about every one twice.

  “Ah, there lives the widow in black who invites me to dinner every Thursday, like a spider enticing a fly.”

  “What? Afraid of a little black widow?”

  Gabriel smiled, and, yes, the sun came out. “She’s four-feet tall and piles hair the color of pomegranates so high atop her head, she ducks to enter a room. I vow, she purchases rouge pots by the score, so her cheeks match her hair.”

  “And you haven’t taken her up on her offer?”

  He leaned near, his warm breath against her ear raising the hair on her arms. “She’s smells of an undertaker’s parlor.”

  Lacey laughed, a rusty sound of late, but enough to send them back to an easier time. “Do you remember the day we climbed to the Maccabee Tower at Ashcroft and tossed mounds of cook’s rising bread dough on unsuspecting passers-by?”

  “Do I? Cook blisteredmy backside,” Gabriel said. “Then my father did the same twice as hard. You, I remember, got away with a bold finger-shaking, when it was your idea in the first place.”

  “I did get you into trouble, didn’t I?” she said, remembering the last time she might have done, and how sorry she was that she hadn’t told her mother the truth. She so wished they’d become a poor but happy family with their first, and more, happy children.

  At the solicitor’s offices, they had to wait for either Mr. Arkwright or Mr. Albion to return from unscheduled appointments. Nearly two hours later, Mr. Arkwright arrived, and Lacey invited Gabriel into his office with her, but he declined, allowing that she should have privacy with her solicitor.

  When she returned to the anteroom, she caught the frown marring Gabriel’s features. “It’s all right,” she said. “Come, I’ll tell you on the w
ay home. We’ve been away longer than we expected. Mac will be worried.”

  Hours after they’d left, as they approached Rectory Cottage, Gabe supposed he hadn’t taken it very well. She’d wanted him to be happy for her and he acted cross while he shuddered in his shoes instead.

  “I’ve come into some money,” she’d told him simply. “A great deal of money. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s an anonymous gift, but I suppose it’s from Clara, who couched it in secrecy in the event she predeceased our mother. At any rate, Mother is likely turning in her silk-lined gold coffin, even now. Imagine, independence for the sinner.”

  She could take Bridget away, was all Gabe could think. She could afford to leave him and take his daughter with the greatest hulking chunk of his heart as well.

  “Gabriel?”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “What?”

  “You have the means to leave and take Bridget away with you now, and after the things I said, I wouldn’t blame you, but I don’t want you to go.”

  “It’d save a lot of talk, if I did. You could repair your tarnished reputation among your flock and—”

  “Rubbish! I’d rather have you and Bridget where I know you’re safe. Think about staying, Lace, will you?”

  She’d never felt so heartened. “I’ll think about it.”

  Two months ago, she would have given her soul for that request, and now that she had thatand the money to take Bridget away, her thought turned to burning her ragbag of clothes and buying dresses to make Bridget proud.

  They entered the Rectory kitchen through the back door, startling her Mac, baking pies. “Lord, where have you been? Bridget’s frantic.”

  “Why? Where is she?”

  “She asked Ivy if she could please speak with Hedgehog, in private, mind you. In a right bustle she was, crying about MyLacey leaving her forever and her Papa not . . . well, just go on into the parlor and let her know you’re back. Ivy looked a bit unstrung when he went for Hedgehog.”