Holy Scoundrel (12 page)

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 mus
t
mak
e
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 wor
d
hom
e
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 motherin-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.