Page 15

Darch chuckled at this, topping off his laugh with a noisy slurp of wine.

Daron, who should have been her champion, shifted in his chair and scooped collops onto his plate, following with a large ladle of lobster sauce.

They ate well at Vine Court, but the Greenfield cook was truly gifted.

Too bad Anne’s throat couldn’t admit anything larger than a pea.

“Calvin.” Hew’s voice from the head of the table was quiet but firm, and there was a deep current in it, like the thunder grumbling beyond the hills, rolling in from the sea. “You will show respect for any lady at this table.”

Calvin’s smirk shifted into a sneer as he faced his brother.

“Would expect an army man to appreciate the sentiment,” he said.

“Imagine it’s been a long while for you, old man.

Maybe you’ve forgotten how you apply your tool?

” The sneer flattened. “Or maybe you were happier with your merry band of brothers and?—”

Hewitt slammed his fist on the table. “Enough. I won’t have An—Miss Sutton be subject to such talk. From you, or anyone.”

Calvin fell silent for a moment. The entire table did.

Perhaps because Hewitt, clenching the carving knife, had pointed it at his brother.

Anne felt a thrill of—terror, it must be terror that winged its way up her back and fluttered along her arms. Because he looked so formidable in that moment.

Like a man who would put his body in the way of an injustice, and stop it.

That strange heat in her middle shifted, dropped lower.

Almost as if she needed to visit the necessary.

But no, that wasn’t the urge. The sight of Hewitt Vaughn, his muscles clenched and bunched beneath that handsome coat, his mouth a firm line, his eyes hard and brilliant—no, the thrill was not terror, or not terror alone.

He was a powerful man, but he was protecting her.

“’Pears I’ll have to watch my property,” Calvin said finally. “Brother wants m’things for his own, wouldn’t it seem?”

Darch guffawed at this, as he was meant to. Daron blinked blearily at Calvin, then Hew, as if gauging which fighter he meant to place his money on.

The fine hairs rose on the back of Anne’s neck. She wasn’t Calvin’s property .

“You may not respect my decisions.” Hewitt spoke softly, holding his brother’s gaze, one the watery blue of turned milk, the other the deep blue of a stormy sea. “But you will abide by them.”

Calvin gripped his hand around his fork as if he thought to use it as a weapon. His thin lips trembled as he searched for a retort, but his mother swept in.

“I know my boys would not quarrel at my table when I have contrived a celebration,” she said, her voice cool and cutting. “Calvin, you won’t spoil all our appetites, will you? When I have specially requested Cook bring out a roasted leveret for you in the second course.”

Calvin relaxed his grip on his implement. “Of course not, darling Mumsy.”

Hewitt applied the carving knife to its designated task, and Anne let out her breath.

It came out uneven, much to her surprise.

Her insides jumped about like crickets as she watched Hewitt carve the meat, his movements swift and precise.

Such control in the man. Such leashed strength.

Calvin Vaughn was a soft pudding wrapped up in superfine and brocade.

Hewitt was all lean sinew and hard, smooth muscle.

Saliva pooled in her mouth as the loin fell into neat slices beneath his knife. He extended one to her, and Anne fumbled as she held out her plate.

His eyes met hers. She couldn’t read the dark emotion in their depths, and she blinked rapidly, fearing it might be anger. At her, for causing discord at the table when this was supposed to be his welcome-home dinner.

He watched her eyelids flutter. Then his gaze dropped to her lips.

Anne’s hand shook as she set her plate before her, the choicest cut of loin nestled next to her stewed cauliflower. That wasn’t anger in his eyes. It was—something else.

She stared at the slice of mutton, still pink in the center, like a heart.

The thought came as if it had been loitering a long while at the back of her mind and finally saw the space to step forward.

If the money was to come to Anne, why must she hand it over to a man straightaway?

Prunella could set up her own household because Prunella had money. What if Anne needn’t be under anyone’s thumb, but could take Aunt Gertrude’s fortune and set up a household of her own?

“—have one or two business ventures you might invest in,” Darch was saying when Anne blinked to clear her head.

The thought sat there still, solid and formed, like a loaf fresh from the oven.

“Happy to share some of my … opportunities.” Darch swirled the wine in his glass, admiring the ruby red color.

“Think that wine came from one of your opportunities.” Calvin smirked at his friend, but kept one eye on his brother, gauging his reaction.

“Do you mean—free trade?” Daron sounded flustered. Anne was accustomed to seeing her brother be his cocky self, charming the table, competing with other men, especially strangers, to establish his dominance. He seemed almost intimidated by this Darch, which didn’t make sense.

Hewitt addressed himself to his mutton. “You sound surprised, Sutton. When Wales is almost all coastline, why wouldn’t there be a brisk business running brandy and the like?”

“I wish the talk at my table would not be of illegal activities,” Lady Vaughn said, calmly spooning up her crawfish soup.

Oh. Smuggling. Darch’s business must be smuggling.

“Were there to be a new regiment of militia training hereabouts, I imagine the free traders would find their work more difficult,” Hewitt remarked.

“The Monmouthshire? Duke of Beaufort has them lounging around the pubs of Monmouth, or pretending to drill in Brecon.” Calvin snorted. “Wouldn’t put them where they could be useful.”

“I wonder that you’ve never thought of joining up with the militia,” Hew remarked.

“Me? One son posing as a military man’s enough for this family.

’Sides, Mum needs someone devoted at home, looking after her welfare.

Can’t count on the other to be here doing his duty.

He’ll be off sailing into the arms of some Caribbean lightskirt, or getting himself blown up in the arid East, trying to be a hero. ”

Anne put down her fork. Calvin’s vitriol toward his brother made her stomach boil with acid. Or perhaps it had clenched around the idea of Hewitt embracing a woman. Pursuing her the way Calvin had pursued Mathry.

She focused on her host. Was that why he moved so awkwardly at times? Had he been injured somehow? His eyelids tightened—indication that he was annoyed—but his voice was calm when he answered his brother.

“Some of us protect from home, and some of us go to defeat the enemy abroad so he can’t threaten British shores or British interests.”

“What about our interests? What about this family?” Calvin snorted. “Haven’t done a fine job looking after those, brother mine.”

“I’ve done my best. I’m not to blame that Father died and left things as he did.”

“You’re to blame that you dismantled his most profitable investments before the earth had settled on his coffin,” Calvin shot back. “What was it for, then? You liked your miserable Army conditions and thought we should be living in a tent as well?”

Hewitt’s hand curled into another fist. Anne’s insides did their jumping act, trying several different directions at once.

“The Commons has been passing bills for years to end the slave trade. It is inevitable that the House of Lords will eventually choose the humane path. I had the sense to look ahead and invest in more viable ventures.”

“The House of Lords will never end slavery and you know it,” Calvin snapped. “Too many of them profit from it same as we did. All you did was take your bets off the winning horse. How is Mum to hold her head up to the Morgans with you making us paupers?”

Anne’s muddled thoughts scrambled to follow. Hewitt did not support the slave trade. Did not profit from it. She’d heard wrong.

But she wasn’t misreading the rage that rippled off him.

He contained his temper, showing the strain only in his curled fist, in the tight set of his jaw as he forced his voice to remain even.

“I am doing everything I can to see to Mother’s comfort.

Through just means.” His gaze slid over his brother, dismissing him.

“You should know. You’ve spent more than your share of the household allowance of late. ”

“Need to hold my head up too!” Calvin barked. “See what you reduced me to? Grubbing for a wife with money. Don’t blame me I made a poor bet and chose one whose father squandered it all before I could.”

He jabbed a finger at Anne, and she stiffened out of reflex, noting too late how straightening her spine brought her bosom into arresting profile.

Darch noticed, and so did Calvin, and so did Hewitt.

That bite of mutton tasted bloody on her tongue, though it was perfectly cooked.

An agony of a blush swept up the sides of her neck, and she knew it must be visible in her cheeks.

She’d known it all along, hadn’t she? It wasn’t any attraction of her own person that invited suitors to ask for her hand.

She’d never had men desperate to touch her, as Daron had been desperate for Gwen.

She’d never been swept away by declarations of undying passion.

She’d merely had men negotiating with her father to establish the price of her dowry, and she was only here because, dowry gone, Daron and Calvin Vaughn believed Anne might have an inheritance by other means.

Her heart squeezed in humiliation, but there was rage in there, too, as though she were borrowing Hewitt’s heat. She had half a mind to march herself to Llandrindod Wells and tell Aunt Gertrude to save her money. Give it all to the workhouse to support widows and orphans.

“She’s sitting right in front of you, man,” Hewitt growled. “And if you’ve been pursuing her for a dowry, you’re a bigger sand worm than I believed.”

Anne shoved a bite of greens into her mouth before she did something that would prove her a ninny.

She hated sand worms, the legless lizard that looked like a snake. They were pale and corpulent, like Calvin, and when attacked they shed their tails, which would continue to wriggle in the most repulsive fashion. Like Calvin.

Did Hewitt mean that he would have been pursuing Anne for more than her dowry?

He was supposed to be putting a wrench in her marriage. Not instructing Calvin how to treat her once they wed.

Calvin narrowed his eyes, which had gone almost colorless with anger. “So you do want m’ gel. My bride.”

A tense silence stretched across the table, end to end. The growl of thunder pulled nearer. The heat grew so thick it was going to collapse the air and suffocate them all. Anne plucked at the puffed sleeve of her gown, peeling the fine muslin away from her shoulder.

Calvin continued to glare his brother. But Hewitt watched Anne’s movement, his gaze riveted to her shoulder and the exposed slice of skin.

That odd heat gathered and sank low, past her belly, slithering between her legs.

Good God, she wasn’t about to start her courses, was she?

They were unpredictable, but to start bleeding here , in this sheer muslin gown—she’d rather be stabbed with a fork and perish at the table than endure one more disgrace.

She felt hot all over her skin, even after Hewitt looked away, back at his plate, as though he’d been found out doing something illicit and were trying to discipline himself.

A distant flash of lightning leapt from the glowering sky to light upon a far hill, and Anne felt the coming break. Finally. She welcomed the storm. Perhaps it would blow through her head as well, chase away these tangled emotions, and leave her thoughts clear.

Because she knew one thing. She could not, would not, marry Calvin Vaughn. She had to find a way to free herself from his clutches, a way that would leave her in charge of her own destiny and able to use whatever money was to come to her as she wished.

She didn’t want to leave her family in penury. She wanted to help Daron.

But she wanted to make her own choice, finally. And here lay the opportunity before her.

I don’t need to honor my father’s commitments , he’d said.

Some business at Acre had followed him home, something that, according to the Earl of St. Vincent, had put Hewitt Vaughn in chains.

He’d returned to Wales to hide, the way smugglers concealed their boats and goods along the rocky shorelines.

When Gwen had tossed away her virtue, she’d been turned out and left to wander. So had Mathry.

The lightning flashed again, a dare, a promise, and Anne’s nerves welcomed the bolt, the flare of determination. If Hewitt Vaughn would not do it, she must free herself.

She saw a chance. She meant to seize it.

And never let herself be trapped again.