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“She may have wanted to, but she was even younger than I am, and about to come out in society, as the English do. When it was clear I was increasing, I had to leave my friend’s. I had nowhere to go, so I tried to find work. But when you are a young woman with a belly?—”

“Yes,” Mathry said, nodding. “Did you cast it, then?”

“No. I wanted her. I wanted her more than my life. I had no one else to love me, you see, but my own mam had loved me so fiercely, and I’d been so devoted to her. Anne’s mother was cold. I vowed I would do better. But I had nothing—no help. No home.”

Dovey’s eyes were a deeper black than the darkness, and the candle picked out the sheen of tears. “What happened?”

“It was winter. I was staying in the sty of a kind farmer who let me bed with his animals. She came early, and I was alone, and I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do. It was—a difficult birth. She came out feet first, with the cord wrapped around her neck.”

Gwen drew a deep breath, reliving that pain turning her inside out. It seared to the core. Dovey reached around Mathry to touch her shoulder.

“It doesn’t always kill, I know that now,” Gwen managed.

“A good midwife might have helped me turn her, or untangle her, or—” She caught Mathry’s horrified eyes.

“We’ll have the best we can find when it’s your time.

I promise you. But I—as I said, I didn’t have help.

” She let out a shuddering sigh, watching the floor.

One step at a time, one foot before the other.

“I buried her as best I could, in the hard ground, and came south with my heart frozen. All I wanted was to go as far away as possible. To let the sea carry me off.”

“Not you, too,” Dovey said quietly.

Gwen summoned a wavering smile for her friend. “I found St. Gwladys, as I said, and she told me to stay here. And that’s when you found me.”

“And then you found me,” Mathry said. She sighed, her shoulders drooping. “God above, how does any woman survive this? And how does she let a man touch her again, after?”

“Would you want another child, Gwen?” Dovey asked as they circled the church for the dozenth time. The deep shadows felt warmer, safer, with these women at her side. The ghosts had ceased their screaming.

“I don’t know if I can. Something—happened with the birth.

Part of my womb collapsed. I shoved it back in, and by some miracle didn’t take a fever,” Gwen said.

Dovey flinched at this image, and Mathry made a horrified squeak.

“But I imagine something weakened or was broken,” Gwen said. “I won’t bear children again.”

“Cerys is as good as your own,” Dovey said stoutly.

Gwen nodded. “She is, and we could fill St. Sefin’s with babies if we wished. I don’t need a womb to mother.”

“We need that lord to let us stay here,” Mathry said.

“I want my babe to have a roof. And mothers.” She leaned her head on Gwen’s shoulder, and a small piece of Gwen’s heart that had been hard for years pained her, though not in a harmful way.

It was the pain of a frozen piece of flesh beginning, at long last, to thaw.

“You haven’t bled yet,” Gwen said softly.

Mathry nodded. “And the cramping’s stopped. I think your tea worked.”

“I’ll make another dose, with something to help you sleep. And tomorrow I’ll start you on red raspberry leaf and nettle tea. Do you want someone with you tonight?”

“I’ll stay with her first,” Dovey said. “You’re weary from harping.”

Gwen nodded. She hadn’t told Dovey yet about Calvin Vaughn pressing her into the hedge, or what it meant. There would be no more harping fees from the Vaughn family. Now where were they to find money?

The three women stood for a moment, heads bowed, hands pressed together, before the flickering smile of St. Gwladys. Then Dovey led Mathry to bed, smoothing the girl’s hair from her brow in the same gesture she used with Cerys.

Gwen stood a long moment, communing with her saint.

She needed guidance. Strength. She’d purged something in finally speaking of her past. She’d been foolish and she’d suffered, but she no longer felt, quite so strongly, that losing her daughter had been a punishment for lying in sin with Daron Sutton.

Her child’s death had simply been the way of Nature, of life and of death.

Her heart gulped in her chest when she heard a footstep from above. She reared back, looking up, to see a man’s shadow on the stair leading to the bell tower. No one used that stair; she didn’t imagine it was safe. Was it a ghost? Vengeance come upon her? Was she to pay again for past sins?

Who would take care of St. Sefin’s if a murdered ghost came at her from the dark?

It was Penrydd. He reached out and put his hands on her quivering shoulders. He was warm and solid and she had that odd notion, once again, that he was safe .

He wasn’t safe. No man was, least of all him.

“I’m sorry I frightened you. I was in the bell tower. I like to go up there when I can’t sleep.”

“You—were all the way up there? And the stair didn’t collapse? I thought those boards were rotten.” She peered into the dark above them.

“Many of them are. I ought to repair it, in the daylight. But one can see a long way from a tower atop a hill. Puts things in perspective.”

He couldn’t sleep because she was no longer helping him fight his nightmares. Guilt squeezed her throat. And shame.

“You heard us?”

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But I couldn’t not hear. Mathry seemed in distress, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Or stop all our hearts, swooping down like a pwca .”

“Like a what?”

A lock of his too-long hair fell over his brow, casting an impish shadow on his face. He adjusted her shawl around her shoulders, snugging it about her neck.

“The Welsh Puck. He leads travelers by night to the edge of a cliff, and then he blows out his lamp and leaves them there. Do you want me to make you a tea for sleep and sweet dreams?”

His frown deepened. “Your lace is torn.”

Gwen lowered her eyes and sucked in a breath. The scrap of blonde lace she and Dovey shared, the token of that long-ago babe left on their doorstep and their pledge for what they would build together, had been torn by Calvin Vaughn’s fumbling, unwanted hands.

Rage made her voice shake. “Mayhap Mother Morris can mend it.”

He walked with her as she turned toward the hall leading to the kitchen. “You told them your story.”

St. Teilo’s toes. He’d heard every part of her confession. Her sordid, sob-filled history. Gwen stopped in her tracks. The candle danced in its holder.

“You heard—all that?”

He nodded and put a hand at her elbow, drawing her down the corridor. His lips formed a hard line. “Am I the reason Mathry tried to cast out her babe?”

“Why would you think that?” she whispered, watching his face.

He winced and stepped back to let her precede him into the kitchen. The fire still glowed in the stove, casting heat into the room. “She, ah, invited me into a dalliance. I declined. I may have led her to believe it was about the babe, when in truth—I did not wish to dally. With her,” he added.

Gwen poked at the fire and then swung the kettle on its hook. “It wasn’t you. She went to see Calvin Vaughn today, to ask for his help.”

A small line appeared between his brows, but he didn’t seem to recognize the name. Perhaps Vaughn had been puffing her up about their association, a knight’s lesser son vying for a viscount’s attention.

“And Vaughn, ass that he is, sent her to a cunning woman to be rid of it. As fortune would have it, the woman didn’t know—or Mathry couldn’t pay for—the right herbs.”

“Is he why you don’t trust me? The father of your babe. Is that why you mistrust all men?”

He stood close, and she felt the intensity vibrating through him, awareness, heat.

He packed the tea strainer with willow bark and chamomile, and Gwen stared.

The man who had asked for a servant’s bell in the infirmary, who had wondered who would empty his chamber pot, stood in the kitchen with her, fixing tea.

“He has no hold over me any longer,” Gwen said. “I’m glad to say.”

“I can keep your secret, you know.”

He turned to face her and the heat from the fire soared up from her toes, traveling through her entire body. Her fingertips tingled. The hair on the nape of her neck rose.

For a moment the sick memory of Calvin Vaughn attempting to kiss her, Calvin Vaughn rubbing his groin against her, flushed through her body. She pushed it from her mind.

“It needn’t be a secret. I know it’s supposed to be shameful, a girl having a child out of wedlock. But it happens all about Wales, and I would guess England, too.”

“Is it shameful? To want to join your body with the person you love? For I am supposing you loved him.”

Ah, this was the more shameful confession yet. “Perhaps at the time I believed that. I had looked up to him, and—the feelings were exciting. Desire is so powerful when one is young. I wanted so much to have someone of my own, and—the longing was stronger than my good sense.”

His voice was a husky murmur. “Desire is powerful at any age.”

Oh, indeed it was. Gwen let her eyes drift closed as a shiver passed through her body. She leaned toward him, riveted by his warmth. His solidity. The delicious scent of him, leather and sweat and the barest hint of rosemary from her soap.

Calvin Vaughn’s lust had left a foul imprint on her.

She wanted it erased. She wanted to immerse herself in Pen instead.

The thrill that went through her at his very nearness tore free the parts of her she held so tightly.

The sheer intensity of wanting him cleared her mind and cleansed, somehow.

The man had plucked a burr from Ifor’s collar before it could prick the blind boy.

He had let Cerys lure him into her hunt for St. Sefin’s lost treasure.

He had, that very afternoon, come back from mucking stables around Newport with a new set of boots for Tomos. In truth an old set that the cobbler had repaired, in return for Pen’s help in making deliveries. But he had brought boots.

She turned to him and drew a deep, steadying breath. “Will you kiss me?”

“What?” His eyes widened, growing dark, and his voice was thick and deep.

“I asked will you?—”

The rest of the words disappeared on her lips as he swooped in.

This was no tentative foray. His hot mouth fell upon hers and she opened her lips eagerly to his seeking tongue.

The contact summoned a wave of molten desire, swift and shocking.

She’d expected him to know how to kiss a woman.

She’d expected to enjoy it. But this—she dug her hands into his hair to hold his head so she could kiss him forever, let the whole world fall away and leave just them, just this, his warm mouth, his clever tongue, the scent of the man making her head swirl.

Kissing Penrydd felt like the most important, the most profound, the most necessary thing she had ever done in her life.

Behind her, the kettle screamed.

She panted for breath as he lifted his head. His eyes were dazed with passion, and she felt a burst of triumph along with the other hot sensations roiling around her insides. He’d been affected. She’d affected him.

“Your tea,” she said weakly.

She could tell he wanted to kiss her again. She wanted to kiss him. But she pushed his cup at him, then tended to Mathry’s tea and avoided meeting his gaze. She needed some air, a bit of distance to get a rein on her emotions. He was too much, suddenly.

“Let me know when you want that again,” Pen said, and she closed her eyes against the delicious heat that flared and danced. And the bolt of satisfaction, too. He wanted her.

She turned to bank the fire for the night so they would have warm coals in the morning. “I need you to keep another secret. Calvin Vaughn fathered Mathry’s child.”

He merely nodded. “I hope she’ll be all right,” he said softly.

She stared at him, soaking up every line of his strong-featured face, the gleam in his eyes, the shape of his lips still damp from their kiss. The shadow of stubble along his jaw, the strong column of his throat. That deep, steady ease within him.

When had that happened? The Penrydd she’d met in the Bristol tavern couldn’t sit still for a second.

Even his hands had quavered. The Penrydd who’d floated to her shore injured and wiped of his memory had paced and snarled like a caged cat.

This man stood quietly, as if he’d reached peace within himself.

Knew his own strength, and knew how to use it wisely.

The Penrydd of before might have taken Calvin Vaughn’s part in the matter of a cast-off mistress. This man cared that Mathry not be hurt.

She lifted her fingers and traced them over the prominent line of his cheek, where the bruise from his beatings had faded. “I knew there was a good man in there,” she whispered. Solid, and decent, and good .

He caught her fingers and kissed them. “I had a thought up there, in the bracing cold, while I listened to you,” he said. “What if I have a Mathry out there?”

“What if you—?” She stumbled on the words, her lips growing thick.

“What if there is someone looking for me? Someone who’s in trouble because I am gone.” He held her hand cupped against his cheek, his stubble prickling her palm. “Or something I need to make right.”

She nodded, her throat closing. She needed to make things right with him.

She would talk to Dovey first. It wasn’t fair to do this without her consent, considering all they had at stake. But it was time for the charade to end.

She needed to tell Pen who he was.

And she would have to bear losing him once he knew what she’d done.