First time in print, fromThe New York Times Bestselling Author Annette Blair:

HOLY SCOUNDREL, Knave of Hearts, Book Four of Four

—Gabe, a passionate widower had sworn off passion.

—Now Lace, his first love, is back...with a tarnished reputation.

—She's there to help raise her niece/his step-daughter...

—But the rich, powerful town gossip won’t have it.

—Hidden secrets, a forbidden love, and trouble...plenty of it.

—HOLY SCOUNDREL!

A Super Sexy Regency Historical Romance

SEA SCOUNDREL (Lady Patience, the Uncut Version), Knave of Hearts, One

CATIVE SCOUNDREL (Lady Faith, the Uncut Version), Knave of Hearts, Two

PROPER SCOUNDREL (Scoundrel in Disguise, Revised), Knave of Hearts, Three

Review Quotes forNew York Times Bestselling Author Annette Blair’s Historicals:

“Annette Blair is a master at sweeping you from one emotion to the next with the flip of a page. Her humor mixed with life challenges give you characters with dignity and laced with fun. You can’t help but feel good when you’ve finished one of her books.” Grade: A+ Sandy, The Good, the Bad, and the Unread

“Annette Blair is one of my all time favorite authors. Her writing skill is in a league by itself. Very Highly Recommend.” Suzie Housley, Myshelf.com, Explicit Content

“Annette Blair is a master of the Historical Romance genre. I cannot recommend this tale highly enough and I plan to tell everyone I know about it.” Detra Fitch, Vine Voice Reviewer

“Ms. Blair grounds the story in her time period, gives enough details to be engrossing then weaves a tale that sweeps the reader from page to page. The suspense element is handled with a masterful touch. I eagerly await her next offering.” Karen Larson, Scribes World

“Annette Blair is a master artist in the world of romantic fiction. A strong plot provides the canvas for her compelling characters. Vivid settings and engaging minor characters beautifully augment the portrait. Fascinating subplots add depth. Spicy sexual encounters supply bold strokes . . . A romantic masterpiece.” Linda Lukow, MyShelf.com

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Copyright:

First published in e-book format, January 2013

Copyright 2013 by Annette Blair

Published by ABA LLC, January 13, 2013

E-book Cover Copyright 2013 Calista Taylor, www.calistataylor.com

Photoshop Brushes: Dark Garden Photography

All rights reserved.

This is a historical work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and establishments is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means, including those not yet invented, without permission of the copyright owner, is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

Table of Contents

Note to Reader

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Epilogue

Excerpt: Unmistakable Rogue by Annette Blair

Excerpt: Prince of Pleasure by Sandra Marton

Excerpt: Bluegrass State of Mind by Kathleen Brooks

Annette Blair Bio

Contact Annette

Awards and Accolades

Annette Blair Booklist

Note to Reader

Surprisingly, there seem to be several schools of thought as to the length of the Regency Period. Purists say it lasted from 1811 to 1820, at the time George IV ruled as Regent during the well-known “madness” of his father. Others say that the Prince Regent’s influence lasted beyond 1820, and not until William IV came to the throne in 1830 did the Regency period finally come to an end. And still others place the Regency at 1811 to 1837, when Queen Victoria succeeded William IV.

For this series, I have chosen the broadest Regency timeframe.

Dedication:

To Brother Shawn, SC

For years of treasured friendship

And a shared sense of the ridiculous.

Thanks for believing in me

From the first sale

ToThe New York Times.

Merci, Mon Frère.

Je croyais toujours en vous, aussi.

Je t’aime.

Knave of Hearts, Four

HOLY SCOUNDREL

by

Annette Blair

PROLOGUE

The Zebulon Fishkill Academy for Unruly Boys, 1805

“Blighted knave!” Old Fishface said as he tossed Gabriel Kendrick by the scruff of his neck into the heating stewpot of rotting hay, sweaty animals, and ripe manure. The Academy stable.

“Muck out a stall,” the heartless schoolmaster told one of the younger dormitory discards, “and find yourself a place to sleep, likethese scoundrels did. Simply keep the animals clean, groomed, and fed, and you might fare half as well.”

Gabe regarded the blighters who came before him—the unruliest of the unruly—spines straight, proud despite their punishments, and he raised his chin as high as theirs.

“This one,” Fishface said, pointing his way, “is here at the whim of an aristocrat. A charity case. Lady Bountiful does not want the vicar’s son sniffing aroundher girl.”

So much for the pretense of respectability, Gabe thought.

“Lord or pauper matters not to me,” Fishface added, slapping his big belly, “as long as tuition is paid. These are your quarters, the lot of you. Make the best of it.”

Their jailer-schoolmaster slammed the door and left them to their own devices.

“He set to kick us out of school?” Gabe asked his new inmates.

Justin Devereux, a future duke, chuckled. “’Course not. He wants the money we bring in. If he had his way, he’d keep us forever. We grow up and break out is how we leavethis place.”

“Except for Daventry here,” Gabe said. “TheLadywho . . .sponsors me is springing him. He’s the spare to her heir.”

Nick Daventry laughed. “Beingnearly an heir is, I vow, the longest prison sentence a man can get.”

Gabe eyed Justin Devereux. “You do know that your brother Vincent,your father’s spare, got you kicked in here with a vile lie, do you not?”

Justin gave a half nod. “SinceVincentwas not firstborn, then yes, he usuallyis my problem.”

Andover, in line to be a marquess, stepped toward him. “Kendrick? Be ye knave or scoundrel?”

Gabe thought about that. “Bit a’ both, I’d say. Knave of hearts, maybe. But Fishface is right to worry about me and the girl with the title. I won’t give her up.”As if her mother would let him near Lacey after this.

“Guess we’re all of a piece,” Andover said. “Each a knave of hearts and scoundrels all.”

Marcus Fitzalan slapped Gabriel on the back. “We have to make our time here count. Form a bond; be there for each other when needed. Swear a lifetime oath.”

Andover nodded. “So for now,and after we go our separate ways, we show our scoundrel faces to the world but we send for each other in times of trouble, whatever life hands us?”

“I like that,” Gabriel said, a vicar’s son determined to match the strength of an aristocrat. “I might not be rich, but I’m strong. I can hold up my end. Whatever you say.”

“Till the end of our days,” Fitzalan cautioned. “We’ve bonded in our rebellion, and that’s the strongest of friendships forged.”

Gabriel smiled.

So knaves and scoundrels, lords and paupers alike, they sealed a lifetime oath, each raising a tin cup of brackish water.

And a fine pact they made of it.

CHAPTER ONE

Arundel, The South Downs, West Sussex

England, Summer 1830

Lacey Ashton, unnoticed in the midnight shadows, fixed her hungry gaze upon Gabriel Kendrick, the most formidable of the ghosts she had come home to face.

Dwarfing his surroundings, Gabriel bent to keep his head from an intimate encounter with a raw-oak barn beam while protecting the newborn lamb in his keeping, a smile in his eyes, if not on his face . . . until he saw her. Gabriel the indomitable—named for the bright angel when he should have been named for the dark—stood frozen in vulnerability.

A heartbeat, no more, and the scoundrel narrowed his eyes, stepped forward, stretched to his full staggering height, and squared his shoulders to a stunning span. Lucifer, sighting prey, spreading charred wings.

His chiseled features, graven in shadow, sharpened to unforgiving angles as his dark-fire gaze seared her.

Lacey stepped back. In that moment, despite her resolve, she wanted nothing more than to turn tail and run . . . except that she could not seem to move.

Here stood the father of her child, while between them stood the lie she’d told to deny it—saving him and tormenting him in one horrific stroke.

A horse snuffled and shuffled in its stall, freeing the scent of hay musk into the grip of silence, injecting reality into unreality, replacing the past with the present, and allowing her finally to draw breath.

As forbidding as her nemesis appeared in lantern light, dressed entirely in black, the tiny white lamb tucked into his frock coat humanized him, the contrast bringing his cleric’s collar into conspicuous and bright relief.

A vicar’s trappings, a scoundrel’s soul, and no one seemed to know, save her.

He no longer fit the image of the young man she had carried in her heart. His features, familiar despite the firmness of his jaw, had been lined and bronzed by time and parish responsibilities to a mature and patrician air. His leonine mane, still an overlong tumble of sooty waves, thick and lush, bore strokes of gray at the temples. No phantasm here, but the bane of her existence in the flesh, more daunting, more vitally masculine. More a threat to her sanity than ever.

As if he could read her, Gabriel shifted his stance, on guard, watchful, yet before her eyes, a hard-won humility replaced his arrogance.

He did not do humble well, and his attempt jarred her.

He’d always been proud, even when they were children—he, the indigent son of a vicar who squandered parish funds; she, the daughter of a duke. But now, their roles had been reversed, and the duke’s daughter stood, impoverished, disowned, before the boy who’d adored her, then hated her, with all his heart, face to face for the first time in five years. “Gabriel,” she said, wishing her voice did not tremble and her body did not remember.

For his part, Gabe foolishly wondered if the sum and substance of all his dreams, good and bad, could hear the sound of his cold stone heart knocking against his ribs, bruising him to his core. “Lace,” he said, her name emerging raw and raspy.

Mortified at his self-betrayal, he cleared his throat to try again, but a shadow fell between them, cutting the anguish of the moment.

Gabe focused on the newcomer. Yves “Ivy” St. Cyr stood there beaming, his little red dog at his heels. Ivy, whose puppet wagon they’d once chased giggling down High Street. The happy vagabond grasped Gabe’s hand and pumped it, making him feel the dolt for failing to extend it. “Ivy,” Gabe said, relieved his voice worked again.

The puppet master beamed. “I see you found the surprise I brought you.”

Found it? He could not take his eyes from it.

“Yes, Gabriel,” Lacey said. “I have come home.”

As was her habit and his curse, she answered his unspoken thought. Whether her words eased or deepened his anxiety, he could not decide, but he hoped fervently that his shock and yearning were not as plainly writ on his brow for her to read.

“She’s staying with me for now,” Ivy said. “Helping with my puppet shows until she finds a place here in Arundel to live. There’splenty of room in my wagon.”

Gabe worked to comprehend Ivy’s words and form a coherent response, while the horrible gladness burgeoning inside him begged release to the point it constricted his chest and stole his breath. He found concentration necessary to fill his lungs.

“You’ll stay at Rectory Cottage,” he said. “Both of you. More room than in that gypsy wagon.” Gabe raised a hand while Ivy prepared a token protest.

Gabe shook his head. “No argument, now.” He had always suspected that Ivy enjoyed making people as well as puppets dance, though with the best of intentions. He’d probably kept Lace as up to date on his life and failings as Ivy kept him apprised of Lacey’s unholy exile. So of course the puppeteer offered no argument to having a roof over his head and a hearth to warm himself. But Ivy did grin and wink at Lacey. “Took pity on my old bones, he did.”

And there, Gabe thought, did they not know each other almost too well?

As Lace had once commanded, Gabe bowed before her. “My lady.” Instantly, Gabe saw that his insolent use of a title was a hurtful reminder of her status before her fall from grace, and for that reason, it pierced him as well. “I apologize,” he said. “That was . . . unforgivable.”

“Yes, it was.”

She tried, and failed, to mask her distress.

Gabe watched, his heart racing as she turned to their friend. “Ivy,” she said, “I can’t stay. I’ll sleep in the wagon while I look for—No, I’ll take the morning coach back to Sussex. Staying won’t do.”

Panic rushed him. Handing Ivy the lamb, Gabe placed the flat of his hand against Lacey’s back to stop her retreat, turn her, and propel her toward the vicarage before she objected further.

Her familiar heat warmed his palm and spiraled like smoke from a chimney to surround his icy heart, causing a painful, thumping nudge in the center of his chest.

He retrieved his hand and fisted it in self-preservation as he looked about him for an answer to his dilemma.

The vicarage kitchen, friendly, welcoming, pleased him absurdly, seeing it as he was through Lacey’s eyes. But she stepped from his reach. “I won’t stay. I won’t.”

He could not let her go. Not again. Just thinking about the possibility wounded him. Like a knife had sliced him open, the thought of losing her again near left him bleeding.

To save himself, he turned and bent on his haunches to stoke the fire in the grate, chase the damp, and warm the undersized lamb.

Ivy’s pup, a German Dachshund, placed her front paws against his thigh seeking attention, its tail beating an amiable tattoo, yet Gabe could concentrate on nothing save Lacey.

Lace home, here, in his house, where he’d pictured her a hundred times. A thousand.

His Lacey. As beautiful as ever. More beautiful. His.

No, not his. Never again his. That was past.

He was a proper vicar now, staid, unemotional, his passion a vice overcome. Long-buried. Dead. Except that it was not, he had just tonight discovered.

Gabe turned to the sound of a throat being cleared, almost surprised to find Ivy standing there, exhausted, a sleepy lamb in his arms.

“It’s late; I’ll prepare your rooms,” Gabe said, rising from the hearth. “MacKenzie’s asleep.”

The lamb bleated and Gabe reached to stroke the downy-soft head against Ivy’s arm.

“She’s hungry, the wee thing,” Lace said.

“I was planning to fix a bottle.” Gabe felt stupid, overlarge, oafish beside Lace, and remembered a time that hadn’t mattered.

“Did she lose her mother?” Lace asked.

Gabe relieved Ivy of his burden, feeling more comfortable with the lamb in his arms like a shield, he thought fleetingly, but against what? “She’s a twin,” he said, “and a runt to boot. Her mother rejected her.” He stroked the fragile neck and the mite closed its eyes in ecstasy.

Obviously pierced by the memory of a mother’s rejection, Lacey nevertheless watched, transfixed, as if he,and only he, could soothe her as well.

Hope flared in him. He saw . . . yearning . . . in her blue-green eyes. The kind that had once made him lower her to the grass and—

The fire snapped, shooting sparks into the air, breaking the taut thread of tension between them.

They both stepped back, set free by the sound.

Lace looked anywhere but at him. “I’ll fix her a bottle.”

“I’ll get you a bottle.” They spoke together, stopped together.

He gave a half-nod and set the lamb on its wobbly legs. Then he proceeded to take everything from the scullery that Lace would need to feed the mite.

Not sure what more he could say without exposing old wounds, Gabe nodded and headed out to get their bags. The click, click, click of puppy paws on the slate floor behind him assured him that Ivy and his dog followed.

Once Gabriel quit the room, Lacey nearly swooned from the effort she’d expended pretending indifference while jolted out of mind.

She glanced about her at the kitchen that had been a haven for half her life. Twenty years ago, Gabriel’s mother had taught her to make jam tarts and sew her first stitch by this very hearth.

Here, tonight, she came face to face with the stormy, soul-deep longing that led to her downfall—memories she could not classify; she had not come to terms with them after five years. In her mind, they were not wicked, though not quite righteous, either. Nevertheless, she’d brought upon her family the ultimate disgrace.

After the birth, and death, of her fatherless child, Ivy had taken her from here, where she grew up, to the Peacehaven Home for Downtrodden Women, in Newhaven on the Sussex Coast. There, she’d tried to hide. But she’d been brought back to life with a vengeance and with love, first by Jade, and then her girls—women really, who had suffered at the hands of their men. Eventually, Jade’s Marcus, too, had helped bring her back.

At Peacehaven, she’d regained her self-respect, grown strong, confident, assertive. She’d discovered, and finally accepted, that she must face her past before she could hope for a future.

This morning she’d set boldly forth, carrying heart-flags of purpose and determination, eager to brave the world she’d left behind . . . and ended trembling in a vicarage kitchen, fragile as the lamb butting her leg.

Despite herself, Lacey smiled at its antics. “What makes you think I have what you need? Do I look like your mama? Oh.” Lace placed a hand on her aching chest. The self-inflicted wound, unexpected and sharp, the more so in this place where she had brought a fatherless, stillborn babe into the world.

Determined to calm herself before Gabriel returned, she poured milk into a pan to warm as she rinsed a lambing bottle and nipple. She reminded herself that her purpose in returning stood at hand—her little cousin, Gabriel’s stepdaughter, asleep upstairs, the child she would save . . . as soon as she saved herself.

So near, yet so far. So possible, yet not. Only Gabriel stood between her and success, between joy and despair.

Some thingsnever changed.

Lacey sat on the floor near the hearth and coaxed the lamb into her lap by tugging gently as it followed its grip on the nipple.

She was home. To face her ghosts. An entire village of them, specters who’d condemned her and turned their backs on her, called her wanton, and rightly so—Gabriel at their head, she sometimes suspected.

While his flock considered him a saint, they’d called her a sinner. About the latter, they were correct. About the former—Gabriel himself—however, they were mistaken. He was human, all too human. Flawed. No one knew that better than she.

Oddly enough, she believed she’d forgiven him a long time ago. ’Twas herself she could not seem to pardon.

Gabriel returned to the kitchen after bringing Ivy and their bags upstairs, and Lacey tried to appear composed as she sat before the fire, the greedy newborn in her lap suckling lustily.

Gabriel stopped beside her, hands behind his back, a paradox of a scoundrel, bigger than life, deadly handsome, stirring her just by looking at her.

As if he realized it, he stepped away, fixing his gaze on the old oak table with its slab of a top and legs big as tree trunks. Then he sat, confused for a moment as to what to do with his beefy hands, which he placed finally on his thighs.

“Where’s Ivy?” she asked, her dratted voice a wobbling croak.

“Fell asleep while I was showing him his room, the pup beside him. I took off his shoes and threw a blanket over them. Is he getting old, our Ivy?”

“The pup’s name is Tweenie; she’s his shadow. And he’s not as old as he is stubborn. He insisted on driving through, all the way from Newhaven. I’m sorry we arrived so late; we made a late start. Your friend Marcus Fitzalan, a knave of your club, I’ve been told, married my friend Jade today, and we stayed to celebrate. I’m glad we didn’t awaken you.”

“Marc, married? Imagine that.” To her dismay, he rose and dropped down beside her to stroke the drowsing lamb’s lanolin-soft wool.

Too close. Oh, God, he was too close. “The Duke of Ainsley and the Marquess of Andover also send their best. They said you were a holy scoundrel in school.”

As if she hadn’t spoken, the mite roused at Gabriel’s attention and suckled again as if it hadn’t eaten in a week, until it was pulling loudly on air bubbles.

Lacey tried to wrest the empty bottle from the lamb’s grip, and as she did, Gabriel’s big brown hand stroked too far and grazed her breast.

The two of them froze at the contact, gazes locked, a primitive, unnamed energy rising hot and thick between them—an intangible yet undeniable force, savage.

Lacey’s heart raced, her nipples budded, her womanhood flowered. To keep from crying out at her body’s betrayal, she bit her lip and tasted blood.

No wonder Jade’s eagerness for Marcus, Abigail’s for Marc’s brother, Garrett. Love had surrounded her, not just lust. Not like this hot rush between her and Gabriel.

Gabe’s breath left him. He struggled for air. A burning desire flared in him, molten and heavy. He’d controlled passion for years, the more so with his wife, Clara’s, staunch approval after their sorry wedding night. But a minute in Lacey’s company and passion, long-dead, reared up wild and alive.

Trapped. By weakness.

Strength lay in denying passion—a hard-won lesson for him. But around Lacey, lust overcame determination, and strength became a wisp of smoke where once had burned a zealot’s fire.

Lacey. Lace. Home. His Lace.

No, and again, no.

She used to make him call herLady Lacey when he wanted to call her Lace, like the rest of her friends did, except for the day he’d come home a new-minted parson, when he’d finally called her . . . his.

Why did he still feel like that worthless boy with the torn shirt and dirty nails? Why, when his clothes were new and his home comfortable and clean, elegant even? Why, when the gray dress Lace wore, which must once have been blue, had been mended and pressed to a pauper’s shine?

Trapped. By passion. By Lacey. Gabe wanted to swear, to rage. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she gave as good as she got. As only Lacey could.

If it were not for the fact that he wasn’t the only man to know—

Gabe rose to his feet and crossed the kitchen to get as far away from her, from captivation, as possible.

He wasn’t certain he could bear to be near her without taking her into his arms, any more than he could bear the constant reminder of her betrayal and his foolishness.

“I’m looking forward to spending time with my cousin,” she said, her nervous rush of tumbling words pulling Gabe from pain and shivering him to his bones. He gazed at her across the room, hoping he would see no greater significance than her words betrayed. “My daughter,” he said, desperate, for some strange reason, to stake his claim.

Lacey rose, lifting the lamb in her arms. “Your stepdaughter,” she corrected. “I hope she hasn’t forgotten her real father.”

Gabe approached her then. He’d face any and all demons, real or imagined, for Bridget. “Her father died before she was born. Her mother and I married before Bridget turned two. I am the only father she knows.”

“I am her cousin, kin by blood.”

“Blood, as we know, doesnot always tell.”

Lacey stepped back beneath the pain of his verbal blow.

As unexpected to him as to her, his barb had been born of instinct and self-preservation, but as always, her pain became his. He might just take to bleeding on her behalf, and then how foolish would he look?

Frustrated over his callous behavior, over how brutish he must appear to her, he reclaimed the lamb with more force than he intended, yet he could not seem to compose himself. He wished to the devil he didn’t bloody well care how he appeared or how Lace felt. “I’ll show you to your room.”

Preoccupied by his demons, Gabe made for the stairs, then he realized he’d committed the unforgivable and gone before her. He should have allowed a lady to precede him as he would the lowliest in rank . . . except that Lacey was no longer a lady, he hated to remember.

Neither was he a gentleman, she had often reminded him.

He stopped to let her pass.

CHAPTER TWO

Lacey closed the door to the bedroom she’d been given and collapsed against it, burying her face in her hands, until her fingertips came away wet. “No more tears,” she whispered, regarding them, repeating the admonition she’d been given upon leaving Peacehaven in a deluge of watery good-byes. “Look forward, not back,” she’d also been told.

Squaring her shoulders, she gazed about her for her bags, caught sight of the silver jewelry casket on the walnut dressing table, and her heart tripped. Gabe had given her Clara’s room. Her cousin’s room. Her cousin’s husband.

Lacey traced the engraved initials on the hairbrush twice before realization hit, heart-thrumming and hand-trembling. Like a cat scenting cream, she raised her head and found with her gaze the connecting door to Gabriel’s bedroom.

Wild and traitorous, hope flared, but she squashed it like a stinging spider. Gabriel’s choice of accommodation for her meant nothing. This had been her late cousin’s room, after all. His dead wife’s room. Perfect for her cousin Lacey.

Gabriel had been insulting and insinuating since she arrived, Lacey reminded herself as she battled the uncooperative buttons on her dress, proof he did not want her in his life. He’d also been unbending and unforgiving, exactly the way he acted the day she convinced him . . . that her child . . . the day she lost him forever.

“Forever,” she said aloud to remind herself as she dropped into a chair to stare at a cold hearth. Gabriel, more devilishly handsome than any man of the cloth—any man at all—had a right to be. He who could never be hers because to save him, she had destroyed him.

Tired of regrets, of battling an unalterable past, Lacey rose.

Perched on the edge of the old four-poster, she ran her hand over the faded coverlet on which Gabriel’s mother had stitched primroses—a hundred years ago, it seemed—when Lace was about seven and wished the sweet woman was her mother, too.

Her real mother, only society could claim. For hugs and proud smiles, Lacey came here to Rectory Cottage, always more a home and haven than Ashcroft Towers, that ancient stone fortress atop the hill.

In those days, Gabriel was the boy she’d made bow and scrape whenever the fancy took her, and it took her often, horror that she’d been. Back then, he would have done anything she asked.

Lacey wasn’t certain when her inbred disdain for the scabby-kneed peasant who adored her had turned to something more. She remembered only that it had happened in a bright starburst of joy. And for a span, after he’d come home, the new vicar, life was bliss. Then it was hell.

Lacey rose and worked her stiff shoulders before putting on her night-rail, a fine fitted sleeping gown. Standing before the dressing table, she released the pins from her hair and began to plait it. She saw, in the same mirror her cousin had once regarded, that she had aged as well, though no hint of silver threaded the braid between her fingers. Not for another year would she reach Gabriel’s advanced age of thirty-eight.

“Life goes on,” she said softly. It can be good . . . or not. If we’re fortunate, it can be the good we make of it. If we’re unfortunate—as she had witnessed at Peacehaven—life could be hellish, with no blame to us.

Tomorrow she would meet her cousin Bridget, Gabriel’s stepdaughter.

Whether a relationship between her and the child would flower or wither—good, or not—God only knew. However, she felt compelled in some fated way to make good of it.

As she turned back to the bed, Lacey noticed in her open reticule the well-read note from Gabriel that Ivy had passed to her. She took it now and read it for perhaps the hundredth time.

“Ivy, I need your help,”Gabriel had written.“It’s my stepdaughter. Sullen and sad she is, hiding anger and fear behind those big brown empty eyes. Since her mother died, she rarely speaks, never laughs. A man like me, alone with a daughter to raise . . . it’s killing me that I don’t know what to do for her.

“You made me smile when I was young and sad, old friend, even when I was older and sad. You always knew how. Can you come? And bring your puppets? A motherless four-year-old who never laughs . . . how can you resist? Come soon, my friend. Your Faithful Servant, Gabe Kendrick.”

The note was two months old. Gabriel had wanted Ivy to come but he had not expected his dark past to return with the puppeteer.

Lacey slapped the note against her palm. Ivy had known how to get her home. She could not bear to know that Bridget was sad and unhappy. The first time she read the letter, she wept. She knew then that she must return, to bring joy to Bridget’s life, and to set old ghosts to rest so she could get on with her own life.

At first sight, the most redoubtable of her ghosts had seemed an unapproachable challenge, hard and impervious, and yet there were words unspoken in his letter, a deeper meaning hidden between the ones he had committed to paper.

In the note, he expressed a plea, not only for the child, but for the writer as well, though Gabriel would never seek help for himself. Among the vicar’s saintly attributes, there also dwelled a very unsaintly stubbornness, however hard-headed—and more arrogant than anyone knew. The humble village cleric would never admit as much; he would, in fact, be shocked to his black stockings to hear it.

No, he would not ask for himself; he simply did not know he’d done it. Had Ivy caught the twofold plea? She should perhaps confirm her suspicions before she faced Gabriel again.

Lacey donned her wrapper, still tying it when she left her room. Which door would be Ivy’s?

The one at the opposite end of the hall used to be the spare bedroom. She made for it at once, but stopped. It stood ajar, wide enough for her to see Gabriel bent over a small figure settling in for sleep. While her heart cried out to see and meet Bridget on the instant, Lacey held herself in check for the child’s sake.

She watched Gabriel pull up and tuck in a light blanket, whisper a word, kiss a small head. When he straightened, Lacey read his concern for the child in an expression as clear and open as it had once been for her.

The minute he noticed her, he tried to mask the emotion, then he shook his head as if in surrender. Sidestepping the small bed—it was as simple as that for a man his size—he came toward her in the hall, while she stood rooted, knees weak, unable to move forward or back.

Lacey had never been more aware of him as a man of the cloth as she was at this moment, when his pastoral attire revealed so much of the flesh-and-blood vicar beneath.

He had discarded his black frockcoat, unbuttoned his black shirt, and tucked his snow-white cleric’s collar into his pocket. His shirtsleeves, he’d rolled to his elbows, leaving his muscular forearms bare.

Bridget’s door shut with a soft click, snapping Lacy’s gaze to his face.

Stepping before her, he raised a finger to draw a gentle path down her cheek, his look penetrating. “Tear trails,” he whispered, tracing them, his brows furrowed with regret.

A sense of . . . intimacy, or isolation, captured Lacey as if the two of them were not only alone in a darkened hallway but in the universe as well. And she yearned, while no one else was looking, to run her hands along his muscular forearms where her fingertips remembered the feel of the dark hair there as being soft as silk.

“You have done a good job with your parish, Gabriel,” she said, so he would not know how he affected her. “We stopped at the church before coming here. I see that you erased the family blight from pillar to post. It does not look as deprived as your father’s gambling made it, nor so drained as your grandfather’s drinking left it. You cleared the Kendrick name. I am happy for you.”

With barely a wince, quickly forgotten, Gabriel fingered a soft-stroking line of shivers down to the bow at her ruffled bodice, awakening her, sending waves of prickling heat floating to the farthest reaches of her being. And despite a whisper of inner caution, Lacey allowed herself, for the first time since her return, to devour the man she loved with her gaze.

His longish hair feathered away from his face, except for several unruly locks fallen nearly to one eye, and without thought, she swept the undisciplined strands from his brow.

His eyes closed . . . in ecstasy or pain, and she snatched her hand back, but he caught it and placed it against his tripping heart instead.

His thick, black brows and deep-set eyes lent to his features a perpetual scowl, a stern, controlled look, denied at this moment by the rapid beat of his heart. And though the warmth in his gaze also denied ire, his lips did not form a smile.

Lacey remembered that when he did smile, the sun shone brighter.

“One’s dreams,” Gabriel drawled, “do not come true the way one plans. I paid a high price, as have my parishioners. After your mother’s death, when her heir, your cousin Vincent, denied my existence, never mind my living, Lady Prout, widow of the late Sir Gordon Prout, interceded. With Vincent’s blessing, she became the lady bountiful. She pays my wages; therefore, she has the bishop’s ear and me by the, er . . . throat . . . I am daily reminded. At her whim, I could be turned away for the least indiscretion.”

And as horrid as that sounded—as much as she fearedshe was his indiscretion, back to make more trouble—he moved, without relinquishing her hand, stepping closer still, his warmth and scent, tobacco and cloves, enveloping her in a warm cocoon, raising her to a plane where memories lived, gold and good, and she welcomed him with all her heart.

“Lace,” he breathed, his lips less than a whisper from hers.

Penitence for his ancestors’ sins and his dream of redeeming them could no longer hide the desire and passion they had both, apparently, been trying to deny.

A rush of fear stabbed at her, as physical, nearly, as the rush of desire that instigated her panic.

Before she knew she’d moved, Lacey had torn from the pull of his nearness and found herself regarding him from the safety of the room he assigned her.

He hadn’t taken his gaze from her. She had not spoken or struck out, yet he stood alone in the center of the hall, appearing wounded, broken . . . deep down, though he covered his wounds well with a firm jaw, raised chin, and straight spine.

Swallowing a cry of dismay, Lace shut her door on the sight then, with a sob, she realized she’d taken the most painful step thus far in exorcising her demons. “Please, God,” she whispered. “Let it be a step in the right direction.”

Exhausted, as if she’d run for miles, Lacey lay on her bed, and clutched his note in her grasp. The plea inside was soft and gentle, the way she remembered Gabriel could be when he loved. The way he’d been just now in the hall.

So much to think about. So much to take in and consider.

She should leave. Already, she feared she loved him still, that her body would open to his, even if her mind knew the danger. If she had been uncertain before about her ability to withstand the temptation of him, she was the more so since he’d touched her.

She should find a house elsewhere in the village, now, not next week or next month. But the opportunity to remain at Rectory Cottage, if only for a while, became an unexpected gift. Here, she and Bridget could get to know each other in an easy, familiar setting.

No, she could not give up the opportunity, but she must be strong where Gabriel was concerned. She must deny her body’s needs and her soul’s cry. Soon enough, Gabe would remember that he despised her. Better it should happen when she expected it than when she did not.

She almost wished that he expected the blow she feared she might inevitably deal him. He honestly seemed to care for his stepdaughter. Yet how easy would it be for her to take Bridget and leave here forever, if he did not?

He’d said, himself, that the child was unhappy—who wouldn’t be with a brooding man like him for a stepfather?

Any child would be better off with kin who could bring joy to her life than with a man who could not. Lacey hoped that she read him right as he stood by Bridget’s bed, and that she and Gabriel had love in common where Clara’s child was concerned. If they did, he might come to see that Bridget would fare better with her. That Gabe might not understand how good she could be for Bridget troubled Lacey in the same way he seemed troubled by her interest in Clara’s daughter. Unfortunately, more adversity awaited them both, of that Lacey was certain, since some of it would occur at her instigation.

Gabriel had begged help for his child and she had come to help, even if it inevitably meant taking that child to a happier place. As guardedly sympathetic as she felt for Gabriel at this moment, she would stay, and if her earlier instincts proved correct, she might be best to take Bridget, when the time was right, wounded stepfather or not, and leave.

If her instincts proved wrong and Gabriel made Bridget happy in time, she would perhaps get a cottage nearby so Bridget could visit . . . if the locals allowed her to walk the streets without throwing stones.

Lacey’s heart and mind, one strong with regret, the other with conviction, did battle until dawn when she finally slept.

Gabriel had not slept at all.

He’d paced. He’d brooded. He’d lusted for the woman just the other side of the wall in a way he had not lusted since—

“You’re up early,” MacKenzie said as she entered the kitchen, stopping him mid-pace, her grizzled mop of hair standing at odd angles as always of a morning. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Gabriel shook his head. He was neither refusing to answer nor confirming her supposition. The old meddler could interpret his response however she chose; she would anyway.

“Difficult sermon to write?”

God, he hated it when she pried. He sighed. “I was up half the night delivering twin lambs to Lady Hamilton.”

“That ewe’s too old.”

“Tellher that.”

“Humph, ’tis indecent, a ewe her age breeding,” his wizened housekeeper muttered.

Gabe felt a smile forming, until he recalled the real reason he’d paced the night away. “Oh, and we have company, if you must know.”

“Well, of course, I must. I’ll have to make more Boxty and Scotch eggs now, won’t I? Drop scones, too, I’d warrant. How many and who?”

“Two. Ivy St. Cyr. And Lacey.”

The cast iron griddle she’d just pulled from the cupboard hit the floor with a resounding clatter. Mac covered her mouth with her hand, a myriad of emotions marching across her fretful features—fear, acceptance, then, oddly enough, relief. “’Bout time you two—”

Gabe smacked the table with a hand. “No, by God!”

He startled the old bird into a screech.

“MacKenzie, I’m sorry.” He rose, took her arm, and led her to a chair. “Forgive me. That was . . . I’m better now. Are you?” He fetched her a cup of water.

Her stubborn-Scot scowl grew fierce. “Good thing your little one’s still asleep, or it’d take you another month to get her to look at you, after an outburst like that.”

Another blow, this in a different corner of his agate heart.

Why it mattered so desperately, Gabe couldn’t precisely say, but for the life of him, he was determined to get through to that little bundle of bones with big eyes. “You’re right.”

“I’m always right,” MacKenzie was pleased to pronounce, then she removed her apron and climbed the backstairs.

Gabe sat at the kitchen table and scrubbed his face with his palms, the lamb butting his thigh. He leaned down to scratch its head while he listened for sound at the top of the stairs.

Lacey, dressing upstairs.

Lacey, in the hall in her night-rail, smoothing the hair from his brow.

Lacey with ruffles at her neck, like the first time he saw her in the front pew of his father’s church.

“A four-year-old with black ringlets.” Lace said. “Does she remind you of anyone?”

Ivy coughed.

Mac squeaked.

Praise be, Gabe thought, that his little one did not resemble her mother’s oblivious cousin, Lacey, in temperament.

Lacey had liked to work the vicar’s scruffy son in the same way Ivy worked his puppets. But Gabe had adored her anyway and followed her everywhere. He would have kissed the hem of her gown if she’d let him. He was surprised now she’d never commanded it. Lord, she’d been a tyrant.

Then everything changed. He’d been away studying at seminary forever, it seemed. On rare visits home, he saw that time had wrought change in her. A woman grown, her raven hair formed a striking contrast to alabaster skin kissed by roses. Gull-winged brows hovered over bright, verdant eyes and high, perfect cheekbones. Her smile could make poets weep.

Sweet, snatched conversations between them had told him the woman who’d displaced the brat had become as beautiful inside as out.

The day he’d returned for good, the new parson, a boy no more, dressed well, respectable, he’d found her at their favorite haunt.

God’s perfection in a siren’s body, lush, ripe, Lace ran to him, a smile illuminating her joyful features, arms open to embrace him. And he was lost.

Drugged by her welcome, the opium of her skin, the taste and texture of it, he’d kissed her with a passion that frightened him as much as it pleased her.

Dark. Untamed. Forbidden.

The birds chattered, the heavens blessed them with sunshine, and in the ruins of Ashcroft Abbey, he gave his body, heart, and soul to the woman he’d loved with his entire being for as far back as he could remember.

Before three months had passed, that same woman had hardened his heart, torn into his soul with sharpened claws, and left them bleeding. His body wasn’t in any better shape for some good time after that as he hadn’t cared to look after it.

And now she was back.

Gabe stopped pacing. He didn’t even remember standing. Lacey hadn’t been back an entire day and she was tying him in knots.

“Never again,” he growled.

He’d let passion rule him once and all but died of it.

He would not let it rule again.

Lacey would have to go.

CHAPTER THREE

Hearing a scratch at her door, Lacey put down her hairpins, went to open it, and gasped. Dear Nanny Mac, her beloved old nurse enveloped her in strong, welcoming arms, and they wept amidst the joy of an unexpected reunion.

“I didn’t know it was you,” Lacey said. “MacKenzie, he called you. I should have known. How? How did you end up keeping house for the somber parson? You must want to trounce him out of his grouches ten times a day.”

Mac chuckled even as she dragged her handkerchief from her apron pocket to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. “I went to your cousin right off and stayed to help with the bairn. Two years later, we came back from Scotland and Clara married himself. When she was ailing, I made her a promise, and I told his stodginess I’d not be leaving his little one. So here I am, nurse to his angel, housekeeper to him.”

“How is Bridget, Mac? Will it be all right, do you think, to tell her who I am?”

Mac reared back, brows arched, eyes wide.

“Ishouldn’t tell her I’m her mother’s cousin?” Lacey stepped back and hugged herself, rubbed her arms against a sudden chill. “You’re right, of course. It’s too soon after losing her mother. She likely isn’t ready. It’s only been a few months, after all. I’ll say I’m a friend, then, or—”

Mac captured one of her expressive hands, held it still, and squeezed it. “You tell her you’re her mama’s cousin. She’ll be fine with that.”

“But—”

“Ach, don’t know what I was thinking. She needs a . . . younger woman, like a mama, you know? Me, I’m too old. Granny stuff, fine enough, but she needs somebody to teach her to climb trees and run between the raindrops.”

Lacey grinned. “You scolded me for those things. Besides, Gabriel won’t like—”

“Himself? Likes nothing these days, that one. But if anyone can snap him out of his dark moods, it’s you, if only to try his patience so much he hasn’t the time to brood. Quite a change you’ll make.” Mac grinned. “Here, let’s do up your hair and you come down to sit and talk while I cook breakfast.”

Feeling especially attractive this morning, with Mac’s determined help, Lacey embraced relief, once down in the kitchen, when after a terse good-morning, Gabriel did not speak with her. She found herself happier, more comfortable, to chat with Mac. They had years to catch up on. Mac had all but raised her, Clara—and Nick Daventry and his brother, Vincent, too, for that matter, her mother’s heir and spare—all cousins from different levels of the family tree. Difficult to believe thathermother had been the best of them, unless her mother’s title and wealth hadwon her the honor.

Lacey faltered in her conversation several times because she hesitated to mention Clara around Gabriel. Less than two years married, and he’d lost her.

No need to dredge up painful memories. He must have loved her terribly, if his mood was any indication. She, herself, had likely reminded him of Clara last night, and that’s why he’d shown her such unexpected tenderness, despite the bad blood between them.

It shouldn’t hurt to realize. It was only natural.

Startled from her thoughts, Lacey caught him observing her, his rich chocolate gaze fixed on her above his two-handed grasp on the coffee cup at his lips. He’d always preferred coffee over tea. In the last five years, she’d never smelled coffee but that she hadn’t thought of him.

Suddenly, the sound of tiny feet on the kitchen stairs trebled her pulse as every step brought her closer to—

Lacey’s heart nearly stopped.

Ivy dropped his fork.

The poppet on the stairs took no note of the agitation her appearance wrought. Concentrating on her next step, Bridget’s dark eyes were too big for her small, ethereal face, and her thick, black waving hair paled her opalescent skin to milk.

Her cousin was not so much beautiful as striking. She needed color in her cheeks. Bows in her hair. Sunshine. Laughter. She needed a female relative.

Theyneeded each other.

Eyes glistening, Mac grasped Bridget’s tiny shoulders from behind and walked her forward. “Look, lovey, here is my . . . Lacey, your . . . mama’s cousin . . . come to stay.” Mac nodded above the child’s head as if to say she’d done the deed, made the familial connection, taken the burden upon her own shoulders. No wonder her tears.

When Bridget finally looked up and their eyes met for the first time, Lacey’s heart clenched, her soul mourned, and . . . memory stirred. Shaken, but trying not to show it, Lacey smiled and cupped Bridget’s little cheek. She looked like . . . Clara, she supposed, though darker than both her parents. Actually her own father’s coloring came to mind, but then Clara’s father and hers had been brothers.

Bridget’s chocolate eyes assessed her curiously. “You look . . . sad . . . like me,” she said.

Jolted out of mind, Gabriel spilled his coffee and nearly upended Mac’s teapot into a tottering twirl with one shocked move. “Good morning, Cricket,” he said since he’d caught her attention with his clumsiness, and the soft smile he gave her made him look younger. But Bridget turned her face into Mac’s apron.

Gabriel’s smile faded to a parody. Lacey reached out to console him, but he whipped her hand away, his look hostile—nothing new there. He would accept no comfort from her.

Bridget tugged on Lacey’s sleeve, claiming her attention.

“What can I do for you, sweetheart?”

“Your dress is old.”

Despite the embarrassment warming her face, Lacey’s rush of love was so intense and unexpected, it almost hurt. She resettled one of Bridget’s wayward curls. “I know.”

Bridget shrugged and sidled closer. She liked MyLacey. She talked softly and smelled of the flowers that grew in the water meadow, alive and sweet, same as Mama used to smell.

Bridget liked that scent better than the brittle petals NannyMac put in Mama’s trunk and shut away in that fusty old attic.

That smell made her sad and cross.

Bridget leaned against MyLacey’s soft body and shut her eyes to inhale the scent that almost made it seem as if . . . “Mama,” she said.

Mac emitted a strangled sob.

Lacey’s heart skipped and needle pricks attacked her suddenly weak limbs.

The color left Gabriel’s face as if he were jolted to his marrow, aging before their eyes, yet she did not mistake the slight movement of his head, a warning for her not to react.

Even Ivy appeared shaken.

Afraid to do the wrong thing, yet more afraid of failing Bridget by not heeding her unspoken need, Lacey took the child on her lap.

That small, dark head settled against her breast, fitting and feeling perfect.

“Are you hungry, Bridget?” Lacey asked, brushing the hair from the child’s big appraising eyes, checking the rush of emotion that she did not think Bridget would appreciate.

“Cricket,” Bridget corrected, and Gabriel looked up startled and . . . young again.

“Cricket, then. What would you like for breakfast?”

“Boxty, please, with butter and sugar.”

“My favorite. Your mama and I used to . . . ” Lacey hesitated, looked at Gabriel, then Mac, but both were waiting for her to continue, as was Bridget. “Your mama and I liked Boxty best with strawberry jam.”

Cricket sat up looking for Mac.

The old woman placed her hands on her ample hips and shook her head, shivering its silver tufts. “I suppose you’ll be wanting the strawberry jam, now, lovey?”

Bridget nodded, her big eyes eager. “Yes, please.” Lacey looked forward to the day she might glimpse even the hint of a smile in those eyes.

To her secret delight, Bridget refused to leave her lap, even when her breakfast was placed on the table. Lacey pulled the plate in front of them, noting the quick, disapproving lilt of Gabriel’s brow, but she didn’t care. Her arms had ached to hold a child since her own babe had died, and she wasn’t relinquishing the incredible warmth and joy of it for anyone, except Bridget herself.

Lacey kissed the top of her little head, ignoring Gabriel’s steely regard. She saw right away that lack of appetite had nothing to do with Bridget’s small size. She also saw that the child had perfected the art of ignoring her stepfather. In that, Bridget reminded Lacey of herself as a girl, trying to master Gabriel like Ivy did his puppets. Lacey wondered if Bridget’s tormented stepfather realized she was doing it.

“I take your enthusiasm to mean that you like Boxty with strawberry jam?” Lacey asked, and Bridget lowered her fork and swung around to nod. Then she squeaked and turned back in time for them to see Ivy’s pup back away from the table, a fork falling from her mouth to clink at her paws.

Tweenie chewed the forkful of Boxty she’d stolen from Bridget and licked her puppy chops. Then she stood straight up on her tiny hind legs to beg for more.

Bridget gasped and slid off Lacey’s lap to receive a tongue-licking face-wash, and Lacey got down on the floor as well to show her Tweenie’s tricks, Ivy prompting from the table.

Like an outsider watching the domestic scene, jealousy reared up green and ugly in Gabe’s hard-beating heart, so strong, he could barely stand himself for feeling it. After months of ignoring him, Bridget took one look at Lacey, spoke to her, called her mama, of all things, and sat in her lap.

While Gabe was duly ashamed of himself for being jealous, he couldn’t seem to shake it. For the first time in months, Bridget was acting almost like a normal four-year-old, without his help. Since Clara’s death, he’d been sitting up nights watching her sleep, praying for the ability to pull her from her dark, dismal shell, for anything, anyone, that might—

Dear God, couldLacey be the answer to his prayers?

Surely the Deity would not play such a jest as this on one of his faithful servants. Then again, a few weeks ago, he’d panicked after a day of Bridget’s dark, brooding silences and offered God a bargain. He’d promised to build a school for the crofters’ children—in other words, he’d promised the impossible—if Bridget could only be happy again.

While he was more than grateful for Cricket’s animation this morning, he’d wanted, selfishly, to be the one to breathe life into her once more.He’d wanted to be his daughter’s hero. How foolish was that?

Bridget had sometimes seemed as if she’d given up on the world that disappointed her. He’d been worried sick about that, so worried, his own needs became dust in the face of hers. If Lacey was important to Bridget, then Lace was welcome here. Welcome hereforever popped into Gabe’s mind and he shot from his chair to escape it.

Everyone looked at him, even Bridget for an instant.

With little choice but to make an exit, Gabe bent on his haunches to place a kiss on his daughter’s head. “Have a nice day, Cricket.” He rose. “Ivy, you want to come with me on parish visits later and meet your audience?”

“I’d like that; we can talk about when and where to have the first puppet show.”

“See you at the stable around eleven, then. MacKenzie, I’ll be back at teatime. Lace, walk me outside, will you?”

Lacey’s brows furrowed, but she rose graciously. When Bridget hesitated to relinquish her hand, she assured his daughter she’d be right back.

That, more than anything, disturbed Gabe as Lacey walked beside him through the house and out the door.

On the front walk, she turned to him. “Gabriel, I assure you, I had no opportunity to say anything to make her—”

“I am aware of that. Besides, I saw your face.”

“And I saw yours.”

Gabe ignored the concern in her gaze and shrugged. “She’s . . . fragile, our Bridget. I think, Lace, that she needs you.” Gabe took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know your intent as far as staying, but I’d—” He cleared his throat. “I’d appreciate it if you did stay for a while if you could. Bridget’s better already, and frankly, I’d do anything, anything, to see her happy again.”

“Even keep me around?” She turned away quickly and made for the house, but he’d caught the flash of pain in her expression.

“I didn’t say that,” he called, but she shut the door on his words. He’d thought it, but he hadn’t said it.

Gabe fisted his hands and marched off, but he stopped short of going through the kissing gate and dropped to the garden bench, instead. “Blast him for a fool!”

Only one other individual had ever provoked him as much as Lacey—Nicholas Daventry, the accursed father of Lacey’s child. After nearly five years, just remembering made Gabe want to howl with rage and strike something, or someone, preferably Nick himself.

He smacked the granite bench with both hands and welcomed the sting.

Yes, he had good reason to despise Lacey’s association with Daventry, but none at all to despise her love for Clara’s daughter.

Nevertheless, this jealousy tasted the same—vile. He’d best shake it, else he’d wallow in it, and end up as bitter as the malady itself. He would not act the hind end of a horse every time Lacey did something like show Cricket a pup.

He raised his head. Botheration! He’d meant to show her the lamb. The opportunity to do so, coupled with the chance to make up to Lacey, cheered Gabe somewhat as he returned to the house. But back in the kitchen, he found Lace feeding the lamb, Bridget in her lap.

A trickle of blood marred Bridget’s tiny foot, the injury piercing him. “Bridget, your feet are bare! MacKenzie, put her slippers on before she hurts herself again! Blasted slate tiles.”

Quick as a poacher with a fat rabbit, Mac whisked Bridget upstairs.

Lace rose and shook out her skirts with more vehemence than necessary.As if MacKenzie would allow even one dust mote to settle in her domain.

Invisible grime dispatched, Lace regarded the stairs pensively, until they heard a door close upstairs, then she rounded on him. “You shouldn’t have snapped at them like that.”

“I don’t snap!” Gabriel snapped, and winced.

“Lord, it’s grand being together again.” Ivy grinned and raised his teacup. “To old ghosts, and new.”

Later that day, on a jaunt of Lacey’s choice, Bridget pulled her up short. “I don’t like the attic. It smells fusty.”

Lacey urged her along. “You mean musty?”

“That, too.” Bridget plopped down with a heavy sigh to sit in the middle of the stairs. “My legs hurt.”

Lacey smiled and tugged her up. “You make me think of two little girls I once knew, me and your mother.”

“Did you grumble a lot?”

“Only when we didn’t want to do something we didn’t like.”

“I don’t like the attic. I don’t want to go there.”

Lacey grinned. “I know, but we’re going anyway. Did I forget to tell you that complaining doesn’t work?”

“Oh.” Bridget gave a long-suffering sigh. “Why do we gotta go there?”

“Why do wehave to go there?”

“That’s whatI want to know!”

“I want to look through your mother’s things. I don’t have anything to remember her by.”And I want you to understand that she and I are two “different” people. “I didn’t see much of your mama’s downstairs.”

“I have her special book.” Bridget pulled Lacey in the opposite direction. “C’mon, it’s in my room. You can have that.”

“Not so fast, my little beguiler. We’ll go to the attic now and later I’ll read your mama’s book to you. How’s that?”

“It’s notthat kind of book.” Bridget started dragging her feet, catching the toes of her shoes on the steps, in turn, and slowing them down.

Lacey swallowed her laughter. For all Bridget’s dawdling tactics, Lace hadn’t had this much fun in an age. “Your papa and I used to play here when we were young.”

“I never saw my Papa. What did he look like?”

That stopped Lacey. “I meant your stepfather. What do you call him?”

Bridget shrugged.

No wonder Gabe was hurt; Bridget barely looked at him, and she musn’t address him directly, either, Lacey thought as they continued their climb in silence.

The cozy attic appeared nothing so much as a jaunty jumble of junk. Lit by windows round and tall, it spoke of bygone days and forgotten secrets. Judging by Bridget’s face, it must simply seem to her a gloomy place.

“Did you ever look out over the village from here? I vow you can see all the way to Scotland.” Lace stood her on an old trunk to look out the large round window. “See those turrets over there. That’s Ashcroft Towers, where your mama and I grew up. Did you know that?”

Bridget nodded, not the least impressed.

“Oh, and there’s your stepfather’s carriage tottering down Parson’s Hill; guess they never replaced those missing cobbles.” Inspired, Lace turned Bridget to face her. “Why don’t you call him PapaGabe. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He loves you, you know.”

“I know.” Bridget began to undo Lacey’s buttons. “He calls me Cricket.”

“That’s how you know he loves you?”

She nodded and touched Lacey’s hair.

“Not by his hugs and kisses or his keeping your blankets tucked to your chin so you stay warm at night?”

Bridget shrugged again and began to finger-comb Lacey’s hair with great concentration, until she ended up pulling her chignon off-side. When a hank broke free and covered half of Lacey’s face, Bridget’s eyes actually twinkled with mischief, reminding Lacey so much of the happy, carefree little girl who must be hiding inside, that emotion welled up in her and she pulled Bridget close. Then she planted smacking kisses on Bridget’s cheeks, forehead, and nose, and lifted her off the trunk to twirl her in circles. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” Lace shouted.

Bridget’s sob made her stop. Small arms came hard around her and that small, perfect face pressed into her neck.

Lacey wasn’t certain if going in circles had frightened her or if emotion had overwhelmed her. Either way, she wasn’t letting her go. Lowering the two of them to a trunk, she began to sing.

“Oh dear, what can the matter be?

Dear, dear, what can the matter be?

Oh dear, what can the matter be?

Papa’s so long at the fair.

He promised he’d bring thee a basket of posies,

A garland of lilies, a garland of roses,

A little straw hat, to show the blue ribbons

That tie up thy bonny brown hair.”

Bridget listened and watched transfixed, until Lacey finished and kissed her nose again.

“Mama used to sing to me sometimes,” she said, then, quick as a curious kitten, she scrambled from Lacey’s lap and headed for a small trunk beneath a shaft of dust-filled sunlight. “This is mine.” Bridget ran her small hands over the leather top. “My baby clothes are inside. Do you want to see how little I was?”

Lacey thought of the dress she’d sewn in anticipation of her own babe’s birth and bit back the cry in her heart.

Looking at baby things would not be easy, but Lacey went to kneel beside the child whose wide, innocent eyes begged a response that could not be denied.

The trunk’s lid was ceremoniously lifted, and the topmost item, a soft, shell-pink bonnet, made Bridget squeal with delight. “I used to bethis tiny!” She tried it on, but it sat like a cone on her head and she couldn’t make the ribbons meet beneath her chin, so she tossed it in Lacey’s lap. “Wait till you see my favorite. It has yellow roses and—”

“What’s this, lovey, making a mess for me, are you?” Mac bustled Bridget aside to repack the baby things.

“I thought you were looking for Clara’s trunk,” she said. Mac gave Lacey a piercing look, claimed the small trunk, and made for the stairs, taking something without name that Lacey wanted without reason.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mac muttered her way down the attic stairs. Lacey didn’t know why she was disappointed; she hadn’t wanted to look at baby clothes. Dismissing her chagrin as nonsense, she sat forward, and one of Bridget’s baby bonnets fell from her lap. Almost expecting Nanny to snatch it up, Lace slipped it into her pocket.

On bended knee, Bridget stared into Clara’s open trunk as if it held a nest of vipers. Lacey knelt beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulder to pull her close. “Show me your favorite of Mama’s dresses.”

Bridget shook her head, swallowed, and sniffed.

“Oh, darling, don’t cry.”

“What’s this?” came a strange, squeaky voice. “Did I hear someone crying?” A hand puppet peeked around the doorjamb, from nowhere, appearing both clandestine and curious.

Bridget gasped and approached it in awe, stopping a distance away to shake her head. “I’m not crying. The smell inside my Mama’s trunk itches my nose and makes my eyes . . . wet.” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “See? All better. What’syour name?”

“I’m Hector the Hungry Hedgehog and I’m lonesome. Will you talk with me?”

Bridget nodded, making Lacey wonder if Ivy could see around corners.

“What’s your name?” Hector asked.

“Bridget. My papa, but not, he calls me Cricket.”

“You have a papa, but not?”

Bridget nodded again. “PapaGabe.”

With a frisson of elated apprehension, Lacey wondered what Gabe wouldreally think of the name.

“Ah, I see.That papa. Well, then, Cricket, do you think perhaps you might be just a little bit sad today?”

“I am not sad.”

“Worried then?”

Bridget pondered the possibility and finally nodded.

“Can you tell me what’s bothering you? Perhaps I can help.”

Bridget sighed, raised her arms and dropped them in defeat. “I want to keep MyLacey and I’m afraid my . . . PapaGabe won’t let me,” she ended on a rush.

“And who is MyLacey? Is she a kitten or a puppy?”

Bridget took Lacey’s hand and dragged her before Hedgehog. “She’s my mama’s cousin and I want her to stay. Can you talk to my . . . to PapaGabe for me?”

Lacey had come home, expecting the freedom to leave at anytime, but now she knew for certain that she could not. Nor would she want it any other way.

“MyLacey is your cousin, then?”

Bridget looked up at her, wide-eyed and expectant. “Are you?”

Lace knelt down, tweaked Bridget’s nose, and nodded because the lump in her throat made it impossible to speak.

“Sheis my cousin. She is!” The discovery clearly pleased Bridget. However, smiling did not come easily or naturally to the child, a sad truth that Lacey planned to correct.

Hedgehog bowed gallantly. “Hello, Cousin Lacey.”

“Nooo, it’s MyLacey. NannyMac said so.”

“Oops, sorry. Hmm. Well, do you smell that?” Hedgehog’s nose crinkled with enthusiastic sniffs. “I think dinner’s about ready. Mmm. Before I go, Cricket, promise me you’ll tell your PapaGabe how you feel about MyLacey. I’m sure he’ll listen. He cares very much about you, and about MyLacey, too, and he wouldn’t want either of you to worry. All right?”

Bridget’s sigh was audible. “All right.” Her answer, however, was barely and reluctantly given.

“Good. Can I visit you again? I like talking with you.”

“Yes, please.”

“G’bye, Cricket. Bye, MyLacey.”

Bridget stepped into Lacey’s embrace after Hector left, and they stayed that way, until Bridget spoke softly near her ear. “Do wegotta go through Mama’s trunk?”

Joy infused Lacey. Bridget clearly knew the difference between her and Clara, and she loved her anyway. “No, Baby, we don’t. Let’s go downstairs. You can brush my hair so I can put it up again.”

“Will you brush mine?”

“I’d love to.”

Gabe was so busy with vicariate work, he came late for Ivy—at one o’clock, not eleven—and MacKenzie poured Gabe’s cold pot of coffee down the drain because the two men never did make it back by teatime.

Lacey toured Rectory Farm, Bridget’s hand in hers, while Bridget talked nonstop, from buttery to bower, dovecote to stable, as if Lacey had never seen any of it before, when, in fact, this was all part of her childhood.

Gabriel, like his father and grandfather before him, had expected to owe his rectory living to her estranged family. Right now, however, her distant cousin, Victor Daventry, held the title: Eleventh Duke of Ashcroft. She didn’t know Victor well as an adult, but what she did know, she didn’t much like. He’d been degrading and insulting after she’d named his younger brother, Nick, as the father of her child. Though Nick had offered himself up for the position, a bold lie, because he’d been bound for America the following week, anyway, which would put him beyond the long arm of her mother’s fury. A dear friend and distant cousin, Nick had practically saved her life and definitely Gabriel’s living. Because if the truth came out, Gabriel could never have been a vicar.

On the other hand, when she told Gabe that Nick fathered her babe, after she told her mother the lie, she expected from Gabe . . . trust, faith, and an unwavering love that denied the possibility of betrayal. She’d wanted to hear, “Nick, by all that’s holy, is not your babe’s father! I am!” Gabriel should have believed as much to the roots of his being. Those wordsshould have slipped off his tongue. Later, they could have told her mother that Gabe would save her by marrying her and raising Nick’s babe as his own.

Her mother would have rewarded and adored her hero for turning her from an unwed mother into a respectable vicar’s wife. Gabriel Kendrick would have become a well-paid vicar and a pampered son-in-law.

At the worst, if he believed her lie, she’d still expected him to offer his name in marriage. But he did not offer. He paled, turned, and left Ashcroft Towers.

She had not expected to be exiled, to return a pariah, or to find the vicar at a distinct disadvantage in his livelihood.

Prout held Gabriel’s reigns, and a scarier life she could not imagine. It had always been whispered that Lady Prout got her way or someone would pay.

So long as Bridget was not made to do so.

At an ancient, gnarled beech, Lacey boosted her up. And when they perched together in the lowest, widest fork, Lace took from her pocket a beloved storybook, adapted and hand-printed by Clara’s mother, calledGrimm for Girls,in which she’d left out the gruesome parts. Lacey readSnow White—until Gabriel’s “Good God,” made them look down.

Hands on his hips, he stared up at them, close enough for Lacey to— She tapped his shoulder with her slippered foot. “Join us. It’s cozy up here.”

To Bridget’s wide-eyed shock, he did, which made her scoot into Lacey’s lap, which put a broody storm in Gabriel’s eyes.

The tempest cleared quickly enough, however, when Bridget told him that MyLacey planned to readRapunzel next.

“Proceed,” he said. “I shall remain quiet as a church mouse so, Cricket, you can hear every delectable word.”

She hid her face against Lacey’s breast.

But quiet as mouse bait, he remained for a good hour—except for several speaking glances her way. During that time, Lacey became alive to details: her raspy voice and dry lips, his attention to the tongue with which she moistened those lips. The trembling hand she hid beneath her skirt but had to reveal or lose her single-handed death-grip on the book. She became more acutely aware of Gabriel’s thigh pressed along her own, of his stroking the hair on Cricket’s sleepy head pressed wondrously to her breast. She felt for all the world as if they were a family. Impossible with him grieving for Clara and mistrusting her.

When she read the last page, she hated for the peaceful interlude to end, however much of an anomaly she found it.

At dinner, Ivy regaled them with a story about a brawny farmer with the toothache who’d monopolized Gabriel’s afternoon, the man moaning and groaning about dying and getting it over with.

“He would accept help,” Ivy said, “if Gabriel, himself, would extract the tooth, which could only be done by drowning the sniveling giant in enough spirits to knock him off his clumsy feet.”

“I had no idea that vicars extracted teeth,” Lacey said.

Gabriel regarded her soberly, though his eye twinkle belied his mood. “There is no end to my talent,” he said, sending a charged shiver of anticipation through her.

That night, Lacey experienced the rare joy of giving Bridget a bath. When she brought her downstairs afterward to say goodnight, Bridget in her lawn night-rail, hair brushed to a silken shine, slippers on her feet, Gabriel rose as they entered the parlor. He bit his lip, Lace saw, against a treacherous smile. “Bridget, you look lovely. Lace, you look as if you lost a fight with a flapping duck.”

Lacey grinned, but Bridget just cocked her head. Had she never heard anything so playfully absurd from her PapaGabe before?

To Lacey’s disappointment, Bridget had not addressed him as such, nor asked to speak with him. Not that she cared whether Bridget asked for her to stay, she simply wanted her to talk to Gabriel. Say something. Anything. Why she wanted it, since she herself was secretly hoping to be forced to take Bridget to raise, Lacey wasn’t sure. She guessed she didn’t know what she wanted anymore.

It no longer mattered; Bridget’s needs would come first.

Obviously, the task of putting her down for the night was Gabriel’s, which Bridget accepted. However, after she took his offered hand, she dragged him with her to grab Lacey’s hand and tugged her off the settee and from the room along with them.

Thus, Lacey found herself climbing up an evening-dim stairway with Gabriel, a child between them, as it should have been but for the fact that God had taken their daughter home with Him at her birth. As perfect as the scene seemed, she must remember that she and Gabriel were not meant to be. She only hoped Bridget would not find the lesson a difficult one to understand when the time came for them to part.

She would not go far, but leave this house, she must.

When they entered the child’s room, Gabriel took off his frockcoat and threw it over a chair. Bridget climbed on her bed, knelt and began to unbutton his waistcoat, unhooking his fob and dropping it and his watch into one of his pockets. She unhooked the button studs at his cuffs, put them in another pocket and rolled up his shirtsleeves to his elbows.

He gazed at Lacey over Bridget’s head, giving her a lopsided half-grin that shot straight to her heart. “Cricket likes to do buttons. She’s been doing them since . . . forever.”

Lacey felt like a child out in the snow, nose to the window, gazing on a warm family scene in which she ached to be included.

Bridget undid Gabriel’s top shirt buttons to free his cleric’s collar and tuck it into his breast pocket with his studs—as she must have done when he came in last night.

“Now, MyLacey,” she said.

“What?”

Bridget motioned her forward. “C’mere.”

Lacey got her top three buttons and the bow at her bodice undone, then Bridget placed her head on Lacey’s breast, another skip to her heart, those small arms coming around her waist to squeeze.

Grief, love, sorrow, and joy mingled and welled up in Lacey. She laid her cheek against Bridget’s soft curls and closed her eyes. “Thank you for a splendid day, sweetheart. It was the best I ever had.”

“I love you,” Bridget whispered.

Lacey opened her eyes to find Gabriel pale as chalk for the second time that day.

She was as elated as she was saddened by the words, because it hurt Gabriel not to be told the same.

“I love you too, darling,” she whispered.

“I know. Mama told me so.”

“Your mama told you I loved you?” Lacey asked.

Bridget nodded. “She said I had a cousin who loved me like an aunt, but I didn’t knowyou were that cousin until Hedgehog said so. I’m glad Mama was right.” Bridget then knelt with Gabriel beside her bed to say her prayers, but when she started, he touched her little arm to stop her, looked up, took Lacey by the hand, warming it and her heart with his touch, and pulled her down beside them.

How right it felt to be here, beside this child and this man, however soon their paths must diverge.

Gabriel’s shoulders seemed to relax. “You may begin now, Cricket.”

“Bless Mama and Papa in heaven,” she said, peeking up at Gabe for a blink. “And make PapaGabe let MyLacey stay. Amen,” she said on a rush.

Lacey bit her lip on a bubble of laughter.

After offering each of them her rosebud lips, Bridget settled on her side. Gabriel tucked her blankets to her chin and kissed her brow one last time. Lacey stood watching until Bridget opened one eye as if to say “well?”

Lacey kissed her nose. “See you for Boxty and jam in the morning. Sleep well.”

They left the room with Gabriel’s hand at her elbow, thank God, for Lacey could not have made it on her own. “I’m sorry,” she whispered the minute he shut Bridget’s door.

“For what?”

“Don’t even try to cozen me, Gabriel Kendrick,” Lacey whispered. “I’m the little girl who knew you better than you knew yourself. You’d give your right arm to have Bridget say she loves you, and I walk in and get it handed to me on a silver salver.”

He sighed and opened his warm hand against her back as if to walk her to her bedroom door, yet he remained in the same spot. “I fell in love with her, Lace, the first time Clara placed her in my arms. You should have seen her. She was the tiniest thing, even at two, with a thick crown of raven curls all over her head. She used to love it when I played with her, Clara egging us on. If I pretended she was exhausting me, Bridget would laugh and tease me until I gave her more attention. “

“What happened between you then, so it’s come to this?” Lacey asked.

“Cricket’s laughter stopped when Clara got sick, and since she died, Bridget hasn’t directed more than a word, and never a smile, my way. Yes, she said she loved you, but she calledme PapaGabe, and frankly, that’s the best I’ve had from her in a long while. It’s as if she thinks—” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re going to think I’m daft, but I feel as if she blames me somehow for Clara’s death.”

“Oh, Gabriel, no.” Lacey had never wanted to comfort him more. The urge was so great and dangerous, she stepped from his touch. “I’m sure she doesn’t. She’s simply a little girl who’s lost her mother, confused and sad. She’ll be happy again soon.”

“She will if you stay. You heard her. One day with you and she’s more herself than she’s been in months.” He turned away, ran his hand through the roguish disarray he’d already made of his hair, and turned back as if he didn’t know where to put himself.

“I’m not saying this because of Bridget, though you know I’d give my life for her, so I suppose I couldn’t fault you for thinking I’d lie for her because I would.” He raised his arms and dropped them. “Blast, I’m making a muddle of this. It’s been a relief being able to discuss my concern for her with you.”

He sighed. “I’m trying to say that this has been a good day for me. too, becauseyou’re here . . . for me, too, not just for her.”

“Gabriel Kendrick, I do believe that’s the most you’ve ever said to me, or anyone.”

He looked sheepish. “Wait till you hear one of my sermons.”

She grinned.

“Stay, Lace. For as long as you want.”

“There’ll be talk.”

“To the devil with the gossipmongers. That’s the devil’s talk. Worthless.”

“But painful.” She spoke true with no idea it would begin so soon.

It rained on the day of the first puppet show, so Gabe arranged to bring Ivy’s gypsy wagon and puppet stage into the carriage house. Like other Ashcroft Estate buildings, the carriage house sat nearer to Rectory Cottage, away from the castle her family once owned. Gabe’s church, farm, and cottage, though they belonged to the Ashcroft Estate as well, were also situated on this distant corner of estate property.

More than the local children attended the puppet show. Prout the Malevolent—Gabriel’s “patron”—led the charge of the gossipmongers. Her ample bosom heaved as she watched and tattled, and Lace heard the wordsexiled in disgraceandSociety for Downtrodden Women.

Eventually Prout actually peered through her quizzing glass, and Lace felt like a bug beneath a lens, while Prout’s audience nodded and threw their own suspicious looks.

Lace figured she could cower or give them something to talk about, so she approached them. “Not only an inmate. I graduated to teaching there. And I loved it.”

Oblivious to the undercurrents of devil’s talk, Gabriel ran from his church to the carriage house carrying benches, definitely notbetween the raindrops. Lace checked on Bridget, Tweenie on a leash, a line of children behind her, and wondered who was having more fun, Bridget or Ivy, who was watching her. Every so often, he’d point from Bridget to Lacey as if to say, “Look at her, she’s just like you were.”

As the object of such conjecture, Lace enjoyed Ivy’s tease more than Prout’s tattle, so she changed course and ran to help Gabriel.

By the time there were benches enough, they were soaked. Gabriel took one good look at her wet gown up front and transferred his mackintosh to Lacey to warm her and hide the evidence of her budding womanhood, going so far as to button her bodice from the neck down, while Bridget buttoned her from the hem up. How must this look to Prout?

The thought made Lacey laugh rather effervescently because that’s how she felt—decadent and proud of it.

She set her shoes and Gabe’s to dry near the rustic hearth at the back of the carriage house, leaving Gabriel looking like a water-slick predator in stockinged feet, she the willing and besotted captive. So be it.

Julian Gorham, a boyhood friend, dapper as ever, came right over to take Lacey’s hands. “My dear girl, how good it is to see you. Howhave you been?”

“Missing home, Julian, but I’m doing better now that I’m back.”

They both heard Gabriel growl and Prout hiss as Julian tucked her arm in his to walk her about the room and regale her with four years of gossip.

Watching, Prout began to tattle anew, Gabriel to frown the more.

Ivy told everyone the show was about to begin, so Lacey took a seat. Bridget claimed her lap as if she’d had the use of it forever.

Soon Tweenie the dachshund appeared, the brim of a bottoms-up top hat between her teeth, to collect the children’s admission pennies.

Gabriel sat beside her and Bridget but got right back up to help a boy frightened by the dog’s antics. “Put your penny in Tweenie’s hat,” Gabe told the child. “She won’t hurt you.”

When the boy failed to respond, Gabriel picked him up and set him on his lap, one bench over.

Bridget sat forward to watch the boy who’d taken the place in her father’s lap that she was presently shunning but might want after all.

Lacey smiled inwardly.

When the boy finally reached toward the hat, Tweenie dropped it and lunged. The boy screamed but the pup growled as she grabbed the toe of Gabe’s sock between her teeth and began a tug-of-war with his foot.

Lacey knew the winner beforehand. Ivy kept a score of women employed knitting socks to replace the ones Tweenie stole. His pup’s stocking-stash was legendary.

Gabriel laughed so hard, he was roaring by the time Tweenie raced away with her prize, while Bridget had slipped from her lap to go and stand beside him, her eyes big as five pence.

Half of Gabriel’s flock laughed with him, the rest were in shock. Lacey expected that Gabe laughed in public about as often as Tweenie relinquished her prize.

Ivy tossed him a new pair of socks, which Gabriel donned with dispatch, chuckling as he did.

When he got himself under control, he tugged Bridget over and perched her on his other knee. “Did you see that, Cricket?” He tweaked her nose and chuckled, then whispered something in her ear.

Lacey watched Bridget slide off his knee. While she was sorry Bridget didn’t stay with her father, Lacey was also glad she was coming back. She didn’t like sitting alone with Prout and so many others watching.

“C’mon,” Bridget said, taking her hand and walking her to Gabriel, who patted the place beside him. Despite the speculative looks, Lacey proudly took that spot that said she mattered to the vicar.

When Bridget stood before her and Gabriel, gazing from one of them to the other, Lacey took the boy from Gabe. “Sit with your PapaGabe for a while then we’ll trade.”

Bridget seemed somewhat content with that, though Lacey suspected she wasn’t, not quite. But she could hardly sit on both their laps at the same time. That Bridget did not try to send the boy on his way pleased Lacey no end.

After Tweenie collected her pennies, Hector the Hungry Hedgehog came out and bowed. When the applause quieted, he cupped his hand above his eyes to search the crowd. “Cricket,” he called. “Oh, Cricket, are you here?”

Bridget slid off her father’s lap and went to stand before the stage facing Hedgehog. “May I help you?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, you may. Pick up that covered box over there, on the side of the stage. Yes, that pink-and-white striped one. Keep it for me, will you? There’s something inside that Sergei the Wolf wants. And I don’t want him to get it.”

Bridget leaned close. “What is it?”

“Merry Mouse. I want to marry her, but Wolf wants to eat her!”

With a gasp, Bridget clasped the covered box protectively.

“Go and sit with your Papa and take good care of Merry, while I take care of Wolf.” Bridget returned to them, puffed with importance and seriously guarding her treasure.

Ivy’s audience clapped for Hector and booed Sergei. They shouted warnings, screamed and giggled, as a battle of wits and brawn raged between hero and villain.

When Sergei had been chased off, Hedgehog acted exhausted and seemed to think he was finally safe, so he settled down to nap, and snore, entertaining his young audience, until Wolf came sneaking back.

The children began to shout, “Wake up, wake up,” Bridget loudest of all.

Hedgehog woke and won the day and the stripling audience cheered. Then he asked Bridget to return the precious box and place it just so on the stage. After she did, Merry Mouse nudged the top up with her head and peeked over the edge. “Thank you, Cricket,” she said. “Please stay for the wedding.”

Parson puppet came out to marry Hector and Merry, but before he did, he bent over to kiss Bridget on the head.

The sanctimonious, long-winded Parson Mouse had been modeled after Gabriel.

Lacey giggled without control, and Gabriel frowned.

As the show ended happily ever after and the final applause died down, Julian came to stand before Lacey, looking from her to Gabriel, trying not to frown over their intimate display of stockinged feet. “I say, Lace, whom precisely do I ask for permission to call on you at Rectory Cottage?”

Gabriel grumped and Lacey found herself at a loss for words. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she wasn’t quite ready for this.

Lady Prout and company stepped nearer, the better to hear.

Prout’s daughter, Olivia, tall, with a slim but promising figure, was tricked out in a pricey day gown that turned her skin to paste, her hair pulled severely back to a knot at her nape, a style that emphasized the length of her nose.

Softer curls at Olivia’s face, and a dress, if it must be brown, should be the purple-brown of puce to draw the beholder to see none but her extraordinary eyes.

But the poor thing—likely made to dress so as not to outshine her peahen of a mother—tended to melt like a flower into a wall, except when tryingnot to look at Gabe’s feet, at which she failed and tittered foolishly.

Gabriel rose and became Parson Puppet in the flesh with exactly the same scowl in place as he walked away.

“I told Olivia,” Lady Prout whispered to her band of bad-mouthers, loud enough for Lace to hear, “that our dear vicar would notkeepone of low morals among us.” She raised a shoulder as if to point. “I mean, we have a church to build, he and I, if he wants to remain vicar, though he’s yet to find theperfect ring for Olivia’s finger. Meanwhile, it’s all arranged, except for the wedding and transfer of funds.”

Prout beamed.

Lacey thought she might be ill.

CHAPTER FIVE

At first Lace took the words at face value. Gabriel had sold himself in marriage for the price of a church? A slap could not have hurt more, though she knew she had no right to feel the sting.

But when she considered the full ramifications of Prout’s malicious disclosure, Lace realized that Gabe could lose his livelihood if he didn’t marry Olivia. Not only was it selfish of Prout tosell her daughter for more power, but to threaten to take over a man’s life, in a way, never mind his livelihood. But Lacey’s titled mother had been no different. Why blame Prout? Why not blame the aristocracy in its entirety?

What a waste of time to mourn the loss of what could never be. She’d known before coming home that she and Gabriel could never be. And now, well, facts were facts. They could not be changed. But Bridget’s happiness was another matter.

Nearby, Bridget had begun backing away from the dour look in her father’s eyes—instigated by Prout’s revelation—which made Lace set aside the pain in her own chest. She wished she and Cricket fit in Merry’s safe, little box, the two of them alone together, the lid on tight.

“The vicar should send that one away.”

Lace heard the loud whisper, turned toward the sound, and Prout gave her a you-heard-me nod. “Olivia can take the little one in hand.”

“We don’t needher kind,” a matronly follower said.

“See here!” Julian snapped at the harpies. “Lacey Ashton is worth a dozen of the precious Olivia.” He ignored the women’s outrage. “She has more moral fiber than any woman I know and a kinder heart than most. It’s an affront to hear your vicious attack. I suggest you take yourself off to the rock beneath whichyour kind gather.”

Lady Prout flushed, Olivia squeaked and fluttered, and Gabriel regarded Lacey with a look fit to turn her to stone.

Loathing, Lacey saw in his eyes, or was it her own for him she saw reflected there?

She removed his mackintosh, tossed it his way, and allowed Julian to lead her and Bridget toward the carriage house door, Gabriel yelling for her to take the coat against the weather, but she ignored him.

“Cricket,” she said, before rushing into the rain. “Let’s run between the raindrops.”And pretend the water on our faces isn’t tears.

The following morning, Bridget climbed into Lacey’s lap the minute Lace sat, last at table, but those assembled seemed no less anxious for her appearance than they had been the first day for Bridget’s.

Perhaps they expected her to appear in traveling clothes after the preponderance of “devil talk” the day before. “I can face Prout,” she declared. “Mercy, I can faceanything for Bridget,” she added. Let Gabriel make of that what he wished. It would take more than a vicious old woman to chase her away. “Why is everyone so quiet,” she asked. “Goodness, you’d think—”

Gabriel produced a letter and held it out to her.

Lacey regarded it with furrowed brow. She looked at Mac, stoic, at Ivy, who nodded for her to go ahead and take it.

She grasped Bridget’s chin and turned her face so they were nose to nose. “Do you know what’s in this silly letter?”

Bridget nodded. “Somebody’s dead. Your distinct—”

“Distant,” MacKenzie corrected.

“Distant,” Bridget repeated. “Your distant cousin. He’s a man. NannyMac cried. Papa said a bad word.”

Lacey’s hands began to tremble. She stared at the letter in the center of the table in the same way Bridget had regarded her mother’s trunk, wishing she understood yesterday this feeling of fear mixed with dread. “Bridget,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Tell me his name.”

“Lace,” Gabriel said.

“I’ll do this my way, if you please.”

Gabriel sighed. “MacKenzie, can’t you do anything with her?”

“I am in the room, Gabriel,” Lacey said. “Bridget? His name?”

“Something . . . Davenwood.”

“Daventry?” Lace heard the panic in her own voice. “Not Nick.” The faces around the table blurred before her eyes.

Ivy grasped her hand. “It’s Victor, little one, not Nick. Knickerbocker’s all right. Had a letter from him just last week.”

Lacey released the sob she’d been holding. Mac tried to take Bridget, but Lace wouldn’t let her go. “No. Don’t. I’ll be fine.” She hugged Bridget close and looked up at Gabriel. “How did it happen?”

“You know what an adventurer he was. Got lost in some godforsaken stretch of Canada.”

“Then, they don’t— That is, they have no . . . proof?”

“He’s been missing for more than two months in a remote area, Lace. Proof enough.”

She nodded, saddened despite her dislike of Nick’s older brother. Then she realized who stood to inherit. “Ivy, this means Nick will inherit the title, the house, my old house. He might come home!”

Ivy’s smile was forced, probably because he too had seen Gabriel’s face turn to stone. What an idiot she was. Gabriel had always been terribly jealous of her friendship with her cousin Nick and it only got worse over time. Surely worse after she named Nick as the father of her stillborn babe.

No, Gabriel was the idiot. Nick was her dear friend. Gabriel, the love of her life. Which he should bloody well know.

“Cricket, my sweet,” Lacey said. “How would you like to have a dress-up tea party this afternoon and invite some of the little girls we met yesterday at the puppet show?” Lacey would allow no more sadness to mitigate Bridget’s joy. Victor had lived a long and wild life. She would mourn him privately.

Ivy cleared his throat. “Lace, as the closest member of Victor’s family here at home, it’s rather up to you to arrange for a memorial service.”

Lacey regarded the stern faces around the table, one in particular. “Gabriel, I would like a memorial service a week from today. Announce it in church on Sunday, would you?” She turned to Ivy and nodded firmly, putting period to his censure. “There, that’s done.”

“Nanny, tea party for . . . oh, ten at four o’clock.”

“Bridget, I’ll get the pony cart, you get your cape. We’re going calling.”

Gabriel stood in the library window and watched the pony cart wend its way toward the village until it slipped entirely from sight.

Nick Daventry. Nick Daventry. Nick Daventry. Even the cadence of the name dogged him as Gabe made his rounds about Rectory Farm to speak to his workers about the haying in one field and the flax in another.

A gentleman farmer, when vicariate duties allowed it, Gabriel liked his life, though his woolly flock didn’t impose nearly as great a challenge as his flock of churchgoers. God’s knew, he even enjoyed tossing down a mug or two with a few of his non-churchgoers on occasion.

Only one thing in his life had been missing. And now she was back. But was she his? For a day or so, he’d thought perhaps she was. Then old Lady Prout reminded him that for months he’d been treading water in a shallow pond, on rocks that could cut you and make you . . . him . . . makehim bleed. He’d been pretending not to understand that the designing old crow would only hand over the funds he needed to build a new church if he married her puppet of a daughter.

He’d thought if he handled the woman just right, the church contribution could be made and Olivia could look elsewhere for matrimony. Lord,he was as bad as Ivy with his puppets.

Gabriel hated that the bishop was forcing his hand. They didn’t need a new church. The existing one was fine, if not as grand as the old prelate would like.

Yesterday at the puppet show, when Prout insulted Lacey, Gabriel had wanted to give Prout a proper set-down, tell her what he really thought of her . . . till she mentioned the church. He’d shut his mouth then to consider his options, and there’d been Gorham, Lacey’s veritable knight in shoddy armor, charging her attacker with a bejeweled lance. It appeared that even fake jewels glistened with a light on them.

That namby-pamby popinjay of a pauper had more teeth than brains; couldn’t Lacey see that? Yes, Gorham had certainly shone bright againsthis poor performance in defending Lace, Gabe thought morosely. The truth was, he’d feared venting feelings that would open a Pandora’s box. To his mind, admitting passion was a great deal worse than Prout’s ire.

First Gorham to contend with, and, botheration, now Nick was coming home. Gabriel had never been more frustrated in his life. Well, yes, he had been—more broken, at any rate.

Just the name Daventry brought it all back. Lord, he detested the man.

Gabriel remembered how frightened he’d been after he and Lacey had made love for the first time. Frightened and elated at one and the same time and eager, as well, to love her again despite the possible ramifications of their fall from grace.

But no worry had marred the perfection of their love in Lacey’s bright, happy eyes, or so he’d thought. Lace had glowed. She’d smiled. She was happy, at least for a time.

Then he heard the gossip, whispered throughout the parish. The Lady Lacey Ashton was with child. Disgraced. Her mother was enraged. He’d heard the woman had ranted and demanded for days that Lacey name the father, swearing to break the man responsible for her daughter’s fall.

Despite those threats, Gabe had gone to the Towers, hat in hand, to face the furious and powerful harridan, knowing he stood to lose his living, his very heritage—his grandfather’s and his father’s parish—Lacey’s mother was that mad.

Six months ordained, and he’d become a worse shepherd and manager than his forebears, and that was some grand failure.

Oddly enough, Gabe hadn’t cared. All he’d ever wanted was Lacey. Just the thought of the child they’d created with their love and, Lord, he’d been as mindlessly happy as he was mindlessly frightened.

He scoffed now remembering what a fool he was.

Lacey had met him that morning in the blue salon, just before her mother came down.

If he lived to be a hundred and ten, he would never forget Lacey’s words to him on that crisp fall day. “It’s not yours, Gabriel. My baby’s not yours. Nick Daventry is my child’s father.”

The words hurt even now. In that first horrific moment, they might have been an axe blade between his shoulders for the pain he’d felt.

From that day to this, as far as Gabriel was concerned, Nicholas bloody Daventry could go straight to hell.

Later, around six, he returned to the Rectory still troubled and noticed that the best parlor looked as if squirrels had taken up residence.

In the doorway, he stepped on something that cracked and picked up the arm of an ugly French figurine that had once belonged to his grandmother.

MacKenzie, mumbling and sweeping up its remains by the hearth, hadn’t yet noticed his presence. Neither had anyone else.

For the first time that day, Gabe felt himself relax.

Lacey had her head tucked beneath the front of the camel-backed settee, her crinolines bobbing into the air, affording him a lovely and shocking view of her sweet bottom, clad in what he believed were calledpantalettes.

Never before, Gabe realized, had lust and tenderness and the urge to chuckle or wring someone’s neck, come upon him all at the same time.

“Can you see it?” Lacey called, obviously searching for something. But whom did she address?

“I can, almost, but it’s wiggling a lot,” Cricket said, either from behind or beneath said piece of furniture, judging by her muffled response.

“You have it, then?”

“Ouch. Not anymore.”

“Where did it go?”

“Up. Inside.”

Lacey’s quivering petticoats gave Gabe the impression she had suffered a shock, and before they finished their flutter, she backed out and sat on her knees, hands on her hips. “Bridget Kendrick, are you telling me that your kitten has disappeared into the sofa stuffing!”

What kitten? Sofa stuffing?

Cricket came tottering into sight on shoes with heels thrice her size, trailing a god-awful green dress and a red boa for half a yard, and wearing a straw hat his mother had favored. From the hat’s brim dangled a clump of papier mâché cherries, topped by a molting bluebird.

Gabriel barked a laugh and clapped a hand over his mouth.

Bridget and Lacey looked up in unison, both regarding him with stunned surprise. MacKenzie grumbled the louder—for her share of attention Gabe would wager—so he confiscated her broom and sent her on her way. “Just see to dinner,” he said. “We’ll take care of everything.”

Her rusty old Scot’s laugh mocked him as MacKenzie walked away.

Gabe turned back to the two people he loved most in the world. One would rather step around him as look at him. The other was bound to break him for good one of these days, especially if she discovered the continued existence of his foolhardy love. Yet he wallowed in their regard, too beguiled to move from their proverbial paths.

Since there was no changing destiny, he pulled out a chair, sat, and crooked his finger to bring his comically adorable little one over to him. She must actually have regarded him long enough to catch his summons because she came.

“Lovely dress,” he said.

Cricket’s eyes came alive. “It’s Mama’s. MyLacey made it smell like the water meadow again.” Bridget shoved her arm under his nose . . . so he could sniff, he imagined. So he did, nodded, and kissed her offered elbow. “I’ve heard you call her MyLacey before but I don’t know why.”

“That’s—”

He raised a hand to quiet Lacey. “I’d like Bridget to explain, if she would.” He regarded his daughter again, his rush of love so overwhelming, clearing his throat became necessary before he could speak. “Haven’t you noticed, Cricket, that everybody else calls her Lacey?”

Bridget nodded. “I remember that Mama used to call her that, but NannyMac called her MyLacey the day I met her, and I like it ever so much better.”

Lacey looked at him with a plea, and darned if he didn’t experience another rush of love, one that made himwant to tumble headlong into the sea-green depths of her eyes where he could die happy. For a moment, he allowed his emotions to show, letting her glimpse her power over him, and she looked away, but not before he saw a hunger mixed with fear.

He knew exactly how she felt.

“Can’t I call you MyLacey?” Bridget asked, stepping from her slippers onto the sofa to reach and undo a bodice button or three of Lacey’s while shyly awaiting her answer.

“Of course you can, sweetheart.” She kissed Bridget’s nose and winked at him over his daughter’s enticing plea, the color in her cheeks matching the rosebuds marching across the bit of underbodice Cricket had revealed. “MyLacey can be your special name for me,” Lacey said, “like Cricket is your papa’s pet name for you.”

Bridget turned and gave him a single, strong nod as if to say, “See, I told you,” much as Lace had done this morning to Ivy in regard to Victor’s memorial service. Had Bridget learned that from Lace in the short time she’d been here? Or was prideful stubbornness a natural Ashton trait that his daughter inherited from her mother?

“Now tell me about this kitten,” Gabe asked his daughter as he folded his arms to listen and distract his attention from Lace rebuttoning her dress the way he’d like to do—No, he’d undo it the rest of the way, first, and then—

“Julia gave the kitten to me.” Bridget raised her empty hands. “But it’s dist-a-peared.”

“No, it’s not,” he was mostly pleased to report.

“It’s not?” his lovelies said together.

Gabe carried Bridget to the settee and pointed to the spot on the padded back where the outline of two little kitty paws pushed on the fabric from the inside.

“Oh, my, God,” Lacey said. “It’ll suffocate. We have to take the sofa apart.”

Gabe sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He removed his frockcoat, rolled up his sleeves, and unhooked his cleric’s collar. Then he turned the sofa around and got on the floor behind it with them.

Two hours later, the settee’s tapestried back had been flipped to the front, and Bridget sat on the floor cuddling a tiny, blue-eyed angora kitten who wanted nothing more than to catch those cherries wobbly-bobbing from her hat. Or was it the bald bird the fluffball coveted?

He’d spent so long bent in half trying to get the kitten out, Gabriel could barely straighten, so Lacey rubbed his aching back. “You’re getting old,” she said, rubbing hard along his spine, and he chuckled because her hands on him felt so good he wanted to kink it every day. And as for feeling old, he’d never felt younger or more alive. “If I’m old, you’re old,” he said, to turn his thoughts and get her eyes to twinkling.

“Not for three years yet. Even so, you’ll still be older than me.”

MacKenzie came in and gasped. “I thought you were going to clean this up. It’s thrice as messy.”

Lacey chuckled. “We noticed.”

“Er, perhaps I’ve come at a bad time?” asked an unexpected male voice.

“Julian!” Lacey shot to her feet.

Forgotten on the floor, Gabriel took satisfaction in the fact that Lacey was not dressed for callers. Her bodice had been splattered with raspberry jam and the back of her skirt looked as though she’d sat on an Eccles cake.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she said, trying uselessly to tidy herself.

Beautiful. She looked beautiful.

Gorham tilted his head, considering. “You look like a queen.”

Their visitor should take a row on the river Arun, without oars in a leaky boat, Gabe thought. But since the dolt looked so uncomfortable with his outlandish compliment to Lace hanging in the air, Gabe felt more in control. He stood and stretched to his full imposing height, just so he could look down on Gorham. Then he placed his hand on Lacey’s shoulder, adding possession to power.

“Ah . . . is dinner still at eight?” Gorham asked awkwardly.

“Oh, Lord,” Lacey said. “I forgot I invited you.”

Gabe chuckled. Serve the man right.

Julian did not take the unintended slight well.

An hour later, Bridget’s running dialogue on her first-ever dress-up tea party kept dinner from being a compete waste with Lacey’s admirer making calf eyes at her across the table.

“Margaret’s mother makes dolls and doll dresses; did I tell you? She said perhaps I could go and play at her house tomorrow?”

For a little girl who’d rarely spoken until Lacey arrived, his Cricket took to making up for it with a vengeance, talking as fast as she ate.

“Clarissa’s nicer than Gwyn.She poked her finger into Nanny’s lemon tarts.”

Lacey focused on Bridget, winced at the ill-mannered tart-poke, and ate very little.

“I told Sara Jacques that I want to call my kitten Merry. She said that’s Mouse’s name, and I know that, but I like it, anyway. I’ll ask Mouse next time I see her, or I’ll ask Hedgehog when Ivy comes back on Sunday.”

“You’re eating awfully fast,” Lacey told Bridget.

“I’m hungry. Lydia said our pig should not be named Lady Cowper. She said we should call our cow that. Do you think so, Papa . . . Gabe?”

He regarded Lacey across the table. Bridget had addressed him directly. Finally. “I think our pig is perfectly happy with the name she has. Though I suppose we could reassign their names and call them the Ladies Cowper and Pigger.”

Cricket’s eyes widened to the size they’d been when Tweenie stole his sock, and Gabe decided he should tease her more often.

“How can you be hungry?” Mac asked. “After all the sweetmeats you ate this afternoon?”

Bridget yawned in answer and that was all Mac needed. She stood. “That’s it. Bath time, lovey. Then bed. My little lady’s had a tiring day.”

Lacey rose as well, bringing Gabe and Gorham to their feet, but Mac waved them all back down. You three finish and go to the parlor—the second parlor, that is—and I’ll bring tea ’round in a bit.”

Half an hour later, Gorham helped Lacey from her chair and followed her from the dining room. Gabe pouted until she turned to look for him. “Aren’t you coming?”

As much as he hated to leave her alone with the blustering dandy, he was concerned about Bridget. She’d been almost too excited. “I’ll tuck Cricket in and come right back.”

This was her chance, Lacey thought, to tell Julian that anything more than friendship between them wouldn’t work. She couldn’t be courted. Not with Bridget’s situation so precarious.

For half an hour, she tried to bring the conversation ’round, but every time she’d begin, Julian would say something absurd such as “her eyes were more brilliant than emeralds,” or, worse, “her cheeks could give apples lessons in bright and delectable.” To the latter, she laughed outright.

“Any man would be honored to have you for wife,” Julian said, bringing her back with a vengeance. “Make me the happiest of men and—”

“Vomit,” Gabriel said. He’d heard how Julian began, of course. “Bridget’s sick,” he said with accusation from the doorway, his demeanor thunderous. “She’s crying for you.”

Lacey stood and looked from one man to the other. What could she say? She shrugged and left the room.

“I’ll show you out,” Gabriel offered Julian as she approached the stairs.

He caught up with her before she reached the top.

“What did you do,” she asked. “Shove him wordlessly out the door?”

“I said good-bye.”

Lacey rolled her eyes but forgot her exasperation when she saw Nanny trying to make a weeping Bridget lie down. She let Bridget go when they entered, and as soon as she did, Bridget sat up with a whine. “MyLacey, my tummy hurts.”

“We’ve got her, Nanny,” Lacey said. “Go to bed. We’ll be fine.”

“This is no parlor that needs cleaning,” Nanny said from the door , “but I expect the two of you can manage this one.”

Gabriel started to remove his frockcoat and stopped. “Want to unbutton?” he asked Bridget, but she laid her head on Lacey’s breast and whimpered.

Lacey warmed when Gabe caught her watching him undo his shirt studs and quirked an inquisitive brow, but she didn’t turn from his gaze. He was settling in, becoming comfortable, the way she liked him best, collar in his pocket, sleeves rolled up.

Something about him, dressed, or, rather, undressed, in that at-home way, made her want to curl up in his arms before a fire and weave her fingers through the longish hair at his nape.

“MyLacey?” Bridget placed her hands on either side of Lacey’s face to get her attention.

“I’m sorry, sweet, what is it?”

“Can I have a drink of water?”

“I’ve got it,” Gabe said, filling a cup from the pitcher. He sat on the edge of the bed and handed it to Bridget.

She drank it down in one long gulp as if she’d thirsted for a week. Then she became violently ill.

When the spasms passed, Lacey and Gabriel washed her and got her bed changed.

“She needed that,” Gabe said a while later, standing beside his daughter’s bed, while Lacey stroked her brow.

“She’s sound asleep,” he said. “Go to bed. I’ll stay with her.”

“I’ll go and change,” Lacey countered, “and when I get back, you can do the same. We’re neither of us sweet and fresh.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

In her room, Lacey toyed with the idea of changing into another dress, rather than her night-rail and wrapper, but that was foolish. This was Gabriel, after all. He’d . . . well. This was nothing. Nevertheless, she took the time to brush her hair, then she decided at the last minute to let it curl down her back rather than braid it.

She unpacked the gift her friends at Peacehaven had given her when she left. An elegant China silk wrapper of buttercup yellow, trimmed in lace, hand-embroidered, and threaded with ribbons and love. After Lacey put it on, she gazed at her reflection in the cheval glass, and pulled the ribbons tighter beneath her breasts. How foolish, primping to sit with a sick child. Nevertheless, she pinched her cheeks before she left her room.

Gabriel stood when she entered, and by the light that leapt in his eyes, she knew he approved. Those same eyes hardened as quickly, however, and he left the room in silence.

Deflated, Lacey touched Bridget’s brow, then she pulled up her discarded covers and went to open the window to cool and air the room.

Looking out, she wondered where to go from here. Some time later, Gabriel placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. He wore a Spanish blue brocade dressing gown. Mercy. If she’d thought he looked good in shirtsleeves . . .

A different fire leapt in his eyes, one of intent. Before she could fathom it, he took her in his arms and kissed her with the same greedy hunger he’d shown the day he returned from divinity school.

Forever, Lacey thought, sliding into the perfection of his kiss. It had seemed forever, a lifetime, since they’d kissed like this.

He slid his big hands up and down her back, everywhere, as if he needed to learn her before time ran out.

Lacey lost her ability to think. Her head swam, her body ached. She opened to him and kissed him back, the way she knew would drive him wild.

It did. His kiss deepened. His body roused and sought closer contact with hers.

They broke for air. “Oh, God, Oh, Gabriel.”

He shifted nearer and took her mouth again, his long arms so tight about her, his hands came back around her to caress the sides of her breasts, moving closer and closer to the place where she ached.

Her soul rejoiced; her body wept for more.

“Papa? MyLacey? What are you doing?” When Bridget’s voice broke their sensual fog, they jumped apart so fast, Lacey hit her head on the window.

“Cricket,” Gabriel said, needing to clear his throat before his words could emerge as more than a rasp. “Ah, Cricket, I see you are—”

“How do you feel, sweetheart?” Lacey asked, since he could barely form a sentence.

“I’m thirsty. Hungry, too.”

“I’ve heard this song before,” Gabriel said in a more natural voice.

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 sethim 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 thegood 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 grand-sire. 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, thathewas the only man she ever took to her bed.If 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 haveyou.”

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.”

“I came for Bridget,” she said, moving farther away, needing to be truthful about this, at least. “I think I wanted to take her away from you, to raise her myself.”

He sat up at that, his back straight, his hair in disarray. “I would never have let you.”

“You are only her stepfather, Gabriel, no relation at all.”

He rounded on her. “You make me so angry, I swear, Lace, if I were her real father, I would disappear with her so fast, you would never find her.”

Lacey tugged the sheet close around her, a dagger of panic stabbing her, but reason pulled her from the pain of it. “You are a good and decent man, Gabriel Kendrick. Ultimately, you will do what is best for Bridget, as will I, and we both know it. It simply has yet to be determined which of us is best for her.”

“She has been mine for two years. I know what’s best for her,” he all but shouted.

“You don’t. She plays you like one of Ivy’s puppets, to get your attention, like I used to do, but it just makes you sad and sick with worry. She had no say over losing her mother, so she tries to, to . . . buttonhole you. Not being able to keep her mother must have given her the sense there was nothing, no one she could . . . keep . . . where she wanted them. When I was a child, I could count only on two people. One of them was you at my heels, or wherever I wanted you to be!

“As I used to do, Bridget is holding you by an invisible tether—call it love—pulling your lead taut or letting it go slack at whim. Just watch her. You can practically see her consider in which direction she will tug. Two years, perhaps, but you haven’t figured her out yet.”

“Do not pretend to know my daughter better than I do.” Gabriel rose to put on his dressing gown, then he turned to her, tying it with a vicious yank, and his ire vanished. “Lace, I can’t stay angry with you in my bed, a sheet between my mouth and your body, your hair a veil I want wrapped around me.”

Physically, Lacey responded to his words. She wanted what he did. She didn’t want him angry or broken. Neither did she want him to think passion was wrong. He needed to accept it as natural. The physical expression of their love for each other had been right and good, even if a future together was impossible.

Aware of her power, she raised her hands above her head to stretch like a cat. “I like your passion.”

He stood firm, though she saw him waver. “Had I caused your fall, I could not have lived with myself,” he said. “I don’t like my passion, not when it becomes wild, almost savage, as it does only with you.”

“But you said you were passionate with Clara.” Lacey embraced the jealousy beating in her breast.

Gabriel walked to the night-dark window to gaze out. “I was trying to recreate whatwe had. Some months later, I realized that. It was a mistake. It never happened again.”

Lacey sat up. Jealousy disappeared and sorrow replaced it. “So you will never . . . be with a woman again, never share your body with—”Me, she wanted to shout, but that would sound too much like begging. Besides, she’d known before leaving Peacehaven that there could be nothing more between them.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, she wrapped the sheet close about her then she rose to approach the door to her room.

“Lace, who else could you count on when you were a child, besides me at your heels?”

She looked straight at him. “Nick, to get me out of trouble. Think about it.”That was as close as she dared get to telling him the truth.

Back in her own bed, tears coursed down Lacey’s cheeks for the love she had destroyed. ’Twas not his passion but her decision to deny his paternity that hardened him, and there was nothing she could do to change it. The rift between them could never be repaired.

When she went downstairs the next morning, Mac said that Gabriel had gone away for a few days and wouldn’t be back until Sunday in time for service.

Lacey wondered where he would go for two days, and whether he despised her, or himself, more?

On that next Sunday morning, sitting in the front row between Mac and Bridget, Lacey saw that St. Swithin’s needed attention. She’d once heard her father describe this as a Perpendicular Gothic. She didn’t know what that meant but whatever it was, Gabriel really needed to repair its ceiling.

If ever he returned.

Already its pews were crowded with people speculating as to why the vicar was late.

“Where’s Papa . . . Gabe.” Even his fidgeting daughter, too stubborn to drop the Gabe from his title, wondered.

Mac leaned close, surprising Lace. “Pray hard, young lady,” she whispered.

Lacey furrowed her brows. “Why should I?”

“Because I found your missing slipper.”

Lace reared back in confusion. “So?”

“Found it changinghis bed.” She pointed toward the front.

Gabriel stood at his pulpit, and Lacey hoped he wouldn’t think her blush had to do with the other night. Well, it did, actually; it had to do with Mac’s assuming it had been more than it was.

He spoke with eloquence, his message as magnetic as he. He spoke of generosity for the sake of giving—not to get a husband for your horse-faced daughter, she translated inwardly, though he paraphrased it better.

She watched his every expression and gesture, and still Gabriel looked like Lucifer even at a pulpit in a cassock—devilishly handsome.

Mercy, she was as much in love with him now as ever, which got her to imagining some serious machinations, so there might be a future for them, like when hell froze over.

Lady Prout didnot get the point of the sermon. On the church steps after service, as Gabriel bid a good morning to his flock, Prout elbowed Lacey from his side and pushed Olivia before him. “I realize you were looking for contributions this morning, vicar,” she said, settling herself at his left, “but I must tell you that given the company you keep of late, I fear donations will be few.”

Mac swept Bridget away fast. Lacey watched her loved ones cross the churchyard, a forced smile in place.

Gabriel saw as well and gave her a reassuring look, which calmed her and made her dig in her heels to remain stubbornly near at hand, no matter what Prout said.

The vicar wished a good morning to the last of his flock and turned back to malevolence personified. “Lady Prout, may I gently remind you that Christian charity is a virtue.”

“Yes,” said she, “and charity is exactly what you need to build your church. Honestly, I don’t know why you persist in keeping around a woman whoyou insisted, vicar, be sent away in the first place for decency’s sake.”

As a keen-edged blade pierced Lacey’s heart, she turned on her heels and walked with purpose along the outside of the church to make her inconspicuous way to Gabriel’s stable far behind it. Hopefully, that had been Ivy’s returning wagon she heard at the end of service.

“Lacey, Lace,” Gabriel called from behind her, his long black cassock unbuttoned and flying in the breeze behind him, and despite the way it hampered him, like charred wings against the wind, he gave chase.

His devilishly handsome face and broad shoulders, the memory of that dark curly hair between her fingers, collaborated to make Lace ache. She wanted nothing more than to run into his arms instead of away from him.

So she picked up her pace and ranfrom the man she considered her port in a storm, except ’twas he who had sent her away.

That hurt. God, it hurt.

“Lacey, listen. That’s not what happened.”

Ivy’s gypsy wagon sat near the stable, still hitched to its two-horse team, her friend beside it. “Ivy, I don’t belong here.” She threw herself foolishly into his arms, but managed to swallow her tears. “Please take me away.”

“Ah, little girl.” Ivy stepped back and lifted her chin to look into her eyes. “I think you know where you belong.”

Lacey shook her head, her gaze moving from her friend to her winded betrayer, not certain what or who she wanted.

“If you went, what would we tell that little one with her nose pressed to the window over there?” Ivy asked.

Shaken by the reference, Lacey looked over in time to see Mac pull that sweet little face from the glass and out of sight. “I have to . . . I have to—”

Gabriel grasped her shoulders so she would be forced to look at him. She stubbornly regarded his black cassock instead, realizing with disappointment that hedid wear trousers beneath it.

When her face warmed, she lowered her head and focused on his shoes.

“Lace, please look at me?”

She shook her head.

“No? Well it doesn’t matter; you’ll hear me anyway.” His sigh, heavy with regret, got her attention despite her stubbornness. “Back when you lost the baby, I wanted you gone, Lace, so you wouldn’t be hurt in the exact way you were just now—by ignorant, callous fools who have nothing better to do than criticize everyone else. People like that put others down to raise themselves up, Lace. You had just lost your child; you didn’t need to be flogged any more than life had already done.”

Lacey faltered, but she couldn’t let him turn her up sweet. Not this time. “You wanted me gone, Gabriel Kendrick,” she snapped, looking right at him. “Because you didn’t want those same fools to know thatyou had been so wicked as to succumb to my wiles.”

Ivy whistled, turned on his heels, and walked away.

“Don’t go, Ivy. I need you to get me out of here,” Lacey called after him, but he kept walking.

Gabriel knew a panic, frightening in its power. “Lace, don’t be a fool,” he said, desperate to get through to her. “There’s too much between us to allow ourselves to be torn apart by spiteful words.”

“Torn apart by you, you mean.”

Gabriel tried to take her into his arms to calm her and show her he cared, but she fought him, which angered him all over again, blast it! “Ivy,” he shouted, “Is the wagon locked?”

Ivy turned. “It’s open.”

“Good.” Gabe swiftly swept Lacey off her feet before she realized what he was about and set her in the puppet wagon. Then he shut out her righteous indignation by closing the door and locking her in. Ignoring the sound of her pounding fists and oaths of retribution, he climbed up on the box and flicked the reins.

The window behind him on the gypsy wagon opened before they cleared the drive. “You’ll go to hell for this, Vicar Kendrick,” Lacey shouted.

Gabe laughed where she was concerned for the first time in months, now absolutely certain he was doing the right thing.

Grin wide, Ivy waved. “Bye, little girl. Bye, Gabe.”

“Take care of Bridget, you and Mac,” Gabe called. “It could take years to knock sense into Lacey’s stubborn head.”

Their friend all-out laughed while Lacey tossed a threathis way.

With no other choice, Gabe headed toward St. Swithin’s, Lady Prout and Olivia still there, burning gullible ears. They didn’t look too happy when they spotted him.

He looked behind him, and sure enough, Lace stood at the big side window, her fury of a moment before replaced by a wide happy smile as she waved at her detractors.

Gabe barked a laugh and urged the horses faster.

On the church steps, the stunned gossips scattered when a dark cloud scudded by, split open, and poured its contents in a torrent.

Gabe hunched forward against the water pouring down his neck and kept driving.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The beating rain made Gabe reconsider his extemporaneous flight, but drat, he had to make Lace listen. Yes, he’d been furious at Nicholas five years before—he remained furious to this day. Yes, he’d been devastated that Lacey betrayed him with another man. But he’d never wanted to hurt her.

Having her leave Arundel had made him feel as if every vestige of goodness and hope departed with her. He had not had her banished in retaliation. He had not had her banished at all. If she’d stayed, she would have been eaten alive, which would have hurt her, and him, worse than it did this morning.

Go home, go for Lace? Or let her go? The questions ranked right up there with, “Give up and die?“ or “Fight for life?“ He’d discovered over the past few days, as he endlessly pondered their relationship, that Lacey Ashton had not been expunged from his blood, despite the agony of the process. She dwelled in every drop that pumped through his body.

So what if she’d had a dozen lovers, if she’d betrayed him with his former best friend, he wanted, needed—he must make a life together work for them.

Bridget needed her. By God,he needed her in the same way he needed his next breath. Even if it was only physical, or mostly physical, between them—No, they enjoyed each other a great deal, even out of the bedroom. He enjoyed her company more than anyone’s. And he could talk to Lace as he could to no other. Blast it, Lace could read him. Of course, that wasn’t always a good thing.

Turn back? Keep going?

The devil’s-talk dragons in his flock wanted more than ever to destroy her, and he was her only hope for survival. Why couldn’t she see that?

Thunderation! He mustmake her see he was on her side or die trying.

Fight had always been his only answer. For life. For love. For Lace.

Lacey paced the wagon endlessly. They’d been driving for more than an hour. She tried to break the lock a dozen ways without success. Rain poured from the heavens from troughs now, not merely buckets.

The idiot on the box must be soaked.

For the second time since they set out, she threw open the casement behind him. “Mercy, Gabriel, get some sense into your thick head; stop the wagon and get the dratted devil out of the rain.”

It annoyed her no end that he didn’t so much as turn his head or scold her for her wicked words.

Wait. Were his shoulders shaking? “How can you laugh at this . . . entanglement you’ve gotten us into? So help me, when I get my hands on you, Gabriel Kendrick, I’m going to beat some sense into you.” She shut the casements as loudly as she could . . . without breaking Ivy’s windows.

Who knew a vicar could be so much a nodcock as to steal a member of his flock beneath the judgmental gaze of its most outspoken members. Cackling hens the lot of them. No, worse, they reminded her of a literal murder of crows. Deadly.

And Gabriel. “Of all the half-witted, impulsive….”

Lacey stopped at the thought, her gaze fixed on one of Ivy’s favorite pieces of pottery, a wall-pocket of Chinese lanterns. Gabriel Kendrick had never been impulsive a day in his life . . . except for the day he came home from seminary for good.

Lacey gave up pacing and lay on her side in the narrow cot tucked along the left of the puppet wagon, head on her arm, gazing toward the bunks opposite. She, Clara, Nick, and Gabriel used to do sleepouts sometimes beneath the stars—her personal favorite—or in this very wagon. Girls squeezed into the bottom bunk; boys on the top, “tight as piglets at the trough,” Ivy used to say.

Boys, in Ivy’s opinion, could fall from a top bunk, crack their heads, and survive. Today, for the first time, Lacey understood that males had particularly hard heads.

One certain male did, at any rate.

Their favorite haunt, hers and Gabriel’s, besides this wagon, had been the old Ashcroft Abbey. The ancient cathedral, all broken stonewalls and no ceiling, stood now like the skeleton of a church overtaken by nature.

When Gabe had been away at school, she went there when she missed him. That’s where he found her the day he returned. Had he suspected she would be there?

He’d approached her, the single most important being in her universe, handsome, dashing, as dark and dangerous as he was smart and dear, his black suit and bright white collar proclaiming him a man of dignity. Finally.

The fire that engulfed them in that sparkling moment had burned brighter than his collar, bright enough to create new life . . . a life snuffed, like the pyre of their love, leaving nothing but charred hearts and a cold headstone to mark its passing.

Lacey remembered dreaming of the day Gabriel would come for her, after she’d left Arundel. He would sweep her off her feet and carry her away, saying that he realized she could no more lie with another than he could stop loving her.

Could this be that day? Did he finally see her prevarication for what it was?

Perhaps.

And perhaps Ivy’s horses would turn into pigs and fly the wagon above the clouds where the sun shone still.

Lacey opened the window, quietly now, as furious with her abductor as she’d ever been. He should have known back then that she would give him up before she would cause him to abandon his dream of breathing new life into his home and parish. She would never have destroyed him before he could earn the dignity and respect he’d craved and deserved.

A generous, understanding, and dignified cleric now, Gabriel lived in a well-appointed home. He ran a parish of healthy, happy, and well-guided individuals . . . good and happy people because of Vicar Gabriel Kendrick. She’d heard from one that he’d helped thatch her roof, from another that he purchased the children’s schoolbooks from his own pocket for that makeshift school. When her cousin Victor traveled, Gabe apparently let the schoolchildren meet in the Ashcroft carriage house where they’d held the puppet show.

Look at him, she thought, wide-shouldered posture rigid, no hat or coat, defying the very elements to get his way. Stubborn. Dear. Traveling a raging river of a road as turbulent and deep as the man mocking it.

How could he explain having sent her away?

He couldn’t.

It didn’t matter. It was done. She cared for him too much to let this break them. Had he said much the same after service?

She had hurt him badly. Perhaps she’d deserved his revenge, if vengeance her banishment had been.

“Gabriel,” she called, and he turned, surprised to see her.

“Self-punishment will prove nothing,” she said. “Take me home.”

The wordhome hung in the heavy, moist air between them, the pelting rain making the possibility of home and hearth more real and more appealing.

His features lightening, he relaxed his hold on the reins and started to speak. The horses faltered. He swore and turned back to them, but the flood seemed more than they could navigate.

Just when Lacey thought he had them under control, lightning and thunder struck as one.

The horses bolted, tearing the reins from Gabe’s hands, and they raced forth till all she could see was a stand of trees.

Gabriel fought to keep his seat and shouted for her to get back.

She did, holding to anything that wasn’t toppling, and watched, frightened to death, as he struggled to climb over the seat and grasp the sill, the wagon careening and teetering like an angry mount trying to throw its rider.

He’d barely climbed through and cleared the window than Lacey saw that the spooked horses were about to choose opposite sides of an ancient oak.

Gabriel had just righted himself when the wagon hit.

A limb pushed its way through the window he’d climbed through, splintering wood, shattering glass.

Gabriel swore as they toppled.

Books flew from a railed shelf, coming toward them and battering Gabe about his head and shoulders, one after another.

The wagon teetered once, twice, three shuddering times, then it settled, with a huge creaking groan, nearly upright, impaled by a tree.

When silence came, they lay on the floor of Ivy’s wagon, locked inside, Gabriel on top of her.

Awareness came to Gabe in slow measure. He first registered his own rapid breathing. Ice cold and soaking wet, his body nevertheless rejoiced at its soft resting place—Lacey.

He allowed himself to enjoy the feel of Lacey beneath him for one long delectable moment before he raised his aching head to look into her wide, verdant eyes.

Invisible shafts of white-hot current shot between them as if they were at opposite poles of the light flashing about them.

In her eyes, he read awareness of his body’s awakening, his arousal rampant. He knew just watching her that her own stirred as well.

“You’re . . . wet,” she said, licking from her lips the rain dripping off him.

“As are you.” The husky timbre of his voice surprised even him.

“Yes.”

Concerned of a sudden that he might crush her, Gabe rolled to his side. His erection now prodding her thigh, he kissed the second-hand rain from her lips.

Salty.

Tears, not rain.

Heart tripping, he sat up. “Are you hurt?” He ran his hands over her to be certain.

Lacey slapped them away and shot to her feet as if she meant to escape, except there was nowhere for her to go. The entire wagon was no bigger than a priest’s hole, sparse but homey, and surprisingly warm and dry . . . except for his own soaked self, the leaves on the impaling branch, and now Lacey, because of him.

She stood as far away as she could get, beside the branch hanging over the cook-stove. Then she squeaked and came closer, despite herself. She must have been dripped on.

Gabriel rose to his feet and began to peel away his cold, soaking vestments—cassock first—with slow, sensual purpose.

Panic rose in her wide eyes. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re a vicar, for God’s sake.”

“But I’m a man for my own sake . . . and yours. You knew me as a man first.”

“A boy. I knew you as a boy first.”

Gabriel hated the rag-wearing child he’d been. “I didn’t like that boy.”

“Only because he wasn’t perfect, Gabriel. But he was human and that’s allowed. If you didn’t know it somewhere deep down, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Score one for Lacey. “Right.” He began to unbutton his shirt.

She stepped back and hit the branch, sprinkling more water over herself. “Look what you’ve brought us to,” she snapped. “What the devil were you thinking to steal me before the eyes of the town? Well, you wasted your time and a great deal of money as well for all this sorry mess will cost. You couldn’t take me far enough away to make me believe you had me cast out for any other reason but to save your sorry self from being exposed as having been . . . ensnared . . . in my wanton web. You—”

“Lace, you’re babbling.”

She flushed.

“Prout would have had you stoned in all but fact had you stayed, Lace. I did nothing more than concur with your mother’s opinion, however, as did Ivy, that you should go for your own good!”

She laughed contemptuously as she rummaged through a drawer.

The scorn of no other could cut as deeply, Gabe realized.

“Don’t be so disrespectful of your mother-in-law,” she said as she lit a candle against the fading afternoon.

“There’ll be a frost fair in hell before I marry that bit—harpy’s whelp.”

“Vicar Kendrick! What would your flock think to have their sainted shepherd speaking so?”

Gabe didn’t stifle his vulgarity this time. He peeled away his shirt and tossed it to the floor. “Nobody knows better than you that I’m as human, and a cursed sight more imperfect, than you are. You should also remember that nobody’s humanity calls to mine more than yours does, Lacey Ashton—soon to be Kendrick, after this day’s work is done.”

“Nothing has happened to—”

“That won’t matter.” Gabe unbuttoned his wet trousers.

Lacey looked around but there was no place for her to go, so Gabe advanced, giving her less choice. “If we get you out of your crinolines,” he said, “you’ll have more room to run.”

Lacey gasped, both shocked and exhilarated, as Gabriel knelt before her and lifted the hem of her gown.

She knew she should stop him, but for the life of her, she could not raise a hand to do it. Her arms were leaden, as were her legs, but for their sudden need to buckle at the knees.

He found the tapes at her waist and undid them with care, his forearms warm and wet against her belly.

Her gown broke free and fell over his head.

Lacey squeaked and pulled it up, holding it to allow him to continue, her face flaming when she realized what she was doing.

But she didn’t let go.

When he looked up at her then, eyes dancing, hair askew, she swore her heart did a small flip before it laid itself at his feet.

One by one, her crinolines fell to the floor, wire and whalebone shaping them into smaller and smaller circles.

Gabriel stroked the front of her cotton drawers, rushing warmth to her core, and rested his cheek there, before he turned his head and opened his mouth against her, whispering her name like a prayer.

Lacey closed her eyes and wove the fingers of both hands through his wet mane of dark hair as if she were trying to keep him there.

He moved his big cool hands upward along the backs of her thighs, sliding them beneath the soft cotton to cup her bare bottom, then he slid those talented hands slightly forward and splayed them to stroke and tease, closer and closer to her core.

Lacey let out the breath she’d been holding with a ragged, shuddering sigh, and Gabriel rose like the vengeful Lucifer to open his mouth over hers. Ravenous, he swallowed her sighs, drew more, until he was so much a part of her, she might bleed if he stopped.

Just when she thought the kiss had reached the height of perfection, he began to undo the buttons at her bodice, stroking her like a whisper of butterfly wings as he did, standing all her nerve endings and setting them aflame.

He freed her arms from her sleeves before she knew it. Just as well; she had not the strength to help or resist.

“That’s my sweet girl. Mine,” he whispered the claim as he slid her dress slowly downward along her torso, the palms of his hands skimming her. When he cleared her hips, her gown slid to the floor and joined nearly all that had once come between them on the floor.

He took her hand and she stepped over her clothes, to face her lover in the center of a gypsy-wagon-turned-cocoon-turned-heaven.

He slipped her camisole up and over her head. Then he stepped back to regard her, a connoisseur examining a work of art, assessing it and delighting in the vision of creation.

“God’s work,” he said. “Well done.”

Standing there, in corset, chemisette, and stockings, Lacey wished her underpinnings were silk and lace, like those she’d helped make for Jade’s trousseau at Peacehaven. Hers were no more than serviceable cotton, rough, plain, and well-worn, yet Gabriel regarded her every bit as hungrily as Marcus had often eyed Jade.

She’d dreamed of this moment for five long years, and whether this would be the first of many nights for them, or the last, she loved this dignified, handsome, stubborn bear of a man more than she loved her life.

She wouldn’t trade this time with him for anything, no matter the pain that must inevitably follow.

She wanted him in the way a woman wants her man, inside her, deep, one with her and the universe, as if no one else existed but them.

As if she spoke her surrender, Gabriel nodded and undid her garters with renewed determination, sliding each of her stockings down her legs. Then he stood, turned her back to him, and unlaced her corset just enough to slip his hands inside and around her, until he cupped her breasts full in them.

Lacey leaned back against him as he plumped her breasts like silk pillows and pebbled her nipples, whispering his adoration of her body, his breath and lips warm along her neck, her ears, her shoulders.

Potent points of pleasure coursed through her with burgeoning force. Happiness soared, her womanhood flowered, wet and welcoming, pulsing to take him in.

In a trice, Gabriel did away with her corset, turned her, and lifted a breast to suckle through her chemisette. With his other hand, he reacquainted himself with the heat of her beneath her drawers.

Finally, they, too, were gone and Lacey stood naked before the man she loved.

Rather than allow his smoldering eyes to set her ablaze, she disposed of his trousers in a thrumming heartbeat and saw he was wearing an item of male attire she’d heard about but never seen. Underbreeches. She circled him to get a good look, then she gave him back a bit of his own.

Stroking the fabric ever so lightly across the front, she discovered, to her surprise, that the marvelous new inventions were slit just enough to accommodate . . . a lover’s hand, or his own, the thought of which made her wet.

He gasped when she found him, that part of him rigid and thick, the rest soft and supple . . . except her other hand wanted to touch him as well, and so she knelt and teased his underbreeches down his legs, slow and torturous, letting her cheek graze him, making him jump, and swear, and shiver and groan, until she finally cupped him in one hand even as she closed her other around him.

Who knew she had such power? She incited him to throw back his head and shout for her to stop, and continue, and to stifle a groan, as if he experienced more pain than pleasure, but she knew better. She liked as well that she could make him beg and buck and plead for her to stop and continue and hurry and, “Stop!” but “Don’t!”

Then he was setting her on the bed and kissing her and coming down on her, opening his mouth over her own once more.

Hard to her soft, cool to her hot, he dipped where she curved, and arched where she plunged, and all so deliciously and perfectly well. They fit into and along each other like two pieces of a hand-shaped puzzle, making her wonder how even the Deity had accomplished it.

“Gabriel. You feel so good.This is good; it’s right and—”

“Just kisses,” he said. “Kisses and touches enough for pleasure. Nothing that can result in babies.”

She reared back for a minute, too shocked to go on. “You think onlydark passion makes babies?”

“Shut up, Lace, and kiss me.”

She chuckled and did.

Just touching could bring pleasure, Lacey discovered, wild pleasure, trembling pleasure, when touching just so, in just the right places, and with the right rhythm. Tongues touching and dancing, mating. Hands, legs . . . mouths touching everywhere.

She learned variations on pleasure—with no danger of babies—a pleasure she never imagined possible without the joining of bodies. Wondrous. Yet, something was amiss, something nameless and poignant that made her want to weep, like sliding fast yet not fast enough, down an ice-slick hill. But despite the lack, pleasure grew and burst, and set them free to drift.

Like two spoons in the small bed, they slept . . . until Lace woke, sat up, and examined every facet of Gabriel’s man parts in the soft light of dawn, stroking along and around, up and down, testing his bollocks, the soft, the hard, up his length, teasing his moist tip with a slick finger.

When she dared to kiss that silky tip, he awoke with a moan, saw what she was about, and as fast as that, she was on her back with him deep inside her.

In a frenzy, he brought her higher in three deep strokes than he had all night long, and she curled her legs around him and arched her back to pull him deeper, worked her muscles to keep him there.

He gasped, he groaned, and he shouted her name to the heavens in thanksgiving.

So blessedly good she felt with him there, she’d nearly wept after they crashed for the simple joy of his weight atop her. Even then she’d known she would take him any way she could have him. But this glorious, incredible, ordained way, this was the most perfect of all.

They climbed and soared, and then, like water cascading down a mountain—pure, bubbling, wild, and free—they floated as one, peaceful and at rest, for minutes or hours. It might even have been days. Who cared?

Ready again, Gabriel worked in her, slow and purposeful, making her whimper for faster, then slower, then just plain more. She looked up at him looking down at her, handsome, too handsome for a man of God, certainly too handsome for her. And when he laughed, the sun shone brighter in the sky.

“Come with me, Lace,” he said. “Come with me to heaven. I’ll wait. Come.” Then, deepening each concentrated thrust, he dipped his head to suckle her, pulling hard shafts of leaping pleasure.

He stopped suckling with a groan to move higher over her and increase his pace. She feared she might die of the frenzy, just before she shattered into a million star-bright pieces, to hover over the earth and become one with eternity.

A fraction of a moment later, Gabriel climaxed, shouting her name, and she rushed to the heavens again. One last incredible time she fell to earth to drift sated and exhausted in Gabriel’s arms.

After a time, he reversed their positions and settled her atop him in a state of lazy contentment.

He urged her to sleep, so she closed her eyes.

She had never been so comfortable.

Awareness came as Gabriel felt the morning light tease at his eyelids. Remorse hit and consumed him before he opened them. Instinctively, he tightened his arms around Lacey to keep her with him, always to be a part of him.

No use. He’d done it again, let passion all but rule him. He’d taken her, by God, while holding passion back, and could not imagine what might have happened had he set it free.

If he were not careful, his baser instincts would win. This night alone together could ruin them. And Bridget, caught in its aftermath, would be hurt as well. Cricket had lost everyone but him and Lacey. Him, she could do without; Lacey, she could not. He’d come to that sorry conclusion in the two days he spent mindlessly pacing after the night Lace came to his room.

To keep Bridget, he knew he must keep Lace—no easy task. Though she had always been his missing half, he hadn’t realized it as a boy. Back then, he knew only that following her, adoring her, being ordered by her, even, infrequently touching her—as in, being pushed into the mud by her—had been joy enough for him.

Now he wanted more. He wanted everything. He wanted . . . them.

She stirred in his arms, snuggled her face deeper into his neck, moved, and moaned. Parts of her must be tender and sore. He would have to kiss them better the minute she woke. He frowned.

No. First he would settle the matter of their marriage, then he would make her tender parts better, and after that, perhaps he would let her out of his bed.

He supposed he had no choice in that matter. She should be dressed in the event someone spotted their benighted wagon, impaled by an encroaching tree, its leaves now bathed in colored light from the sunbeams splintered through the intact—praise be—stained-glass window at the back of the wagon.

Lacey shifted and moaned and rubbed her nose back and forth against the hair on his chest. Then she stilled and looked up at him, as if getting her shocking bearings.

He laughed and his stone heart warmed. “Itchy nose means you’re coming into money.”

She smiled lazily and stretched her arms in that fine feline way of hers, her limbs sliding along his own. “Don’t need money. I have you.”

“Not yet, but you will.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lacey regarded Gabriel soberly. “What do you mean by that? I will what?”

“Have me.”

“In the biblical sense?”

“Well, yes. You’ll have me in that way as well. Often.”

Lace took her luscious bottom lip between her teeth, making him want to bite it himself, while she appeared to be working out some high mathematical equation. Her growing silence made him nervous. “You understand,” he said, “that after last night, wemust marry.”

“Must we?” She rose too fast at that, placing certain parts of him in perilous danger of extinction, until she got herself free.

Safe to love another day, Gabriel expelled a relieved breath and tried not to be distracted by her pert breasts and fine bottom. He watched her rummage and blush until she covered herself to her thighs with one of Ivy’s shirts, so worn Gabe could practically see right through it.

Then he had to raise one knee to keep her from seeing how alluring he found her in it, or she’d find something else to wear, for certain. She seemed that annoyed, though he didn’t know why. Oh, how cork-brained was he? Of course he knew why.Must. No one told the Lady Lacey Ashton that shemust do anything.

“Lace, listen. Bridget needs a mother. You’re her cousin; you love her and she loves you. Who better? And if you marry me, you can save me from a tittering empty-headed wife and a mother-in-law who carries a pitchfork.” He’d thrown that in to make her smile, but it seemed, rather, to bring a thunderous frown to her brow.

“I know,” he said, rising to look for food, “that we’d have to get Prout on our side.”

“When hell freezes over.”

He scratched his lush, man chest. “Aye, most likely.”

She regarded his rampant desire with an annoyed frown.

He followed her gaze down to the evidence of his randy self. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“You can forget something that large? Doesn’t it get in your way? You should be tripping over it, for heaven sake.”

“Why, thank you. But one gets used to what one has always had.” He scratched his hairy chest. “I’m . . . hungry.” His body rose as he regarded her.

She scoffed. “For food, even?”

“That, too. Splendid idea. Ah,” he said looking into the round tin from which he’d pried the cover. “Irish soda bread.” He took a bite and offered her the can but she shook her head. He made a face. “It’s dry; it could use some jam.”

Lacey searched the floor and stooped, carefully, to pick up a jar. “I saw it rolling around before, before we….”

Too many silent minutes passed, them facing each other, her thighs beneath that shirt looking perfect and welcoming, his body jumping up and down, shouting, “Let’s go, I’m ready.”

Gabe raised a brow. “Before we what? Hit the tree? Took off our clothes? Laid hands on each other? Burned each other alive?”

She made a strangled sound deep in her throat, her cheeks strawberry-bright. “Before any of it, blast it!” she snapped. “Will youplease put on some clothes?”

“They’re wet.”

Lacey huffed and grabbed them from the floor to throw them over the encroaching branch. “There, now they can dry. Ivy must have something in here that you can wear.” She searched frantically and finally gave a great sigh of relief. “Here, put this on.” She handed him a second old shirt, just as worn but not so sheer that she’d realize what hers revealed, thank goodness, because he liked the view.

The shirt she chose for him fit his wide shoulders well enough, but it didn’t meet in the front to button or cover his chest . . . or anything.

He couldn’t help laugh at her, standing there half-dressed, half-exasperated, and totally appalled. “At least it keeps my back warm. You could come closer and warm my front.”

That raised her chin and snapped her back ramrod-straight. “I will not marry you, Gabriel Kendrick. Not to give Bridget a mother or to save you from the greedy Olivia. Drat you for suggesting they were good enough reasons to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Yes, raising Bridget with him would be like a dream come true, but his reasons were not good enough to make a life together, or even a life for Bridget.

She couldn’t live with a man who couldn’t sort his emotions and neither could Bridget. “It might be better if I take Bridget and raise her alone.”

Her unexpected assault threw him, coming on the heels of intimacy, bearing the revelation he dreaded hearing most in the world. He picked up her clothes and turned his back on her to hang them over the branch beside his, so she could not read his pain.

He couldn’t lose her again. He could not. But what—

“Hello the wagon? Anyone inside?”

“Hello,” Lacey shouted. “We’re locked in. Can you get us out?” Her voice had wobbled as if she might cry, but when Gabe looked, she stood with her back to him, stepping into her wet crinolines, still covered by Ivy’s shirt.

More than forty-eight dreadful hours after they left town in full view of the gossips, Gabe drove Ivy’s quickly repaired puppet wagon, Lace sitting beside him, down Arundel’s High Street, people stopping to point and conjecture as they passed.

Gabe pulled the wagon up to the door of the carriage house behind Rectory Cottage and helped Lace get down. Nothing had passed between them since they’d left the Kingsley’s crowded cottage. They’d spent the night there, in Amberley, he in a bed with two strapping boys, Lace with three little girls.

It had been the longest night of his life, for Lace had not spoken a word to him from the moment Adelard Kingsley broke into the wagon until they parted at the top of the stairs, in the man’s wattle and daub cottage, to enter different bedrooms.

He’d paid the Kingsley family handsomely to help him clean and repair Ivy’s wagon all that day and late into the evening. Ivy’s horses, Chatsworth and Eccles, had been grazing beside the wagon when he and Lacey were set free around mid-morning. The bolting steeds had been found to have little more than a few paltry cuts, but very large and expensive appetites.

As he followed Lacey down the drive toward Rectory Cottage, Gabe determined that once they were inside, they would have this out. MacKenzie would take his side, if she knew the possible consequences, like another unmarried pregnancy for Lace, though he was loath to produce that knowledge unless left without choice.

And he would not let her say it wasn’t his this time!

Gabe stilled as the thought settled, the sentiment stopping him in his tracks. But like a badly carved puzzle, the pieces did not fit properly. And why that should make him shiver, he could not say.

“Lacey,” passing through the kissing gate distracted him. “Lacey, you have to listen to me.”

The front door opened and they both froze as Prout and Olivia stepped from Rectory Cottage. Snob-the-elder’s nose could not have risen any higher were it attached to a French hot-air balloon. “I will make you pay” were all but inked on her judgmental brow.

Despite her disdainful regard, she was loving the entire scene. Gabe could almost see her mentally rubbing her hands in glee. The daughter, to give Olivia her due, seemed acutely uncomfortable and wishing herself elsewhere.

I suppose,” said Prout, regarding him, “that you must have an explanation for a two-day journey alone with such a one as this, though I’m not certain dear Olivia will be up to hearing it. One cannot sully the ears of the innocent with tarnished tales, can one . . . vicar?”

That arrow hit its mark. A vicar and the town “sinner”—Prout’s word—returning two mornings later. Wait till his bishop got wind of the tale. With Prout’s help, it wouldn’t take long.

“Alone?” said Ivy, from behind him with a chuckle, surprising the devil out of Gabe “Not likely. Sorry I couldn’t wave when we went by Sunday, but Lace wouldn’t give me a turn at the window.” Ivy chuckled. “Wasn’t that fun?” He put an arm around Lace and escorted her into the house, not giving the disbelieving women so much as a nod as he passed.

Gabe offered Prout a nod before following them silently inside, then he turned and shut the door on the gaping mouths.

MacKenzie insisted Lacey be swept upstairs to wash and rest while Gabe insisted she step into the parlor to hear him out. “Right this minute, if you please!” he demanded.

Bridget, barreling into Lace and bursting into tears, put period to the debate, so MacKenzie won by default as she’d moved the duo forward while shushing Cricket.

“One hour,” Gabe shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “One hour, Lace, and we discuss this down here, or I’m coming up and we’ll discuss it up there, locked in again, if we must.”

Lace appeared in the parlor entrance seventy-four clock-ticking minutes later and Gabe wished he, too, had gone up to bathe and change. She had him at a disadvantage as things stood, and he hated it.

MacKenzie pushed Lace into the room and shut the double doors behind her, tossing him a fearsome Scot scowl of warning.

“Sit down, please,” he said as he took his place, elbow on the mantel, prepared to be patient and reasonable and explain all the advantages of a marriage between them.

“You sit,” she said, setting his back up. “And let me lord it over you.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I need a bath first.”

“Go and wash, then, and leave me alone, why don’t you?”

“Devil it a bit, Lace, why?” He half-expected to read loathing in her expression—she should despise him, by God. He was begging and couldn’t stop. Nothing in his life had ever seemed this important. “Why won’t you marry me? We could raise Bridget together. We’ve been a good team in the past, Lace. Bridget would benefit from our guidance. You love her.”

“I love her,” Lacey repeated.And I love you, too, you dolt of a thick-skulled, halfwit.“But frankly, Gabriel, since I wouldn’t marry you if you came roasted with an apple in your mouth, I’ll have to take Bridget and raise her myself.”

He stepped back at her rancor and the repeated threat and he gathered his scattered wits before he could form a reply. “You cannot,” he said, after too long, cursing his lack of brilliance.

“Watch me.”

“You wouldn’t do that to her.”

“Do what to her? Give her tenderness and love and a life of joy and laughter?”

“No. You wouldn’t give Cricket a life where everyone looks down on you both because of your sordid past. She’d be tainted by association. No man would court her, much less marry her, withyou as her parent.”

The barb hit, dead center, its shaft imbedded in Lacey’s heart so she bled on the instant. With a deep, shuddering breath, she thought she might be ill and wished she could melt into the floor. She raised her chin instead. “Thank you Gabriel, for firming my resolve. I am decided now. I shall raise her alone. We’ll be out of here as soon as we’re both packed.”

“To go where?” He hadn’t quite masked the panic she saw in his eyes before he spoke. Small comfort.

“So far away that no one will know anything about me,” she said. “As far away from you as I can get.”

That broke him. He folded, and her heart went out to the pale shadow before her, yet her words had been taken from his own supply of poison darts. “Don’t go,” he said. “I have to be able to see y—her. Therewill be talk if you stay, here or nearby,—you know that—but I’ll stand in the way of it; I promise.”

“Like you’ve stood in Prout’s way? I don’t think so. It’s over, Gabriel. I’m going.” She opened the door, needing to run, because she wanted so badly to weep. She would hurt him and herself and Bridget as well if she managed to take the child. But, Lord, staying with him, here, yet apart from him, would finish her.

She had barely vacated the room when her tears began.

“You won’t go, Lacey Ashton!” Gabriel shouted after her. “Because you haven’t a feather to fly with. You’d both go hungry. You’d end in a ditch, Bridget beside you.”

Lacey’s knees nearly buckled and she couldn’t see where she was going, but she kept walking, skirting both Mac and Ivy as she headed for the stairs. To think that Gabriel had actually asked her to marry him yesterday. Fortunately for her, she had not answered, for she refused to live with a man devoid of emotion. Upstairs, in her bed, Bridget curled beside her and patted her shoulder. “Papa makes growly-bear noises sometimes,” she said. “But he never bites.”

Lacey might once have laughed at that. Shades of Clara, she thought, and almost lost the fight with tears then and there.

They could hear Gabriel shutting drawers and cursing beneath his breath in the next room.

Mac came in and sat in the chair by her bed. Ivy followed and stood staring out her bedroom window. They were all the support anyone could hope for, except that the man she most needed took his stand as far away from her in spirit as anyone could get.

“He’s right about the money,” Lacey said to no one in particular. “I don’t have any.” Besides, she thought, Bridget needed her father as much as she needed anyone. She turned into Bridget’s embrace, pulling her close. “We’ll do just fine right here, won’t we, darling? You’re right about Papa. Lots of growl but no bite.”

Bridget slept with her that night. In the morning, Lacey didn’t remember who’d suggested or approved it. It had just happened.

Life at Rectory Cottage became strained and quiet. She and Gabriel talked in company when necessary.

Long after Victor’s memorial service, sometime during the third week after her falling out with Gabriel, they broke the silence with one-word answers. They did not make polite, if abbreviated, conversation when they were alone until the next week.

Feigned affability, for Bridget’s sake, warmed over the second month. She and Gabriel had almost regained a semblance of their old ease in each other’s company whenthe letter came.

“It’s from Arkwright and Albion, my mother’s solicitors,” Lacey said, sitting at the breakfast table while everyone waited for her to open the missive. Nervous, she rose and left the room.

They were still there, waiting, quiet, pensive, when she returned. “I am summoned to appear at their offices in Horsham tomorrow. Ivy, can you take me?”

“Can’t. Sorry. Two performances in Amberley tomorrow. I can take Cricket with me, though. Gabe, you can take Lace, can’t you?”

A combination of quivering fear and raging hope gripped Lacey, until Gabriel regarded her with a nod. “I’d be happy to.” He didn’t seem happy at all about anything.

Thus, she found herself sitting beside him in his carriage on a gray August day. He set out to entertain her with stories incited by this residence or that along the way. “In that ramshackle lodge lives a chatterbox,” said he. “She claims one new malady a day. Say hello and you’ll hear about every one twice.

“Ah, there lives the widow in black who invites me to dinner every Thursday, like a spider enticing a fly.”

“What? Afraid of a little black widow?”

Gabriel smiled, and, yes, the sun came out. “She’s four-feet tall and piles hair the color of pomegranates so high atop her head, she ducks to enter a room. I vow, she purchases rouge pots by the score, so her cheeks match her hair.”

“And you haven’t taken her up on her offer?”

He leaned near, his warm breath against her ear raising the hair on her arms. “She’s smells of an undertaker’s parlor.”

Lacey laughed, a rusty sound of late, but enough to send them back to an easier time. “Do you remember the day we climbed to the Maccabee Tower at Ashcroft and tossed mounds of cook’s rising bread dough on unsuspecting passers-by?”

“Do I? Cook blisteredmy backside,” Gabriel said. “Then my father did the same twice as hard. You, I remember, got away with a bold finger-shaking, when it was your idea in the first place.”

“I did get you into trouble, didn’t I?” she said, remembering the last time she might have done, and how sorry she was that she hadn’t told her mother the truth. She so wished they’d become a poor but happy family with their first, and more, happy children.

At the solicitor’s offices, they had to wait for either Mr. Arkwright or Mr. Albion to return from unscheduled appointments. Nearly two hours later, Mr. Arkwright arrived, and Lacey invited Gabriel into his office with her, but he declined, allowing that she should have privacy with her solicitor.

When she returned to the anteroom, she caught the frown marring Gabriel’s features. “It’s all right,” she said. “Come, I’ll tell you on the way home. We’ve been away longer than we expected. Mac will be worried.”

Hours after they’d left, as they approached Rectory Cottage, Gabe supposed he hadn’t taken it very well. She’d wanted him to be happy for her and he acted cross while he shuddered in his shoes instead.

“I’ve come into some money,” she’d told him simply. “A great deal of money. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s an anonymous gift, but I suppose it’s from Clara, who couched it in secrecy in the event she predeceased our mother. At any rate, Mother is likely turning in her silk-lined gold coffin, even now. Imagine, independence for the sinner.”

She could take Bridget away, was all Gabe could think. She could afford to leave him and take his daughter with the greatest hulking chunk of his heart as well.

“Gabriel?”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“What?”

“You have the means to leave and take Bridget away with you now, and after the things I said, I wouldn’t blame you, but I don’t want you to go.”

“It’d save a lot of talk, if I did. You could repair your tarnished reputation among your flock and—”

“Rubbish! I’d rather have you and Bridget where I know you’re safe. Think about staying, Lace, will you?”

She’d never felt so heartened. “I’ll think about it.”

Two months ago, she would have given her soul for that request, and now that she had thatand the money to take Bridget away, her thought turned to burning her ragbag of clothes and buying dresses to make Bridget proud.

They entered the Rectory kitchen through the back door, startling her Mac, baking pies. “Lord, where have you been? Bridget’s frantic.”

“Why? Where is she?”

“She asked Ivy if she could please speak with Hedgehog, in private, mind you. In a right bustle she was, crying about MyLacey leaving her forever and her Papa not . . . well, just go on into the parlor and let her know you’re back. Ivy looked a bit unstrung when he went for Hedgehog.”

From the hall, they could see Bridget in the second-best parlor, on the Chippendale divan on her stomach, chin in hands, facing Hedgehog, peeking over the far arm.

“Mama married him after myreal papa died,” Bridget said.

Hedgehog petted her hair with his finger-sized arm. “Tell me what you remember most about your mama.”

Bridget wiggled around to rest her legs up against the back of the sofa, hands beneath her head, her gaze trained on the ceiling. “Mama used to sing, though not as often as MyLacey does. Once when she did, I remember that papa looked really sad. Mama told him that she knew he missed MyLacey most when she sang, but he would be able to see MyLacey soon.”

She looked at Hedgehog. “This makes me sad to remember.”

“You’ll feel better, if you tell me what’s bothering you.”

Bridget sighed and sat up. “Mama said she wouldn’t rest easy in heaven if Papa didn’t go and get MyLacey after . . . after Mama was gone. Papa pulled her close and he cried and he kept saying he was sorry. And Mama cried, too. And I cried, too.” Bridget swallowed convulsively. “They didn’t know I was there.”

She swiped her eyes with the backs of both hands. “I know Papa likes me because he calls me Cricket, but I wish he would have liked Mama enough to keep her here and not send her home to God.”

Gabriel sucked in a breath and paled to the point that Lacey took his arm, half in support, half in comfort. It was a measure of his shock that he let her.

Neither of them could have moved from that spot, skirting Bridget’s range of vision, for anything.

“Now today Papa has taken MyLacey, and they haven’t come home, and I’m afraid he sent her to God, too.”

Gabe sucked in a breath and crushed Lace’s hand in his.

“Bridget, listen to me,” Hedgehog said, more in Ivy’s voice than Lacey had ever heard. “Your papa had no choice. Your mama was very sick.”

“He could have kept her; Mama said so.”

“What exactly did your Mama say to make you think your Papa had any control over her passing?”

“She said Papa was God’s special helper, one of His chosen ones, one of His favorites. I think if Papaasked, God would have let him keep Mama; I know it. God listens to Papa, Mama told me. That’s why Papa talks a long time on Sundays and everybody comes and they hardly ever fall asleep. Why did Papa let God have Mama, Hedgehog? Why didn’t he like Mama enough to ask God if we could keep her?”

“Shh, love,” Hector said. “Your mama was hurting bad when she was here, and the only way to stop her hurting was for God to take her home with Him.”

“But MyLacey’s not sick and she’s gone. When Mama was gone for lots of hours, Papa came back and told me God had taken her to heaven. And now MyLacey’s been gone forever and I’m afraid Papa’s gonna’ come back and say she’s with God, too, and I’ll never forgive him, Hedgehog. Never!”

“Cricket,” Lacey said, sitting beside her.

Bridget launched herself into Lacey’s arms and began to sob as she clung like a monkey.

Gabriel watched, rooted in horror. He would never be his daughter’s hero. He’d failed at the single most important task of his life. He’d failed to rescue her mother from the clutches of death.

“You’re wrong, sweetheart,” Lacey said. “Papa couldn’t have kept your mama here, and he wanted to. He prayed very hard to God so he could keep her. Mama wrote to me and told me so.”

Like Gabriel, Bridget looked up. Unlike her father, Bridget’s lashes were spiked with tears. “He did?”

Lacey nodded. “That’s why he cried in your mama’s arms, because he knew God had said no. It’s why he was sorry.”

“Did you?” Bridget asked Gabe as she caught sight of him.

He nodded and tried to take her into his arms, his emotions dangerously close to the surface.

Bridget refused to go to him, and despite the hand Lacey extended and he accepted, and his battle to remain strong, tears tipped his lashes as well.

CHAPTER NINE

Gabe waited outside his daughter’s room while Lacey tucked her in for the night. Lace was angry when he didn’t follow them inside. He knew it. So be it. She’d been annoyed with him half their life, anyway. He certainly wouldn’t admit to Lace that it would bloody well break him if Bridget turned from him a second time in one day. So he’d stay out here and not give his daughter the chance.

He walked the length of the upper hall half a dozen times before Lace came out, then he stopped dead when he saw her face. Disappointment, rather than anger, he read there, and frustration seethed in him. “I do not want to discuss it!” He had about reached the end of his ability to withstand rejection for one lifetime, by thunder.

“You’ve had a shock,” she said stepping forward and hugging him.

With a force of sheer will, he kept his arms at his sides. “I do not need you. I do not need anyone.”

“I know you don’t,” she said, holding him tighter and laying her head on his chest. “I know you don’t.”

“Oh, God,” he said, crushing her against him. “I wouldn’t blame you if you took her away from me after this.” The echo of his statement was sobering. He stepped away from Lace to gather the strength for the blow he would instigate. “It might be best if you did. She’ll never forgive me for her mother’s death. You were right. I don’t know her at all.”

“You told me you felt as if she blamed you in some way for Clara’s death. You know her better than we both thought.”

Gabe released and oath. “Who does she think I am that I can stop death?”

“God’s best friend.”

Three simple words and Lace had managed to pierce and deflate his anger. On a ragged sigh, he allowed her to lead him to his room and shut them in. As promising as that might be, sexual intimacy at this moment seemed . . . wrong. Dear Lord, he’d never been in more trouble in his life.

He about smiled when Lace silently mimicked Bridget’s nightly routine, undoing the same few buttons.

“I like you this way,” she said, rolling up the second sleeve. “Relaxed and easy.” She led him to his settee and sat beside him, bringing his arm over her shoulder. “Ever since my first night back from Peacehaven,” Lace said, “seeing you like this has made me want to curl up with you before the fire.”

He shook his head as the tightness in his chest eased and he pulled her close. “When the weather cools, we’ll make it a nightly ritual . . . if you’re still here. I’ll never take anything for granted again.” His heart skipped at the implication in his words. “I think you have something else on your mind. Out with it.”

“I’m wondering what you’re planning to do about Cricket’s misconception?”

“Do? What can I do? For the first time ever, I think I understand why people turn from God or the church. My daughter hates me, Lace, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“On the plus side, she equates you with God.”

“Which makes my human failings all the worse to her.”

“True, but, Gabriel, she doesn’thate you.”

“Yes, well, I’m no more convinced than she is.”

“I’ve been wondering if that scene might have been part and parcel of her trying to make life go her way.”

“I sure as Hades noticed it wasn’t going my way.” Gabe winced. “Sorry, that was selfish.”

Lacey squeezed his hand. “I don’t think she’s aware, mind you, that she’s trying to make you conform to her wishes. I didn’t realize it about myself, until I saw a certain little girl at Peacehaven wrap two usually sane adults into knots.”

Gabe latched on to her words like a line from the mire. “You never told me about Peacehaven, Lace. Was it terrible?”

“At first, anywhere not here seemed terrible. Then I accepted the changes in my life . . . well, some of them, and I grew to love it. There are a few people back at Peacehaven who mean a great deal to me. I cried more the day I left there than when I left here. But I’m so very glad I came back. Which reminds me.” She removed the pins from her hair and shook it out. “I’ve decided what I’m going to do, first, with my newfound wealth.”

Gabe’s spine went straight and he tried to remove his arm from around her. “Take Bridget away?”

She held his arm in place. “I’m going to purchase new clothes for the first time in five years, so Cricket won’t be ashamed of me.”

Gabriel released the breath he’d been holding and toyed with a lock of her hair. “She’s not ashamed of you; she simply thinks your dresses are ugly.” He chuckled. “But judging by that god-awful green dress she loves, her taste may be difficult to satisfy on a daily basis.”

“Gabe, you need to spend more time with her.”

“So she can twist the dagger in my heart?”

“She doesn’t know you, Gabriel, any better than you know her.”

“God, Lace, I’d do anything for her and you know it, but she doesn’t want to spend time with me.”

“Remember how excited she was the day she dressed up for tea? She talked to you then. And in the tree, when you joined us?”

“Because you were there. She was happy with you beside her.”

“I think when we’re together, we make her feel safe enough to forget her childish conclusions. Take us to a draper in the village tomorrow. It’s market day and there’ll be any number of attractions. Perhaps we can go for a picnic on the River Arun after, or take tea at the Thistle.”

Gabe brought her close and kissed her. Their relationship had changed subtly. They’d started as friends, became lovers, and now they were partners of a sort, trying to do their best for Bridget while taking care of each other in the process. Her concern, both for him and Bridget, rather than pure sexual desire, had prompted his kiss. The concept felt comfortable and right. “You’re bound and determined to repair the breach, are you not, even though I believe that deep down you came first and foremost to take her away from me?”

“I told you we’d both do what was best for her in the end.”

“You’re best for her,” Gabe said.

“And you,” she added, “and if we’re not careful, talk like this will make her think that neither of us wants her.”

“You know what this all means,” he said, thinking this was a bad time to offer marriage, except that it seemed a perfect time. “If you married me, she could be ours forever.”

“She already is ours. Nothing will ever change that.” Lace rose, seeming somewhat at a loss despite her show of calm.

A good sign, Gabe thought. She hadn’t said no though she hadn’t said yes either. He stood as well. “Thank you for caring about what happens to both of us.” He felt lost. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to carry her to his bed, and yet, something nearly as good as sex, amazingly, had just passed between them. He couldn’t quite define it, but he experienced a renewed hope for the future because of it. He escorted her to the connecting door, kissed her gently and held her for a long minute, stroking the silk of her ear. “’Night, Lace.”

“’Night, Gabriel.”

After he undressed and climbed into bed, like clockwork, a little red dog pushed open the door he’d left ajar, jumped up on his bed, and settled right down beside him, her nose in his neck. “No offense, sweetheart,” he said as he stroked Tweenie’s sleek red back. “But I have hopes of replacing you in this bed very soon.”

“Like with whom?” Lace stood in his doorway, appearing interested but uncertain.

Gabe rose on an elbow. He hadn’t heard his door open. Tweenie whined but vacated the spot that Gabriel meant for the insecure beauty at his bedroom door. He peeled back his covers. “I’ve been saving this spot for you . . . for years.”

She flew into his arms and knocked the air from his chest by nearly landing atop him, though he would have her nowhere else.

“Sleeping in our dress, are we?” he asked between kisses, his hands seeking buttons and closures, finding some, undoing as many as he could, and before he had a chance to wonder why she wasn’t trying to help remove her clothes, his nightshirt was being lifted over his head.

“Unfair,” he said. “I only have the one layer.”

“Lucky me,” she giggled. “I have a dozen.”

“Two dozen, at least,” he said as his hands crept beneath until he found her, the silk of her thigh, her sigh near his ear, warm and welcoming, just like her, her legs falling open to a stroke up the inside of that thigh, closer and closer to his goal and her plea. “This is not prudent,” he mumbled through his sexual trance.

“Nor wise,” said she on a shivery gasp.

“Nor patient,” he added as she rose to meet his seeking hand.

“It’s no virtue I can think of,” she gasped between those little satisfied mewling sounds she made. “It’s splendid.”

He smiled, his shaft dancing for her attention “Ordained,” he added.

She shuddered at the small and growing cataclysm within her. “You should know. “It’s hopeful,” she added. “Hope is a virtue.”

“Mmm.”As is love.But no more words were necessary as he made her rise toward climax, pulling pleasure from her deepest recesses, making her repeat his name in supplication and need—for him.

After making her shudder three more times, he let her rest, while he removed her dress as if from a limp doll. One layer gone.

And though he thought she might fall asleep, she awoke instead, rolled to her side to face him, found his needy self, and took him into her hand, moving her petticoats so his shaft rested at her entrance, at that sweet wet place where she pulsed to pull him in.

He tugged her petticoats over her head, and anything else that got in their way—as they lay face to face. And before he decided how serious to let this get, she screamed in frustration, stole his decision, arched her hips, and forced him to impale her.

He let her eager muscles take him deep.

Gabriel bucked, he shouted, his good sense lost in her intoxicating power, her hands in his hair one minute, cupping his bollocks the next, so that every sensation became new and blazing hot, till he caught fire and reveled in the burn. But she would not lead him to completion and cautioned him not to move too fast. “Slow. I want it slow.”

As if she worked a magic he had not quite realized she possessed, she concentrated her inner muscles and practically woman-handled him, squeezing his erection in small bursts while pulling him deep within her tight sheath. Gabe ground his teeth and tried to last as long as she wished while she floated him to heaven.

Her breathing became erratic, her thrusts harder, more fevered. He growled in thanksgiving and matched her for speed, exulting in their wild abandon, both of them headed for a sensual cataclysm, and together they shouted and flew off the edge of the world.

In the float to awareness, they held, clung, her tears blessing his neck, him trying so very hard not to let his emotions show.

She had come home. Lacey had come home to him.

They slept, woke, and made love again and again.

Toward dawn, they lay wakeful, holding tight, and he wondered if she feared, as much as he, what daylight would bring in the way of reality. “Your skills are new, more powerful. I hadn’t noticed in Ivy’s wagon. You never used them when we were young. Are there books to teach such things?”

She chuckled. “At Peacehaven, we were all women, most without their men, well, mostafraidof their men, but sometimes, when the children were asleep in the dead of night, we talked of forbidden things. Marcus had shown his gentle side, proved he had a heart by caring for Jade and little Emmy. Jade had announced that ‘not all men were created equal; that some of them are good.’ So we hoped, which inspired sensual memories that begged explaining, which bred dreams. They hoped for men worth pleasing, and in whispers, they shared secret bedroom skills a woman might employ for thatone good man, meant for each of them, who would remove them from a life of drunken beatings. I listened, Gabriel, and in my mind and body, I practiced the wiles I would work on you, if ever the opportunity arose.”

That humbled him no end. He leaned on an elbow. “Me?Not Nick?”

She gasped, planted him a facer, and left his bed so fast, the muzzy dizziness had not stopped circling before he knew she was gone.

Mac raised a brow when she saw his black eye in the morning, and while he drank his coffee, she slapped a steak on it none too gently.

Cricket laughed when she saw him and tilted her head. “PapaGabe, did you run into a doorknob?”

“The biggest one you can imagine.”

“Smart doorknob.” Mac chuckled.

He and Lacey did not converse until the day of their shopping expedition at the end of that week, and it seemed, by mutual consent, he believed, that they would leave his fall from grace—the mention of Nick, he supposed—to the annals of unspoken history.

Lacey believed that Gabriel was right about Cricket’s taste in dresses. He laughed aloud when she chose lime silk ruching for one of Lacey’s strawberry muslin morning gowns.

Despite the diplomacy required of the situation, Lacey left Watts and Acott, Drapers, on Tarrant Street, with six new dresses on order, and wearing an unclaimed treasure, a walking dress of rich jasper silk with agate buttons. Her mantilla and white chip bonnet, both specially trimmed with jasper ribbons, were everything she could want.

Bridget happily wore a pair of new lime-green silk ribbons in her hair, despite her lavender dress.

They stopped at the Swan, one of the oldest inns in Arundel, for a delicious tea to be packed as a picnic, and afterwards, though Tom Buller hired pleasure boats for the river, they chose a quiet safe spot beneath a tree to watch the activity on the water.

“With more than forty ships registered in Arundel, the River Arun is no peaceful port,” Gabriel said as he ruffled Cricket’s hair and bumped shoulders with Lace. “It connects to the sea by a directed canal.”

He bid them watch the tiny harbor tug, theJumna, pull theEbenezer, a one-hundred-and-fifty ton merchant ship toward the open sea. “A ship like that carries coal, lumber, and salt,” Gabriel said as he took Cricket on his lap. “Watch that bridge over there.” The railroad bridge rolled back to allow the huge ship to pass.

After that, a four-master slippedintothe harbor, with theJumnapulling it in. A ship called theKnickerbocker with a sailor atop a mast shouting, “Lacey. Lacey Ashton!”

“Nick!” Lacey stood, shouted his name again, and waved. “It’s Nick, come home, Gabriel,” she said, waving again toward the ship.

“Leave it to him to own the dratted ship!”

“It could be a coincidence that Ivy calls him Knickerbocker.”

“Nothing about Nick has ever been a coincidence, even the fact that he’s the only Norse god in his titled family. Blond, blue-eyed, with a smile to make women swoon.”

“Shush, Gabriel.”

“Myuncle Nick?” Cricket asked.

“Heruncle?” Gabe barked.

“He’s her mama’s cousin. We were raised together like brother and sisters, so yes, shewould call him uncle, would she not, as a symbol of respect?”

“Respect, yes. Nicholas Daventrymust have respect,” Gabe mumbled.

“Gabriel Kendrick, if your thick head ever gets to becoming normal size, you are going to feel like the hind end of a stubborn . . . arse.”

Cricket slapped a hand to her mouth, but she couldn’t suppress a giggle. Lacey either, the two of them falling over each other, and when they came up for air, Cricket was twice as excited. “Let’s go meet my uncle.”

“It takes hours to get off a ship,” Gabriel said.

“Not if you own it,” Lacey replied.

Gabe sighed. “Which I’m sure he does.”

“Please PapaGabe?”

“Not today, Cricket. Let him get settled first,” Gabe said.Or maybe break his neck falling from that blasted mast first.

Before Bridget could work up a good pout, Gabe took her on his lap and showed her in the distance the windmill on Portreeve’s Acre.

“Let’s go to there,” Bridget said. “I want to see the windmill up close.”

The Acre was a vast expanse of grass as far as the eye could see with scattered trees and a windmill dead center, beside a narrow stretch of the river. “We’ll visit the windmill soon, Cricket, and have NannyMac make us a robust Scottish picnic that day.”

Watching father and daughter together, Lace knew she could never separate Gabe and Bridget. They loved each other. She’d have to find a way to make it work for the three of them. Never mind Prout’s ledger of threats. Never mind Gabe’s thick head. Never mind that Nick had come home.

“In the high distance, Cricket,” Gabe said, “are the peaks of Ashcroft Towers, Lacey’s old home, and Uncle Nick’s new one, since he’s Vincent’s heir. It was built to guard the valley and its access to the sea.”

Lacey cleared her throat. “Nearly every owner added a tower, including my father.”

“Did you know, Cricket,” Gabe took over, “that your great-grandfather raised large American owls as pets in Ashcroft Keep? He named them after some of the noted men of his time.”

Lacey chuckled. “One day his butler came to him in the breakfast parlor and said, “If it please your Grace, Lord Montgomery has laid an egg.”

“Like Lady Cowper, Papa?”

“Exactly like.” Gabe wanted to teach Cricket more of the castle’s history, her heritage through Clara, but she yawned, as did Lacey, so he urged them to rest and let them drift into sleep, closing his eyes as well, pleased to be their lumpy pillow.

Soon enough, Cricket woke crying for her mother.

Gabe turned to Lace. “She hasn’t done this in months.”

Lace tried uselessly to comfort her, but Cricket wouldn’t be calmed.

“Cricket,” Gabe said, remembering the early days right after Clara’s death. “Cricket, come to Papa,” he said. “And I’ll sing you happy.”

Lacey regarded him in surprise, but Bridget climbed into his lap as she must have done before she decided he’d let her mother go without a fight. He sang her favorite hymns in the same clear baritone he usually reserved for service.

When he finished singing, Cricket began to run her fingers back and forth along his beard stubble. “MyLacey, feel,” she said. “Ucky-scratchy, isn’t it?”

Lacey’s teasing smile hovered, telling Gabe he was in for a roasting. She stroked his cheeks, his chin, her eyes bright with memory. “Yes,” she said. “It’s definitely ucky-scratchy. Do you know how he gets it smooth again?”

Bridget shook her head, eyes wide. “No, how?”

“Tomorrow we’ll watch him shave.”

CHAPTER TEN

Next morning, Gabriel fetched Lace first at dawn, then they tickled Bridget awake, so they could drag her, yawning and moaning, each by a hand, where she and Cricket climbed into Gabe’s bed, sleepy-eyed and night-rail clad, to cuddle with Tweenie and watch him shave—Gabriel, not the dog.

Gabe stood before his dresser mirror wearing his black brocade dressing gown brushing lather on his face, which made Lacey wonder what he usually wore, or didn’t wear, to shave. She thought of him in the puppet wagon, buck-naked and soldier-ready, searching—not for something to wear, but for something to eat.

He turned at her chuckle and winked as if he read her. Yes, she liked him best in a bed, deliciously randy and ready, then gentle and loving, in turn. All hers, at least in her mind.

Truth was, he belonged too much to a set of false impressions where she was concerned, which made him entirely unsuitable. A man should trust his soulmate. No matter the evidence, he should have said no, and again, no. “Lace would not have betrayed me.” And until the day he could say as much, and believe it, there was no hope for them.

What was more, he belonged to the machinations of the woman who paid his wages and worked him like a puppet for as long as he failed to reach up and cut his strings. And he belonged to the sins of his fathers and the fear that kept him tethered to a livelihood that he had not chosen so much with his heart as with his pride.

He straightened for a moment to watch her, as if he couldsee condemnation and hopelessness march across her features, and she saw him retreat inside himself, at which point, his expression dimmed, and he returned to shaving.

Bridget, who obviously knew him better than Lace imagined, climbed from his bed, not to get a closer look, she’d wager, but to draw him out again.

Gabriel dragged a chair over so she could stand on it. She reached for his razor but he pulled it farther away. “That is dangerous, young lady. It has to be sharp to cut away my ucky-scratchy beard, and it can cut little fingers as well. Do not, ever, touch it; do you hear me?”

Bridget nodded. “Doesn’t it cut your skin?”

Lacey had been right about him spending more time with his daughter, Gabe thought, worried deep down about losing Lace but giving his all to this conversation with Cricket. “Sometimes I do cut myself, but mostly, I’m very careful.”

They chatted about everything and nothing, her ancestors’ owls and their names, new names for the farm animals they now owned. Names that got so silly, he chuckled and she giggled.

As he rinsed the razor, Cricket reached up with both hands and patted his cheeks, stealing some of his lather for her own face. “Look, MyLacey, I’m—”

“Shh,” Gabe said. “She’s fallen back to sleep.” He toweled Cricket’s face, then his. “Want to sleep longer, too?”

Bridget nodded, so he carried her to his bed and lay her down beside Lace, tucking them both in so as not to awaken the loves of his life.

“Sleep,” he whispered, running his finger along Bridget’s cheek.

To his shock, Cricket caught that stroking finger of his, kissed a knuckle, and closed her eyes.

Gabe straightened and blinked, so full of gratitude, he entered Mac’s kitchen feeling stronger and more ready to face the day than he had for some time. He felt positively exhilarated.

Yes, Cricket had kissed his knuckle in a sleepy moment, but three hours later, when he returned from the bishop’s blasted building committee meeting, she wouldn’t even look at him.

Tweenie, however, was so ecstatic to see him, she piddled on his shoe in her excitement.

If it weren’t for the fact that the pup’s accident brought Bridget’s smile, Gabe would have called everything after his morning shave a total loss and climbed back into bed himself.

The unexpected and unprecedented note from Olivia Prout about sent him there . . . to hide.

My dearest Gabriel,he read, and nearly stopped right there. You’ve been a good and true friend, and more. You are my vicar, my trusted spiritual advisor. Therefore, it is fitting that I come to you, and only you, at this most difficult crossroad in my life.

“Poppycock,” Gabe said, but he read on.

There is no other fit to guide me. Only you, my trusted vicar, can save me from this abyss into which I have fallen.

Help me. Please.

Yours, Olivia.

P.S. I shall be at the Ashcroft Buttery at three of the clock, should you decide to come to my rescue.

“Blasted Cheltenham Tragedy.”

“What’s that?” Mac asked attacking his office with a dustcloth.

Gabe shook his head, his face warm. “Church business. Didn’t mean to grumble. She’s one of God’s children, too, I suppose.”

“Who?” Mac asked.

Gabe rolled his eyes but kept his own counsel. Consulting his pocket watch, he shook his head. “I don’t have much time.”

He set out to help one of his flock, one he’d like to send packing, except that her mother owned his living.

Rectory Farm was situated about three quarters of a mile from Ashcroft Towers, where Lacey grew up. She knew every hidden corner of every building from one end of the property to the other, but she hadn’t realized that Cricket knew them in the same way.

The eggs she gathered in tiny, gentle hands, and the chicks, lambs, and ducks they visited that afternoon were all wondrous new, seeing them as Lacey was through Bridget’s big chocolate eyes.

Like the Rectory, several other workaday structures that served Ashcroft Towers were near at hand. One of her favorites, the octagonal buttery, sat just down the road and across the lane from Gabriel’s thatched-roof cottage.

The buttery was also constructed of flint and brick with a thatched roof. Unlike the cottage, it bore a unique eight-sided shape, all windows, like a wide but low-lying lantern-tower with window seats along each of the eight windows. Its second-best feature was its central fountain running pure, cool spring water twenty-four hours a day.

As they approached, Lacey caught Bridget up short. Olivia Prout had just slipped into the buttery—no, she’d sneaked, actually.

It was true that in summer, the buttery, with its pristine tile walls and floors, was the coolest spot on the Ashcroft Estate, but today was not hot enough to entice a woman with Olivia Prout’s air of superiority into its provincial confines.

Lace turned Cricket toward home. Perhaps Gabriel knew something about Olivia’s presence.

At the Rectory, Cricket went up to find her kitten, and Lace went to Gabe’s office. He wasn’t there, but she found a wrinkled note from Olivia on his desk.

She read it and scoffed. “Of all the ridiculous—” Lace hoped that Gabriel had not fallen for Olivia’s drivel but had gone to send the woman packing. Still, she suspected he might be stepping into a trap.

“Mac, watch Cricket,” Lace called as she ran out the door and down the road.

As she ran, it didn’t take Lace long to see them, Olivia reclined on a window seat and Gabriel beside her, his hand in hers.

Lace spotted Lady Prout and an aging crony coming down the lane, headed this way. She squeaked and ran for the back door, dashed through the workroom, and grabbed a cup. “Found a cup,” she said as she entered the fountain room to fill it with water as Prout and her witness stumbled “accidentally” upon the scene.

“Here you go, dear,” Lacy said to Olivia. “You’ll feel better in a trice. Oh, Lady Prout, I didn’t see you.” Lace straightened. “Olivia was feeling faint so Gabriel and I brought her inside where it’s cool.”

Gabriel stood, stony-faced and fists clenched, regarding the matrons, and Lacey placed her arm through his, squeezing it. “Lucky we happened upon her, wasn’t it, darling?” she asked Gabe, wondering if he was as furious as he appeared . . . with everyone.

Lacey bestowed on the seething Olivia a concerned smile. “You shouldn’t walk this far alone on a warm day, dear, especially without your parasol. I hope you brought your carriage, Lady Prout. I imagine Olivia is anxious to be away. Such a fuss.”

Olivia silently marched from the buttery, a wilting parent and a clucking hen in tow.

Neither Lace nor Gabriel moved until their coach rolled out from behind the dovecote, they boarded, and the vehicle moved down the lane. Mission not accomplished. No scandalbroth wedding for Olivia Prout and Gabriel Kendrick.

“What the devil did you think you were doing?” Gabe snapped, still oblivious to his near miss.

“Saving your hide, and much thanks I get. You nearly got a lifetime sentence. Did you want to be sacrificed on the block of matrimony to the highest bidder?”

“While the unfortunate coincidence had been misconstrued at first, I’m certain I could have—”

“Coincidence? Misconstrued? You were lured here to make one of the most common and dangerous mistakes in society—being caught alone, unchaperoned, in the company of an innocent.” Lacey allowed herself an undignified snort. “An unmarried maiden whose reputation can only be repaired for being found alone in your company with matrimony.”

“Balderdash.”

“How often do you think the Prouts come to the Ashcroft Buttery? Ever see the old harridan’s coach at the home farm before, and so near to Rectory Cottage? Behind the dovecote every other day, is it? With Prout and awitness inside, Olivia roaming free? I’ll warrant the elder was all fluttering shock and chagrin before she clapped eyes on the scene.”

Gabe paled and sat. “Before I stepped inside, I saw her through the window and wondered what happened . . . except it had not yet happened, had it?”

“No. Unless you anticipated the assignation, becauseyou were the biggest part of old Lady Prout’s machinations? Perhaps you helped stage this to be rid of me? Was something going on between you and Olivia before I got here? Did I ruin your plans? Or do you make a habit of seducing the innocents in your parish? Because that’s exactly how it looked, Gabriel.”

“Don’t be a fool. I’d never touch a woman who didn’t ask for it. I don’t seduce innocents!”

Lacey stepped back, his words stinging as much as his hand might have done. “That would make me the harlot who seduced you against your will.”

Gabriel stepped toward her. “Lace. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“I thought I had put it behind me,” she said, “how angry I’ve been with you for the past five years.”Though she’d never stopped loving him, more fool her.

“I did not make the only mistake, Gabriel Kendrick, when you came to my mother’s house to claim paternity. You could have kept us from so much heartache byclaimingme, thereby offering to raise the babe as yours, no matter what youbelieved.”

True, Lace thought, heshouldn’thave believed the lie about her child’s paternity: she did tell it, and since she had been honest to a fault to that point, and terribly in love with him, he would believe it. About time she accepted blame for that. “And for your information, in case you hadn’t figured it out at the time, youdidtouch an innocent. You weremyfirst.”And my last.

“You were also a man of the world. You knew better than I, that day we first loved in the ruins, what could come of it.”What did come of it, though he saw no further than her lie.

“Lace,” he said trying to take her into his arms, but she pushed him away and stepped from his reach.

“I thought I could not forgivemyself. But I was wrong. It was your wrongheadedness I could not make peace with.”

“You are right. I am a beast. I should have claimed you and promised to raise your babe as mine. Look at all the years we lost.”

“My mother would have kissed your feet for saving me and the Ashcroft name from shame. I’m sure she died begging forgiveness for raising such a daughter as me.”

When she became lost in the pain she caused her mother, in her maternal humiliation and self-reproach, Gabriel managed, despite her best efforts, to corner and embrace her, to hold her close, apologize, and shush her like a child.

“No!” Giving in to her rage, Lace shoved him away with such force, he lost his footing and sat hard on the window seat.

Gabe grumped. “Take Bridget to raise by yourself,” he said. “I hurt everyone around me.”

Lace sighed. “We cannot seem to raise her together. Beneath the rickety bridge of our combined pasts flows a lethal layer of pond scum, not fit to share with anyone, much less Bridget. But you were right; I cannot take her. I’d taint her with my sordid past, ruin her prospects. I should never have come back.”

“You know whoshouldraise her,” Gabe said with bitterness. “Saint Nick, that’s who.”

The back door slammed, sobering them and snuffing their childish diatribe and putting period to their impotent ire. Gabriel scanned the windows and Lace ran to the door at the back.

Gabe shook his head. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Back here,” Lace said. “I caught the tail end of Tweenie chasing after something.”

Gabe paled. “Do you think someone heard us? I mean, what if—”

“Prout heard?” Panic rose in Lace.

“Or Mac, or Ivy, or—”

“Say it. Cricket. What would she make of our nonsense?”Now Lace wanted to step into his arms. “If Cricket heard . . . We’ve got to explain that grownups argue, say things they don’t mean.”

“What did we say, precisely?” Gabe asked.

“Whatever would hurt the other most?”

“That’s true. Let’s find her. I don’t care if anyone else heard. I care that Cricket is all right.” Gabriel grabbed her hand, the best feeling in the world. At the Rectory, they couldn’t locate Mac, but they found Ivy in the stable painting the wheel Gabe had repaired.

Gabe got down on his haunches. “Please, Ivy, tell me Tweenie chases rabbits.”

“Little ones,” Ivy said. “Birds and squirrels, too, but last I saw, Tweenie was chasing Bridget.”

Lace squeaked. “When was that?”

“A few minutes ago, they ran right past here.”

“Dear God,” Gabe said.

“Have you seen Mac?”

“MacKenzie went to market about an hour ago.”

Lacey went cold. “I called for her to watch Bridget and she wasn’t even in the house. Oh, Gabriel, I left Bridget alone. Oh, God. Oh, no.”

“Ivy, start combing the place for Bridget, will you? Come on, Lace, let’s go find MacKenzie. We don’t know for sure that Cricket’s not with her.”

“Let’s hide in this cave, Tweenie,” Bridget said, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the back of a hand, rubbing her chest where something pounded terribly fast, like she was scared on the inside, too. “Nobody will find us here. I don’t know how warm it will be but I don’t think the rain can come in.”

Inside, Tweenie whined and placed her head in Cricket’s lap.

She petted the pup. “If Papa and MyLacey don’t want me, I’ll live here, alone, with you. It’s very small, isn’t it? Just enough room for us, except if I sit straight, my head hits the ceiling. Uncle Nick has a big house, the Towers, a castle where I would have more room to run and play, but I don’tknow Uncle Nick. How can Papa and MyLacey want to give me to him?”

Tweenie whined and buried her nose beneath Bridget’s pinafore.

“Papa says I’m not to come to the chalk pits, but I gotta think how to make them want me again. Was I a very bad little girl, do you suppose? I must have been. Theybothwant to give me away. I think they were angry with each other, too. If they can’t be friends, Papa will send MyLacey away, and I wanted so badly to have a papa and a mama, again.” She pulled Tweenie all the way on her lap and snuggled her. “Do you have a puppy mama somewhere? Is she home with God, like my mama? Maybe we can find you a puppy cousin, like MyLacey, to take care of you. Or is Ivyyour cousin?”

Bridget slapped a hand over her mouth. “Ivy’s not a dog,” she said, sleeking the pup’s long red back, “so he can’t be related, can he? But he loves you, I can tell.” She raised her head. “I have a better idea than Uncle Nick for my papa. If I went with Ivy, do you think that Hector and Merry would be my cousins?”

Bridget yawned, while it seemed that the walls of the tunnel got nearer.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Bridget said, petting the fur above the pup’s long red nose. “If Papa and MyLacey are worried about me, they might be friends to look for me. When they find me, maybe we can all go home together and they’ll forget about giving me to Uncle Nick.”

Tweenie whined.

“I know.If they find me.”

Tweenie pushed beneath Bridget’s neck, offering herself as a pillow, and after a while, Bridget accepted, curled into a ball, and closed her eyes.

Gabriel enlisted the help of his flock to search for his daughter.

Julian Gorham appeared, and with graciousness, considering the way he’d been treated at Rectory Cottage, he offered himself and every member of his staff to help search.

Gabriel gave them lanterns and sent the searchers off systematically in all directions, so every inch of ground would be covered well beyond the Ashcroft Estate. He and Lace combed Cricket’s room to see if she took anything that might give them a clue as to where she’d gone.

No luck there.

When Gabe sent men to the river, Lacey began to cry even as they followed. “I should never have come home. Bridget was safer with you.”

“Talk like that is what got us into trouble. How do you think it sounded to her, us trying to give her to each other? It must have sounded like neither of us wanted her and that we hated each other.”

Lace stumbled, and Gabe righted her. “You can’t crumble on me now, Lace. You’re the one who’s keeping me going.”

His words sobered her. She accepted his handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. “Sorry. I’ll try to be strong. Maybe it does take two people to raise a child. We were lashing out is all. ”

“I pray for the chance to explain that to Bridget,” he said, raising his lantern.

They took turns calling her name as they searched beyond the Ashcroft Estate and down toward Arundel proper. “Gabe,” Lacey said, breaking the tense nothingness, “suppose thatwas Bridget at the door, and she thinks she can bring us together as we look for her?”

Gabe shook his head. “To pull my strings, she runs to you, not away from you. This does not smack of manipulation.”

“She’s never seen me as a villain before,” Lace sobbed, “but I shoved you, remember?”

“She couldn’t have seen that, and you didn’t so much shove as I made it look like you did. I didn’t see her through the windows. Neither of us did. So how could she have seen us?”

Lace rubbed her temple. “She really is good at playing people, like Ivy with his puppets. Suppose she’s hiding to get our attention, trying to make the world go her way, again?”

Gabe caught her arm. “Suppose she is? I don’t care. I just want her back in my arms.”

“I’ll warrant she’s safe somewhere, waiting us out,” Lace murmured. “I hope she is.”

“I can’t tell you how much I’d like to think so,” Gabe said, “but we’ve checked every building on the estate.”

“Let’s look further off the property, then.”

“We will. We’ll look until we find her.”

When Bridget woke, the world had turned pitch dark and shivery cold, and her tummy growled with hunger. Nighttime noises chirruped and scratched all around her. Something howled from a distance and came closer.

“I . . . I hope that’s not Sergei the wolf,” she said beginning to cry. “I can’t find the get-out hole, Tweenie. I can’t see to stop hiding. Papa!” she screamed. “MyLacey! Come find me. I got lost.”

Thunder boomed and made her jump.

Tweenie rose and began to bark, then she hunkered down in front of Bridget and grabbed her sock, twisting and pulling at it—making Bridget giggle for a bit—until the pup won the tug of war. And the minute she had the sock, Tweenie disappeared.

Cricket couldn’t see where Tweenie went, but when she tried to push her way out about where the pup disappeared, rocks fell and filled the opening to bar her way. “I can’t follow you, Tweenie! Come back!”

Sergei howled again and Tweenie growled, then Sergei’s howl became a yip that faded.

“Just a scaredy old wild dog,” Bridget whispered to herself.

Tweenie barked from outside the tunnel, and Bridget’s head came up. “Go get Papa, Tweenie. Run. Hurry.” Bridget sobbed. “I’m scared.”

She heard Tweenie running, rocks falling, and after a while, something growly coming closer.

Bridget curled up and whimpered.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dawn crept softly through the stained glass windows and brightened St. Swithin’s with shafts of color—a slice of blue for Lace, red for Gabe. But they remained kneeling, silent, cloaked in fear, lost in thought.

Eventually the light reached Lace’s eyes. Hope. She imagined turning to see Bridget walking—no, she rarelywalked. Cricket would run up the church aisle to greet them.

Lace sat on the hard-backed oak bench, turned a hand in a shaft of color, disturbing a dance of dust motes, watching the color change as the sun rose higher in the sky.

She raised her face to be bathed in light, trying not to turn and look down the aisle toward a pair of gothic black walnut doors. If they opened, they would send a mighty squealing echo to bouncing off walls and rafters. But silence held sway.

Bridget would not run up this aisle any moment soon.

Gabe regarded her and grasped each other’s hands.

“I promised I’d give her to you and welcome, Gabriel, if—when we find her.”

Gabe squeezed that hand. “I made the same promise. She belongs with you. But it would kill me if you took her away.”

Lacey threw herself into his arms. “Gabriel, that’s what she heard us saying, but in her child’s mind, could that not sound as if neither of us wanted her?” She sobbed in his arms. “Oh Gabriel, she’s lost. Our little girl is lost and it’s our fault.”

“Our girl. That’s what Clara wanted, I believe. She did not so much marry me, I think, as she married a father for Bridget.”

“But you married Clara because you loved her,” Lace said.

Gabe hesitated before he shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that I married her because I wanted to be a father to Bridget.”

Lacey squeezed his hand. “I suspect that you both had the marriage you wanted.”

“All for Bridget,” Gabe said. “I’m worried sick.”

“As am I. But we’ll have her back in no time. Soon the sun will have fully risen and we can start the search again.”

Lacey cleared her throat, but a sob caught there. “I’ll never forgive myself for being so selfishly concerned with—”

“Me getting caught in Olivia’s trap? Glad to hear. Means you want me for yourself, right? Don’t answer. You weren’t selfish, you were heroic.I was embarrassed by my gullibility, so I not only failed to thank you, I fought you. I am sorry and grateful.”

“If I had let you fight your own battle, Bridget would be safe in her bed right now.”

“And about to get Olivia for a mother.”

They both shuddered.

“Cricket will be fine,” he said, believing it. “I feel it deep inside.”

Lacey looked at him with hope. “I want to feel it, too.”

They heard that squeal of an echo, finally, Ivy throwing the church doors open and shouting for them to come.

“One of the elder searchers came to say he heard a dog barking in the chalk pits. He’s got a bad leg, so he couldn’t go down the uneven track, much less carry a little one up, but he met Julian before he got to me, and Julian’s on his way there.”

As if Ivy conjured a canine, Tweenie reached them in a silent frenzy, a little girl’s sock hanging from her mouth. With it, she ran toward Lace and stood on her hind legs presenting it.

Lace took the sock from the pup and trembled as she showed it to Gabe. “It’s Bridget’s.”

Tweenie took to barking and loud, running toward and away from them in ever-widening circles.

“She wants us to follow,” Ivy said.

Gabe grabbed Ivy’s arm so Lace could walk well ahead of them. “What were you not telling us?” Gabe whispered.

“Wild dogs, the old man heard, but they wouldn’t be barking for nothing. I said it careful so Lace would think it might be Tweenie.”

“Wild dogs. Oh, God,” Gabe said, picking up his pace.

A half-mile to the south, an old abandoned chalk pit had become a repository for slag heaps from all along the South Downs. Gabe had told Bridget to stay away from this one place on all accounts, so of course she would choose it to run and hide. At least he hoped the choice had been hers and that she hadn’t been abducted.

Why do fathers think of the most frightening scenes where their children are concerned? Who in Arundel ever got abducted anyway?

When Tweenie raced down the incline toward the base of the pit, Gabe lost all thoughts except the immediate expectation of seeing Cricket.

Lacey ignored the dizziness trying to take over her being as she stumbled her way down, trying to catch her balance more often than not, to where Tweenie barked and Julian tore at a dusty fall of rough slag pieces, fresh-broken, not weathered smooth like the rest.

Ahead of her, Ivy and Gabriel reached that particular slag heap first. There Tweenie took to barking furiously while Julian cleared enough space for the pup to disappear through a break in the debris.

“I’ve called to her,” Julian said, still working to clear the opening, “but she isn’t answering. I’m sorry.”

“She isn’t there, then,” Gabe said.

“Papa, MyLacey? Is that you?” Bridget called, clear as day.

“We’re here,” Lace said reaching the spot beside Gabe. “Are you all right?”

“I’m scared. It got dark.”

Julian shook his head. “Why didn’t you answer when I called your name?” he asked.

“Are you my Uncle Nick? I don’t want to be given to you, even if youare a saint.”

Gabe whipped his gaze to Lace. Bridgethad heard. That would teach them to watch what they said.

“Nick’s no saint,” Julian muttered. “But I don’t think he’s alone.” He eyed Gabe. “Can you see the light yet, little one?”

A small hand came through the opening and jiggled.

Lace sobbed. “Darling, I’m here.”

Gabriel and Ivy got on their knees and with Julian removed the largest chunks of chalk and stone to help widen the opening.

Tweenie whined suddenly and went inside, then Bridget herself emerged from the hollow cone of slag.

Lacey whooped and lifted Bridget into her arms. Then Gabe was embracing them both. Someone was crying. Perhaps all of them. It didn’t matter. Cricket was safe. She was safe.

Julian placed his hands on his hips. “So what do you have against your Uncle Nick, little one?”

“I just want him to be my uncle, not my papa.”

“I’ll warrant he can do that.” Julian raised a brow toward Gabe, because it was evident, given his and Nick’s pasts, that Gabe had saidsomething to confuse the child.

Lace knuckled the tears on Bridget’s cheeks. “Cricket, you heard us arguing, didn’t you?”

“In the buttery.” Bridget nodded and her eyes filled. “Please don’t go away.” She turned to her father. “Please don’t send MyLacey away.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Gabriel said. “Except you, straight home for a warm bath and a long sleep.” He wiped the chalk dust off her face.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

Gabriel chuckled. “All right. First food, then a bath, then a good sleep.”

Gabe offered Julian his hand. Lace embraced her old friend in thanks.

Pale and shaky, Ivy wiped his brow and sat on a boulder, and Tweenie jumped into his lap to wash his face. “I hoped you were with her, you smart pup. Guess you’ve earned your socks for some long time, my girl.” Ivy scratched the pup behind her ear.

“Well, young lady,” Gabriel said stepping back. “Care to explain how you got here?”

Bridget opened her arms for him to take her from Lace, and his ire vanished on the instant. His daughter’s little face tucked into his neck was all it took to dissolve his long-held control. He shrugged as he regarded Julian. “Thank you again.”

Julian slapped Gabe on the back.

Gabe winked at Lace over Bridget’s head, her little cheek against his, and when Bridget put her arm around Lace’s neck, Lace happily joined them.

Dirt trails on her small face, Bridget grinned. “I’m glad you came,” she said pulling back to look at them. “I want youboth to take care of me. Why did you keep giving me to each other, and then to Uncle Nick. Am I too naughty to keep? I can be gooder.”

Lacey caught her lip on a sob.

Gabe blustered. “If we do something that hurts your feelings, you are to tell us immediately. As we are free to tell you that if you ever run away again and scare us out of mind, you will be punished. As to what you heard, that was two foolish adults arguing about who would be the best parent. We wanted thebest for you.”

“So Nick was in the running?” Julian asked.

Lacey chuckled. “He was an easy jab.”

“Ah, Gabe, my man, you were practicing your sarcasm on our old friend.”

“Unfortunately.”

Bridget shifted back to Lacey’s arms. “The truth is, Bridget, that neither your Papa nor I was feeling very lovable at that moment. Not half good enough for you when we wanted the best one to take care of you.”

“Not one. I want two.”

“Excuse me?” Lacey asked.

“All my new friends have two parents. A papa and a mama. Why can’t I have youboth? I won’t run away anymore. I’ll be good. You know, I heard monsters out here last night, worse after Tweenie left. I cried. I really did. I think I needtwo of you to protect me. The monsters might come back.”

“Wait,” Gabriel said, “If it was so easy for you to climb in there, why didn’t you come home when it started getting dark last night?”

Lacey wondered if they’d jumped to do Bridget’s bidding once again. Then she remembered how sick with worry she’d been and it was difficult to work up a case of angry.

“Me and Tweenie got in easy, and we got tired and fell asleep but when we woke up, Tweenie left. Then I got scared because it was too dark to see where I came in, so I tried to kick my way out, but rocks fell and closed me in.”

“Dear God,” Gabe said. “Tweenie gets a steak tonight.”

Back at Rectory Cottage, MacKenzie rose from her deathbed, miraculously cured at sight of Bridget, to make the child’s favorite breakfast.

When Lacey gave her a bath, Bridget fretted for Papa. When Gabriel rocked her, she wanted MyLacey. The child didn’t relax enough to sleep, until Lace lay down beside her and Gabe sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing her back.

He could feel the fretful catches in her breathing as he did, and it drove him insane that they’d done this to her with their bickering. He wasn’t even certain what Lacey had been so angry about. She’d spoken as if he’d abandoned her when he left her with child, when that had never been the case. And the only time he’d beenreally stupidwas when he’d actually believed her childmust be his.

Though that thing she’d said about him not making theonly mistake the day he’d gone to claim paternity, where he might have claimed her on any account. That would have been the vicarly thing to do. And they could have been together all this time, except that they wouldn’t have Bridget, because he never would have married Clara.

Or maybe they would have Bridget, anyway, because Clara, at her death, surely would have made Lacey her daughter’s legal guardian, not the town vicar.

That was the nature of their time on this earth, he supposed, choices to be made at every turn, and very often our decisions were wrong. Life does try one. No wonder he had so many parishioners to counsel.

And if he didn’t calm down and let Lacey’s remarks go, however confusing, they’d be at it again, and only Bridget would suffer. He looked up to find Lace watching him. “She needs us both,” he whispered.

Lace nodded and covered his hand on Bridget’s back. “I know.”

“We’ve got to make it work.”

She nodded. “We will.”

Was she saying she’d marry him? He couldn’t ask, not right now, not so soon. It was enough that they would betogether for Bridget’s sake, even if it only meant living in the same house. He wasn’t certain why he was desperate to marry Lace; he knew only that he must.

MacKenzie came to stand by the bed. She nodded her approval when she saw that Bridget slept. “News from the Towers,” she said. “Nicholas has returned.”

A knife blade could not have slashed Gabe’s hopes more deeply.

Nicholas Daventry; it wanted only that to complicate matters. It looked to Gabe as if Lace slept as well, so he sighed and rose, squeezing MacKenzie’s shoulder as he left the room.

Lacey opened her eyes to regard Mac. “I hurt him badly, Mac. And not just five years ago.”

“I know, my love. And with Nick home, our vicar’s not likely to mend any time soon. Do you know yet what you’re going to do?”

“Live nearby, so I can help raise our Cricket.” Lace sat on the side of the bed, careful not to wake her. “I’m going for a walk. Up toward the Towers, I expect. I have a great deal to ponder. I’m thinking I’ll talk to Nick about a small plot of land on the estate nearby, where I can build a cottage.” She smiled when Bridget mumbled something in her sleep. “MacKenzie, stay with her while she sleeps, will you?”

Mac harrumphed. “Where else would I be?”

Lacey kissed her old nurse’s brow and left the room.

After a night of hell, it was quite the beautiful day for a walk, she thought, as she made for the old Abbey where she and Gabriel had once played and then shared the first blossom of love.

Ithad been love for both of them, she believed. But between her mother’s fury and her resultant betrayal of Gabriel, too much had happened for the bright innocence of it to have survived. Much in her had died with their child. And as a result of her lie, Gabriel, too, had become hard and intractable, difficult to read. Brooding.

Yes, he loved his stepdaughter, but it was a frustrating love even so, tempered by Bridget’s consequent rejection.

Gabriel was a good man, but he didn’t love her in the wholehearted way she needed, the way necessary for her to be able to give herself in marriage. They had first been torn by lies, then over the past five years they’d grown apart.

From marriage, he wanted . . .her simply as his lusty bed partner for a lifetime.

She wanted a marriage made of whole cloth, a life tapestry woven with everyday threads but made strong with the silver and gold of promise and fidelity—trustmost of all. She wanted a helpmate in hard times . . .and a lusty bed partner.

If it were not for Bridget, Lace would leave Arundel and let Gabriel come after her once he sorted his priorities. However, after today, her choice had been taken away. She would do anything for Bridget, even grow old beside the man she loved but could never entirely have, because he didn’t believe she could be faithful.

She loved Gabriel Kendrick; she would until the day she died. But unless he loved her in the same way, unless he understood without question that she had not betrayed him, despite her attempt to save his parish living and his dreams, then there was no hope for them.

No hope, yet she wanted him, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Perhaps the town’s designation as sinner was appropriate for her, after all. Because if she didn’t leave Rectory Cottage soon, she would end up in the vicar’s bed more often than in her own, and that was no way to raise a child.

It was no way to live. Gabriel was a man of the cloth, for heaven’s sake; he needed the respect of his flock. He needed to guide them down a righteous path, and how could he do so if he strayed from that path himself?

She would move out, but stay close. A place nearby, but not so near that allshe had to do was turn a knob to climb into the vicar’s bed.

Lacey wiped her eyes and tried not to think of her hopeless love for the big, stubborn ox.

She entered the Abbey ruins and sat on a corner patch of grass in a circle of sunlight. She’d go and see Nick later. Right now, she needed time in which to firm her resolve to leave Rectory Cottage.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Gabriel entered the kitchen and slammed the door behind him. “MacKenzie, do you know where Lacey went? I can’t find her anywhere.”

MacKenzie slapped the mound of dough she was kneading and turned to face their brilliant vicar, who had no clue about the depth of love he’d been given. “Last I knew, she was heading up to the Towers to ask Nicholasthe scamp Daventry for a place to live. Not a worthy notion, if you ask me, those two. I mean, after the scandal they caused a few years back.”

Mac regarded her employer from the corner of her eye and smiled inwardly. That should shake him up a bit. And she hadn’t lied a jot.

Gabe growled beneath his breath. “Where’s Bridget?”

“Taking tea with the Misses Julia and Annabelle, andthree dolls, I believe, upstairs in her bedroom.”

Lord, the vicar could be handsome when he smiled.

“Go and give your little one a kiss, and then fetch her MyLacey for her before she starts fretting again, will you? We’ll both be here when you get back.”

Himself nodded and ran upstairs, more alive since abducting Lacey with the gypsy wagon than he’d been for years.

He was back down and out the door before she could turn the dough.

Mac hummed as she shaped the bread into loaves and saw him out the window headed toward the Abbey Ruins, the Towers a half mile beyond.

Gabriel did not know whether Lacey had been to Ashcroft Towers or not, or if she asked Nick for a place to live or not, but he could not be upset with her when he found her asleep like this on a patch of sunlit grass in the place where they’d once made love—her more beautiful than a dream, more dear than his own life. Then and now.

He sat beside her and touched her skirt, just to make the connection.

How could he stop her from throwing herself at Nick Daventry again? He couldn’t believe she wanted to live with the man after everything. Sometimes Gabe thought she had a blind spot where that knave was concerned. You’d think she would hate Nick for abandoning her and their unborn child. Instead, she wanted to welcome him with open arms and move into his house. What hold did Nick have over her?

What would the parish think?

Not much more than they did about her living with their vicar, he supposed. Then again, she and Nick had had a child together. Never mind that the child could have been his.

It hit him then that Lacey had made certain that the village, and his parish, had never known about their dalliance. Had she meant to protect him all these years? Odd that, considering how angry she’d been at him when she left.

Had she protected him? On purpose? That was certainly something to think about. A puzzle beyond solving, however painful.

Gabe felt a sense of loss all over again. He’d already loved the babe she carried when she admitted itwasn’t his and turned his heart to stone. He’d actually felt his chest tighten and grow cold. He’d lost two people that day. Aye, and a part of himself as well.

And still, look at him, sitting here worshiping her, stroking the hem of her gown. He should put a stopper in his foolish infatuation and let her do any feather-brained thing she dratted well pleased—as if he could.

He should find a woman who would marry him and give Bridget a proper mother, except that she wanted MyLacey. Who wouldn’t?

Gabe stretched out beside Lace and slipped his arm around her waist, inhaling her rich vanilla scent. She stirred and started. “Hush,” he said. “It’s only me. Let me hold you for a bit. Here in our special place. Then we’ll talk.”

She covered his hand with her own and held it against her heart, a splendid welcome—silent, but no less affirming.

Gabe kissed her nape.

She sighed and lowered her chin to give him better access.

His body reacted instantly. “Only holding,” he said, reminding them both.

But his body disagreed and made its eager need known.

Lace giggled.

Gabe huffed, annoyed she noticed that his nether regions had a will of their own. “I can’t help it,” he said. “You intoxicate me.”

“I do something else to you, too,” she said turning into his arms. “I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep. I was on an errand and ended up here.”

“I came to stop you,” he admitted too soon.

“To stop me what?”

“MacKenzie said you were going to ask Nick to let you live with him. He’d be a fool to say no, and though the man is many things I don’t like, a fool is not one of them.”

“Mac said that? Are you certain?”

“It’s no use in getting angry with MacKenzie.”

“For trying to knock some sense into you? I’m not angry, though I think her phraseology could use some improvement. I’m as grateful as ever.”

“Grateful?” His brows furrowed, and Lace smoothed them.

He loved her hands on him, anywhere, everywhere. “Mac knows what’s best for you, Lace. I imagine that’s why she told me. Stay with us at the cottage.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

She slid her hand between them and ran her knuckles over his embarrassing erection. “This is why.”

Gabriel closed his eyes and allowed pleasure to wash over him. “God, Lace. I’ll probably ache for you on my deathbed. How wicked will that look?”

She opened her mouth to respond and he opened his over hers, his kiss desperate and needy. Lacey gave passion back; she always did. Her enthusiastic return of ardor had been his undoing too many times to count. Now was no exception.

She raised his temperature with her seductive ministrations including a nip at his earlobe. “Tell me why I shouldn’t move in with Nicholas,” she said, “I’d still be near Bridget.”

“You know exactly how to cool my fever, I’ll give you that.” And yet, he covered her hand to keep it there, where he wanted it most.

“I know how to do a lot of things where your fever is concerned.”

“Hmm.” Though annoyance fought pleasure, determination won the day. “Stay with us. It’s working fine.”

“When I’m not in your bed or within touching distance, it works fine.”

“Works better when we’re touching, andin bed, seems to me.”

“That’s why I can’t live there, and you know it.”

Gabe sighed. “Live near the cottage then, and Bridget can live with you. You’d both like that, and I could see you everyday. We could breakfast together.”

“We don’t like to eat as early as you do.”

Gabe chuckled despite himself, while he slipped a hand to below her breasts. “I’ll eat after I do church accounts and work on my sermons.”

She looked as if she were considering it. Feigned as her deliberation seemed, it gave Gabe hope.

“Better still,” he said. “Marry me and sleep in my bed every night.”

“We wouldn’t sleep.”

“We’d be happy, though.”

Lacey laughed. “And have six more children,” she said.

“More?”

Lacey lost her smile and rose to dust herself off. “I’m sorry, I forgot and counted Bridget as our first. It was silly of me to pretend that she was even partly mine.”

“Ah, Lace, I didn’t mean to hurt you. It just seemed that—I don’t know—that you meant something else, something I needed to….” He shrugged. “I’m being fanciful. Six more would be good. Let’s do it.”

Lace regarded him so long, Gabe became uncomfortable.

“You could forgive me for betraying you?”

He nodded, uncomfortable of a sudden.

“You could welcome Nicholas into our home as my friend and relative, as Bridget’s uncle?”

Gabe nodded, but he felt the telltale heat of anger rise up his neck.

“I thought so,” she said.

“No, you’re wrong. I forgive him. I forgive you both.”

At which point she turned and walked away so fast that she ended up running . . . all the way back to Rectory Cottage.

Gabe followed and wondered when he’d lost control of the conversation. He couldn’t, by thunder, let her go to Daventry. He couldn’t.

So why did forgiving her, forgiving them both, make her so blasted angry?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

How easy it would be to marry him as he wanted and become Bridget’s mother in truth. Easy but wrong for all of them, especially Bridget.

Marriage should be founded on truth, not face-saving falsehoods.

She should not have run back; she had a stitch in her side, and her stomach was doing flips. Lacey raised her hand when Mac started to speak. “Yes, the dolt found me. How thick can he be?”

“Verra thick, our vicar. Why don’t you just tell him the truth, that t’was his bairn you carried?”

“You know?”

“I was your nanny; I saw the eyes you had for him, the love shining in them. Nick, the scamp, no. Gabriel the new vicar, aye. He was yours; and after a time, verra much yours.I could have named the father of your wee one, but it was not up to me.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” and Lace had no sooner said it than she was, right over the back porch rail, wretchedly ill, just in time for Gabriel to round the corner.

He went inside and returned with a cool towel for her neck, a chair for her to sit, and a cup of weak tea for her to sip. He stooped down before her to watch the color return to her face.

He was handsome and robust with dark curly hair and shoulders as wide as the double gothic doors of his church. And if she’d have him, pitfalls and all, he could be hers for life.

He might mistake her returning color as a sign of physical wellness. But it was her embarrassment at this public humiliation of hers riding her.

“I think you should lie down,” Gabriel said.

“I agree.” Mac ushered her past him and up the stairs, removed her dress, and covered her with a quilt Gabriel’s mother had stitched. “You gonna tell himself this time?”

“I don’t have anything to tell.”

Mac scoffed. “He doesn’t think he’s half good enough for you, my girl. That’s why he believed your story about Nick. Nick has a title, so Nick is good enough to have fathered you child. Do you not see? It has nothing to do with trust on Gabriel’s part, but his unworthiness.”

“He should have known that my love for him was so great that I could never have— Oh, bother. Your logic is giving me the headache to go with my stomachache.

“That’s no stomach ache and we both know it.” Mac’s chuckle as she left the room carried a hint of delight.

Soon enough Gabe paced next door, and that’s the sound that nearly lulled Lacey to sleep. He was worried about her, but he would let nothing happen to her . . . unless the choice was taken from him. Like with—

“Oh!” She sat up. Could he fear her as ill as Clara had been?

Well, they would know soon enough, one way or the other.

This would be so simple if he would stop forgiving her for Nick and realize that there was nothing to forgive.

To the sound of his pacing she finally slept, until she woke in time for church the next morning.

Gabriel seemed prickly because they had not had a chance to talk before they walked to church.

As he stepped up to the pulpit and began, he stopped speaking, because three new churchgoers had arrived. Oh, not just any churchgoers. One had a cleric’s collar, and he was accompanied by Prout and daughter, all three claiming the front pew, squishing her, Mac, and Bridget.

Lace took Bridget on her lap to give them room.

Without ceremony, to Gabe’s surprise, the bishop interrupted Gabriel’s talk by taking the pulpit to the left of the altar.

The battle of the pulpits?

The bishop said the first prayer, led the first hymn, and gave the first blessing as if he were taking over. “My dear Vicar Kendrick.”

Oh, no, not a public chastisement, not because of her?

“One of your parishioners has offered you twenty-thousand pounds if you will build a church?”

And marry her daughter.

“I will not be bought, your excellency.”

“Commendable but proud,” the bishop said. “Are we not all called upon to make choices for the greater good? Now, which will it be? A known sinner? Or a pillar of the church for wife? The answer seems clear.”

Lace’s heart raced when Gabriel made eye contact with her for the briefest of moments. “I love this woman you dare call sinner—forgiveness being our stock and trade, judgment being His.” Gabe pointed upward. “I would not take the pillar for a pot of gold, never mind her mother’s bribe.”

The congregation shifted, uncomfortably, as one, the rustle of crinolines all whispers of unease.

The bishop cleared his throat. “I cannot say I approve your choice.”

“Thenyou take Prout’s twenty-thousand pounds and Olivia to wife. Become Prout’s son-in-law, dance at the end of her strings. See how you like it. But heed me on this; we need a school for the crofters’ children more than we need a church.”

A rousing cheer stopped as fast as it began when the bishop’s caterpillar brows furrowed the congregation’s way with a promise of reprisal. He descended the steps from the left pulpit and nodded for Gabriel to do the same from the right.

Gabe did so, passed his bishop by, sat beside Lace, and took her hand.

“I see you know your place,” the bishop said. “You are hereby stripped of the parish your ancestors served before you.”

“The parish his ancestors destroyed,” an elder shouted. “Which our vicar rebuilt.”

The bishop chose to ignore that truth. “You may stay Vicar Kendrick, in Rectory Cottage, for one more week.”

“Or not,” Gabriel said, standing, lifting Bridget and taking Lacey by the hand to leave.

“Be glad I do not begin proceedings to have you defrocked,” the bishop called as Gabe’s household followed him out, Mac and Ivy, with the sneaked-in Tweenie clicking down a silent aisle that seemed to grow in length.

As the bishop began his sermon, a goodly number of parishioners followed them out, offering their hands, their thanks, condolences on the loss of his parish, and their congratulations on his upcoming marriage.

Except that the firm-lipped Lacey beside him, Gabriel noticed—looking grateful for their good intentions—had notagreed to marry him. Yet.

“Where will we go?” Cricket wailed, voicing all their worries, Gabe was sure, when they reached the safety of Rectory Cottage? “Will my new Uncle Nick let us live with him at the Towers where you grew up, MyLacey?” Her little eyes were big and round.

Gabriel barked a laugh, but beneath Bridget’s innocence, he found the smallest seed of hope when in his heart he worried. Some provider he had turned out to be. No hearth or home for his family. And yet, he wanted so badly to enlarge it.

He must be a daft as his sire and grandsire after all.

“I have to see Nick,” he said, and off he went, leaving Mac, Lacey, and Cricket stunned and silent.

Daventry, Gabe thought, would probably expect to be leveled in one punch, and so said his cautious welcome as he stepped into his drawing room to greet the man he’d betrayed. But Gabe didn’t feel betrayed today, just hopeful. Daventry owed him.

Gabe offered his hand, and the two shook, tentative at first, then strong, with an extra shake that called for a silent peace. “I’ve come for your help, Nick. I want to marry Lacey.”

“Then it seems that I’m finally out of it. Finally came clean did she?”

Gabriel ignored the trip of his heart. “I’ve just lost my church for choosing her over the moneyed Prout’s daughter. Worse, I stated my belief that the crofters’ children need a new school more than St. Swithin’s needs a new church. I’ve lost my living. We have a week at Rectory Cottage. I need to find a new living.”

“Funny, I thought I chose the vicar for my estate,” Nick said. “Aren’t I the new Duke of Ashcroft?”

“You can offer me the living but I don’t think my bishop would approve.”

“Ah.” Nick rocked on his heels. “Then what can I do to help? If you’re out of a home, so are NannyMac, Bridget, and Lacey. We can’t have that. You could all live here, separate wing, but I don’t think you’d like that.”

“No. No, I wouldn’t. I’d like—” Gabriel huffed. “Well.” He ran a hand through his hair.

Nick raised a brow. “Get it out, man. Caught in your craw, is it?”

“Well, as to that, I wanted to beat you when she named you as her child’s father. Are we clear on that?”

“They were only words, man.”

Gabe ran a hand through his hair. “To you, who ran off and left her stranded.”

“I was leaving anyway, that’s why it worked so well.”

Gabe fisted his hands. “You always were a heartless bastard.”

Nick grinned. “You were always the most thick-headed among us. But you need this bastard, do you not? Cry peace, because God knows there’s naught— Just tell me what I can do to help.”

“I need you to invite the scoundrels to our wedding, mine and Lace’s, and let them stay here for the duration.”

“What does Lace think of this plan? A fast wedding smacks of need, and she’s already been through enough spec—”

“She doesn’t know.”

“You haven’tasked her to marry you yet?”

“Oh, I’ve asked her, but she always says no. I thought faced with wedding guests, she might change her mind.”

Nick barked a laugh. “Faced with wedding guests she might make a permanent dent in your brain. A man of the world, you are not. No woman wants to be surprised with a wedding. You have to woo her.”

Gabriel coughed and cleared his throat. “There’s been a bit too much wooing, and we know what that leads to. A wedding is our smartest bet, or we’ll . . . she’ll . . . you know.”

“Indeed I do. And the bit about me fathering her child?” Nick asked.

“I can be the bigger man. I’ve forgiven her for that.”

Nick chuckled. “Big, heart of gold, generous to a fault, but dumb, Vicar Kendrick. Big and dumb. No wonder she refused you. And now you’re giving her a surprise wedding on top of your thick-headed forgiveness? I can’t believe she hasn’t already taken an iron skillet to your head.”

“She gave me a black eye. Does that count?”

“That’s mild for our Lace. She’s not going to marry you, no matter how much wooing has been going on . . . until you stop forgiving her.”

Gabriel brows furrowed. “That makes no sense.”

“It would if you thought about it. Stop looking at what you think are the facts and start looking at the possible reasons behind the facts as they have been stated.”

“Sure. Sure,” Gabe said. “I’ll do that. Meanwhile, it’ll be harder for her to say no to marrying me with our friends here waiting for a ceremony, don’t you think?”

“I think that when they were handing out social graces, perception, and self-confidence, you were chasing Lace to the old Abbey ruins.”

“That doesn’t bother you? You being—or having been—”

“Whoa,” Nick said, “you haven’t changed at all, Gabe. Pardon me, but you were also absent when they handed out common sense, or is it self-esteem? She loves you, not me.”

“Why would she love a vicar’s son, a big, poor, clumsy beggar, when she could have the rich, fair-haired, fair-skinned son of the manor, Nick Daventry, Duke of Ashcroft? I think you’re missing the point, Nick. Except for the fact that I love her and you don’t seem to, or you wouldn’t have spent so many years in America, she has every reason to want you more.”

“I offered her marriage, back then, I’ll grant,” Nick said, “but Lacey loves you, Gabe. And only you. Always has. Always will. She told me so.”

Gabriel stepped back, pole-axed by Nick’s words.

Daventry touched his shoulder with the tip of an index finger and near knocked the shocked vicar off his feet, he was so stunned.

“Onlybecauseshe lovesyou,” Nick said, “will I go along with your fool notion of a surprise wedding, but don’t expect it to go well. It’s been an age since I’ve seen the scoundrels we went to school with, so no loss to get together for a ball, if nothing else. Besides, I’ve come home, and I’ve missed you all. Well,” Nick said, looking Gabriel up and down, “I’ve missed most of you. I’ll send the invitations to yoursurprise wedding, on Friday, say, since you have to be out by Sunday?”

“I would appreciate that.” Gabriel turned to go then he turned back. “But don’t send a wedding invitation to Lace. Send us an invite to your ball, will you? Let me handle the rest.”

“You mean, you’ll get her here, then get her to agree to marry you on top of it?” Nick asked as Gabe opened the drawing room door.

“Invite her to a ball. I’ll take care of the rest,” Gabriel replied as he shut the door behind him, going over the conversational discrepancies in his muddled mind.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Two days passed with him sending letters seeking a new living and with no invitation to Nick’s ball.

Could Nick Daventry do nothing right? Gabe groused inwardly as he slammed the mulberry jam so hard on the table, he broke the jar.

Mac harrumphed. “Look at you, grumpy as a cock in an empty hen house,” she said, and Cricket giggled, which made being the brunt of Mac’s ire worth everything.

“Seems Knickerbocker’s back from the Americas,” Ivy said as he came into the kitchen for breakfast from the front of the house where they’d heard him answer the bell. “Here’s a note from him for each of us,” Ivy said, handing one to Gabriel, one to NannyMac, one to Lacey, and keeping one for himself.

As they tore open their notes, Bridget slapped her hands to her hips with a good pout. “Did Uncle Nick not send one for me? Why ever not? And why hasn’t he come to visit me? Can I go up and meet him by myself?”

“No!” Gabriel barked. Then he was forced to raise his chin against all the looks he got, most of them chiding, though Lacey seemed hurt by his reaction. Gabriel cleared his throat. “I’ll bring you to meet him after I do my parish rounds today.”

Cricket jumped and applauded and he couldn’t help compare her the sullen little girl that Lace met that first morning.

After cleaning up the jam and glass, NannyMac read her note, then Lacey’s note over her shoulder. She stole Gabe’s from between his fingers, read it, mumbled an oath, and slapped her bonnet on her head. “I’m going to the Towers to have a talk with that foolish man.”

After a second of indecision, Bridget followed Mac out to the back porch at a run. “See if you can get an invitation for me,” his little one called after her, and Gabriel found he had to rub his hand down his face in order not to laugh and risk offending his Cricket as she returned, scowling because she had to ask.

Gabe went to Nick’s right after breakfast. “What took you so long to send the invites?”

“I know our Lacey.”

“My Lacey,” Gabe snapped, aware that he sounded like Cricket, as in: just as young and sullen.

“Yours, then, though she and Iare related by blood . . . just distantly . . . enough.”

“I’m sick of this blood business. Now what took you so long to invite us to the ball? It won’t give the Scoundrels half enough time to get here.”

“I sent their invitations ten minutes after you left. I sent yours today. I figured that’d give Lace less time to question my motives.”

“She’s got me skittish, she does. I don’t seem to care that I lost my livelihood, my heritage and home. I only care that Cricket and I could lose Lacey.” Gabe ran a hand through his hair. “Thinking it through, Nick, your tactic was prodigious kind. Thank you.”

“She won’t like it, being forced to say yes, or not, in front of witnesses.”

“Oh, sounds dreadful,” Lacey said as she invaded the Ashcroft drawing room. “Who won’t like it?” she asked, but when Nick opened his arms, she jumped in. “Nicky!”

He twirled her in circles, the two of them laughing, which made Gabe smolder—though they seemed more like old friends than former lovers. Still, Nick had been a good distraction from what she heard.

He was right. In front of all those guests, Lacey could very well say “No,” to his proposal, given the fact that he was practically forcing her to be polite and say, “Yes.” Being forced set Lace up to be contrary every time. Now why had he not remembered that?

She smoothed her skirt, and they stepped back, she and Nick, still holding hands just looking at each other, grinning like children in a schoolyard. It all looked so . . . innocent?

“I was just telling Gabe,” Nick said, “that as the new Duke of Ashcroft, my first order of business, before I took possession of the Towers, was to head straight to London to reinstate your rightful title and the inheritance.”

“Oh, Nick, you didn’t have to do that. The money is yours, and I don’t give a fig for the title. Besides, I just received an inheritance—from Clara, I think, though it was couched in secrecy. Anonymous and all that.”

Nick beamed. “Congratulations. Frankly, I feared both had beenunlawfullystripped from you, but your mother didn’t file any paperwork, Lace. Shesaid she was taking them, but she didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have known if you didn’t look into it. So thank you, Nick, for reinstating my mother into my good graces. She seemed awfully cold back then. Once again, you’ve come to my aid.”

Gabe remembered a conversation he’d had with Lace. “Who else could you count on?”he’d asked her. And she answered: “Nick, for getting me out of trouble.”

By the time he looked up, it seemed they’d forgotten his presence, but there were no secret touches or taut need in their expressions. No static if silent lightning passed between them, such as happened with him and Lace. With the realization, his fears for their future eased.

“Did you want something special?” Nick asked. “Like that invitation for Bridget that Gabe asked for?”

Lacey laughed, and Gabriel’s heart lightened the more. “She’s mighty insulted that you didn’t send her one.”

“I didn’t think you’d want her up that late.”

“Oh, she won’t be,” Lace said. “She’ll fall asleep in the middle of it, but at least she won’t be able to say she wasn’t here. She just wants a big-girl invitation in her hand and she’s picked up MacKenzie’s sweet way of getting her way that carries the devil’s own guilt to it.”

They laughed as Nick saw them to the door.

After a last wave, Gabe and Lace meandered down a well-worn path toward home, remembering the times they’d done it at a laughing run, when neither of them was as tall as Ivy’s puppet theater.

“I learned something about you this afternoon,” Gabe said, taking her hand in his, pleased she let him.

She gave him a coy look. “What’s that?”

“You love me more than you love Nick.”

“That’s not news and it’s not true, exactly. I love you both, but I love you differently than I love Nick. I love you deeper, soul deep. I love him like a brother.”

Gabriel tripped himself up and came to a complete stop. “Then how could you. How . . . how—”

“Indeed . . . how? Howcould I?” she asked, tugging her hand from his to walk backwards facing him. “If only you’d remove your blinders and shove your questions up your conclusion.” She huffed, turned, and ran ahead, gamboling down the hill in a childlike rush, leaving him far behind. But the usual rolling laughter that normally accompanied her romp was absent today.

Truth was, she’d probably never laugh on this hill again.

He couldn’t, either, not when he watched her reach the bottom and cut a swath through the church cemetery to land on her knees at the small claret marble memorial he knew to be her child’s. The rich pink headstone stood out among the flagstone and slate, and in beauty stood second only to the larger specimen marking her mother’s final resting place, that erected barely a year after the daughter Lace lost.

Curled now upon her stillborn babe’s grave, Lace wrapped her arms around the stone, her cheek against the veined, sun-warmed marble, and closed her eyes.

By the time he stood there, tears clung to her lashes. “I had imagined that her little hands would be soft as silk,” Lace whispered.

He curled himself behind her and became her strength, slipping a comforting arm around her waist, while she mimicked hugging the child she’d lost, except that she cuddled stone, without heartbeat, like her babe.

They remained that way for some time, quiet, one in purpose, seeking comfort and solace from each other, and the grace to move ahead with their lives.

“Gabriel, we’re at peace now, right?

“I’d like to think so. I’m much more at peace now that you’re home.”

“So am I, amazingly. Then I can ask. Was the service beautiful?”

“Which service, pet?”

“My baby’s funeral. Did you make it wonderful? Tell me about it.”

“Ach, Lace, your mother asked for no service. The babe never lived. She was stillborn.”

“Do you want to hear a secret?”

“I’d be honored.”

“I heard her cry. Mama said I didn’t, but I remember.”

He remembered too, sitting below Lacey’s window while she labored to bring forth the child of another, her pain like a knife to his heart. It most certainly did enter the world with a cry . . . which meant that it had not been stillborn at all. Odd that her mother had lied.

Perhaps she thought it would be easier on Lace to think her child had been stillborn, which seemed preordained, in God’s hands. If it had actually taken a free breath, its second had rested in a midwife’s hands. Hard to make peace with that.

And if the child had been his, he would probably have spent the rest of his life agonizing over his inability to coax a second breath, then a third, and more, from the babe.

“No life and no service to send her to God, the poor thing,” Lace said and smoothed the headstone. “It hurts my heart to know.”

“Your mother ran me like she ran us all. But your little one could have a service now, Lace.” Gabe wiped her cheeks with his thumbs. “We’ll sing hymns, and I’ll pray that we get to parent her when we all meet in heaven. Set your heart at rest and name the date for her service.”

She clasped one of his hands and held it to her heart. “Who would come?”

He could see how much she wanted it. “You, me, Bridget, MacKenzie . . . and Nick.”

“You’d do that for me? With Nick?”

He settled her head on his chest, set his lips in her hair. “Aye, love, I’d do about anything for you. Even stand back and let you go to Nick, should you wish it, though I’d rather keep you for myself.”

“Which is why you came looking for me? Because MacKenzie said I’d gone to see him?”

“Yes, I did, but it’s occurred to me since we spent time with Nick that you came home tome. You did not take ship to America, did you?”

That did it. “You’re almost right.”

Stricken, Gabe reared back.

“Icame for Bridget.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The day of the ball dawned bright and sunny, but Lace paced her room till the middle of the afternoon. She knew only one Scoundrel’s wife, her dear friend, Jade, who owned the Benevolent Society for Downtrodden Women in Peacehaven on the Sussex coast. Oddly enough, during Lacey’s four years there, Jade had married Marcus Fitzalan, one of Gabriel’s Scoundrel school friends. She also knew Abigail who married Marcus’s brother Garrett. But she knew none of the other Scoundrels, their wives, their titles. She should have had Gabe make her a list, but it was too late for that now.

As to titles, she had one again herself, so she felt less skittish about making light of the formalities. “Just call me Lace,” should work.

With the butterflies in her stomach, she wore one of her new day dresses in gold gauzy muslin, trimmed at bodice, waist, and hem with an intricate embroidered edging in flowers and curls of aubergine. She loved the new styles. Since the last time she was measured by a seamstress, high waists had gone the way of walking sideways through doors to accommodate wide-hooped skirts.

Dresses all had slight flares to the skirts now with ankle hems, cinched waists, wide shoulders, and ballooning sleeves. What made this one especially lovely was the pleated V-bodice to the neck and the double-layered matching capelet one could add for morning calls.

Last night in the parlor, with Cricket and Mac looking on, Gabriel had surprised her with it, and with a confection of a silver gown for Nick’s ball. He said he ordered it the day they went shopping for her new wardrobe while she went to look at bonnets in the shop next door.

Cricket had jumped up and down and applauded, and Mac’s eyes teared as she gave Gabe an approving nod.

Bridget came in bringing Lace back to the present with a happy smile because her girl was all frilly frocked and sable hair curled, as excited about making friends with their company’s children as Lace was about new and old friends.

“Lacey?” came the call. “Lace, where are you?”

“I know that voice,” Lace said, taking Bridget’s hands. “Wait until you meet my bestest friend,” she whispered.

But Jade’s little Emily came flying into the room first and threw herself at Lacey’s skirts, pushing Cricket out of the way.

Lace bent to embrace Emily, the child she’d come to love at Peacehaven.

Bridget crossed her arms over her chest and stamped a foot as if to say, “You’re supposed to be hugging me.”

Lacey laughed and brought the girls’ hands together. “Emily, also known as Emmy, I’d like you to meet my Bridget, also known as Cricket. You’re both nearly five.”

“Emily Fitzalan, you come back here,” Jade called.

“We’re up here,” Lacey shouted.

Jade filled her doorway, and Lace burst into tears. They were in each other’s arms in a blink.

Two pups, dachshunds, also old friends, found each other: Ivy’s Tweenie and Emmy’s Mucks were soon dancing beside them, yipping and generally hugging in their own puppy ways. Ivy came in to say his hellos to Jade and Emmy before he went to the Towers to join the Scoundrels for a good cigar.

“Where are the rest of the wives?” Lace asked. “I’m nervous-sick with anticipation.”

Jade looked her up and down, brows furrowed. “Nervous-sick, you’re—glowing!” Lace turned to Emmy and Cricket. “Girls, go down to the drawing room and tell the ladies we’ll be down in a minute.”

Lacey spoke up. “Cricket, find your kitten now that there’s another pup in the house, and put her in the barn until we can introduce her to Mucks properly. We don’t know that they’ll get along as well as Merry and Tweenie.”

“Want to see my kitten?” Bridget asked Emily, taking her hand. “Her name is Merrycat.” And just like that, they ran from Lacey’s room and down the stairs as if they’d been doing it forever.

Jade circled Lacey. “That glow. Are you—?”

“Happy? Sure. Almost.”

“Are you sure you’re not—?”

“Not.”

“Lace, we lived together for four years, became best friends. You’ve got a look, bit of a give-away radiance.”

“As to that, so do you, Jade Smithfield Fitzalan. Rosier cheeks. Twinklier eyes.”

“There you go, and you’re right. Iam in a delicate condition. Are you?”

“Oh, mercy, Jade. Gabriel says he wants to marry me.”

“Good thing, considering. So have you told him?”

“Nothing to tell.”

Jade stepped back, her lips firm, her eyes seeing too much. “What’s stopping you from marrying him?”

“He keeps forgiving me for sleeping with Nick.”

“Isn’t forgiveness a good thing?”

Lace huffed, slapped her hands to her hips, and tapped a foot.

Jade grinned. “Ah, I remember the story now. Even though you said you did, Gabriel should have known instantly that you would never.”

Lace gave her friend one strong nod. “Exactly.”

Jade chuckled. “Trust beats forgiveness.”

“Trust is everything.”

“Lace, he might havetrusted that you’d never tell a lie, especially about something so important.”

“Don’t take his side, however valid your point.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” Jade hugged her.

Lacey clung and bit her lip. “Well, if he didn’t know back then that I lied, he should know by now. I’d marry him if he believed in my unconditional love. If he said, ‘You couldn’t have slept with Nick. It’s impossible,’ I’d marry him today.”

Jade rolled her eyes.

Lacey narrowed hers. “What?”

“We’re not here for a ball. We’re here for your wedding. Youare marrying him today.”

“What!”

“Gabriel planned it as a surprise. He brought a vicar from a neighboring estate, invited all of us, and he doesn’t even know you’re . . . glowing. Give him credit for loving you, for wanting you so badly, he’d pull a bull-headed, man-stupid stunt like this. It’s you he wants, perfect and high up on that pedestal where he set you, with him as your lowly servant, the unworthy vicar’s son—which is what keeps him from seeing the truth. Fact is, he doesn’t think he’s good enough for the Lady Lacey Ashton. You know that, right?”

“I know humiliation,” Lacey said. “And I’m trying not to plan his public flogging.”

“Lord, Lace, I only met him a short while ago, and even I can see how much he loves you.” Jade sat on Lacey’s bed and pulled her down. “You mourned that man for four years at Peacehaven. You came back to him, and now, well, you could be, couldn’t you?”

Lace sighed, “Perhaps.”

Jade giggled. “There’s no halves about procreation, love. Either you did or you didn’t make it possible. I’d like to think you did. So let’s say on the off chance that you are, do you really want to be ostracized again? I say marry him tonight and make peace with his stupidity later. Or flog him, whatever. But this time have his name ready for any children that may come of your love.”

Lacey rose and dusted off her skirt. “I’ll think about it. All of it. You know, they saywe’rein a delicate condition. My current situation wouldkill a man.”

“Then you are?”

“Idon’t know.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Maybe,” Lace granted.

Arm in arm, they went downstairs discussing how strong—not delicate—a woman had to be to bear a child.

The Scoundrels’ wives were a delight. They agreed not to share titles, just first names. “This is Patience, married the longest, Faith married the next longest, and this is Patience’s last remaining ward, Sophie.”

Sophie curtseyed. “I’m the only one she couldn’t marry off when she gave us a season to find husbands. I don’t seem to take. Too American, I think.”

“Too forthright and too much the hoyden, I think,” Patience said. “It’s your excellence in pugilism,” she added. “If you keep beating up your suitors, bloodying their noses and knocking them unconscious, you’ll never find a man.”

The ladies nodded with wide eyes, hands over mouths, and reluctant chuckles, while Mac brought in an assortment of aromatic teas, scones, berry jams, and clotted cream.

“I’ve never been so hungry at teatime,” Lacey said, finally relaxing with her guests.

Faith’s daughter, Beth, age seven, ended up sitting on the floor with Emmy and Cricket, three new friends, each with a pet in hand—Mucks and Tweenie, the dachshunds, and Cricket’s Merrycat. Bridget had made Merry’s introduction to Mucks the minute they came down.

“Where’s Abigail?” Lacey asked looking for the only other woman she’d expected to know. Abigail had been an inmate at Peacehaven when Lacey taught there, until Abigail and Jade became sisters-in-law after marrying the Fitzalan brothers.

Jade beamed. “Abby and Garrett couldn’t make it. They’re due for their second at any time, but the rest of us wanted to come down and meet you—while our husbands stink up the Towers library with cigar smoke and talk of schoolboy pranks.”

“If we hadn’t come soon,” Sophie said, “we couldn’t have come for afternoon tea. That’s the law of the land, right? No visits of an evening? Not like in America when we trod all over everyone’s evening just for the pleasure of their company, and maybe a game and a dance or two, all unplanned.”

The ladies chuckled, because Sophie obviously acted the gauche American on purpose.

Patience slipped an arm around Sophie’s waist. “Our Sophie entertains the ladies, though notnearly as well as she entertains the men.”

“Speaking of which,” Faith, Justin’s wife, said, “I do believe that our host, the Duke of Ashcroft, or Nick, which he told us to call him, is smitten with Sophie. He may have left her side on occasion since we arrived, but he has barely taken his gaze from her.”

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,anyone, 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? Didno one say a prayer over my babe’s wee casket?”

“Your 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 wasyour babe supposed to be there.”

His words echoed in Lacey’s head. . . supposed 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 didnot live. 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 anempty grave?”

“Wills probably embellished the tale. Consecrated church ground is probably the point. She’s buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on the estate inunconsecrated 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,borrowed 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.

“Holy Scoundrel,” said Captain Grant St. Benedict, the Marquess of Andover. “Thisplan is as airtight as a dinghy with woodworm.”

“These pews are filthy,” Justin, Duke of Ainsley, said. “Years worth of grime to be chipped off.”

Gabriel looked from one to the other, sick with despair yet filled with hope. “I sent to the Towers for a couple of Nick’s maids with cleaning supplies.”

“Where are you hiding your wisdom these days?” Justin asked.

“I thought every woman wanted to get married,” Gabriel said in self-defense, encompassing his friends in his plea. “Lace and I, we’ve been—I mean, since we were kids, we’ve done nothing but—”

“Fight?” Justin suggested. “According to Nick, all you’ve ever done is argue, disagree, and disappoint each other.”

Gabe felt the blood drain from his face as he sat on a cobwebby pew. “That’s not quite right. We’ve fought hard, yes, but we’ve loved harder.”

Marcus slapped him on the back. “Sounds like the makings of a good marriage to me. The pleasurable kind. What type of exhilarating challenge would marriage be if you got along all the time? The lovemaking of atonement and reconciliation makes for a higher realm of satisfaction that can only enhance marital bliss. It’s got that extra jolt and thrill to it, if you know what I mean.”

Gabe knew. “With Lace, it’s got punch,” he said. “I’ve had the black eye to prove it.”

Justin chuckled while Gabe considered the matter, his hopes brightening.

Grant scratched his chin. “Gabe, how did you manage the license? Lacey’s signature? Doesn’t she have to agree on paper at least?”

“I’m a vicar, the paperwork was easy, and she signed what she thought was a draft on her bank to pay for her new clothes. I thought she’d forgive me for that because, well, I paid for them. Do you suppose I did the wrong thing?”

“Possibly,” Justin said, “but for the right reasons. If you love each other so much, whywould she say no?”

“She can’t seem to forgive me for forgiving her.”

“That response is as sticky as a surprise wedding,” Justin said.

“Can’t go into details,” Gabriel said. “I love her too much.”

“Do you know what might work?” Marcus muttered to one and all as he scratched his chin, his mind working overtime. “Getting our wives onGabriel’s side. Stressing how lovesick he is, and getting them to admit that Lacey is as much in love with him. I mean, Jade knows. She could tell your wives how Lacey pined for Gabriel at Peacehaven for four long years.”

“Wait? She pined forme?” Gabriel asked, saw the Scoundrels’ surprise, and Nick’s slight head shake, and changed tack. “Do you think that would work, getting the wives on my side?”

A footman came with a note for Nick. “I’m wanted back at the Towers,” he said after reading it. “Have fun. Sorry I can’t help with anymore pews.” He chuckled as he left them.

Gabriel regarded his cronies. “As to getting the wives on my side, will it work?”

“Only if Lacey loves you as much as you love her. Otherwise, it’s a study in stupidity.”

Grant cleared his throat. “And we already know whatthat looks like.” He let his gaze wander to the pews, then upward toward the nonexistent roof in the old stone skeleton of a chapel where they stood.

Marcus kept to his original thought. “Weneedthe women on our side,” he said. “How else are you going to get Lacey here to the Abbey dressed for the occasion? And do you plan to ask for her hand in front of us, so shecan’t say no, let her mortify you with her refusal, or just wordlessly drag her up the aisle?”

Justin chuckled. “You couldorder her to marry you.”

“Yes, that always works with Jade,” Marcus said, “and my brother Garrett says it works with Abigail, too.” Marcus broke into laughter. “Frankly, about anything I tell Jadenotto do makes it necessary for her do it, so if you tell Laceynot to marry you in front of another vicar and all your friends, she might just insist on it.”

“I’m an idiot,” Gabriel muttered, noticing that his friends looked anywhere but at him or each other, a sure sign of agreement. “I think we should just have a ball,” he said, “and forget the wedding.”

Justin grumped. “But you love her?”

“So much I can hardly breathe. She can race my heart with a look, and when she gets close—”

Grant frowned. “Have you ever thought of telling her that? Using those exact words? If you tried,” he added. “After she knew how dreadfully heartfelt was your love, you couldask her to marry you in a ceremony as soon as this evening . . . and we’ll happen to be ready for the nuptials.” He indicated the makeshift altar and assorted candelabra in Gothic openings where windows, likely stained-glass, once stood.

“Let’s go back to the Towers,” Gabriel suggested, leading the way, “and tell Nick that the ball should start earlier tonight. He arranged it as a celebration for after the wedding, as a ruse to go along with my dimwitted plan. We’ll simply skip the wedding.”

“If you’re sure,” Justin said, his words infused with doubt.

They left the old Abbey, ready for a wedding, and Gabriel looked back with longing, certain of two things. He was a prime fool, and Lacey would never agree to marry him after everything that had passed between them.

“Why,” he wondered as he walked, “did forgiving her for having a child with Nick make her so furious? More furious than he ever remembered her being, and that was saying something.

“Why did Nick and Lace act like it never happened? And how had Nick become his ally in getting Lace to marry him?”

When they were kids, and Lace was at her most stubborn, she often repeated one phrase: “It’s the principle of the thing.”

Gabe arrived back at the Towers without recalling his journey from the Abbey surprised to find Lace waiting there, as if for him, dusk sweeping the sky behind her in pinks, yellows, and lavenders. As soon as he reached her, she slipped her arm through his and smiled up at him.

His heart skipped. Eyes only for him. Could she not see, hear, or care about Nick playing tag with the girls all around them, all that screaming and laughing, Nick and Sophie the loudest, the closest to each other, hand in hand most of the time? Did Lace not mind Nick catching Sophie and twirling her to three little girls’ applause and screeches, so each must have her turn at being twirled by the handsome new Duke?

It seemed not.

It seemed that Lacey could see nothing but the undying love for her inhis eyes.

While Nick complied with the children’s requests, his gaze never left Sophie’s. It seemed to Gabriel that Lace didn’t care that the handsome blond god and the perfect blonde goddess had flown down like angels from above, only to be reunited as mortals and live charmed lives. Even their accents matched. One started in Merry Olde England but had America’s own edge to it, and the other started in America and had grown a near-sophisticated English air.

Gabe checked the focused interest in the Scoundrels’ wives’ matchmaking expressions as they watched each couple with glee, as if sensitive to every nuance. Their speculation was clear, two matches were in the air. Nick and Sophie. He and Lacey.

Judging by the look Lace turned on him, soft-eyed and caring, Nick did not mean as much to her as Gabe had always surmised. She hadnot been pining for the father of her child all these years.

Or had she?

Marcus said earlier, as they carried one of the pews to the Abbey, and again later, that when Lace went to Peacehaven, according to Jade, she mourned her lost babe and pined for him. When Gabe asked Marcus how she felt about Nick back then, Marcus had said, “Nick who?” never for a moment equating Lacey’s love with their host.

What had Ivy meant about bringing Lace back to face her ghosts, like him and her destiny?

Why him, if Nick had fathered—?

Not Nick?

Whoalways got her out of trouble? she’d once asked, practically giving him the answer.Nick, that’s who.

Who sailed away to America, as planned and anticipated for an entire year before, when Lace was due to give her child life? Nick. Easy to take the blame from another continent, so whynot give his permission for her mother to hate him?

Who sat beneath her window and suffered the fires of hell? Who longed to take on her pain as she brought that child into the world?Not Nick, but him.

Who could her mother have ruined but good? Him. The new parson with a rotten family legacy of a church living to fix, or lose, along with a tardy and hard-won respectability for the Kendrick family name.

Though it meant banishment, who would Lacey lie to protect the loss of her title and funds, while facing a lonelier, sadder existence?

Stupid, stupid, stupid him. She’d lied to protect him.

She couldn’t forgive him for forgiving her because he should have seen the lie for what it was. He should have said he’d marry her to give her child a name andher respectability.

She was right. Her mother would have loved him for the first time ever.

He didn’t deserve her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

He looked at her now with a new and unforgivably belated wisdom. How could he have been so dense? So foolish as to think she would give herself to anyone but him?

Lacey, his dearest Lacey, expressed no heartbreak, no jealousy, simply joy in Nick and Sophie’s play. She laughed at their banter, squeezedhis arm in her exuberance—him, she wanted to share her happiness with. She planted a giggling kiss on his knuckles, then on Cricket’s head, when she came over to encompass them both in a big bear hug as if their friends’ happiness was contagious.

Because they were a family. They were. Cricket belonged to them both.

Theirs, yes. Clara’s daughter, his stepdaughter, and Lacey’s cousin. Theirs. For the first time, Gabriel considered proposing marriage on one knee, in the least romantic of locations—the here and now—using three magic words: “I love you.”

Just thinking it echoed the phrase in his head.Wait, had he spoken it aloud?

Lacey gasped and reached to cup his cheek, while stroking his chin dimple with her thumb and lowering his face toward hers. “I love you, too,” she whispered.

He had not ruined it. He would not. Neither, he decided on the instant, would he relinquish his hope of a wedding between them this night. If not before the ball, then after, or in the middle of it, by jingo.

“Holy twisted garters,” Jade snapped. “Get married already, if only for Cricket. She needs the stability of having you both as her parents. One day with you, and we can all see that.”

Marcus approached, having apparently heard his wife. “Lace, everyone can see that you and Gabriel love each other,” he added.

Hope rose in Gabriel as he looked Marcus square in the eye, begging for his fellow knave’s help in this quarter, since they both knew the wedding location had already been set, and he only needed a heartfelt road to the altar. This could be the perfect opening to a proposal, without telling Lace that he had planned something so stupid—as Nick called it—as asurprise wedding.

Marcus raised his chin and grinned. “Shall we go see about readying the church?”

Everyone looked at Lace for the go-ahead.

Gabriel took her hand. “I love you, Lacey Ashton. Make me the happiest of men. Marry me today.”

Lace smiled and gave him a half-nod.

“Yes?” He kissed her. He couldn’t help himself. Neither could he ignore the applause from the Towers lawns. “Nick, can we postpone the ball a few hours? Your guests have a wedding to attend first.”

“I think that can be managed,” Nick said with a chuckle.

Gabriel stepped back but did not want to let Lace go. “I’ve been banned from the church,” he said. “We’ll see if we can do something with the old Abbey chapel, shall we?”

“Oh,” Lace said, her voice soft. “Yes.”

“I’ll gather the Scoundrels,” Marcus said, “and that minister friend of Nick’s who’s here for the ball, and we’ll see what we can pull together.”

Jade took Lace’s hand. “Let’s go, we have to dress you for your wedding.”

Marcus’s wife practically dragged Lace away, making Gabriel worry that Lace agreed under duress. “Wait,” he called, and they stopped.

Gabriel took Lace’s hand, led her to a copse of trees, away from prying eyes, knelt before her, and took her hand. He brought her knuckles to his cheek, then turned her hand to kiss her palm. “Please be my wife. Not for the reasons I stated in Ivy’s wagon, or because of what happened between us there, which Ivy put right by seeming to arrive home with us, anyway, but because I have always loved you, Lacey Ashton, and I would like to spend the rest of my life showing you how much.”

“For that reason, Gabriel,” she said, pulling on his hand so he would stand and she could step into his arms, “Iwill marry you.”

Gabriel returned Lace to Jade. “Lace, wear the silver gown. It’s made for this very occasion. Help her, Jade. We’ll send for you when our makeshift chapel is ready.”

“Won’t it be quite late by then?” Lace asked, now biting her lip as she looked up at the sky.

“Not in our hearts,” Gabriel said. “What matter? Now off with you, ladies, before I take to kissing Lace and forgetting what I’msupposed to be doing.”

Jade urged Lacey along but Lace had misgivings. “This is happening too fast, too easily,” she told her friend.

“Easily?” Jade laughed. “You’ve been to hell and back, bearing him a child you mourned alone. You’ve been all but stoned by the people of this village before and after you were banished.”

“Five years,” Lace said, “if you count the months I carried my daughter, locked in seclusion under my mother’s watchful and disappointed eyes.”

“See? The road to marrying the man you love has been paved with hot brick shards and snake pits, and because this last step—a step no longer than your arm—is smooth and shiny, you think it’s easy?”

Lace quirked her lips.

Jade raised a brow. “I say, take the step and settle any and all questions as husband and wife in the bedroom. Never discount the value of distracting a man with sex.”

Lace chuckled.

“Let’s get you dressed for your wedding.” Jade hugged her arm.

At Rectory Cottage, Lacey grabbed Mac by the hands and twirled her around the kitchen. “Congratulate me, MacKenzie, I’m finally marrying Gabriel.”

Mac stopped dead. “When? Next month?” She paled. “Or next year?”

“Tonight.”

Mac took a sharp breath, slapped a hand to her heart, and stepped back.

“You don’t approve of me for him,” Lace whispered. “You think I’m not good enough—”

“I think you’re the best thing could ever happen to him. It’s me . . . and my sins I’m grappling with.”

“Sins? You? That’s a laugh. Stop your fussing and put on your Sunday best while Jade helps me get ready for the wedding. You’ll be one of our most honored guests.”

Upstairs in her room, Lacey shook out the silver gown Gabriel had bought her, while Jade opened her dresser and took out the best of her unmentionables, including her new tricot drawers. How decadent.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

With a sisterly embrace and wishes for a happy future, Jade left Rectory Cottage well ahead of Lace to tell everyone that the bride cometh.

Lace went into Cricket’s room to take in the fact that they were about to become a family. Then, she went into Clara’s room, the room she’d been using, touched the silver dresser set and experienced the oddest sense of peace, destiny and . . . approval.

“Thank you, Clara,” she whispered.

Filled with joy over the thought of finally marrying Gabriel, despite the fact that they would be forced to have a proverbial candlelight ceremony, she made her way down the backstairs to cut through the kitchen only to find Nick sitting at the table.

He stood. “You make a beautiful bride, Lace.”

“Come to escort me to the old Abbey?” she asked.

“And down the aisle, if I may be so bold as to stand in place of a father. I simply would like to set Gabriel’s fears to rest and give you to him, literally, before God and the Scoundrels. We are, after all, cousins, raised like brother and sisters, you, me, and Clara. Do you feel, and eerily so, as though Clara is with us tonight?” he asked.

“Yes!” Lacey said. “I feel her presence for the first time since I came home. It’s like she’s walking on my other side. You give me to Gabe, and Clara will give me to Bridget.” Lacey’s eyes filled.

“None of that now,” Nick said, dabbing at her tears with his handkerchief. “Today is for happy,” as Clara used to say.

“As she said just now through you, you must realize?” Lacey shivered.

“I felt it, too,” Nick said, “that sudden chill in the air.”

“I think she’s been waiting for this day for a long time.”

“Haven’t we all?” Nick gave Lace his arm, which she accepted. And at the same time, she almostfelt the touch of a hand at her other arm.

They exited the kitchen door to the herb garden, its scents sharp with a minty mix in the moonlight, and continued down the slate walk toward the windmill, flanked by a country cottage garden.

There, Nick picked a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and a rainbow of lilies, snapdragons, and more varieties of orchids than could be imagined. The chalk in the Sussex soil nourished superb orchids of all varieties, one of her favorite local delights.

“A snip of cockscomb,” Nick said, “to represent the Scoundrels, and, ah, here, a trio of Canterbury bells because—”

“Every bride must carry something blue?” she finished.

Nick chuckled. “And baby’s breath to honor the Kendrick babes to come.”

They hugged, then she shoved his arm with sisterly affection, the way they’d done as kids.

Lace took a readying breath and they began walking again. But the magic on the hill stopped her. A play of light, candles in moonlight, the Scoundrels and their families making their way to the Abbey where she would finally marry the man she loved.

She elbowed Nick to get them moving again, smiled, and took his offered arm. “You’re a Scoundrel and a knave, just so you know.”

“So are we all, my pet. So are we all. Including your future husband.”

Her grin grew wide. “I know, and I love him that way.”

The old abbey had been built, legend had it, around the 1300s, of round stones from the fields, surely causing many an aching back and monastic prayer. It stood enclosed on nearly all four sides. Without a roof, its end walls arched toward nothingness to mimic, in large scale, its Gothic windows.

As they approached, she loved how those same window arches had been filled with lit candelabra of every sort and size, multi-flames dancing in the breeze drifting through trees growing inside and out.

A candlelit church had never looked so wondrous beautiful.

Inside, around the beauty of nature reclaiming this high holy place, pews had been set in rows, and along each stood their guests, turning to watch her arrival, each holding a lit candle.

At the front of the chapel, Gabriel waited, handsome as sin in his black suit and vicar’s collar, as bright a white as his imaginary wings, now pearlescent and glowing with love.

He held his daughter by the hand, Cricket who wore a miniature of her Lace’s silver dress. Gabriel had hidden depths; he’d planned this whole thing way back when they went shopping for clothes. Good to know she’d been loved when unlovable.

Together the two peopleshe most loved in the world waited for her to make them a family.

Lace had not expected to be serenaded as Nick escorted her down the aisle, but she heard the crank of Ivy’s barrel piano, favored by street musicians and puppeteers—no wonder his gypsy wagon had been left outside the chapel. Then her guests added their combined voices as she went to meet her love to the strains of “Sheep May Safely Graze.”

Lace sang the words in her mind and realized that surely Gabriel had been the shepherd who kept watch over Bridget, so her little lamb could safely graze, until, in due course, on this night, they could begin their life together.

Had Clara anything to do with her finding Gabriel sheltering a lamb the night she returned? Had the scene been an indication of the wonder and love she would find here?

No bride ever met her future husband at the altar at a more ordained moment in time nor to a more perfect piece of music.

When Nick officially gave Gabriel her hand, Gabe asked Nick to stay and be his witness. Lace had forgotten about needing one, so she turned and crooked a finger at Jade to come and stand beside her.

When Jade complied, Lacey gave her snapdragons, baby’s breath, and pink Canterbury bells.

“Flowers for me, too?” Bridget asked, so Lace gave her Queen Anne’s lace, baby’s breath, and orchids. Then Cricket slipped her hands into theirs, hers and Gabriel’s, so it looked as if Gabe held a bouquet as well, while Bridget huffed and tilted her head at the minister. “Well . . . marry us.”

The minister chuckled, and as he began the service, Lace felt as if Clara kissed her cheek, Bridget’s too, because, without letting go of their hands, Cricket raised a shoulder to swipe at her cheek with a giggle, as if something, or someone, had tickled her there.

This is where it all began. She could practically hear the echo of their childish laughter. Here they loved as man and woman. Here they now pledged their troth, binding their lives, with Clara’s Bridget and any future children to come of their union.

Lacey’s voice grew strong and sure as she spoke her vows, her hand squeezing Bridget’s.

Gabriel’s voice cracked as he repeated his vows loud enough for her mother and Clara to hear, Lacey thought, watching him through the shimmer in her eyes.

“I now pronounce you man and wife, and daughter,” the minister said.

“And about time!” Cricket shouted jumping into Gabe’s arms and clinging like a monkey as she pulled Lacey over. “Can I have my first sleepover now?”

Laughter rippled through the guests, and in the magic of that candlelit Abbey, when Gabriel and Lacey Kendrick kissed for the first time as husband and wife, their daughter snug between them, the guests’ eyes were soft, their expressions pleased.

The newlyweds took the aisle at a jaunty pace, a little one skipping between them, to a burst of applause and shouts of “Huzzah!”

Nick blocked the exit after the Kendrick family left the chapel. “Knaves and brides, come to the Towers and dance in celebration. A celebratory ball awaits.”

Gabriel winced, but Lacey chuckled, and they went to the Towers planning a quick getaway.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

At the ball, Nick and Sophie danced nearly every dance, especially the waltzes, practically a promise of marriage in London, but no one at Ashcroft Towers seemed to care . . . except for Nick and Sophie, who appeared to care very much . . . for each other.

Suddenly dancers parted from their partners and began backing away until they’d formed a circle around the dance floor. In the center of it, Sophie and Nick circled each other, fists poised.

“Oh, no, Sophie’s fighting,” Patience said. “Not again.”

“Daventry, you can take her,” the Duke of Ainsley called.

“No, he can’t,” said Captain Grant St. Benedict, husband to Patience, because they’d seen such a display from Sophie several times before, the first time having been on Grant’s ship,The Scoundrel’s Secret.

“I can do it,” Sophie said. “I’ve got my left hand up, my right up front, even with my left elbow. It’s my first position, the way Jasper taught me.”

“I’m terrified,” Nick said.

Sophie beamed then she growled, exposing perfect white teeth, her look as fierce as any dimpled blonde in yellow watered silkcanbe. “Just remember our wager. You teach me to sailThe Knickerbocker, if I win.”

He straightened, affronted that she could doubt him. “Word of a gentleman.”

That was when she shot out with her left, quick as lightning, and hit said gentleman square on the nose. Blood shot to her dress and Nick went down with a thud, but she dropped, and caught him with her skirt-cushioned lap before he could smack his head. She’d timed it perfectly.

Gabriel’s laughter, a rare thing, started slowly, but once he got started, it grew contagious.

Nick opened his eyes. “I won,” he said with a dizzy grin.

“No,” Sophie said, wiping the blood from his nose with a handkerchief Grant handed her. “Iwon.”

“I was set to win either way,” her downed opponent said. Nick Daventry kissed Miss Sophie Kane right there on the Ashcroft ballroom floor. Then he raised his head and saluted his fellow Scoundrels. “Congratulate us. We’re betrothed!”

“We are?” Sophie asked. “I thought I was supposed to learn to sail to America.”

“Not without a ring on your finger you’re not,” Patience said. “Months at sea? Who knows what could happen between you?”

“I know,” Grant said catching Patience in his arms and kissing her senseless.

A grin split Sophie’s face. “Patience! This means that I finally made a match.”

Patience pulled from her husband’s kiss, dazed and happy. “Yes, you did.”

Good wishes followed, as did more tender care for Nick from Sophie.

As Gabriel and Lacey were about to take their quiet leave of the happy gathering, Julian arrived to partake of the festivities. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said to Lace. “I know I wasn’t invited to the wedding, but Nick invited me to the ball after I helped find Bridget. I think you know Miss Olivia Prout and her mother, who deigned to accompany us?”

“Julian is our escort for the evening,” Lady Prout said. “Julian, dear, may I have a word with the newlyweds while you partner Olivia in a dance?”

“Certainly.” Julian bowed and took Olivia’s hand.

As she regarded them, Prout’s visage went rigid. Ire darkened her eyes. “You think you’ve bested me with this marriage, but I tell you this, vicar, you cannot raise a harlot to the status of vicar’s wife. In due course, the arrangement can do nothing but go wrong and turn you into a defrocked vicar, which I will make certain happens. You will end as nothing but a sinner’s spouse. No parish will want you. I’ll see to that. My connections in the church, through our dear bishop, are vast and long-reaching. I have money and power, which you turned your back on. I take umbrage with that. You will see that crossing me was your worst mistake,after marrying Lacey Ashton.”

“Do not bestow that condescending smile upon me, missy!” Prout snapped at Lace.

“There is nothing so sad,” Lace said, “as a woman who does not know her place or her limitations. I know what I am. I have made peace with my Maker. But you think you are His equal. That will becomeyour downfall. I wish you a soft landing. Good evening, Lady Prout.”

Gabriel bowed, slipped his arm around Lace, and walked her out the door. “Don’t let her see you tremble,” he whispered in her ear, looking for all the world as if he were nibbling and kissing it.

MacKenzie and Ivy waited for them.

“Thank you, MacKenzie,” Lace said with a hug, “for staying at the Towers tonight in case Bridget needs anything.”

“Prout is there,” Gabe said. “She wangled an invite through Julian. She’ll try to spread her venom but our friends won’t stand for it. I’m not worried there. It’s Bridget I’m worried about. Keep the old harridan away from the girls, will you?”

“We’ll take care of Prout,” Mac said.

“This is your time. Don’t worry.” Ivy rubbed his nose. “I’m staying the night at Nick’s as well. You won’t see any of us until late tomorrow. Right now, in the chapel, a midnight supper awaits with a few surprises. At any rate, Rectory Cottage is yours until tomorrow. Leave a note on the kitchen door if you need more time. Nick has invited us for as long as we need to stay.”

As Mac and Ivy returned to the Towers, Gabe and Lace clasped hands and veered toward the Abbey chapel, but Gabe kept looking down at her. “I am not afraid of Prout, and if you let her ruin our wedding night, I will be very cross.”

“She no longer has a hold over us. She is all talk. I have forgotten her every word.”If only.

“Ah, I have a brilliant and beautiful bride.”

“So many wonderful friends in attendance. It was an enchanting wedding, Gabe. I dreamed for years of being your bride.”

He turned to her. “My bride,” he repeated just to hear the sound of it. “Kiss me, my bride.”

She kissed his hands, and there in the woods of the Ashcroft Estate, she undid the buttons on his frockcoat, his waistcoat, his shirt, just enough to twirl a bit of chest hair around her eager fingers.

Unexpectedly, he kissed her in a way he had not dared, till now, but he stopped before he lost control. He couldn’t let passion spoil another wedding night. So he pulled her close until his heart slowed.

“I feel your heart racing.”

“You are mine,” he said. “Never to be taken away again. I have so much to make up to you for. I figured it out. Dense, I may be, but not forever, praise be. You lied about your babe’s father to save my living, to keep your mother from ruining me.”

“I always thought that I should make up to you for my lie, though if you forgave me one more time—”

He chuckled and touched his eye. “And my timing was so good.”

“I’m sorry about giving you a black eye.”

“I deserved it. You showed me the greatest example of love imaginable. You bore my child alone, took my sin as yours, just to keep me from losing my dream.”

“A dream that meant everything to you.”

“No. You were the dream that meant the most to me. You are still allowing everyone to think badly of you to protect me. You know the true meaning of love, and because of it, I cannot believe that you love me, unworthy creature that I am.”

“Let us agree that neither of us is worthy,” she said, her arm around his waist, his around hers as they approached the ruins. And since neither of us is worthy, we are perfect for each other.”

He chuckled as they entered the chapel and stopped.

More candles, they found. Fresh-lit tall tapers on window ledges and a dining table with fine linens and flowers in vases, covered dishes, pewter plates, and cutlery.

Over in the corner, a bedroom of sorts with a stack of mattresses made up with fine linens, a table beside it with more flowers and candles.

“So you can sleep beneath the stars, which you love, Ivy must have remembered, though you’ll not be alone on your mattress this night,” Gabe said throwing back the covers, inviting her to a world of silk and promise. . . with him.

But they had not begun to take in their surroundings, so she turned to do so, shiveringly well aware that their bed beneath the stars awaited their pleasure

And in the farthest corner, inside the chapel ruin, the gypsy wagon stood, minus its horses, its colors bright beneath the moon, with a note on the door. “Eat, sleep, inside or out, makes no difference. Or take your bride to Rectory Cottage, the two of you will remain alone. When you wait as long as you did, ithas to be special. With our blessing, Ivy and MacKenzie.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lacey went to uncover the dishes. She was starving.

Her new husband stood with his hands behind his back and regarded the possibilities. “So, my love, after we dine, which I presume you wish to do first—”

“It is the thing to do,” she said, mocking him in her own way because she was surely as ready as he to celebrate their wedding in the most passionate and sensual of ways. “Besides, I will faint from hunger if we do not. It is nearly tomorrow and I have missed dinner, after all. And MacKenzie would be heart-broken if we ignored her feast.”

Gabriel began to approach her in a rather sinister but titillating way, much like a predator, a wolf perhaps, like Ivy’s Sergei—well, a little bit of Sergei and a bit more of Parson puppet—stalking its prey. “After we dine, then,” he whispered, stroking the skin of her breasts above her décolletage. “Where should we make love? Beneath the stars? In the gypsy wagon? Or in Rectory Cottage?”

“Yes, please.”

His head came up quite fast at that. “What? All three?”

“Beneath the stars, to start. We’ll go for silk and sensation, teasing and tantalizing, with all the candles on, a first coming together of husband and wife, shy, sweet, slow, raising pleasure like a mighty wave that spills as it crests.”

He cleared his throat. “What will be left for the gypsy wagon?”

“There, we will be ruthless lovers. We will ride each other until we rock the wagon and cry out with mutually unbearable pleasure.”

Gabriel took to standing differently.

She’d affected him and she reveled in it . . . because that’s what she’d set out to do.

“And at the cottage?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a rasp now.

“Lastly, in our marriage bed, we’ll tear each other’s clothes off . . . and go to sleep.”

He caught his breath and she laughed at what she’d done to him, boldly raking his body with her gaze, stopping to admire his arousal so long, she’d turned his readiness into a saluting soldier.

“Sleep?” he asked, playing along. “On our wedding night?”

“Well, it’s midnight now, so by the time we get to the rectory, it’ll probably be the morning after our wedding. What are we, heathens to make love during the day? Lud, yes!” she added.

“Oh, I love it when you get forceful.” He lunged.

She squeaked and stepped back. “But not too forceful.”

He stopped, held his hands behind his back and, whistling, he headed past their bed beneath the stars and out the side door.

She laughed.

He peeked back inside.

“In Rectory Cottage, which sounds so decadent,” she said, curling her finger his way to draw him toward her, “we’ll get naked and eat passion whole, throw our bodies into the earthiest of gratifications. Love-licks, mouths exploring, suckling each other, handseverywhere. I’ll become the mate to the wolf hiding inside you, and we’ll pleasure each other until we howl at the moon and expire of exhaustion.” She met him halfway.

“One step closer, Lacey, and I’ll spill my seed, I swear.”

“Words,” she said, stopping. “They’re so powerful when painting a picture.”

“Well you’d better paint another picture or I’ll be useless to you.”

“I’m hungry?” she tried.

He shook his head. “Hunger and the scene you described feel as one to me. You’ve only made it worse.”

Lace fell to the grass in giggles, her silver gown puddled around her, mirroring a dazzle of sparks, like shooting stars made of moonbeams and candlelight.

After watching her for a minute or more, Gabriel bent to raise her face to his by placing a finger beneath her chin. “Of all the memories we made today, I think I’ll carry this image of you in my heart forever. I’ll call it:Seductress.”

“Caught,” she whispered, cupping his cheek. “Happy wedding day, Gabriel.”

“Happy life, Lacey.”

“Can we eat now?”

He groaned and gave her a hand up so they could.

She uncovered the courses. “I’m glad the pews have been taken away, or I’d feel as if our guests were watching us in our bed beneath the stars later.”

“You might have doused me with cold water with that remark.”

“Not in the condition you’re in.” She chuckled and kissed him.

They sat as close as two people could and fed each other bits of turkey and ham pie, pears in red wine, pippin pie, and bites of steamed lemon pudding with sugar bells on top. To drink, Mac had made a weak champagne punch.

Lacey raised her glass. “To our family.”

Gabe nodded. “All three.”

“Our family.”

Gabe went into Ivy’s wagon, which surprised her, until she heard the strains of a Viennese waltz.

He returned to take her hand.

“How does it play without someone turning the crank?” she asked.

“Ivy taught me this afternoon how to change the music and run it with a coin. He often puts it outside during street shows and lets his audience choose the music.”

“I’m glad we’re here in our secret place.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Not secret anymore.”

He twirled her, slowed to a decadent waltz, caught her mouth with his, stole her breath with love, let his lips linger and toy with hers, his tongue, his hands making free with her person, until they were all but making love with each move of their legs and torsos, his leg between hers, abrading her sex, her knees set to buckle.

“It was rather cheeky of MacKenzie and Ivy to set up a bed for us beneath the stars, wasn’t it? Mac must’ve blushed from here to the sea.”

“For all that we’ve scandalized the town, we’re rather naïve, we two. It seems that Ivy and Mac have had an understanding for years, now.”

“You mean that they—”

“Every chance they get. He won’t stay in his own room tonight any more than he does when he stays here. You didn’t wonder why he picked a room on the third floor in the servant’s quarters? And this? Only lovers understand what lovers who practically have to steal their wedding day need in a wedding night.”

Lacey stopped dancing. “I’m shocked.”

“You’re surprised is what you are, Lacey Kendrick—I told you that would be your name.”

“Now don’t pick a quarrel, I’m rather liking you right now,” she warned.

He laughed, swept her off her feet, and brought her to the mattresses in the corner of the ruins, set her on the satin bedding, and went down with her.

“I’ve already lost my head kissing you in front of everyone today,” Gabe said. “So I’m taking full advantage of being alone with you in a bed. Finally.”

His vow of never letting passion rule him again echoed with a beat similar to the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, the sound of an inner mandate to mate with his one true love. Zounds, he was in trouble.

He kissed her like a man drowning and tried to keep his hands above her gown, to enhance her rise to bliss, grow her need from a seed to a bud opening its petals. He wanted to bring her to flower, moist with the dew of her need, woo her with an ever-expanding pleasure heretofore unknown to her, and make her his own, for eternity.

Over that gown, he traced the straight of her spine, but before he caught himself at it, he’d slipped his hand upward, along the silk stockings, garters, then the bare skin of a soft, sweet leg.

Lacey sighed with anticipation and pleasure, rolled to her back, and arched to give him access. Saints preserve them both. At the rate they were going they’d last thirteen seconds at the most.

So instead of cupping her perfect bottom as he anticipated, he found her perfect center instead, and her needy whimpers at his touch combined to form the inner music that fed their love, and the strains of the waltz surrounding them fed their spirits as well. Stars above, a full moon, the grass below their bed, Lacey, slick and sleek and more than ready, as open and dew-kissed as a morning glory at dawn. What more of life could a man ask?

Several minutes in, she burst as if from the inside into a million sparks of light.

“You went up like the fireworks celebrating our victory over Napoleon,” he said, raising her up again. “Since you came home, you’ve been different in bed. Reserved. How long has it been since youreally let yourself go like this?”

“You mean with a man?” Lacey shouted her second release with him throbbing so hard, the push of his trouser buttons chafed his saluting soldier. And she wasn’t done yet, but he wouldn’t stop for anything. Giving her this kind of attention and satisfaction both humbledand excited him. “Of course, with a man,” he said, tardy in catching her silly joke.

“The last time I let myself go like this, I was with Gabe . . . somebody . . . the man I loved—” She gasped. “’Twas five or so years ago, no mattress, just the grass at my back and him inside me.”

Talk about being humbled. “That’s all I need to know. Fly once more, or ten times more, that’s it. Come on, you can do it.”

“Too . . . tired.”

“No. I’m not giving up. How’s this, right here? Oh, that’s the spot, slow and deep, I can tell.” Thunderation, she was sweet and beautiful in her wild abandon, as hot and bright as those fireworks. He had nearly missed her hearty participation since she came home because guilt accompanied every stolen moment of bliss. But she was hiswifenow.His.

“This is all for you,” he said. “Let’s keep it going, love. I’m sending you straight to the stars and I’ll keep you there for as long as you can stand the ride.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lace opened her eyes to an actual dream, the one where she wakes in the morning with Gabriel wrapped around her, the sun streaming in the windows.

Except that it was still the dark of night, the stars winking down on them like a blessing, and they were both wearing clothes. Every stitch.

She had been extraordinarily satisfied, and Gabe had gotten . . . nothing. Remembering the size and throb of him in her hand, he must have suffered for her pleasure, but he bore it stoically and exhausted them both in the process.

She might even have lost consciousness from the pleasure, it was so nearly unbearable. So utterly amazing. As was her new husband.

While he snored softly, his waking erection patted the back of her hand. With it being so big and happy to be alive, she gave it a “good morning” stroke, to which it stood and bowed, and soon enough, her hand was full and being coaxed into rhythm.

“You once said you liked it best big and long,” Gabriel said, stretching and falling to his back. “Are you trying to have your wicked way with me? Say yes.”

The night she came home, he’d looked like Lucifer to her, and now he more closely resembled the lamb wanting to be stroked. So she simply adored him, every part, not just his impressive erection, but all of him, his face, his talented lips, his dark head of hair, the “ucky-scratchy” beard, silken chest hair, broad shoulders, big clumsy feet, andeverything in between.

“Gabriel? May I please feel my breasts against your nice, naked hairy chest?”

“C’mere, wife.” He pulled her over him so she could use him as another mattress, and he could insinuate himself, that elongated part of himself, between her legs, just where she wanted it almost.

“Gabriel, it would work better if my skirts were up and we were wearing less clothes.”

He chuckled. “You should be proud of yourself.”

“Funny, but I’m rather ashamed of myself. If I remember it clearly, you did not get your share, or any share of the delight to be had in the marriage bed. You didn’t, did you?” She raised herself up on her hands. “Oh, please tell me I didn’t sleep through it?”

He chuckled. “If you ever sleep through my lovemaking, I shall have a duel with myself and win.”

“You haven’t had your turn, then, have you?”

“Not yet,” said he, “but I did not intend for my situation to be a permanent one, make no mistake.”

She grinned like a sated cat. “I shall give you more than your fair share until you beg for mercy.”

“I may need a nap first. You exhausted me, you ravenous, delightful dream of a wife.”

Lacey buried her warm face in his neck. “I am so very remorseful.”

“Remorse, my aunt Tilda. I witnessed a miracle tonight. You gave new meaning to the termmate. I will want to rush through my work just to get to my marriage bed from this day on. I only hope I don’t remember last night during future sermons, wherever we find a church, or I’ll lose my place and be too embarrassed to move from the pulpit. By thunder, you belong in the betting books, except that I prefer my secret knowledge—in the biblical sense—of your lusty self.”

Lace wailed and buried her face in his neck. “I’ll never be able to look you in the eye again.”

He stood and offered her a hand. “Sure you will. Right now. In the wagon. Naked. I’m determined to let you earn your way to our bedroom in Rectory Cottage, or die of pleasure trying.”

But when he carried her up the steps and into the wagon, she knocked over a lap desk that belched a flutter of papers that floated to the floor.

Denied the pleasures of the marriage bed for a bit, they found themselves crawling around the gypsy wagon on all fours picking up papers and trying to put them together.

“I’ll light a candle,” Gabriel said, his arousal still tenting his formal attire.

Lacey giggled.

He shed some light on their task. “I’ll get you back,” he whispered at her ear, warming her, and making her want. But she was quickly distracted by the sight of two papers that landed close to each other. “Gabriel, my name.”

He picked up a candle so they could see to read. “These are Ivy’s directions to his solicitor for my anonymous inheritance. He told the man that he was doing this so I, Lacey Ashton, could become self-sufficient, self-confident, and as a lady of independent means, I could freely choose to marry the man I had always loved.”

“He did it for us, Lace,” Gabriel said. “I can see that now, though I feared at first that you would see it as a way of taking Bridget.”

“I would never have done that. And I’ll never be able to thank Ivy, because he shouldn’t know that we know,” Lace said.

They put all the papers back in the lap desk and Gabe returned it to its shelf. “This should be secured but you must have kicked the strap at a vulnerable point.”

“Gabe, he’ll see that it’s broken and know that the papers have been rearranged.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll probably think Hedgehog did it.”

Lace scoffed.

“Seriously, he’ll probably think Cricket and her friends did. They’re always in here. And he’d never be angry with them.”

He turned her away from him, there on the floor. “Allow me,” he said, undoing her buttons, remembering their time in the wagon with fondness. He kissed and fondled her as he peeled away the layers between her and her underpinnings, toying with every pleasure-heightening inch of flesh he exposed along the way.

Lace whimpered. She gasped. She asked him to stop, and she asked him for more.

He wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her the way he’d kissed her the day they made love for the first time. He’d kissed her then as if time had stopped and belonged entirely to them. Now he could do that and more. He could slip inside her and stay forever, take her on a meteoric rise to the stars, where they could both weep with pleasure.

He set her on the bed and she pulled up the covers.

“No.” He pulled them back down.

“This is embarrassing,” she said, turning on her side to face him, moonlight bathing her hair a rich sable, starlight stroking her from her neck to the tops of her long shapely thighs, until she raised a leg to hide her woman’s core and placed her arms so as to hide her breasts, the nubbins hard and aching for his hands and his mouth.

He imagined those legs wrapped tightly around him and was forced to drop his man-drawers to save himself from strangulation by titillation.

You’d think she was his first meal in a week. All he could think about was the way she’d taste on his lips and feel gloving him.

She seemed as interested in the process of him taking off his clothes as she had been interested in him removing hers.

“When we get to the Rectory, I want to take off your clothes the way you removed mine,” she said, moving in the bed like a slithery siren seeking his ministrations.

“Can you read my mind?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “Naughty thoughts make for a naughty vicar, a holy Scoundrel, if you will.”

“Your holy Scoundrel, if you will.”

She practically purred. “Oh, I will.”

He lost his patience as his inner garments came off in a rush, and he was in the bed as naked as she.

She met his enthusiasm and became the warmth at his neck, the heaviness on his chest, her hair feathered his cheek, his sex. Her scent became seduction and salvation enticing him to slip further into her arms. Her hand rode his chest, her knee rode his groin.

Destiny, this was called.

He found her mouth, warm, barely open, inviting, seeking succor from a kiss. He devoured that pout while she gave an involuntary squeak, a lusty moan. Those sounds and her tongue set him on fire.

“Lace,” he heard himself breathe.

She responded by becoming greedy, ravenous, determined to help him make the relentless climb, breathless and unyielding, toward a place they labored to reach, a ride toward eternity, a need to prolong. Despite his best efforts to hold his passion at bay, realization came with a frisson of panic that turned quickly to elation. His wife. Lace the passionate had become his wife. At the release of his ban on passion, joy came in waves. Acceptance. Gratitude. Responsibility.

“I want you,” Gabe whispered against Lacey’s ear, sharing the warmth of his breath, offering himself to her, raising her higher still, but not so high that she could miss the underlying need of Gabriel the boyseeking acceptance.

“I need you more than my next breath,” she said. “No more pretending this is out of our control. We’ve taken it in hand, so to speak.” She stopped being serious to squeeze his thickened flesh. “This is the rest of our lives we’re talking about. I love you. Till death do us part. I want all of it, home, family, all of it with you,” she added, arching against him, fitting her every curve to his every hollow.

“Now tell me you’re actually awake,” he begged.

She licked his lips. “I’m awake and I want you inside of me, Gabriel. No pretense, no evasion, just a life as it was supposed to be lived, for both of us.”

Gabriel nodded. “We’ve known it from the beginning, haven’t we? Since we were kids.” Not a question but a statement.

His echo of her thoughts firmed Lace’s resolve to make this rare moment in time a blessing, a memory for the ages. No fear of reprisal but free, she felt. Uninhibited, for the first time ever. Ready to welcome the mate ordained for her.

“Are you certain?” she asked, and he heard the insecurity in her voice.

Gabriel’s sex surged, almost involuntarily, against her. “Never more so of anything . . . you have proof at hand.”

“It’s not your sturdy soldier talking, is it?” she asked with amusement. “Your other brain?”

“Him? He’s never been more alive, whimpering, weeping in anticipation, aching to sing in full-throated glory.” Gabriel hardened the more.

“Alive, yes,” Lacey said. “Like me, awash in energy and need. Let’s finish what we started on our bed beneath the stars.”

“Excellent, yes!” Gabe said. “Now, while the world can’t intrude, take my hands,” he whispered on a kiss that lingered as he rose over her. He held himself apart, kept their bodies from touching, as they made a simple meal of each other’s mouths, fingers entwined on the pillow by her head, nothing else touching.

“Come inside of me. Now,” she begged.

“No,” Gabe said. “Let’s go to the house.”

“What!”

“Look behind you.” Gabe rolled off of her.

On a shelf behind the bed sat of row of peeping tom puppets. Sergei, Hedgehog, Merry Mouse, a very stern Parson Puppet, and various others, all of them grinning, except the parson.

“Why weren’t they here the last time?” she asked.

“He must have been repairing them when I stole the wagon.”

Lace sat up. “The house, yes. Quick. I’ll never be able to watch another puppet show without turning beet-red.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“I want to do this right, anyway. In our marriage bed,” Gabriel said. “That’s where we should conceive our next child.”

She bit her lip for a second, for so many reasons. She wasn’t certain. She wasn’t. And one should be in these cases, shouldn’t one? “But I don’t want to get dressed. I want you now, blast it.”

“Ach, it’s a heathen I married. She uses salty language,” Gabriel roared. “You wear my shirt. I’ll wear my breeches, and we’ll run hand-in-hand into the house and up to our bedroom.”

She grumbled so, as she turned all the puppets to face the wall, that his laughter made it difficult for him to hop into his trousers.

Before they ran, Gabriel kissed her with satisfaction, as possessive and wildly frantic as she.

“I’m dying, too,” he said. “We’ll make it fast and by the time we get there, we won’t be able to bear the wait.”

Lacey huffed. “But I didn’t want to have to stop.”

“Do you know how greedy you were last night?”

“No, how greedy was I?”

“Like the last time we made love here, right before I found out aboutour baby.”

Oh. Did impending motherhood made her randy? She grinned.

She practically dragged him toward Rectory Cottage, knowing she was foolish for possibly getting herself in this condition without the benefit of marriage, twice. Both times in love with a man she could never have. First, the Lady Lacey Ashton and the vicar’s son. Then the town harlot and the respected vicar. The truth was that every time Gabriel touched her, she’d wanted to conceive.

Now, thankfully, a bizarre series of events and the love they’d denied for years had conspired to bring them together as man and wife. Praise be. “I love you, my husband,” she said as they entered his room, their room, at Rectory Cottage.

She twirled as she crossed it. “Now, I finally belong here with you.”

He opened his arms to her and she ran into them so he could raise her up, let her slide down his body and kiss her senseless.

It was only when he lifted her into his arms and turned toward the bed that he stopped and Lacey squeaked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“On the bed, that’s Bridget’s trunk of baby clothes,” Lace said, “the one MacKenzie practically tore from my hands that day in the attic. I haven’t seen it since.”

She stepped closer. Atop the trunk sat a key. “Oh,” Lacey said. “Oh.” She sat on the bed reaching for the small leather-trimmed trunk, but she pulled her hands quickly back, clasped them and set them in her lap. “My heart is racing,” she admitted softly and looked at Gabriel.

He spread his hands. “I fail to see the significance of an attic cast-off. I am also embarrassingly humbled by the early failure of my wedding night seduction. Methinks I should have ignored those ruddy puppets.”

Lacey laughed, a bubble of pure joy rising in her, an imprecise instinct illuminating the monumental nature in the moment.

“I will expect a wedding-night-quality seduction every night,” Gabriel, “so you will have ample time to make it up to me.”

“Me?” he asked. “Make it up to you? When you abandoned me?”

She giggled but soon forgot him when she became distracted by the key, which she fingered, then fit into the lock.

She turned the key to find the trunk still filled with baby clothes, the ones on the topmost layer still in disarray from Bridget’s search for the bonnet that Lace kept hidden in a drawer.

Bittersweet memories filled her as she searched further and raised pieces to exclaim over. “So tiny.” In the pit of her belly, she replaced her bittersweet anticipation of motherhood with the joyful knowledge that in future, her child’s father would share the amazing journey through expectation, excitement, and concern. She turned to kiss his cheek.

He turned so their mouths met. Sweet. Satisfying. She lingered over the treat, and when they stopped to draw breath, she kissed him quickly and returned to the small trunk. “There has to be a reason this is here.”

She fingered each soft, silky piece of clothing and imagined using them on their babies to come. She touched a sweater to her cheek. “Bridget’s baby things,” she repeated.

“Ah.” He fingered a sweater, brought it to her cheek, nuzzled her ear. “Let’s find a reason to use them,” he suggested, his voice low and suggestive.

“Mmm.” She’d agree to anything with his breath warming her ear.

And then she saw it: an outfit and matching bonnet that . . . reminded her . . . of—

She took it out, heart racing. “This can’t be,” she whispered.

“What?” Gabriel asked, pulling her closer against his chest, her back to his front.

She turned to show him. “I’d swear this is the sacque and bonnet that my mother said she buried my baby in. Except that no baby was buried where the stone is.”

She fingered the sacque and matching bonnet with embroidered yellow rosebuds. So familiar the stitching. The fabric. The little ruffle on the bonnet. Too familiar. She examined it in detail, her heart beating at a pace that frightened her as much as it filled her with a desperate kind of hope. “Gabriel? How could Clara in Scotland, and I here in Arundel, make the same baby outfit in the same fabric and trim? Same colors? Get me some scissors.”

Gabe fetched a pair of scissors from his dresser.

When she opened the sacque at the front, a note fell out.

“Lace,” was written on the front in Clara’s hand.

She picked up the note, traced her name, caught a scent very much her own in the parchment, faded but indisputable. “Gabriel, had Clara had taken to wearing lavender oil?”

“Absolutely, since the day she returned to Arundel.”

“Hmm. She used to like rosewater best.”

Gabriel, watching her intently, ran a hand down her cheek, a shiver of love, silky and reassuring. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. Yes. Maybe.”

He sat beside her and slipped an arm around her waist. “This is important to you, whatever it is?”

“I think so. This note is from Clara, you see. I recognize her handwriting.”

“I see. Well, since Clara did not leave it in my care, she must have left it with MacKenzie.”

“Do you mind if I read it?”

“Of course not. It might explain your confusion. Perhaps your mother told her what you were making in a letter, described it in such detail, Clara wanted your babies to match.”

Lacey set the precious baby outfit in her lap and began to open Clara’s note.

Gabriel lifted her in his arms, outfit, note, and all, and set her against the pillows at the head of the bed. Then he picked up a blanket and covered her with it. He sat against the footboard, showing her that he was there for her.

“Thank you,” she said, “for letting me have this bit of our wedding night. I can’t explain yet why I’m so jittery anxious. I almost feel like Clara is with us,” Lace said.

Gabriel groaned. “My wife who hated my passion and my wife who loves it, together in the same room, on my wedding night? I’m getting kind of jumpy myself.”

That made her laugh.

“The letter is yellowed by time and stained by tears.” Lace traced a shadowed droplet with a finger. A deep shuddering breath, she took, before she could peel away the sealing wax.

Lacey looked up at Gabe and waited for his nod of approval to actually open it, the parchment shaking in her hands. This felt like the last step in a very long journey.

With trepidation and a racing heart, she began to read in silence.

Dearest Lace,

Please forgive Gabriel; he never thought he was good enough for you, so believing that Nick was your baby’s father came naturally. He admitted as much once, in a roundabout way, when we were married.

Only you can help him believe in his own worth.

And do not be angry with God. I imagine now, in my final days, that when I go to heaven I will give the Deity a piece of my mind for putting you through the loss of your babe.

Lacey lowered the letter to her lap and burst into tears.

Gabe rushed to her side and rocked her in his arms. “Ah, sweetheart, I wish I could take your pain as my own,” he whispered against her brow.

She accepted his handkerchief. “Stupid me, I thought, I don’t know what I thought.”

“Read,” Gabe said. “I will hold you while I give you the privacy to do so.”

I also imagined God’s answer: He needed you at Peacehaven. He needed Gabriel to focus on his flock. He needed me to care for Bridget . . . for a time.

That you are reading this must mean that we have all fulfilled the goals God set for us. You and Gabriel must finally be husband and wife. Congratulations to you both and to Bridget, too.

Your mother was not mean; she was simply determined that a grandchild of hers would not be labeled as illegitimate. During the course of your pregnancy, she mourned the loss of that child.

“During my pregnancy?” Lace said aloud, looking at Gabe, who was as confused as she. “My mother couldn’t have known that our baby would—”

Your Mother was going to give your child to rich strangers, but I talked her into sending her to me, in Scotland, instead. I thought I’d find a way to let you know, but you disappeared, and Mother wouldn’t say where you’d gone.

I had suspected Gabe was your child’s father but I was certain the moment I saw her face, Lace, and held her in my arms.

When I realized before she was two that I was dying, I brought her to him and I was right to do so. He loved her on the spot. I did not tell him that I was sick at first, just that Bridget and I needed him. And I made certain that we did not live as man and wife in the true sense, though we shared a child—yours and his—and lived in the same house.

“Oh, oh my God.”

The day that NannyMac brought Bridget to me, Lace, I began to wear your special scent, so she would know you when you found her. I told her for years that my cousin, her cousin, would some day come for her and that you loved her already. She is a smart one, our Cricket, I’m certain she will have remembered.

Do not be angry with Mac, either. I swore her to secrecy because of how Bridget would suffer in society if the truth were known. And Gabe’s guilt over your banishment, were it caused by him, would have broken him.

I told NannyMac to give you this letter the day you and Gabriel married..

If you are reading it, this must be that day.

Congratulations, dear Lace. You have a daughter. Not stillborn, never that. So full of life she was. It breaks my heart that you could not know for so long.

You also have a man who loves you, if you can get Gabriel to admit it.

Goodbye, my darling. Have a happy life. Give Cricket a kiss for me. Gabriel, too.

Do not hate me for my part in deceiving you. Please.

All my love,

Clara

Lacey’s tears knew no bounds; she had no idea that happy tears could cause such a flood. She let them fall unchecked, let Gabriel hold and shush her, kiss her, and give into all the emotions she’d had cause to hide for four long years.

Gabriel kissed her brow. “Are you going a wee bit daft there, pet?” he asked as he pulled her onto his lap.

Lacey settled deep against him, well aware of how seductive her position had become.

She showed him the little yellow sacque with embroidered ladybugs on it. “I made this for my baby during my confinement. My mother said she buried my stillborn daughter in it, but in truth, Mackenzie took her to Clara wearing it.”

Lace opened her mouth over his, an offer he accepted with alacrity, and as she put all her love into the kiss, he put his love into it as well.

And when they broke the kiss, she parted the seam she’d clipped and revealed the embroidered proof. When she rolled it open, she showed Gabriel the name there. “Baby Ashton Kendrick, I embroidered inside. I wanted it stated somewhere, anywhere, even if it was hidden, which it had to be, of course.”

Her joy begot laughter that grew to the point that she bordered on hysteria.

Gabriel calmed her. “But these are Bridget’s baby clothes,” he said.

“Yes! Yes, they are.” She cupped his face in her hands. “Gabriel, Bridget is our daughter. My mother sent her to Clara with Mac, and Clara brought her home to you when she knew she was ill.”

Gabriel read the embroidery and read it again. He looked more confused afterward. He ran a finger over the embroidery. “Kendrick,” he said.

“Bridget Ashton Kendrick,” Lace said. “Our baby didn’t die. Mother sent her to Clara so she wouldn’t bear the stigma of being a bastard.We gave Bridget life, Gabriel. I knew I heard a baby cry that morning.”

“Aye, you did.”

“How do you know?”

“I sat beneath your window the whole time, and I heard the cry as well. When I did, I wept.” He ran a hand through his hair, though with his other hand, he held her quite a bit tighter. “Why didn’t you say Bridget was mine? You about killed me with your lie.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. That’s why I did it . . . with love, because I didn’t want you defrocked when you had just taken holy orders. You finally had your father’s living, your family name was set for you to mend, to exalt, that’s how good a vicar I knew you’d be. How could I destroy all that? They were your dreams, Gabriel.”

“I wanted desperately for your babe to be mine,” he said. “You, Lacey, and our child, were more my dream than anything. Didn’t you know?”

Their kiss lasted longer this time because they’d thrown honesty and forgiveness into the mix. “I love you, Gabriel Kendrick.”

“I would have left here in a minute with you and never looked back. I love you . . . and our daughter.Bridget is our daughter!”

He chuckled. “Lace,” he said more softly, combing both hands through her hair to cup her face. “You’ve married me and now you can sleep in my bed every night.”

“You know we’ll never sleep.”

“But we will be happy.”

Lacey combed her fingers through the waves in his hair. “Since I like your passion so much, we’re bound to have six more.”

“Hopefully,” he said, “in a new home and parish, where we can be a family, you, me, and Bridget. We’ll tell her after we move, shall we?”

Lacey touched his arm. “We’ll tell her when she’s an old married woman and then we’ll give her the sacque and bonnet, the one she went to Clara in. Right now, she’s just a child and it will come out. She’ll learn about the excitement of secrets, or some child will say she doesn’t belong to us, and she’ll defend herself. It’s the nature of children.”

“You’re right,” Gabriel said. “Look at me. I’m acting like a child who wants the secret to come out and I’m—”

“Older than me. If it comes out,” Lace said, “she’ll be labeled. No man will want her. No respectability for our Cricket, if we tell. And she tells.”

With a sigh, Gabriel laid his head against the headboard, taking her with him.

“I like your shoulder better than a pillow,” she said.

He smiled. “I want to shout it to the world that she’s ours,” he muttered.

“Marcus is a fine man of affairs. He can help us find our way through the legal system to adopt Bridget. They adopted Emily, you know.”

Gabriel raised his head, eyes brightening. “Did they? Legally? And no one questions that she is totally theirs?”

“No one.”

“As soon as we move then, we’ll make her ours forever.”

They rejoiced over their living daughter, Bridget, the child of their love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Eventually, after a bit of sleep, Gabriel freed Lace from his open shirt. “Let’s make it last this time, with both of us participating.”

“Both of us. Yes.” She’d waited a long time to belong in Gabriel’s bed. Shame on her if she couldn’t beat him at his dratted “let’s make it last” game.

She slipped his breeches off him, nothing beneath, and took him captive, all naked, his wavy hair mussed, his amber pupils dilated with lust, his big-boy hard as the proverbial rock.

When he knelt over her and made to nuzzle her breasts, she slugged him hard, in the shoulder.

He reared back, puzzled, speechless.

“Mercy!” she said, raising herself on her elbows, arching so as to point her breasts his way and keep him focused. “We’ve yearned for each other, leapt on each other, feared being caught, and got interrupted more often than not, and now you want to make it last? Are you addled? I want sizzling, spicy, star-bound love-making, both of us reaching the firmament together, Kendrick. I want the old Gabe, and I want him now! You’re not trying to make it last, you’re tryingnot to lose yourself to passion, and I won’t have it, I tell you.”

“But I keep remembering what Clara said, and we’ve talked about her a lot tonight.”

“She lied. She told me in the letter that she made sure you didn’t live as husband and wife. She turned from you for us.”

He ran a hand through his hair, put on his dressing gown, and went to the window, all the old guilt rising up to eat at him. “Do you mean that Ididn’t frighten her with my advances?”

“No. She loved her husband in a bold, physical way. I knew that from the day she married. Before she married. Girl cousins raised like sisters talk, you know. When she came to you, she was likely still mourning him.”

Gabriel wanted to scream in frustration, shout in triumph, and for the first time, he wanted to make love without guilt and with every racing beat of his heart. He wanted mutual love, a sharing of bodies until the ultimate release, both of them together. He turned to her, sitting as demurely as a naked goddess can sit in the middle of an empty bed.Hisbed.His wife.

“I want what you want, Lace, passion, with no emotions lacking,” he confessed. Ignoring the heart-skip the insane statement brought, he approached her as if he stalked her.

Lace squeaked and scuttled backward on the bed until her back hit the headboard.

He grinned. “You wicked, impatient seductress. Hard and fast, say you? You asked for it. Passion unleashed.” He climbed on the bed on all fours, growled for good measure, found her so royally sexy, the former Lady Lace, his bride, that he had to keep himself from swooping in and devouring her. “Just a small bite,” he said.

“Big bites now, hard and fast, slow and tantalizing nips later.”

“As you say.”

He kept going, inspired by her anticipation, and perhaps even a frisson of fear that she’d loosed an animal, so he knelt before her, his eagerness rampant. “Have at me, my love.”

“Glory, glory,” she said, her gaze focused on his sex.

“Why, thank you.” And while she blushed, he grew more rigid before her widening eyes.

“More, please,” she said.

“Insatiable seductress, too late for savoring. I’m giving you what you desire.”

“Oh,” she said, still focused on the nest of his arousal. “Just let me touch . . . everything.” She stroked him slowly, took him into her greedy hands, raised him to the precipice, and turned him into her dutiful slave. She handled him with gentle reverence, kneading and nuzzling with fingers and lips, growing him, breath by gasping breath, stroking her cheek against his arousal, nibbling with her lips, until he got so close to spilling, he pulled her away and atop him.

Still on his side, he slid into her, in one fast, incredible thrust, burying himself to the hilt, satisfying a longing so sharp, it hurt to achieve, yet it burst so wondrous, he could hardly bear the pleasure. He wanted the same wild and unexpected bliss for her and more. He wanted to make a wedding memory that would last.

She came almost at once, making him slick, easing his heaving way. When he caught his breath, when they both did, he rolled her to her back, still inside her, and rose over her. “That’s one,” he said. “Hard enough?”

“Harder.” She arched, pulsing tight around him, milking him into a sensual haze of eagerness.

“Greedy,” he said, rising to the occasion and going for two, pretty certain that trying to satisfy her by giving her as many orgasms that she could take,before his turn came, would about kill him.

She wrapped her incredible legs around him, legs that only he had the privilege to see, kiss, stroke, and lick, always hidden by her gowns, except inhis bed. Her gorgeous legs tugged him forward, worked him deeper, the muscles of her womanly sheath pulling and swallowing him, kneading and pulsing. He began to move faster; he had no choice.

She was milking him, wringing sanity from him with every pulsing beat, every rotation of her hips with each stroke of her palm and scratch of her nails. She came again, praise be, and he’d survived, reeling, exhilarated, and breathing shallow. Impossible, but he fell deeper beneath her spell with her every explosive orgasm and the way in which she took full and uninhibited pleasure. Have mercy!

When Gabe thought he couldn’t take a second more of her torture, when he pumped so intensely into her, afraid he’d hurt her, Lacey reached between them with both hands, cupped his bollocks, and held them firm against them both.

Gabe groaned and he growled, begged her to stop, begged for more, and he knew once again, with the wisdom of the ages, that no other woman would ever mean as much to him as Lace.

He shouted his triumph, cursed her, and kissed her as if to devour her and spilled his seed in a climax that made anything previous seem like nothing in comparison.

If he lived, he thought—heart beating in his head like a drum—he would survive to be a hundred because he was a lot tougher than he’d imagined.

“Lacey?” He pushed himself up in a panic and fought dizziness. “Oh God, I’ve killed you.” He’d pinned her to the bed, crushed her when he lowered his full weight on her, her face pale and still. She wasn’t even breathing.

He rolled off her, called her name. “Lacey? Lace, speak to me.”

“Shh.” She failed to open her eyes. “I’m floating.”

Gabe laughed and collapsed, pulled her against him, and buried his face in her neck. “Thank God.” He allowed himself to float as well, until the air in the room nipped a chill along his nether regions and his pounding heart settled to become softer than the wind outside his window.

He grabbed a blanket, pulled it over them, felt Lacey’s slowing heartbeat, the gentle way she breathed as she slept.

As he warmed, Gabe replayed every incredible fly-me-to-the-stars moment since their wedding . . . and before. Since the day they met. Lady Lace, age seven. The vicar’s ragged son, age eight. He’d adored her from the start.

She hated him as fast. The more she berated him, ordered him around, the more he loved her. A life of mixed messages was the best way to describe their courtship. But their marriage, he could sum that up in three words. Hard, fast-loving. Or . . . Happily ever after.

Unless Prout had her way.

What could she do to them now? Her threat had been empty. He’d bet his life on it.

No . . . he would not.

Lace woke to his talented hands raising her again toward that star-sprinkled place where he’d left her. “Yes.” She stretched like a cat so tremendously content it couldn’t bear to leave that spot of sun below the window. “Now,” she said, all but purring. “Now it can be slow, sensuous, lay-me-on-a-cloud lovemaking.”

Gabe laughed and kissed her. He kissed her with the slow-easy experience of a lover. “More, she wants, after she’s about slayed me with lust.”

“You suffer so at my hands,” she admitted, stroking his brow.

“Aye, I do.”

“You know what you did tonight? You finally accepted passion as a beautiful physical expression of love.”

“I’ll admit to forgetting the first passion we shared and its power.” He stroked her bottom with the same attention she gave to his brow.

“We’ll have to make love in the big copper tub,” she said. “The next time MacKenzie’s away.”

Gabe pretended to pass out from exhaustion, but when she manually lifted his eyelids, he laughed and pulled her atop him. “Good thing I didn’t know you were insatiable or that you knew all those tricks, or I’d have been walking around embarrassing myself for weeks.”

“But you did.”

Gabe growled. “Tell me no one noticed.”

“The Scoundrels noticed,” she said. “Perhaps a few others.”

“Prout,” he admitted with a sigh. “Let me set you up with a hot bath. I’ll set the copper tub in front of the fire, so you can soak. You must be sore.”

After he hauled up the tub, then the hot water, she fell asleep in the tub. He fell asleep in the bed. And sometime later, she must have climbed in with him.

They went downstairs looking for breakfast right before teatime. They made their own and sat on the porch to eat.

“I need a nap,” Gabe said, and Lacey laughed.

“Seriously, they can’t find usstill in bed.”

“Lace,” MacKenzie called from the kitchen. “Have I come home too soon?”

“Hmm,” Lace said. “She must have come in the front door. I’ll be right back.” She got up and went inside.

Mac jumped when she saw her and pressed a hand to her heart.

“I opened it,” Lace said.

“You understand that Bridget will be labeled if it comes out.”

Laceyknew how it felt to be labeled and exiled. “If I had not come back— MacKenzie, you were prepared to go to your grave with this?”

“To keep our girl respectably titled and acceptable in the eyes of society? Aye, I would have burned the note and died with the knowledge.” Mac wrung her hands. “I love you. I always have. You know that?”

“It killed me that you went to Clara when I had just suffered the loss of my child.”

Mac’s eyes filled. “Don’t hate me.”

Lacey was no less affected. “I never could. You did what was best for my child, though I thought I could go away and raise her. I was young, and in love, and wrong about my daughter’s future.”

Mac began to cry softly and Lace took her old nurse in her arms. “Thank you, MacKenzie.”

Gabe came in with Bridget just then.

“Nick brought her home,” he said, as he and Lacey examined their daughter—theirs, not stillborn. They must have looked like they’d burst into tears or into song.

Lace took her daughter by the hands, and she danced her around the kitchen until Cricket giggled uncontrollably, and Gabriel and MacKenzie chuckled with her. Though Mac found it necessary to wipe her cheeks with her apron.

Gabe wasn’t too far behind.

On one of her dance passes, Lace picked up the baby sacque and sat with Bridget. “You used to wear this, sweetheart.” Lace unobtrusively peeked inside the hem.

Cricket patted her cheek and set her little head on Lacey’s shoulder, a whimsically concerned look on her face. “Can I call you Mama, now?”

Gabriel picked them up as one and carried them to the settee in the best parlor. He sat Lace beside him with Bridget on his lap.

Bridget told them about her sleepover, and she talked about the wedding, and how wonderful it was to have a Mama and Papa, both.

Mac came to get Bridget for tea, though it was difficult for Lace to give her up. “Our girl is to be given a large piece of toffee after tea, NannyMac, with a glass of milk and a song, if you please,” Lace said.

When they were alone, they became newlyweds again.

“I can’t believe that you gave up twenty thousand pounds for me. I had no idea I was worth so much.”

“That money would have belonged to the church, not me. You’re as poor as a church mouse, Lace.”

“No, I still have most of my inheritance from Ivy, don’t forget.”

“Oh, good, we’ll be homeless, but we won’t starve.”

She pulled from his kiss. “Where will we live until you find a new parish? We have to be out of here tomorrow.”

“There’s always the Towers. It’s a last resort, and today’s post might have an assignment for me. I haven’t thought to look yet.”

“I wonder why,” she said.

So he looked, but there was nothing. He did not want to move to the Towers. He did not want to keep his wife in this unforgiving town one minute more.

Mac knocked on the parlor door. “You’re little one is ready to be tucked in. Tired, she is, after a night of giggling and no sleep.”

“Me, too,” Gabe muttered beneath his breath. “We’ll be right up.”

After tucking in their daughter, they went back to their own bed. They even slept for a while.

What they woke to the next morning was a pounding at the door.

They heard Mac grumbling as she came down the stairs from the third floor. He and Lace dressed quickly and followed. Gabe checked his pocket watch.

“It’s too early to get up.”

Lacey giggled. “Because I made you cry for mercy. You used to be up with the birds, remember?”

He followed her down the stairs. “I think you ruined me.”

She winked. “I love raising the devil in a holy Scoundrel.”

Again, the knocking. Impatient. Determined.

Old Lady Prout pushed past MacKenzie at the door, her namby-pamby Olivia following.

“We’re on our honeymoon. I suggest you take up your complaint with the new vicar, whenever one is found. I no longer work here.”

Lacey entered the hall behind him, her hair a crown of well-nuzzled ringlets, curled by the steam from her bath, her face aglow with the satisfaction of a good loving. Gabe turned back to Prout and grinned.

He had a wife who looked . . . sated.

Gabe knuckled her cheek and Prout screeched. “One night of passion is a high price to pay for a life of regret,” the greedy old lady said. “Everyone in Arundel knows that according to the Duchess of Ashcroft’s will, the man who marries her daughter, Lacey, will receive a hundred thousand pounds.”

Lacey gasped and the light left her eyes.

Prout preened. “No wonder you gave upmy twenty thousand. Now you can put up a new church to buy back your parish, and you’ll have money left over for yourself. You’ll be the richest vicar in the kingdom.”

“What, here?” Gabe asked. “When hell freezes over.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

At the news that Gabriel married her for her money, Lacey gasped, and turned to walk away. She needed to make sense of this.

Before Gabe could get rid of Prout, Lace had run out the back door with a questioning Bridget, who had just come down for breakfast.

Fortunately, they got Ivy to feed them in the gypsy wagon, and Lacey asked him if he knew about the inheritance from her mother.

He did, and he saw her face when he admitted it.

Ivy tsked. “If you’re running away two days after your wedding,I’m doing the driving.”

“I’m not so much running as looking for a place to think, in peace, without Gabriel muddying my thoughts.”

Ivy harrumped. “Eat up, Cricket, then it’s up on the seat beside me for you. Your mama will ride inside because she has tothink. And while she does, she should consider the possibility that Gabe might be one of the few who didnot know about the inheritance from her mother. Your PapaGabe doesn’t approve of gossip, as the gossips well know.”

Ivy received Gabriel’s note to find Lacey right before he left to drive her in circles. Gabriel had written, “She can’t have gone far,” and Ivy aimed to keep it that way.

When they stopped for, Cricket went over to see some horses, over a fence, and Ivy got down to the issue at hand. Prout and her money. Gabriel and Lacey’s mother’s money. “So,” Ivy said. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“No.”

“I’m for you going to the church to discuss it with your Maker. It’s Sunday. Service doesn’t start for an hour, and I can get you there fast. Life is never perfect, but it can be good when it’s shared with love.”

“Take me to St. Swithin’s, then, will you? Do you still keep those dark hooded capes in the wagon to wear to disguise yourself behind makeshift stages for when your larger stage won’t fit?”

“Aye, I do.”

“May I borrow one for me, and a small one for Cricket, please?”

She and Cricket slipped into the last pew at the very back of the church, the one nearest the door. She wouldn’t see Gabriel because, well, this wasn’t his church anymore, but she could speak to her Maker and perhaps learn forgiveness from whoever did preach.

The church filled up fast, and no one seemed to notice them as they crouched, heads down, in the beggar’s pew. Cricket thought this a game and played along splendidly.

Lacey hugged her often, though her head bobbed up too many times to be comfortable.

Unfortunately for her, ’twas the bishop who took the main pulpit, a man with no sense of time who could ramble shamelessly, and so he did, too long for Cricket not to fidget, but long enough for Lacey to mourn the loss of her husband.

With her head down, shushing Cricket, she didn’t know what prompted people to begin a whisper that nearly became a roar, until she looked up and saw him—Gabe finishing his march down the aisle, in his cassock, his collar in his pocket, his buttons open so it flared behind him like a greatcoat.

So manly, so sumptuous he looked in that way, with his hair mussed as if he’d run his hands through it a thousand times. Writing a sermon is what he’d been doing. She saw the signs.

He climbed to the minor pulpit and interrupted the bishop with barely a nod, mid-sermon to take up where the slack-jawed church leader left off.

“It appears to have been common knowledge,” Gabe said as he began, “that the man who married Lacey Ashton was to inherit one hundred thousand pounds from her mother the Duchess. Is that true?”

Most of the congregation nodded.

Gabriel sighed. “Well, I am among the few exceptions, I see. I didnotknow. And if Idid, I would NOT have married her. So . . . I suppose I am glad that I did not know because I love Lacey Ashton Kendrick. I have loved her since I was a young man, and you should know before I go on to my new parish that I am sick for my part in sending her away.

“We did her a grave injustice, and I would claim her pain as my own, if there were any way to do so.”

Lacey closed her eyes. He could not tell the truth; it would ruin Bridget, so he did the best he could.

It wasn’t long before Lace realized that there was nothing in Gabriel to forgive; it was herself she must forgive. Gabriel must also forgive her. If only he would. For doubting him. For lying about the father of her child.

And most recently, for running away after such a splendid night of love on the word of a hateful busybody like Prout.

“Face facts, my friends. The woman you harmed with your gossip is the least of the sinners among us.”

He looked down at his notes. “Now, I have several problems, not the least of which is this hundred thousand dollars that I find myself tethered to. Bishop, you want a church.”

Suddenly, their high holy leader was all smiles. “Yes, yes!”

“I do not. I think the crofters’ children need a school more, and I don’t suppose the new vicar will let them hold school clandestinely in the carriage house like I have been doing. Now this money is mine, not the church’s. I read Lacey’s mother’s will quite thoroughly this morning. One hundred thousand pounds to do with as I see fit. I would not have to work for the rest of my life, if I so wished. Or I could build a new church for St. Swithin’s. Or I could build a free school for the crofters’ children, and leave money for its upkeep in perpetuity.

He examined the expressions on the faces of his former congregation. “Carpenter Bracken, you are in need of work, yes? To you, I charge the wage-paying prospect of overseeing the building of the new school for the crofters’ children. You will be head carpenter, but you will also hire and pay decent wages to bricklayers and any other tradesmen necessary.”

Carpenter Bracken nodded stiffly, probably dumbstruck to have work again.

“The new Duke of Ashcroft, Nicholas Daventry, my wife’s cousin, has donated a parcel of land for you to build on. See him for the costs of supplies and wages. They will be generous enough for your large family with a little extra for your sick little Jenny.”

Gabriel ran that hand through his hair again. “I leave you, my former congregation, my eternal good friends, with these thoughts. Never doubt the power of love, for it is that very doubt that lost me my love for a time. Judge not lest ye be judged. And be good to one another.”

He stood no longer on the pulpit of St. Swithin’s, but in the aisle near the altar of the church. “I have already signed the money over to his Grace, Nick Daventry. I am packing up my family to begin a new life if I ever find my wife. No need for concern. Newlyweds’ quarrel.”

Chuckles rippled through the church.

Lacey’s heart filled to overflowing, tears coursed down her cheeks.

Gabriel saw, in the last pew, in the beggar’s corner, a cloaked and hooded woman take a cloaked little girl by the hand to rise and step into the aisle.

There, she threw back her hood, exited the pew, and walked the center aisle of the church to meet him at the front. Their gazes locked, Lace looking penitent, but no more so than he. And in love, but no more so than he.

Carpenter Bracken stood. “A cheer of thanks to Vicar and Mrs. Gabriel Kendrick.”

The congregation did cheer—all except for old Lady Prout—though Olivia and the bishop couldn’t seem to hide their reluctant approval, it seemed, as Gabriel and Lacey, Cricket between them, walked down that aisle toward the door, hand in hand, spines straight, chins high.

It seemed to Lacey that they were unutterably happy, even with no home to go to . . . because they had each other, all three.

His former congregation shouted him up. “The best Kendrick vicar that ever there be!”

Cricket turned and faced the congregation. “Huzzah,” she shouted, one arm raised, and Gabe’s flock echoed the phrase as the Gothic doors closed behind them.

Outside, in front of the church, Scoundrel carriages had been lined up, each man standing beside his open carriage door, a significant statement, Lace realized. They were welcome at every home for as long as they needed a roof over their heads.

Powerful stuff, she thought, this bond the knaves had formed. Gabriel went to shake each hand and speak a word of thanks.

But Marcus, who would have been last in line, became a man of action. He lifted Cricket in his arms and set her beside Emily on the gypsy wagon seat with Ivy. “Where are we going?” Cricket asked.

“You’ll see,” Marcus said.

He then took Lace’s arm, walked her to his carriage, and helped her inside. Gabe climbed in behind her, the two of them inside alone.

While Gabriel spent the night just passed telling and showing her how much he loved her, his ultimate declaration had been given in disposing of the money he inherited for marrying her, and renouncing his father’s parish, his dream, for her.

“Gabriel, did you know that I was in church?”

“I think the Scoundrels did, or perhaps the wives; Mac or Ivy did. I imagine so in retrospect, at any rate, because they were all urging me to stop worrying and enter the church as planned.

“As for me? No, I didnotknow, thank God, or I would have botched it. You think I canact dignified, when I’ve been utterly stupid for five years?”

“That’s true.” She pushed her arm up against his and he brought her onto his lap and into his embrace.

Marcus and Jade got inside with them, and he set her down again as the coachman shut the door and they were off.

“Are we being kidnapped?” Gabriel asked.

“No,” Marcus said. “You are being offered a living.”

“Sixteen,” Gabriel said as he slipped a set of missives from his cassock pockets.

Lacey gasped. “They all came today? On a Sunday?”

“No. MacKenzie has been saving them for me so I would have a range of choices and not make the wrong one. Sometimes, my darling, I could wring your old nurse’s neck.”

Lacey giggled. “Me, too.”

Marcus cleared his throat. “Why did you not ask your Scoundrel brothers for work, may I ask?”

“So as not to presume on our friendships,” Gabriel said. “I presumed that you all would have offered. Zounds, just now, you all did offer.”

Jade nudged Marcus to speak with an elbow to his side and a tease of a wink that her husband understood.

“Presuming you read those, I have two more offers for you,” Marcus said.

Gabe sat forward. “I’m listening.”

Lace cleared her throat. “We’re listening.”

He took her hand, placed it on his knee, and covered it with his own. “We are listening.”

“You sent letters of inquiry to estates with which you were unfamiliar. My brother Garrett’s was one of them. He wants you, make no mistake. But he recognized you as a Scoundrel and passed your inquiry to me. His living would be your best choice if not for one other.”

“We were married at St. Wilfred on the Peacehaven Estate,” Jade said, “where I house the Benevolent Society for Downtrodden Women.”

“Where I lived for four years,” Lacey added and Gabe nodded.

“Our vicar is ninety-two,” Marcus said.

“We can’t retire him,” Jade continued. “He’s been so good with the battered women in my care, but we’d like to give him a helper.”

“By helper,” Marcus said, “she means we need a gracious assistant, someone who will take over the greater share of responsibilities while allowing our current vicar to think he’s in charge, until he either announces his retirement or moves on to his just reward. In addition to his vicariate duties, the assistant we need would counsel the women and children who have been battered physically, emotionally, and verbally.

“They live at Peacehaven to escape the brutality of their lives while they learn the skills to make new lives for themselves and their children. Lace used to teach them how to speak and act like ladies so they could get respectable jobs in shops and such.”

Gabriel’s respect for Lace grew, if that were possible. She had been exiled there and made something good of it. Another reason to love her.

“I could do that again and help with your counseling,” she told Gabriel, showing enough eagerness for him to make his decision.

Jade clasped his hand, which Gabe did not expect. “The job is yours if you want it, Gabriel.”

“Do I want it? Did the Israelites want manna from heaven? A fresh start with Lace as my bride? In a village where people lookup to her rather than down at her? Oh, I want it. Lace?”

She squeaked and laughed. “Oh, Gabe, there’s a wonderful house for the— Oh, that’s probably the current vicar’s home.”

“Actually,” Jade said. “He prefers Swan Cottage by the water. With only two rooms, it’s more his size. The larger vicarage is empty and ready for you to move in. I predict that the Peacehaven staff with your NannyMac in charge, will have it shipshape in no time.”

“A new beginning for the three of us, Lace. What think you of that?” Gabriel asked.

Lace straightened his lapels. “No one in Sussex would remember your father’s poor money management, or your grandfather’s drinking, and compare them to you as they do in Arundel daily, or did I jumble your family tree? At any rate, it would be a wonderful new start for us. A clean slate. I’ll not be labeled at Peacehaven, it’s true, and I feel so free at the thought of going where I’m welcomewith you.”

“Thank you, Jade, Marcus. I’m so excited to be going back to the friends I made at Peacehaven. How wonderful to live where no one judges.”

“Oh,” Jade said, her voice cracking. “Bridget and Emmy will become best friends, as will any other children we have. They’ll play in the yard between our house and yours.”

Gabe took Lacey’s hand. “New beginning, love?” he asked.

“New baby, love?” she asked in return.

He winked. “In nine months, I expect.”

“No,” Lace whispered. “In eight months, Iexpect. I tricked you into marrying me, you see.”

“No, I tricked you.” He examined her impish smile. “Didn’t I?”

She held his hand to the slight mound beneath her heart. “Did you, love?”

EPILOGUE

Seven and a half months later

Peacehaven, the Downs, West Sussex, England

“Listen, darling, to what Nick has to say about Olivia.” Lace sat propped up in bed waiting for her twin daughters to be brought for their first feeding.

Gabe, who groaned in a semblance of a response, never moved a muscle as he lay on his stomach, his face against her side, his arm around her waist.

Lace looked down from where the sound had emanated and couldn’t see much more than the covers and an ear near her hip. She traced the shell of that ear with her finger.

“Mmm,” came the muffled reply.

“Poor darling hasn’t slept for days.” Gabe had remained sleepless waiting for their child’s birth, then stayed by her side during every minute of her sixteen hours of labor. Each day of her marriage, she thought she couldn’t love him more and each day she found she was wrong. “You know, sweetheart, you didn’t have to stay up all night watching them sleep.”

Gabe rolled to his side with a huge satisfied grin on his face, his black eyes shining. “They’re wonderful, aren’t they? I can’t believe we’ve two of them. Did you ever see such little fingernails?” He sat himself up to kiss her. “Thank you for such precious gifts. When they looked up at me for the first time, with your big green eyes, my heart expanded so, it almost hurt.”

He kissed her again . . . and again. Pulling away, Gabe ran his hand through his hair and decided he’d better think of something besides Lace’s lips. “What’s this about Olivia? I want to hear nothing about the Prouts.”

“Oh, you’ll find this vastly interesting. Nick writes that Olivia married the bishop. She’s a perfect bishop’s wife, obedient and kind, it turns out, and she dresses now in muted colors more suited to her complexion—I believe Sophie added that part—which seems to make her bishop husband proud.

“Her mother, Nick says, who so obviously fostered the match, likely thinking that a bishop for a son-in-law would raise her own standing and power in the community, now lives inNick’s dower house for which the bishop pays a grand monthly sum.

“Lady Prout, the gossip and church leader, has been dethroned and silenced by her own daughter and son-in-law. There is no pride left in her, and no one, it seems, who cares to visit her.”

“I’m only sorry that she hurt you,” Gabe said.

“It’s in the past. Our present is bright. Oh, listen here. Nick adds that he and Sophie were married at Grace’s home in Scotland, with most of the Scoundrels in attendance, after which the happy couple sailed off in Nick’s ship,The Knickerbocker, heading for America and their honeymoon. I’m sorry we missed the wedding,” Lace said on a sigh.

“Your health and the birth of our daughters took precedence, and when Nick and Sophie come home, they will come back to Sussex. Arundel is not so far distant. We’ll see them. They’ll visit.”

MacKenzie barely knocked then and came in carrying a screaming baby girl. “Here’s a hungry little miss. The other’s still fast asleep but I expect she’ll be filling her lungs before long. Bridget is sitting by her cradleprotecting her while I’m gone.”

Lace beamed. “Thank you, Mac. Come, my sweet,” she told her new little one.

Mac encouraged Lace for a bit, coaching her in providing her milk for the babe then, quick as a wink, the babe latched onto a nipple to suckle greedily.

Gabe chuckled at his ravenous, sable-haired daughter and the look of surprise on Lace’s face. “She looks just like Bridget,” he said.

“Justin Devereux, Duke of Ainsley, and his wife, the Duchess, just arrived from London,” Mac said. “They’re eating breakfast with the Lady Jade and Marcus Fitzalan from the big house. I’m going to check and see if the other missy’s fussin’. Oh, and Miss Cricket will be up to see you and help with her baby sisters as soon as she finishes her Boxty and jam. I insisted that she eat breakfast as soon as these two were being fed. She’s taking this big sister business verra serious.”

Gabe watched Lace nurse their daughter. “You’re more beautiful than ever. Motherhood agrees with you. You have bigger breasts.”

“You don’t think they’ll go away after I’ve weaned the babies? MacKenzie thinks they might.”

“That doesn’t matter. You do. I love you the way you are.” Gabe sighed contentedly. “Do I look like an unhappy man? Three adorable daughters, a beautiful wife.” He beamed proudly.

Gabe was only slightly disappointed that his girls didn’t look a bit like him, but their eyes held all the promise of their mother’s. And their lungs said they were every bit as determined. Well, hearing the second begin to cry from down the hall, he thought maybe they got their stubbornness from him. God help them all.

He walked and cuddled his first content daughter after she finished nursing, until MacKenzie returned with the second. Much to his regret, Mac took the first away for a bath. He took his second daughter’s tiny hand. “We’re a family. A family offive. Imagine.”

Lace smiled at the wonder in his eyes. “How many more of the Scoundrels are due to visit the babies?”

“Angel, one of Patience’s wards, and her husband, Dickon, one of Grant’s former sailors, now a partner, will be coming along with Patience and Grant, as will Grant’s brother, Shane, with his wife, Rose, another of Patience’s wards.”

“A houseful. I’m glad we have MacKenzie to manage it.”

“And Jade. You know that some of the guests will be staying with Jade at Peacehaven.”

“Now,” he patted his daughter’s bottom. “Much as I’d like to stay here, I’ll go down and greet our guests. I know they’ll be clamoring to see the babies as soon as possible.” He kissed Lace again. “Do not move from this spot. I’ll be back to help you change and wash before I bring them up in small groups. Promise now, you’ll wait for my help?”

Gabe’s concern filled Lace’s heart. “I’ll wait. I don’t think I’m ready to tackle much without your help this morning.”

Two hours later, Faith cuddled a babe wrapped in yellow fleece and Patience exclaimed over her pink bundle. Gabriel chuckled. “I must say, Lace, I think it was smart of us to have a pair,” Gabe said. “There’ll be fewer squabbles among the guests.”

“But do you think they’ll ever giveus a turn?” Lace asked.

“You’ll have your turn as soon as they start to cry,” Jade replied.

“Or anything else,” Marcus added, bouncing his two-month-old son as he paced to keep young Marc from crying.

“Where’s Mama, Amy?” Shane, Grant’s brother, asked his oldest, from just outside Lace’s door.

“Feeding the new baby.”

“May I please see Uncle Gabe’s horses?” they heard Amy ask.

“Wouldn’t you rather see the babies? Aunt Lace has them with her inside this room.”

“I don’t like babies, Papa. We have too many.” The adults in the room laughed as Shane brought Amy inside anyway. Despite her protests, Amy decided girl cousins were nice, which she told Uncle Grant and Aunt Patience as Grant hauled her onto his lap.

Shortly thereafter, Rose joined them. “What will you name the babies?”

Gabe, so obviously the proud father, beamed down at his daughters. “This,” he took the tiny hand of one babe and kissed it, “with her button nose is Chelsea.” He sat by Lace on the edge of their bed. “And our wee puddin’ with the fetching dimples is Gwyneth.”

“Beautiful,” Faith whispered.

“You should consider matching names for twins,” Angel said, having just arrived with Dickon and their four sons. “Like Molly and Polly.”

Rose laughed. “Or Magnolia and Marigold?”

Angel’s eyes danced with mischief. “Cloey and Zoey.”

“This from a woman who named a pig Horatio,” Grant said.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Whatever you call them, Gabe, remember that before you know it, you’ll have to begin husband-hunting for them, all three, Bridget first.”

Gabe looked thunderstruck. “What a sobering thought.”

“You must also remember,” Ivy said, “that they will, no doubt, be desirable young women. You will have to protect them from handsome devils who will pursue your daughters and romance them the way you romanced their mother.”

Gabe turned to Lace, a look of utter horror on his face. “What say you, Lace, to naming these two Chastity and Prudence and consigning the three of them to a nunnery at early ages?”

THE END

EXCERPT

UNMISTAKABLE ROGUE

by

Annette Blair

CHAPTER ONE

Gloucester, England, May 1817

“Are you stealing those children?”

Caught at a second-story workhouse window, Chastity Somers swallowed a scream and gathered the little ones close. The moonless night, perfect for her scheme, became her foe. She could discern nothing, no one, save darkness in the alley below.

The owner of the deep, disembodied voice seemed to linger, but she dare not. She must get her new and unexpected brood to safety, or fail her husband’s young cousins the way she had failed William, himself.

With no choice but to brazen it out, Chastity nodded her hood further forward and readied her best English accent. “Do not be ridiculous. You cannot steal what is already yours.”

The intruder made no reply, so she lifted the last of the four children out the window and shut the sash.

“Kitty?” Luke’s version of her name echoed loud and alarming as he tugged at her sleeve. “You are stealing us.”

“Hush, Luke.”

“It’s all right, Sir,” Matthew called down. “We wanted stealing.”

Galvanized by the boy’s defense, Chastity shook herself. “Mark, take Bekah’s hand. Stay by the window, all of you, and hold the sill.”

They would not be taken away from her, again, Chastity vowed, as she lowered herself from the attached shed’s eaves and dropped the remaining distance to land on her bottom in the dirt.

Amid a discord of giggles, a hand grasped her upper arm, racing Chastity’s heart, trapping a scream in her throat, but her captor must sense her fear, for he gentled her, somehow, with the same touch that alarmed her in the first place.

His nearness, his scent—horse, leather, and man—put her in mind of ... rescue and ... sanctuary, as William had once done, except that her sense of well-being seemed stronger now than it had ever been with—

Chastity shook off the foolish notion. “I did not hear your horse approach,” she said, seeking the ordinary in an extraordinary situation.

“I call him Stealth,” the man said. “He served me well at Waterloo.”

Relieved by her fancy that the military man meant no harm, Chastity allowed him to help her stand. She should be afraid, she supposed. He had fought her people at Waterloo, but her sheltered convent background—hardly conducive to a judicious caution—taught her that all men were all God’s children.

Besides, she’d judge him as trustworthy by the tone of his voice alone.

“The children are not afraid of you,” he said, revealing his surprise.

“Of course they are not. How do you know?”

“Frightened children rarely laugh.”

Neither lonely ones, Chastity knew from personal experience, hoping she employed the same faultless instincts as the children, where this man was concerned.

Reassured, yet unnerved, by his hand on her arm, Chastity nevertheless regretted the loss of human contact when he released her. But she had no time to regard it, for Bekah’s cough urged their removal from this unhealthy place, and fast, lest the children be incarcerated, again.

Fact was, she would bargain with the devil to keep her little ones safe. “I have to get the children down,” she said. “Thank you for your help, but we can manage on our own.”

The devil had the impertinence to laugh.

“Be quiet,” Chastity hissed.

“You are sixpence short a quid,” said he, “and will get exactly what you deserve for this night’s work. Children are nothing but trouble.”

“Children are gifts from above.”

“Hah! Vengeance, more like.”

Chastity perceived some vexation in the man, but no real threat.

For all his curious notions, he seemed of a mind to let her and the children go. “We shall be fine. Truly. Thank you for stopping, but you may be on your way without further concern for our welfare.”

“‘Tis not concern detains me, but astonishment. Why would anyone seek the encumbrance of children?”

Shaking her head, Chastity turned toward the four atop the workhouse shed. “All the world and his wife would step over a dead body in the middle of St. James’s,” she snapped. “But I do something the least ... uncommon, and am observed by someone who investigates. Matthew, lower Bekah to me.”

As she received the littlest one, Chastity hugged her close. “Good. Now Mark, then Luke.”

“Kitty, I’m hungry,” Luke said, as she set him on his feet.

“I know, darling. Hush, now.”

Deep within the bleak bowels of the parish workhouse, a bell began to toll. “Jump, Matt,” Chastity ordered, thrusting Luke into the stranger’s arms. “You’ll have to help,” she said, scooping Bekah into her own arms. “Hurry.”

Reed Gilbride heard, rather than saw, the woman hasten away, her stolen brood hard at her heels. Then he realized that if he failed to follow, he would be stuck with the urchin dangling before him. “Damn.” Reed slung the lad under his arm like a sack of grain and gave chase, his horse trotting behind.

Despite being carted off by a stranger, the lad’s giggles over his tumbling ride testified to the rare joy in his short life.

Reed had to give the woman credit, pluck to the backbone, she was. Either that or daft, he thought, as he followed her through noisome village by-ways, dodging running steps and reeling vagrants, all the while wondering why he’d got involved.

Previous to finding them, he had reached Sennett’s office hours too early, and gazed about, thinking to find a light at an inn, when in the alley across the way, a cloaked form in the window, silhouetted against the dim interior of the workhouse, had caught his attention. A matron of the asylum, he thought, until he noticed the children’s profiles atop the attached shed roof. A curious sight, yes, but he should never have stopped. What cared he for a flock of raggle-taggle street brats and their provoking protector?

The bell from the workhouse faded in the distance, and when the woman slowed, Reed set the lad in her path. “Here, you snatched him, you take him. I’ll not be left to foster somebody’s brat. I’ve had enough of children to last forever.”

“You need to have that ice chipped away.”

Birds called their first good mornings. Too bad it needed an hour or more ‘till full light, for he conceived an urge to see her face, discern her age and examine her features. Her words and manner contradicted his impression of her as a matron of any kind. “What did you say?”

“The ice around your heart,” she repeated. “You should have it removed.”

If he owned a heart, her honey-warm voice might melt said ice on its own, Reed mused, before stifling the maggoty thought. “What the devil are you about?”

“Watch your language around the children. We were running because ... because of a—”

“Fire?”

To his surprise, she laughed, the sound a balm to his senses. “I was rescuing them.”

He damn near laughed with her. “What a whisker.”

“Oh, no, not at all. Telling falsehoods would set a bad example.”

“And stealing children would not?” He winced at her gasp. “Pardon my lack of faith in your mothering,” he added by way of reparation.

“Kitty ain’t our mother.”

“Hush, Luke.” She ran a hand through the rag-mannered lad’s hair and brought him close for a quick hug—not the action Reed expected of a reprimand.

Even if he managed to peel away her hood, as he itched to do, dawn was still too far away to make a glimpse worthwhile. Yet something about her, with her odd accent, and odder notions, called to him, which he liked not a whit. “Where are you bound?” he asked.

“What difference does that make?”

“None, make no mistake, but it will matter to someone before long. You have money, of course.”

She hesitated a fraction too long. “Of course.”

Reed shook his head. “Of course not!” He took her hand and slapped a guinea into it. “Feed them. If you scuttle down back alleys, you’ll get pinched, but if you stroll hand in hand, as if you haven’t a care in the world, no one will notice you.”

They would not come looking, Chastity knew. Fewer mouths to feed would trouble no one, not in that hellhole. “Why should I take your advice, and why would you give a perfect stranger money?”

“Perfect, no. Daft, more like, stealing children in the middle of the night. Damned if I know why I bother, or you should listen, except that you seem to care about them.”

“While you care about nothing.”

“I’d care if I got tossed into Newgate with you. Nevertheless, if you keep from getting pinched, I think you might do right by the brats. Good-bye,” he said, “and good luck.” Reed saluted, grabbed Stealth’s reins, and walked away.

“Come along, children,” he heard the daft woman say.

That their footsteps kept time with his, Reed found alarming. He stopped.

They stopped.

Shaking his head, he turned. “Are you following me?”

“Of course not.”

“Yes we are, Kitty.”

“Hush, Luke. Which way are you going?” she asked. “Toward Eastgate or the Island?”

“Which way are you going?” he countered.

“Eastgate.”

“Ah, well then, I am going toward The Island.” In truth—as directed in his odd, anonymous note—he was returning to see Mr. Sennett, the solicitor whose office sat diagonally across from the workhouse. “Good day to you.”

“God go with you,” the woman said, “whoever you are.”

Reed stopped and turned with a laugh. “Sorry, Kitten, God and I do not keep company.”

A moment of dismay held Chastity as the stranger’s chuckle faded, and she resisted an urge to call him back. An enigma was he, that faceless man who professed to dislike children but would foster a lad rather than abandon him.

Chastity watched until dawn broke over the horizon, and he disappeared from sight, his benevolent guinea warming her palm.

With her four exuberant charges, she began the seven-mile trek from Gloucester to Sunnyledge in Painswick.

As they walked, Chastity thought back to her previous day’s meeting with the solicitor to whom William had been directed in his anonymous note.

“Where did you get this?” Mr. Sennett had asked after he finished reading the note.

“It was sent to my husband, William,” she said. “And it prompted us to travel here from France. He wanted to settle an injustice, which I assumed amounted to claiming the inheritance due him, except that he was taken by a wave in a channel storm on the way, and drowned.”

“Please accept my condolences, Mrs. Somers.” Mr. Sennett shook his head in dismay. “While I am the executor of the Barrington Estate, I have no idea what this note means or who might have sent it.”

“I had hoped it meant that Sunnyledge belonged to my husband, and now to me.”

“Even if your husband was the Barrington heir, which I doubt, the claim would now be that of his son. Is there a son?”

“No.” Chastity sighed. “I wanted the estate for a children’s home, Mr. Sennett.” If she had remained a nun and taken vows, she would have opened such a home at the Abbey. Now, for the sake of William’s young cousins—the children God had surely placed in her keeping—she must make it happen.

Chastity raised her chin. “Though an inheritance would have helped, I will open a home for orphans. Workhouses are a disgrace, you see, and no child should be raised without love. Perhaps you can direct me to someone with a philanthropic nature? The sisters who raised me care for the sick with such contributions. Or perhaps one of your clients has a house?”

Mr. Sennett frowned as if startled. “Fancy Barrington’s estate coming to light, now. And fancy you having the one argument in the kingdom that could move me.”

He sat forward. “According to the will, if no heir is found, twenty years from the date of the Earl of Barrington’s death, which is three months from now, I am to award the estate to a charity of my choice.”

The solicitor settled into his big leather chair. “Tell me about your children’s home, Mrs. Somers, every detail.”

So she did, his interest encouraging her to elaborate. “The opportunity to love, and have that love accepted and returned, is essential to all of us. My home will be special, as my children will feel wanted.  They will have a sense of belonging by working toward its upkeep. The older children will care for the younger. In that way, they will become close.”

“Family members are not always close, my dear. As a solicitor, I have seen many a family rift.”

“Do you not think that abandoned children would be more inclined to appreciate familial relationships?”

At his approving smile, Chastity opened her reticule. “I listed the cost per child, per week, month, and year, for food and clothing. I have added a bit for dolls and— I do not know what little boys play with.”

“Tin horns, toy drums.” He smiled. “Boys are noisy.”

“I—” She almost said she knew—she had learned as much at finding the children in William’s aunt’s cellar. “I imagine so.”

“Your ideals make me fear for your practicality in this matter,” Mr. Sennett said. “You have listed nothing for a caretaker, a housekeeper, nursemaids, tutors.”

“I will do what must be done. The children will help.”

“I haven’t seen a child yet who could run a house. Listen to me in this. If I allow you to have Sunnyledge....”

Chastity thought her heart would leap from her chest.

“On a trial basis,” the solicitor cautioned. “You must hire the necessary help. The caretaker left about a fortnight ago; hire another. As you will no doubt set the house to rights, I will pay you a housekeeper’s wages and give you a monthly allowance for upkeep and maintenance. You will need supplies, though the house should provide much in the way of necessities.

“I cannot believe you would— Are you a philanthropist?”

Mr. Sennett chuckled. “Hardly, my dear, but there is little likelihood that an heir to Sunnyledge will be found at this late date. I must find a worthy charity soon. Who knows? Your children’s home might prove to be the very one. As a boy whose mother drowned in gin, I met the worst and best of men. Helping to fund a children’s home may be the way for me to repay the gentleman who took me in and raised me.”

The solicitor sat forward. “In asylums, in workhouses, everywhere, there is greed, cruelty, evils I will not name; I doubt you know of their existence. But I occasionally come across a person of caring and compassion. The man who raised me was such a man. I believe that you are such a woman.”

He held her gaze. “But you must understand what I want, nay, demand of you, and why.”

“I am listening.”

“You must know, clearly, right from wrong, and teach those precepts to the children. Only in that way can you nurture them properly.”

Chastity considered the workhouse, where children died daily. She knew right from wrong, and leaving Matt, Mark, Luke and Bekah in that workhouse would have been wrong.

“If I find that you have acted in other than a moral, conscientious or lawful manner,” Mr. Sennett had continued. “You will lose Sunnyledge, and I will see that you never open a home for children, anywhere, ever.”

Chastity’s heart had raced as he spoke those words.

It raced now an entire day later, but she buried her guilt and worry. She had acted conscientiously and morally by telling the parish beadle she would raise the children. Taking them would have been legal, but for him, a corrupt church elder who sent them to the workhouse because she would not pay his wicked price.

All would be well, she reassured herself as they continued their trek toward Sunnyledge. No man, save one, knew what she had done, and that man, she would never see, again.

In time, clustered cottages gave way to sprawling farms. Grasslands, divided by dry stone walls, became hilly uplands. Hillocks grew forested; roads narrowed.

By the time the valley before them revealed the jaunty jumble of structures, requisite to bustling village life, dusk streaked the sky with lavender. “This is it,” Chastity said, her sense of destiny so intense, a frisson of alarm stepped on its heels. “Painswick.”

By virtue of the steep cobbled track descending into the village, the children gamboled headlong hand in hand, Luke laughing all the way.

Amid hawkers’ songs and hot, spicy scents, Chastity admired a bonnet placed in a shop window by a barrel-bellied, frock-coated merchant. “Two pounds, three? That’s highway robbery,” she said.

Luke shifted the satchel that contained their clothes and William’s medical bag, and tugged at her sleeve. “I’m gonna buy that for you someday, Kitty.” As she bent to kiss his cheek, he ruffled her hair, freeing the powder she’d used to disguise and drear its chestnut hue.

After buying food and supplies, she bought her giggling band each a ha-penny pie and a peppermint stick for a thruppence. They ate while they watched village children roll misshapen hoops in the wheelwright’s dooryard.

Afterward, Chastity sought directions to Sunnyledge.

“Oh my, no,” said a buxom matron, all agog. “Not that God-forsaken place. It’s haunted, don’t’cha know. Many’s the night they’ve heard her pitiful wail, that lost soul searching for her missing babes. They died with her, some say, but their wee bodies were never buried.”  She whispered the last part.

Chastity held Bekah closer. “If you could direct us.”

The matron shook her head. “If you insist.” She pointed. “There it is, top ‘o the hill.”

A honey-gold manse stood guarding the valley, its chimneystacks straight as parade soldiers at full attention. Mullioned windows—as tall as the first floor, and wide as they were tall—reflected the sun, bright as that off the stone itself.

“It’s a bloomin’ castle,” Matt said.

“Magic,” whispered Luke.

Mark snorted. “Where our dreams will come true.”

“It is splendid,” Chastity said. “As if it’s made of gold.”

“That’s the sun on the stone—Painswick stone. The old Earl’s dead. That’s his house. You kin?”

“If you could tell me how to get there.”

“Go left at the yew row and take the hill straight up. Been abandoned for years. Except for a daft caretaker, now and again, most won’t go near the place.”

Chastity gave her thanks and they went on their way, the villager following. “It’s farther than you think. You got a key? Can’t get in, if you don’t have a key.”

Chastity kept walking.

“You’re braver than I,” the tenacious woman called from a distance.

Luke blew the shepherd’s horn Chastity had saved for him. WARRONNK!

Mr. Sennett was right. Boys were noisy. She would never be able to thank the solicitor for giving her the use of Sunnyledge—though if he ever learned that she rescued the children after he set down his rules— Well, just imagining the consequences of her actions made Chastity shudder, even as Rebekah began to wail.

“How old is Bekah?” she asked the boys.

“Three ‘cept we dunno’ when we’re gonna’ be the next number,” Luke said.

“Don’t mind that noise she makes,” Matt said. “She does that lots. Wish she would talk, though.”

“She’s dumb.”

“That will be enough, Mark,” Chastity said, coming to a faltering stop with a shiver.

Sunnyledge may have looked warm and inviting from the vale, but up close, after dark, it looked decidedly bleak, forsaken, and forbidding.

The key was useless. A mere nudge opened the door, the wind taking it the rest of the way. With the children attached to her skirts, Chastity stepped inside, stifling a nervous urge to giggle. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

WARRONNNK!

The sound made Chastity shriek and fall against the door, a hand to her fast-pumping heart. “That will be enough, Luke. Anyone here has expired from fright by now.”

Chastity tried to lock the door, but the keyhole turned with the key, so she pushed a chair against it, cutting off the last sliver of moonlight. “Bother, I am such an idiot. I do not even have a candle.”

“I can see in the dark,” Matt said. “We hid in Aunt Anna’s cellar so long after she died, we never saw the sun.”

“Do you think you can find the kitchen?”

“I’m good at finding things. Be right back.”

Chastity sat on the floor, Bekah, Mark, and Luke, cozy and warm, nesting in her black wool skirts. For once, she was glad William had not seen fit to replace her religious habits during their short marriage. She had, however, removed all symbols of her religious life, so that her gowns looked more like widow’s weeds.

“Found the kitchen, Kitty. And candles,” Matt called.

A short while later, the children ate some of the bread and cheese she’d bought, as exhaustion overtook them, and a sense of destiny, profound and peaceful, enveloped her.

Settled for the night with Zeke, their lame rabbit, on a mattress plumped with Chastity’s aprons and nightshifts, one old habit and one Sunday best, Luke said they hadn’t been so comfy since Mum left.

“I worried,” Matt said with a yawn. “That you wouldn’t come for us at the workhouse, like you promised.”

Mark scoffed and rolled to his side, presenting his rigid back. “We would never have gone to that horrid old place, if you hadn’t turned us in.”

If she failed to breach that barrier Mark kept erected around his heart, Chastity feared it would become as hard as the stone in these Cotswold Hills.

How could he be so angry, yet cuddle his baby sister so lovingly? Perhaps this child, who professed to need no one, needed her even more than his brothers and sister did. One thing was certain; Mark would never forgive her for trying to gain their custody through the proper channels first.

After she arrived on Britain’s shore, she had gone on to William’s Aunt Anna’s as planned. There, she found that his aunt had died, leaving his young cousins, abandoned at her passing, hiding in her cellar to keep from getting separated or going to the workhouse.

Chastity had marched them to the Vicar to say she would take them. The Vicar passed her to the Curate, the Curate to the Beadle.

Chastity shuddered remembering the Beadle’s lustful suggestion as to how she could purchase them. Since she refused to pay his price, however, the Beadle had relegated her children to the parish workhouse with nary a blink.

So much for following the rules, Chastity thought, unable to forget Mr. Sennett’s words, “If I find that you have acted in other than a moral, conscientious or lawful manner, you will lose Sunnyledge, and I will see that you never open a refuge for children anywhere, ever.”

At the workhouse, children younger than hers, died. She thought about the baby girl born the week she worked there, while trying to get hers back. How she’d wanted to take that babe as well. She thought of Matt’s protectiveness, Mark’s anger, Luke’s trust, and Bekah’s cough.

In taking them, she had acted conscientiously and morally. Except for the Beadle’s lust, her guardianship would be lawful as well.

Mr. Sennett said he tried to bring the conditions of asylums and workhouses to the notice of people who could improve them, and their lack of interest angered him.

“Do you never get so incensed,” Chastity had dared to ask, knowing she planned to rescue William’s cousins the next day, “that you wish to take matters into your own hands?”

“We cannot give in to such,” he said. “To have lasting effect, reform must be undertaken in a lawful, orderly manner. There is never an excuse to breach rules.”

Chastity sighed. Having been an orphan, the solicitor lauded her wish to open a home where children without parents would be loved. She only hoped that he would come to understand that taking these few had been necessary.

She bent to them now—warm, safe, unafraid, bellies full—covered a shoulder, stroked a brow, and prayed, for their sakes, that all would be well.

Then found a chair in which to take down her hair, and examined the kitchen, aglow from a fire in the old stone hearth.

Sunnyledge—a haven—someday perhaps, a home.

* * *

The hell of it was, Reed Gilbride thought, rubbing the back of his neck, looking up at Sunnyledge, the house was so damned big, he could search for years and never find the truth of his birth. As for secrets, the place fairly reeked of them.

Even the cryptic note he had received added to Sunnyledge’s aura of mystery—a note that roused an anger, tempered oddly by hope. Such anger, he usually reserved for the people who gave him life and threw him away. And the hope? Well, that just made him madder ... until Sennett killed expectation by saying the note must be a hoax. The solicitor said he’d seen more than one, worded exactly the same way. He also suggested that a Barrington by-blow had no claim, here.

Still, Reed could not give up. As a child, he would have settled for knowing who his parents might have been. Now he bloody well wanted to know why he had not been good enough for them to keep. Who gave a helpless babe to the Gilbrides, of all people?

He led his horse around back to find it shelter.

Why did the woman who raised him—if you could call it that—refuse to talk about Sunnyledge? Why act as if the devil would swallow her whole, if she did? Could this place hold the key to his past? Him, the Earl of Barrington, as the note suggested?

Reed mocked himself with a chuckle, raised his collar against a cold drizzle, settled Stealth in a rickety old stable, returned and picked up his satchel.

He might be a bastard in more ways than one, but with or without Sennett’s approval, he needed to find out.

Now that Boney had been defeated, and he’d retired from the Guards, Reed looked forward to a life of peace and quiet, and the occasional willing woman. But first he must search for his roots, this being the place to start.

“Damn, it’s cold.” As if fate heard, a blast of wind and rain smacked him in the face and opened the door with a flourish—the thunderous crack of it hitting the wall loud enough to wake the Sunnyledge ghost herself.

Reed saluted and stepped inside, a sense of inevitability filling him, as if he had arrived after a thirty-year sojourn, turned an invisible corner, and could not return the way he had come.

What was more, he did not want to.

In the kitchen, Chastity jumped at the thunderous sound, and shot to her feet. After a frozen heart-pounding beat, arms and legs prickling, she located a meat cleaver in a kitchen drawer and closed her trembling fingers around its smooth bone handle.

THE BEGINNING

EXCERPT

THE PRINCE OF PLEASURE

By

Sandra Marton

CHAPTER ONE

His name was Khan ibn Zain al Hassad.

That was what he called himself though, in truth, his name was much longer and more elaborate.

In private, he winced at the sound of it. What man of the 21st century wanted to be known as His Royal Highness, Sheikh Khan ibn Zain al Hassad, Crown Prince of Altara, Defender of its Ancient and Honorable Throne, Protector of His People, Leopard of the Finarian Hills?

All those antiquated titles…

Yes, he was proud of them. The blood of kings and warriors ran within his veins. It was just that the titles often preceded him. People bowed and scraped before they knew if he was worth the bowing or scraping.

Not that any man was worth that.

His father had always frowned and said his attitude came of having had an American mother. Worse, he'd attended an American college, an American university. Two American universities, to be accurate.

In a sense, the old man had been right. Being half North American, Khan understood the need to move forward. Being half Altaran, he understood the importance of tradition.

Both parts of him knew that titles could be intimidating.

They could also make people fawn over him.

People who wanted to sell him things he didn't need or desire, who wanted to borrow money and, worst of all, people who wanted to bask in what they saw as his reflected glory.

Added to that were the all women who thought it was original to gaze at him from under lowered lashes and whisper,And are you a leopard in bed, my lord?

At eighteen, the question had been a challenge he'd been more than eager to prove, but he was thirty now, his father was dead, and his life was one of responsibility and discipline. He was a king, even if he still preferred to call himself a prince.

Khan's green eyes narrowed.

And there were fools out there who called him only a fantastically rich playboy.

It infuriated him.

He was the leader of his people.

Maybe rock stars enjoyed being sought after for their celebrity. All right, maybe he'd enjoyed it, too, years back, but he was older and wiser. Still, the gossip blogs andPage SixandPeople and half a dozen other gushing magazines loved to send photographers after him, to write lies about him, and to call him…

The damned word set his teeth on edge.

They called himgorgeous. Such a lurid word, one you might use to describe a sunset or a mountain vista but to ascribe it to a man…

His looks were meaningless.

In truth, they had nothing to do with him.

Take a father of a certain height, a certain body type, a man descended from conquerors. Combine his DNA with that of a stunning supermodel.

Unless something went very wrong, you'd end up with a man who looked like him.

Six foot two. Leanly muscled body. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Thick-lashed eyes the color of emeralds, square jaw, high cheekbones…

Add in all those anachronistic titles…

Khan's jaw tightened.

The only thing about him that was his, entirely his, was his fortune.

Forbes called him one of the ten richest men in the world. He suspected it was true but the only reason it mattered was because, unlike his looks and his titles, he had earned that fortune on his own.

Well, he thought, smiling a little as he stood on the terrace of the Texas mansion calledEl Sueño, well, not exactly.

The truth was, his old friend Travis Wilde had earned it for him.

The only credit he could take was for having been smart enough to have handed Travis the relatively modest inheritance his mother had left him a decade ago.

"Do something with it," he'd said.

Travis had glanced at the check, then at him.

"Something safe?" he'd said, with a grin. "Or something risky?"

Khan had laughed.

"Have I ever done anything that was safe?"

Back then, he had not.

He'd lived for risk. For the adrenaline high that came of skydiving, of kayaking rapids nobody sane would go near, of jumping out of hovering helicopter into virgin snow and schussing down from what was surely the edge of the world.

But that had changed.

Two years ago, his father had become ill. Very ill. Within six months, he was gone. Running the kingdom of Altara had fallen to Khan.

His Council of Ministers had told him not to worry. They would take care of things.

Khan's mouth thinned.

And they had—with near-disastrous results.

His father had ruled as if it were still the 19th century. The ministers, not content with that, had ruled as if it were the 15th century.

Khan was a prince, accustomed to a life of pleasure, but he was not a fool. His country and his people were inexorably part of him.

He'd waited a year. Then, with determination and commitment his ministers had not expected, he had assumed control.

His life had changed, of course, but in his heart, he'd always known this was kismet, his destiny.

Under his guidance, Altara was moving forward, embracing science, technology, and a new infrastructure. Roads. Hospitals. Schools, all funded by the money his father had left, a multibillion-dollar cache the old man had amassed from the kingdom's oil and mineral resources. His father had treated the money as if it were his own, an ancient custom followed by most of the kingdoms in the so-called Black Gold triangle along the Sapphire Sea.

Not anymore.

Khan held a view some of his ministers saw as quaint, even radical.

He believed that Altara's wealth belonged to Altara.

A New Beginning for an Ancient Kingdom,The New York Times had trumpeted. It was the first time he'd smiled at a headline that involved him.

But there were still those who preferred to see him as a stereotype, a libertine prince with too much money and too few morals.

He came across them all the time.

Tonight, for instance.

Dammit!

He was back to that. The woman. The brunette in the house behind him.

A vein in his temple throbbed.

Ridiculous, that he should permit such an incident to anger him, especially this evening, when he had important business to conduct in Dallas as well as here at the Wilde ranch.

A sea of oil lay under the endless sands of Altara but much of the drilling equipment was old and outdated. His engineers had tried to convince Khan's father to invest in new techniques, but the older man had been deaf to their pleas.

Khan had listened.

He understood the benefits of looking beyond the Black Gold triangle for new environmental and ecological drilling techniques, and he knew that there were men in Texas who understood such things.

Men like the Wilde brothers.

They were his oldest friends, and for years, they had been among his most trusted advisors.

Jacob was the one to consult about the horses Khan bred on ranches in Brazil and in Altara. Caleb handled all his stateside legal affairs. Travis was the reason he had become almost embarrassingly rich even before he'd ascended the throne.

The four of them had met as undergrads at Columbia University. They'd been acquaintances.

Then, one memorable night, they'd become friends. The memory eased him, and made him smile.

Somehow, they'd ended up going out together after they'd all survived tough finals. The night had been a long journey through pleasure.

They'd ended it in a tough bar off  Amsterdam Avenue.

A bunch of punks had decided the three guys with the funny Southern drawls and the guy with the definitely un-American accent would be easy to take.

Wrong.

A couple of bloody noses later, the punks stumbled out into the night. Khan and the Wildes had grinned at each other, and then ordered a round of Buds for the crowd of admirers who'd stood back and watched the brawl.

As the night wore on, they'd talked about the future. Jake wanted to fly combat helicopters. Travis, already a pilot, wanted to fly jets and do in the bad guys. Caleb was talking with a recruiter for a hush-hush government agency.

"I'd tell you all about it," he'd said solemnly, "but then I'd have to kill you."

Everybody laughed. Then Caleb looked at Khan.

"So," he'd said, "what's it like to be a prince?"

By then, the heady combination of wine, women and a bar fight had loosened Khan's tongue.

"Actually," he'd said, "it sucks."

The Wildes had looked at each other.

"Such princely talk," Caleb had said.

"You wanted the truth. Well, that's the truth." The downside of too much of any indulgence was reality, and Khan had plummeted into a lake of it. "Men should not be judged by such arcane nonsense as titles."

Silence. Then Jake had raised his eyebrows.

"Arcane," he'd said, solemnly.

"Arcane," Travis had echoed.

Caleb had nodded.

"Easy for you to say," he'd muttered,  "even if nobody's sure what the hell it really means—unless you're complaining about that title pulling in more babes than any one man can handle."

It was the truth, but nobody had ever dared be that blunt about it. Nobody was ever blunt, when they dealt with a prince.

In a heartbeat, his mood had soared from zero to ten.

"Oh, I can handle them," Khan he'd said, modestly, "but if you guys play your cards right, I might just direct the overflow in your direction."

The Wildes, good-looking and rich and known for the ease with which they attracted women, had burst out laughing. Khan had, too, and after that, there were no barriers between them. In fact, once they knew how he felt about his string of titles, they only used them when things got slow and they wanted to piss him off.

The only timeshe used them was when a little show of power was needed, and that wasn't very often.

Over the years, Khan had developed the ability to control virtually all situations with a look, a word, a natural air of quiet command. He never lost control, not in business, not in politics, not in bed.

For a man with his responsibilities, control, self-control, was everything.

And that was precisely why he was so annoyed right now.

For a man who never lost control, he hadn't done very well tonight.

The Wildes had thrown a small, very civilized party for him tonight. He should have been inside the house, enjoying it.

The woman had eliminated that possibility.

A two minute incident, the kind of thing he'd normally have simply ignored…

Khan drew a long breath, then expelled it.

Okay. Maybe his reaction had been understandable. He was tired. . Exhausted, after flying through endless time zones, then spending the day in meetings.

What he needed was a night's sleep…

Or perhaps a woman. Sex. The relief of tension that came of spending himself within a warm, willing body…

An image flashed through his mind. Dark, soft curls. Enormous blue eyes. A full, rose-pink mouth.

Dammit!

Why was he thinking about her? He probably wouldn't even have noticed her if Travis hadn't pointed her out.

They'd been walking him through the huge living room, Travis introducing him to the select group of guests. He'd made small talk with a couple of congressmen, the CEOs of two oil companies, the COO of a third

Then, Travis had put his hand lightly on his arm.

"There's someone you need to meet," he'd murmured, jerking his head toward a brunette who'd just come through the door.

Khan's first reaction was that the woman was striking but not the type he found attractive. Not that it mattered. This was a business event, not a social one. Still, he was male, she was female, and automatic assessments were, he supposed, inevitable.

She was tall and slender. He liked his women petite and curvy. She wore a severely-tailored suit and—what were shoes like that called? Pumps. That was it. The other women were all wearing silk dresses and delicate sandals. The only outstanding things about her were that the suit was expensive and the shoes had skinny heels high enough to make her already long legs look even longer.

"Who is she?" he'd asked, as Travis led him toward her.

"Her name is Laurel Cruz. She's an associate at Maxwell and Mayberry. Big law firm—the 'Maxwell' is Senator Joseph Maxwell. He's been out of D.C. for a few years but he's still got the right contacts, and Laurel's his right-hand man."

By then, they'd reached her.

"Right-hand woman," she'd said, with not even a trace of humor.

Travis had grinned, leaned down, and kissed her on the cheek.

"Uh oh," he'd said lightly. "Rough day in the legal trenches?"

"Most of them are rough," Laurel Cruz had replied, shifting her gaze to Khan, appraising him with cool blue eyes.

"Laurel, I'd like to introduce you to our guest of honor—"

"Khan al Hassad. Yes. I know who he is."

That was how it had all started. The way she'd spoken, not to him but about him, as if he weren't even there. The disdain in her voice. Her deliberate avoidance of his title—and why in hell that she had bothered him, given his own feelings about titles…

He'd felt his belly knot.

The woman disliked him.

He had no idea why and, frankly, he didn't much care. He had only to remain polite. He was here as his country's representative, and he was well-schooled in diplomacy.

Smiling, showing nothing of his feelings, he'd extended his hand.

"Miss Cruz. It's a pleasure to—"

"It'sMs. Cruz, and if you want to meet with the senator, I suggest you phone our office for an appointment."

Khan had held the smile, but with some effort.

"Pardon me?"

"You're here on oil business."

"I am, yes."

"Surely you want help from our satellites, perhaps access to our seismic technology, and the senator has friends in high places."

Khan's smile had vanished. "I'm afraid you've jumped to conclusions, Ms. Cruz. I am not interested in help from the senator or his friends. I've come to discuss Altara's oil development plans with those best suited to advise me."

"I must admit, I'm surprised by your willingness to admit you need advice from anyone."

"Laurel," Travis had said in a low voice, "the prince is my guest."

"Of course." Her smile had been saccharine-sweet. "But aren't we all supposed to address him as 'king'?"

"Try speaking directly to me," Khan had said coldly. "You'll get better answers."

"I doubt that."

Travis had groaned. "I'm sorry, man. I don't know what—"

"Don't apologize on Ms. Cruz's behalf, Travis." Khan's eyes had narrowed to icy slits. "And don't try to silence her. I'm fascinated. She is obviously a woman with strong opinions."

"And you're not accustomed to women with opinions," "Laurel Cruz had said, her eyes as cold as his, "or, at least, to hearing those opinions expressed.

Another time, he might have laughed.

His newly-appointed Minister of Education was a woman. His personal assistant, who was privy to all the secrets of running the kingdom, was a woman. He was about to appoint a woman to head up the newly-instituted Ministry of Health.

"How nice," he said, with a twist of his lips that bore little resemblance to a smile, "that you are so well-informed."

Travis had cleared his throat.

"Listen," he'd said briskly, "I hate to break this up but—"

""Women like mearewell-informed. And that's going to be the eventual end of you and men like you."

"Jesus, Laurel," Travis had hissed, "what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter with me," Laurel Cruz had snapped. "I'm simply making the most of an opportunity to ask questions."

"I have not heard a question yet," Khan had growled.

"Well, here's one. Do you ever think about the people who grovel before you, Mr. al Hassad? Probably not—but if you do, have you ever wondered if they do it out of choice—or because it is what you and your kind expect?"

Khan had felt a vein in his temple start to throb.

"And what, exactly, is 'my kind,' Ms. Cruz?"

"You expect subservience," she'd said, answering her own question instead of his, her chin lifted, her eyes shot with cold fire. "Blind obedience. Being treated as if you own the world, especially by women. Men like you, Mr. al Hassad, are barbarians!"

By then, she'd been breathing hard. Khan had barely been breathing at all. What he'd been was half-crazed with rage.

He'd taken a step forward. She'd taken a step back. As far as he was concerned, that was the first good thing that had happened since Travis had made the mistake of introducing them.

"I am addressed as Prince Khan," he'd said, his voice low and hard. "Or as Your Highness. And if we should ever have the misfortune to see each other again, you will also remember that you are to show me the respect I am due." One step more and his body brushed hers. Despite his anger, he felt the fullness of her breasts, smelled the light floral scent of her hair. That he was aware of her as a woman drove his rage even higher. "If we were in my country, you would do those things on pain of death—and what a pity it is we are not."

The still-functioning part of his mind had wanted to laugh at the stupid, cheesy lies—but when the color drained from her face, he'd felt a kind of bitter triumph. He knew she was trying to come up with some kind of response, but she failed.

It was time to walk away.

"My regards to the senator," he'd said, and he'd moved past her, through the remaining knot of guests, and stepped through the open French doors to the patio.

Travis had come after him.

"Khan. I'm sorry about that."

"Forget it."

"You're our friend. Our guest. And Laurel—"

Khan had whirled toward him.

"What was that all about?"

"Well, she's an attorney. A hotshot attorney. And—"

"And, what does that have to do with anything?"

"She's into human rights. Women's rights. Maybe you read about an incident here a year or so back. A bunch of cretins who'd come here from a place nobody could pronounce or find on a map, raped a woman. A girl, really. She was, I don't know, fifteen, sixteen. Anyway, she was a bloodied, beaten mess. Somehow, she got home to her folks—and her brothers killed her because they said her rape had dishonored the family."

"And?" Khan said coldly. "I am responsible for this?"

"No, of course not. See, while Laurel was in law school, she worked with the Justice Project. They're the ones who try to get—"

"I know what they do," Khan said impatiently. "They work to set aside the sentences of those who've been wrongly imprisoned."

"Yeah. Well, Laurel started up something similar, except her idea was to get justice for victims like this poor girl."

"I can almost hear you saying 'but.'"

"But," Travis said, "there was some kind of hush-hush diplomatic intervention in Washington, way up the food chain, on behalf of a couple of small, wealthy, oil-rich countries. Laurel's funding was shut down; the couple of D.C. politicos who'd shown an interest in what she was doing suddenly went deaf, dumb, and blind—"

"In other words, yes, Iamresponsible because I am from a small, wealthy, oil-rich country."

"No!" Travis threw out his hands. "All I'm saying is, if you try to see this from Laurel's side of the fence—"

"Am I the ruler of some hellish piece of earth whose name nobody can pronounce?" Khan had said in white-lipped fury. "Does my nation treat women that way? Do I have anything to do with such barbarism?"

"Of course not. But—"

Khan had raised his hand. "Travis. It wasn't your fault. Let's drop it."

"Sure," Travis had said, after a long, deep breath. "Okay. We'll drop it. Come back inside. Have a drink. Let me introduce you to some other people."

"In a minute."

Travis had started to say something. Then he'd shrugged, clapped a hand on Khan's shoulder, and gone back inside the house.

Twenty minutes, perhaps more, had gone by, and he was still on the patio, anger burning a hole in his gut.

He hated what had just happened.

And hated that it had happened before.

Not the same sort of accusation, no, but he'd been judged by outsiders who didn't know him or his nation or his people. He'd been spoken of as if he were a medieval monster.

And yes, he knew there were places were women were still thought of as property, treated as second-class citizens, that though his father had never physically abused his mother, the way autocratic way he'd dealt with her might well be the reason she'd run away and died in the sudden sandstorm that had sent her car spinning, finally burying it in the ever-shifting, endless sands of the desert…

What was he doing?

So what if Laurel Cruz thought she knew all there was to know about him? So what if she believed his cultural beliefs were those of a barbarian?

The only barbaric thing about him was that a few minutes ago, he'd thought of her and sex in the same instant, but what could you expect of a man who'd been going, non-stop, for God knew how many hours?

Exhaustion was equally barbaric.

He needed some rest. A long, hot shower instead of the quick under-the-spray, out-of-the-spray thing that had been all he'd had time for in the bathroom on his private plane. He needed some time alone where he could be himself, not a man cursed with a hatful of titles.

He took a deep breath. Ran a hand through his hair. Straightened his maroon silk tie, his dark blue Savile Row suit jacket.

Good. Excellent. He was much calmer now.

All he lacked was a smile, and he managed that just as he walked into the living room. Caleb, Jake and Travis were waiting, looking as if they were ready to pick up the pieces.

"Khan?" Jake said. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure? Because we can end everybody home—"

"No. Why would you do that?" He glanced around him. Excellent. No one was looking at him, which surely meant that no one had noticed the little scene that had taken place earlier. And Laurel Cruz was gone. That was even better. "Give me a minute to wash up. Then I want to meet the rest of your guests."

"Sure. The downstairs lav is—"

"I remember where it is." Khan clapped Jake on the back, flashed smiles at Travis and Caleb. "I'll be right back."

What he needed was to splash his face with cold water, because he wasn't quite as calm as he'd insisted. If he were, he wouldn't have found himself looking for the Cruz woman…

And there she was, in the foyer, standing with her back to him as she put on a tan leather jacket.

Did she somehow sense his presence? She must have, because she went still. Then, slowly, she swung around and looked at him.

Her eyes widened.

Just for an instant, she looked wary.

Then she clutched the edges of her lapels. Her chin rose, her gaze zeroed in on his. It was a combative stance, and she erased any doubt when she flashed him a smile filled with contempt.

He could almost feel his blood pressure climb for the sky.

To hell with this, he thought grimly, and started toward her.

It was sheer pleasure to see that look of contempt change to one of fear. She was a woman with foolish opinions, he thought grimly, but she was not a fool.

She swung away from him, went quickly to the massive front door, opened it, and stepped out into the night.

Khan followed her.

She was heading for a red Honda parked in the gravel driveway. By now, she was damn near running but he was bigger, stronger and faster.

It was no contest.

He reached the Honda with seconds to spare.

"You were right," he said in a low, dangerous voice.

"Get out of my way!"

"Don't you want to know what you were right about?"

She reached in her pocket, took out her keys, started to point them at the car. Khan plucked them from her hand.

"You said I always get what I want. Then you called me a barbarian."

She started past him, back toward the house. He grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Let go of me," she gasped. "Let go, damn you, or I'll—"

"And what I want right now," he said, "is this."

Laurel read what he was going to do in his eyes, in the way his muscles tensed, in the way he looked at her mouth.

Then he lowered his head to hers.

Terror sent her heart racing.

"No!"

He laughed. She pushed against his chest, tried to twist her face away, but it was useless. He thrust one hand into her hair, cupped the back of her head, and it was all over.

The best she could do was steel herself for his kiss, meant to punish. To subdue. To reinforce what she already knew about men like him, that he didn't give a damn for anyone but himself and the few exalted souls he considered his equals.

She tensed, waited for his mouth to assault hers.

Wrong.

He brushed his lips over hers, did it again, then settled his mouth against hers in a kiss that was gentle and soft.

He slid his hand down her spine, drew her against him, lifted her into him. And he went on kissing her, kissing her until a breathless little sound escaped her throat, until she felt her lips soften, mold against his, part under his…

That was when he put her from him.

She blinked. And found herself staring up into eyes the frigid green of a winter sea.

"Possessed by a barbarian," he said in a low voice. "What a hell of a fate to suffer."

She wanted to say something witty or, at least, insulting. She couldn't. Her mind was a blank. All she could do was watch the Prince of Altara stride past her, get behind the wheel of a black Land Rover, and gun the engine to life.

The Rover sped off, leaving a spray of gravel in its wake.

THE BEGINNING

EXCERPT

Bluegrass State of Mind

Kathleen Brooks

A Bluegrass Series Novel

PROLOGUE

Her bare feet pounded down the concrete stairs. Her panty hose were ripped from snagging the cold metal strips on the edge of each stair. Her feet stung with every step she took. She heard the door above her open. She pushed herself faster. She couldn’t let him catch her.

She jumped the last stair on the sixth floor, the impact of the jump reverberating up her body.  She felt as though she had stopped breathing two floors ago. Her lungs burned as she forced her legs to move faster. Her hand was sliding along the railing to brace herself as she raced down the stairs at breakneck speed.

She heard him yell her name. She turned around to see he was now just one floor away. The look cost her dearly as she missed a step and had to slow down to steady herself.

Her heart beat in turn with each slap of her foot. Faster. Louder. She just had to make it to the garage. He would kill her if she didn’t.  He called her name again as if she were a disobedient child. He was taunting her, triggering her fear. Her heart felt as if it would explode as she ran faster and faster down the stairs.

She didn’t feel the cuts causing her feet to bleed. She didn’t feel the pain running up her legs. All she knew was she had a couple more flights to go. She tried to suck in a breath of air but could only manage a small gasp. He was closer now.  She could feel him right behind her.

The door to the garage was so close. She could see it now. She had to reach it. He closed in on her. She could hear him breathing. She willed her legs to move faster.  He reached out his arm to grab her….

CHAPTER ONE

McKenna looked around and saw nothing but black, four-plank fences and green grass for as far as she could see. Daffodils were playing peek-a-boo with the bright morning sun.  She looked down at the GPS in her cherry red BMW M6. Only five more miles until her destination. Bringing her eyes back up to the narrow country road, Kenna gasped and hit her brakes as hard as she could.

The stabilization in her car kicked in and kept it from fishtailing off the road. She fought for control of the car as her brakes locked. A massive horse was standing in the middle of the road, calmly watching her scrambling for control over her car. She rested her head against the steering wheel and let out a shaky breath when she stopped the car in the opposite lane. Hearing tires squealing, she lifted her head and saw an old pick-up truck heading straight for her, fishtailing out of control.  Kenna shifted into reverse and floored it. The truck skidded by her, narrowly missing her car. The truck came to a sudden stop in the grass ditch off the side of the road.

Kenna watched a jeans-clad woman wearing a stylish, black, long-sleeve shirt and bright pink scarf belt jump out of the truck. The woman with beautiful, shiny, shoulder-length brown hair was the polar opposite of what McKenna expected to see. Instead of being concerned about her truck, the woman slowly approached the horse with her hand out. Kenna saw her mouth moving as she talked to him. Ever so slowly, she placed her hand on his head and gave him a smile. Sliding her hand down, she grasped the halter and scratched his nose.

Kenna opened her door and got out on shaky legs.  She could hear the woman talking on the cell phone as she walked toward the scene. “Yeah, Bets, I'm out here on Route 178, and it looks like one of your stallions is loose. Another woman and I almost hit him. Yes, we’re okay. No, I have him now. You better have one of the boys bring a trailer. Okay. Bye.”

“Hi. Are you okay?” Kenna asked after the woman put away the cell phone.

“Yes. Thanks. Looks like you made it out okay. I’m Paige Davies. Do you mind helping me for a sec?”

“McKenna Mason. What do you need?”

“Here, hold this.” Paige walked the massive stallion over to her and indicated where she was to hold him. “I need to see if my truck is able to run or if I need to call a tow. Thanks!”

Kenna took a hold of the halter and stared at the horse. She hadn’t been around a horse in decades. She held on for dear life, even though the horse seemed content to just stand off to the side of the road and watch the world go by.

Paige’s truck roared to life. She drove it out of the ditch and parked next to Kenna’s M6. What a sight: a brand new M6 next to a rusted, blue, Chevy pickup that had to be fifteen years old. Paige gracefully jumped down from the cab and walked over to her.

“Thanks. Now we have room for the little guy to be picked up. I wonder how he got out?”

“I'm just glad we didn’t hit him.”

“This is part of the Ashton Farm, and unfortunately they've been having a lot of problems recently.”

“Ashton, as in Will Ashton?”  Kenna couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t even pulled into town and she had just found the person she was looking for.

“Yes. The family owns and runs it. You know Will?”

“I used to. I haven’t seen him in seventeen years.”

“Are you here to visit them?”

“No, I'm here to interview with Tom Burns for the assistant district attorney job.”

“That’s great.” Paige was so excited for her that Kenna couldn’t help but smile. She stepped forward and scratched the forehead of the large horse.

“Actually, I'm glad I ran into someone from the town. Can you tell me a good place to stay? I couldn’t find any hotels online.”

“That’s because there aren’t any. You’ll want to go see Miss Lily Rae Rose. She has a bed and breakfast. Just continue straight and make a left at the first stop light you come to. She’s in the big white Victorian. And, if you’re looking for a good place to eat, Miss Lily has two sisters, Miss Daisy Mae Rose and Miss Violet Fae Rose, who run the Blossom Cafe. Great place to eat some chocolate after a close call like this!” Paige laughed and Kenna couldn’t help but like her. This was a woman after her own heart!

“Thanks a lot. I'm guessing you're from Keeneston. What do you do there?”

"I have a store on Main Street named Southern Charms. I have all local made products. Everything from statues, paintings, jewelry, clothes, painted wine glasses, to cookbooks.”

“Sounds amazing. I'll have to stop by.”

“We should have lunch together. I can be the official welcoming party!” They both turned to the sounds of a diesel engine and saw a massive truck with a horse trailer come around the corner from the direction Paige had come. “Ah, good. Now we can get this boy home.”

Kenna stood back as three men jumped down from the truck and with an apple helped convince the horse to get in the trailer.

“Thanks for the help with him. I look forward to our lunch. It was great meeting you and welcome to Keeneston,” Paige said as she and Kenna walked to their cars.

Kenna’s legs had finally stopped shaking when she slid into her car. Pulling out after Paige, she headed into town, wondering what her new home would be like.

*     *     *

"Just shoot me now," Kenna thought as she squeezed her eyes closed. She slowly opened them, hoping against all odds the scene before her had changed, but to her utter despair, it was the same scene she had just driven upon. Kenna had pulled her M6 to the side of the road and stared at the town before her with a critical eye. She was sitting on the edge of Main Street and could see the other end of what she guessed to be downtown just two stop lights away. The town was straight out of Mayberry, she thought. She couldn’t help but start  whistling the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show as she looked around her new hometown: perfect trees lining both sides of Main Street, American flags waving from every light post, and the people wandering down the sidewalk seemed to know each other since they were tipping their hats and smiling to each person they passed by.

Kenna had spent the last eleven years in the Big City. So when she took a deep breath that lacked pollution and listened to the honking of cars that were strangely not honks of anger, but honks of greeting as they passed someone they knew, she felt out of her element. Not for the first time, Kenna wondered how she ended up here. Just a month ago, she was at the hottest nightclub in New York City with her best friend Danielle, celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday with all her friends from Greendale, Thompson and Hitchem, the largest law firm in New York. Kenna sighed wistfully as she thought about the six figure salary, the hot clubs and a condo in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that she had left behind in a hurry.

With her eyes closed and her mind firmly set in what might have been, Kenna thought about how she had dined with professional athletes and actors at the best restaurants on the company dime since they were clients. Standing only five foot four, but blessed with what she called womanly curves, Kenna had not only wined and dined famous people, but had dated and been pursued by some as well. Kenna’s auburn hair, milky skin and dark green eyes that hid an intelligence and sharp wit had made her sought after inside and outside of the courtroom.

Kenna continued her trip down memory lane by giving herself a moment to gloat. She had just made junior partner, one of the youngest associates to have ever done so and the only woman to ever do so.

She cringed as she remembered the night it all changed. The night she fled from her six figure salary and left her amazing condo.  She had fled from New York City with her ex-boyfriend hot in pursuit of her.  Kenna fought a shiver as she remembered Chad trying to find her to prevent her from leaving not only the city but most likely her beautiful condo ever again. It was in the early morning hours of the city that never sleeps that Kenna found herself running for her life and looking for a place to hide.  She had sat in her car and thought about what always made her feel better - chocolate. She had suffered a chocolate craving to end all other chocolate cravings that night.

Now sitting in her car in Keeneston, she remembered the shivers of fear that had wracked her body and the feel of the cold bite of the February wind. And all she wanted was chocolate. That’s when the idea hit her, the perfect place to hide and the perfect place to indulge in the mother of all chocolate cravings.  She had turned her car towards the interstate and headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Kenna’s lips twitched. She had been right.  Since he had no idea where she was, she was left alone.  And in turn, Kenna was surrounded by chocolate for a month. The second night she spent in Hershey, Kenna knew it was time to develop a plan for the rest of her life, or at least for the next phase of her life. Even though she was tempted to apply for the taster’s job opening at the Hershey plant, she decided she couldn’t waste the law degree her parents’ death had paid for. They died when a drunken truck driver jackknifed his semi-truck on a patch of ice, leaving no place for her parents' car to go. The trust they established for Kenna was more than enough to pay for her attendance at law school, and she even had a good part of it left to be able to live off of if she wanted.  However, after her parents’ death, Kenna had lost the carefree ways that the life of privilege provided and had gone to law school to learn how to put away drunk drivers for the pain they caused innocent families.

Kenna sat on her bed in the extend-a-stay hotel with the smell of chocolate in the air and started looking for a job.  She started with Alabama and worked her way through the states alphabetically, looking for places that were hiring. She kept an eye out for cities that were small but not isolated, cities that Chad the Bastard wouldn’t think of looking for her.  But most importantly, cites that were looking for prosecutors. One week later Kenna pumped her fists in the air and jumped up and down on the bed when she saw the opening for a prosecutor seventeen states later. Not too big, not too small… just right.

It was a good thing she had found the opening when she did, Kenna thought to herself. She couldn’t put on any more weight after spending a month in Chocolate Heaven. She pushed the thoughts of the past back in her mind and opened her eyes again. Mayberry was still there. When she was in Hershey the week before, waiting to hear back about an interview, a memory floated up to the surface from some hidden depth of her mind. That memory was Will Ashton. “What the hell,” Kenna thought. It’s not like she had any place else to go and no idea what the future held besides a job application for an assistant district attorney position. Kenna knew her subconscious had led her here to Will Ashton and to Keeneston, Kentucky.

Kenna pulled herself out of her thoughts as she drove up the driveway, surrounded by Bradford pear trees, and made her way towards the bed and breakfast Paige had recommended. “It's picture perfect,” Kenna said to herself as she got out of the car and looked up at the three- story, white brick Victorian.

The green front door opened and a little woman with a helmet of white hair stepped out. "Can I help you, dearie?" she asked Kenna with a soft, Southern tilt to her voice.

"Are you Miss Lily?" Kenna asked as she started up the steps to the wraparound porch.

“Yes, surely I am,” Miss Lily answered, her hands clasped in front of her and with a dishtowel casually draped over her shoulder.

"Paige Davies said you had a room to rent for a couple of nights?"

"Yes, I do have a room for you, dearie.  Come on in." Miss Lily turned and walked into the house, presuming Kenna would follow right behind.

Kenna turned back to her car, grabbed some of her bags out of the trunk, and hurried into the bed and breakfast just behind Miss Lily. The house was huge with a grand entranceway whose focal point was a wide sweeping staircase. There were large, square shaped rooms off to her right and left.

"Over here are the private quarters," Miss Lily said, pointing to the right. "This first room here on the left is the sitting room for our guests. There are books and such in there, and we have a fire at night in the old fireplace. The room behind the staircase is the dining room.”

“I love it.”

“Well then, I'll put you on the second floor. If you go up these stairs here, there will be another sitting room. Your room is off to the left."

“Thank you, Miss Lily. I'm McKenna Mason. It’s nice to meet you, and thank you for making me feel so welcome in your lovely house.”

“Not a problem, dearie. I'll give you a moment to settle in and lunch will be served in an hour,” Miss Lily said as she turned to head into what Kenna guessed to be the kitchen.

Kenna grabbed her bags and headed up a staircase obviously made for a different time, a time when ladies wore ball gowns so large they needed the six-foot wide stairs to sweep down while making a grand entrance for a ball.

The sitting room on the second floor was as large as the entrance way and full of overstuffed furniture and a braided rug on the floor. It was the perfect place to curl up and read a book. Two large windows overlooked the front yard and the street. Kenna turned to her left and opened the door to the Man O' War room. She had seen a lot of Man O' War names and couldn't figure why a large and deadly jelly fish was so prominent in Kentucky. Oh well, another Southern mystery she thought as she tugged her bags into the room.

In the center of the room stood a huge, king- sized, four- poster bed so high up, it had little steps to climb up to get into bed.  A TV was on top of an old oak dresser that ran the length of the opposite wall. A window seat looked out to the side yard and down towards Main Street.  A private bathroom with an iron claw tub finished off the room. It was amazing. Just sitting in the room with the white lace curtains billowing softly with a spring breeze coming in the open window was enough to make her feel safe for the first time since she had left New York City.

Kenna unpacked some of her clothes, put them into the drawers, and went to wash up. It was almost time for lunch and amazing smells were coming up from the kitchen. Her mouth started to water as she thought back to the last meal she had at McDonald’s the night before in West Virginia. She finished putting the clothes away and opened the door to head downstairs. The door across the hall from her opened and two impeccably dressed people stepped out. They were dressed casually, well, as casually as you can be dressed in Ralph Lauren, Kenna noted.

"Oh, we have another guest!" sang the women. She was a couple inches taller than Kenna and in her early forties. Her makeup was perfect in that understated way only movie stars could manage. Her blond hair was pulled into a perfect pony tail tied off with a white ribbon. Kenna realized that if one wasn't used to shopping the expensive department stores like she was, one would never know the woman was wealthy, well, except for the eight carat diamond weighing down her ring finger. Compared to this bubbly woman, Kenna felt much older than her twenty-nine years after the pressure and stress of the last month. Kenna pasted on a smile and turned to face the perky couple.

"So we do, honey," her husband said to her. He matched her perfectly. Kenna placed him at fifty years old and dressed in Ralph Lauren jeans and a white button up shirt. His salt and pepper hair was perfectly trimmed. He let his right hand rest lightly at the small of his wife's back.

"Are you here for the sales as well?” Mrs. Perky Ralph Lauren asked Kenna.

"Sales? I didn't see any department stores in Keeneston. I could do a little shopping.” A happy feeling washed over her and Kenna’s smile turned into a real one.  The kind of feeling that only spending money on the perfect pair of sexy shoes or finding that little black dress that hid ten pounds and increased your bust at least one cup size could do for you.

“Oh! Oh, ha, a joke. Good one, little lady.” Mr. Ralph Lauren laughed. Kenna darted a glance back and forth between the couple, and apparently Mrs. Perky picked up on her creased brow and look of utter confusion at the apparent joke she had made.

“Julius, she’s not joking. Dear, I'm so sorry. We thought any visitors would be here for the Keeneland horse sales.”

So, Mr. Ralph Lauren was Julius.  Apparently they had come from out of town, out of state by Kenna’s guess, for horse sales.  That was good news for her since she had found out Will still has a horse farm.

“I am so sorry. Since June and I are so horse crazy, I just assumed you were too. I'm Julius Kranski and this is my wife, June.” Julius turned and took his hand off his wife's back to shake Kenna's.

June clasped Kenna's hand and lightly held onto it when she introduced herself to Kenna. "So nice to meet you!”

“Nice to meet you both. I'm McKenna Mason, but you can just call me Kenna. It’s nice to meet some other people from out of town. Where are you from?” she asked as she looked back at June.

“We have a horse farm in Ocala, Florida,” June said as she smiled and gently squeezed Kenna's hand again.

She's a toucher, Kenna thought as June continued, “I hope we can be friends. I always love coming to Miss Lily’s for the sales. We always meet the most wonderful people.” June continued to talk as Kenna made her way to the dining room for lunch, explaining all about the sales and about the horses they were hoping to buy. Kenna looked around the dining room and noted that it was casually set with a buffet of olive nut and pimento cheese sandwiches. Fresh fruit was in a bowl and a large salad was set in the middle of the round table were Kenna sat with June and Julius.

"Come in, come in. Have a seat just anywhere at the table ya'll. I'll be out in a jiffy with the sweet tea," Miss Lily said as she quickly zipped into the kitchen. Kenna's eyes widened slightly. Miss Lily was remarkably fast for someone in her early seventies. She reappeared with a pitcher of sweet tea, and her white apron was blown back from her flowered dress as her easy spirits sailed across the polished hardwood floors. The room was bright with sun streaming in through the open windows.

Kenna picked up her sweet tea, tentatively gave it a sip, and found that she was pleasantly surprised by the taste. Julius and June began to talk about one of the horses they were hoping to sell and which barns they should go to first when they went to the Keeneland sales after lunch as Kenna listened with half an ear and nibbled at the pimento cheese sandwich. Not bad, she thought and then took a bigger bite.

"So, are these horse sales a big deal? I mean, do lots of people go to them?" Kenna asked while she tried the olive nut sandwich. She was definitely going to have to learn how to make these sandwiches and had a feeling Miss Lily would teach her in a heartbeat if she asked.

"They sure are, hon," Julius told her. "The Keeneland sales bring in tens of millions of dollars every year. There are smaller sales in Florida and some good sized sales in Saratoga, New York. But if you want the next big thing or the best selection, you go to Keeneland."

“It’s also the best place to see the who’s who of racing,” June chimed in. “For example, some Middle Eastern royalty own racing stables. There's a Sheik from some small oil country who's trying to build the next big stable right here in Keeneston. He's not the only royalty. Queen Elizabeth has been known to have a horse or two stabled in the area. She’s also attended the Derby a couple of years ago.”

Kenna though that this was as good a time as any to ask about one of the reasons she had come to Keeneston , "When I was a kid, one of my Nana’s friend’s family had a horse farm here. This morning I found out the Ashtons are still here. Do you know them?"

"The Ashtons!" June practically squealed. She clapped her hands lightly together and beamed at Kenna, "Of course we know them. Everyone knows them. After all, they have Spires Landing at stud on their farm here in Keeneston."

Kenna breathed a sigh of relief and felt a little of the weight lift off her shoulders. Maybe June would know how to get in touch with Will. That would be easier than trying to find the entrance to the farm. She would feel strange just knocking on the door. "So, you think they'll be at the sales?"

"Of course, although I don't know if Betsy and William will be there. But I'm sure someone from the family will be," June said.

Will had gotten married. Kenna knew it was wishful thinking or stupidity on her part to think that after all these years he wouldn't be married. After all, he was a couple years older than she, probably around thirty-two by now. She had heard that he had graduated from the University of Kentucky and played in the NFL for a couple of years, so it was definitely stupid to think him still unmarried. Childhood crush aside, she needed help and he was the one she was depending on to give it to her.

"If you want to go to the sales this afternoon, we'd be happy to take you. Wouldn't we, sugar?" June said, interrupting Kenna's thoughts.

"Of course we would. You just come along with us if you'd like," Julius responded.

Kenna looked at her phone calendar and saw that her appointment with the Keeneston District Attorney's office was scheduled for two days from now, so time was a concern. It was best to go track down Will now and beg him to put in a good word with her potential boss. Or see if he knew of any other jobs in town if she didn't get the D.A. job. "That would be great. Thanks, June, Julius."

After finishing lunch, Kenna went to freshen up before heading out to the sales. She stared at her hair in the mirror and attempted to fluff it, but then it just ended up looking tangled as opposed to that Hollywood, windswept ‘just had great sex’ look. She looked at her clothes hanging in the closet and decided to compensate for not having the ‘just had great sex’ hair with her own Ralph Lauren skin- tight, green cable sweater. Mr. and Mrs. Perky put her in the Ralph Lauren mood. She slipped her small feet into her black Nine West, two- inch heel boots to boost her shortened height up to what she thought of as a normal height. With that, she was ready to go. Wiping sweaty hands on her jeans, she headed downstairs, trying to prepare herself for what would equate to begging and pleading for help finding a job, something she never, never, never did, especially from an old crush she thought as she rolled her eyes, who would probably not even remember her name.

Kenna found the Kranskis on the wraparound porch and walked with them down the stone path lined with daffodils. She slid into the back seat of their white Mercedes sedan.

She looked out the window as they headed toward the "big city" of Lexington. She guessed being from New York City, anything under a couple million people seemed small, but she could understand if you're from the surrounding towns of fewer than twenty-five thousand people, that Lexington with its population of three hundred thousand would be a "big city". As she stared out the window, she felt some comfort come over her as she watched the rolling hills of the farmland dotted with corn, tobacco, soy bean, cows, horses and beautiful manor houses pass by. So open and so green… she had never seen so much green.

Fifteen minutes later they approached Keeneland and turned with a steady stream of traffic into the race track. Kenna observed the beautiful landscaping and how open it seemed while at the same time a huge plane was attempting a landing over the racetrack.

"The airport is right across the street," Julius explained. "That was probably one of the Sheiks or a Royal from somewhere across the pond coming in for the sales. They'll fly into the small airport and just park the plane for a day or two.”

She nodded, showing she had been listening to him. Kenna thought it was safe to bet the owner of that plane was going to inject some cash into the thoroughbred industry.

They drove through fields of green grass, all trimmed and lined with huge old trees, up to a clubhouse. A valet came out and took the keys from Julius and went to park the Mercedes. Julius and June started a constant stream of chatter between themselves and then deftly went through the clubhouse to the paddock area. Pictures of past Derby winners and stakes winners lined the stone walls from the times they had raced at Keeneland. The majesty of the pictures, the feel of the stone building, the sounds of the horses’ hooves, and smelling the scents of cut grass, hay, oats and leather, she could just feel the history of the place and start to understand why horse racing has been such a popular sport for hundreds of years.

They stepped out of a stone walkway and into the paddock where horses were being led around with a number stuck to their hips. Hundreds of people were milling about, looking at each horse or just talking to one another. Some people where wearing Armani suits

while some were in worn cowboy boots and faded jeans. She caught the sight of one man in a simple button- up shirt, faded jeans with some tears in it, and boots that looked like they had stepped in nothing but horse crap. Yet he pulled out a state of the art Smartphone and had the keys for an Audi carelessly dangling out of his pocket. She smiled at the strange scene. Who these people were, what they wore, and the type of car they drove was of no importance. Audi driving cowboys chatted with beat- up Ford truck owners over which horse to bid on.

Taking in another deep breath, Kenna closed her eyes and let the sounds and scents flow over her. Having always been a history buff, she could just see the men and women walking around in 1936 when Keeneland first opened.  While she had been daydreaming, the Kranskis had made their way across the paddock and were heading for a string of barns.

"We're heading over to the Spring Creek Barn to check out a yearling. You see that blue and white flag over the third barn down? That's the Ashton Barn. Just make your way down there and ask for your friend. Whenever you're done, just come find us." And with that, June gave Kenna a finger wave and started to walk toward another barn. Find them? How, could she find them in this massive place?

She took a deep breath and turned toward the blue and white flag. As she walked towards it, she passed by a couple of barns proudly displaying certain colors she took to be the farm colors, much like a family crest. She slowed as she approached the Ashton Barn and saw that many people walking horses around were all wearing blue and white polo shirts. It must be a way to identify farm personnel. Some were taking horses up to the paddock while others were putting them in stalls. Still others took them out of stalls and walked them to groups of people who seemed to be examining them. Kenna assumed that they were potential buyers. She looked around and didn't see anyone she guessed to be Will. Of course, the last time she had seen him she was twelve and he wasn't quite sixteen. However, she didn't think she would ever forget those dark, chocolate brown eyes. She looked around, scanning the faces around the barn.

She sighed as she realized she needed help finding him and turned to the closest man in the blue and white uniform, “Excuse me, I'm looking for Mr. Ashton. Is he here today?" she asked the short young man leading a horse from the barn.

"Si. He over there," the blue and white clad man said in broken but understandable English. He pointed to a little hallway in the middle of the barn. It was lined with more horse stalls, and as she approached, she saw a man rubbing the nose of one of the horses. He was tall, at least six feet one inch, and his brown hair had a slight amount of gray in it near his temple. He still looked good though, even if he was a little prematurely gray.

She walked up behind him and stood for a moment staring at his back, trying to figure out how to say, "Hi, I know you haven't seen me in seventeen years, but I was hoping you could help me start a new life here in Kentucky by helping me get a job and maybe find a place to live.”

Before she could make her presence known, Will turned to her and asked, "You here to look at Miss Thing, hon?"

Kenna's mouth opened, but nothing came out. She stood momentarily locked in place taking him in. The graying hair, the brown twinkling eyes, the huge smile that showed one dimple on his left cheek, the wrinkles around his eyes, and the hands gave away his

age. It wasn't Will. She let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding, “I'm sorry. I was told Mr. Ashton was in here," Kenna said with a distracted smile on her face. She was fighting off the strange feeling that she knew this man, but couldn't place him.

"Well, then you found him. William Ashton. Nice to meet you, ma'am." Mr. Ashton stepped forward with his hand outstretched. Kenna stared for a second and then reached her hand out to grasp his. He gently, yet firmly shook her hand and gave her an approving nod when she returned the firm handshake.

THE BEGINNING

Annette Blair Bio

A New York Times best selling author for Penguin Books, Annette Blair left her job as a Development Director and Journalism Advisor at a private New England prep school to become a full time writer. At forty books and counting, she added cozy mysteries and bewitching romantic comedies to her award-winning historical romances. She’s also stepped into the amazing world of self-publishing.

Contact Annette:

http://www.annetteblair.com

http://twitter.com/annetteblair

To learn when a new book is available, sign up for Annette’s mailing list: https://www.facebook.com/annetteblairfans

Awards and Accolades:

KNAVE OF HEARTS SERIES

1991 A Heart of the Rockies Award

1991 A Dallas Area Romance Authors Award

1997 From the Heart Award Winner as KEEPING FAITH, Georgia Romance Writers

1997 RWA Golden Heart Finalist

2000 A Great Beginnings Contest Winner as SEDUCED BY A ROGUE, Utah RWA

2001 A PASIC Book of Your Heart Award Winner as A PERFECT SCANDAL

2006 A Five Star Editor's Choice: "The Best of the Best" "

2007 A Readers and Booksellers Best Laurie Winner, Smokey Mountain Romance Writers

THE ROGUES CLUB SERIES

1996 Hook, Line & Sinker Winner, Hudson Valley RWA

1996 RWA Golden Heart Finalist as Act of Charity

2002 A Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee

2002 Romantic Times K.I.S.S. Award, Knight In Shining Silver, RT

2003 A Laurel Wreath Award Winner

2003 A Holt Medallion Award Finalist

2003 A Barclay Gold Top Ten Favorite

2003 An Aspen Gold Finalist

2003 A Winter Rose Winner

2003 The Lories Best Historical Winner, Best Overall

2003 Booksellers Best Award Winner

2003 Laurel Wreath Award Winner, VCRW

2003 Orange Rose Finalist, Orange County RWA

2003 Aspen Gold Finalist, HODRW

2003 Blue Boa Award of Excellence Winner, The Peninsular Chapter RWA

2003 Most Exciting Start to a Story, Romance Reviews

2004 Booksellers’ Best Award Winner

2004 Readers’ Poll Favorite, Best Regency [Historical], Affaire de Coeur

2004 #1 Top Pick Review, October, ARR

2004 Top Pick Award, RRAH

2005 Aspen Gold Winner, HODRW

2005 Reviewers’ International Org. Award of Excellence Runner Up

2005 Regency Romance of the Year Award Nominee, HRC

2005 Gallant Rogue of the Year Nominee, Reed Gilbride St. Yves, HRC

2005 Bravest Heroine of the Year Award Winner, Larkin McAdams, HRC

2005 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence Finalist, S Magic RWA

2005 Top Ten Reads for 2004, Lynda Lukow, MyShelf

Annette Blair Booklist

Tulle Death do us Part, Vintage Magic Mystery 6, July 2013

FREE Jewels of Historical Romance, Excerpt Anthology, Jan 2013

Holy Scoundrel, Jan 2013

Moving Pictures, Sisters of Sprit Anthology, Jan 2013

The Rogues Club, A Four Book Boxed Set, Dec 2012

A Winter Heart Novella, Aug 2012

Cloaked in Malice, July 2012, New York Times Bestseller

Proper Scoundrel, May 2012

Captive Scoundrel, May 2012

FREE Sea Scoundrel, May 2012

Butterfly Garden Audio Book, August 2012

Jacob’s Return Audio Book, March 2012

Untamable Rogue, January 2012

Unmistakable Rogue, January 2012

Unforgettable Rogue, January 2012

FREE Undeniable Rogue, January 2012

Butterfly Garden, Oct 2011

Skirting the Grave, July 2011

Jacob's Return, May 2011

Vampire Dragon, April 2011

Fall in Love Like a Romance Writer, February 2011

Naked Dragon, January 2010

Death by Diamonds, July 2010

Bedeviled Angel, August 2010

You Can't Steal First, Hot Ticket Anthology, Sept 2009

Larceny and Lace, Aug 2009

A Veiled Deception, January 2009

Never Been Witched, Feb 2009

Gone with the Witch, May 2008

Sex and the Psychic Witch, August 2007

The Scot, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Dec 2006

You Can't Steal First, Hot Ticket Anthology, May 2006

Scoundrel in Disguise, May 2006

My Favorite Witch, January 2006

The Butterfly Garden, April 2005

The Kitchen Witch, Oct 2004

A Christmas Baby, Oct 2004

An Unmistakable Rogue, Oct 2003

An Unforgettable Rogue, Oct 2002

An Undeniable Rogue, Mar 2002

Thee I love, Oct 1999

Lady Patience, Sept 1999

Lady Faith, March 1999

http://www.annetteblair.com

http://twitter.com/annetteblair

To find out when a new book is available, sign up for Annette’s mailing list at: https://www.facebook.com/annetteblairfans

THE END