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Pen rolled up his sleeves and took his stance.

The combatants circled, taking the other’s measure.

The taller man had a larger reach and a huge advantage in weight, but he was clumsy.

Pen rolled to the balls of his feet in readiness but the other stood back on his heels, counting on his mass rather than his movements to win the day.

He was right to do so; one solid punch from that claw would lay Pen out on the ground.

But he couldn’t shame himself before Gwen.

“Ye look like a gentry cove I tossed the other day,” Gap-tooth said, cracking his knuckles. “Remember, Minikin? Th’ one on th’ boat.”

“He do look ’im,” the little man observed, peering at Pen as clouds closed in.

Rage reared through Pen. “You attacked me at the wharves? You were the ones?” He threw a punch that snaked beneath Gap-tooth’s guard and landed in a fleshy rib.

His assailant grunted. “Throws a punch better’n he did, though.”

“Do you know what you did to me?” Pen roared. If this was the man who beat him senseless—robbed him of his memory, of everything he knew—he saw red. He dove in and swung, again and again, and the jolt and burn of pain told him his punches were finding a place.

“Hey, now!” the little man cried. “’Twas just business. We does what we’s hired to do.”

“Steal from passersby and call it a toll?” Gwen called. “Some business! We’ll have you all thrown in the watch house.”

Which was nothing but a lean-to in the back of King’s Head stables, Pen knew.

It wouldn’t hold these ruffians. He paused in delivering a flurry of punches to the chest and ribs of the larger man and reared back, shaking the hair from his eyes.

He was already pouring sweat—or was it raining? —but he felt deadly cold.

“Who hired you?” he growled.

He never heard the answer because a brick exploded beneath his cheek, and he saw stars. The world tilted and he toppled like a felled tree to the hard-packed ground.

“Stop!” Gwen screamed. Above him, her outline stood etched against the pearled sky, arms outspread like an avenging angel.

She plunged a hand into one of her bags and then threw something into the air as if she were scattering pixie dust. Powder glittered and spread, and Gap-tooth started choking.

His companion, Miniken, let go the bridle and turned away with a terrific sneeze.

“Pen?” Gwen’s face was just above him now, blurred and concerned. He let her pull him up. “Can you get back in the trap?”

“Not…finished,” he wheezed, trying to suck air in his lungs.

“Yes, we are.” She pulled his arm around her neck and heaved him to his feet.

He staggered against her the few steps back to the cart, where the horse shook its head, snuffling.

There was something in the air, tickling his nose.

Gwen’s nose twitched, too. Gap-tooth bent over, holding his ribs while he sneezed violently, and Minikin had half-disappeared behind an enormous printed handkerchief.

“What…was that?” Pen managed to get his breath back as Gwen drove them down High Street towards Stow Hill and St. Sefin’s. At the pie shop a curtain moved as a woman looked out, then quickly retreated.

“I’ve never seen those men before,” Gwen said, her jaw set with anger. “I can’t imagine they’ll be let stay there to intimidate people. I’ll tell Mr. Stanley at once, and he can talk to the constable and the magistrate. Sir Robert still has the position, I think.”

“What was the powder?” His ribs felt tight as she drove into the yard of St. Sefin’s and helped him down from the trap.

“Sneezewort,” she said. “Chewing the root is good for toothache. I carry a powder of it when I travel to deter anyone who wishes to meddle with me.”

Pen laughed, though it made his chest hurt. He hadn’t thought Gap-tooth had landed any punches to his midsection, but he might have missed something in his red haze of fury. His face was on fire. Gwen told him to lie down in his room while she boiled comfrey leaves to make a compress.

He didn’t want to leave her, but bed sounded wonderful.

He was weary from little sleep the night before.

He’d been given a blanket to roll out on the kitchen floor at Pencoed beside several other traveling servants whose masters had elected to stay the night.

Then there was the day-long battle to keep from trying to kiss Gwen at every opportunity.

On top of that, the emotional turmoil of recognizing Penrydd Castle, and his connection to it—how did he own a bloody castle, and come from a line of viscounts?

And that was before Gap-tooth had dealt him a facer.

As he left, Dovey came into the kitchen, her eyes wide with alarm. Pen paused in the hallway, pricking his ears.

“Who beat him now?” Dovey whispered, feeding the stove to heat water.

“A pair of ruffians at the bridge, who appear to have been stowing away in the castle. I’ll tell Mr. Stanley about it.” A pause. “I think they admitted to attacking him before. One of them said they’d been hired.”

A small gasp. “What if he thinks it was us ?”

“He could. We have to find out what those men are doing. And who was behind the attack.”

“Did you say anything?” Dovey said after a moment of silence. Pen pressed against the wall, holding his breath.

“I took him to Penrydd,” Gwen said in a low voice. “Showed him the house.”

“And he remembered?”

“He had some reaction to it. As if it seemed familiar. But he didn’t say much.”

“Then we don’t know what he knows,” Dovey said quietly.

“Dovey bach ,” Gwen said after another moment passed. Pen leaned in to hear over the steaming hiss of the kettle. “I know you want to let him remember?—”

“Until we can come up with a good reason for?—”

“But what if he’s in danger here? What if those men are after him?”

There was a clatter, a brief pounding, then Dovey’s voice, low and urgent. “What happened while you were away?”

“I kissed him. Again.”

Pen reared back, surprised at the confession. He would have lied, himself. Surely Gwen was a great hand at lying. Her voice changed, became muffled. “We—danced. We talked. He’s?—”

Pen willed his heart to stop pounding in his ears so he might hear , damn it.

“Different,” Gwen said finally. “Not the man I met at the tavern.”

“He’ll go right back to that when his memory returns,” Dovey said.

“Will he? I wonder. Maybe it’s best if we…”

Tell me. The inner voice had turned frantic. Tell me everything!

“Gwen.” Dovey’s voice was threaded with fear. “You said it yourself. There are dangerous men out there. If he turns us out, what happens to Cerys and me?”

“I’ll take care of you,” Gwen said. “I promise.”

“How, dearling? You don’t have any money either.”

Utter silence fell in the kitchen. Pen peeked around the doorframe. Gwen stood at the table, wrapping a clump of wet leaves in a strip of linen. Dovey moved close and touched her arm.

“Can we wait a bit longer? At least until the men are gone and the danger is over. Cerys can’t be out there alone. Not like this.”

Gwen placed a hand over her friend’s. “I’ll wait,” she said. “But if he is starting to remember…”

Dovey nodded and wiped the corner of one eye. “I know.”

Gwen turned toward the door, and Pen leapt for the stairs to his room so he could pretend he’d been there all this time. He was wrestling with his waistcoat when Gwen rapped at the doorframe and walked in.

“A compress of comfrey for your face,” she said. “Helps with swelling. Here, let me.”

She handed him the small bundle of linen and he held it to his cheek. The warmth soothed, though his vision in that eye was already clouding.

“At least he clobbered me on the right side. Balancing things out, so to speak.”

He willed his heart to calm as Gwen worked the buttons of his waistcoat and peeled it off him, then hung it next to his coat.

He sat on the bed and kicked off his boots, but it hurt too much to bend over and take off his stockings.

She knelt and dealt with them, making a pile of laundry that someone else would tend to, probably Widow Jones.

They might have been keeping his identity from him, but they’d tended to his basic needs.

He’d remember that when the time of reckoning came.

But his heart didn’t slow with that realization.

If anything, with Gwen’s scent surrounding him, her soft hands on his face as she checked the compress, it beat all the faster.

“I’ll take your shirt and work out the stains.”

“Blood?” Pen said, holding out his arms as she lifted the shirt over his head.

“Not yours.” She smiled. “You trounced him, Pen, and he was three stone heavier than you.”

“Do you think he’s the one who beat me before?”

Cool air tingled over his feverish skin, and he sat nearly naked before her.

They were alone here in this narrow stone room, with the last light leaving the sky.

It felt like they were wrapped in a secret, a world known only to them.

Like the field of bluebells, save here was a bed he could draw her down upon.

Like that intoxicating dream of a dance, but with a door they could lock against the outside.

“We’ll find out.” She sat beside him, her eyes roaming his bare skin, looking for injuries. She lifted a finger and traced the scars webbing his left shoulder, chest, and ribs. “You seem better.”

“I don’t feel the pain from before.” Somehow he knew that. Like she’d said, the connections were forming in his mind, deep, too slow for his patience, but all would be clear in time.

She lifted troubled eyes to his. He drank her in. “I’ll make it right, Pen.”

“You’ll stay with me, then?” Because that would make everything right.

He didn’t even care if she would choose, even now, to use her body against him, as a forfeit or a trade, a distraction, or defense from all he might accuse her of.

He didn’t care how she came into his arms, only that she arrived there.