The Seduction of Scandal by Cathy Maxwell

Author:Cathy Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-08-31T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Shortly before noon the next day, Will burst through the kitchen door to announce, “The whole village knows my cousin has come to visit.” He was hatless, as if he’d left the church in a hurry. “Everyone. I’ve had three people ask after you.”

Corinne sat reading at the table. She looked up in a show of mild surprise. “Oh, are you speaking to me now?” This morning, when she’d come downstairs, he’d kept his nose buried in a book and had refused to look at her, let alone say a good morning.

He stabbed his fingers through his hair in frustration. “This is what I feared. Gossip will spread through the village faster than a fire. Before supper this evening, everyone will know my cousin is here. Mrs. Gowan promised to keep your presence secret. I can’t imagine she’d break such a promise—” His eyes narrowed on the bucket by the dry sink. “What is this? Fresh water?” He picked up the bucket and gave it a sniff. “Did you pump this?” He didn’t wait for her response but launched into the diatribe she knew he wanted to deliver. “I told you to stay inside. You assured me no one would see you if I let you stay here. And you were wrong. If you had stayed at the reiver’s hut, no one would have known you were here because you wouldn’t be here. Now everyone is speculating and asking questions. It’s the questions they don’t ask to my face I need to worry over.”

“Mrs. Gowan told me this morning no one will say anything to Lord Bossley or Major Ashcroft.”

“Oh, yes? The two of you are cozying it up, aren’t you? Well, let me inform the two of you that gossip doesn’t work that way. And Bossley aside, what if the bishop hears word of this? That I’m keeping a woman who pretends to be my cousin in the rectory. Then he will say something to Bossley. Or to Freddie.”

That last sobered Corinne immediately. “I didn’t go out. Mrs. Gowan pumped the water for me. And she said she told her husband but no one else.”

“Then how does anyone know you are here?” he said to himself, pacing from one end of the small kitchen to the other.

Corinne immediately knew the answer. “Her daughter. Mandy is a chatterbox.”

“Yes, but who would listen to her?”

Men never understood the workings of society.

“Anyone. Everyone,” Corinne replied. “You are an important person in the village.”

“I’m just the rector.”

“You are the rector, the only one in the whole parish with that title,” Corinne said, then began ticking off other important points on her fingers. “You are also single, handsome, related to Bossley.” She shrugged. “It’s a wonder the gossips aren’t camped out in your garden.”

He pulled a frown, shook his head, half-turning from her . . . but then he said, “Would they really pay that close attention?”

“Is there something else to take their minds off of their own lives? Father always said gossip

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