Page 267

They paused in the shadow of the looming stone porch. Evans fell silent. Pen stood calmly, weight on his heels, shoulders square. Lordly.

He looked at the men as if he knew exactly who they were.

“M-m-milord!” Ross stammered. His expression was priceless, a Trojan scout counting the Greek armies massing on the shore.

“Lord?” Barlow’s bushy white eyebrows flew toward the brim of his hat.

“Penrydd,” Pen said.

Gwen’s stomach splashed into her shoes.

“The Viscount Penrydd?” Barlow yelped.

Pen nodded. “Fourth of that title. Hullo, Ross. Took you long enough to find me.”

He knew .

“Er.” Ross gulped, his eyes bulging behind his spectacles. “Well. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that you would be here, milord. Surveying your, ah, property.”

“My property?” Pen’s brows lifted in a more regal version of Barlow’s surprise. “Ah. My property. That explains a great deal.”

His gaze pinned Gwen, and she clung to Dovey’s hand so she didn’t collapse. The scenery whirled around her. Dovey’s fingernails digging into her palm kept her anchored.

She wanted to say so many things to him, but foremost was a hopeless plea. Forgive me .

“Well,” Pen said, his voice neutral. “I’ve had time to survey my property at length.”

Tomos shifted on his feet, growing agitated. Evans put a calming hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“We want to buy it,” Gwen said to Pen, her throat tight with anguish. “But you—know our situation.”

“Fifteen hundred pounds.” Pen regarded Ross, who coughed into his hand. “I recall your telling me it couldn’t be worth more than a thousand.”

He remembered everything. Everything . Gwen’s heart started working its way down her chest, aiming to join her stomach. Dovey held her up.

“Yes, well, I thought you should ask an extra five hundred to cover loss of prospective rent,” Ross said.

“I see,” Pen said. “And what other properties have you sold while I was—away?”

Pen hadn’t dressed in the laborer’s clothes she’d given him, the rough woolen coat and trousers.

He wore his own clothes, the tailored coat with its clawhammer tail, the buckskin breeches, the cravat more complicated than anything he’d attempted before.

With his attire and his mien, there was no questioning he was a man of stature.

Barlow at last remembered to sweep off his hat. “My lord,” he stammered.

“We’ve not gone behind your back, sir,” Ross squeaked. “Nothing can be finalized without your approval. But I’ve been—importuned for money. From—you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Pen said.

The others in his group stepped away from Pen, acknowledging they were no longer equals. He was lord of this land and they were his subjects, entirely at his mercy.

Gafr, uninterested in the ways of men, nosed at Pen’s boots, but Ifor, attuned to the tension in the air, pulled him back.

Pen plucked a tall flowering stalk that grew in the shade of the porch.

He studied the white bell of the flower, the scarlet specks at its heart, then put the bloom on his finger like a thimble.

Gwen wondered if he knew it was foxglove, flowering early this year.

She should tell Mathry, she thought with the fluttering, leaping part of her brain that was not frozen in shock.

Foxglove was very useful for nervous disorders or to stem bleeding, but too much could stop the heart.

She ought to remove the clump to the poison garden.

Pen examined the plant as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to heal or to kill.

“Let me guess,” he said. “The moneylender lost track of me after his men attacked me as I sailed for Newport. As far as I can ascertain, after beating me senseless in pursuit of my purse, his men tipped me over the side of the boat so they mightn’t be hanged for murder.

By sheer good luck, or their stupidity, I fell into a boat alongside the ship instead of drowning. ”

He glanced at Gwen, but his expression was guarded, revealing nothing. “Finding my purse insufficient, I gather this same moneylender then approached you, Ross, insisting you pay the debt my brother owed him. A debt I suspect I am not, after all, responsible for.”

Pen turned to Evans, as if continuing a conversation from before.

“This moneylender and his men are the cause of the violence we’ve been seeing in town.

The man lives in Cardiff, but for some reason has lately become keen on collecting his debts, and not loathe how he goes about it.

He had some grudge against the Jew from Merthyr Tydfil, a successful financier whom he regarded as a rival.

And we know how that ended, may his poor soul find peace. ”

Mr. Stanley crossed himself, watching Pen with wide eyes.

Penrydd turned back to Gwen. “Our friends we met on the bridge, Minikin and Gap-tooth—his real name is Pedr—they worked for this lender. They were part of the gang sent to shake me down, in fact. But they were spooked by his methods so struck out on their own. I found them in the pubs and we’ve been discussing how to end their boss’s reign of terror. They call him Y Gwyllgi.”

“The Black Hound,” Gwen whispered. Y Gwyllgi was a mythical beast that roamed mountain passes and isolated roads. His red eye froze his prey and his breath was poison. Any mortal who had earned that name had done so by being a monster.

So Pen, during his days in town, had been making friends along the wharves and mingling with the shopkeepers and merchants of Newport.

He’d not only remembered his past but was laying plans to deal with the man who attacked him, the man who was threatening others as well.

She understood now why he had sought out Gossett after that first thrashing and convinced the man, a former bare-knuckle boxer, to teach him to fight.

A cold cloud froze her heart, as if she’d taken the foxglove. Those men had meant to kill Pen if he wouldn’t pay them money. She would have lost any chance to know him. To love him.

How long had he known who he was?

“Pen,” she managed to say. “Let the authorities deal with him. You must have nothing to do with such a man.” He could be killed in truth next time.

His eyes tightened. She’d used her name for him, not his title.

She didn’t get to call him Pen, or even Penrydd—that was a luxury reserved for his peers.

He was Lord Penrydd now, his lordship or my lord to someone like her.

The Right Honourable The Viscount Penrydd did she wish to write him a letter. She didn’t even know his given name.

And she had no right to learn anything more about him. Not after what she’d done.

Pen, forgive me .

Barlow’s eyebrows had taken up permanent residence near his hairline.

“Can we call the constable on this Gooey—” He gave up trying to pronounce the Welsh syllables.

“In no way are you bound to discharge this debt, milord. If I know the moneylender to whom you refer, he charges usurious, ruinous rates. The law cannot compel you to uphold an illegal agreement your brother made.”

“The law cannot compel me,” Pen agreed. “Which is why he’s trying other means.” He winced and rolled his injured shoulder.

“When he lost you, he contacted the viscountess,” Ross said unhappily. “She came here to pay him, thinking to free you all, but of course, with you absent?—”

“She doesn’t have the funds.” Pen’s studied calm slipped. “Do you mean Lydia is here? Or Prunella?”

Ross lifted his hands in a shrug. “Er, both? The moneylender told them both he could seize their jointures if he wasn’t paid, which you and I both know he can’t do, but they believed it.” He cleared his throat. “They are currently staying in Chippenham with the family of Miss Carruthers.”

“Who the deuce is Miss Carruthers?” Pen scowled.

“The—er—girl your mother wishes you to wed. The one with the rather large dowry.”

“Coc oen ,” Pen swore, and Mother Morris’s lips twitched.

The older women, laundry forgotten, hung close by, listening as intently to the conversation as everyone else.

Gwen had stopped breathing. Pen knew who he was.

Pen had a mother and sister and possibly a betrothed waiting for him in his real life. What came next?

As if she’d spoken aloud, he turned to her. “Gather your things, Gwen. You’re familiar with my rooms at the Green Man—we still have them, don’t we, Ross? I can only imagine how delighted the dowager viscountess, my stepmother Lydia, and my brother’s wife, Prunella, will be to meet you.”

He snapped the stalk of foxglove in two and threw it at his feet. Gafr sniffed and turned away.

Gwen held to Dovey’s hand as if it kept her from drowning. “What of St. Sefin’s?” she whispered.

Pen scowled. “We will discuss that. Among other things.”

The arrogant lord was back, the one who could wave his hand and men, and women, would spring to his bidding. He was a viscount, of all things. What she had done to him was punishable. He could have her whipped and put in chains. He could have her transported.

Gwen lifted her chin. She couldn’t go with him, not even to save St. Sefin’s. She had no bargaining power with the arrogant lord.

“My place is here,” she said quietly.

She missed him already, Pen, the man who had shared this place with her. He’d disappeared, and she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.

His face froze with that flat expression she couldn’t read. Dovey, dropping a brief curtsey, tugged at her hand. “We’ll gather your things, milord. Only give us a moment.”

Lifting her leaden feet with conscious effort, Gwen followed Dovey to the men’s dormitory and Pen’s room. The room where she’d spent all those blissful, wondrous hours in his arms.

While he was betrothed to someone else. Or about to be.