Holy Scoundrel by Annette Blair Page B

for her, after she’d left Arundel. He would sweep her off her feet and carry her away, saying that he realized she could no more lie with another than he could stop loving her.
    Could this be that day? Did he finally see her prevarication for what it was?
    Perhaps.
    And perhaps Ivy’s horses would turn into pigs and fly the wagon above the clouds where the sun shone still.
    Lacey opened the window, quietly now, as furious with her abductor as she’d ever been. He should have known back then that she would give him up before she would cause him to abandon his dream of breathing new life into his home and parish. She would never have destroyed him before he could earn the dignity and respect he’d craved and deserved.
    A generous, understanding, and dignified cleric now, Gabriel lived in a well-appointed home. He ran a parish of healthy, happy, and well-guided individuals . . . good and happy people because of Vicar Gabriel Kendrick. She’d heard from one that he’d helped thatch her roof, from another that he purchased the children’s schoolbooks from his own pocket for that makeshift school. When her cousin Victor traveled, Gabe apparently let the schoolchildren meet in the Ashcroft carriage house where they’d held the puppet show.
    Look at him, she thought, wide-shouldered posture rigid, no hat or coat, defying the very elements to get his way. Stubborn. Dear. Traveling a raging river of a road as turbulent and deep as the man mocking it.
    How could he explain having sent her away?
    He couldn’t.
    It didn’t matter. It was done. She cared for him too much to let this break them. Had he said much the same after service?
    She had hurt him badly. Perhaps she’d deserved his revenge, if vengeance her banishment had been.
    “Gabriel,” she called, and he turned, surprised to see her.
    “Self-punishment will prove nothing,” she said. “Take me home.”
    The wor d hom e hung in the heavy, moist air between them, the pelting rain making the possibility of home and hearth more real and more appealing.
    His features lightening, he relaxed his hold on the reins and started to speak. The horses faltered. He swore and turned back to them, but the flood seemed more than they could navigate.
    Just when Lacey thought he had them under control, lightning and thunder struck as one.
    The horses bolted, tearing the reins from Gabe’s hands, and they raced forth till all she could see was a stand of trees.
    Gabriel fought to keep his seat and shouted for her to get back.
    She did, holding to anything that wasn’t toppling, and watched, frightened to death, as he struggled to climb over the seat and grasp the sill, the wagon careening and teetering like an angry mount trying to throw its rider.
    He’d barely climbed through and cleared the window than Lacey saw that the spooked horses were about to choose opposite sides of an ancient oak.
    Gabriel had just righted himself when the wagon hit.
    A limb pushed its way through the window he’d climbed through, splintering wood, shattering glass.
    Gabriel swore as they toppled.
    Books flew from a railed shelf, coming toward them and battering Gabe about his head and shoulders, one after another.
    The wagon teetered once, twice, three shuddering times, then it settled, with a huge creaking groan, nearly upright, impaled by a tree.
    When silence came, they lay on the floor of Ivy’s wagon, locked inside, Gabriel on top of her.
     
    Awareness came to Gabe in slow measure. He first registered his own rapid breathing. Ice cold and soaking wet, his body nevertheless rejoiced at its soft resting place—Lacey.
    He allowed himself to enjoy the feel of Lacey beneath him for one long delectable moment before he raised his aching head to look into her wide, verdant eyes.
    Invisible shafts of white-hot current shot between them as if they were at opposite poles of the light flashing about them.
    In her eyes, he read awareness of his body’s awakening, his arousal rampant. He knew just