Page 38 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
Chapter 8
“Good afternoon, Ralston.” Wills smiled at the kindly butler who saw to the precise running of Courtland Hall as if it were a clock in Windsor Castle. “I’m so pleased to see you well.”
“As we are to have you, my lady.” He waved a few fingers at his footmen and her servants, dispersing them all to their duties of luggage and equipage. “A welcome note on your good health.”
“Yes, quite. My indisposition was mild.” Her ‘sniffles’ had truly been a foil in case her father did more than stomp his foot at her departure. She would have had to find another way to easily escape the house, but that problem had not come to fore. “I would not miss this event for the world.”
“We have you in the same accommodations as last year.” He led her into the spacious foyer, alive with the perfume of cut roses from Lady Courtland’s well-tended orangerie. “I imagine you wish to rest after your journey.”
“Briefly.” She pulled off her gloves and noticed the house was quiet. Surely her other school friends had arrived. The Livingston twins made it a point to appear to every event on time. Millicent Weaver, who had suffered a disaster here one year had written to Wills to say she hoped she’d see here here. Lady Fiona Chastain had written to say she arrived with another of their school chums. So many more would be here, looking for fun and eligible men. “Has everyone gone to the Frolic?”
“They have, my lady. If you wish, I can send a small tea to your rooms?”
“Lovely. My maid is lodged in my dressing room?”
“She is.” He stood to one side as Mary, her maid, nodded and took the broad staircase following one of the Courtland footmen.
“And Miss Harvey?” She’d love to have a few minutes alone with Esme. Her dear school friend had had a whirlwind courtship with her fiancé, the Marquess of Northington, and Wills wished to bask in the thrill of such a romance. Her own with Charlie had been all too sudden, too fleeting and oh so tragic that she questioned the accuracy of her memories.
“She is about. Shall I inform her you wish to speak with her?”
“I will wait until supper.” She dare not reveal her new course of action to anyone. Even her best friend.
“Shall I show you up, my lady?”
“You may indeed.”
* * *
By three o’clock, she’d visited with a few other guests until she’d exhausted all polite talk. Her conversation with Esme had been too brief and unrewarding because Esme was off to do work for her father. So it was time to pull up her courage and set out to grab hold of her future. She’d go to the village to view the last of the May Day festivities and find former school friends. Or that was her rationale, should anyone ask.
Tying her fichu about her throat, she picked up her bright red pelisse and secured the braided passementerie frogs closed. She perched on her head the tiny hat that matched her coat and patted the escaping tendrils of her chignon into place. Sighing at her lack of total success, she turned this way and that in the long mirror. Her hat, like all others she owned, slid to the side. Her mama often said that her inability to keep a hat on made her look tipsy.
Would that I were today. A bit of Dutch courage would be welcome.
If resolve made for valor, liquor was quicker. Alas, the Courtlands did not place decanters of the stuff in the ladies’ suites.
To rush her fate, she flipped open her little ivory accessary box in search of a hat pin. The pearl and ruby was the only remaining one—and she stabbed the long lethal thing into her straw concoction, then tapped the crown of her hat.
“Mary?” She called to her maid who was at work in the far dressing room.
“Yes, my lady?”
“I’m off to the village. Finish your sorting and rest.”
“But ma’am,” the girl said as she rushed to the doorway, “I should go with you.”
“Mary, I’m old enough not to need you to hold my hand.” The girl was six years younger and six inches shorter than she. In a melee, who would protect whom, eh? “And I know the way. I shall return in an hour or so.”
Off she went, grabbing up her little red purse and her short gloves. Down the main stairs, she hurried along through the foyer to the drive and the far lane to the village, inhaling the brisk May air, carefree as…Oh hell. Carefree as she wasnot.
I know what you are about, Willa Sheffield.(That was her mother’s voice chastising her when Wills was a naughty sprite of ten and picked all the seedlings from the winter box and threw them in the copse.)We see you.
No, Mama. You do not!
Not when she saw the charming limestone vicar’s cottage or at its rear, the little Grecian folly of white stone. The octagonal neo-classical structure was open to the air and sun and rain on three sides. Called ‘The Vicar’s Folie’, the tiny building was surrounded by a profusion of budding rhododendrons and supported by stone columns of four tall, muscular Greeks in scant costumes. The statues, which Wills swore left little to one’s imagination about the men’s virility, wore scant loincloths and grins that denoted their lascivious ambitions. As Wills passed, the four of them seemed to wink at her. In truth, they reminded her less of ancient splendor and more of one well endowed dark angel with a ready smile, a come-hither gleam and firmly sculpted lips a woman could kiss in the madness of passion.
Suddenly, that mouth was real. Those eyes smiled. That angel loomed over her, expectant, hesitant, handsome as sin.
