A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Julie Anne Long

“Get up.” He didn’t extend a hand.

  Haynesworth lay flat another moment longer. Then, turning on his side, gracelessly pushed himself to his hands and knees.

  Adam didn’t offer to help and didn’t wait. He didn’t look up at the astonished faces of the crowd.

  He just sought the exit like a trapped wild thing.

  EVE TRIED TO push through the crowd to catch up to him, but his long legs made it nearly impossible; he vanished within seconds. And so she hiked her skirts in her hands and ran. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t already conspicuous.

  She heard him before she saw him, breathing in, breathing out, the sound of a man wrestling with this temper. He’d stopped to lean against the house.

  He didn’t turn. He didn’t even lift his head.

  For a long time, neither of them said a word. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence. His mood seemed as dark and impenetrable as the night.

  “Thank you,” she tried.

  He didn’t turn toward his voice. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, as if he wished himself over the sea. “For what?” His voice was flat and distant.

  “For … defending my dubious honor.”

  “Of course. Then again, it’s probably only the sort of excitement you’re accustomed to from men.”

  More flatness, this time shot through with irony. Her sense of unease grew. She cleared her throat.

  “Your hand. Are you hurt? Is it—”

  “No.” A guillotine chop of a word.

  And now the unease began to churn in earnest.

  “Adam … “ she tried softly. “Please tell me what’s troubling you.”

  Another of those silences. Not a man for superfluous words, Adam Sylvaine.

  “Is it true, Eve?” The words were quiet, but edged with something like pain.

  “Is what true?”

  And that’s when he finally turned to look at her. Each ugly word measured out slowly, punishingly.

  “Did Haynesworth pay you for sex?”

  Shock momentarily destroyed all thought. And when she could speak, her words were broken, awkward.

  “I … please tell me… . you can’t possibly think …”

  “Did. He.”

  “No.” She whispered it hoarsely.

  He simply stared at her in the dark.

  “Adam … Please tell me you believe me. He’s lying, if that’s what he said. He pursued me once, and I rejected him. He’s punishing me for it.”

  He took this in. “He fought a duel over you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted on a near-anguished whisper.

  “Chaos’s muse,” he muttered bitterly amused, half to himself. “How many other Haynesworths are in your past?”

  Shock gave way to a low, simmering anger. She bit out the words.

  “You’ve no right to these questions.”

  “How well I know.”

  And now fury sizzled between them.

  “Do you really believe him, Adam? Or are you just jealous of someone who isn’t afraid to touch me?”

  The barb found its mark. She heard him hiss in a breath..

  “Eve … I do not think we should see each other again. Not unless I’m standing at the altar, and you’re in the pews. Ever.”

  Everything stopped. Time. Her breath. Her heart.

  “You can’t mean it.” she almost whispered. “Adam. We’re … why?”

  He turned to her and said it slowly and coldly, as if he was explaining it to an unintelligent child. “I’m their vicar, and I just struck a man in the face. Because of you.”

  “It was … glorious. He deserved it.”

  “It was shameful. And I realized standing there that I would have enjoyed hurting him even more. The ass. It solved nothing, and I feel like hell. I should apologize to every person in that room. That’s not who I am. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “I would wager everything they’ve already forgiven you. They’ll likely erect a monument to the event in the square.”

  “They might forgive me once.”

  The implication being that since she was controversy incarnate, it was bound to happen again.

  “And you … I doubt they’ll ever forgive you. I did your reputation no service, believe me. I merely compounded it. Although perhaps this pleases you.”

  She could find no way in to this man. He was a cold and furious and implacable stranger.

  Tentatively, she stretched out a hand. “Adam, surely we can talk about—”

  “Please don’t touch me.”

  Her hand dropped as though he’d shot it out of the sky. And she fell along with it, in an endless, sickening plummet. She couldn’t speak through the vertigo.

  “The church was nearly empty on Sunday, Eve. Can you guess why?”

  She knew why. She answered this with silence.

  Which stretched like a prisoner on the rack.

  “Are you sorry you did it?” Her words had the ring of accusation.

  She meant the necklace. She meant knocking Haynesworth to the ground. She meant the kiss. She meant everything.

  “No.” His voice was weary and dull.

  And final.

  All at once, a caustic loathing burned her throat. She hated him then for his inability to speak anything but the truth. She hated him because she knew he was right, and she hated herself for being selfish and wanting him to stand by her anyway. She hated him because everything she was and the life she’d lived jeopardized everything he was and the life he wanted.

  She hated him for that nearly chaste kissed that had seared her soul. For nothing that followed after could possibly compare.

  And she could never, never change any of it.

  She wrapped her arms around her body to keep herself from doubling over from pain. To keep herself from screaming from the injustice of it.

  “It’s cold. Go inside, Eve, before you catch your death.”

  “Ah, but if I did catch my death, then you’d come and sit beside me and hold my hand and murmur prayers, wouldn’t you, Adam?” she said bitterly. “Because that’s what you do. You’re not afraid to do that. You could bear to see me then. For I’ll no longer be a risk, and you’ll no longer be afraid to touch me.”

  He jerked as though she’d struck him. For a moment, he stared at her, as rigid as a crouched wolf, his blue eyes blazing. She could feel the intensity of his gaze even in the dark.

  She flinched when he advanced upon her. He stopped when he was so close his thighs nearly brushed hers; the wounded hand he cradled was a scant inch from her breast. Distantly, she heard the revelry inside, a low hum of voices and laughter, a universe away, naught to do with either of them; and then she only heard breathing, his and hers.

  And with just his nearness, her entire body—her lips, her throat, her breasts—sang like a note touched, until her body hummed with need, bittersweet, frightening, total, irrevocable.

  She understood then how much it had always cost him not to touch her. How much he’d wanted to.

  She suspected that they would both likely incinerate if he did.

  He whispered, each word slow and flat and measured and bitterly amused:

  “Do you really think I’m that bloodless, Eve?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He backed away two steps, three steps, taking what felt very like his last look at her.

  And then he turned and walked up the road to the vicarage.

  And she watched him go. Of course, a man who knew himself, who was only himself, wouldn’t doubt and wouldn’t look back.

  He didn’t.

  Chapter 19

  ADAM FLEXED HIS hand as he reached for his quill. Every word he wrote punished him a little for hitting Haynesworth because his knuckles had been split. A nice little form of penance, that. But the swelling in his hand had eased quite a bit, and now he could use it for usefully violent things, like chopping wood. Which he quite looked forward to these days.

  He flung his quill down.

  He stripped off hi
s shirt and flung it aside and went outside to attack the woodpile with an axe, turning big logs into manageable logs into kindling into splinters. He’d done this at the same time every afternoon for a week now, and word had gotten out. He’d drawn in the process a surreptitious audience of women who took up the hobby of gravestone rubbings for the first time in their lives. Crouched behind ancient buried Everseas, Redmonds, Hawthornes, and the like in the churchyard, they rubbed the stones and watched. They didn’t know why the vicar needed so much wood but were prayerfully full of thanks that he did.

  Mr. Eldred stopped by the vicarage full of glee. “I was right there when ye done it, Reverend! Smack! Nivver heard a sound quite like it.. Down he went! That’ll put the fear of God into a fellow, eh? Forget about the sermons. Just go about hitting a bloke when ’e get up to no good and the like! Haha!”

  Everyone somehow assumed he’d primarily been defending Miss Pitney’s honor when he’d knocked Haynesworth to the ground. He’d been forgiven promptly, as Eve had predicted.

  The countess hadn’t fared quite as well, naturally. There might be some confusion regarding the nature of her transgressions, but it had been tacitly decided she wasn’t worth the trouble she was bound to cause. She had been officially cut.

  If only she wasn’t so determined, he thought. It would have been so much easier. If only she wasn’t so herself.

  “I’m sorry,” the first message she sent over with a footman said. “Perhaps if Mrs. Sneath prayed harder for my salvation?”

  He crushed it and threw it on the fire.

  She sent a jar of honey to him. Which was meant to be funny. In another circumstance, it might have been.

  He gave it to Mrs. Sneath, who gave it to the poor, who would never know it was from the countess.

  At last she sent over a tiny package. Wrapped in paper and tied in string. He unfolded it, holding himself very still, willing emotion to stay at bay, willing anticipation to quiet. And still his fingers trembled.

  In it he found a silk handkerchief.

  Embroidered at one corner were an awkward but completely recognizable collection of Sussex wildflowers. And his initials, A.S.

  Do you see what you’ve driven me to? I’ve taken up a hobby in earnest. You can see that things are desparate indeed. And I know you likely gave yours away.

  It was the “desparate” that nearly destroyed him. There was something so very her about the word: unapologetic and open, sophisticated yet innocent.

  So … dear.

  The Eve she showed only to him.

  It tears a hole out of you, Colin had said. When he’d thought he’d lost Madeline.

  Adam tipped his head into his hand and crushed the handkerchief in the other. For a long time he sat that way, breathed in, breathed out.

  He wanted to believe her.

  He had no right to his feelings of betrayal. Or even of doubt.

  Knowing this didn’t help.

  And then he smoothed the handkerchief flat. With a deep breath, he folded it neatly and tucked it into his pocket.

  That was the day he asked Lady Wareham’s footman to wait for him in the parlor under the watchful eyes of Mrs. Dalrymple.

  He returned to his desk and scrawled two words on a sheet of foolscap, flung sand over it, folded it. And for a moment he simply couldn’t move because his heart felt as leaden as one of Mrs. Lanford’s tea cakes.

  He abandoned thought. He abandoned feeling. He pretended he was made only of reflex and handed it to the footman.

  Who, he swore, looked him full in the face with something like entreaty before he took it away.

  But after that, the messages stopped.

  Ah. But at least attendance at church was restored.

  PLEASE STOP.

  She read the words over and over, searching out some softness, some give, some chink through which she could insinuate charm and persuasion. But he was a bloody fortress, the man was, and he’d known what he was about when he’d written just those two words. He knew her. He’d given her no way through them.

  He hadn’t even signed the message, as if he was so exhausted, so thoroughly exasperated with her, he couldn’t be bothered

  She understood why he was doing it, and she had the grace to feel ashamed.

  She was torn between hurling the scrap of foolscap across the room and salvaging it tenderly. She opted for the latter. She laid it aside as gently as if it were his injured hand.

  And sat motionless, feeling as hollow as a bell without a clapper.

  She hadn’t slept well in nearly a fortnight. She’d had no callers in that time, either. She visited the O’Flahertys twice; she’d once watched through their windows as Mrs. Sneath’s barouche stopped in the drive and turned around and departed at the sight of her own carriage.

  She held her breath for a moment so she wouldn’t feel the hurt of it all over again.

  She exhaled.

  How she hated the silence. She wasn’t meant for it.

  And though it felt a bit like admitting defeat, she finally sat down to reply to a letter.

  Dear Freddy—

  I should be happy for a visit from you. Come as soon as—

  A mighty sneeze behind made her jump, sending her quill smearing across the foolscap. It was followed by a cough so violent and wracking, the porcelain vase on the table rocked to and fro. She thrust out a hand to still it.

  “Lud, Henny, I hope you have a handkerchief the size of an apron, the way you’ve been going about.”

  Henny gave a mighty valedictory sniff when the fit of coughing ended and did indeed produce a handkerchief roughly the side of a bedsheet from her apron pocket. “ ’Tis but a cold in the head. The man who delivers the coal … well, he had a bit of a sniffle, ye see …”

  Evie narrowed her eyes at Henny. She suspected she’d made yet another odd romantic conquest.

  Henny’s eyes were nonchalantly wandering the room.

  “You sound horrible. I’m a bit concerned you might jar your organs loose with a cough like that. Perhaps Mrs. Wilberforce can prepare another tisane for you?”

  “Ack, I willna be choking down one of her poisons made of leaves and twigs and whatnot. Tea and a rub of goose fat on me chest, and I’ll be right again. And maybe a spot of rest.”

  Eve wrinkled her nose at the notion of goose fat. But then she looked at Henny. Really looked at her for the first time since Adam Sylvaine had stomped away from her in the dark.

  Her heart gave a lurch. Her eyes were too bright in a face gone frighteningly pale.

  Apart, that was, from a faint green cast about her mouth and two pink spots on her cheeks.

  Icy little tendrils of dread crept over her limbs.

  She forced herself to ask lightly, “Don’t you think we ought to send for the doctor, Henny? Just for an opinion? I’ve seen you looking more in the pink of health.”

  Henny spent the next minute or so coughing before glowering fiercely. “He’ll only bleed me. I needs all me blood. Just look at the size of me.”

  “Well, perhaps we can visit the gypsies on the outskirts of town and have our fortunes told. They have potions, too.”

  It was the kind of enticement Henny normally couldn’t resist. She was superstitious as the day was long and thought gypsies were easily as wise as vicars or doctors any day.

  She hesitated. “I think a spot of rest in my bed will do me right.” She sounded nearly conciliatory.

  And this, more than anything else, frightened Evie.

  “You rest straightaway. Go up to your room, and I’ll have some soup sent up to you, and Mrs. Wilberforce will see to the goose fat. And a … and willow-bark tea! For fever.”

  And not even a token resistance. “Verra well, yer majesty.”

  Not even a “I always knew you wanted to poi-son me.”

  “YOU’VE GONE AND done it, haven’t you?”

  Adam gave a bit of a start; the room was so warm and close, he’d begun to doze. Lady Fennimore was growing weaker by the day; he sp
ent as much time sitting with her in silence next to her as he did speaking now, but neither of them minded.

  “What have I gone and done, Lady Fennimore?”

  “You’ve a bit of a hunted look. You’re thinner, which makes you look a bit like one of those martyrs, which isn’t a terrible look for a vicar, mind you. It’s persuasive. Your eyes are a bit too bright. And you move slower up the stairs now, as though you carry a great weight, or you haven’t been sleeping. Either you’re constipated, or you’re in love, the hopeless variety. They’re often indiscernible. Ask Jenny for a tisane if it’s the first—an old family recipe works a treat. I fear there’s no cure for the second except for what you might expect.”

  He was speechless. He stared down at her, and her eyes snapped open suddenly. A trap! She took a good long look at his expression. Satisfied, she closed them again and smiled.

  “Fire and flood and jealousy, Reverend,” she murmured. “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”

  The Song of Solomon. It sounded like a prayer, but for what? He wanted deliverance from all of those things.

  He hadn’t seen Eve in three weeks now. She’d stopped going to church. He’d seen Henny once, from a distance, as she shopped in town. But then Henny was as visible as the cliffs of Dover from a distance.

  Lady Fennimore was quiet for so long, her breathing so even, he thought for a moment she’d drifted off. But then she smiled slightly again. “D’ye know, Reverend Sylvaine … he died twenty years ago, Jenny’s father did. But I think about him still. I still see him as he was. And I’m looking forward to seeing him again soon. My heart always had two chambers, one for him, one for my husband, and for most moments of my life, well, my heart was in two places with two different men. No one knows this except you. I think you may understand a bit of this now. Indulge a dying woman and nod yes or no, there’s a good lad.”

  “Now, Lady Fennimore, it’s unfair to bargain that way.”

  “What’s fair about life?” she asked reasonably.

  And for the first time he said aloud what amounted to a confession. “Would you be satisfied with an “I don’t know?”