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“Well, of course. Can’t trust the pater with an inheritance, look what he did the last time.

Aunt Gertie didn’t give it all to me , when she ought’ve.

I owe Calvin an opportunity, and this repays all.

As your husband, he’ll control your fortune and can set himself up like a gentleman without his blasted brother controlling the purse strings. Everyone wins.”

“Except me,” Anne said.

Daron blinked in surprise, and Anne jerked her arm free. His face changed swiftly, into such a contortion of anger that Anne almost thought a demon looked out through her brother’s eyes. “Now listen here, Nanny, don’t you dare think you can?—”

“Can what?” Anne cried. “Be the pawn who sets all right for you? What about what I want?”

Just as swiftly Daron’s face changed again, as if an eddy had churned through the River Ebbw, and it was back to its gentle self. “Nanny!” he said, his voice hurt and surprised. “This is all for you! Thinking only of you. How you can be a fine lady. Safe. Taken care of. Pampered as you deserve.”

Her mind flicked to that morning and the ceremony in the church—how had it only been that morning?

Gwen standing in a shaft of colored light that fell through the stained-glass window of St. Sefin’s.

The mild-voiced vicar proclaiming the holy words of matrimony.

Penrydd, in a tailed coat and breeches, promising to worship her with his body.

Gwen would be a viscountess, and she would be fighting for her place among all the aristoctracts who saw only a miner’s orphaned daughter.

But she would be loved by a man who had chosen her, who had blown up a ship to stop the villain who would keep them apart.

There were other images from that morning. The heads of the two widows of St. Sefin’s crowned with their black hats, faces wreathed in smiles as they sat at their table eating their plain seaweed fare. Under no one’s bidding but their own.

The smile that Dovey Evans sent her husband as he used his good arm to set up and tap a cask of wine she’d made, with the first glass toasting his wife and their recent marriage.

Dovey wasn’t pampered with luxuries, not living in St. Sefin’s, but she had a companion she trusted and admired, a solid, steady man.

Prunella, the newest dowager Viscountess Penrydd, had calmly sipped her wine and doubted she would remarry. She wanted to order her own life as she wished and no longer bend herself around a mother, a brother, a husband.

Anne hardly knew where she found the temerity for her next words. “The money does not change the fact that Calvin Vaughn and I will not suit.”

As if another rock were rolling through the river, once again stirring its quiet depths to violence, rage kindled Daron’s face. Anne took a step backward. She reminded herself Daron would never hurt her.

But Daron had never been thwarted as much as when they’d come south to Newport. He’d never had his native luck and charm turn against him for this long.

He smoothed his face into a strained smile and reached out a hand.

“Nanny!” he said in cajoling tones. “I’m only working so hard because this is what you want. Isn’t it why we came here? So you could marry Calvin and start your life at last. Get away from Mother and that miserable tiny town of ours. Start your life in truth.”

Anne faltered. Those were the reasons, or had been. She’d been dwelling on them only this morning. Yet her mind felt fogged, as if the scented air of this place were disordering her mind.

“But Calvin,” Anne said, hating the plaintive thread in her voice.

Daron tucked Anne’s hand over his arm as he turned her toward the house.

“It’s best for all of us, Nanny. You’ll be taken care of, which is what we all want for you.

Living in a near palace—better than Vine Court, isn’t it?

And think of it. You’ll be the savior of your whole family.

Giving her brother a leg up in the world, getting him back on his feet.

You’ll turn the tide back in my favor. The deliverance of our mother and father as well, paying them back for their devotion.

You’ll set things right for all of us, Saint Anne.

Everything, finally, going on as it ought, because of you. ”

Because of Aunt Gertrude’s money, Anne thought, but did not say, because the picture Daron painted tugged at her heart.

She did owe her parents for all they had invested in her with tutors, music instructors, dancing masters.

And if she paid his debts then Daron would adore her again, the way she’d always adored him.

At the cost of marrying Calvin Vaughn.

A good daughter would make that sacrifice, wouldn’t she?

So she’d been taught, all her life, by the example of her mother and their friends and the sermons at church.

A genteel woman married for the advantage of her family, not for silly fancies of love.

A high marriage was a business arrangement, and a woman needed to know her worth and negotiate for the best offer she could find.

“Of course I want to help,” Anne said, her voice ringing hollow in her ears. She meant the words, didn’t she? She wanted to help her family.

But Daron didn’t know how Hewitt Vaughn felt about this marriage.

Hewitt Vaughn might yet be the rock all his hopes and plans crashed upon, for Hewitt Vaughn was not a man to be cowed or cozened or cajoled.

If he did not think Anne worthy of Calvin, he would bring an end to this, and Anne would be left battered, still jilted, but free.

Only imagine—not an hour earlier, she’d thought the man meant her doom. Now Hewitt Vaughn was Anne’s last slender hope of deliverance.