Holy Scoundrel by Annette Blair Read Free Book Online Page B

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 kno w yo u 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.