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The silence following was loaded with doubt. Anne couldn’t see the conversants, but an occasional shadow flickered past the door, and the wooden floor creaked under a certain window. One of them was pacing in large circles, like a big cat in a menagerie.

“If only there were,” the solicitor said.

“I’ll take a look. There may be improvements possible.” Hewitt’s voice was clearer, gaining in confidence. Or he was closer to the door, to where she sat out of sight of the window.

She hoped.

Another beat, laden with doubt. “I thought you were a gunner, Mr. Vaughn.”

“Captain. And I spent my fair time with the sappers. An honorary engineer, by the end, if you can believe that.”

“Very well. I can look into the construction projects you suggest. And the shipping line. But as for the rest—” The solicitor clicked his tongue. “You will need a source of capital.”

Hewitt’s voice went muffled, as if he were speaking into his hand. “I am aware.”

“Do you have any ideas, Mr.—Captain?”

“If I can keep my rank, I can go begging to investors with hat in hand. But if this business at Acre has followed me home …”

Anne strained her ears, but his voice moved away.

The solicitor cleared his throat. “Your mother has suggested a marriage. To a woman with a sizeable dowry.”

Anne went very, very still.

“Of course she would see that … an option.”

“It is an option, Mis—Captain.”

“Ask a woman … share the dishonor? Would you want that for a woman you cared about, Beddoe?”

Anne wished she had antennae she could turn and point, like an ant. What dishonor? What had Hewitt Vaughn done among all his heroics at Acre?

“Your father?—”

“Is spinning in his grave that I hold the reins, and my mother …” There followed a diminishing of voices, as if Hewitt were on the far round of his circuit. It was a moment before he came back within hearing. “… penury … the slave trade.”

Anne flashed hot, then cold. But that tore it, for good. Anne could not look Dovey Evans in the eye knowing she had married a man whose comfortable life rested on the exploitation of a race of people whose ancestry Dovey shared. That all the pleasures of her home were built on the misery of others.

“… invest in ships carrying such cargo, either,” Hew said. “There must be other opportunities. Newport?—”

“Yes, canals and trackways that ferry goods out, and bring goods in,” the solicitor said, his tone disapproving. “Supplies to meet the demand in growing towns. Sugar. Cotton. Opium. Tea. Someone will profit from them, Captain. It might as well be you.”

Anne watched with astonishment as a small crimson stain bloomed on her linen. She withdrew her needle and saw, once the pain registered, that she’d pricked her finger.

Anne hadn’t pricked herself with a needle since she was seven years old. She studied the spot, wondering if she could disguise it with a spray of roses or perhaps peonies. Not wanting the blood to fall on her white gown, she stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked at the wound.

A man approached over the empty back lawn. Cocky stride, cane swinging as if he owned the place. Her brother.

Drat it. He couldn’t expose her now . The men would know she had been eavesdropping and had heard them discussing how to profit from enslavement.

Anne rose and went swiftly down the shallow steps, meeting him close to a stone bench positioned so that a stroller might sit and contemplate the river, or the house, depending on which view was the more pleasant.

“Where have you been?” she hissed.

Daron raised a wheat-gold brow. Her beloved brother had gotten a bit portly about the middle, and it made his legs look spindly in the yellow pantaloons. Their family might be on the edge of poverty, but Daron was eating well.

“I’ve the run of the place, since m’sister’s to marry a Vaughn,” he drawled. “Why the pelter, pet?”

Anne straightened her shoulders. Refuse to marry , she reminded herself.

“I have given Mr. Vaughn’s offer careful consideration, and regretfully I must decline.”

Daron blinked. For a moment he looked like a fat, fluffy bird facing a predator he’d never seen. Anne herself didn’t know when she’d grown teeth. Right this minute, likely.

“You can’t jilt Calvin,” he said flatly.

Anne raised her chin. Her finger throbbed where she’d pricked it. She hoped she wasn’t bleeding further into the linen; this strip, bleached white as it was, had not been easy to obtain.

“I see no reason to move forward. There is no affection between us. No signed contract, for that matter, so he can’t sue for breach of promise.

I have found him to be—” She thought of Mathry, the look of disdain she’d shot Calvin Vaughn before she maneuvered her swollen belly away.

Could Anne bear to marry a man she knew her acquaintances held in contempt?

A man she held in contempt? No, she could not.

The idea, the sheer terror it inspired, gave her strength.

“He is not someone I can esteem. We do not suit,” she said firmly.

Daron gripped her arm, and a surprising jolt of pain shot up her arm. Daron was never rough with her.

“You have to marry him, you witless goose.”

Not if Hewitt objected, which she gathered he did. Greenfield needed capital, and Anne had no dowry.

“Let me go.” She tried in vain to tug her arm free. Daron would never hurt her—save that time he had gotten her kidnapped along with the Viscountesses Penrydd, but that was just the once, surely.

Daron’s eyes, normally such an innocent blue, had a hard slant to them, and the whites were clouded, as if he’d been imbibing.

All at once, as if the sun had shifted to a new angle, Anne saw her brother in a strange light.

It was as if he were no longer the Corinthian, the pillar of fashion who had held up her world, the Exquisite who had set all the hearts and fans of Llanfyllin aflutter. It was as if he’d become—someone else.

She blinked, and he was Daron again, giving her an ingratiating smile, though his lips were thin and strained. “It’s the money,” he said.

She pulled on her arm, hoping not to give anyone who might be watching from the house the impression of distress. Was Hewitt watching? Could he see her?

“There is no money. You spent my dowry. Father lost our fortune. We are destitute.”

“You forget Aunt Gertrude,” Daron said.

Anne stilled. She had forgotten Aunt Gertrude .

Their eccentric relation, their father’s aunt, lived in Llandrindod Wells, residing at the gracious hotel and swearing the waters of the spa town kept her youthful and vigorous.

Delight swirled in Anne’s chest, though there was a keen edge to it. How had she forgotten Aunt Gertrude?

Perhaps because throwing herself on her aunt’s mercy was the most desperate of measures.

But desperate times had arrived. Anne could be her companion.

Anne would make a perfect companion. She would be discreet, invisible, polite, charming, fetching shawls and smelling salts as requested, and though she would live on another’s charity, she would not be subject to a husband.

She would go to Aunt Gertrude. Of course.

“She’s on her deathbed,” Daron added.

The swirl of delight collapsed like a summer breeze gusting out.

“How do you know this?” Anne whispered.

“She wrote Father of it, peagoose. We thought at first dear old Aunt Gertie would be the saving of us all. Too tight-fisted to give Father a farthing when he needed it, but she can’t take her jewels with her, can she?

Only fancy.” Daron’s face twisted into a grin that hadn’t the ghost of his usual charm.

“She’s written her will and had it witnessed.

It’s all to go to you. To her little favorite, Nanny. ”

Anne blinked. That wet, molting thing in her chest stirred its new wings, as if testing them. “Why me?”

“Likely because you charmed her well enough when Mum dragged us along for visits. Or she sees herself in you. Or pities you. I don’t care. Because here’s the fact of it.”

He dragged Anne further down the groomed pathway that led in a gentle meander to the fishpond and the river beyond, all the lines of landscape smoothed to picturesque effect.

The masters of Greenfield controlled the very land they looked upon.

Except the mighty Welsh mountains: no one could master those.

“That money will get me out from under the hatches,” Daron said, the cast of his mouth turning grim.

“Our worthy sire will be able to hold up his head and his lady beside him. And you, pet, will live like the little cat you are, fat and sleek on your cushion, with nothing to bother your pretty head save ensuring your husband has his port and slippers when he returns to his loving home after a taxing day in the world. That’s all you ever wanted, isn’t it, Nanny?

And it’s all to be yours. Courtesy of Aunt Gertrude. ”

If Aunt Gertrude left money, Anne’s parents would not lose their home. If Anne had a dowry, she would be desirable again. To more than just Calvin Vaughn. The new wings beat in her chest, gaining strength.

“What must I do? Visit her, I suppose,” Anne said, her thoughts leaping forward to Llandrindod Wells, to freedom. Away from all the disappointments that Newport held.

“Here’s what you’ll do, pet.” Daron’s fingers dug little wells into the delicate skin of her arm. “The solicitor tells me our aunt, the crafty old beldame, put one or two requirements on how you can use the money. And the way around all of it is to marry Vaughn.”

Anne stared. Daron could not still want Calvin for her. Calvin Vaughn was only a second son. Hewitt controlled Greenfield now. Hewitt was the war hero, by some accounts if not all. Hewitt was the heir. Hewitt had that rugged face and an officer’s bearing and that delicious line above his lip?—

“Then Calvin will control the fortune,” Daron said with satisfaction. “And everything will be set right.”

“Calvin.” Anne attempted to pry her elbow from his grip. It was like trying to peel off a leech.