Page 45 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
He scowled at her.
She lifted her brows, unrepentant. The termagant.
“I do need to talk to you,” Esme called on a more serious note. “I’m expert at the temporal pleasures. Always have I been indulged.”
He sucked in his breath at that statement. He must end his own indulgence. He put Willa’s hands firmly to herself and motioned to her to stay put.
“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Esme called from his gathering room.
He strode out and threw Esme a tolerant smile.
She met him, a sheepish look on her pretty face. “Aside from my vices, Charlie, I can say I’m still a virgin.”
“All credit to your fiancé,” he teased her, but his mind burned with his own lack of purity. He wanted Wills as a man and he couldn’t have her. He wanted Wills but as a vicar, he shouldn’t have her. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. A man of the cloth, he was supposed to be virginal in thought and deed. But he’d left his naiveté behind at age twelve when his best friend at Eton had been beaten to death by two bullies. Again at nineteen when he’d vomited after a cousin died, cut to pieces, in a knife fight. Nothing compared to the bloody carnage he’d tramped though on Spanish plains. Nor should he talk about anyone’s sexual life. He rarely had a need. But now he should not be discussing the morality of the daughter of that man who gave him his living.
Esme strolled closer, examining him. By the light in her eyes, he could see she knew he had thoughts other than her own pressing subject. “Well, there you have it! You do not trust me. But Northington is a gentleman.”
“Thank the Lord.” He tucked his white shirt more firmly in his breeches, then sat in the opposite upholstered Queen Anne chair. His wine decanter within reach, he topped up his glass of good red. “To your health, Madam Marchioness!”
She drank, taking her leisure before speaking again. “That’s what I want to discuss. My health.”
“Ha! Then you need a doctor or a chemist. Not a priest.”
“You consult on unhealthy humors of the soul.” She took another sip and settled back into the sumptuous cushions.
“Esme, you rid yourself of unhealthy humors years ago.”
“Bah. How do you know?”
“I rid myself of mine at approximately the same time.”
“Your’s were worse than mine.”
He lifted his glass in a toast. He had served in Wellington’s renowned army in Spain and witnessed more atrocities than he could count. Those horrors were primary motivators of his return to the clergy. “Indeed.”
“Forgive me for pointing that out.”
He pursed his lips and stared at the fire for a long minute. Then he lied. “I’ve come to terms with it.”
“Serving here can be peaceful.” From her skirt, she picked off two tiny crawling black insects.
He handed her his handkerchief to crush them.
She sagged in the chair, glum and melancholy.
He tried to draw her out. “The atmosphere soothes the soul.” He considered his glass, half empty now.
“I wish mine were soothed.”
“What bothers you, my dear Miss Harvey? You are about to become a bride of a man you adore. Or so you have told me. Have you changed your mind?”
“About Giles? No. Or rather…maybe.”
He slapped an open hand to his heart. “There’s a chance for me then?”
“Never.”
“Ah, well.” He took another draught. “A man can try.”
