A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Julie Anne Long

  He slipped away from her grasp to drag his cheek along the tender side of her breast, then traced his fingers along the contours of it, lowered his mouth to taste her again. Quicksilver shivers of pleasure fanned through her body from wherever he touched her, until she was dazed from it. The flat of his hand followed a trail of hot kisses down the line of her ribs, down to the curve of her belly, to the triangle of curls springing at her legs. He blew softly there, and her legs slipped apart, inviting him in, and, experimentally, he tasted.

  “Jesus,” she gasped.

  Correctly interpreting this as approval, he did it again, with the tip, then the flat, of tongue, and the shock of pleasure sent her arching upward.

  “Good?” he whispered. Unnecessarily, she thought. With a smile in his voice that included just a just a little self-congratulation.

  And again he did it. And again.

  They colluded in finding a rhythm. His fingers played lightly with that vulnerable skin between her thighs as his tongue artfully drove her closer, and closer, and closer to the brink of losing her mind. She could feel it when her body began to dissolve into pinpricks of hot pleasure. Her breath was a savage saw now, as she writhed, beseeched him with his name, frightened of the intensity of the bliss and hurtling toward it inexorably. The air spangled before her eyes, and her hips were frantic; and then nearly violent bliss bowed her body upward.

  She came apart with a cry.

  She dropped again to the settee, shattered and amazed, and he left his palm against her to feel each pulse of her release before he joined her on the settee. And then he covered her with his long, hard body, fitted his cock to her, and she raised her hips, locked her legs around him, pulling him into her, and he plunged.

  He tried to go slowly. His arms shook with the effort of control. And this in itself excited her nearly unbearably: His control was so extraordinary, so hard-won. She wanted him to release it to her for the evening.

  “It’s all right. I want you, Adam. Please. Now.”

  He sighed, and he moved his hips. Languidly at first, but then he abandoned attempts at leisure and moved swiftly, ever more swiftly. She clung to his shoulders and rose up to meet him, taking him deeply, reveling in the drumming of his white hips, until his release came on the harsh cry of her name.

  They lay quietly wrapped together, sated. And for a peaceful, wordless time, she indulged in exploring his body the way she would any new and splendid terrain: She drew her hands over the slid them over the smooth hard contours of his shoulders, the planes of his chest, tangled them in the dusting of gold hair there, followed the seam of hair to his cock. And when it began to stir again, she slid to the floor to kneel next to him.

  And she took him in her mouth.

  He sighed the pleasure of it as she closed her lips around the smooth head, and followed the shaft down with her mouth, and his hands languidly tangled in her hair. She followed it up again, then traced the dome of it with her tongue, circling, circling, until he shifted, and dropped his legs wider, and tipped his head back, and his body bowed upward.

  “Evie.” He sighed. “Oh, God. Evie.”

  And in that moment, she blessed everything she’d learned in her life: She was a skilled giver of pleasure, and yet she’d never been more grateful to possess a body, to know how to use it in service of a man’s bliss, to be the reason this extraordinary man who shouldered the cares of so many should entirely lose himself.

  Languidly, she moved her mouth along him, with her fist following, taking him deeply into her throat, again, and then again, and again, until she felt his belly rise and fall ever swifter, until thrashed his head back hard, arching into her, aiding her, urging her faster.

  “Inside … you …” he gasped. “Please. I want … inside you …”

  She rose again and straddled him, and together they fitted him to her, and she slid down over him. She paused, savoring the feel of him, and smiled wickedly down at him. Teased him a little by rising up and away from him; he swore and bucked fiercely upward.

  “Mother of God …”

  And then he held her hips fast in his hand and took her hard, bucking fiercely upward, their bodies colliding until he went rigid and cried out again.

  Later, together, they got his boots all the way off, and his trousers. He had long, hairy feet, she discovered, and she tangled her small ones with his on the settee.

  Quietly breathing, limbs practically braided, they lay together, their bodies sheened in sweat, until the cold became uncomfortable.

  He stood and unself-consciously crossed the room to tend to the fire. She dozily watched him kneel, add logs, poke them, and reach for the flint. How right his body seemed to her. How different from the bodies of the men she’d given herself to, men who were fit enough, but soft, too; so much of their lives were seen to by other people, shaped by luxury. The muscles etched in Adam told the story of his life—the walking, the riding, tending to the roofs, tending to his own woodpile. Taking care of others, taking care of himself. And his body was magnificent, but his buttocks were so small and white, so oddly dear and vulnerable, in the half-light.

  “I didn’t have sex with Freddy,” she told him.

  He turned to her swiftly. Surprised perhaps. He simply knelt where he was.

  “It doesn’t matter,” was all he said.

  “Adam, I swear to you, I never have. And I didn’t while he was here.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated evenly.

  “And I had naught to do with Haynesworth. Ever.”

  “Eve …” He paused. “It doesn’t matter. I believe you. But even if I’d known you had … even if all of those things were not true … would have come to you and Henny. I would have come to you if you were on the moon. I would have found a way. I would have come to you.”

  They looked at each other from across the room. He’d said it, not with resignation, but matter-of-factly. A man surrendering to his fate.

  But everything he felt was in his eyes.

  I love you, too, she wanted to say.

  “I know it changes nothing,” he said.

  And if he’d waited for her to deny it, he waited in vain. They gazed at each other across that gulf for a moment.

  But they still had tonight. He rose and returned to the settee. She opened her arms, and he burrowed in. Neither of them spoke after that.

  He fell asleep, and she held him while he slept.

  FORTUNATELY, THE COLD woke them before the servants could stumble across the two of them, naked and entwined on the settee. He kissed her mouth, her closed eyelids. And then he stretched and gently pulled away from her, rolled down to try to start the fire again.

  She watched him crouch there, loving him so fiercely it was like sunlight had replaced the blood in her veins. But it was the sort of glorious brightness and heat that could never be sustained.

  And if only things were different, this might be what she saw every day for the rest of her life: his beloved back poking at the fire. Sharing homely moments like these. But she knew what she had to do, and because she was brave, she would do it now.

  “I’m going to London in a fortnight, Adam.”

  He turned slowly around. His face was at first expressionless, as if she’d spoken in another language entirely. Slowly absorbing what she’d said.

  “To … visit?” But he said it as though he knew the answer.

  “For good,” she told him gently.

  He sat motionless. Stunned. He began. “You cannot … surely there’s a way …”

  He came to her, knelt next to her on the settee. “Eve … Evie.”

  “Listen to me,” she said, and touched his face, dragging her fingers along his jaw, to his mouth. Branding the shape of him into her soul. He caught her fingers gently between his teeth, kissed them.

  “It’s better this way.

  “No! Let me speak, please.” Before I lose my courage.

  “You know they will never accept me. Your whole livelihood depends on parishion
ers filling the pews, and oh, Adam, they’re so lucky to have you. You’re so brilliant at your job, I don’t know if you even realize it. I’m just in … awe.” Her voice cracked. “They need you. And you’ve a chance to be happy, Adam. Or at least content. To have a family of your own, live among the family you love in peace and contentment … but if I’m the spectre that prevents you from living fully … think of Olivia Eversea. What her life is like. I refuse to let that happen to you. I won’t allow it.”

  He watched her, the appalling words absorbing only slowly.

  “You’re going to Lisle,” he said flatly.

  “He isn’t a horrible man, Adam. He truly isn’t. He will never be you. But he’ll honor his commitment to me. He’ll marry me. He may give me children. He has the resources to care for my family, and he will.”

  She heard her own words with disbelief. Even though she meant every one of them. She could hardly believe she needed to tear out her own heart and his in order to keep living.

  “How can you … how can you talk of … marriage and children with him … of lying in bed with him … after …”

  He was sickly pale. His breath came in swift bursts, as though he’d just run a mile. “Eve,” he said softly, pleading.

  She heard herself as if from a distance, as though she was separate from her body. It was the only way she could bear to break both her own heart and his. She heard her voice say the words that would free and kill both of them.

  “You know there’s no way, Adam. You know I’m right. When you think about it … and you’ll be able to think about it after this morning, but now, now … you’ll know I’m right. Perhaps you didn’t expect it to be so soon, but perhaps that’s for the best, too. I want this moment, this perfect moment to be good-bye. So kiss me now …” Her voice broke then. “ … and tell me good-bye. And go.”

  He shook his head roughly. “No.”

  “Adam …”

  He saw implacability in her eyes.

  He leaned over and kissed her. She tasted heartbreak, and fury, and love, and infinity in that kiss. She felt the persuasion of it weave itself through her very soul, felt her body stir, felt her thoughts begin to dissolve into need. And he knew it.

  So it was she who ended it.

  She ducked her head into her chest. Closed her eyes. “I want you to go.”

  There was silence.

  She listened as he dressed swiftly.

  She felt him leave as much as heard him because the sound of the door’s shutting seemed to snuff out the light in her heart.

  Chapter 25

  FIRE, AND FLOOD and jealousy …

  He stared uselessly out the window of the vicarage. He jerked his thoughts back to the task at hand and scrawled on the foolscap instead:

  “Lilies of the field?”

  He tried to stare the words into yielding an entire sermon to him.

  They hatefully remained inscrutable. All he saw was Eve holding wildflowers in her arms when he’d first gone to meet with her, and suggesting lilies of the field, and …

  He scratched them out with something approaching antipathy and wastefully bunched the single word into a ball and hurled it across the room.

  And she’d be leaving Pennyroyal Green for London in less than two weeks.

  I thought I’d never be whole again, Colin had said.

  What if Colin was right? Adam moved and spoke and breathed and slept. But food had lost its taste. He didn’t seem to notice hot or cold. Mrs. Dalrymple shoved plates beneath his nose, took them away untouched, and worried about him, but he didn’t notice, that, either.

  Eve hadn’t attended church since he’d last seen her. Everyone else had, of course. For the first time, he saw Mrs. O’Flaherty and her children, who were shockingly well behaved throughout, and who wore admiral hats and swords.

  Eve had made it possible for her to be there.

  He’d seen them and lost his place in the sermon briefly. Stared at them so intently that a few pairs of eyes grew curious, then worried, which was enough to nudge him into speaking again.

  He shook the memory away, selected another sheet of foolscap, smoothed it flat. Then did it again. As though he could stroke it like a cat into surrendering a decent sermon.

  Fire and flood and jealousy. It’s not like that first Corinthians nonsense Lady Fennimore said.

  And that’s when he leaned back in his chair, struck dumb.

  He knew it by heart, but he thumbed his Bible open to Corinthians and read.

  Well. Inspiration, you fickle visitor, that’s where you were hiding. Thanks for stopping by at the eleventh hour, as usual.

  Lady Fennimore, you were wise, but you didn’t know everything, he thought.

  Inspiration burned a hole through the fog, and suddenly he knew what he needed to do.

  And so he set to writing. But not the sermon.

  No, the sermon could wait.

  Dear Freddy,

  I’m coming. Don’t gloat. Will be pleased to see you. Perhaps you should see about a special license?

  Evie

  He would appreciate the pithiness of it, Freddy would.

  And he would gloat.

  Eve had given it to Henny to take to Postlethwaite’s Emporium. The mail coach took it to Lord Lisle. Likely he’d had it framed, knowing Freddy.

  And now Henny was supervising the packing of Eve’s wardrobe in readiness for their departure to London.

  “Ah, this white muslin … this is what you wore the first day the reverend came to visit.” She held it up. “Do you recall?”

  Evie stared at her suspiciously. “I recall.”

  “You were a picture in it. “And this … the green silk. You wore this to the Assembly.”

  “I recall, Henny.”

  But Eve stepped toward her and took the green silk in her arms for a moment. Cradling it like she would a wounded thing.

  “What will you wear to church tomorrow?”

  Eve stared at her incredulously. “We’re … not going to church tomorrow.”

  “I’d say ye was a coward if ye didna go in one last time.”

  “You do like to call me names,” she said to Henny. And sighed. Not taking her seriously.

  “If the shoe fits, m’lady. Wouldn’t you like to go out in triumph? Wouldn’t you like to see all of them one last time before you become the wife of a viscount, hold your head high, and never look at them again? And shouldn’t you do it for the reverend? ‘e saved my life, after all.”

  “More’s the pity,” Eve muttered.

  It was a very unfair card for Henny to play.

  Henny said nothing for a time, just watched Eve. Who was holding the green silk gown, her face as rapt as someone waltzing with a big vicar.

  “He was very kind to you, m’lady,” Henny said softly.

  And to her horror, tears started up in Eve’s eyes.

  She turned abruptly away and walked toward the window. She put her hand up to her throat, covering the cross.

  She didn’t want to go to church because she didn’t want to have to see him. She was just getting accustomed to the idea of never seeing him again. It would be reopening a wound.

  Then again, she would have a lifetime to heal from it. And once the idea of seeing him insinuated itself, it was powerfully difficult to release it.

  And avoiding it was for cowards. Henny was right. Evie despised showing weakness.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “We’ll go. On our way out of town, we’ll stop for church. And we’ll leave for London immediately thereafter, do you hear me?”

  “Splendid,” Henny said cheerfully. “Now, I think ye should wear this lavender, and the hat with the dark purple silk ribbon, and …”

  And it was then Eve saw two women who seemed to be moving virtually on tiptoe toward her arbor.

  They were followed by a little boy and a brown dog with a whip of a tail.

  She dropped the curtain and scrambled downstairs.

  IT WAS MARGARET Lanford and Jos
ephine Charing, along with Paulie and his dog, Wednesday. Who smiled up at her with the usual impartial, world-loving dog smile.

  Margaret Lanford was carrying a basket.

  “We heard you were leaving and wanted to say good-bye,” Josephine whispered. “We’ve missed you.”

  “You needn’t whisper, Josephine. I missed you, too.”

  “Oh, of course. It’s just that if the other ladies saw us here, you see …”

  “I do see.” Eve couldn’t stop her heart from sinking just a little.

  “I will never, never forget your kindness, Lady Wareham. And I know how you enjoyed my tea cakes.” Margaret Lanford thrust the basket at her. “So I wanted you to have them as a farewell gift.”

  Eve was touched speechless.

  “Although …” And then Margaret Lanford flushed. “I fear this batch may have turned out a trifle harder than I’d prefer.”

  “They’re like rocks!” Paulie expounded cheerfully.

  Evie looked at Margaret for confirmation. She nodded dismally.

  She bit her lip thoughtfully. And then she brightened.

  “I know what we can do!”

  And so for the next hour, the four of them spent a delightful hour hurling teacakes across her garden at a target she drew against the back wall, while Wednesday the dog chased them, barking.

  And thus she said farewell to Pennyroyal Green very much the way she’d greeted it.

  AFTER HOURS OF exhausting the fronts and back of most of his foolscap and stacking a whole cannonade of crushed drafts, he’d arrive at a sermon about brotherhood. It was a topic as well-worn as his boots. If ever Evie Duggan wanted a nap, this was the sermon to use.

  But it would do for his purposes.

  He was in church well before Liam Plum began ringing the bells. Much like any other morning, sunlight shafted in through the windows of the altar as it had for centuries, illuminating clergyman after clergyman.

  Although … it could very well turn out to be a morning unlike any he’d ever had.

  Or ever would again.

  “Good morning.” He smiled at his congregation.