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“ G wen, dearie. There’s a man at the door. The front door.”

Gwen, her arms elbow-deep in straw, peered down from the roof of the small sty. Dovey stood on the packed dirt of the rear courtyard, frowning at a small white rectangle in her hand.

“What kind of— oof .” Gwen sputtered as a bundle of wheat straw sailed upward and smacked her in the face, flattening her against the pitch of the roof. At least she didn’t fall off. Little good she’d be to anyone at St. Sefin’s if she ended up in the hospital ward.

“Pardon, Miss Gwen.” Evans, propped against his crutch, flexed his good arm and turned red to the tips of his ears. “You said toss up the last bundle.”

“That I did,” Gwen said, rubbing at the burn on her cheek. A sight she’d be, performing tonight for the Vaughns. “Has someone received our guest, if he’s a seeker?”

Silence drifted below as Gwen unrolled the whisps of straw and levered the thatch into place with the spar.

She knew why neither volunteered, though Evans had lived at St. Sefin’s for nearly all the seven years she and Dovey had been running the place.

Dovey disliked dealing with strangers, and strangers disliked dealing with Evans.

“He’s a Sais ,” Dovey said.

Gwen sighed. “A complaint, then, if he’s an Englishman.” She tossed the twisted stick to the ground and climbed down the ladder while Evans steadied it with his hand, then she dusted her scratched hands with bravado. “I’ll turn him off right quick, shall I?”

Evans scanned the sky, his sidewise glance landing on Dovey. “You may tell Mrs. Van der Welle I’ll help her take the linens off the line, as it bodes rain.”

Dovey marched toward the shadow of the great stone building, the jagged roof etched against the pearl-grey clouds rolling up from the river. “You may tell Mr. Evans,” she tossed over her shoulder, “I don’t need his good hand nor any part of him.”

Gwen shook her head at their arguing, grown worse of late.

“St. Aled’s head! What are the two of you chopsing about now?

” She stowed the wooden ladder in the small outbuilding that held their other tools, then caught up with her friend.

“Mayhap the Sais wants to hire a harper and heard none plays the telyn so well as Gwen ap Ewyas.” They could use the money; they always did.

“He gave me this.” Dovey thrust out a small white card.

Gwen didn’t catch the gasp before it escaped her. Mr. Barlow, Bristol. Solicitor.

“What’s it, then?” Dovey didn’t read, claiming she was too busy to sit while Gwen taught Dovey’s daughter her letters in English and Welsh.

“A legal man.” Gwen smoothed the kerchief pinned to the bodice of her grey flannel gown. “Oh, Saint Gwladys, preserve us.”

A legal man boded no good. Sleepy Newport thought to grow of a sudden, workers flooding South Wales as the coal fields spread.

The new Monmouthshire canal lured more ships to the harbor, reeling goods up and down the Severn in an endless chain.

And the Saeson poured in too, thinking they owned what was and always had been Welsh land.

Evans pointed behind them with his crutch. “I, uh, think Tomos said the winch on the well needs oil. He struggled with it this morning.”

“And I’m to ask Widow to help me take in the linens.” Dovey made a beeline away.

St. Sefin’s had been Gwen’s idea; she had to accept that she was the face of it.

She wiped her hands on the woolen shawl at her waist, apron and catchall, and strode through the gardens bristling with spring color.

The camelias bloomed red at their hearts and the cherry tree blushed pink as a bride, tugging her heart with a fierce, bright sense of belonging that burrowed deeper each season. This was her home.

A small man stood on the porch, somber and strict in a black wool coat, glaring at the stern walls of the ancient priory.

He seemed unmoved by the mellow golden glow of the thick limestone walls as they caught the last afternoon sun before it slid between a veil of clouds.

Gwen wished she’d paused to pull the straw from her hair and straighten her gown.

Fine folk wouldn’t hire her to harp in their parlors if they thought she’d turn up in her dirt.

“ Prynhawn da ,” Gwen greeted him, and saw from the slant of his grey-peppered brows that he didn’t speak a word of Welsh. “Good afternoon. Do you wish a tour, Mr. Barlow?”

English liked to holiday in Wales, where the woods had not yet been burned up for fuel nor the hills tilled down for farming.

Medieval ruins like St. Sefin’s were picturesque, and Gwen never turned away tourists willing to place a few coins in her palm for the privilege of seeing where a Welsh nun once slept and said her prayers.

Barlow scowled. “I am not a tourist, Mrs.—”

“Miss,” she answered coolly. “Gwenllian ap Ewyas.” She made no move to curtsey. This man was not her better, despite his condescending manner. The false name slipped out easily after all these years.

“Can you explain to me, Miss Why-yes—” He stumbled over the pronunciation—“why you appear to be inhabiting a property owned by the Viscount Penrydd?”

Alarm churned in her belly, and instinct shrieked at her to run. Gwen straightened her shoulders.

“You are mistaken, Mr. Barlow. St. Sefin’s was abandoned years ago.”

The priory, once home to an order of Cistercian nuns, had fallen into quiet ruin when Gwen arrived at its door.

She and Dovey made the place as habitable as they could, tacking oiled paper in the openings where the medieval church had held arched clerestory windows, filling in the occasional crumbling block with rough plaster.

Mr. Barlow regarded the barred opening in the tower as if Gwen had been personally responsible for melting down the bell that had hung there.

“The property may have been, or should be, empty, but I assure you Lord Penrydd holds the deed,” the solicitor said.

“I…ah.” Gwen flailed, her mind swallowed by one thought. Someone owned St. Sefin’s . Someone not her. That meant she was a trespasser. They all were.

Barlow’s gaze turned hawkish. “Have you gained his lordship’s permission to be here? For I have not handled any arrangements for tenancy.”

Lie , instinct shrieked. Gwen hated lying. She had lied once, as a child, and the consequences were devastating.

“You’ll be well, mam,” she’d whispered at the bedside of her mother as she lay, pinched and thrashing, in the grip of childbed fever. “You’ll pull through.”

But she hadn’t. A week later Gwen had stood at the graveside with her silent, stricken father and understood her mother had been taken, and the infant boy with her, because Gwen had lied, and God heard her.

But if a falsehood would keep a roof over the heads of the people she cared about, Gwen would lie till she choked on it. She pulled her lips into a brittle smile.

“Only a lark, Mr. Barlow. I fancy the place, so I give tours now and again for a bit of silver.” She forced out a laugh, a cackle. “No one actually lives in this old pile.”

“Mistress Gwenllian!” The vicar strolled toward them over the small green hill that led to the gulch dividing St. Sefin’s from the parish church. Ifor shuffled behind the vicar, his favorite goat, Gafr, on a rope beside him, both their heads hanging low in shame.

The vicar patted the boy’s shoulder. “I’m afraid there’s been an upset again today.”

Gwen swallowed a groan. “What did Gafr eat this time?”

“I’ve given Ifor leave to graze his friends in the churchyard, mind,” the vicar said. “But it seems that visitors to St. Woolos do not look kindly on our local goats munching grass grown on the bones of their dearly departed. Little as the departed may care.”

Barlow stared at the boy’s blind, unfocused eyes with an expression of revulsion. Then he turned a disapproving stare on Gwen.

“Perhaps you might show Gafr to his pen, Ifor,” Gwen suggested. “I fixed the roof.”

Ifor lifted his head. “Did you, Miss Gwen? And without my help even. Well, let’s have a look, Gafr.” He let his crooked staff and the goat guide him along the pebbled path.

“Your son, Miss Ewyas?” Mr. Barlow inquired.

“Heavens, no,” the vicar said with a friendly smile. “Ifor was left on the porch of St. Woolos years ago. Miss Gwen saved his life when she took him in. She’s saved many a life, if you must know. As much a saint as the good sisters who dwelled here before her, she is.”

Gwen held her breath, waiting for a heavenly pillar of fire to reduce the vicar to smoking ash for that heresy. Or scorch her. But the only heat came from Mr. Barlow’s tight-lipped glare.

“And all of this taking place, I presume, without the Viscount Penrydd’s knowledge or permission, though the property belongs to him.”

“Penrydd? Him with the empty estate near here? That’s grand for the neighborhood if the new lord’s taking up the reins. He’s never set foot in Wales.” The vicar winked at Gwen. “He’s a young one, I hear, and handsome, or least he was before…well, before.”

A salty breeze chilled her skin, and Gwen stripped her shawl from her waist to draw it about her shoulders.

More proof to her lie wound its way up Church Street, passing the copse of trees that divided St. Sefin’s from the growing town of Newport.

Tomos’s face lit with a placid grin when he spotted Gwen, and he trotted over to slip his hand in hers.

“It won’t do, Miss Gwenllian.” The tanner still wore his leather apron, reeking of chemicals. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “I’ve tried, and the missus has tried, but our boy’s as good as a fart in a jam jar when it comes to the trade.”

Gwen tugged Tomos’s hand away as he reached, fascinated, for the solicitor’s beaver hat. “Perhaps we might apprentice him to the hatter?”

The tanner shook his head. “Fact is, he’s too simple for the work, and he wanders off when it takes his fancy. There’s the new lady running the pie shop?—”