Virginia Heath - A Warriner To Rescue Her

‘Just one, please, Mrs...er...my lady.’

The pretty blonde woman giggled. ‘To be honest, it confuses me, too. Perhaps we should simply dispense with the formalities. Why don’t you call me Letty?’

‘In that case, please feel free to call me Cassie.’ She risked peeking at Captain Galahad, but he made no move to invite her to call him anything familiar. In fact, he looked quite irritated at her continued presence. His gorgeous eyes were distinctly narrowed, which made her babble. ‘I am new to the area. My father has recently been appointed the vicar of this parish. We live at the vicarage.’ A completely ridiculous clarification only an idiot would make. It would probably be sensible to stop babbling nonsense and wait to be asked a question. Unfortunately, once her nerves got the better of her, Cassie’s mouth had a habit of running away with itself. ‘I couldn’t help noticing you are going to have a baby.’ Was it polite to mention such things?

Whether it was or it wasn’t, her hostess smiled and Cassie watched in wonder as the young woman’s hand automatically went to her protruding stomach lovingly. ‘Yes, indeed. But not until the autumn. I appear to have got very fat very quickly.’ She handed Cassie her tea. ‘Are you engaged to be married, Miss Reeves, or is there an ardent suitor on the cusp of proposing to you in the near future?’

A very sore point.

Cassie’s odd personality, off-putting exuberance, unfortunate freckles combined with her father’s ferocious temperament had all proved to be highly effective deterrents to the male sex. ‘No to both questions, I’m afraid.’

I am doomed to sit on the shelf and gather dust; I only hope it is sturdy enough and wide enough to bear my weight.

‘Well, I am sure it won’t be long before some lucky gentleman snaps you up—you are uncommonly pretty, Miss Reeves. Isn’t that right, Jamie?’

Captain Galahad grunted and appeared very bored. Clearly he disagreed. He was sipping his tea and practically glaring at her over the rim of the ridiculously delicate cup in his large, manly hand. Or perhaps he was glaring at his sister-in-law for asking him such an impertinent question? It was quite difficult to tell.

‘Did you enjoy being a soldier, Captain?’

A safer topic might make their exchange less awkward, although this also seemed to annoy him because he frowned.

‘It had its moments.’

‘You will have to forgive Jamie, Cassie. He is a man of very few words and even fewer smiles. However, beneath that surly, unfriendly exterior he is actually rather sweet. He also paints the most beautiful romantic pictures of the English countryside.’ This comment garnered another warning glare. ‘Do you have any hobbies, Cassie?’

‘I like to write stories. Children’s stories.’ It was the first time she had admitted that to anyone, but Letty did appear friendlier than the usual person she came into contact with.

‘Oh, how lovely! What are they about?’

‘As she is a vicar’s daughter, Letty, I dare say they are morality tales,’ the Captain said disparagingly, clearly disapproving of such things. Sensible men of action like him would disapprove of her whimsical nature and romantic fairy tales.

‘Not at all!’ There was no way of explaining without sounding odd, but as Captain Galahad was of that opinion already, Cassie confessed all. ‘At the moment they are about my pony—Orange Blossom. Or rather how Orange Blossom views our life together. In my stories, she talks. All of the animals talk.’

And she was babbling again.

‘I often weave the tales around my own personal experiences. For example, the story I am currently working on is called Orange Blossom and the Great Apple Debacle...’

Her voice trailed off when she saw Letty and Captain Warriner exchange a strange look.

‘I suppose it all sounds very silly to you, but I have read one or two of my efforts to the children in my father’s congregation; they seemed to enjoy them.’ Cassie had also sworn the children to secrecy. If her father got a whiff of her vain and pointless hobby, he would forbid her from writing—or worse.

‘They sound quite delightful. Maybe you should consider getting them published.’

Cassie already liked Letty Warriner a great deal. ‘I doubt my scribblings are good enough for that. But perhaps one day.’ After my father is dead and buried—because that was the only way he would allow such self-indulgent frivolity. Unless she ever did manage to escape his clutches just as her mother had done before her. The meagre savings she had secretly accumulated in the last twelve months would barely get her a seat on the post to Norwich and there were woefully no ardent suitors clambering at her door who might whisk her off from her dreadful life. Unless a miracle happened, she was stuck.

Miserably stuck.

Her father had no idea she wrote stories about talking animals. Or about anything at all for that matter and Cassie had no intention of alerting him to the fact. It had certainly never been broached in conversation, not that they ever had conversations. Such an atrocious sin would doubtless require a great deal of solitary repentance, so Cassie had kept it all hidden. Mind you, he also had no idea that she was plotting to run away either. The image of his stern face as he spun manically in his grave at her sinful, open defiance, despite everything he had done to curb her dangerous passions, popped immediately into her thoughts and threatened to make her smile. She hid it by sipping her tea.

Chapter Three

Jamie could see the light of mischief in his sister-in-law’s eyes and did not like it one bit. If ever there was time for a speedy exit, it was now, but that meant standing like a creaking old man and then limping laboriously out of the room in front of Miss Reeves. He was torn between the devil and the deep blue sea. Staying opened him up to more mischief—of that he was in no doubt. Letty had a tendency to be tenacious when she set her mind to something and her mind was clearly set. However, leaving and displaying his infirmity was humiliating in the extreme, although why he was so keen to appear less useless in front of the vicar’s daughter was as pointless as it was pathetic. She was only being kind, after all.

‘I would certainly be interested to read The Great Apple Debacle. Will Jamie be in it?’

Pregnant or not, he was going to strangle Letty later, but for now he had to take the bull by the horns and direct this unwelcome conversation or else die of total humiliation. Unfortunately, that meant making conversation. Something he had never been adept at. ‘What drew your father to darkest Retford, Miss Reeves?’

‘The diocese sent him here. We were in Nottingham for a few months beforehand and they felt his talents might be better used in a rural parish...away from trouble.’

As Jamie had always thought Nottingham was a dire place, filled with poverty and crime, he completely understood. It was certainly no place for a lovely vicar’s daughter. ‘I dare say your father is relieved.’

‘Hardly. My father prefers working in a city, although I cannot say I do. Of all of his parishes, this one is by far the nicest we have ever lived in.’ Her face lit up when she smiled and her freckled nose wrinkled in a very charming manner.

‘You say that as if you have lived in a few places.’

She nodded, the motion causing one of her burnished curls to bounce close to her neck, which in turn drew his eyes to the satiny-smooth, golden skin visible above the bodice of her plain dress, and, of course, the magnificent way she filled out that bodice. Jamie had always had a great deal of affection for a woman’s bosom and Miss Reeves’s bosom was undoubtedly one of the finest he had ever had cause to notice.