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“Of course it was! I am particularly fond of the silk fringe, which is all the rage. One cannot step outdoors without a fringe this year.”

“And would that gown cost more than I might give to a family to support Meggin for a year, in your estimation?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I despise that sort of trick, Reverend. Believe me, I’m an old hand at avoiding guilt. And I don’t think much of you for trying it. I’m not one of your flock.”

Tom grinned. “No more you are. A fact about which I am very sorry.”

She shrugged. “You’re a vicar. How else can you behave?” Suddenly she seemed utterly uninterested in him, as if he were no more than a tedious houseguest whom she was forced to entertain. “I shall ask Rees to support Mrs. Fishpole,” she said. “He can more than afford it, and he never refuses any of my monetary requests.” She said it flatly, without a gleam of triumph in her voice.

Tom looked at her until she finally looked away. This vicar with deep gray eyes was altogether disturbing. It’s only his similarity to Rees, she had told herself the night before. For all Rees had never loved her, she had loved him. And here was the vicar, with all of Rees’s unruly looks and burly body, but paired with eyes that felt as if they looked to her very soul. How annoying.

“Wouldn’t you rather sell the gown?” he asked her.

“Given all your talk of my gown, I can only assume that you wish me out of the garment,” she said; leaning back against the couch, she gave him her most enticing smile, the one she had practiced for hours.

He looked at her more intently than anyone ever had in her life; more intently than even her mama had looked when Mama knew full well that Lina had been stealing blackberries from Mrs. Girdle’s garden. “That goes without saying,” he said with a grin that made laughter lines appear around his eyes. “There’s no man alive who wouldn’t look at all those buttons and feel his fingers twitch.”

Lina couldn’t help but grin back, for all he was a vicar and she didn’t like the species. “I thought a man of God was above such feelings,” she said impudently. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs praying for your soul?”

“Who told you vicars had no feeling?” he said, looking distinctly amused. “And my soul suffers nothing from loving you, Lina. You are as beautiful a creature of God as I’ve ever seen.”

“Love?” she said, hooting. “Your tongue slipped there, Reverend!”

“No, it didn’t,” he said quietly. One touch of his hand on her cheek and she stopped her rather feverish laughter. He was looking at her that way again.

Lina felt a wash of nervous fear. “Did you hear the jest about the bishop who heard a noise in the night,” she said, “but when he got up to see—”

“Hush,” the vicar murmured, as he moved toward her, eyes intent on hers.

Lina knew why men had broad shoulders; it was so that one could clutch them when you couldn’t see. And you couldn’t see because the vicar—the vicar—had crushed his mouth against hers and he was kissing her in a way she’d never been kissed. Not by Hugh Sutherland, nor by Hervey Bittle, and never once by Rees Godwin.

“Are you”—she gasped some time later—“are you sure you’re a vicar, Tom?”

He looked at her, and his eyes were glowing with something she couldn’t quite recognize. “No question about it.”

Well, she could have answered that herself. Look at the way he never touched her below her shoulders, although his hands had made havoc of Meggin’s hairstyling. “You don’t kiss like a vicar,” she whispered. His lips were so beautifully shaped that she had to lean close again and taste him.

“And you don’t kiss like another man’s mistress. If I weren’t a vicar,” he said rather hoarsely, “you’d be in some danger, Lina.”

Lina didn’t see what she could possibly be in danger of. Sure, and she was a lost soul, they both knew that. The thought was a bit lowering. He seemed to read her thoughts.

A hand forced up her chin. “You’re no strumpet, Lina McKenna,” he told her.

“Just because you don’t like the truth does not mean that you can command it not to be so,” she said, managing a wry smile.

“I know it to be so,” he said.

She had to marvel at the confidence in his voice. Men were like that. Her father was like that. Undoubtedly, he would welcome her back as a lost sheep…forgiveness is the Lord’s, he would say.

“Doesn’t it get tiring to be so good all the time?” she said, and the edge in her voice was half for him and half for her absent father.

He was running his hands through her hair, straightening out the tangles that he had put there. “Yes,” he said frankly.

Her father never said such a thing. He was endlessly forgiving and loving, tiresomely understanding, tediously perfect. “Still, I suppose you have never broken one of your vows,” she said sharply. “Not one of the Ten Commandments and their permutations.”

Tom kept his hands sweeping through his Lina’s glorious hair. He was learning something very interesting. “I haven’t had much trouble with Thou shalt not commit adultery,” he said mildly. “It’s a good thing you’re not married. I think I prefer, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He paused and dropped a kiss on her head. “I favor adhering to that commandment, Lina. You are, after all, my neighbor.”

She ignored his punning. “What about the question of fornication, Reverend? What of that?”