A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Julie Anne Long

  “Is it difficult, being a vicar?” she asked softly.

  He gave a short rueful laugh, surprised.

  Then breathed in at length as if to fuel the answer. And exhaled.

  She realized her own breath was held, and her heart thumped in anticipation. She was ravenous in a way she’d never been before to know anything about this man.

  “I suppose I don’t think of it as difficult. It’s my life.” They both glanced up, exchanged small smiles acknowledging he’d echoed what she’d just said.

  “There’s the blood gone. This next bit may sting a bit.” She laid her ruined fichu aside and took up the St. John’s wort. Dipped her finger in and laid it gently on the scratch. His skin was warm, and she slowed. I’m touching his bare skin.

  He didn’t flinch.

  “Lady Balmain?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Why two?”

  She froze as if he’d yanked the floor from beneath her. She felt herself plummeting in surprise. And then she caught herself abruptly.

  Why two men, was what he was asking.

  He wanted to know.

  She wanted him to know.

  “I needed the money to take care of my family. And the theater isn’t the road to wealth, Reverend Sylvaine.”

  “Why?” There was an urgency in his voice again. A demand. It wasn’t quite desperation. More like a need bordering on impatience.

  She felt pressure welling inside her. In her way she was as contained as he was, unaccustomed to laying her burdens down or sharing her thoughts with anyone. Reflection, regrets—those had always been a luxury for someone whose every action had been considered, a contribution toward survival. And they were so guarded, so much a part of her, the confidences were like shy beasts. Reluctant to be coaxed forward.

  “Why those two men, or why wasn’t I a respectable seamstress or housemaid—or a flower girl instead?” she heard the edge in her own voice.

  “Both.” Clipped.

  She exhaled. “I hadn’t the skills for the first, and we would have starved if I were the second.”

  “And the men?” he pressed. Still the suppressed urgency. But his voice that was like a path she wanted to walk down, simply to see where it led. She understood then in that moment that she was safe with him.

  To a degree, that was.

  She composed herself. “Well, you see … Seamus was in trouble you see—not his fault, of course; it never seems to be.” She said this dryly. “He’s a charmer, has a good heart, my Seamus, but he can be a bit … impulsive. He was jailed briefly. And the MP promised to get him out if I retired from the theater and became his mistress. He made good on his promise, for Seamus roams the earth free to plague me yet. And the second man … I suppose you can say he wooed me with more wealth, better connections.”

  She glanced up to see if the vicar’s thoughts on any of this were reflected on his face. Of course they weren’t.

  But he appeared rapt.

  “The first released me from our agreement very amiably; he was getting older, you see, and wanted to retire permanently to the country. And after that, I was able to send more money to Cora. I worry about Cora, you see. She’s my sister, and she has so many children, and … Well, the second man introduced me to the Earl of Wareham, whom I married.”

  They were both utterly still. Utterly silent.

  His expression was unreadable,

  A flush heated her cheeks.

  “I know it’s the sort of thing that would horrify nearly everyone you’re acquainted with. It isn’t so different, Reverend Sylvaine, from how many young women begin marriage. I could have fared so much worse. Think of Mary O’Flaherty. They were decent enough men. And I preferred survival, my own and my family’s, to near-certain death on the streets.”

  And she supposed, in the silence that followed, with her finger slowly, delicately stroking the balm over his wound, she awaited a verdict. A judgment, though he claimed not to judge.

  He gave nothing away of his thoughts. There was no tension in his arm. The muted light of the room seemed to pillow them in a peculiar safety.

  And the silence went on long enough for her to realize that his presence, the warmth of his skin beneath hers, worked on her senses like laudanum. And again she felt that perilous urge toward surrender, of wanting to melt, vanish into him.

  “Sometimes the only choices we have, even the ones made out of love, isolate us.” He said this quietly.

  She looked slowly up at him.

  His eyes met hers.

  He understood. And she understood: Who asked him about himself? Who truly saw him? Who took care of him? The people here saw in him their own desires and needs; they saw him as a set of qualities, as beautiful and kind and trustworthy. He was what they needed him to be.

  Not unlike her.

  “You’re … lonely.” It emerged inflected with revelation. She didn’t add “too.” She knew that was understood.

  How had she ever thought his blue eyes placid as a lake? But there was untold power in any water: to buoy, to drown, to toss, to carry one to the safety of shore.

  “Two,” he said softly. Deliberately as laying down a chess piece.

  Her mouth began to part in a question.

  “Two is my number as well, Lady Balmain.”

  Their eyes locked.

  She was so close she could see the tiny scar next to his ear. See that his lashes were tipped in darker gold. All of it seemed desperately valuable and precious. The shape of his face was an ache inside her. Outside, a light rain began to fall, spattering the window.

  And suddenly it was as if the very air was a silken web that wound round them both.

  Only two. Practically an innocent. So unlike all the men she’d known, and he must have known it. And yet the thoughts swelled and crashed and swelled again, a torrent of unprecedented jealousy, raw and unfamiliar: Who? Who knows how it feels to be covered by your body? Who knows the taste of your mouth, the feel of you inside her? Who has tangled her bare legs with yours, seen your eyelashes against your cheek while you sleep, your hair smashed across the pillow, knows the scrape of your morning beard against her cheek?

  What are you like when you lose control, Reverend Sylvaine?

  “How long has it been?” she whispered.

  Time suspended. There was only the duet of their breathing, and their own reflections in each other’s eyes, and her fingertip motionless on his skin. His pulse raced, thumping. An echo of her own. She could feel his breath, swift, soft, warm, on her face.

  And then his chest moved as he filled his lungs with air, struggling for his will.

  Slowly, slowly, he withdrew his arm from her.

  He sat back in her chair and turned his head toward the window. His hands lay against the table, the knuckles white and tense. His throat moved in a swallow.

  He didn’t look at her. As though he didn’t trust himself to do it.

  “I’ve a parishioner to visit.” His voice was quiet.

  He’d saved both of them, and she knew it.

  He stood slowly, like a man drugged or wounded. He reached for his coat and pushed his arms into it.

  She simply nodded. Both relieved and strangely destroyed. For if he had touched her, she would have been undone.

  And if she had touched him … likewise.

  She stood, too. Feeling stripped bare. She couldn’t speak.

  “Thank you for patching me up again,” he said with a faint, rueful smile.

  Thank you for undoing me, she thought ironically. Still dazed.

  “Oh, I’ve any number of useful skills.”

  Lud. On the heels of everything, it sounded like the worst of innuendos.

  A hint of a smile. “I believe it,” he said simply. “I’ll perhaps see you again at the O’Flaherty house?”

  “I expect so. And I understand I may be rewarded with an invitation to the Assembly almost a fortnight from now. With music and dancing. Should I be deemed acceptable, of course.”

&nb
sp; He took a good deal of time to settle his hat on his head, as if it contained all of his good sense and control, and he wanted to make sure he restored it.

  And studied her somberly for a long moment, a look in his eyes that made the breath hitch in her lungs again.

  “I’m an excellent dancer, Lady Balmain,” he said softly.

  It sounded like both a promise and a warning.

  He touched the brim of his hat and let himself out of the kitchen.

  “ISN’T THAT … the vicar? Walking in our direction up on the green, there?” Josephine said this.

  Mrs. Sneath and Miss Josephine Pitney and Miss Charing all craned their heads out of the window of the carriage as they rolled up the road on the way to fetch Lady Balmain.

  He was indeed unmistakable. They waved through the windows. But even as they approached, he didn’t look up at the sound of their carriage wheels. As if he were utterly deaf.

  “Just look at his expression,” Mrs. Sneath said. “So absorbed. Like he’s had a miraculous visitation.”

  “It does look that way, rather,” Miss Pitney said thoughtfully.

  “Such a good man,” Mrs. Sneath maintained stoutly.

  “Where do you suppose he’s going?” Josephine yearned after him with her eyes as he passed.

  “To Heaven, of a certainty,” Mrs. Sneath said to her admonishingly.

  “Where do you suppose he’s been?” Miss Pitney said this.

  They all turned their heads in the direction from which he’d come.

  The road that led to Damask Manor.

  “Important parish duty,” Mrs. Sneath said definitively, of course. As if the force of her conviction could make it true.

  Chapter 14

  TWO HOURS LATER, Mrs. Sneath, Miss Josephine Charing and Miss Pitney delivered Eve to Lady Fennimore’s house.

  “Lady Fennimore is a very elderly dowager. She enjoys the company since she cannot leave the house any longer. Perhaps you can read to her,” Mrs. Sneath suggested. “Something edifying to both of you.” She’d thrust a Bible into Eve’s hands. A passage was marked.

  “She’s terrifying,” Miss Charing had confided to her, out of earshot of Mrs. Sneath. “She’s a horrible old lady. If you haven’t cried in years, even if you’ve never wept at all in your entire life, I wager she will find a way to make you do it. Even Miss Pitney—and her heart is as cold and hard an olive stone, I assure you—wept.”

  “I got a bit of camphor in my eye, and it stung,” Miss Pitney insisted huffily. “Her room is filled with the stuff.”

  “Her daughter Jenny holds up well, I think, beneath all of that. She says her mother wasn’t always like that, but I’ve never known her to be anything else. And she likes the vicar, Lady Fennimore does.” Her tone said, But who doesn’t?

  They abandoned Eve at Lady Fennimore’s, with the promise to fetch her in two hours.

  Eve was then ushered by a diffident young woman named Jenny, Lady Fennimore’s daughter, into a manor house scarcely more impressive than her own. She didn’t see any bones strewn about, which she supposed was promising.

  And then she’d been led up to a stiflingly hot room, fire roaring, curtains flung open, sun pouring in. The center of the room was occupied by an ancient, bedridden woman.

  “Ah. So you’re the whore everyone’s been nattering about.”

  She had enormous blue eyes. One of the consolations of old age for her, clearly, was the opportunity to shock. Which she’d embraced with unfettered glee.

  “Have they been nattering on about me, Lady Fennimore?” Eve asked pleasantly. “Although one can’t be a whore unless one is paid for favors. And I haven’t been paid for favors in simply ages. So I’m not certain I qualify any longer.”

  Lady Fennimore narrowed her eyes. “Doing it simply for the pleasure of it now, are you?”

  “Can you think of a better reason?”

  This gave Lady Fennimore pause.

  But only for a moment.

  “To bring children in to the world,” she said huffily. “I’ve brought several of my own into the world, you know.”

  “Of course. The making of children is a splendid excuse to make love. I’ve a riddle for you, Lady Fennimore What do you suppose is the primary difference between a whore and a wife, all told?”

  Lady Fennimore appeared to give this some genuine thought.

  “Skill,” Evie told her.

  And damned if Lady Fennimore didn’t smile at this, albeit slowly, with an evil little gleam in her eye. “We all of us do it for the money, don’t we, when it comes right down to it? Sell ourselves into marriages. Perhaps your way is best after all. Why did they send you in? Are they trying to shock me into an early grave so they won’t need to decide which milksop to send in next?”

  “From the looks of you, Lady Fennimore, your grave is hardly early.”

  Lady Fennimore glared at and raised her head slowly, slowly, quiveringly slowly, a few inches off the pillow. It hovered there, as if she were trying desperately to pop it off her neck and launch it like a cannonball at Eve.

  Then she dropped to her pillow again.

  A moment later, she smiled to herself.

  “ I imagine your life has been interesting,” she said to the elderly woman.

  “Not as interesting as yours, my dear. When one lacks a moral compass, one can stray every which way, I suppose, which allows for a variety of experiences unavailable to most of us.”

  “To milksops, you mean to say?”

  Lady Fennimore smiled again, this time looking delighted. “You’re not one of them, are you? A milksop?”

  “Never quite had the luxury of being a milksop, I confess.”

  “My dear, why are you here? Why should you want anything at all do with the tedious ladies of the committee and their good deeds for the poor and the poor, helpless infirm such as myself?” She grinned wickedly at this.

  “I’m new to Pennyroyal Green, Lady Fennimore, and I wanted friends. And helping the poor seemed an excellent way to go about it while staving off boredom.”

  “Casting you in with me is hardly a friendly act, now, is it? I’d say they were trying to drive you off since you’ve had the unmitigated gall to want to befriend those righteous prigs. Still, it’s unutterably too easy to make them cry. So dull. And I can’t move from this bed, I need to poke and prod them in order to derive some sort of entertainment.”

  “Well, one discounts the powers of endurance a whore can acquire. I can assure you I won’t be weeping. Prod away.”

  Lady Fennimore cackled delightedly, and it devolved into a cough, and wracked her until she collapsed against the pillow, her eyes fluttering closed.

  “Here now,” Evie said, her voice both soothing and practical. She handed her a handkerchief.

  They sat quietly together for a time. Evie glanced about the room, looking for clues to the woman’s history.

  “You married an earl, I’m told.”

  “I did. And then he passed away, and I was terribly sorry.”

  “My condolences, dear.” It sounded sincere. “They say you killed him.”

  That sounded sincere, too.

  “His heart gave out. Too much marital activity.”

  “Ah, the pleasures of the marriage bed.”

  “I’ll wager you were wicked enough in your day, Lady Fennimore.”

  She looked momentarily startled. “Have you been speaking with the vicar?”

  “Ah, have you shared your secrets with him, then? Everyone seems to. One gets the feeling he’d never share a single confidence, however.”

  “He’s a good man,” Lady Fennimore said. She fell quiet. “But for the love of God, don’t tell him that. It would be just the thing to make a handsome man insufferable. The ‘good’ is in the trying, you see, and I shouldn’t want him to stop trying.”

  And Eve was thrown by her comparison to a man who was ‘better’. The good is in the trying.

  “You see, I have never in my life met a—I suppose the polite
word is ‘courtesan’—before. Have you ever been in love, dear? Or is that forbidden in your profession?”

  “Nothing is forbidden,” Eve said tantalizingly. “They’ve given me a Bible to read to you. Shall we?”

  Lady Fennimore waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve read that thing a million times if I’ve read it once. Did you love your husband … your name again?”

  “Eve, you can call me. I cared for him.”

  “Ah. So you didn’t love him. I would see it in your face, you see.”

  “Did you love yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you weren’t in love with him. For I would see it in your face.”

  “Touché, my dear.”

  “Who were you in love with?”

  “Aren’t you a cheeky thing!” Lady Fennimore raised her hand and slapped it down delightedly.

  “I thought you loathed being bored.”

  “Mmm. Do you know, you remind me of the vicar. And not just because the two of you can tolerate me. It’s more a sort of … purity.”

  Evie almost choked. “No one has ever before accused me of purity, Lady Fennimore.”

  “Perhaps it’s because you’ve been bad, and he’s been good. But there’s a fearlessness to both traits, I think. Both require a certain strength.”

  “Just as there’s a fearlessness to having one foot in the grave.”

  Lady Fennimore cackled again.

  “I do believe you’re considered some sort of trial for me, Lady Fennimore. What will you tell them?”

  “And you want these people as friends.”

  “I do. I think I like them.”

  Lady Fennimore tilted her head dubiously. “Very well. I’ll tell them you dutifully read the Bible to me. And I’ll ask them to send the whore as often as possible before I die.”

  “I’ve never been more deeply touched, Lady Fennimore.”

  “You’d think touching is all one does in your previous profession …” she said drowsily. “Go ahead and read that Bible now, will you? I’ve need of a nap. Choose something truly dull. My guess is that Mrs. Sneath marked it for you.”

  “PSSST. THE RATAFIA is against the back wall,” Colin said, correctly reading Adam’s expression. He’d arrived alone at the Assembly to find an already giddy throng of Pennyroyal Green and greater Sussex denizens.