Page 7 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
Chapter 2
“What will you do for love?”
He rose early the next morning, her words ringing relentlessly in his head like bells on Christmas day. He wanted facts and answers. Who had been her suitors. How had they died. When. By what reason could she possibly believe she was to blame. Certainly, logic would destroy her superstitions.
Last night, he’d given up his tossing and turning and decided to end his misery and quiz her about her superstition.
He’d been invited up to the main house, as he always was, for any meal or tea or party. So not unusually, he arrived promptly at seven, ready to partake of breakfast and catch her dining. However, Ralston the butler told him she’d already come and gone, leaving with friends at dawn for a ride along the Avon. Lest he appear to Ralston and the staff to be stalking her, he gave his thanks, then returned to his work…and his pondering of her rare but intriguing question.
At one, he’d run up to the house for luncheon. But she’d beaten him to the draw there and sat with a few friends to dine. There was, sadly, no more room to sit at her little table. But he caught her glimpsing him, shrugging her shoulder in apology and offering a smile. Afterward, she’d gone off to the card room to have a go at her luck there.
Odd to think she’d believe she could win at cards but be unlucky in love. But he had learned long ago from contretemps with his mama not to argue with a woman, especially if it involved money or men.
He’d sighed, and retired to his cottage to write his sermon for tomorrow. Only words about superstition appeared on the page and he thought them too pointed to be used. After all, she would attend the service, hear his views on the subject and not appreciate his use of her challenge to instruct others. Indeed, Lady Willa did not appear to appreciate too much logic on this particular subject of curses.
At dinner that night, his own luck to get next to her ran high. A buffet had been laid out for the guests and he took the opportunity to maneuver his way next to her in line and at table. She wore a gown of pink and cream that gave her complexion a glow that made his mouth water. He was convinced that if he could savor the perfect sweetness of her skin, he’d be nourished for the rest of his life. Plus, he had a devil of a time keeping his mind on her words, her plump bowed lips the purest aphrodisiac to his heart and inspiration to his loins. Indeed, his mind long gone to spicy matters, he prayed she said nothing of any import. As a footman came round to their little table for two with a selection of small cakes, Charlie could wait no longer.
“Come stroll with me around the conservatory?” Lady Courtland had announced the party was to adjourn to her large glass hot house to enjoy the fragrances of the viscountess’s skills with roses and camellias. One of the guests was to play the violin.
Lady Willa beamed at him and the flood of his appreciation for her smile did nothing to lessen the problem he had with breeches that seemed even smaller than before. “Oh! You’ve heard from…?” She lifted her brows.
“Not yet.” He hadn’t formulated his appeal to Him yet. One needed more information before one hared off to ask for special favors, true? “I must learn more of this.”
“He needs details?” she joked, as a bit of pink icing clung to a corner of her mouth.
“Indeed.”
“Odd, don’t you think?” Her luminous eyes caught his attention to the corner of her lips where icing beckoned his own lips and even…yes…his tongue. But she frowned. Then she examined Charlie so closely, he wondered if she might put her lips right up to his as she whispered, “He knows, does He not, what has occurred?”
“One would think so.” He fought the urge to bend down and lick the sweetness from her lovely lush mouth. “But He is busy.”
“Busy. Yes. He must be.” She pulled away. Her tongue darted out to swipe away the icing. “Preoccupied with the war, I take it?”
“The price of wheat,” he supplied, shifting as his cock rose to unbearable fullness. His mind went blank. Should not the Good Lord be concerned about the nothingness in his head and pull his concentration from the words and lips and breasts of divinely tantalizing Willa?
“Very well. I will tell you all.”
Minutes later, he led her to pause amid the branches of the red and pink flowers while someone ran a bow over a few strings of an instrument. Amid the foliage, she and he stood too far from the crowd to be overheard, but better still, far enough away to wince at the screeching from the poor violin which was so horribly abused!
She closed one eye. “Whoever that is, they must take up embroidering.”
“Lady Courtland should hand out earmuffs!”
She grinned. “Then I would not hear you.”
“Why would that be a problem?”
“Your voice,” she said in the rush of confession, no maidenly embarrassment accompanying the statement. “It resembles the rumbles of summer storms.”
He was the one who was flustered, opening his mouth, but snapping it shut. He’d never been so ardently complimented before by a lady, but for her to praise him had him fighting the impulse to haul her against him and kiss her senseless.
“I’m certain the ladies come to hear your sermons because they like the sound of your baritone.”
He curled his fingers into his palms, lest he carry her off then and there. “They have not said.”
“Nor will they. Coo, perhaps. Preen, most likely.” Her molten gaze resting in his told him more of her own desires than her words.
He went blind in a fog of his enchantment.
