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“I’m sure it will all come back in time,” Gwen said weakly.

He’d remembered Arwen, the woman he loved.

He’d remember more soon. She must work quickly to soften him, persuade him to take a generous view of St. Sefin’s and their life here.

He was quiet and docile as she returned him to the infirmary.

She warmed water and witch hazel and set to cleaning the blood off his face, once again stripping off his soiled clothing and wrapping his ribs.

“I will only take you in twice, you know,” she said as she cleaned the scrape on his head, hidden beneath his thick thatch of brown hair, but still noticeably swollen. “The third time you go off and get clawed by ruffians, I’ll leave you in the ditch where you lie.”

His hazelnut eyes held a strange, steady warmth as he regarded her. That slant at the corners of his eyes made him look puckish, up to mischief.

“He was so friendly,” he said, sighing as she laid a cloth soaked in witch hazel over the new bruises on his chest. “That Gossett chap. Thought mayhap he knew me, could tell me something. But he beat me hollow and left me all a-mort. Would have filed my pockets if I had any blunt.”

“Speak English,” Gwen murmured.

He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand as she placed it on his forehead, checking for fever.

“My clothes are a gentleman’s,” he said.

“I speak like I’ve been to Oxford. But I like grog, and flip—have you had it?

Small beer and brandy with sugar and lemon.

Served it at the pub. I think I’m a sailor, but I fell off a boat.

And apparently I’m not very handy with my fives, though the brute said I throw a punch like Jackson.

” He turned his head against her palm, rubbing like a cat. “Whoever that is.”

“Bare-knuckle champion of boxing,” Gwen said. “He’s held the title since 1795. Even I know that.” She kept her hand in place, though the heat coursing through her arm told her touching him like this was unadvisable.

He opened his eyes and held her gaze. “You’d do better to turn me into the street.”

That was the advisable thing. Cast him loose and let him come to his senses on his own time. Let someone else take him on charity.

But who? Newport was a small town, barely a thousand souls. Barring Cardiff, the rest of Welsh towns were smaller. It was a risk to travel unknown through these lands, asking for the kindness of strangers. She knew that.

She had built St. Sefin’s as a house of refuge. Penrydd, in his current state, was just the flotsam she’d vowed to shelter, with no one else to care for him, no way to provide for himself, injured as he was.

But she could end it in a moment. Tell him who he was, what he owned, what was due him as a peer of the realm. With a word she could restore him to the security, the income, the precedence that was his by birthright and custom and the British laws of primogeniture.

Shame knotted her throat, hot and choking. She was the one denying what was owed him. She was his cruelest tormentor of all.

“Rest,” she said hoarsely, returning her cloth to the washbowl and turning away. “I’ll see if there’s anything left from supper.”

“Shame about that poor lad,” said Mr. Stanley over fish stew and the last of the bread Gwen had made that morning. He sat at the large kitchen table, chatting with Dovey as she dried and put away dishes. “What do you suppose we should do about him?”

“Wait and let him come to his senses.” Dovey fixed Gwen with a firm stare, as though she could see Gwen cracking. “Everything will come right if we just wait.”

“For how long?” Gwen muttered as she slipped past her friend to fetch a wooden bowl down from the shelf.

“Telling him puts us at his mercy,” Dovey hissed, keeping her voice low while the vicar drank the last of his soup. “I like him better at ours.”

But there was no mercy for liars, Gwen thought. And this was her greatest falsehood yet.

She hadn’t been to see him in hours. There was noise in the kitchen.

It must be mid-morning, and Pen thought he heard her voice now and again.

But the light-skirted maid brought his breakfast, winking and flirting the whole time.

Pen flirted back—what was a man to do when a woman flattered so prettily? —but he wanted Gwen.

He wanted to hear her. See her. Find out if she’d come again to his room last night.

He had a vague memory of gunfire and screaming, some men shouting at him about money, and then the smell of blood turned to bluebells, and the clobber on his head was instead a warm hand and a cool cloth scented with witch hazel. After that he slept without dreaming.

The man with the missing arm, he’d forgotten his name, brought Pen his clothing.

His breeches were mended and his coat had been brushed, but his suit was growing shabbier by the day.

Was he a dandy, that he cared about his garments?

Pen said curtly he could valet himself and sent him away.

The sight of the man’s empty sleeve and limping walk unsettled him.

Made him feel guilty. Why should that be?

Why couldn’t he remember a bloody thing about his life?

It was like a great fog in his brain box.

Every time he reached for something he should know, it slipped away to airy mist. All that was left were feelings, but no knowledge.

He couldn’t recall his family. His home.

His profession. He knew his likes and dislikes; he knew, for instance, that he badly wanted a glass of rum.

But how could he not even know his name ?

Pen. That was what she’d said. He knew, in some way he couldn’t articulate, that was what people called him. But it wasn’t his name.

He was turning maudlin, lying in this cot in the empty room, nothing but time on his hands, life going on just out of reach. He was also bloody bored.

He straightened his neckcloth, buffed the buttons on his coat, and walked into the kitchen. Into an uproar.

There was a mad howling going up from some great buffoon who sat in a chair by the wall, rocking and sobbing.

Gwen sat beside him holding his hand, bound with bandages.

An old crone with white hair and a puckered expression sat in another corner, angrily stabbing knitting needles into a snarled mass of wool and spewing gibberish in the direction of the howling young man.

From a room beyond, a stillroom or cellar of some sort, came the sound of two women quarreling.

And the whole room smelled like wet goat.

Because an actual goat stood in the door to the scullery, dripping water onto the floor, a rope around its neck leading to the boy who stood within, working a handpump at the basin.

“Good Lord,” Pen said, “I’m in Dante’s Inferno .”

“What do you want?” Gwen snapped, her head rearing up.

He was surprised. What was she taking his head off for? “There’s an awful lot of noise,” he said, gesturing to the boy beside her. “Is it because he’s an idi?—”

“Don’t,” Gwen warned him, her voice full of wrath. “Tomos caught his hand in the winch when he was drawing water this morning. He’s upset.”

“It happened an hour ago,” said the crone.

“ Poen ,” the boy sobbed.

“Yes, you’re in pain.” Gwen patted the boy’s arm and he leaned against her shoulder. He had an oddly round head, his eyes small slits spaced wide apart, his nose flat between chubby cheeks. A simpleton of some sort. Pen looked away.

“What are the hens fighting about?” He nodded his head toward the small room where bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, and where the volume of voices, and the acrimony in them, was escalating.

“Cerys has the putrid throat today that Ifor had yesterday,” Gwen answered. “We cannot agree on the best remedy.”

“Boiled mutton suet and beeswax plaster,” said the crone with confidence. “Wrap her from ear to ear and let her be.”

“Fetch down to the barber surgeon for leeches,” came the voice of the young, flirty maid. “That’s what Mrs. Harries always did, and don’t tell me you think you know better than she.”

“A bolus of conserve of rose mixed with powdered frankincense,” came the voice of another woman, older but still mellifluous. “Mr. Wesley says so in his Physick .”

“There’s a licorice tea steeping on the stove,” Gwen said. “Just mix in a bit of honey and lemon juice. I think we’ve one lemon left.”

Their arguing was better than a Punch comedy held at seaside resorts in the summers. He must have been to many as a child—what seaside? What resort?

“Add a spoonful of rum,” Pen said helpfully. “And then you might give me the rest of the rum, and the lemon.”

Gwen stood and moved to stand before him.

She was wearing the same plain, worn gown, with that red woolen shawl draped around her waist and a ruffled kerchief concealing what he knew to be a shapely bosom.

Why did she go about hiding her assets from the world?

At least she wore nothing to hide her hair, which was bound into a loose braid about her head.

He wanted to run those ashy brown curls through his fingers.

He would wager they were softer than silk.

He blinked as she leaned forward to peer into his eyes, then lifted his hands to look at them. He clenched his fingers to hide the tremor.

“No more grog for you, Pen,” she said softly. “We’re drying you out.”

“No spirits in this fine accommodation? I shall register a complaint with the management.” He scowled, hating how easily she saw his weakness.

“And that worked so well last time.” She moved to the stove and poured a cup of tea. “Mathry, take this to our little chick. I don’t know when Dovey will be back.”

The younger maid swished away, tossing Pen an arch look and making sure he got an eyeful of her bosom, which was not in the least concealed. She was rather endowed in that area, and others. Pen watched the progress of her swaying rump out the door, then caught Gwen watching him.