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She could be cast into the bridewell for years and her friends turned out of St. Sefin’s.

Once again Daron Sutton could destroy her life and cast her into the outer darkness.

And Calvin Vaughn, whom she had thought an idle menace, might manage what she had once feared Pen would do: end St. Sefin’s entirely.

Sir Robert Salusbury was a man she’d had no business with.

Mr. Stanley could tell her that he’d studied at Trinity College and Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn.

Gwen had passed Llanwern, the manor house he’d inherited through his wife, on her way to harp at Pencoed Castle.

Sir Robert had recently been elected mayor of Newport, but he was also MP for Brecon and had Parliamentary duties, so she couldn’t vouch that he knew of St. Sefin’s and the people she’d helped.

The travelers they lodged when the inns were full, earning much-needed extra coin.

The girls like Mathry they took during their lying-ins for children they would be forced to give away.

The foreigners they housed while they looked for work in the mines and coalfields and shipyards.

The widows and orphans turned out of their homes, the men deprived of work, the ailing who had found refuge under their roof until better circumstances arrived, or they were transferred quietly to the pauper’s section of the graveyard in the cemetery at St. Woolos.

The room fell silent as she shed her hat and moved toward the wooden table where Sir Robert sat. He looked like a decent man. He wore a white bag wig, the sign of his office, and was dressed in a somber black wool suit. But he had children, daughters. Surely his heart could be moved in her favor.

Gwen looked about hesitantly. Sir Robert had chosen to hold court in one of the upper rooms of the Fleur-de-Lys, a pub just off High Street.

In Tudor times the house had belonged to the powerful Herberts, high sheriffs and lords of St. Julian’s Manor outside of town.

St. Julian’s was an ivy-covered ruin now and Herbert lands had been absorbed by other lords as Dame Fortune turned her wheel.

Gwen cast her eye over the plasterwork ceiling and shivered.

She recognized the Aragon pineapple in the bas relief.

Wales had celebrated when their Tudor prince, Arthur, was betrothed to the beautiful Katherine, princess of the powerful realm of Aragon.

But Arthur died before his prime and Katherine passed to the cruel hands of his brother, Henry VIII.

The once-admired princess had ended her life impoverished and divorced, denied by her husband, stripped of her pride and her child when another woman caught Henry’s eye.

He had riven England from the Roman church in order to have Anne Boleyn, and then chopped off Anne’s head when she displeased him.

A chill ran down Gwen’s back. The fortunes of the powerful were changeable, and the fates of women more fragile yet.

She lifted her chin and wondered why the silence stretched out.

A small crowd of people was gathered in the room, other plaintiffs and defendants awaiting their turn, witnesses waiting to be examined, spectators there for a diversion.

The May afternoon promised sun after the morning mist rolled away, and dust motes glittered in the air.

The clerk of the peace stared at her. Sir Robert stared at her.

Even the bailiff, craning his neck for the source of the quiet, couldn’t take his eyes off her face.

“Don’t be taken in by her beauty, judge,” Calvin Vaughn said. “There’s a tart’s heart beneath that lace.”

“Hold your tongue, Vaughn.” Daron Sutton stepped forward. The two men had been standing in a corner, shielded by the ostrich plumes on the hat of a woman wearing a heavy veil.

“I meant for her to be my wife.” Daron reached for Gwen’s hand. “I would still have you, Gwen. Say the word, and the charges against you will be dropped.”

Gwen stared into his face. His petulant, self-satisfied face. Even now he thought she was his for the asking.

Deliberately she moved her gloved hands away from his outstretched one. “I decline the honor of your hand, Mr. Sutton,” she said, and then ruined the dignity of her reply with a muttered Welsh curse. A gasp told her someone in the back knew she’d compared him to sheep’s poo, though Sutton didn’t.

He scowled, but his retort was drowned out by the man behind the table.

“You will address the court as Sir Robert or Your Worship, Mr. Vaughn,” Sir Robert said.

“And you, Mr. Sutton, will stand back. This examination will proceed, considering the charges are already written out and on the rolls.” He pointed to a tiny lectern where perched the clerk of the peace, scribbling across a scroll of paper.

“The evidence is false, Your Worship,” Gwen said. She stroked her fingers, the way she calmed herself when playing before a new audience. “It can only be false. St. Sefin’s is not what they say.”

“I am here to judge that.” Sir Robert glowered, and Gwen bent her head.

The clerk cleared his throat. “The charges include drinking.”

“Rhubarb cordial and dandelion wine,” Gwen said. “We cannot afford spirits.”

“Tippling,” the clerk continued.

“How is that different from drinking?” Gwen asked.

Sir Robert scowled. “Proceed, Mr. Lewis.”

“Carousing at all hours of the day and night,” the clerk read.

“We go to bed at dark.” Gwen’s cheeks tightened with a blush. “All of us.”

“Suspicious conversation?—”

“Suspicious to whom?”

“Miss Ewyas! Let the man do his work,” Sir Robert barked.

“Huh—ahem—whoring,” the clerk stuttered. Calvin Vaughn smirked. A hot wave of anger splashed through Gwen.

“Not once.”

Sir Robert gave her a stern glower. “You deny the charges?”

“All of them. Particularly the last. We are not—that kind of house.” Gwen managed to keep her temper, though she wanted to rain Welsh curses down upon their heads.

The clerk hid behind his roll. “There are accusations of men coming and going at all hours. A Mr. Stanley?—”

“The vicar,” Gwen said, scandalized.

“A young, stocky man, fair-haired?—”

“That’s Tomos. He is grown like a man, but in his mind he’s as a boy. Five, six years old at most.”

“There are reports of keeping company with boys as well, leading them into a path of vice and sin.”

“Does he mean Ifor?” Gwen stared. “Our goat boy?”

“And there has been of late, under your roof, a particular person, origins unknown—a large man, very rough-looking, who has roamed at large about Newport, engaged in fighting, drinking, and general disruption of the peace?—”

“That’s Penry—Pen.” She chopped off his title, not sure if Pen would want it known that he’d spent weeks cloistered with the unfortunate souls of St. Sefin’s in a rough, tiny town in Wales.

The hind-end of Britain, he’d called it.

A hard thread twisted around her heart and pulled tight.

She hadn’t heard from him since he’d walked away, nearly two weeks ago.

She hadn’t dared send to him, not even when the writ appeared, for she recalled the cold look on his face when he left.

What if he regretted his time with her? Thought it shameful. What if all they had shared had meant nothing to him?—

“What have you to say to these last charges, Miss Ewyas?” Sir Robert demanded.

This whole spectacle was a farce. They didn’t even know her real name. At least it couldn’t shame her father, and her poor mother too, to have the Carews on the rolls with such ridiculous charges. When Gwen had done so much worse in her life.

“Who was keeping company with me?” she asked.

“This stranger. Pen,” Calvin Vaughn said roughly.

Gwen stared at him. Even now he had no idea. “That wasn’t whoring,” she said to Vaughn. “Men and women keep company all the time outside of marital relations, and not in criminal conversation. Unless he’s forced a girl against her will?—”

Vaughn flushed at the accusation. “It’s whoring even if there’s no money involved! And you’ve done it before.”

Daron, beside him, grew rigid. He must have said something to Vaughn about their past relationship. He’d dug a hole for himself now; he couldn’t take her hand or her supposed inheritance if Vaughn dragged her name through the mud in a court of law.

The thread around her heart tightened. What she’d shared with Pen was beautiful. It came near to being holy, the highest design of their Maker, two human hearts ennobled and bound together in adoration, in service, and in love. For her, it was love.

She’d wager no woman had ever known that sense of wholeness and completion in Calvin Vaughn’s arms. And not Daron Sutton’s, either.

“All this to the effect,” the clerk went on in a strained voice, “that the neighbors were vexed and disquieted and grieved.”

“What neighbors?” Gwen laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Our land abuts the St. Woolos churchyard, a ditch, and marshland owned by the Morgans. There’s nothing but empty land between us and Maes-n-Gaer, the old hillfort.”

Sir Roger glowered at the plaintiffs. “Mr. Vaughn, you led us to believe that this St. Sefin’s was a rowdy pub filled with all manner of debauchery.”

Vaughn swung on Gwen. “It is!”

“Your Worship,” Gwen said. “Let me acquaint you with the present inhabitants of St. Sefin’s.

A young boy left blind as a babe who earns his keep as our goatherd.

A young man who is a natural, an innocent, whose parents could not afford to keep him.

A widow turned out of her house by her children and a grandmother turned off her land when her sons died.

A veteran of the British Army maimed in the siege on Gibraltar.

A young widow who lost her husband in the service of the Dutch Navy.

And a young maid recently in service at Greenfield?—”

Here Calvin Vaughn cleared his throat loudly, drowning out what she might say next. Gwen knotted her fingers in the lace apron she had worn instead of her shawl, because Dovey insisted it looked more English.