Holy Scoundrel (23 page)

Lacey grinned. “Entertain Nick with your pugilistic skills, young lady, and you will have him in your pocket for life.”

Sophie’s head came up at that, her eyes wide and eager. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Have at him. He’s yours on a silver platter.”

“Is he yours to give?” Sophie asked.

Lace bit her lip
.
Oh, the schools of thought on that one
.
“Yes and no. He’s my distant cousin and we were raised as siblings, so I will never be truly rid of him, but Gabriel would as soon I lose him to someone
,
anyon
e
, as soon as may be.”

Sophie’s string of questions inspired Lace to lead the ladies out the French doors to the garden, away from three giggly young girls so Lace could tell her tale away from tender ears and impressionable minds.

Mac must have seen them from the kitchen, because she came to move the tea tray outside, after she set a low table with sweetmeats for the girls.

Cricket and her new friends came out to the garden some long time after tea. “MyLacey, may we accompany our guests back to the towers and Uncle Nick?”

“It sounds like a lovely jaunt, especially as the afternoon is waning,” Patience said, “and will you show us the Ashcroft property on the way? It’s a beautiful estate.”

Since that sounded like a fine way to finish an afternoon, which broke all rules of etiquette, Lacey let Cricket lead the way with Beth and Emmy beside her, and she gave the tour like the Lady of the estate.

To Lacey’s dismay, however, they eventually came ’round the church to the graveyard, and Cricket stopped at one dear little pink marble headstone. “MyLacey’s baby girl sleeps here,” she said.

Jade placed a protective hand over her growing child.

“Oh, look,” Emily said. “That man is digging a grave.”

Every mother said “No,” which did not stop the girls from darting over to him.

Lacey failed to recognize the gravedigger, though he did resemble the one who worked here when—They could be related, though this man was younger, and she did not remember the elder’s Christian name. He had always answered to Digger. “Excuse me,” she called to the young man, because she couldn’t wait a minute longer to get an answer to the question plaguing her.

He removed his hat and turned it in his hands as she came his way.

“Was it your father who used to work here?”

“Father and grandfather, yes ma’am.”

“Oh. It must have been your father I knew. I don’t suppose he told you about the woman from the Towers who gave birth and was sent away? Her baby’s gravestone is that pink one over there.”

“The Ashton baby from Ashcroft Towers?” the young man asked.

“I was a lad, and I’ve heard the story mor’n once. My father was pretty old when he told it at the last. I never was sure he got it right. Such a jumbled tale of a stillborn babe.”

Lacey nodded graciously. What else could she do? She’d lived the jumbled tale. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know your name.”

“Wills, if you please, ma’am.”

“On behalf of the family at the Towers, let me just say that we appreciate the way your father served us.”

“Oh, m’lady, thank you.” He bowed awkwardly.

Lace appreciated his effort. “Wills, did your father tell you what happened the day he buried that baby? Was a graveside service forbidden? Did Lady Ashcroft say why? Di
d
no on
e
say a prayer over my babe’s wee casket?”

“
You
r
babe?”

Lacey raised her chin and gave a half-nod. Being the village wanton would never sit well or get easier. She wondered what her guests might think, but not for long. Suddenly they’d closed ranks, and each of them touched her. She felt the flat of a hand at her back, on her arms. Cricket’s hand slipped between hers and Jade’s, though Cricket clutched Jade’s hand, too, while Emmy held Jade’s other. They were all of them connected in helping her bear her loss.

Lace cleared her throat. “Wills?”

“No service was forbidden, m’lady. But me Da, he said he din’ dig no hole, y’see, ’cause t’weren’t no casket to bury. No babe to put in one, Da said. He set the stone there like yer Ma told him, but he never buried no baby. Your ma, she paid him regular to say naught till she died.”

Someone slipped an arm around her on the instant, holding her up when she might have lost her legs. No information could have shocked her more.

“One more thing, m’lady, if I may. You asked if anyone prayed over the grave. Well, I was a lad, y’see, playin’ in the churchyard, when I should’a been in bed, but I was scarin’ m’friends, like boys do, when we hear somebody coming, so we scatter. Me, I hid behind that stone over there. It’s small, but it’s my gramps, and I always figured he’d keep me safe here.”

“I’m certain he does.”

Wills beamed. “So we see this giant of a man wearing a cape, dark, a shadow against the church. A monster in black, he looked.”

Lace smiled, grateful for the touchstone to reality amidst a sea of unreality.

“And he kneels at your baby’s grave, prays, and then—this really scared us—he starts to cry so loud, we run away. I don’t like remembering that part, m’lady. I always want to apologize when I see him for being there.”

“You know him?”

“Sure. He’s our vicar. Well, not anymore since the bishop sacked him.

“Da didn’t tell till after your mother passed, and then he did it all secret like so we’d never tell, but you’re . . . I mean that wa
s
you
r
babe supposed to be there.”

His words echoed in Lacey’s hea
d
. . . suppose
d
to be there.

Wills shrugged. “Your mother and my Da are both gone, now, and you have a right to know.”

NannyMac came around the corner calling Bridget’s name, stopped, took one look at the women, the gravedigger, pulled her apron over her face, wailed into it, and ran back the way she came.

Lacey covered her mouth with a hand.

Bridget, now standing once again beside that pink marble slab over the fake grave, traced the numbers on the stone. “MyLacey, I know these numbers,” she called. “They’re in my mother’s book, the one I told you about. Mama made me memorize them.”

Lacey turned toward Wills. “Thank you for your honesty.”

She went over to Bridget. “Where is your mama’s book?”

“In my dresser, bottom drawer, in the back with the sad things.”

Lacey hugged Cricket, kissing the top of her head. “Thank you, sweetie.” She turned to the three wide-eyed little girls and knew they didn’t belong here right now. “Patience, Faith, and Sophie, dusk is nearly upon us. Will you take the girls up to the Towers to play? I need Jade to help me carry on here.”

The three nodded, rounded up the girls, and took their hands.

“Lacey,” Jade asked. “Should we ask them to send Gabriel down?”

“No, please.” She touched Jade’s hand imploringly. “Not yet. Ladies, can we keep all these confusing revelations to ourselves for now?” Lacey asked, though she wasn’t sure why. “Girls, can we turn this into a game and not mention it until I know the answer to the puzzle. I’ll tell you when, all right?”

The thought of a puzzle brought some light into the girls’ eyes. The ladies, too, seemed relieved.

But she couldn’t count on children keeping silent, and perhaps it was too much to ask of them, except that they looked delighted at the prospect of a game, which prompted a stroke of brilliance. “Why don’t you get Ivy to let you put on a play with his puppets later? Find him at the Towers, borrow the puppets, then practice in secret.”

Lacey snapped her fingers. “Sophie, since you’re not tied to a husband’s whims, can you get Nick to help you find the girls a place at the Towers for them to practice? And would you be so kind as to keep an eye on them? Tell Nick your intent, he might help you, and tell him I said it’s a secret. He’ll understand.”

They would surely discuss what they’d just heard, and no worries if Nick heard the story.

The girls got herded up the hill in the bright promise before sunset, the ladies vigilant, so when she and Jade rounded the chapel and the children were lost to sight, Lace turned into Jade’s arms and burst into tears. “How can I feel both hopeless and hopeful at the same time?”

“I don’t know,” Jade said. “Because my emotions are right there in that tug-of-war with yours. You’re thinking no baby, no death, right?”

Lace gave a half-nod, before her tears returned at the uselessness of such a hollow hope. “Thank you for standing by me. Again.”

“You more than repaid it during your years teaching our poor battered ladies how to act like ladies, then later, in my darkest of times, when you stood by me.”

Jade and Lacey went to Bridget’s room, where Lacey retrieved Clara’s book, a bible, and sat on Bridget’s bed with it. She traced the etched, carved leather cover design, took a deep breath, and opened it.

On the family page, Lacey found Baby Ashton’s date of birth and death listed in Clara’s hand as happening on the same day as on the headstone. Mother: Lacey Ashton. Father: blank.

Dated a week later, Clara listed Bridget Spencer’s birth to her and her Scottish husband. Lacey noted, with a sinking heart, that the color of ink and track of the pen nib were different in the second entry.

She stared at the entries until they blurred before her, then she looked up at Jade. “My outrageous imagination made me believe the impossible. What a fool. My baby di
d
not liv
e
. The fake grave is for show, to keep my mother’s reputation intact. Maybe even to punish me further.”

Lace sought a handkerchief for her tears. Her child was not missing due to some wild plotting of her mother’s to send it to a childless couple of noble birth who would raise it and keep its parentage a secret to their death. “Foolish, hopeful, imprudent Lace,” she called herself. “Or that’s what my mother would say. Of course my babe did not live.”

“Lace?” Jade said. “Then how do you account for the fact that her headstone, according to Wills’s tale, could very well mark a
n
empt
y
grave?”

“Wills probably embellished the tale. Consecrated church ground is probably the point. She’s buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on the estate i
n
unconsecrate
d
ground.”

“Still,” Jade said. “You’d think the vicar would know that and not bother to mourn beside a fake grave.”

Lacey’s head came up. “He does think it’s real. I know, because he mourned her with me the other day, said we’d parent her together when we all meet in heaven. Which means that my mother didn’t think she could trust him to keep the truth from me.”

Jade whipped away from the window and gaped.

Lace frowned at the swiftness of her action. “What?”

“He promised to parent her with you when you all meet in heaven, despite the fact that she’s Nick’s? Isn’t that what you wanted from the beginning? No matter your child’s father, that Gabe would claim you both?”

Lacey’s head came up, and a lightness of being overtook her. “It is what I always wanted.”

“You said you’d marry him today, if he stopped forgiving you.”

Lace tilted her head. “I don’t think he’s realized he stopped, anymore than I did, but suddenly realization doesn’t seem important.”

Jade beamed.

As did Lace. “I guess I have a wedding to prepare for then. My own.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Starting earlier that same day, Gabriel and his fellow Scoundrels had allowed their wives to believe they would remain at Ashcroft Towers smoking, drinking, and reminiscing, when he had, in fact, roped them into doing manual labor.

Gabriel could not, of course, utilize the church for his surprise wedding because the bishop not only banned him from the vestry, he’d confiscated Gabe’s key to the church’s Gothic front doors.

Because Gabriel had a wedding to plan and his allegiance to the bishop had been forcibly severed, he had not, however, returned the outside key to the church basement. True, he would minister to any member of St. Swithin’s who so wished in future, but the bishop could go to . . . wherever self-aggrandizing bishops went after death.

Behind the church with his cohorts, Gabriel had thrown back a set of rusty, paint-chipped, double doors, near level with the ground, and revealed an old set of crude stone stairs that led into abject darkness. He and the Scoundrels skulked downward and, in slow measure
,
borrowe
d
an ancient set of pews.

Three men on a length. They carried them toward the old Abbey ruins, where he and Lace played as children and, years later, made love for the first time.

What better place to make her his wife? Now if only he could get her to show up for the wedding, or more to the point, if he could think of a way to ask her that would make her eager to become his wife. Telling her she must, after sleeping with him in the gypsy wagon, had not been brilliant, he could now see. And the thought of losing her, again . . . well, that just made him ill. A life without her was not to be borne.