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All three of them stared at the still form on the bed.

He was less pale now, his skin not so clammy.

His breath seemed calm and even. Gwen picked several long strips of cloth from the bandage basket.

In the face of a larger problem she didn’t know how to resolve, she liked to focus on the small tasks.

“Help me bind his ribs. I expect the bruising means he cracked or perhaps broke a few. I think we ought to make a sling for his shoulder as well.”

“He’s here,” Dovey said. “At our mercy. We simply don’t let him leave until he agrees to sell. On terms we can accept.”

“And then we’re taken up on charges and transported to the colonies for kidnapping a lord,” Gwen said.

Dovey shrugged and lifted Penrydd’s right side so Gwen could wrap the bandage around him.

It was altogether unnerving to touch him.

Leaning over him like this, she felt his heat, and it carried his scent—not foul, not any longer.

He smelled like something spicy she couldn’t identify, and a trace of the honey she used in their soap.

“I heard a bit about Tenerife,” Evans said. He leaned on his cane and watched them. “He must have been one of the first Nelson ordered onto the beach. The Spanish guns mowed them down like wheat.”

“St. Brychan’s tartan,” Gwen whispered. She’d heard Tenerife spoken of as a curse, one of Admiral Nelson’s few failures. Hundreds of British men lost to a handful of Spanish soldiers, ships with their captains destroyed. Nelson himself lost his arm in that battle.

Penrydd had all his limbs yet, but he had not been left unscathed.

“Was that why he left the navy?” Gwen asked. She didn’t know why she kept her voice low, since they were alone in the room and Penrydd was still unconscious.

“I heard he was out of action for a while, but I gather he sold out when his brother died and he gained the title,” Evans said. “Mind, this is all what the vicar told me, since he keeps tabs on the great families hereabout.”

“Should we call Mr. Stanley? In case—last rites are needed?”

“No,” Dovey said. “We don’t tell anyone he’s here. Not until we’ve struck a bargain.”

“You’re a hard woman, Mrs. Van der Welle,” Evans said.

“And you’re a fool, Mr. Evans, if you don’t think we ought to take advantage of him while we can. He’ll be recovering under our roof, wearing our clothes, eating our food. We have every right to press our case with him.”

“It’s his roof, under British law,” Gwen said. At Dovey’s dark glare, she raised her hands in the air. “Don’t eat me! I agree with you.”

Dovey’s gaze lingered on her, wary and guarded, and Gwen stiffened.

Dovey knew what Penrydd had offered her.

Gwen could give up their fraught life in a moment and go on her merry way, the kept mistress of a rich English lord, leaving the rest of them to starve if Penrydd chose to turn them out.

After all they had been through, it hurt that Dovey would doubt her for a moment, but Gwen understood why. She had a child to protect.

“He doesn’t leave until we’ve made a bargain,” Gwen promised.

Dovey gave her a quick, decisive nod and left to see about dinner, their main meal of the day.

Gwen’s stomach bit at her insides. She must be hungry.

And nervous about the man in the bed, an intimidating presence even if he appeared to be sleeping.

He would be the devil to deal with when he woke, sore from his injuries, outraged at the wrong done him.

Taking care not to disturb his dressings, she tucked Penrydd into an old linen shirt, then rearranged the blanket over his chest. His body felt properly warm again, his color improving, his pulse steady.

Her hand lingered, fingers lying against the column of his throat as she studied his face.

He was a well-made man, in his proportions as close to the ideal as was possible for a man to be, a splendid specimen even with his scars.

Many a woman, she imagined, would leap at the chance to earn her keep through intimacies with a man not repulsive in his person, though she couldn’t say as much for his character.

It would be pleasant to have one’s own rooms, jewels and fine gowns and a carriage, all the things she had once thought would be hers, but for a lighter price.

Wives had to rear the children and run the household.

Mistresses need merely amuse and provide appropriate bed sport.

No. She wouldn’t do it, not even to save St. Sefin’s for Dovey. She had vowed long ago that no man would have that power over her again. Struggling to keep body and soul together at least had some honor to it. She would be allowed to keep her soul.

Dovey brought her dinner, steamed cockles and sauteed mallow leaves with laver sauce poured over all, and a large slice of bara brith , their native bread.

She handed Gwen her knitting and they kept watch, talking as if it were any given evening and they sat before the fire in the chapter house with the rest of their community gathered.

They discussed whether they could buy a side of beef from the butcher.

If the Morgans would summer at Tredegar House this year, and host parties where they might invite Gwen to harp.

Where next to apprentice Tomos, if anyone would take him, and what to do about Mathry, who wandered about blank-faced and prone to bursts of weeping.

All the while, the sun inched from the east windows to the west and the man on the bed breathed, a looming shadow, an ever-growing threat. Gwen was about to lose her mind and pounce on him, throttling him awake to demand he pronounce their sentence and end the suspense.

When it came, the hoarse whisper from the bed nearly made her shriek and drop her mending.

“Where the devil am I?”

Gwen melted into a puddle of relief. Not dead. She’d been fearing what she must say to Mr. Stanley, Mr. Barlow, that awful sly secretary, if Penrydd died. They’d have every reason to think she’d wanted it.

“This is St. Sefin’s,” Gwen croaked, and then held her breath. Perhaps if he looked about, saw the place through her eyes, his heart would soften toward them.

Dovey sat up and put her knitting aside. She held still as a mouse.

“Who are you?”

His voice was a low rasp. Gwen passed him a wooden cup filled with water from their own well, clear and safe to drink. He tried to raise his right hand, groaned, and let it fall.

“Jesus. Every part of me hurts. What happened?”

Her fingertips tingled as she touched him.

Odd. She slid her hand behind his neck and urged his head forward, bringing the cup to his lips.

He drank, coughed, and without thinking she dabbed the corner of his mouth with her sleeve.

The man was weak as a newborn lamb, yet she still felt a thrill of terror course through her.

She presumed it was terror, at least. Any moment now, he’d recognize her.

His eyes were a reddish brown, like hazelnuts.

The outer corners slanted upward, giving him a faintly devilish look.

His nose was straight, very aristocratic, and his lower lip was full and almost womanly.

What obliterated any impression of softness or femininity was the jut of his chin and the straight, bold jaw, creasing as a muscle clenched.

“Who are you?” he breathed.

“Gwenllian ap Ewyas.” Her voice scratched from her dry throat, barely audible. It stung that he couldn’t recall her from mere days ago, but she mustn’t appear weak or simpering. She had to keep the upper hand.

“And who am I?” he asked.

Her breath stopped. “Beg pardon?”

His brows met. “I don’t know where I am. I can’t say why I feel I’ve been trampled by a bull. I don’t know who you are.” He looked up at the ceiling, at the empty room around them, then focused on Dovey. “I don’t know who you are.” He closed his eyes briefly. “And I can’t remember my own name.”

This was unexpected. Gwen rushed to help him. “You’re Pen— ow! ” She sucked in a breath as Dovey’s knitting needle sank into her side. Poking her stays, not her skin, but still.

“Pen?” The furrows deepened on his forehead. “Pen.” He repeated it softly to himself. “It feels right, and yet—like that name doesn’t belong to me.” He met Gwen’s eyes, his expression bewildered. “Why should that be?”

“What do you remember?” Dovey asked.

He squeezed his eyes shut and thought a long time before answering.

“I remember a tree in a meadow. Sunlight. I felt safe there.” He paused.

“I see a woman’s face. I want her to smile at me—is she my mother?

I see a tall ship riding at anchor. A naval vessel.

” He opened his eyes and stared at Gwen, the blank look giving way to panic.

“That’s it. Everything else is wiped clean. My life—gone.”

“You did take a rather fierce blow to the head,” Gwen said weakly. “I’ve heard that can disorient for a while.”

“Gwen, dearie.” Dovey’s fingers clamped around her wrist. “Let’s give our patient a moment, shall we? Mayhap he’ll remember something more.” She dragged Gwen out of the wooden hall of the infirmary into the room next door, the old buttery which they still used for storage.

“He doesn’t remember who he is!” Dovey hissed.

“I know!” Gwen clapped a hand to her mouth, pushing back a mad giggle.

She had heard tales of people who couldn’t recall events after an accident had injured them.

There was a farmer in Langstone who had fought in the American colonies and then returned home unable to recall a single incident from the war.

“We can use this,” Gwen said. “We can make him see how people need us, and perhaps he won’t toss us out after all. We need only explain?—”

“Or we tell him nothing,” Dovey said.

Gwen frowned. “You mean, let him see for himself what we do here?”

“I mean,” Dovey said, with deliberate slowness, “we tell him nothing about him . Let him remember on his own time who he is, and what he meant to do with us.”

Gwen gasped. “You want us to lie ?” Her stomach turned over, sending an acidic bite up her gullet. Obliterating the pleasure of that delicious meal.

Dovey’s face wore the innocence of an angel. “Lie about what? I’ve never seen this man before. I don’t know him from Adam.”

“I can’t deceive him. Dovey—I won’t be able to keep up a pretense.

” This wasn’t a little white lie to Cerys that there was not in fact a rat in the cellar or that the man leading a calf to the butcher’s was taking his pet for a stroll.

She wasn’t capable of even those beneficial lies that might make someone feel better.

“My darling, darling dear.” Dovey gripped Gwen’s wrists.

“Listen to me. He needs us right now. He needs our help. It may take him a day or two to recover his memory. And when he does—he’ll have seen our ways, as you said.

He’ll understand what we do here. He’ll realize what he owes us, and if he’s a gentleman, he’ll pay that debt.

” She squeezed Gwen’s hands until the blood left them.

“All you have to do is not tell him who he is.”

Gwen stared into her friend’s eyes. She understood.

Gwen could walk away from St. Sefin’s. She could strap her traveling harp to her back and wrap her few bits of clothing in the shawl at her waist and she could go anywhere.

But Dovey had a child to think about, and Dovey couldn’t go just anywhere.

Not every town welcomed a face that wasn’t the same color as all the rest.

Gwen swallowed and waited until her dinner was back where it was supposed to be. “Just tell him nothing,” she said.

Dovey nodded in encouragement and loosened her grip. “Let him remember on his own. It won’t hurt him.”

“It won’t hurt him,” Gwen repeated.

Dovey squeezed her hands again, but gently this time. “That’s my dear girl.” She walked back into the infirmary, and Gwen followed.

Late afternoon light slanted across the floor. It lit strands of Pen’s hair to gold and burnished his skin. There was a remarkable calm in his voice for a man who had just consulted his memory box and found it empty.

“How did you know my name was Pen?”

“Muttered it in your sleep,” Dovey lied blithely.

Gwen’s first test came immediately. The hazelnut eyes swung on her. “Do I know you?” he demanded. “You seem—familiar.”

Gwen’s stomach plopped straight into her worn out shoes. She ran her hands along the fringe of her shawl and prayed to St. Gwladys for strength.

“We are not acquaintances,” she answered. “Remember anything else, mi—mmm?” She narrowly remembered not to call him milord.

“Nothing.” His throat tensed as he swallowed his panic.

Of course he would feel helpless and alarmed.

Everything he had, he’d been given because of his name, and now he didn’t know what that name was.

He was strong, healthy, in the prime of his life, and yet he was reduced to nothing, not knowing who he was, where he belonged, where he might go for help.

She knew exactly how that felt.

“You can stay here, Pen,” she said gently. How bold, to address a lord so familiarly. Only his peers were allowed to do that. “As long as you need to.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Because,” Gwen said, “that is what we do.”

The wolf was loose in the sheepfold now, she thought. And she had put him there. How long did they have before his head cleared and the jaws of the wolf snapped shut?