Page 280

“ W e’ll travel north for our honeymoon to inspect her mines and ensure all is in order.

” Pen’s voice floated down from the bell tower of St. Sefin’s where he was repairing the wooden platform where he had made love to Gwen under the stars.

“My viscountess and I won’t let our workers be abused the way Mother Morris’s sons were in the coal mines. ”

“Viscountess,” Dovey murmured. She buffed the stained glass window that held the portrait of St. Sefin, one of the many daughters of the legendary Brychan, Welsh king and saint. “Will I have to call you milady?”

Gwen gave a last loving pat to St. Gwladys, whose window gleamed beneath her cloth. “I’ll only ever be Gwen to you. Will you want me to call you Dovinia Emerald Van der Welle Evans?”

Dovey smiled. “You might call me Mrs. Evans once in a while. Until I get used to the name.”

Dovey’s wedding to Evans would take place in a week, after the last banns were posted. She wanted the ceremony done before Gwen left. There would be less gossip and suspicion, Dovey thought, if St. Sefin’s were run by a proper married couple.

Gwen would marry Lord Penrydd the week after, and so they were polishing St. Sefin’s church to its highest gleam, sprucing up every guest room.

Penrydd had invited all his family and friends, everyone he’d pushed away in his mourning and self-isolation after Tenerife. He was ready to return to the world.

The children were supposed to be helping clean, but they had got up a game with their brooms and mops that involved batting a ball around the floor.

Tomos was currently the man in the middle, chuckling each time the ball sailed past him.

Ifor proved the most proficient player, as he tracked the ball by listening, while Cerys was more interested in shouting taunts and challenges.

At the back of the church, Mathry and Widow Jones discussed where to place flower arrangements, while Mother Morris sat knitting in a shaft of sun falling through the open front door.

Prunella and Anne Sutton were huddled in the chapter house over a bottle of canary wine.

Lydia was visiting Greenfield, but Prunella preferred to entertain Anne at St. Sefin’s, where Miss Sutton was welcome though her brother was not.

Prunella had made it clear that, after what she considered her heroic rescue, Gwen could do no wrong in her eyes.

The rest of Penrydd’s family might not accept her, but Prunella’s cheerful companionship would make up for a great deal, Gwen hoped.

“I want to ensure the mines have safe working conditions,” Pen went on, answering the question Evans had asked.

Evans and Ross, with Mr. Stanley’s help, were repairing the hole in the roof over the north transept.

“Fair wages,” he explained. “Medical care and decent living quarters for the workers. And I won’t allow the overseer to employ small children. ”

“Such progressive notions you have, milord,” Gwen called to him.

He paused his hammer, his head appearing in the opening.

His hair was tousled and his neckcloth wrapped in a simple twist. He’d recovered from the explosion with only residual aches, the old battle scars which he would always carry.

But he was hale and hardy, restored to health, and had so far drunk nothing stronger than rhubarb wine.

Gwen’s entire chest glowed at the sight of him.

“I thought you’d agree.” His gaze met and held hers.

She smiled. “I do. I’m pleased you feel the same way.”

“Most mine owners feel it an unnecessary expense to take care of their workers,” Mr. Stanley said. “Since they are so easy to replace.”

“It’s good business to have a strong workforce,” Pen said.

“Sick workers don’t perform as well, and if you wear them out and kill them, it takes time to replace them and train up someone new.

Better to preserve the workers you have and capitalize on their skills.

Plus that keeps widows and orphans off the poor rolls. ”

“Glad to hear you feel that way, sir,” Ross called.

Mathry bumped Gwen’s hip as she circled past, counting the niches where she planned to put bowls of blooms. “You won’t have time to run mines. You’ll be too busy nursing a baban .” She patted her belly, quite noticeably round.

Gwen shook her head. “There won’t be a babe for me.”

Mathry sent a pointed look at Gwen’s breasts, swelling against the bodice of the old flannel gown that had always fit her. “They’re just growing on their own, then?”

“She’s left off wearing her stays,” Dovey murmured. “Don’t fit.”

Mathry grinned. “Time to start a red raspberry leaf and nettle tea.”

Gwen clasped her middle. “I can’t—it’s not possible?—”

Dovey lifted a curving black brow.

“All right then, it’s possible I caught, but to see it through to delivery—” Fear and wonder gripped her in twin claws.

“I’m sure my womb was damaged from what happened before.

What if I can conceive but not carry?” Her eyes filled with tears.

What if she were forced to relive her nightmare again and again, bearing a babe but not being able to hold it?

Dovey touched her arm. “Dearling. Mathry will have been through her own travail by then, and I know a bit. You’ll have help this time.”

“But it will be seven months or more,” Gwen said, calculating. “You’ll have Evans and St. Sefin’s to see to, and Mathry’s to be our housekeeper at Penrydd.” Pen had set men to work repairing the estate and engaged staff to open and prepare the house. They’d return to it after their honeymoon.

Mathry cradled her own belly with a grin. “Have a little lord, and the dowager will go all sweet on you, I be thinking.”

Gwen stared up at the bell tower where Pen uttered a muffled curse.

An English viscount, wielding a hammer, whistling through the nails clenched in his teeth.

If she could bear children, the last reason she oughtn’t marry him fell away.

Her birth wasn’t equal to his, and God knew her past wasn’t that of a pure, sheltered maid.

But he hadn’t been born to his title, either.

They would learn together. And build a life they chose for themselves, not one dictated to them by others.

“I want a girl,” Gwen whispered. “Is that wrong?”

Mathry tossed her head. “All that’s wrong is that tymffat up there who trips over his feet when’er he sees me, but won’t make a declaration.” She pointed to the platform where Ross and Evans moved about. “Be nice if he made an honest woman of me afore the baban comes.”

“You can’t have my man,” Dovey said placidly, scouring the dust from her window.

“ Wfft , the Northman,” Mathry said. “Thought a Scotsman might have more in his head, but too much English blood up there at the border, that’s what it is.”

“Speaking of Evans, Dovey bach ,” Gwen said. “If you cared for him, why didn’t you marry him long ago?”

Dovey dabbed her cloth at St. Sefin’s purple gown.

“Fear, I suppose. That I’d lose someone again.

Besides, I couldn’t be sure he was sweet on me.

’Twas safer not to let anything change. But then you showed me the way, casting your heart on his lordship, and I thought—how can I be less brave?

” She smiled, her face soft with enchantment.

A sliver of guilt nibbled at Gwen’s conscience.

She and Pen had agreed they would support St. Sefin’s, so Dovey never need worry for income.

But Gwen was leaving her friend with all the burdens, the worries, the knocks on the door in darkest night, and Dovey was both proud and strong—what if she didn’t ask if she needed more help? “Dovey bach — ow! ”

Gwen yelped as the ball bounced off her ankle with a sharp thwack, then caromed away.

“Now you’ve done it, my potato flowers. It’s gone for good if you’ve lost your ball under the altar.

” St. Sefin’s altar was a solid hunk of ancient English oak set on four stone slabs.

They couldn’t move it and had never tried.

“I’ll find it.” Ifor threw himself to the floor and began poking about with his shepherd’s crook.

“By the by, I heard an odd tale from the vicar of St. Mary’s in Abergavenny,” Mr. Stanley remarked.

“Seems a stranger in a small dory floated up the Usk many days back. His fine clothes were covered in filth, smelling of sulfur and dung, and he’d been so knocked about he couldn’t recall his own name.

They sent him to the workhouse, and like he’ll be put to work in the mines of the Black Mountains as soon as he recovers.

Can’t expect he’ll last long there, poor creature.

It’s a great mystery where he came from. ”

“All sorts of traffic on the Usk, newcomers and such,” Evans said.

“Wasn’t St. Mary’s once a Benedictine priory?” Gwen asked.

Pen set a fresh wooden board in place and hammered it down with several loud blows. “Unlucky bastard. Hope it all turns out well for him, though I doubt he’ll have the good fortune I did.” He gave Gwen a saucy wink.

A few hollow thumps echoed behind her, then a loud click. Gwen turned to find Ifor struggling with a wooden panel on the side of the altar.

“Cerys,” Ifor called. “There’s a compartment in here, there is.”

“I knew that.” Cerys hurried over. “I found it years ago. Nothing in it but some lumps of old pottery.”

Ifor reached in and ran a hand over the shapes inside. A grin stretched over his face. “Old pottery, is it?”

Gwen knelt and peered inside the compartment. “The nuns might have hidden things here they didn’t want soldiers or thieves to find. Ifor! Perhaps we’ll find records, or an old scrap of altar cloth, mayhap even?—”

“St. Sefin’s treasure,” Cerys said with a gasp.

“Ooh.” Tomos leaned over her shoulder, his eyes round.

“Cerys, calon bach , I know you love the tale, but it’s not…possible that…”

Gwen fell silent as Ifor pulled an item from the dark hollow. He handed her a large shallow platter, covered with hastily made clay, not even properly fired in a kiln. “Now why would they hide lumps of old mud?”

Dovey reached around her and broke off a piece of the red-brown clay. “Because there’s something beneath,” she said.

Through the break shone another color, a dull buttery gleam.

“The paten,” Cerys said. “The poem said there was one.”

Gwen couldn’t speak as Ifor handed her the next item, shaped like a goblet. Following Dovey’s lead, she nicked a piece of the masking clay with her fingernail. It broke apart, and in her hand gleamed a silver cup inlaid with delicate carvings and precious gems.

“The chalice.” Cerys clapped her hands. “What else?”

There were half a dozen pieces, including an intricate ciborium, the vessel that held the bread used for communion, and a gorgeous monstrance shaped like a golden sunburst on a long stem, bristling with gold and gems, a worthy backdrop for the host it was meant to display.

The men came down from their heights and joined the women and children as they clustered around the altar and stared at the holy relics as they emerged from their cloaks of clay.

They were old, expertly fashioned, and extremely valuable.

“I knew it was here,” Cerys said with satisfaction.

“Gold,” Pen said in surprise as Gwen handed him a censor and he ran his hands over the delicate carvings. “Finely made.”

“You can sell these, Dovey, and be set for life,” Gwen said.

“Sell them? I’ll have copies made and put on display for pilgrims,” Dovey said.

“I’ll have St. Sefin’s treasure put in all the guidebooks.

Travelers who come to climb the ruins of Newport Castle or see the Romanesque arch at St. Woolos will come here to see the priceless relics that St. Gwladys brought with her when she founded her hermitage. ”

“St. Gwladys’s hermitage was at Pencarn,” Gwen felt obliged to point out. “She lived on vegetables and bathed in the Ebbw. Her grave is there.”

Dovey shrugged. “Those old stories of saint’s lives never agree, do they? You were worried about abandoning us, Gwenllian ap Ewyas. I know you were. And now you needn’t fear we can’t make do. You can sally off with your light o’ love and never look back.”

Gwen hugged her friend, her ally for so long. “We’ll live at Penrydd most of the time. You’ll never be rid of me.”

As she released Dovey and straightened, a new thought struck her. “But the papers haven’t been signed yet. The treasure—” Pen could claim it, and he had the right. The items on this table would obliterate his brother’s debts and restore the Price family’s fortunes in full.

Pen raised his voice so that it reached Anne and Prunella, hovering in the doorway of the chapter house with glassy eyes and cheeks pink with the flush of wine. His voice was firm and authoritative.

“The papers Barlow is finishing as we speak entrust Mrs. Van der Welle Evans with the property of St. Sefin’s and all its lands, furnishing, and movables. I’ll not change a word of it. Whatever lies within these walls will be hers.”

Dovey dipped her chin in a gracious acknowledgement. “Thank you, milord.”

“You’ll want a safe place to store them,” said Ross. “And several copies made, as they’re quite likely to be stolen.”

“As many as need be.” Dovey picked up the paten and scraped the last of the clay from the inlaid gems. “I won’t quarrel with the blessings St. Gwladys chooses to give me.”

Gwen cradled Pen’s arms around her and wondered how soon she should tell him what she suspected, that she might have conceived a child.

He’d insisted he didn’t need heirs; how would he feel about having them anyway?

She leaned against his shoulder, listening to the firm steady beat of his heart, and watched the colored light fall through the window of the saint who had watched over her for so many years.

St. Gwladys had whispered to her to stay here, stay alive.

She had given her shelter and then she had given her help, and then she had given her, one at a time, people to heal her heart and teach her again how to love.

And when she was ready, the river had carried her this man, her future, her joy, and the whole of her heart.

“All right?” Pen whispered in her ear. He must have felt the shiver pass through her.

She hugged his arms around her. “Better than all right,” she whispered back. “Very, very happy.”

From her window, St. Gwladys smiled.