A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series Read online

  To his surprise, the small woman and the bear approached.

  Mrs. Cranborn glanced up at the large woman in dark bombazine, recoiled in rank astonishment, and reflexively stumbled a few steps back.

  And so Adam took his first look at the woman he’d clearly bored. She seemed comprised entirely of vivid contrasts: black curls at her temples and alabaster cheeks and eyes like the proverbial jewels, so green, they seemed, even through that scrap of net that fluttered from her hat. Her pelisse hung and swung and clung flawlessly, a fit only the most exclusive of seamstresses could accomplish—this much he knew about women’s clothing. She seemed unreal, like something out of a storybook. He supposed she was beautiful. But he was moved by women who seemed touchable, unwrappable, like Lady Fennimore’s daughter Jenny, whose soft hair was forever coming out of its pins. This one seemed entirely contained, as sealed and gleaming as a jar of preserves.

  “I hope you don’t think it inappropriate, Reverend, since we haven’t been properly introduced. But I wanted to thank you for the sermon.” The glance she slid over to her bear-sized companion said Satisfied? as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud. “I am the Countess of Wareham. This is my maid, Henrietta La Fontaine.”

  The Countess of Wareham … the name echoed in the recesses of his mind. He was certain he’d been told something about her. Given her appearance, he was unsurprised by both the title and her accent—he secretly thought of those etched consonants and indolently elongated vowels as The London Ironic Dialect. It was as though nothing, nothing in the world could ever possibly divert her again, so she indulged the world by viewing it with detached indulgence.

  He was, however, surprised a countess would introduce her maid. There had in fact been the slightest hesitation before the word “maid,” as though the countess wasn’t entirely certain what to call her.

  He bowed graciously. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Wareham. I’m the Reverend Adam Sylvaine. How kind of you to attend the service.”

  Henrietta dipped a graceful curtsy. “Yer sermon was a balm to me soul, Reverend.”

  She had a very fierce gaze, did Henrietta. Eyes like bright little currants pressed into dough.

  “As soothing as a lullaby, some might say,” Adam said pleasantly.

  Lady Wareham stiffened. Her eyes narrowed so swiftly one might almost have missed it.

  He didn’t.

  But then a distant little smile drifted onto her face, the sort a queen might offer a peasant child who held a daisy out to her.

  “Thank you, again, Reverend, and good day. Come along, Henny.”

  “Good day to you,” he said politely, and bowed elegantly.

  He bit back a wry smile. He suspected she’d exhausted the novelty value of church, and he wouldn’t be seeing her there again.

  Henrietta winked at him as she walked away.

  Chapter 2

  IN THE CARRIAGE, Evie gloomily entertained the possibility that her soul really was impermeable to moral repair or renewal. Clearly it was resistant to sermons. An inauspicious start to her exile—that was, new life—in Sussex.

  Cheeky vicar. The nerve. Lullaby, indeed.

  “You were snoring,” Henny said.

  “Surely not,” Evie said idly.

  “Quiet-like,” Henny conceded. “But you were.”

  And then Evie listened with half an ear as Henny planned aloud about supper “—cold roast, I think there is, and didn’t you ask Mrs. Wilberforce to get in some cheese?” She’d hired a housekeeper by the name of Mrs. Wilberforce, but Henny was in charge of her staff, as her capabilities were far-ranging, her roles and titles as diverse and subject to change as Evie’s had been: maid, housekeeper, Abigail, advisor, scolder, dresser at the Green Apple Theater (which was where Evie had met her), frightener of unpleasant suitors, visitor of apothecaries in the dead of night. She viewed Pennyroyal Green as penance, of a sort. For Eve had all but saved Henny’s life many years ago by employing her as her dresser when Henny was penniless. She would follow Eve to the ends of the earth, but she reserved the right to complain.

  Suddenly, the coach lurched to a halt, and they were both thrown forward, nearly knocking their heads together.

  The coach rocked a bit as the driver clambered down. Eve unlatched the door and peered out just as he was about to peer in.

  They both reared back.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lady, but seems summat is awry wi’ one of the horses. Team’s gone balky. We beg a moment to have a look to see if we may find the trouble.”

  And thus the utter disintegration of my life continues, Eve thought wryly.

  “Certainly. If I may just step out for a moment … ?”

  Because all at once she wanted air. Being transferred from the enclosed little church to the enclosed carriage merely enhanced the sensation of her life shrinking to the size of a cell.

  He assisted her down from the carriage, and she landed lightly on the road, bordered by low grass and other greenery not yet killed by frost.

  She inhaled and inspected what was now her new view and would be for the forseeable future: soft hills mounded like a messy blanket; stubby, needled trees, oaks, some of which still sported leaves despite its being the brink of winter. Smoke spiraled from the chimneys of the few cottages scattered in the middle distance. She moved off the road and stretched and peered: The gray line on the far horizon was the sea.

  Henny followed her out of the carriage and stretched and inhaled mightily.

  And then her driver returned to her and gave a little bow.

  “Lady Wareham, I fear we may have a dilemma. One of the horses has lost a shoe, and it would risk laming him if we continue on the journey.”

  Of course they had a dilemma. Life had become nothing but dilemmas of late. “How far are we from Damask Manor?”

  “A good twenty minutes or so by carriage.”

  Which meant at least double the time walking. She wasn’t incapable of it—God only knew she’d been a country girl a lifetime ago—but it was unthinkable for a woman of Henny’s age and size to undertake that journey on foot.

  Henny took command. “There’s smoke from that chimney.” She pointed. “I’ll see if I can fetch some help, will I? Perhaps a farmer will lend a cart. I’d like to stretch me legs, anyhow, after those torture pews.”

  Evie hesitated. “Well, if you insist. I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

  Henny insisted and trudged off, crested a rise, then disappeared over one of those small hills into the little valley, following a narrow beaten path to one of the picturesque little houses with the inviting chimney smoke.

  All was silence. Apart from the shifting hooves and murmurs of her driver and footman, they were entirely alone. Evie scanned the trees again and gave a start.

  Alone apart from a small blond boy leaning out from behind a tree. He was staring solemn-faced and unabashedly, the way children do.

  She crossed her eyes good and proper, taking care to make her expression hideous. Little boys loved that sort of thing, and she wasn’t above reaching for an easy laugh.

  He quite gratifyingly giggled. His front teeth were missing, which for some reason charmed her to her core. He must be seven or eight years old, then, she thought. Seamus at that age had been a devil in short pants. Then again, long pants hadn’t done much to reform him.

  “Spiders aren’t pretty,” the boy said.

  She was accustomed to small boys and non sequiturs. “Well, I don’t know about that. I suspect girl spiders are pretty to boy spiders.”

  This the boy found uproarious. His eyes vanished with mirth when he laughed.

  She smiled along with him.

  “Are girl cows pretty to boy cows?” he wanted to know.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “And are girl dogs pretty to boy dogs?”

  She pretended to consider this. “In all likelihood, yes. Some girls dogs to some boy dogs, anyhow.”

  “All dogs are pretty to me, too,” he confessed.

&nb
sp; “And to me,” she agreed solemnly.

  The boy went silent, bashful and delighted with their accord.

  “Have you a dog?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. A hound. Her name is Wednesday.”

  “A fine name for a dog. A fine day of the week as well. Why is she called Wednesday?”

  “ ’Twas the day our neighbor brought her to me to keep forever.”

  “It must have been a special day.”

  “Pauuuuuuuulie! Paul ! Where the devil are you?” A frantic woman’s voice echoed all around them suddenly.

  “Ah. And you must be Paul,” Evie guessed.

  “ ’Twas a special day,” the boy agreed, without even blinking, evidently entirely deaf to his mother’s voice.

  The woman huffed up the hill and sighed with relief when she saw him. “Paulie! What have I told you about running off? Your blessed dog is chasing the chickens and Grandmama is expecting us for—”

  She clapped her mouth shut when she saw Evie. She froze midwalk, stiff-legged as a hunting dog pointing out prey.

  Then her eyes frosted, and her mouth became a tight, horizontal line.

  “See, Mama?” Paulie said cheerfully. “She doesn’t look like a spider. She’s pretty. And spiders aren’t.”

  Oh God.

  Evie’s breath left her in a painful gust.

  She stood, cold in the gut, hot in the cheeks, feeling foolish and utterly blank.

  That hated, hateful nickname. But how would a boy have known unless he’d overheard his mother talking?

  Which meant that his mother had learned it from someone else.

  Who had learned from someone else.

  Which means they must know about her after all.

  So much for camouflage in Pennyroyal Green. So much for a new life here.

  “What did I tell you, Paul, about bothering strangers?” She said this to her son, but the woman still eyed her unblinkingly.

  “But Mama, she’s very nice and she likes dogs and she said that boy dogs think girl dogs are pret—”

  The woman latched her fingers about his arm and gave him a tug, dragging him behind her. He protested something on an unintelligible whine.

  “Because I’m your mother, and you will do as I say without questioning it, that’s why. She simply isn’t our sort, Paul.”

  Ah. The staggering self-righteousness of it.

  Evie couldn’t move. Her bones had turned to stone

  It was the sort of thing that once would have bounced from her as gaily as guineas flung down on a gaming table. For years, nothing ever dented her; she had shaped the world to suit her, as surely as though she were a signet ring and the world sealing wax.

  But it was then she realized her hand was flattened protectively, right over the velvet frogs closing her expensive pelisse, one of the earl’s many—one of his last, in fact— gifts to her. Exactly as if a dart had entered just there.

  She dropped it instantly.

  “And she’s not that pretty, Paulie,” drifted back to Evie.

  This, at least was predictable, and made her snort softly.

  It was a moment longer before she could toss her head insouciantly. And then for good measure, she stuck her tongue out at their retreating figures before whirling on her heels.

  And nearly bouncing off the chest of a man cresting the hill behind her.

  Chapter 3

  SHE LEAPED BACK with a stifled shriek, clapping her hand to her heart.

  “Sweet Merciful Mary Mother of God, ye shouldna sneak up like that! Ye creep like a cat ye bloody big …”

  She stopped.

  A very ripe Irish accent, long dormant but apparently healthy and whole and frisky and unleashed by shock, echoed across the countryside. Bloody big bloody big bloody big …

  Ohhhh. The shame of it.

  She wanted to close her eyes and sink deep, deep into the earth.

  Instead, she forced herself to look up—very up—at who proved to be the Reverend Adam Sylvaine, the vicar.

  He appeared entirely unruffled. Apart from his eyes, that was. They fair danced like flames with wicked, wicked, downright un-Christian mirth.

  One of her horses whickered into what threatened to be a never-ending silence.

  Be a gentleman, she silently willed him. Leave it lie. Pretend you heard nothing at all.

  Up his eyebrows went.

  “Biiiig …” he prompted.

  She eyed him stonily. Bastard, she was tempted to complete. Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound.

  He waited. Patient as Job. Wicked as Lucifer. Amused as hell.

  “Vicar,” she completed inanely, finally, on a mumble.

  His head went back as though this was almost too good to be true, then came down on a nod.

  “I suppose I am,” he agreed thoughtfully, though his voice held a suspicious tremble. Stifled laughter. “I suppose I am a big … vicar … Though no one has ever before accused me before of creeping like a cat. Something to do with being … well, big, I suppose.”

  The vicar was taking the piss out of her, as her brother Seamus would say, and quite effectively, too.

  She looked full into his face then. His eyes were such a disarming blue—the color of deep, still water, of Lough Leane in Killarney—they made her strangely restless. It was if the weather inside him was always clear and temperate. Like his conscience and unblemished soul, no doubt, she thought sardonically. An unprepossessing black wool coat—Weston hadn’t stitched up that one, she knew this for certain—whipped behind him in the stiffening wind, which was also doing its best to pluck a carelessly knotted cravat from the confines of a gray, striped waistcoat of no discernible pedigree.

  And as though they were a beckoning road, her eyes followed the line of longer, finer, harder thighs than a vicar had any business possessing down to the dusty, creased toes of his boots. Which most definitely had not been made by Hoby.

  Her eyes stayed safely on the ground. She took advantage of a moment of unexpectedly necessary composure gathering in the wake of the revelation about his thighs.

  “I thought vicars were supposed to wear dresses.” She said this almost testily. At least she had gotten control of her accent.

  “Oh, a dress is optional.”

  Ping! Insults bounced from him, it seemed.

  “And by ‘dress,’ I suppose you mean ‘cassock’?” he added helpfully. “Difficult to creep like a cat in a cassock, you see, Lady Wareham. It swirls about one’s ankles, flaps noisily in the breeze. One needs stealth to stop iniquity in its tracks.”

  In … iquity?

  The word was a slap.

  But … perhaps he was jesting? Surely he was? Did he know about her? Was the whole of this horrid village going to take turns plaguing her in turns? Would they turn out with boiling oil?

  “Is that why you’ve suddenly appeared? Did you scent iniquity on the wind then, Reverend Sylvaine? Do you roam the Sussex countryside sniffing for it, like a truffle-hunting pig?”

  He didn’t reply for so long she finally turned to look at him.

  To find he’d gone as rigid as if he’d been driven into the ground.

  Something about that stillness made her think that angering him would be very unwise, indeed. Which seemed a peculiar thought to have about a vicar. But despite the fact that he wasn’t blinking, he didn’t seem angry. He was studying her the way one might study a lock about to be picked. The only movement was his hair. The breeze lifted it, let it fall, lifted it, let it fall. Hidden in the dark blond were dark gold or copper threads or strands sun-bleached to silvery fairness. In the silence and stillness it was absurdly fascinating.

  “I’ve dozens of cousins and a number of siblings, Lady Wareham. If you’ve siblings, you won’t be surprised to learn that my hide is quite callused. It’s nearly impossible to offend me.”

  Well.

  He said it evenly. As if he hadn’t just seen right through her and neatly incinerated her defenses, as surely as if she were a petulant child.
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br />   “Some might interpret that as a challenge, Reverend.”

  Which was precisely how she was acting, and she couldn’t seem to stop.

  He went quiet again. And then he smiled. Very, very faintly. Just enough, it seemed, for her to notice the elegant shape of his mouth. To tease out one dimple at the corner of it. And when at last he spoke, again she felt his voice more than she heard it, like fingers brushed along the short hairs at her nape. It had gone soft, so soft. But somehow it wasn’t gentle.

  “Oh? Did you come to Pennyroyal Green for challenge, then, Lady Wareham?”

  She stared at him.

  He stared back.

  And to her astonishment, heat slowly washed the back of her neck, the backs of her arms, and it was suddenly more difficult to breathe. It occurred to her that she’d never seen a man who was so … contained. Yes: That was precisely the right word. As though something in him, some potential, required control. And whatever it was, whatever he was, pulled at her. The way earth pulled water into it. It felt stronger than she was, and her entire life had depended upon her being stronger than anyone.

  She turned abruptly away. She inhaled in the hopes of clearing her head, but the traitorous air had turned to wine or some such; her thoughts staggered like foxed heirs at a gaming hell.

  He was only a vicar, she reminded herself. The man had caught her in a rare moment of weakness amidst a particularly vulnerable episode in her life. That was all. And she was very weary, of course. After all, the church nap had hardly been the restorative kind.

  She tugged her pelisse about her more snugly and stared toward her halted carriage with a little frown. Where the devil was Henny?

  “It seems one of our horses threw a shoe,” she said finally. Her voice was fainter than she would have preferred.

  She wondered if she’d disappointed him.

  He’d been watching her. She half suspected he knew the number of her eyelashes now.

  “I see,” he said easily enough, after a moment. “I was on my way to visit a parishioner when I saw your stopped carriage. And as there’s no worry about brigands on this road since One-Eyed William haunted these parts a few decades ago, and as this isn’t precisely one of the more scenic parts of Sussex, I feared something might be amiss.”