A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Julie Anne Long

  Though Ian was quite right.

  Colin continued his tale. “Well, the uproar Evie caused in her day—she once caused a duel by winking at the wrong man. One heir lost an entire estate in a wager over whether he could bed her. I could go on and on. Politicians, even Prinny, yearned after her. She was showered with jewels; they all competed for her attention. And for her grand finale, she married the Earl of Wareham when he won the right to do it in a card game.”

  Adam received all of this information like little blows.

  “Of course. Of course she did.”

  Then he lifted his ale and drank half of it in a few gulps.

  “Played another man for the honor of marrying her, the earl did,” Colin continued blithely. “And I wish I could say she lived happily ever after, but then the Earl of Wareham died just a short while after they were married. Rumor has it she killed him, which was absurd, because nearly everything he owned was entailed. And then Mr. Miles Redmond—you know the Redmond famous for exploring exotic lands and who crawls about studying insects and whatnot? He gave a lecture in London on poisonous spiders. There’s one in the Americas called the black widow—apparently the females kill and eat the male after they mate. The ton loved it. they took to it instantly. That’s what they called her. Ceaselessly.”

  There was a beat of silence while Adam mulled this.

  And then he raked his hair back in his hands. “Oh, God.”

  Too late realized he’d said it aloud. He hadn’t meant to.

  “I imagine she’s heard rather a lot of those two words in her day.” Ian said idly.

  “No. It’s just … something I said to her today …”

  “Iniquity” was what he’d said to her. One must be stealthy to stop iniquity in its tracks, to be specific. He’d said it in jest. And her head had jerked toward him as though he’d struck her.

  His lungs tightened in shame. It wasn’t as though he could apologize for it. What on earth could he say? “If I’d known you were a renowned tart, I’d have chosen my words more carefully?”

  “Did you introduce Mary Magdalene into the conversation?” Ian wondered.

  Adam just shook his head slowly.

  “Whatever it was, old man … don’t berate yourself. I sincerely doubt your ‘wild bird’ has an innocent or fragile bone in her body.” Colin said this with marked admiration. “She’s always known precisely what she wanted, how to get it, and she got it, too, when she married Wareham. And that’s the thing the ton never could forgive her for. I admire her for dozens of reasons, from those green eyes of hers to the ambition, and she’s a good egg when it comes right down to it, but the woman is silk-encased cast iron and quite formidable. Her sort does nothing without a reason.”

  Her sort. And now he remembered what Maggie Lanford said. She’s not our sort.

  He saw again the countess’s hand flattening against her rib cage, the stunned hot spots of pink in her cheeks.

  And just then he realized he’d just flattened his own hand over his ribs. As if her pain were his own.

  He surreptitiously moved it and closed his hand safely around his ale. Tightly.

  Fragments of what he knew about her orbited his mind. A petite woman with innocent freckles and a soft, carnal blur of a mouth and blazing green eyes and a glacially aristocratic accent that apparently caved like rusty armor when she was good and startled to reveal … what he suspected was her true self. Or part of it, anyhow. That feisty temper and Irish accent and the quickness with a retort.

  He sensed she’d learned the rest of it: the imperious demeanor, the accent, the boldness, the innuendo-soaked flirtation. From a protector, no doubt. Or from having protectors.

  For actresses must be skillful mimics, of course.

  Why would a woman become a courtesan? What led her to the decision to live forever on the outskirts of polite society? That was, until one fateful card game.

  He stifled a stunned, slightly hysterical laugh. It occurred to him that he hadn’t said any of those words—“courtesan,” “actress,” “protector”—aloud in possibly years, if ever, so alien were they from his daily life. And from the life of nearly everyone who lived in Pennyroyal Green. With the notable exception of his cousins, of course.

  “Do either of you know her origins?”

  The Irish accent was the missing piece of the puzzle.

  “Seems to be a bit of a mystery surrounding that,” Ian told him, catching Polly’s eye and gesturing with his chin for more ale for all of them. Which she brought straightaway, gifting Adam with a glorious smile which, in his distraction, he failed to notice, breaking her heart for the thousandth time. “Never gave it much thought.”

  “Mmm,” was all Adam said.

  He had no trouble believing that the countess was scandal incarnate.

  A wayward little surge of protectiveness—toward her, and toward himself—made him keep this notion, and their encounter on the downs, and the Irish accent, to himself. “Why do you suppose she was doing in church this morning?”

  Colin shrugged. “Belated concern for her immortal soul? Craving a new experience? I daresay when another man she deems worthy of her favors comes along, she’ll be gone. Until then, I doubt anyone will receive her should she deign to call. Nor will anyone call on her. Unless it’s the town vicar, of course. Out of, oh, say … parish duty.”

  A fraught little silence followed. It contained both challenge and warning.

  For unlike his cousins, Adam had never had the option of flinging himself into gleeful debauchery. He’d hardly led a joyless existence, but to do debauchery properly—gaming hells, horse races, bawdy theater, the very idea of courtesans—one must have plenty of money and time.

  Whereas God willing, neither of his cousins would ever administer last rites to a baby as it drew its last breath, then comfort the sobbing mother.

  In other words, though it hardly mattered much of the time, there was a gulf of experience and privilege and obligation between them. Adam was both more and less innocent than the two of them.

  Not to mention the countess.

  And now, ironically, his entire way of life depended on behaving faultlessly and standing before his parishioners and reminding them of the perils of behaving, in essence, like the Everseas.

  Or like the widowed Countess of Wareham.

  Adam would be ruined if his name became linked to the countess in any way. Whereas if Ian, for instance, wanted to pursue her, there was very little stopping him. One would almost expect it of him.

  All three of them knew it.

  Courtesan. His imagination sank deeper and deeper into the word as if it were comprised of dense furs. He couldn’t seem to extricate himself. For the very word conjured exotic realms of pleasure.

  He was far too long overdue for pleasure. That was the trouble.

  And once again, his fingers tightened around his ale.

  “I suppose I could pay her a visit. Perhaps crawl up the trellis to her balcony. Isn’t that how one normally pays visits to countesses? Or should I go in through a window?”

  Colin had once plummeted from a trellis leading up to the balcony of a married countess. Ian had once been ignominiously sent stark naked out the window of a duke’s erstwhile fiancée and forced to walk home in one boot.

  Both of them hated to be reminded of those two little episodes.

  “Get married, Adam,” Ian suggested, not unsympathetically. “It solved the problem of … Colin.” As if Colin’s oat-sowing was a contagion stemmed by matrimony. “And virginity grows back if you go too long between.”

  Adam rolled his eyes.

  A raggedly tipsy cheer went up then; Jonathan Redmond had apparently just won another game of darts. They turned toward the sound just as man sitting across from them looked up. His eyes were dark; his nose was bold, his chin square. Not an elegant face, but a face with character. He raised a glass and nodded politely. Adam and Ian and Colin returned the greeting with similar nods.

  Colin lowered hi
s voice. “Lord Landsdowne. Every day for the past fortnight he’s sent flowers to Olivia. A subtly different bouquet every time, just different enough to intrigue her. It’s actually begun to drive her just a little mad. I think she might even be anticipating the next one with something like eagerness. Devilishly clever, if you ask me. And every day he sends the same message: He would very much like to call on her.”

  Adam remembered why he recognized the name. “He’s the one who entered the wager in White’s betting books, isn’t he? About Olivia?”

  This was noteworthy. Not one of Olivia’s myriad suitors had dared go so far as to enter a wager regarding Olivia since Lyon Redmond had disappeared. Olivia had made clear in ways both subtle and overt that it was a bet no one could ever win.

  Fire and flood and jealousy. What was it about Olivia that Landsdowne thought he must have? The fact that she could not be had? Was it purely the challenge of it? Or was Olivia Landsdowne’s equivalent of an embedded glass splinter? An inappropriate woman who’d managed to fascinate him into a bombardment of bouquets?

  The Song of Solomon said nothing about foolishness. Perhaps he would be the one to immortalize foolishness in verse.

  “But he won’t win that wager,” Colin said with grim certainty. “Because he doesn’t know Olivia. And that’s my point: There’s nothing heroic about futility. And Ian’s right. Getting married is the best thing I’ve ever done. Do you really want to discover whether virginity grows back?”

  Adam sighed gustily, pushed himself away from the table, and stood. “Good night, cousins. It’s been edifying, as usual. And just for that, you can pay for my second ale.”

  “It makes you testy if you go long between, too,” Colin called after him. “So I hear.”

  “Chirp chirp,” Ian added.

  It was purely an accident he trod on Ian’s outstretched foot as he departed.

  Chapter 6

  ADAM ARRIVED HOME after ten o’clock to discover that Mrs. Dalrymple had collected all the wadded foolscap and dumped it on the fire. Where it belonged, as far as he was concerned. Saturday was for wadding; Sunday was for burning.

  “They do make excellent kindling, Reverend, and I like to think of all your words floating up to God in the smoke,” she’d told him.

  “I’m certain God would be relieved that I burned them, rather than inflicted them upon my parishioners,” he’d told her dryly.

  Often he welcomed the blessed silence after days filled with goat-related disputes and Lady Fennimore and the like. But tonight, after the warmth and hum of the Pig & Thistle, the quiet of the vicarage rang like a blow to the head. There were days when he felt the isolation of his job keenly; he belonged to everyone and yet to no one.

  Tonight, he sat down at the table in the spotless kitchen and stared down and thought dryly: If I were married, at least I’d have someone to help me get my boots off.

  He tried to imagine it. For instance, Jenny kneeling there to give a tug on his boot, her soft, fair head shining in the …

  He couldn’t do it. His thoughts felt permanently dislocated in the shape of a petite brunette. God willing, it was nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure.

  He opened his eyes and lifted his head when he heard Mrs. Dalrymple’s solid tread in the hall.

  “Oh, Reverend Sylvaine, I did hear you come in. Something arrived for you while you were out.”

  As usual, he looked first at her face for clues to what it might be and found it carefully stoic, ever-so-slightly disapproving.

  Then he looked at her hands. The missive might have been edged in flame or dipped in something foul, so gingerly did Mrs. Dalrymple hold it. He could see it was sealed in wax. In her other arm was tucked a soft-looking package bound in brown paper and string.

  “I thought you might like to see this straightaway. It was brought to the house by a footman. Powdered hair and all dressed in scarlet and yellow like a bird, he was, and this package for you along with it.”

  He stared at her. A scarlet-and-yellow footman?

  “Reverend?” she said, a bit uneasily, after a moment.

  He realized he’d stopped breathing. He exhaled carefully.

  “Of course. Thank you, Mrs. Dalrymple. I’ll just see what it might be, shall I?”

  She extended her arms, and he took the package and the message from her. She waited. Presumably she could cast it into the fire with great haste.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Dalrymple,” he said, gently but firmly.

  She backed away, apparently loath to leave him alone with it.

  He wanted to be alone with it.

  He examined the handwriting, as if it would provide clues to her. He in fact wanted to postpone the moment of opening it, the moment when he learned more about who she was. To prolong the unexpectedly pleasurable shock of its arrival. For what he read might undo all of it.

  He finally broke the seal.

  Dear Reverend Sylvaine,

  While I’m assured your cravat is beyond salvaging, I’m certain our horse would thank you for the gift of it he could. I hope you will accept the enclosed by way of thanks for your kindness. It belonged to my husband, but since he is no longer alive and since he possessed forty-seven of them if he posessed one (I am never certain of the number of s’s that ought to be in that word, I hope you will forgive me that and my spelling in general), I cannot think it’s an inapropriate gift, though mind you I am no expert on what is apropriate. I hope we may begin our aquaintance again over tea on Tuesday next at Damask Manor, where I will attempt to demonstrate that I do have manners, contrary to what you likely currently believe. I understand it is the custom of Pennyroyal Green natives to feed the vicar as often as possible, and when in Rome! I shall endeavor not to bore you.

  Your neighbor,

  Countess of Wareham

  He was charmed motionless by the poor spelling and the apology.

  He read it again. His thoughts ricocheted between suspicion and sympathy. She was a professional enchantress, after all.

  He’d read it three times before he realized he’d been smiling nearly the entire time he’d read it.

  He slowly unfurled the cravat and ran it through his fingers. Silk, it was, and spotless as the soul of a saint.

  It had once belonged to a man who’d won the right to marry her in a card game.

  No, not at all an appropriate gift for a vicar. And this was part of its charm, too, and part of its danger.

  He had a duty to all parishioners; he’d dined with nearly all of them. And if she intended to become one of them, he could hardly decline the invitation.

  She never does anything without a reason, Colin had said.

  A strategist, his cousins had described her. Who knew how to get what she wanted and always gotten it. Clearly, she wanted something from him.

  God help him, he couldn’t wait to find out what it was.

  “NO JEWELRY,” HENNY had advised adamantly. “He’s a vicar. He’ll likely already know you’ve been a kept woman, and you needn’t remind ’im of it by decorating yerself overmuch.”

  In the intervening days, Henny had discovered that Reverend Sylvaine was related to the Everseas— a cousin on their mother’s side. And that the sister of Mrs. Wilberforce, their housekeeper, kept house for Pennyroyal Green’s doctor. Which likely solved the mystery of how the entire town had learned exactly who had taken Damask Manor.

  So Evie wore no jewelry, apart, that was, from the St. Christopher’s medal she always wore. It hung warmly between her breasts, and her hand went up to touch its reassuring shape as she stood in the drawing room and craned her head to see Reverend Sylvaine hand off his hat and coat to her footman. Who seemed puzzled, as if he’d never before seen a coat that hadn’t been brushed and groomed within an inch of its life by a valet.

  And then the vicar turned and took a few steps into the room. He halted when he saw her standing against the hearth, right below a gigantic portrait of a glowering, bearded, ruffed fellow, likely one of the earl’s ancestor
s.

  How had she forgotten how tall he was?

  Or how tall he felt, more accurately.

  The very air in the room seemed to rearrange to accommodate him. She felt him as surely as if he’d disturbed a wave of it and it had rushed forward to splash her. She folded her hands against her thighs; her fingers laced together like creatures clinging to each other for comfort. She didn’t move to greet him; she couldn’t seem to speak. All of her faculties seemed preoccupied with just seeing him.

  They in fact eyed each other as if the carpet were a sea dividing two enemy territories.

  It was then she noticed he was holding a small bouquet of bright, mismatched flowers in one fist. It ought to have made him look beseeching. It didn’t. On him it might as well have been a scepter.

  From the distance of a few days, she realized she’d made a number of miscalculations when she’d anticipated winning him over. A few things had paled dangerously in her memory: the impact of his eyes, even from across the room. That long, elegant swoop of a bottom lip. That palpable confidence, as if he were a man who had nothing to prove because he’d already proved it.

  She wondered at the source of that. He was just a vicar. He wrote homilies about goats and read them to country people on Sundays. Likely a sheltered man, whose entire world was comprised of Sussex. While she had made the unimaginable ascent from peat bogs to Carleton House to countess. She knew what Prinny’s breath smelled like, for heaven’s sake, because he’d leaned over her more than once in an attempt to look down her bodice. If a way could be found past Adam Sylvaine’s reserve, she was the one who could forge it

  She glanced down at his boots, and the creased toes of them seemed to reassure her of this.

  Just as the reverend glanced down at her hands. And he looked up again, with the wry, challenging tilt of the corner of his mouth. Because there was no way the man didn’t understand his physical impact. He’d watched her hands lace, and she sensed he knew she was trying not to fidget.

  “Thank you for inviting me to your home, Lady Wareham.”

  And then there was his voice.

  Her heart was beating absurdly quickly.