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“ I would not stake money that the Vaughns will help us,” Dovey said when she heard Gwen’s plan.

Gwen sucked in her breath to close the last button of her jacket. Her chest hurt, her ribs fragile and bruised as if Barlow’s words that afternoon had dealt a physical blow. She winced as she pinned a neckerchief to the lapels of her collar and pricked her skin.

Once she’d been offered rooms of gowns. Hats, shoes, chemises, the finest silks from France, linens white as the snow on the head of Yr Wyddfa.

Now she slept in a drafty stone room that had housed a medieval prioress, and her best gown was a redingote with a too-small bodice and a striped silk skirt long out of fashion.

“I would not take their money if I could help it,” Gwen said.

The Vaughn fortune came from a plantation in Jamaica and part ownership of a slaving ship that sold kidnapped Africans into lives of misery in the Americas, then brought back the fruits of their forced labor in the form of cotton and sugar to British shores. “But I don’t know who else to ask.”

“Mr. Stanley could take up a collection for us.” Dovey twisted Gwen’s hair into one of their precious silk ribbons.

The sandy brown curls went free of powder, since they couldn’t afford the tax.

“Remind his faithful that we keep the poor rates low, since those we take in would otherwise look to the parish for outdoor relief.”

“I do not think Mr. Stanley could raise enough even with his flowery words. He did offer to write a letter on our behalf. Perhaps an English lord might heed an English vicar.”

Might. An unsteady word to hold such a weight of hope. Barlow had already delivered the order to vacate. Every hour they stayed was a trespass.

Dovey rearranged the lace at her throat, and Gwen knew they shared the same memory.

The handmade lace, not as fine as that of Flanders or France, had come tucked inside the wool blanket of an infant deposited on the porch of St. Sefin’s six years ago.

Desperate mothers often left a badge with their foundling, hoping they might identify the child later when their circumstances improved.

But the babe had died of the bloody flux when they sent it to a wet nurse, and Gwen wore the lace on her evenings out as a reminder. Whatever humiliations or scorn might be dealt her, she would bear it for the sake of the fragile lives that depended on her.

“What shall we tell them?” Worry lurked in the deep brown of Dovey’s eyes.

Gwen squeezed her friend’s hand. “That I will find a way. We’ll not be sent to the workhouse.”

Side by side they descended the broad day stair to the refectory.

Lancet windows high in the walls let the glimmer of early evening into the wide, smoothened chamber where the nuns had once taken their meals.

So solid St. Sefin’s was. So safe Gwen had felt in these walls of golden stone, built with prayer and firmness.

An illusion. But wasn’t safety always such?

One fancied themselves protected by walls, by love, by a name or full coffers or a mother who bent like a guardian angel over a child’s bed.

And the next moment the love or the name or the angel could be gone, robbed and not returned no matter the tears one shed.

Normally the residents of St. Sefin’s laughed and chattered at their meal, wooden spoons clattering in wooden bowls. Tonight every eye turned to the women on the stairs, faces drawn with fear, mouths worried.

Gwen’s stomach pinched, and not from hunger or the too-tight gown.

“Miss Gwenllian!” A young girl peered through the servery window that divided the dining area from the kitchen. In the next instant, she barreled through the connecting door, a bowl of soup curled in each arm, and skidded to a stop before them.

“The bad Englishman did not tell us we can’t stay at St. Sefin’s any longer. Ifor is telling tales,” Cerys said.

“Am not.” Ifor sat at a wooden table, scooping mouthfuls of cawl into his mouth as if his bowl might disappear if left on its own for a moment.

The thick native stew was a staple of their menu and Widow Jones put anything she could find in it, thickening the broth with oats and the dumplings she called trollies.

Gwen smelled cabbage, leeks, wild garlic, and a trace of beef.

The butcher often sent meat he couldn’t sell before it went bad.

So many people in Newport supported the mission of St. Sefin’s as best they could.

If only their voices held some weight with the Viscount Penrydd, but Gwen knew how the gentry thought.

They cared only for the opinion of their class, which left her to plead her case with the Vaughns, a family she could never respect and did not much like.

“Are too,” Cerys said, pressing her point.

Dovey took the bowls from her daughter. “Only you, little chick, will be turned out in the street, because you cannot remember you are a young lady and not a goat.”

“Right. Spoons.” Cerys charged back to the kitchen and returned with her bowl and a trio of utensils. “Budge over, Ifor, I want to sit next to Miss Gwen.”

“You smell like wild violet and bluebells, Miss Gwen. Hey, now, Tomos, mind my soup!” Ifor, complaining, slid down the bench as the larger young man pushed in to stroke the silk of Gwen’s gown.

“ Pert ,” Tomos cooed, pawing Gwen’s hair. “Pretty.”

“Thank you, Tomos, that is very kind.” Gwen gently removed his hand. “Now eat. Tomorrow we find another trade we might apprentice you to.”

“Unless the bad man turns us all out into the street, as Mam said,” Cerys added around slurps of stew.

“I won’t allow it,” Gwen said. “I am going to Greenfield to harp for Lady Vaughn, who was bored by the London season and now is bored here. I am sure she will help us.”

Lies upon lies, all of them weights upon her soul at the final reckoning. The soup burned her mouth, and Gwen put down her spoon. Her belly refused food.

Cerys sighed. “And there will be lovely ladies with their gowns of silks and satins, and their kerchiefs of lace, and their tiny silk slippers. Will there be dancing?”

Gwen forced a smile. Little Cerys would never see any of the fine things she dreamed about, living as they did. But she saw a way to lift the gloom from their dinner.

“ Saeson don’t know how to dance to a Welsh harp, pwt, ” Gwen said. “Nor whistle, nor fiddle, nor pipe. They only dance to their own English instruments, and quite stiff they are at it. They never bend nor clap, but only promenade and bob up and down, like this.”

She climbed over the bench and, one palm in the air, solemnly processed between the line of tables. She curtseyed to Mother Morris and, when this earned a giggle from Cerys, made a deeper curtsey to Evans, who hobbled toward them with his crutch tucked under his good arm and a bowl in his hand.

“Good eve, Mister Evans,” she intoned. “We be dancing .”

Cerys howled. “That’s terrible! ”

“Most Saeson are.” Gwen reclaimed her seat. “Good thing your father, God save him, was Dutch, and the way he and your mother danced!” She winked at Cerys. “A scandal, I call it. Nothing but ankle, and your mother as light as a cloud when he twirled her.”

“ Fffwt ,” Dovey scoffed, for Gwen had never met Lieutenant Jan Van der Welle. But Dovey smiled at the memory of her husband, and Gwen counted it a triumph.

Cerys rested her chin on her hands. “In London there are streets with whole rows of shops.”

“Perhaps your mother and I might take you to Bristol one day. Or Bath,” Gwen said.

“That’s asking for trouble, that is.” Dovey rose. “Come, Gwen, dearie . If Mr. Evans has done his job and borrowed a horse from the stables, I’ll help you hitch up the dog cart.”

“Mrs. Van der Welle will find that the horse is already hitched and waiting in the back court.” Evans settled himself at the smooth, scarred oaken table.

“Though he might have put it in the front drive and made it easier on a body.” As soon as they’d said their goodbyes and left the room, Dovey’s face fell into somber lines. “She’ll never see London. She’ll never be accepted among fine folk, Gwen. You mustn’t let her think she can.”

The borrowed gelding stood in harness, rolling the bit in his mouth.

Gwen would take some of her home-brewed ale to the barkeep at the King’s Head in return for the use of his stables.

They made most of their way on trade, and Gwen harped, her one skill, to earn coin for the things they couldn’t barter.

But barter wouldn’t work with a viscount.

How much would it cost to buy their freedom? And how would she pay?

Dovey helped Gwen climb into the small cart, holding the creamy linen of her underskirt. Gwen took up the light riding whip.

“Every girl of eight should have her dreams, don’t you think? Perhaps she’ll grow up to a world where she might be exactly who she is, and loved for it,” Gwen said. Her stomach shifted, and she wished she’d eaten.

“Did you ever know such a world? Did I?” Dovey’s eyebrows lowered. “By St. David, does that man trust us to do nothing ourselves?”

“Have a care tonight, Miss Gwenllian.” Evans came forward and hung a carriage lamp on the hook beside Gwen’s seat. “You should have a moon, but you might ask them to send a boy to see you home.”

“She knows the way,” Dovey said, annoyed.

“There are greater evils than the workhouse.” Evans held the side of the cart and met Gwen’s gaze. “Don’t trade your soul on our account, Miss Gwenllian.”

Gwen read the weary resignation in his eyes. She’d never asked Evans about his history, where he maimed his leg, lost his arm. They didn’t probe one another’s private wounds. It was the one dignity they preserved in a communal space.

“You’d die in that place, and so would we all,” she said softly.

He shook his head and stepped back. “There’s worse.”

Gwen clucked the gelding into a walk, a cold claw of fear in her chest.