A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) Read Online Free PDF Page A

gentleness. “I apologize for startling you. It wasn’t my intention.”
    To her horror, heat bloomed in her cheeks again.
    “My maid is very nearby,” she said shortly, struggling to hide her embarrassment. “And I don’t mind the cold.”
    “I’ll just see if I can be of some assistance to your driver then, shall I?”
    When she said nothing, he made a very elegant bow and turned away from her. She stood still as a stone, watching as he hailed the driver and her footman, who greeted him cheerily. All those male heads gathered together, the powdered one and her stocky, hatless driver and Mr. Sylvaine’s fair one, conferring in low voices. While the driver gently held the horse’s head, the vicar bent and lifted up the glossy animal’s hoof and inspected it. Evie watched in astonishment as he tugged his cravat free of his waistcoat and carefully, almost tenderly, wrapped the horse’s hoof to the evident approval of her staff.
    And then he turned and waved a farewell, striding up the road, no doubt toward his original destination. Cravatless.
    She watched him go.
    At last she heard the huffing of Henny’s breathing before she saw Henny, then Henny crested the hill, skirts lifted in her hands, exposing a few inches of thick, sturdy ankle decorously covered in thick, sagging woolen stockings. sagging. “I fear no one answered me knock at the door, m’lady.”
    She dropped her skirts and froze in place when she saw her mistress’s face.
    Her eyes went wide.
    Then she narrowed them shrewdly and swiveled her great head about and raised a hand to shade her eyes when she saw Adam Sylvaine walking away, posture like a soldier’s, stride long and easy.
    Silently, they both watched him.
    They in fact watched long enough for it to become ridiculous.
    He never once looked back.
    “Now that one is a man,” Henny pronounced finally. As though they’d been debating the topic.
    Evie snorted. “The country air has curdled your brain.” She tossed her head and strode toward the carriage. Henny followed on her heels, still huffing.
    “Now ye listen to me. Ye think ye’re worldly and grand now and that ye’ve known every sort of man there is to know. But if ye’ve too many flowers in your garden, they all start to smell the same, dinna they? Ye canna tell one from another. And I tell you, that one is better.”
    “Because he’s a vicar? For heaven’s sake, Henny,” she said wearily, “he’s … just a man.” It was easier to use the word “just” to describe Adam Sylvaine when he wasn’t standing near enough for her to count the colors in his hair. “Beneath their clothes, under the skin, they’re all the same. It always becomes evident eventually. It matters not whether they look like angels or gargoyles.”
    “I didna say he was saintly, or even good. I said he was better,” Henny maintained obstinately. With the maddening air of superiority she liked to adopt when she couldn’t support an argument.
    In her weakened state, the word “better” for some reason cut Evie too close to the bone. She’d no hope of being better, it seemed. Life had seen to that, and it had taken on a momentum of its own long ago. Still, she hadn’t any regrets. Regrets implied she could have made other choices, and she wasn’t certain she could have. Certainly, she’d viewed her life as a triumph of planning until recent events had exploded it like a cue taken to racked billiard balls.
    “It might behoove you, Henny, to remember that age doesn’t necessarily bequeath wisdom.”
    “Ye only use words like ‘behoove’ when you know I’ve the right of it. And mind you, better means he isn’t for the likes of you, rag-mannered chit that ye are.”
    “A rag-mannered chit who has tolerated your cheek for much too long.”
    They bickered with comfortable familiarity all the way back to the carriage.
    The driver and footman had just finished reharnessing the horses and scrambled upright when the two of them