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S he was going to kill him.

Not on purpose, Pen knew. But not having Gwenllian ap Ewyas—not being able to hold her, touch her, win her for his own—was going to shred him into a million tiny fish-bite sized pieces.

And she would doubtless laugh as she fed his chum to the salmon he’d seen fishermen hauling by the netful out of the River Usk.

He’d claimed the privilege of driving her to her harping appointment at Pencoed Castle. That was the first foolish thing.

What hadn’t been foolish was kissing her. But not kissing her again was going to drive him out of his mind.

He borrowed a horse and trap from the King’s Head, with Mr. Trett’s blessing, and she insisted on checking the harness before they set out.

Yet another instance in which she refused to rely on anyone else, yet having heard her story, he could understand.

She’d lost her mother, her remaining parent sent her to strangers, and then she’d been dishonestly wooed by the son of the house.

Pen had no doubt the lad had pursued her with everything he had in him.

A girl of her beauty, with the grace of a queen and that quick mind and sweet nature, under his roof and his for the taking? She hadn’t a chance.

And after trusting the boy’s blandishments and empty promises, she’d been turned out of that home, too.

Pen tried to imagine giving birth alone and unaided in the bleak of winter, with nothing but a dead babe to show for the effort. How had she not become hardened and cruel?

Yet at her lowest point, she’d found her way back to life by caring for others.

Dovey. Evans. Everyone else who came to her, turned out of their rightful home.

He could see how it weighed on her that she could lose the place and didn’t have the money to buy it from this lord, whoever he was.

The lord represented by the black-clad solicitor who had looked at Pen holding a wheelbarrow of dung and called him filth, because of the work he did and the poor appearance of his clothing, when he knew nothing of Pen himself.

Of course, Pen knew nothing of himself, either, but the man’s insult had burrowed deep. It was unfair and it was untrue. He hoped, in his real life, he was a better judge of character and didn’t dismiss people by sight.

But some deep, lurking fear told him he hadn’t been any better.

Some evil came roaring out of him at night, in his dreams—it had to be evil, to have such a terrifying grip on him.

And he had a sense, a knowing that came with the bloody torments of his dreams, that he too had been in a position like Gwen’s, torn apart body and soul, hanging to life by a thread.

And instead of rising and pulling himself together, building something that could shelter himself and others, he had chosen a path of self-destruction and selfish absorption, if not outright cruelty.

But he could change. Just as he could prove he wasn’t the scrum that the solicitor had called him, he could build himself back as a man of integrity and honor.

Gwen had given him that chance, dredging him from the river and knitting him back together.

He was doing his best to show her he was worthy of saving.

He was even coming to appreciate those other broken souls.

He didn’t care for them as Gwen did—he wasn’t that soft-hearted, or soft-headed, either—but he knew better than to scorn them for their poor state. He knew what they’d survived.

Gwen had survived. And so had he.

“Hawthorn blossom for your thoughts,” Gwen said.

They drove along a rutted track eastward, with wooded hills rising to the north and tidy farms to the south, dotted with barns and houses.

He insisted on driving and she, after walking around the trap to study its wheels and construction, had accepted.

Now she reached out and broke a blossom off a hedge crowding the narrow lane.

The hawthorn was in bloom, along with the apple trees and everything else. The season of rebirth, it was.

“I was thinking how scenic this countryside is,” Pen said. “I hear Wales spoken of often for its beauty. And its wildness.”

He felt comfortable with her, jostling side by side in the small trap.

She wore what he recognized as her one good gown, the redingote riding dress, with the delicate blonde lace that Mother Morris had carefully mended.

Her woolen shawl protected her skirts from the dust of the road, but not all of her ash-brown curls consented to stay pinned beneath her bonnet.

With her refined features and elegant figure she had the kind of beauty that would capture attention in court and the ballrooms of the great—somehow he knew that, without recalling how he had any knowledge of the doings of the great, much less royalty.

Yet she seemed happiest in the open air, unfettered by so-called courtesy or custom.

“It’s the most beautiful land God ever made.

That,” she pointed to the forested hills to the northeast, “is Coed Gwent, the great and ancient forest of the kingdom of Gwent. The English call it Wentwood. Its lords have been doing their best to whittle the trees down for their ironworks, and it’s said that the Royal Navy prefers Welsh oak for its battleships. ”

Pen’s neck prickled at the mention of the Royal Navy.

That meant something to him. But she was still chattering, her arm pointing due north.

“Had we followed the river we’d come to Caerleon, a center of trade for the Silures long before the Romans came and built their fort.

The amphitheater and baths are still standing.

St. Cadog built a church there, and Geoffrey of Monmouth said it was Arthur’s capital, home of the Round Table. ”

She paused, turning the hawthorn blossom around in her hands before she handed it to him. “Cromwell’s troops camped on Christchurch Hill before they came down and destroyed Newport Castle. It was never rebuilt after, which is why it looks as you saw it.”

She was making another sly dig about English destruction in Wales, no doubt. But she was also showing him how much she knew, and cared about, this land. She might not choose to come with him when he left. His throat tightened at the thought.

“What am I to do with this?” he asked.

She smiled. “Eat it. Best while the leaves are young and before the flower buds have opened.”

Cautiously he put the sprig in his mouth. No one in his life, he thought, besides Gwenllian ap Ewyas, would ever encourage him to eat roadside shrubbery. Of course, no one else in his life knew the plant was edible.

She laughed at his expression. “Nutty!” he exclaimed. “Surprisingly good. How did you know you could eat it?”

“Much of what’s around you is edible, Pen.

In fact, on our way home tomorrow, we’ll stop to gather.

That’s chickweed, good for treating a variety of ills, and tasty in salads.

The gorse flowers are delicious and make good wine.

And I want to harvest the ramson, the wild garlic, before the flowers have died. It can flavor most anything.”

“And ward off vampires, I’ve heard.”

She laughed. “Vampires are for European countries. We have the Gwrach y Rhibyn, the hag who waits at the crossroads. She’ll drink the blood of your children unless you keep them close.”

She fell silent and fingered the lace at her throat.

He glanced at her delicate fingers, the slender line of her neck, then away.

The urge to be foolish and kiss her again was strong upon him, but he wasn’t sure she would welcome his embrace in the light of day.

She’d been vulnerable that night in the kitchen, as she never had before, but today she was calm, poised, self-possessed.

She didn’t flirt with him as did virtually every other woman he encountered. She didn’t cast out lures or try to entrance him merely for the sake of conquest. He had the awful sense that when she regarded him with her clear, steady eyes, as she was doing now, she saw deep inside him.

And he wasn’t certain there was much of anything to show there.

“How did you learn it all? How to forage, I mean.”

Her eyes clouded and she looked away. “My mother taught me first. I don’t think we were poor, for our house was pleasant, built of wood and a tiled roof, not mud and thatch.

But she used everything around us. Then, at Vine Court, the housekeeper knew herbs, and there was a cunning woman nearby who made remedies that had been handed down to her.

Not written but taught, woman to woman, for centuries, much like the bards and ancient druids learned their verses.

“And then when I was—on my own, and had no way of earning food, I learned by trial and error what around me I could eat.” She broke off a hawthorn blossom for herself and popped it in her mouth. “It helps us now, at St. Sefin’s. When we are able to find our own food.”

Her little community, living half-wild in the abandoned shell of a medieval religious house, on the edges of a society that had broken them. And he had found himself, unaccountably, fitting in. Best not to examine why.

“I thought cunning folk were witches,” he said.

She frowned. “The priests like to call them witches. And burn them for it. I fear what is lost when learned men and their instruments of torture come to take from the simple folk. And to what purpose?”

He was one of those, Pen thought. The men who came with guns and fire to force others to their will. His nightmares told him that.

She had saved his life, but he did not see how she could come to care for him.

He was too different, foreign in more ways than just being English.

He’d never been taught what she knew. And he feared that, when in the past he’d had the chance to help another or advance himself, he’d advanced himself, every time. She couldn’t love that.