A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) Read Free

always wonderful advice, and often such a challenge. I hope you plan to come round to supper this week so we can discuss plans for the auction and the rest of the Winter Festival?”
    A series of events to raise funds for the local poor were planned—an auction, a small assembly, a larger ball—and she and her committee were coordinating them, but his approval and opinion was solicited. The ladies were indispensable, really, given the endless nature of parish duties.
    Indispensable and maddening. A piquant combination.
    “I wouldn’t miss it for anything, Mrs. Sneath,” he assured her.
    “My niece will be visiting from Cornwall and joining us for supper.” She added this slyly.
    Ah, but of course, she would. “How lovely it will be to meet another member of your family.”
    “Her needlework is unparalleled.”
    “You must be very … proud.”
    Because that was when he saw her: the petite woman flanked by another woman roughly the size of a bear. She was blinking in the sun, like a creature emerging from a cave. And well she might. An accusing shaft of celestial light had illuminated her during the sermon, and that’s how he’d noticed she’d been fast asleep, slightly slumped against the bear of a woman. Not only that, but snoring a bit, too, if the fluttering of the net on her hat was any indication.
    Not once before had anyone slept through one of his sermons. He’d directed nearly the entirety of it to her, out of incredulity and indignant pride.
    Fragments of their low and heated discussion floated to him as Mrs. Sneath spoke.
    “Funny how you’re suddenly an etiquette expert, Henny, when the vicar looks like …”
    “ … ’aven’t the faintest idea what a ‘donnis’ might be, but fancy words aside, I’ve been starved for scenery since we’ve arrived, if ye take me meaning, me lady, so if ye’d be so kind as to …”
    “ … don’t want to make myself conspicuous, Henny, and you know …”
    “Did you enjoy the honey, Vicar?” Mrs. Cranborn had slipped past Mrs. Sneath and was now aiming a radiant smile at him.
    “The hon—oh, yes, thank you so much again for the kind gift.”
    He was forever being given jars of things, honey and jam and apples and ointments, which he supposed was a way of reminding him how much more pleasant his life would be should he ever decide to give a woman the run of it. He remained “dangerously unmarried,” or at least this was how his aunt Isolde Eversea put it. But then she would, given the nerve-taxing his cousins Colin and Ian had given her. Mercifully unmarried was often how Adam viewed it. The dreams of standing naked at the altar had been supplanted by dreams of swimming through the vicarage up to his neck in blackberry preserves, only to find the door neatly embroidered shut by the word “Bless Our Home.”
    To his surprise, the small woman and the bear approached.
    Mrs. Cranborn glanced up at the large woman in dark bombazine, recoiled in rank astonishment, and reflexively stumbled a few steps back.
    And so Adam took his first look at the woman he’d clearly bored. She seemed comprised entirely of vivid contrasts: black curls at her temples and alabaster cheeks and eyes like the proverbial jewels, so green, they seemed, even through that scrap of net that fluttered from her hat. Her pelisse hung and swung and clung flawlessly, a fit only the most exclusive of seamstresses could accomplish—this much he knew about women’s clothing. She seemed unreal, like something out of a storybook. He supposed she was beautiful. But he was moved by women who seemed touchable, unwrappable, like Lady Fennimore’s daughter Jenny, whose soft hair was forever coming out of its pins. This one seemed entirely contained, as sealed and gleaming as a jar of preserves.
    “I hope you don’t think it inappropriate, Reverend, since we haven’t been properly introduced. But I wanted to thank you for the sermon.” The glance she slid over to her bear-sized companion said