Page 36 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
“But the coachman may have reason to tell your parents that you did.”
“I’ll take a chance on that. But you will know nothing. Only that I fetched a letter.”
“A love letter then?” Mary ventured, her expression troubled. All in the de Courcy household knew of the rift between father and daughter—and the cause.
“No. Far from that.”
Mary seemed to accept that and Wills settled into the squabs.
Four hours later, her traveling coach rounded the drive to Courtland Hall. She’d taken the opportunity of the quiet time in the family carriage to solidify her plans for ‘Miss Edith Stanley’. Truth was that Lady Willa Sheffield was about to vanish. She would not go to France in June with her irascible father. She would not marry one of his obnoxious candidates for her husband. Nor would she ever be able to marry her darling Reverend Charles Compton. She had committed herself to becoming Miss Edith Stanley before he’d arrived at her home and proposed marriage. Even if she no longer believed that she was a curse to men who wished to marry her, she had pledged to change her life. She would not go back on her promise to her new employer, nor to herself. She would change her life immediately after she enjoyed herself at this house party for the last time.
In three days, she would become someone else. Fashioned of her own efforts, Miss Edith Stanley would begin a new life. Without mother, father, friends. And without charming Charles Compton.
* * *
Charlie turned at the door of Eunice Billoughby’s cottage and prayed he might give her more than words of comfort and a few potatoes for soup. “You’ll need help peeling those vegetables, Mrs. Billoughby. I’ll send my housekeeper down to you.”
“No, sir!” The woman was just as proud and stubborn as her husband. But the broken arm she cradled in the sling the village doctor had made for her, would attack that pride with pain. Nor would she take aught for her anguish, save her husband’s jug of gin. Serve him right for her to drink up his lot. But two drunks in the family would bring disaster on the four little children who depended on both parents to survive. “I will not have her. I can do for us.”
“Vicar!” George hailed him with a hand weaving in the air as he stumbled to the door. “Send the woman. Ol’ ‘Unice here needs a hand.” He gave a rueful chuckle at his double meaning.
She gave her husband the evil eye. “You broke me arm, you fool.”
“And you must help your wife, Mr. Billoughby. Go to bed. Sober up!” George had become a mean drunk in the past few months. The worst kind. Robbed of the pride the man should have to feed and clothe his family in the right way of honest labor, George took to Blue Ruin to salve his wounds.
Charlie nodded. “Good day to you both.”
Eunice snarled at her husband.
Charlie swung round, determined to let man and wife argue it out. These days, he had less and less patience for those who would not help themselves.
He strode away, cursing to himself. A bad habit he must break. He took pains not to excuse himself for it either, as had been his want for so long. Perhaps, he was suffering from lack of favor by God since not only had Willa refused his suit, but also her father.
Over the past year, he had certainly taken more gratification from serving his father, his editor and the foundling hospital than he had preaching sermons or tending his flock. As Reverend Peoples, he’d published two novels and thrown himself into writing a third. While he was more confident of his income because of all his extra duties, he questioned with greater frequency his decision last year to return to serving the church. He certainly had no saving grace to offer many in his parish. Tom Stockdon continued to love to settle his differences by using his fists on his neighbors. Two little girls, daughters of a sweet widow, had fallen into the icy river last winter and drowned. Annie Wargins had died in childbirth. George Billoughby would not stop his love of liquor.
What good was he doing here?
He trod the lane, kicking one stone and another to punctuate his anger.
A movement caught his eye.
He paused as he examined the Courtland mansion through the apple trees. A carriage approached the house along the circular drive. At sight of the smart yellow traveling coach drawn by four blacks, he identified whose it was. His heart gave a leap of joy just as his stomach clenched.
Wills. Charming Wills. Laughing Wills. Superstitious Wills who thought she killed men who wanted her.
Why not marry me, my lady? No one can kill me. I’ve proven that on more battlefields than I can count. And here at home what kills me is my failure to help anyone.
But he couldn’t marry her. Her father would kill him if he did. And he would hate himself for splitting their family in two. So there was all that.
Garr! He resembled a girl plucking petals from a daisy, reciting foolishness. Young and yearning for a solution that was invisible. Impossible.
But his feet would not move. His eyes had to feast. The elegant figure dressed in vermilion alighted from the coach. The Courtland family butler Ralston fluttered around her. She addressed him in her animated way, her little redhat with three huge white feathers waving gaily in the breeze. The little chapeau teetered on the wealth of her ink black hair and revealed the long line of her neck. She was a swan, gliding forth in a world that celebrated her beauty and her humor, as it should.
He mashed his teeth together. If she were his, he’d stomp on every damn hat she owned, discard every smart pelisse and gown to make her his in the flesh. Her glorious flesh.
As if stricken, she paused upon the stones and turned toward him. Did she sense his gaze? He believed it, silly man. Could she see him amid the foliage? Vain of him, but he hoped so. He wanted her to want him…and knew it was silly to tempt her—and him. He knew her line of sight because last year whenever he’d found her, he had a sense of her presence, long before they’d spoken. In the past year, he’d often halted at odd places at odd times of day or night to stand, paralyzed, recalling a moment with her here, an hour with her there. He’d remember how she walked, a flow like water rushing downstream, graceful and swift. She’d dazzled him, an ivory-skinned beauty with a faint pink blush upon her cheeks and mouth. When she spoke, her voice matched her essence, lyrical and lovely—and deep. She’d stolen his breath with her delicate Renaissance beauty—and stolen his heart with her insight.
Oh, blast it! A man who cannot make his body do what it must to walk on is a man who is dicked in the head. And God knew, fighting Napoleon, snatching up a man’s severed arm, replacing a soldier’s intestines in his belly or walking two miles with a bleeding man in his embrace should have made him crazier than falling in love with a woman he could never have.
