Holy Scoundrel by Annette Blair Read Free Book Online Page A

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 word s shoul d 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 Prou t 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, calle d Grimm for Girls , in which she’d left out the gruesome parts. Lacey rea d Snow Whit e —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 rea d Rapunze l 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