Holy Scoundrel (30 page)

They went downstairs looking for breakfast right before teatime. They made their own and sat on the porch to eat.

“I need a nap,” Gabe said, and Lacey laughed.

“Seriously, they can’t find u
s
stil
l
in bed.”

“Lace,” MacKenzie called from the kitchen. “Have I come home too soon?”

“Hmm,” Lace said. “She must have come in the front door. I’ll be right back.” She got up and went inside.

Mac jumped when she saw her and pressed a hand to her heart.

“I opened it,” Lace said.

“You understand that Bridget will be labeled if it comes out.”

Lace
y
kne
w
how it felt to be labeled and exiled. “If I had not come back— MacKenzie, you were prepared to go to your grave with this?”

“To keep our girl respectably titled and acceptable in the eyes of society? Aye, I would have burned the note and died with the knowledge.”
Mac wrung her hands. “I love you. I always have. You know that?”

“It killed me that you went to Clara when I had just suffered the loss of my child.”

Mac’s eyes filled. “Don’t hate me.”

Lacey was no less affected. “I never could. You did what was best for my child, though I thought I could go away and raise her. I was young, and in love, and wrong about my daughter’s future.”

Mac began to cry softly and Lace took her old nurse in her arms. “Thank you, MacKenzie.”

Gabe came in with Bridget just then.

“Nick brought her home,” he said, as he and Lacey examined their daughter—theirs, not stillborn. They must have looked like they’d burst into tears or into song.

Lace took her daughter by the hands, and she danced her around the kitchen until Cricket giggled uncontrollably, and Gabriel and MacKenzie chuckled with her. Though Mac found it necessary to wipe her cheeks with her apron.

Gabe wasn’t too far behind.

On one of her dance passes, Lace picked up the baby sacque and sat with Bridget. “You used to wear this, sweetheart.” Lace unobtrusively peeked inside the hem.

Cricket patted her cheek and set her little head on Lacey’s shoulder, a whimsically concerned look on her face. “Can I call you Mama, now?”

Gabriel picked them up as one and carried them to the settee in the best parlor. He sat Lace beside him with Bridget on his lap.

Bridget told them about her sleepover, and she talked about the wedding, and how wonderful it was to have a Mama and Papa, both.

Mac came to get Bridget for tea, though it was difficult for Lace to give her up. “Our girl is to be given a large piece of toffee after tea, NannyMac, with a glass of milk and a song, if you please,” Lace said.

When they were alone, they became newlyweds again.

“I can’t believe that you gave up twenty thousand pounds for me. I had no idea I was worth so much.”

“That money would have belonged to the church, not me. You’re as poor as a church mouse, Lace.”

“No, I still have most of my inheritance from Ivy, don’t forget.”

“Oh, good, we’ll be homeless, but we won’t starve.”

She pulled from his kiss. “Where will we live until you find a new parish? We have to be out of here tomorrow.”

“There’s always the Towers. It’s a last resort, and today’s post might have an assignment for me. I haven’t thought to look yet.”

“I wonder why,” she said.

So he looked, but there was nothing. He did not want to move to the Towers. He did not want to keep his wife in this unforgiving town one minute more.

Mac knocked on the parlor door. “You’re little one is ready to be tucked in. Tired, she is, after a night of giggling and no sleep.”

“Me, too,” Gabe muttered beneath his breath. “We’ll be right up.”

After tucking in their daughter, they went back to their own bed. They even slept for a while.

What they woke to the next morning was a pounding at the door.

They heard Mac grumbling as she came down the stairs from the third floor. He and Lace dressed quickly and followed. Gabe checked his pocket watch.

“It’s too early to get up.”

Lacey giggled. “Because I made you cry for mercy. You used to be up with the birds, remember?”

He followed her down the stairs. “I think you ruined me.”

She winked. “I love raising the devil in a holy Scoundrel.”

Again, the knocking. Impatient. Determined.

Old Lady Prout pushed past MacKenzie at the door, her namby-pamby Olivia following.

“We’re on our honeymoon. I suggest you take up your complaint with the new vicar, whenever one is found. I no longer work here.”

Lacey entered the hall behind him, her hair a crown of well-nuzzled ringlets, curled by the steam from her bath, her face aglow with the satisfaction of a good loving. Gabe turned back to Prout and grinned.

He had a wife who looked . . . sated.

Gabe knuckled her cheek and Prout screeched. “One night of passion is a high price to pay for a life of regret,” the greedy old lady said.
“
Everyon
e
in Arundel knows that according to the Duchess of Ashcroft’s will, the man who marries her daughter, Lacey, will receive a hundred thousand pounds.”

Lacey gasped and the light left her eyes.

Prout preened. “No wonder you gave u
p
m
y
twenty thousand. Now you can put up a new church to buy back your parish, and you’ll have money left over for yourself. You’ll be the richest vicar in the kingdom.”

“What, here?” Gabe asked. “When hell freezes over.”

CHAPTER TWENTYFIVE

At the news that Gabriel married her for her money, Lacey gasped, and turned to walk away. She needed to make sense of this.

Before Gabe could get rid of Prout, Lace had run out the back door with a questioning Bridget, who had just come down for breakfast.

Fortunately, they got Ivy to feed them in the gypsy wagon, and Lacey asked him if he knew about the inheritance from her mother.

He did, and he saw her face when he admitted it.

Ivy tsked. “If you’re running away two days after your wedding
,
I’
m
doing the driving.”

“I’m not so much running as looking for a place to think, in peace, without Gabriel muddying my thoughts.”

Ivy harrumped. “Eat up, Cricket, then it’s up on the seat beside me for you. Your mama will ride inside
because she has t
o
thin
k
. And while she does, she should consider the possibility that Gabe might be one of the few who di
d
no
t
know about the inheritance from her mother. Your PapaGabe doesn’t approve of gossip, as the gossips well know.”

Ivy received Gabriel’s note to find Lacey right before he left to drive her in circles. Gabriel had written, “She can’t have gone far,” and Ivy
aimed to keep it that way.

When they stopped for, Cricket went over to see some horses, over a fence, and Ivy got down to the issue at hand. Prout and her money. Gabriel and Lacey’s mother’s money. “So,” Ivy said. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“No.”

“I’m for you going to the church to discuss it with your Maker. It’s Sunday. Service doesn’t start for an hour, and I can get you there fast. Life is never perfect, but it can be good when it’s shared with love.”

“Take me to St. Swithin’s, then, will you? Do you still keep those dark hooded capes in the wagon to wear to disguise yourself behind makeshift stages for when your larger stage won’t fit?”

“Aye, I do.”

“May I borrow one for me, and a small one for Cricket, please?”

She and Cricket slipped into the last pew at the very back of the church, the one nearest the door. She wouldn’t see Gabriel
because, well, this wasn’t his church anymore, but she could speak to her Maker and perhaps learn forgiveness from whoever did preach.

The church filled up fast, and no one seemed to notice them as they crouched, heads down, in the beggar’s pew. Cricket thought this a game and played along splendidly.

Lacey hugged her often, though her head bobbed up too many times to be comfortable.

Unfortunately for her, ’twas the bishop who took the main pulpit, a man with no sense of time who could ramble shamelessly, and so he did, too long for Cricket not to fidget, but long enough for Lacey to mourn the loss of her husband.

With her head down, shushing Cricket, she didn’t know what prompted people to begin a whisper that nearly became a roar, until she looked up and saw him—Gabe finishing his march down the aisle, in his cassock, his collar in his pocket, his buttons open so it flared behind him like a greatcoat.

So manly, so sumptuous he looked in that way, with his hair mussed
as if he’d run his hands through it a thousand times. Writing a sermon is what he’d been doing. She saw the signs.

He climbed to the minor pulpit and interrupted the bishop with barely a nod, mid-sermon to take up where the slack-jawed church leader left off.

“It appears to have been common knowledge,” Gabe said as he began, “that the man who married Lacey Ashton was to inherit one hundred thousand pounds from her mother the Duchess. Is that true?”

Most of the congregation nodded.

Gabriel sighed. “Well, I am among the few exceptions, I see. I di
d
no
t
know. And if
I
di
d
, I would NOT have married her. So . . . I suppose I am glad that I did not know
because I love Lacey Ashton Kendrick. I have loved her since I was a young man, and you should know before I go on to my new parish that I am sick for my part in sending her away.

“We did her a grave injustice, and I would claim her pain as my own, if there were any way to do so.”

Lacey closed her eyes. He could not tell the truth; it would ruin Bridget, so he did the best he could.

It wasn’t long before Lace realized that there was nothing in Gabriel to forgive; it was herself she must forgive. Gabriel must also forgive her. If only he would. For doubting him. For lying about the father of her child.

And most recently, for running away after such a splendid night of love on the word of a hateful busybody like Prout.

“Face facts, my friends. The woman you harmed with your gossip
is the least of the sinners among us.”

He looked down at his notes. “Now, I have several problems, not the least of which is this hundred thousand dollars that I find myself tethered to. Bishop, you want a church.”

Suddenly, their high holy leader was all smiles. “Yes, yes!”

“I do not. I think the crofters’ children need a school more, and I don’t suppose the new vicar will let them hold school clandestinely in the carriage house like I have been doing. Now this money is mine, not the church’s. I read Lacey’s mother’s will quite thoroughly this morning. One hundred thousand pounds to do with as I see fit. I would not have to work for the rest of my life, if I so wished. Or I could build a new church for St. Swithin’s. Or I could build a free school for the crofters’ children, and leave money for its upkeep in perpetuity.

He examined the expressions on the faces of his former congregation. “Carpenter Bracken, you are in need of work, yes? To you, I charge the wage-paying prospect of overseeing the building of the new school for the crofters’ children. You will be head
carpenter, but you will also hire and pay decent wages to bricklayers and any other tradesmen necessary.”

Carpenter Bracken nodded stiffly, probably dumbstruck to have work again.

“The new Duke of Ashcroft, Nicholas Daventry, my wife’s cousin, has donated a parcel of land for you to build on. See him for the costs of supplies and wages. They will be generous enough for your large family with a little extra for your sick little Jenny.”

Gabriel ran that hand through his hair again. “I leave you, my former congregation, my eternal good friends, with these thoughts. Never doubt the power of love, for it is that very doubt that lost me my love for a time. Judge not lest ye be judged. And be good to one another.”

He stood no longer on the pulpit of St. Swithin’s, but in the aisle near the altar of the church. “I have already signed the money over to his Grace, Nick Daventry. I am packing up my family to begin a new life if I ever find my wife. No need for concern. Newlyweds’ quarrel.”

Chuckles rippled through the church.

Lacey’s heart filled to overflowing, tears coursed down her cheeks.

Gabriel saw, in the last pew, in the beggar’s corner, a cloaked and hooded woman take a cloaked little girl by the hand to rise and step into the aisle.

There, she threw back her hood, exited the pew, and walked the center aisle of the church to meet him at the front. Their gazes locked, Lace looking penitent, but no more so than he. And in love, but no more so than he.