David closed his eyes and laid his head against the back of the chair. Should he allow Rachel to make the choice? Should he allow her to decide whether to take him as he was or to continue with her present way of life? Would he be utterly selfish to do so, knowing that her answer would probably be yes? Or would he be showing her the ultimate love, giving her the freedom to choose her own life?
David passed a hand wearily across his forehead. He thought back to the previous morning, to the memories that had been almost too painful to face all of the previous day. Rachel had rejected him. He had offered her the respectability and security of his godmother's wealth and she had refused him. Yet it was not he whom she had rejected. She had been overjoyed when he had first offered her marriage. He could remember now the total surrender he had felt in her body as he had held her and kissed her.
It was the wealth and the security she had rejected. She wanted him. She did not want anything else.
And he realized for the first time the selflessness of her rejection. She had known that by accepting his compromise she would be taking from him everything that made his life meaningful. And everything that made her life meaningful too? He had seen her several times with the poor people of his parish. She had always seemed happy with them. And she had new ideas. She wanted to start a school. And there had been no mistaking her joy that night in the very unladylike scene she had witnessed and participated in.
Perhaps for Rachel too happiness lay in turning her back on the world with which she was familiar and devoting her life to the service of the poor. Perhaps. Who was he to say? It was a decision only she could make. She and her God.
He could not deny her that decision. He could not deny her the freedom to choose him if she wanted him. Or to reject him again. It must be her choice.
David slept just as dawn began to lighten the windows behind the drawn curtains.
Mrs. Saunders showed the visitors into the parlor, keeping her face expressionless despite the strange fact that the hour was very early and both gentlemen were dressed in evening clothes that had somehow lost their sparkle. She had been housekeeper to a vicar for long enough to know that all manner of people might arrive at the vicarage at any hour and in any garb. Matters had grown even worse with this new vicar, who would not turn back even the most suspicious of beggars from his door and whose fame had quickly spread through the world of vagabonds.
She sighed when she found the vicar's room empty and his bed unslept-in. He had set out for Lord Rivers' dinner and ball the evening before, but the Lord only knew where he had ended up. Holding the hand of some elderly person who was pretending to be at death's door just in order to have his company, more than likely. And the vicar would have fallen into the trap, as he had done on numerous occasions already. And would not even know that it had been a hoax until she informed him of the fact.
She checked the vicar's study halfheartedly and was surprised to find him fast asleep in his chair, one leg thrown over the arm, his head drooped forward on his chest, his best clothes-his only really respectable clothes, apart from his church vestments-looking as if they were ready for the rubbish heap. His hair-that lovely dark, thick, shiny hair that made her so proud of him on a Sunday morning when he stood in the pulpit- looked as if it might have been lifted straight from the head of a scarecrow.
Mrs. Saunders clucked her tongue and woke the vicar up.
Two minutes later a wide-awake and dismayed David rushed into the parlor without having made any attempt to tidy himself for his visitors.
'Lord Edgeley,' he said, 'your pardon, please. I fell asleep. How could I have done such a thing. Algie?'
'Rachel is missing,' the earl said. He had not sat down. 'You have not had any word of her, have you, Reverend?'
'Yes, indeed,' David said. 'She is asleep upstairs.'
He knew as soon as he had said the words that the mistake he had made in falling asleep was a far more serious one even than he had first thought. For the few minutes since he had awoken, he had been concerned merely with the unnecessary worry he must have caused Rachel's parents. Only now did it strike him how dreadfully improper it must appear to the two guests to arrive at the house and find that both he and Rachel were sleeping in it. Somehow the presence of Mrs. Saunders in the same house did not add the respectability that he had mentioned to Rachel the night before.
Algernon turned without a word and stood looking out of the parlor window, legs slightly apart, hands clasped behind his back. The Earl of Edgeley stood very still.
'Lady Rachel came to the Perkinses' cottage last night just as the storm broke,' David explained. 'I happened to be there with Mrs. Perkins, trying to comfort her until the midwife arrived. Rachel had to help me deliver the baby, and then we set out for Oakland. But I am afraid we left too early. The uphill road to the house was far to dangerous under the circumstances. I brought her here.'
The earl coughed. 'I see,' he said. 'This is a devilish coil.'
'I will gladly offer her the protection of my name if you consider her honor has been compromised, my lord,' David continued quietly.
Algernon turned from the window. He was looking more grim than David had ever seen him. 'I'll be damned before I see Rache forced into marriage out of any notion of honor. Begging your pardon, Edgeley. I shall offer for her myself. At least I can offer her a lifelong affection.'
'I have my heart to offer, Algie,' David said. 'Very little else, I am afraid. But if his lordship is satisfied with respectable employment and Rachel with the devotion of my love, then I will offer her all I have to give.'
Algernon searched his cousin's eyes for a few silent moments. He nodded finally. 'Good luck then, David, my boy,' he said.
The earl cleared his throat. 'If only this whole incident were not quite so public,' he said. 'We have two housefuls of servants, my houseguests, and most of the guests at last night's ball out hunting for my daughter. There will be a scandal. I am going to leave the decision to Rachel, Reverend. Her mother and I will advise her that she need not feel herself compromised to the extent that she must marry you. We will be prepared to help her live down the gossip. Whether you will be able to live it down, sir, with those parishioners who demand total moral rectitude from their pastor, is a problem that you must face.'
David bowed. 'May I have the honor of calling on your daughter and paying my addresses this afternoon?' he asked.
When Rachel appeared in the doorway in a gown that looked even more crumpled than it had a few hours before as a result of the fact that she had just let it fall to the floor when she undressed, she was looking extremely ill-at-ease. Mrs. Saunders had told her that David had been sleeping in his study when her papa and Algie arrived. He had not gone at dawn, then, to explain the situation. Poor David. He must be feeling dreadfully guilty.
He was standing with his back to the fireplace opposite the doorway, looking pale, tired, and incredibly untidy. For once even his eyes were not smiling.
And then somehow she was in Algie's curricle with her papa while Algie took his gig from the back of the vicarage. And Papa was gravely advising her that her unwise behavior of the night before had put her in a very compromising situation but that she should not feel herself totally bound to accept Mr. Gower when he called on her that afternoon. There would be a nasty scandal, of course, and all their guests were to leave the following day to carry news of it to the far corners of the kingdom. But what was that to them? They would brave local opinion in the knowledge that scandals were quickly forgotten.
David was coming to offer her marriage! And all because road conditions had forced them to spend the night in the same building, albeit on different floors and with the added presence of a female housekeeper!
He was going to do the honorable thing and make an honest woman of her.
Over her dead body!
***
Rachel was not in the house when David called that afternoon. She was supposed to be. She had been excused by the countess from the ride that was to be the final daytime activity for the houseguests and sent to her room to get ready. Both Mama and Papa had explained to her that they would not try to force her to accept David's offer, but both had been insistent that she receive that offer with the proper decorum.
But she had slipped outside. She had been tempted to leave altogether, to walk up into the hills, or to go and
