Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

  “You more than repaid it during your years teaching our poor battered ladies how to act like ladies, then later, in my darkest of times, when you stood by me.”

  Jade and Lacey went to Bridget’s room, where Lacey retrieved Clara’s book, a bible, and sat on Bridget’s bed with it. She traced the etched, carved leather cover design, took a deep breath, and opened it.

  On the family page, Lacey found Baby Ashton’s date of birth and death listed in Clara’s hand as happening on the same day as on the headstone. Mother: Lacey Ashton. Father: blank.

  Dated a week later, Clara listed Bridget Spencer’s birth to her and her Scottish husband. Lacey noted, with a sinking heart, that the color of ink and track of the pen nib were different in the second entry.

  She stared at the entries until they blurred before her, then she looked up at Jade. “My outrageous imagination made me believe the impossible. What a fool. My baby didnot live. The fake grave is for show, to keep my mother’s reputation intact. Maybe even to punish me further.”

  Lace sought a handkerchief for her tears. Her child was not missing due to some wild plotting of her mother’s to send it to a childless couple of noble birth who would raise it and keep its parentage a secret to their death. “Foolish, hopeful, imprudent Lace,” she called herself. “Or that’s what my mother would say. Of course my babe did not live.”

  “Lace?” Jade said. “Then how do you account for the fact that her headstone, according to Wills’s tale, could very well mark anempty grave?”

  “Wills probably embellished the tale. Consecrated church ground is probably the point. She’s buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on the estate inunconsecrated ground.”

  “Still,” Jade said. “You’d think the vicar would know that and not bother to mourn beside a fake grave.”

  Lacey’s head came up. “He does think it’s real. I know, because he mourned her with me the other day, said we’d parent her together when we all meet in heaven. Which means that my mother didn’t think she could trust him to keep the truth from me.”

  Jade whipped away from the window and gaped.

  Lace frowned at the swiftness of her action. “What?”

  “He promised to parent her with you when you all meet in heaven, despite the fact that she’s Nick’s? Isn’t that what you wanted from the beginning? No matter your child’s father, that Gabe would claim you both?”

  Lacey’s head came up, and a lightness of being overtook her. “It is what I always wanted.”

  “You said you’d marry him today, if he stopped forgiving you.”

  Lace tilted her head. “I don’t think he’s realized he stopped, anymore than I did, but suddenly realization doesn’t seem important.”

  Jade beamed.

  As did Lace. “I guess I have a wedding to prepare for then. My own.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Starting earlier that same day, Gabriel and his fellow Scoundrels had allowed their wives to believe they would remain at Ashcroft Towers smoking, drinking, and reminiscing, when he had, in fact, roped them into doing manual labor.

  Gabriel could not, of course, utilize the church for his surprise wedding because the bishop not only banned him from the vestry, he’d confiscated Gabe’s key to the church’s Gothic front doors.

  Because Gabriel had a wedding to plan and his allegiance to the bishop had been forcibly severed, he had not, however, returned the outside key to the church basement. True, he would minister to any member of St. Swithin’s who so wished in future, but the bishop could go to . . . wherever self-aggrandizing bishops went after death.

  Behind the church with his cohorts, Gabriel had thrown back a set of rusty, paint-chipped, double doors, near level with the ground, and revealed an old set of crude stone stairs that led into abject darkness. He and the Scoundrels skulked downward and, in slow measure,borrowed an ancient set of pews.

  Three men on a length. They carried them toward the old Abbey ruins, where he and Lace played as children and, years later, made love for the first time.

  What better place to make her his wife? Now if only he could get her to show up for the wedding, or more to the point, if he could think of a way to ask her that would make her eager to become his wife. Telling her she must, after sleeping with him in the gypsy wagon, had not been brilliant, he could now see. And the thought of losing her, again . . . well, that just made him ill. A life without her was not to be borne.

  “Holy Scoundrel,” said Captain Grant St. Benedict, the Marquess of Andover. “Thisplan is as airtight as a dinghy with woodworm.”

  “These pews are filthy,” Justin, Duke of Ainsley, said. “Years worth of grime to be chipped off.”

  Gabriel looked from one to the other, sick with despair yet filled with hope. “I sent to the Towers for a couple of Nick’s maids with cleaning supplies.”

  “Where are you hiding your wisdom these days?” Justin asked.

  “I thought every woman wanted to get married,” Gabriel said in self-defense, encompassing his friends in his plea. “Lace and I, we’ve been—I mean, since we were kids, we’ve done nothing but—”

  “Fight?” Justin suggested. “According to Nick, all you’ve ever done is argue, disagree, and disappoint each other.”

  Gabe felt the blood drain from his face as he sat on a cobwebby pew. “That’s not quite right. We’ve fought hard, yes, but we’ve loved harder.”

  Marcus slapped him on the back. “Sounds like the makings of a good marriage to me. The pleasurable kind. What type of exhilarating challenge would marriage be if you got along all the time? The lovemaking of atonement and reconciliation makes for a higher realm of satisfaction that can only enhance marital bliss. It’s got that extra jolt and thrill to it, if you know what I mean.”

  Gabe knew. “With Lace, it’s got punch,” he said. “I’ve had the black eye to prove it.”

  Justin chuckled while Gabe considered the matter, his hopes brightening.

  Grant scratched his chin. “Gabe, how did you manage the license? Lacey’s signature? Doesn’t she have to agree on paper at least?”

  “I’m a vicar, the paperwork was easy, and she signed what she thought was a draft on her bank to pay for her new clothes. I thought she’d forgive me for that because, well, I paid for them. Do you suppose I did the wrong thing?”

  “Possibly,” Justin said, “but for the right reasons. If you love each other so much, whywould she say no?”

  “She can’t seem to forgive me for forgiving her.”

  “That response is as sticky as a surprise wedding,” Justin said.

  “Can’t go into details,” Gabriel said. “I love her too much.”

  “Do you know what might work?” Marcus muttered to one and all as he scratched his chin, his mind working overtime. “Getting our wives onGabriel’s side. Stressing how lovesick he is, and getting them to admit that Lacey is as much in love with him. I mean, Jade knows. She could tell your wives how Lacey pined for Gabriel at Peacehaven for four long years.”

  “Wait? She pined forme?” Gabriel asked, saw the Scoundrels’ surprise, and Nick’s slight head shake, and changed tack. “Do you think that would work, getting the wives on my side?”

  A footman came with a note for Nick. “I’m wanted back at the Towers,” he said after reading it. “Have fun. Sorry I can’t help with anymore pews.” He chuckled as he left them.

  Gabriel regarded his cronies. “As to getting the wives on my side, will it work?”

  “Only if Lacey loves you as much as you love her. Otherwise, it’s a study in stupidity.”

  Grant cleared his throat. “And we already know whatthat looks like.” He let his gaze wander to the pews, then upward toward the nonexistent roof in the old stone skeleton of a chapel where they stood.

  Marcus kept to his original thought. “Weneedthe women on our side,” he said. “How else are you going to get Lacey here to the Abbey dressed for the occasion? And do you plan to ask for her hand in front of us, so shecan’t say no, let her
mortify you with her refusal, or just wordlessly drag her up the aisle?”

  Justin chuckled. “You couldorder her to marry you.”

  “Yes, that always works with Jade,” Marcus said, “and my brother Garrett says it works with Abigail, too.” Marcus broke into laughter. “Frankly, about anything I tell Jadenotto do makes it necessary for her do it, so if you tell Laceynot to marry you in front of another vicar and all your friends, she might just insist on it.”

  “I’m an idiot,” Gabriel muttered, noticing that his friends looked anywhere but at him or each other, a sure sign of agreement. “I think we should just have a ball,” he said, “and forget the wedding.”

  Justin grumped. “But you love her?”

  “So much I can hardly breathe. She can race my heart with a look, and when she gets close—”

  Grant frowned. “Have you ever thought of telling her that? Using those exact words? If you tried,” he added. “After she knew how dreadfully heartfelt was your love, you couldask her to marry you in a ceremony as soon as this evening . . . and we’ll happen to be ready for the nuptials.” He indicated the makeshift altar and assorted candelabra in Gothic openings where windows, likely stained-glass, once stood.

  “Let’s go back to the Towers,” Gabriel suggested, leading the way, “and tell Nick that the ball should start earlier tonight. He arranged it as a celebration for after the wedding, as a ruse to go along with my dimwitted plan. We’ll simply skip the wedding.”

  “If you’re sure,” Justin said, his words infused with doubt.

  They left the old Abbey, ready for a wedding, and Gabriel looked back with longing, certain of two things. He was a prime fool, and Lacey would never agree to marry him after everything that had passed between them.

  “Why,” he wondered as he walked, “did forgiving her for having a child with Nick make her so furious? More furious than he ever remembered her being, and that was saying something.

  “Why did Nick and Lace act like it never happened? And how had Nick become his ally in getting Lace to marry him?”

  When they were kids, and Lace was at her most stubborn, she often repeated one phrase: “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  Gabe arrived back at the Towers without recalling his journey from the Abbey surprised to find Lace waiting there, as if for him, dusk sweeping the sky behind her in pinks, yellows, and lavenders. As soon as he reached her, she slipped her arm through his and smiled up at him.

  His heart skipped. Eyes only for him. Could she not see, hear, or care about Nick playing tag with the girls all around them, all that screaming and laughing, Nick and Sophie the loudest, the closest to each other, hand in hand most of the time? Did Lace not mind Nick catching Sophie and twirling her to three little girls’ applause and screeches, so each must have her turn at being twirled by the handsome new Duke?

  It seemed not.

  It seemed that Lacey could see nothing but the undying love for her inhis eyes.

  While Nick complied with the children’s requests, his gaze never left Sophie’s. It seemed to Gabriel that Lace didn’t care that the handsome blond god and the perfect blonde goddess had flown down like angels from above, only to be reunited as mortals and live charmed lives. Even their accents matched. One started in Merry Olde England but had America’s own edge to it, and the other started in America and had grown a near-sophisticated English air.

  Gabe checked the focused interest in the Scoundrels’ wives’ matchmaking expressions as they watched each couple with glee, as if sensitive to every nuance. Their speculation was clear, two matches were in the air. Nick and Sophie. He and Lacey.

  Judging by the look Lace turned on him, soft-eyed and caring, Nick did not mean as much to her as Gabe had always surmised. She hadnot been pining for the father of her child all these years.

  Or had she?

  Marcus said earlier, as they carried one of the pews to the Abbey, and again later, that when Lace went to Peacehaven, according to Jade, she mourned her lost babe and pined for him. When Gabe asked Marcus how she felt about Nick back then, Marcus had said, “Nick who?” never for a moment equating Lacey’s love with their host.

  What had Ivy meant about bringing Lace back to face her ghosts, like him and her destiny?

  Why him, if Nick had fathered—?

  Not Nick?

  Whoalways got her out of trouble? she’d once asked, practically giving him the answer.Nick, that’s who.

  Who sailed away to America, as planned and anticipated for an entire year before, when Lace was due to give her child life? Nick. Easy to take the blame from another continent, so whynot give his permission for her mother to hate him?

  Who sat beneath her window and suffered the fires of hell? Who longed to take on her pain as she brought that child into the world?Not Nick, but him.

  Who could her mother have ruined but good? Him. The new parson with a rotten family legacy of a church living to fix, or lose, along with a tardy and hard-won respectability for the Kendrick family name.

  Though it meant banishment, who would Lacey lie to protect the loss of her title and funds, while facing a lonelier, sadder existence?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid him. She’d lied to protect him.

  She couldn’t forgive him for forgiving her because he should have seen the lie for what it was. He should have said he’d marry her to give her child a name andher respectability.

  She was right. Her mother would have loved him for the first time ever.

  He didn’t deserve her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He looked at her now with a new and unforgivably belated wisdom. How could he have been so dense? So foolish as to think she would give herself to anyone but him?

  Lacey, his dearest Lacey, expressed no heartbreak, no jealousy, simply joy in Nick and Sophie’s play. She laughed at their banter, squeezedhis arm in her exuberance—him, she wanted to share her happiness with. She planted a giggling kiss on his knuckles, then on Cricket’s head, when she came over to encompass them both in a big bear hug as if their friends’ happiness was contagious.

  Because they were a family. They were. Cricket belonged to them both.

  Theirs, yes. Clara’s daughter, his stepdaughter, and Lacey’s cousin. Theirs. For the first time, Gabriel considered proposing marriage on one knee, in the least romantic of locations—the here and now—using three magic words: “I love you.”

  Just thinking it echoed the phrase in his head.Wait, had he spoken it aloud?

  Lacey gasped and reached to cup his cheek, while stroking his chin dimple with her thumb and lowering his face toward hers. “I love you, too,” she whispered.

  He had not ruined it. He would not. Neither, he decided on the instant, would he relinquish his hope of a wedding between them this night. If not before the ball, then after, or in the middle of it, by jingo.

  “Holy twisted garters,” Jade snapped. “Get married already, if only for Cricket. She needs the stability of having you both as her parents. One day with you, and we can all see that.”

  Marcus approached, having apparently heard his wife. “Lace, everyone can see that you and Gabriel love each other,” he added.

  Hope rose in Gabriel as he looked Marcus square in the eye, begging for his fellow knave’s help in this quarter, since they both knew the wedding location had already been set, and he only needed a heartfelt road to the altar. This could be the perfect opening to a proposal, without telling Lace that he had planned something so stupid—as Nick called it—as asurprise wedding.

  Marcus raised his chin and grinned. “Shall we go see about readying the church?”

  Everyone looked at Lace for the go-ahead.

  Gabriel took her hand. “I love you, Lacey Ashton. Make me the happiest of men. Marry me today.”

  Lace smiled and gave him a half-nod.

  “Yes?” He kissed her. He couldn’t help himself. Neither could he ignore the applause from the Towers lawns. “Nick, can we postpone the ball a few hours? Your guests ha
ve a wedding to attend first.”

  “I think that can be managed,” Nick said with a chuckle.

  Gabriel stepped back but did not want to let Lace go. “I’ve been banned from the church,” he said. “We’ll see if we can do something with the old Abbey chapel, shall we?”

  “Oh,” Lace said, her voice soft. “Yes.”

  “I’ll gather the Scoundrels,” Marcus said, “and that minister friend of Nick’s who’s here for the ball, and we’ll see what we can pull together.”

  Jade took Lace’s hand. “Let’s go, we have to dress you for your wedding.”

  Marcus’s wife practically dragged Lace away, making Gabriel worry that Lace agreed under duress. “Wait,” he called, and they stopped.

  Gabriel took Lace’s hand, led her to a copse of trees, away from prying eyes, knelt before her, and took her hand. He brought her knuckles to his cheek, then turned her hand to kiss her palm. “Please be my wife. Not for the reasons I stated in Ivy’s wagon, or because of what happened between us there, which Ivy put right by seeming to arrive home with us, anyway, but because I have always loved you, Lacey Ashton, and I would like to spend the rest of my life showing you how much.”

  “For that reason, Gabriel,” she said, pulling on his hand so he would stand and she could step into his arms, “Iwill marry you.”

  Gabriel returned Lace to Jade. “Lace, wear the silver gown. It’s made for this very occasion. Help her, Jade. We’ll send for you when our makeshift chapel is ready.”

  “Won’t it be quite late by then?” Lace asked, now biting her lip as she looked up at the sky.

  “Not in our hearts,” Gabriel said. “What matter? Now off with you, ladies, before I take to kissing Lace and forgetting what I’msupposed to be doing.”

  Jade urged Lacey along but Lace had misgivings. “This is happening too fast, too easily,” she told her friend.

  “Easily?” Jade laughed. “You’ve been to hell and back, bearing him a child you mourned alone. You’ve been all but stoned by the people of this village before and after you were banished.”