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CHAPTER ELEVEN

T here were a dozen things at Greenfield that needed his attention, and Hew couldn’t focus on a one of them.

Anne had bolted, and he didn’t know where she might go. Newport was too rough for a woman alone. He had to find her and escort her home. To Greenfield.

Unless she had left town altogether, to escape him and the trap she’d accused him of setting her.

His mother wanted Hew to sit with her in her favorite papered parlor and receive those acquaintances not invited to the Penrydd wedding, who would want to hear every detail.

Her ladyship would hold forth as if she associated every day with members of the peerage and their wives, though Hew could almost wish a reminder about the guests, the flower arrangements, the food, the bride’s gown.

All he recalled was glimpsing Anne Sutton in the sanctuary.

A sylph-like creature with a pile of golden hair, destroying a bough of myrtle as if by doing so she could vanquish her enemies.

Anne’s big eyes meeting his over his prostrate mother as she waved smelling salts beneath her nose.

Anne’s expression over the dinner table, hurt and angry, when his brother spoke of her as a movable good.

Anne’s eyes when she stepped into his bedchamber and took off her shawl.

Anne’s eyes this morning when Hew said that of course he would wed her. When she had accused him of tricking her into marriage because he wanted the money.

As if he were the type of idiot to want a woman like that for a dowry.

Hew looped the ribbons of his horse over one of the headstones resting at a gentle, abandoned angle in the cemetery encircling St. Woolos church. A goat grazing on the lush grass raised its head to regard him with narrow eyes.

“ Shwmae, gafr ,” Hew said. The goat went back to his browsing, satisfied by this greeting that Hew was not a threat.

“Captain Vaughn! I wouldn’t expect you to speak Welsh.”

Hew turned with a guilty start as the vicar walked around the yew tree casting its shade over the quiet yard.

“I know only a word or two here or there.” The English worked hard to discourage the use of Welsh traditions and language, but Hew felt that only a great fool tried to make his home in a place where he couldn’t communicate with the locals.

Particularly if he relied upon those locals to produce his income.

The vicar gave him a friendly smile and a courteous nod. “Stanley,” he introduced himself. “Took the living here shortly after you left for the wars, I think.” His eyes twinkled. “But I’ve heard a great deal about you, as you might imagine.”

A hot, tight prickle ran along the back of Hew’s neck. It would have run down his back as well, had he any sensation there. “What have you heard?”

Had news of his infamy preceded him? You , St. Vincent had said with such a cold, haughty air.

“Heroics in the West Indies,” the vicar mused. He carried a basket full of plants and stopped near one tilting grave. Withdrawing a trowel from his basket, he knelt and prodded at the roots of a tall weed with yellow flowers.

“Then heroics in Acre, we heard,” the vicar said as he worked. “Single-handedly turned back the French assault and sent their general Napoleon packing back to—Egypt, I believe the papers said?” He rose holding the plant, stem, roots, flowers, and all, and placed it in his basket.

“Not single-handed.” Hew’s heart gave a sharp beat. “I had a company. There was a whole force of us, working together with the Ottomans.”

He’d had a partner. Partners.

“Heard something about you helping to build a wall.” The vicar resumed strolling, searching out more weeds. “Yet I thought you were a gunner, not a sapper.”

In the Artillery, he meant, not the Corps of Engineers. And there lay the crux of Hew’s trouble.

“So I am,” he said.

The vicar nodded, then knelt for another excavation. “Don’t suppose they’re much for crossing lines of duty, the Royal Army, even in the heat of battle. Chain of command, and all that. Earn a man a court-martial under other circumstances.”

“That it might,” Hew said. Sweat rolled beneath his neckcloth and down the back of his shirt. The vicar knew. He knew a great deal. He must have been talking to someone.

“Was this all in the papers?” Hew asked.

“No.” The vicar straightened with another long plant in his hand. Ragwort. He shook dirt off the roots, careful to avoid soiling his pantaloons. “Had a nice chat with Lord St. Vincent. He filled me in on much the papers leave out.”

Hew’s sweat turned cold. If St. Vincent mentioned a court-martial, it must have been decided already. The summons would reach him any day. There would be no settling into Greenfield as the welcome new owner. There would be no plans for marriage. There would only be disgrace.

“Where is the earl now?” Hew asked, his lips as numb as if he’d eaten of the ragwort. Noxious to horses and cattle, he knew. He’d learned some things about landowning and animal husbandry, despite what his father claimed.

“Left for Bristol last night.” The vicar studied the ground. “Had lodgings there. The bride and groom left after you did, though the feasting went long into the night for us common folk.”

A vicar, identifying himself as one of the common folk.

Stanley was unlike the rest of his breed.

Most vicars would be gentlemen’s sons, if not the extra sons of peers, and considered themselves a cut above the people they served.

This one went about with gardening tasks as if he were the sexton and not the one with holy orders.

“Why are you collecting ragwort?” Hew asked.

“So Gafr won’t eat it.” The vicar nodded toward the goat. “But Miss Gwen likes it for the poison garden, says it attracts bees, and Mrs. Evans says it’s good for dyes. So I’ll carry these over and let the ladies glean the wheat from the chaff.”

He called to a young boy lounging beneath the yew tree, whom Hew hadn’t noticed till now. The boy sat with a straw hat pulled low over his face, chewing on a blade of grass.

“Ifor,” the vicar said, “I’m off to St. Sefin’s to deliver my basket. Will you go with?”

The boy stretched and considered. He was a scrawny creature, in that stage where a boy grew inches overnight. “I’ll bring Gafr back when Tomos is finished with the polishing,” he decided. “S’pose he’ll be another hour or so.”

“He does love the polishing, and Miss Meredith has the patience of St. Melangell with him,” the vicar said with his placid smile.

Meredith. Hew didn’t recall a Meredith family in the area.

She must be one of the ubiquitous spinsters upon whom the daily life of a church and its parish depended for their helping hands and free labor.

The name registered somewhere deep in his memory, but Hew didn’t have time to follow the thread as the vicar turned his way.

“Where you to, Captain, Vaughn?”

“I’ll with you. I’ve a request to make.” Hew unwound the horse’s ribbons and led the animal as the vicar hiked over a brushy swale toward St. Sefin’s, which rose in its stone glory on the opposite side of Stow Hill, the dirt road running between.

“I have made a young lady an offer of marriage, and I wonder if you would solemnize our vows when the time comes.”

If the time came. He was mad to behave as if Anne would consent to marry him. As if he might come within striking distance of such a lovely creature, and he a man mantled in shame.

The vicar’s brows rose. Hew guessed he was somewhere around a score and ten years, only slightly older than Hew. Stanley was an Englishman, through and through, yet didn’t have the English contempt for the Welsh.

Hew didn’t, either. Sir Lambert had purchased Greenfield to bring home his new bride shortly after gaining his knighthood, and Hew had known no other home.

While his parents had retained their sense of English superiority, especially living close to the border of civilization, Hew, being mostly raised by servants, had rather liked feeling he could move between two worlds.

Though whether he belonged in either was a point of debate.

“I presume congratulations are in order,” the vicar said. “And who is the lucky bride?”

Heat flashed over Hew’s neck and ears, as if lit by the lightning of the night before. There was no other way but to brazen out the consequences of what he’d done. “Miss Sutton.”

The vicar’s brows winged upward. “Miss Sutton, as was to marry your brother?”

The heat intensified, a band of shame across his cheeks and brow. “The same.”

No, not shame, Hew thought. He’d do it again in a moment, steal Anne away.

She didn’t belong to his brother. Calvin would only mistreat her.

His brother had a roving eye, always had, and he wouldn’t keep his breeches buttoned if he thought he could dip his wick somewhere new.

He’d never honor and worship Anne as she deserved.

Calvin would neglect her or, worse, be cruel, and in time that cruelty and negligence would break her fine spirit.

Hew had seen it happen with his mother. He couldn’t bear that to happen to Anne.

Hew would worship her, given the chance. He would cherish her. He’d never shame her, never scorn her. He’d make her fall in love with him, if he could.

Stanley tilted his head to the side. “This is an arrangement that suits both you and Miss Sutton?” he asked carefully.

As if a woman like Anne could ever love a man like Hew. Even the vicar saw it.

The man he’d been before, maybe; that Hewitt Vaughn would have had a chance with a girl like Anne Sutton. Had a chance with a girl like Anne Sutton. Had instead tossed it away to enter the Royal Artillery, and there, he’d become someone else.

Hew forced his head into a motion of assent, tasting the lie. “We have agreed.”

“And your brother’s feelings about the arrangement,” Stanley probed.

Hew cleared his throat. “He will come to see the benefits to all involved.”