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S t. Sefin’s had visitors. Pen felt Gwen tense in his arms as they trotted up the path and around the stately front of the church.

A small cart sat in the back yard, near the outbuildings, and a pony he recognized from the King’s Head stables browsed among the goats.

Birds swirled and settled back to retrieving seeds from the newly sown garden when the horses clopped to a stop.

“Haia, Miss Gwen!” Ifor called from his perch atop a low wall, the foundations of a former building long scavenged for its stone. “Two fancy ladies here to see you. They’re the viscount’s people, they are.”

Pen groaned. “Of course they wouldn’t stay in Bristol, though I told them I would bring you to them. Ifor, I’m putting my horse and Ross’s in the pen. Will Gafr have it?”

Ifor’s face broke into a broad smile. “ Croeso , Mr. Pen!”

“That means welcome,” Pen said to Ross as he swung Gwen down from the horse.

She gripped his forearms in terror, and he smiled, pleased at this tiny sign that she needed him.

His stubborn Gwen pretended to need no one, but she’d needed him today in the courtroom.

He had to prove she required him in other ways, too.

“Still holding to your courage, I hope?” he murmured in her ear, catching her arm again as he dismounted and Ifor helped Ross pen the horses.

He sensed Ross’s discomfort; his secretary didn’t know what to make of the unusual community of St. Sefin’s, or Pen’s interest in it.

But Pen’s concern was for Gwenllian, whose face was white with terror.

“You’ll see how they will receive me,” she warned him. “It will be the same everywhere. No one will ever allow you to make a Welsh farm girl your viscountess.”

“I don’t need anyone’s approval,” Pen said. “I need you.”

He detected a softening at the corners of her mouth in response to his words, and debated whether to kiss her.

Instinct won out over propriety and at the door to the chapter house, where the others had gathered, he bent and pressed his lips to the enchanting curve of her cheek.

She pulled away but couldn’t repress the small smile that told him she was delighted by his declaration.

An instant clamor arose as Gwen stepped into the room, shouts, cries of welcome, exclamations of relief. His stepmother and sister-in-law rose from two upholstered chairs, holding themselves apart from the rest. Prunella looked intrigued, and Lydia furious.

Evans stepped forward and held out his hand to shake Pen’s. Lydia’s lip curled at this gesture of familiarity and Pen added a thump on Evans’s back for good measure.

“Miss Gwenllian didn’t end in the bridewell, I take it,” Evans said. “What did Sir Robert decide, then?”

“Not guilty,” Gwen said. “By reason that the Viscount Penrydd appeared and made Mr. Sutton and Mr. Vaughn think very carefully about the accusations they wanted to level against a peer.”

She hugged Dovey, who wiped a tear of relief from her cheek. Dovey, Pen guessed, had been in Gwen’s confidence this whole time, while she had told him nothing, even though it was his property under discussion.

The thought should have made him furious. But it made him simply more determined to prove that he, too, was worthy of her trust.

“We’re free of them?” Dovey asked. “Truly?”

“Doubt they’ll be back,” Mother Morris cackled, rising and hobbling to Gwen to claim a hug of her own. “No use lifting your petticoat after you’ve peed.”

“Will we see the girl, though?” Widow Jones asked, giving Gwen a squeeze of welcome. “Anne?”

“I told her to come to us, though she’s used to better,” Gwen said. “She threw out her scarf for the viscount, and I can’t say I blame her. I imagine Calvin Vaughn won’t take her without a dowry, and she is better off free of him.”

Mathry moved in for an embrace, but Cerys dived in first, clinging to Gwen’s waist. Mathry threw her arms around them both. Tomos, holding to Gwen’s apron with one fist, beamed at them all.

“Well, she can’t have me. Lydia, Prunella,” Pen greeted the two women.

Prunella was a lush woman with large, sweeping curves, just the shape Edwin preferred, and she had a habitual sleepy, languid air from which it was difficult to rouse her.

Pen was frankly surprised she had bestirred herself to travel from the comfortable London townhouse, and in the company of Lydia, whom she did not particularly like.

“What brings you here, Lydia? At least you have finally relieved yourself of Miss Carruthers,” Pen said. “I found her very tedious.”

“Mr. Turbeville took her with his sisters on an excursion to his family’s cottage in Weston-super-Mare,” Lydia said in a tight voice. “Penrydd, we must speak with you at once. Ross advised me of your ridiculous intentions, and I have come to make you see sense.”

“Very well.” Pen seated himself in the bishop’s chair, of which he’d grown fond. He urged Gwen to perch on the carved lion’s paw arm, hooking his elbow around her hips. She blushed at the blatant signal of possession, but didn’t argue, for once.

Lydia narrowed her eyes. In opposition to Prunella’s generous lines, she was a thin, shrewish woman as tense as a coiled spring.

She’d brought an admirable dowry and an impeccable bloodline to her marriage, and she had suffered her stepson’s rowdiness during his breaks from school or visits home.

Now, with no children of her own and that family of impeccable bloodline having no inclination to take her in, she depended on the income she drew from the estate that Pen controlled, and her every interaction with him bristled with her resentment for living at the mercy of the boy she had always despised.

“You might as well have it out here, Lydia,” Pen said. “I daresay Gwen has already gone over all your objections.” He enjoyed the way everyone was listening avidly to the exchange, including Ifor, who had come in from outside.

“Very well.” Lydia gathered her dignity.

She wore an open robe of striped grey silk with white flowers embroidered at the hem and a lace fichu tucked into the bodice.

The ensemble was plain for Lydia, but he saw Gwen eying the finery.

Dovey in turn was studying Prunella’s robe of white muslin spotted with tiny red flowers, cinched with a pink sash at her waist and ruffles of lace about her neck.

“You must think of your family, Rhydian. You cannot sink us this low. To marry a Welsh woman?—”

“You forget your husband’s family was Welsh, and had been for centuries,” Pen said.

Lydia was the daughter of a lesser son born to one of the oldest English earldoms, so she could and did boast of her high connections.

Prunella too was a gentleman’s daughter and could be sure of her reception anywhere.

They were not of the fast, dashing set that would laugh at conventions and thumb their nose at the strictures of the moral middle class.

No, they were of the sort that guarded carefully the borders of class and rank, and they would do their best to ensure that someone like Gwen was kept out.

They would be the first to criticize her conduct and her birth, to ridicule her Welsh ways and forthright manner of speaking.

They would somehow make it shameful that she had run a refuge for the destitute and castaway, and if they ever found out she had borne a child out of wedlock—he had a sense, as most men did, of the cruel, strict way women held other women in line.

Bringing Gwen into this world would be like throwing a virgin martyr into the Coliseum to be devoured by lions.

Lydia’s eyelid twitched, a sure sign of annoyance. “You must realize we couldn’t hold our heads up to the gossip,” she said. “You’d never be taken seriously in Lords or anywhere else. She’d be cut everywhere, and you would too. You might have to leave the country. Is that what you want?”

Of course not. What he wanted was to live in bliss with the woman he loved, and the rest of the world could go hang.

He tightened his arm, feeling Gwen stir in protest. A mistress would be the easier choice.

She would be accepted among the other women of the demimonde, the woman like her who earned their keep with their favors, and he would be applauded for capturing a rare beauty.

Men of his station were expected to keep a ladybird.

They were also expected to marry among their station and breed children to take up the reins of power once they had passed.

Children. With Gwen. He’d never before wanted to bring a child into this cruel world, had in fact taken pains in all his liaisons to avoid that outcome. But a child of his and Gwen’s, or several—his lungs clenched at the thought, empty of air.

“Your wife must be bred to the position, Rhydian,” Lydia said. “You can’t make a Welsh farm girl a viscountess. You’ll shame us all.”

“Is that your main objection, Lydia?” Pen said. “Then allow me to present to you Miss Gwenllian Carew, also calling herself Gwenllian ap Ewyas.” He sensed the gasp of surprise that went around the room as he said Gwen’s name. She rose and delivered a stiff but proper curtsey.

“Gwen, my stepmother Lydia, the Dowager Viscountess Penrydd, and Prunella, the current Viscountess Penrydd, my brother’s bride. There will be two dowagers once you wed me, which I judge will cause no end of confusion about town, but I could not care less.”

“Penrydd,” Lydia said, a set to her mouth that promised she would give no quarter. “It’s shocking enough what these people have done to your property, your family’s property. But to unite yourself in marriage to?—”

“A knight’s daughter,” Pen said, forcing his voice to remain level.

“Badge presented for service to the Crown in supplying copper from his mines to line the hulls of ships for the Royal Navy. Who’s to say but that our ammunition at Tenerife might have stayed dry if Bowen’s ship had been so outfitted.

Now, it’s not a title of a hundred years’ standing, I grant you, but if Sir David Carew has saved one life with his copper, that’s more than I can lay claim to doing in all my years of service. ”

An utter silence fell over the room. Shards of colored light drifted through the stained glass set high in the wall. Gwen’s face caught the colors as she stared at him.

“That’s not enough,” Lydia said. “The money?—”

“Yes, my brother’s debts. Poor Prunella. Our respectable Edwin turned up rather more unsteady than we thought him, didn’t he? I’ll have you know, Lydia, that I’ve been wise enough to let myself be leg-shackled by an heiress. How much did they tell us the mines yield a year, Ross?”

Ross tore his eyes away from Mathry, who was lounging in her usual spot in the window, her curved form limned with light.

“Ahem. Ah. The copper and lead-silver together, on the combined properties, produce about thirty thousand in any given year, depending on the price for ore. Gross income before salaries and supplies, that is. Sir.”

Lydia paled beneath the lead paint of her makeup.

“Thousands, you say?” Prunella looked as if she’d just been handed a pretty new hat.

Gwen scowled. “How do you know this? My father’s solicitor only replied to me this morning.”

“Ross made inquiries,” Pen said. “Now don’t go in a taking. I’ll ask you to repair the Penrydd fortunes, yes, but beyond that I’ll let you have a say in how the income is used.”

A joyful light broke over Gwen’s face. “I can buy St. Sefin’s.”

“Which will do you no good, since it will be mine again at our marriage. I told you this,” Pen said. “Besides, I have other plans for the place. I intend to sell St. Sefin’s to Mrs. Van der Welle for the price of—what do you think fair, Ross? One pound?”

Ross, overcome by a choking fit, could not respond.

His reply would have been drowned out anyway by the uproar in the room.

Pen was aware only of Gwen beside him. She trembled like a dancing flame and her expression of admiration as she looked down at him made him wish he could do something to win that look from her every day.

Dovey lifted her chin with eloquent pride. “I can pay you a hundred pounds, milord. We have savings.”

“Ten pounds it is,” Pen said to her. “I’m not convinced it’s the best move, mind, since what’s yours will go to Evans, do you ever accept him.

But we could draw up papers that upon your marriage put the property in trust for Cerys, or some such.

I’m sure Ross can find a legal recourse, and if he can’t, Barlow will. ”

“Dovey?” Gwen blinked. “Marry Evans?”

“There are ways to keep it in her name, sir,” Evans said in a mild voice belied by the furious red blush of his ears. “And make it her jointure, of course, if something happens to me, with provision that the property go to Cerys in the event that?—”

“I have not consented to marriage,” Dovey said, her nose pointed toward the ceiling. “Mr. Evans has not made me an offer, proper or otherwise.”

“Dovey?” Gwen cried, staring at her friend. “And Evans?”

“My word, Gwen, how did you miss that? And here I thought you so clever.” Pen tightened his arm about her. She was so strong, so fierce, but she betrayed herself in how she unconsciously leaned toward him. Her body knew she belonged with him, even if her solid good sense still protested.

“Dovey and Evans,” Gwen repeated. “But they’re always chopsing. He’s forever scolding her, and she says he can’t do anything right, and?—”

“Gwenllian ap Ewyas, my ridiculous daft garden warbler. That man would give his every remaining limb for her. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s a particular tendre for him, haven’t you, Mrs. Van der Welle?

She needs only be convinced another marriage won’t break her heart again, or leave her destitute, like last time.

And if she has property with some income, that’s one problem solved. ”

“We haven’t any income,” Gwen said.

“We’ll deal with that in a minute.” Pen withdrew his pocket watch and regarded it.

“It’s been two weeks, aye? Time enough to age that special batch of St. Sefin’s brew I made.

And long enough to season our mixtures, wouldn’t you say, Evans?

” At the other man’s nod, Pen snapped his watch shut and tucked it back in his pocket.

“Very well. Let’s have a fine dinner and I’ll tell you what I plan to do with the Black Hound.

And then, Gwenllian ap Ewyas,” and he pulled her close against him, where he no longer felt the constant hollow ache, and with her beside him might never feel such again. “We will discuss posting the banns.”