Annette Blair Read online

  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 appea
r 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.