Page 276

“ I t’s just tea, Gwen,” Anne Sutton said. “My brother and Mr. Vaughn won’t be there. Lady Vaughn wants to entertain the Dowager Viscountess and Lady Penrydd while they are in the area, and to make her apologies to you.” Anne pouted. “Please come.”

She was wearing the frilly muslin dress she’d worn on her first visit to St. Sefin’s, but the dark circles beneath made her eyes look haunted and she smoothed her fingers over the ribbon at her waist in a nervous gesture. Gwen sighed.

“It’s late for tea.” She’d have to travel to Greenfield in the company of the ladies Penrydd, who had not warmed to her after Pen’s startling announcement in the chapter house the day before.

She’d be back far too late to help with the evening meal, leaving Dovey and Widow Jones to see to everything, and then what was she to feed two picky, overbred English viscountesses? “Does she want me to harp, then?”

“Just you. Come, Gwen. The others are already in the carriage.” Anne paused, fingers fluttering at her throat. “Lady Vaughn feels terrible for what her son put you through. As do I.”

The best thing Lady Vaughn could do was let her forget the entire courtroom scene, Gwen thought.

She’d much rather stay here and acquaint herself with whatever schemes Pen was working up.

He and Ross and Evans had been in the back pasture all day, engaged in a project they wouldn’t disclose, but the occasional muffled explosions and whoops of joy that emanated from that quarter told her they were up to mischief.

He’d asked her to let him deal with the Black Hound in his own fashion. So far his fashion, as far as she could gather, included making darnel beer and dung bombs. Gwen harbored great reservations.

Anne tugged on her sleeve. “Gwen. Please.”

Gwen sighed and went to the kitchen to leave her shawl and a word to Mother Morris about where she was going.

She was dressed in a plain cotton day gown, the second best she had, but Anne urged her to the carriage without giving her time to fetch a bonnet.

At least Anne wasn’t lingering to throw out her scarf for Pen, Gwen grumbled to herself.

The coach wasn’t one she recognized, a barouche in glossy black lacquer with red trim around the wheels and door, and red leather seats inside. It appeared new.

“—at least some semblance of civilization,” Lydia was saying as Gwen climbed in.

Prunella offered Gwen a pleasant smile, and Gwen manufactured one in return. She sensed Prunella might be more approachable on her own, but Lydia stood guard over her like a wolfhound, protecting the family honor. From people like Gwen.

The pair of blacks weren’t Greenfield horses, and instead of setting out to the west towards Bassaleg and the patches of red oak and sycamore that encased Greenfield, the coach jolted down the rough track leading south over the salty marshes that lined the low-lying Usk.

Gwen grabbed for a leather handle near the ceiling as the carriage jostled.

“Greenfield isn’t this way.” Lady Vaughn must have hired a coach and driver who didn’t know his direction. Perhaps her own coach wasn’t large enough for all four of them.

“Oh—she wished us to join her on a boat. On the river.” Anne’s smile seemed forced, and her eyes wouldn’t settle in any one place. “A sort of pleasure cruise.”

“A late afternoon pleasure cruise?”

“We go for punts on the Thames all the time, Miss Carew,” Lydia said. Her smile stretched even more thinly than Anne’s. “In fact Miss Carruthers was hoping she and Penrydd would marry on a small boat on the river.”

Reference to Pen’s conjectured betrothal silenced Gwen, as Lydia intended. Prunella grimaced as the carriage wheel fell into a rut, then jounced free. “I wouldn’t like it,” she said. “I daresay I’d be seasick the entire time.”

“It would merely be for an hour, Prunella, and the boat would not be moving,” Lydia snapped. “Miss Sutton, you said Lady Vaughn was from Wrexham? I know Sir Foster and Lady Cunliffe. In fact, they have invited me to Acton Park on more than one occasion.”

Gwen held her tongue and looked out the window, wrinkling her nose against the many odors that crowded the carriage.

Rising above the pungent scent of new leather and fresh paint were warring scents of flowers.

It appeared the other ladies had known about the invitation before she did and had taken care to dress their hats with fresh blooms she recognized as being taken from St. Sefin’s gardens.

Her heart clenched tight. St. Sefin’s was going to feel so different when Pen left.

It would be Dovey’s, not hers. Could she leave it to become his mistress?

How long could she remain immune to the scorn of his world?

At St. Sefin’s, she had friends, the children to look after, a community.

In Pen’s world, she would have no one but him.

It was bound to become lonely, especially when his duties as a viscount pulled him further and further away.

“I’ve seen this ship. It’s been anchored here for weeks. Is it one of Sir Lambert Vaughn’s?” Gwen said with surprise as the river came into full view.

She wouldn’t set foot on a slaver. But the sleek two-masted brig anchored in the curve of the Usk was small and light, made for maneuvering in coastal channels. Four squat, round cannons pointed their noses at them as the carriage stopped on the sandy shore.

“I don’t know. Just come inside. Hurry.”

“Will the tea get cold?” Gwen snapped. Anne’s nervousness was starting to infect her.

Her boots sank into the sand as she struggled out of the carriage.

The breeze from the channel, though the sun shone warm, held a playful bite.

There was no proper dock or wharf at this curve in the Usk, the shore having such a gentle slope that crew could merely carry their goods to the edge of the water and hoist them into the ship using the small rowboat they called a yawl.

She saw several men at such work, rolling casks and carrying crates.

In fact two of them, one quite large and one markedly shorter, seemed familiar.

“I’ll ruin my half boots,” Prunella complained. “And I just got these this Season. It was so pleasant to leave off mourning at last.”

Gwen scanned the brig with rising alarm.

It was fully rigged, the square sails lightly belling in the breeze, the triangular jibs pointed toward the Channel as if eager to be set free.

She saw no sign of Lady Vaughn on the main deck, and no servants either, only the busy work of sailors in their rough canvas garb.

“I don’t think we?—”

She faltered as a sudden ring of men formed behind them. The carriage driver tipped his hat and urged the horses to walk on, taking away their avenue of escape. An enormous man with a black gap in his teeth stood directly behind her.

“You!” Gwen hissed.

Minikin, the little man beside him, flashed her a cocky grin in greeting. “Shwmae , Moll?”

“They are not taking us to Lady Vaughn,” Gwen said loudly.

“Aye, but we’ll be taking you to the boat nonetheless, and you won’t give us trouble, you won’t,” said Gap-tooth—Pedr, Pen had said his name was. These men had been working for the Black Hound all this time. They’d walked into a trap.

“Anne, I don’t know what they told you, but?—”

“They’ll kill Daron.” Anne’s pupils were tiny blue dots in the huge whites of her eyes. “They told me they will kill him if I didn’t bring all of you, and if we fight or struggle—” She pressed a fist to her mouth to stop a whimper. “They’ll kill all of us.”

Prunella shrieked and her eyes rolled back in her head.

Gwen was ready to applaud the girl’s cleverness until she realized her swooning was not a ruse to give them a chance to rush their guards and escape.

As Prunella’s body folded, Pedr lunged forward to catch her before she toppled to the ground, and Gwen could have laughed at the comical look on his face as he found his arms full of round, soft woman.

Lydia screeched and stepped away as if Pedr, or Prunella, had something catching, but she couldn’t go far with another of the Black Hound’s henchman crowding in from the side.

Pedr scooped Prunella into his arms, grunting a bit as he adjusted his grip, and his cohorts herded the rest of them toward the shallow wooden boat that had been lowered to the ground.

“Hey, now, into the jolly-boat with you all!” Minikin barked. He caught Gwen’s eye. “The Moll doesn’t have the—this time?” He made a motion toward his waist.

“The what?” Gwen shot a glare at one of the men shouldering her toward the tiny boat. He had pox scars on his face and only a few stumps of teeth. He looked hungry and angry.

“The—achoo!” Minikin pretended to open a pouch at his waist, then sneezed.

The sneezewort she’d used on him before. Twpsyn ! She always traveled with it, except when she was invited to tea with society ladies.

“I don’t have it,” she bit out.

Minikin, strangely enough, looked disconcerted.

“Ah. Well, then.” He shared a glance with Pedr and, with a wince of apology, shooed all four women into the yawl and indicated that they sit.

The hard wooden plank pressed against Gwen’s rear and the tiny boat jolted as men above cranked the winch to haul up the ropes.

Like water being fetched from a well the boat carried the four women and their captors up the side of the brig, and men on the main deck unceremoniously hauled them over the rail like so many sacks of flour.