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She turned toward the door of the scullery. “Ifor, bachgen, it looks like you’ve managed the worst of it.”

“Thought I was about done,” a cheerful voice floated back. Gwen scratched the head of the billy goat, which stared at Pen with its golden eyes. Pen, alarmed, stared back.

“Why is the goat wet?”

“It’s raining sticks and old women out there,” the goat boy said, emerging from the scullery. Pen couldn’t help himself; he recoiled at the sight of the boy’s blind, scarred eyes. He knew Gwen noted his reaction.

“And Gafr pushed me down and got me all mucky.” The boy scratched between the goat’s horns just as Gwen had, then reached out and put his hand on the shepherd’s crook leaning next to the door. “Think I’ll go back in it and help Evans. He was fixing a tub in the brewhouse and will need a hand.”

“Mind your step if it’s slippery,” Gwen said as the boy departed for the door.

Pen closed his hanging jaw. “You let him wander about like—?” He made a circular motion with his hand.

She gave him a purposefully bland look. He sensed he saw such a look often, from others, and it irritated him every time. “Like what?” she asked.

“Blind!” Pen said, exasperated.

She raised a brow at him. The contrast between her dark brows and light green-grey eyes startled him all over. He would never tire of simply looking at her.

“Blind,” she affirmed. “Not witless. That boy sees more than you do, I’d wager.”

“Why is everyone so cross today?” Pen bridled.

“Because we’ve a great deal of work to do,” Gwen said shortly.

“Tomos, would you like to help me look for morels this afternoon, when the rain stops? We can start in the old orchard, then search in the woods for the hazel trees. Or we might borrow Mr. Coffin’s pig and look for truffles, if you’d rather that. ”

She expressed more enthusiasm over mushrooms than she had over him, Pen thought with annoyance.

The second woman came out of the stillroom and looked him over, and his annoyance increased.

She was at least two decades older than Gwen, with a black fringed shawl draped about her, and her scrutiny did not conclude with the coy smile that women customarily gave him.

Pen might not know much about himself, but he knew he was appealing to women.

At least, normal women. Which these were not.

“A man from Merthyr Tydfil was attacked last night at the wharves,” the woman in black said to Pen, as if answering his earlier question. “A Jew.”

“So?” Pen looked around the room. “No one here is a Jew. And no one here beat him, I’m assuming. Some itinerant looking for work? I ran into a number of them yesterday at the pub. Rough lot. I recall coming in for some abuse myself.”

Undeserved, he could have added, rubbing his sore jaw. He had a feeling at least one of his eyes was ringed with purple. Perhaps that’s why Gwen was avoiding him, though he hadn’t pegged her as missish.

“He was a businessman, they’re saying,” Gwen said, her tone sharpening. “A prospective financier for some building projects, including the new bridge. And they may call us rude and rough, but Newport is not known for being hostile to outsiders. There’s something afoot.”

“I still don’t follow,” Pen said. “You’re all British. What have you to fear?”

A torrent of voices answered this, including a barrage of Welsh from the crone.

“We’re not British!” Gwen yelped. “We’re Cymry.”

He stared. “Wales is part of Britain.”

She held his stare, challenging. “Not to you.”

That was true. Pen glanced at the others, who glared at him with varying levels of distrust. It occurred to him that they considered him the outsider. Preposterous! Even the simple boy watched with interest, cradling his hurt hand.

Gwen stomped to a shelf and banged down a basket. “Welsh, you call us. Wales, you say this is. Do you even know what that word means?”

He didn’t. He had the feeling he’d had a somewhat decent education. He spoke like he’d been educated, at least. But Wales was Wales, England was England, and Britain was the finest country in the world.

“You Saeson ,” Gwen said, stomping next to a cluster of tools that hung from pegs.

“You, the invaders to our land, called us wealas . Foreigners.” She spat the words.

“And that is your name for us even now. We are Cymry. We are proud. But we are not savages. We do not beat men near senseless simply because they are a different race or a different faith.”

She was frightened. He took a step toward her. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

Her eyes flared. “Someone hurt you .”

He shifted his jaw back and forth. “That was one brute who liked to manhandle his wife. A fellow needed to stand up to him.” He felt an odd sort of pride in saying this.

As if he wasn’t accustomed to standing up for the weaker.

As if he had never truly realized, before meeting her, that a man using his fists on a woman was an injustice, not simply the way of the world.

Or, if it was the way of the world, he could no longer accept that.

“You were attacked before that, and you lost your memory,” Gwen said in a low voice. “Someone, or a gang of someones, beat you, robbed you, and left you for dead.”

Pen frowned. “You think the attack on me is related to the attack on the Jew?”

“I’ve no way of knowing. But it’s not done around here. And it’s not right.”

A step sounded in the hallway leading from the door outside, and the dark-skinned woman entered.

She was frightfully lovely, with big dark eyes, gleaming skin, every item of her dress pressed and neat as a pin.

Gwen was still the more beautiful, Pen thought loyally.

But they were like a pair of angels, side by side.

“Cerys?” the newcomer asked.

“Mathry is seeing to her,” Gwen answered. Her face grew taut. “What news? Do we bring him here?”

The other woman shook her head. “He’s not going to make it. Mr. Stanley said—well, he knows your feelings on such a matter.”

“No death under the roof of St. Sefin’s,” the crone muttered, and though it was in line with all the other senseless things she’d said, the hair lifted on the back of Pen’s neck.

Gwen’s shoulders sagged. “How terrible,” she whispered. “How will his family even know?”

“Mr. Stanley said he will see to it. There’s a Jewish community in Merthyr Tydfil, small it is, but he imagines they will want the body for a burial in their own fashion.

” An attempt at a smile quirked one side of her full, lush lips.

“He so badly wants to perform last rites, but knows the man wouldn’t thank him for it.

A Jew can’t be buried on Christian ground in any case.

But I daresay our good vicar ran off to say an Anglican prayer in secret, to feel sure his soul is seen off safely. ”

“He’s dead?” Pen demanded. “The Jew who was beaten?”

“He’s dying,” Dovey said softly. “We’ll hear the bells of St. Woolos tolling before nightfall. Mr. Stanley will mark his passing, even for an unbaptized soul.”

She met Gwen’s gaze and a long, tense look passed between them.

Clasping hands, the two women exited toward a different hallway, not the door leading to the dining hall but one leading inside the building.

Shamelessly, Pen stepped closer to the wall and cocked an ear.

He was an exceptional eavesdropper; he couldn’t claim many talents, but that was one.

“We can’t tell him.” Gwen’s voice, low and full of self-reproach.

“No. If we do, and he turns us out?—”

Pen’s ears pricked. Who did they fear? What man had a hold over them?

“We’d have nowhere to go,” Gwen answered. “And you and Cerys—it’s danger out there.”

“I fear it, Gwen. The town is changing. So many new?—”

Their voices fell and diminished. Steps led away. Pen leaned forward, straining to hear, and then leapt back as Gwen suddenly reappeared in the doorway. Her look speared him, accusatory, but underneath it he saw fear.

He moved toward her. He wanted to protect her. He was half a man at the moment, true, with his bruised shoulder and banged-up ribs. But he would lay himself at her feet if she asked it.

“What do you want now?” she snapped.

He panicked at the sudden and unaccustomed surge of protectiveness. He knew this wasn’t like him. This woman had overset him, upended all his usual sensibilities. Even though he couldn’t say what his usual sensibilities were, she had muddled him. He felt shaken to his core.

“My jordan needs emptying,” he blurted.

“Empty it yourself!” It was as if the request broke her. She whirled for the table and the basket she’d left there, swooping up a spade like it was sword and shield.

“Empty my own chamber pot!” he shouted. He was quite certain he’d never done such a thing in his life. “Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t care who you are!” She brandished the spade at him, advancing, and Pen debated whether to fall back. “You are here. Under this roof. We took you in. We helped you. And so you will follow our rules, mm—Mr. Pen .”

“Your rules!” he said indignantly.

“And the rule is, everyone helps. Everyone works .” She pointed toward the door where the boy had exited.

“Ifor keeps the goats.” She pointed at the simple lad.

“Tomos fetches the water and helps mop and sweep. Mother Morris—” that was the crone—“does the mending and the wash. Widow Jones—” the older woman in the black shawl, still rather pretty even for her age—“has cooked most of the meals you’ve scoffed at, and is the one who fixed your clothing.

Dovey, Mrs. Van der Welle, oversees our housekeeping, among half a dozen other duties, and Evans, with one arm, does the work of three men.

So you—” she advanced until the spade nearly poked his nose—“can empty. Your own. Chamber pot.”

“You needn’t take my nose off.” Pen put on his most affected drawl. It was all he could offer in self-defense. “And what do you do, besides bark orders and menace people with gardening implements?”

Her eyes flared and he wondered, for a suspended moment, if she were going to strike him. No one ever struck him.

No, that felt distinctly untrue. He’d been walloped in Newport several times already.

He had the sense he’d been manhandled quite a bit as a youth—the torments felt dim, far away, but deeply entrenched.

But no one now dared strike him because—because—he was someone important, devil take it.

He did not empty chamber pots. He looked down his nose and waited for her to capitulate.

The widow came forward and placed her arms on Gwen’s shoulders. “Gwen looks after us all, and earns the coin that feeds us,” she said softly. “Gwen bach , you needn’t harp tonight if you don’t wish it. It’s been a trying day already, and a fair drive to Greenfield.”

“’Tis not so far.” Her shoulders slumped. “And it’s a small gathering. Lady Vaughn only wants me to play for a family dinner. Though I admit, with what our Mathry is going through, I have no wish to look upon the smug face of Calvin Vaughn.”

She froze as she said this, and turned a wide, dreadful stare on Pen. The hairs on his neck lifted again. Was he supposed to know these names?

“You might take me,” Pen said, doing his best to hide the desperation in his voice. “Someone might know me. Though it doesn’t seem I’m from here.” No one had recognized him, though he’d wandered town about the better part of a day. Was no one looking for him? Didn’t he matter to someone?

The change in Gwen was alarming. He hated that frightened, hunted look. He wanted the soft woman who had wrapped his ribs and laid her lovely hand on his forehead. His chest hurt, his cracked ribs making it hard to breathe.

“I’ll go tonight. Alone. We need the coin.” She turned away. “It’s time we had meat for a meal, and Tomos needs new boots.”

The simpleton stuck out a foot clad in rags and leather, barely cobbled together. “ Llopan ,” he said.

Bloody hell. What was this place? The roof needed mending, they had to forage for food, and they couldn’t even buy the boy boots.

He didn’t care about the others, but why was Gwen here, seemingly in charge of this collection of tatterdemalions?

A woman that beautiful could simply lift a finger and point to the man she wanted to provide for her.

And the lucky fool would eagerly hand over life, name, and fortune for the gift of her body, her promise to be buxom at bed and board.

Not Pen. He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want to be here. He’d take to his heels as soon as he bloody well could.

But in the meantime, he wanted to do something that would make Gwen’s shoulders slump less. Take away the lines of worry between those clear, soul-searching eyes.

He squared his shoulders, marched back to his room, pinched his nose, and scooped up his chamber pot.