Holy Scoundrel (10 page)

Lacey put Bridget’s slippers on her. “Her stomach is empty. Perhaps she could have a piece of toast to nibble on?”

“As long as I get more of what I was nibbling on.”

CHAPTER SIX

Lacey bustled Bridget downstairs for toast, but the wee thing fell asleep in her lap, a quarter slice in her hand.

Gabe rose to take her, caressing Lacey in the process, almost by accident, she believed, sending skittering spirals of heat to every nerve in her body. “Don’t move,” he said with purpose. “I’ve more of the same.”

How could she ache for him
as if she’d never left his embrace? As if five years had not passed.

She rose and wrapped her arms around herself, chilled, bereft, grateful now that Bridget had awakened when she did. Everything between her and Gabriel was happening too fast, again. Like the first time, there were issues between them, more now than then, questions, lies, doubt, uncertainty. More than ever, she was a threat to losing him his livelihood, possibly forever. There was also Nick Daventry. Olivia Prout. Julian, now, until she se
t
hi
m
straight.

Never mind the deceit and pain—hers, his—that would remain between them unless—

“We have to talk,” Gabriel said from the bottom of the stairs. With his hands buried in the pockets of his dressing gown, he looked as dark and inscrutable as the night he’d turned to find her in his barn watching him. He never looked more like that fallen angel, except at this moment. Still, she wished he would spread his wings and take her in.

“What should we talk about?” she asked, turning to open the cupboard, knowing full well they should discuss everything she’d been worrying about, and more.

“Everything.”

Ah. There it was. “You’re right.” She placed a chunk of cheese and a knife beside the bread on the table and put a pot of water on for tea. “Where do you want to begin?”

“Your choice.” He sat, sliced a chunk of cheese and broke it in half.

She sat and accepted the half he handed her. As she took it from his hand, she realized, in a moment of brilliant clarity, that wherever life took her, she would never be more at home or more complete than at this moment with Gabriel. “Let’s begin with the church you’re going to build,” she suggested.

Gabriel put his food down and sat back, exhaustion etching his features. “My bishop insists we need a new church for St. Swithin’s.”

Not quite what she meant, but all right for a start. “Why? The old church is beautiful.”

“Except that we share it with—”

“The Catholics, I know.”

“Years ago,” Gabriel said, “when your family took the remaining section of the old St. Swithin’s priory attached to our church and turned it into a Catholic chapel, it appears our Anglican leaders swore they’d build a separate church.”

“Not on Ashcroft land, they won’t.”

He gave her a half nod, saying without words that she sounded like Lady Lace, the Papist who’d ordered him around. “I don’t think my bishop has figured that out yet. I’m afraid he sees himself as somewhat of . . . a redeemer.” Gabriel winced when he said it.

Good, they could be equally embarrassed. “No one will ‘catch’ the wrong religion. There’s a wall three-feet thick between the two churches,” she said
.
And between the two of us.

“Besides, I think two faiths sharing a building for worship is somehow fitting.” Gabe sat forward, renewed energy in his demeanor. “We don’t need a church. The crofters’ children need a school, Lace. They’re meeting wherever they can, outside some days. I want to build them a school more than . . . more than almost anything. As a matter of fact, I pretty much bargained you here by promising I would.” He gave her his old hand-in-the-cookie-jar grin.

It threw her, that grin, sent shivers down her spine. Made her want. “Bargained me here?”

“I promised Him.” Gabriel pointed up. “That I would build a school if Bridget could be happy again. It was killing me, her sadness and silence.”

And now his daughter was happy, and he was willing to give Lace credit. That was nearly enough to stay her course, but she couldn’t let disdain and worry over a bargain with the devil fester. “What about the bargain you made with Lady Prout? A church is a pretty big price to pay for a son-in-law. Or, should I say that marriage is a pretty big price to pay for a church?”

Ruddy color filled Gabriel’s cheeks as his anger flared. “There is no bargain,” he snapped. “Nothing was ever stated as clearly as it was yesterday. I hoped I could tactfully solicit the contribution without selling myself.”

“Sounds rather spurious to me.”

That shot him from his chair. “Look who’s talking about deceit, the woman who slept with Nick Daventry days after—”

Lacey stood as well, her face afire. “Nicholas Daventry has nothing to do with this.”

Gabriel stepped near and away so fast, Lacey’s pulse pounded still, even when he stood on the opposite side of the room, his hands fisted at his sides, his face a stormy mask. “You broke me, Lace. Shattered me from the inside out. Left me in a million pieces. And, begad, if I don’t think some of those pieces don’t fit right yet.”

Lacey watched him go up the stairs, looking
as tired and beaten as he’d appeared the day she told him Nick was her child’s father.

Yes, she had broken him. She knew it, even then.

Yet what would have happened otherwise?

Her mother would have broken him in a different way. Generations of Kendricks had served this village, this parish. Gabe had dreamed his entire life of continuing that tradition. He’d dreamed of being th
e
goo
d
Vicar Kendrick, better at management and business than his poor father who gave away or misplaced money faster than he could blink. Better at directing the spiritual lives of his flock than his drunken grandsire. She knew how good he would be. How could she have taken away the dignity and self-respect he’d wanted, needed, his whole life, the respect he had already earned?

Perhaps she’d been wrong to decide his future with that lie, but it was her future she’d been determining as well. It had been hell for her, too, knowing she’d lose him to save him. A horrible choice in any circumstance. She’d expected at least to have her child to raise, albeit alone. And a frightening prospect that had been. Then, having a stillborn daughter, losing their child as well as the man she loved . . . well, she’d been broken, too.

Lacey paced the kitchen for at least an hour before she went up to her room. After she did, the connecting door between their rooms seemed almost aglow with the reminder of its presence. She had but to turn its knob.

The notion of telling Gabriel the truth played in her mind for a while, but what good would it do except to reveal her as a liar rather than a strumpet. He would do exactly as he’d intended five years before. He’d confess his transgression, lose this parish, the respect of his flock, and lose the chance at any other parish as well. He’d waste his life as a clockwork clerk or man of affairs, a farmer or manual laborer. If she confessed, he would never know the joy of his true calling again. He would, however, know, at least, tha
t
h
e
was the only man she ever took to her bed
.
I
f
he believed her at this late date.

No, nothing about five years ago mattered now. But Lacey knew something that would matter a great deal to him now. Bridget was not so much broken as she was, keeping him where she wanted him. After having no choice in the loss of her mother, she was attempting to govern her father.

Lacey stepped to that connecting door and placed the flat of her hand against it. She had heard Gabriel pacing for some time, but all seemed quiet now.

Expecting to find it locked, she closed her hand around the knob but it turned.

A lamp beside his bed bathed the room in a soft glow. Ivy’s little red pup sat up and yipped from the center of the bed before it jumped down and escaped through the slightly open hall door.

Gabriel sat up as well, the sheet dropping to his waist, baring a solid wall of flesh and muscle, a vision unlike anything Lacey could have imagined. They’d never been in a bed together. Never been naked together.

Yes, she had once run her fingers through the fine mat of dark silk, there, beneath his shirt, so she had not seen him.

When she gazed up at his face, he looked so anguished, she turned to go.

“Lace,” he said, the word such a loud plea, she hesitated. Then she found herself in his arms, in his bed, his lips ravishing hers.

She was his. Gabriel’s.

Her clothes fell away beneath his seeking hands.

Too soon. Not soon enough . . . not yet, a tiny vestige of her rational mind warned, not with so much unsaid between them. But her body wept with a demand of its own, and Lacey could neither speak nor think; she could only feel.

The hair on his chest abraded and caressed as did his day’s growth of beard against her face and her breasts, inciting new layers of heat to build on the rest.

He kissed and suckled her, ravenous, greedy, and ready, fulfilling five years of lonely dreams.

This big brute of a man could be so tender, so sweet, so giving. He could lift
her up so she touched the stars and hold her while she floated to safety in his arms.

All this sexual energy had him fighting the pull. Imagine if he did not.

Gabe tried to remember the lesson this very woman taught him. His strength lay in denying passion, but the scent of her filled his nostrils, the taste of her teased his tongue.

She arched against him, whimpered his name. A name that meant nothing in any other voice. But on Lacey’s lips, it
readied him to soar. Lacey, softer than silk, warmer than sunshine, his home and hearth, his heart and soul, satin and silk, and all his, as she was ordained to be.

He cupped her bottom, poised at her entrance, and gazed into her passion-bright eyes. She was his, only his . . . and Nicholas Daventry’s.

Like river water in winter, the knowledge sluiced over him.

Gabriel fell back against his pillows.

Lacey whimpered, bereft, and he pulled her tight against him to console them both. If he didn’t get hold of himself, he’d weep with her.

“It’s the passion, Lace,” he said, his voice rusty. “It almost killed me the last time.” He held her away from him to see her, to put a safe distance between them. “After you left—once I wanted to live again—I knew I had to control my passion. I blamed myself for your trouble at first, but I was willing to pay for my sin. By thunder, getting you and a child of our union felt like being rewarded for my sin. Who cared if I lost my living? I would hav
e
yo
u
.”

Lacey felt the heat warm her face. Had she made the wrong decision? Had she destroyed him to save him when he didn’t want saving? If he knew the truth, could he forgive her?

“When you told me your child was not mine—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat with impatience. “The price of sin, I discovered, was high, and painful. I had lost you and my soul as well.”

“Gabriel, no.”

“Don’t worry, I discovered later that my soul had been there all along, but surrounded by a stone heart, it had not been evident.

“Learning to control my baser needs was a hard lesson. Until today, I thought I succeeded. This dark passion of mine—the wild, unpredictable tumult I just experienced—is not good. It can be frightening and fatal, something to eschew at all costs, yet where you are concerned, passion has more power over me than anything.”

“No, Gabriel; you’re wrong. You act as if what happened between us is all your fault. There were two of us in Ashcroft Abbey that first day, and I saw nothing dark in our loving. It was bright and beautiful. As it might have been tonight.”

He laughed, sounding bitter. “You might not frighten easily, Lace, but you turned to Nick Daventry quickly enough after that bright and beautiful experience of ours. And I frightened my wife, let me tell you. That’s when I knew.”

“Your passion frightened Clara?”

“So badly, she wept on our wedding night, proof I was out of control.”

“Clara was a fool.” In that moment, Lacey was as jealous of her cousin as she’d been the day she learned Clara’s daughter lived, when two weeks before, her own had died.

Gabriel shook his head, denying Lacey’s words. “Your cousin had good cause to be afraid.”

“I doubt it. She had many fears, our Clara.”

“Don’t talk ill of her. She loved you very much. When she was sick, she . . . ”

Lacey sat up, holding the sheet against her. “What? Clara did what?”

“She told me she would never forgive me if I didn’t go to you after she . . . passed.”

Ah, Clara. “Were you going to heed her words?”

“One year from her death. I had three months to go.”

“So you were coming for me?”

“I have been counting the days, but I didn’t know if I would go.” He raised a hand, touched her face. “We’ll never know. You came to me instead.”