Holy Scoundrel by Annette Blair Read Free Book Online

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’ s you r 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 woul d reall y think of the name.
    “Ah, I see . Tha t 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.
    “Sh e i s 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 w e gott a 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