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In fact, Calvin had cornered him in the stables and chased away the servants, leaving Hew to saddle his own horse, glad the nervous mare stood between him and his enraged sibling.

Calvin had been very specific about what injuries he would like to commit upon Hew’s person in response to this vile betrayal.

It didn’t help Hew to point out that Anne knew Calvin had only wanted her dowry.

Calvin had demanded a groom hitch one of the workhorses to the pony cart, then headed out to Newport on some enraged venture of his own, leaving Hew to ride in his wake.

Taking the last horse, since apparently Daron Sutton had asked for the other, and no one, including Calvin, knew what business their guest was about.

Hew had returned and lobbed a cannonball in the center of the quiet, orderly lives that had been going on at Greenfield. In less than a day, he’d come in and reduced this quiet country retreat to rubble.

Just as he’d been trained to do.

“The parties consenting, and being of age, I suppose we can read the banns here and marry you in St. Woolos,” the vicar said with a wink. “You’re certain I won’t be stepping on the toes of Mr. Leyson of St. Basil’s? I believe your mother attends services there.”

The reason Hew had come to St. Woolos. Mr. Leyson, a chum of Calvin’s and a man all too aware of what Lady Vaughn contributed to St. Basil’s coffers, and to Mr. Leyson’s living, would be casting Hew disapproving glances over the prayer book as he read the ceremony.

Vicar Stanley didn’t have a cock in this fight.

The vicar knocked at the back door of St. Sefin’s, and a woman Hew had seen at the ceremony yesterday, the new viscountess’s friend, answered.

“Mrs. Evans,” Stanley greeted her, holding up the basket. “We come bearing gifts.”

“Your lady is at the pie shop with Mrs. Lambe,” Mrs. Evans said to Hew. “That’s she as owns the shop, up in High Street near the old West Gate.”

“Er, I thank you,” Hew replied, recollecting his manners. What had brought Anne here to St. Sefin’s? He had gathered yesterday that she scorned the place.

“She assisted at a childbirth earlier,” the woman added. “Thought she might swoon once or twice, but she came through bravely, and we needed her hands. You might tell her so.”

Anne? Hew stared. Anne had assisted at a childbirth? Shy, virginal Anne, who had been a woman untouched until last night, he would stake his life on it.

“Mrs. Bernstein is delivered?” the vicar asked.

Mrs. Evans nodded. “A boy, just as she wished. She’ll keep her home and her place, from the sound of things, and have an heir. Named him Daniel.”

“Then some good has come of the sorry business,” the vicar said. “God does indeed provide.”

Mrs. Evans took the basket and offered them refreshment, but the vicar declined on the grounds that a new mother ought to rest.

“And your brother took the carriage Miss Sutton came in,” Mrs. Evans informed Hew. “Said you would arrange her way home.”

“My brother?” Hew’s nerves tightened. Calvin had come here also?

“Said he needed it for his business, he did, and I was to tell you he left the pony cart at the King’s Head.”

“Did he take Anne?” Hew asked, apprehension a grappling hook in his chest. His hands felt heavy, as if he were again manacled to the stone wall of the prison, or tied and waiting for the lash. The waiting had in some ways been the worst of it.

Mrs. Evans shrugged, her dark eyes reading Hew’s features as if she could see the dark thoughts within. “That I can’t say.”

Anne had been found in Hew’s bed, but that didn’t mean she was safe. Calvin could take her back. He could drag her to Scotland and marry her over the anvil at Gretna Green, and the marriage would be legal, and Calvin would have his money. And Anne.

“I must find Miss Sutton,” Hew said. His sweat stank of iron, foul with fear for her.

The vicar chattered as they walked down Church Street, past the rows of houses and shops. River silt and smoke from the lime kiln lay rank in the air. The sky had lost its summer glow and lay burled with clouds, a fuzzy gray like the catkins on a willow. It suited Hew’s mood.

Anne intended to jilt him, in due time. The break would leave her embroiled in shame, just as Hew was. She’d be prey to fortune hunters and desperate men, like his brother. Jilting Hew wouldn’t be safe. It wouldn’t be wise. Somehow, he had to protect her.

“That Mrs. Bernstein as was at St. Sefin’s,” the vicar was saying. “Her husband, Daniel, was killed by the Black Hound’s men. Some dispute over money the Hound said he was owed. Mr. Bernstein came to Newport to invest in the new bridge.”

Stanley gestured toward the river, where the Usk coiled like a smooth snake, dappled gray and lazy in the heat.

“You can see there, they’ve begun building to replace the old wooden one.

Five arches, it’s supposed to have. Died while I sat by him, the poor man, but the family brought his body back to Merthyr Tydfil to be buried in their own plot.

” Stanley shook his head. “Sorry business. And he’ll never meet his son. ”

“The Hound,” Hew said. “That’s the man Daron Sutton tried to bargain with to strike at Penrydd. He let all the ladies Penrydd be captured, along with Anne, and himself.”

He felt a rising rage against Anne’s brother. Even that morning at table, when his sister’s honor was under discussion, Daron hadn’t issued a challenge to Hew for besmirching her. He’d moaned about whether his sister’s marriage to Hew would benefit him.

Did anyone in her family stand up for Anne? Was she nothing but a pawn to them?

“And Penrydd doled out justice, after a fashion. Haven’t seen the Hound here since, and don’t expect to.” The vicar looked around them. “But that’s not to say his men have all slunk back to their burrows and dens.”

“I had the same thought,” Hew said.

Down the street he spotted two familiar figures, one wearing the coat he’d sat down to dinner in at Greenfield the night before.

Daron Sutton in the company of Rafael Darch, both of them passing into the small stone building that was once the house of the murenger, the man whose task it was to see to the upkeep of the town walls, back in the medieval days when Newport had them.

Now West Gate was dismantled, the old prison was gone, and the central gate stood over the market as more decoration than defense.

Newport had no defenses. Enemies could come by land or sea, pouring down from the rough hills, pulling their boats up on the sand of the tidal river. There was nothing to stop the coming, and there was nothing to stop the taking.

A third man, much shorter than lanky Darch, looked up and down the street, then made his way into the shadows after the other two. The lookout, announcing the all-clear.

What was Sutton doing in the company of Darch?

Hew didn’t follow the thought, because they reached the pie shop, and he peered through the multi-paned window fronting the street into the broad room inside. One woman, a bit older than Anne, stood behind a wooden counter, offering Anne a packet of oiled paper.

Anne, ten times lovelier than she’d been that morning, peeled back the paper and sniffed its contents.

Her expression of pleasure, the fluttering of her eyes, small upturn of her mouth, and the lift of her pert chin, clenched Hew’s gut like a fist. Then she nibbled at the contents, parting her dainty lips, and her head fell back on her neck as her expression melted into rapture.

The fist in his gut pulled heavy and tight. Hew had brought that look to her face last night. He wanted to be the reason it was there again.

He stepped inside the shop. The scent hit him first, heated spice and sweet preserves, thick as a veil.

Through a rear door lay the back room with the ovens, the kneading trough, the boxes of dough and bags of flour, and leaning against the wall, the long-handled spades that the baker used to place and remove items from the oven.

The front room held shelves beneath the window laden with pastries and loaves, and the shelves behind the counter stood stacked with bags and baskets and tins of all kinds.

The air shimmered with heat from the oven which ran most of the day, as housewives and maidservants in and around Newport bought the family’s dinner and their farthings and ha’pennies to trade for the luxury of serving their family a hot meal.

Hew saw only Anne as she turned to him with the paper in her hand and that glow on her face.

She looked different than she had this morning when she’d glared ferociously at him, a vixen spitting as she realized she’d been trapped.

Now, she glowed with calmness and warmth, like a goddess of the earth, a woman who dispensed her bounty and wisdom with graceful largesse.

The sight of her, the scent in the air, the heat, all of it contrived to make Hew feel like his skin had lifted and something might slide through that space next to his flesh, into his marrow.

He entered a room holding Anne, and he came alive.

“What caused that smile?” His voice grated from his throat.

The woman behind the counter went still, staring at Hew. The vicar entered the room behind him, boots tapping the wooden floor. Anne held out her paper, and he moved toward her like the moon pulled by the sun.

“Artichoke pie,” she said. “You won’t believe how divine it is.”

He took a bite of the pie, his mouth next to where her mouth had been a moment ago. Like she had, he held the morsels in his mouth a moment, letting the complex tastes sweep over his palate. He swallowed and mirrored her smile.

“Nutmeg?”

“Mace. Isn’t she clever?” She turned toward the other woman. “Mrs. Lambe. This is Hewitt Vaughn of Greenfield—Captain Hewitt Vaughn of the Royal Artillery, I mean. Captain Vaughn, Mrs. Lambe, lately returned to Newport, proprietor of this shop.”

Her dreamy look slipped as she made the introductions and the world intruded. Then her face shifted again, and he saw the moment she remembered she was angry with him. Her lips tightened, and two lines divided her brow as she scowled.

He wanted dreamy, sensual Anne back.

“Mrs. Lambe.” Hew gave a perfunctory bow, then stiffened. A prickle passed beneath his lifted skin. The warning he got before an attack.

The woman seemed near him in age, a score and a handful of years. He’d never seen her before, yet a needle poked at his consciousness, the tug of the long-forgotten but once familiar. “You are from Newport?” he asked warily.

“From Rogerstone, rather,” she said. “But I went away when I was an infant and have not been back these many years.”

“Welcome to Newport.” Had he done something to anger her? Had he intruded on a moment with Anne and thus stirred the resentment crackling from her?

“We ought to welcome you. Captain,” she added, stiff as the paddles she used in her oven.

He let his attention drift back to Anne, where it wanted to be. “Is there more pie? We could take one home to Mother.”

“Of course. Because I am to return by dinner.”

At least she hadn’t eloped with Calvin. The relief was so great it shook him. He felt like he’d been set down on land after weeks at sea. “Have you seen my brother? Or yours?”

“Neither,” she said frostily. “I have been at St. Sefin’s all day.”

“Assisting at childbirth, I hear.”

The other woman abruptly departed for the back room. She had not even greeted the vicar. Hew studied Anne’s face, saw the flicker of uncertainty, a brief wash of wonder, then determination as it settled in. She tightened her lips and lifted her chin.

“I did. Yes.”

“Mrs. Evans says you are to be commended.”

Those lovely lips of her quirked up at the corners. “She did?”

A compliment from Mrs. Evans meant something, then. Would she be as pleased at praises from him?

“I did not know you had skills as a midwife.”

All the softness fled from her face. She looked like a guilty girl caught trying on her mother’s wig and diamonds, being scolded for her presumption. “I haven’t.”

Blast. He had lost every skill he’d ever had at flattering a woman. If he’d ever had any, which was in doubt. “May I drive you home?”

“You did not trust me to find my own way?” She tilted her head to the side.

Hew’s heart rapped in his chest, a prisoner banging on the thick door of his cell. She’d come to him in desperation, trying to escape his brother’s snare. It didn’t mean she wanted Hew.

“I hear Calvin took the carriage, leaving you without transportation. I’m told he left the pony cart for us.”

He could not simply say that he wanted her company? Had he ever known how to woo a woman?

No, because he never wooed. He simply accepted what fell into his arms or his bed.

The Morgan girl, that first summer, and other times she contrived reasons to visit her kin.

Willing girls of Woolwich and London. Caribbean beauties in the West Indies sharing their time and charms while the battalions plotted their next moves against the French.

He’d never had to pursue or entice or cast out lures. He’d never poached on another man’s woman, either, despite what was said about him.

Until now, of course. When he’d stolen his brother’s bride.

He watched Anne as she wrapped the handpie and tucked it in her reticule.

She’d come to his room to use him, and seemed shocked at the consequences when they’d been discovered.

But how could she be, really? She was innocent but not stupid.

She must know what happened when genteel girls were discovered in a soldier’s bed.

They must wed the soldier, with all his train of baggage, with all his scars.

He didn’t want to be a sentence of doom for her.

Mrs. Lambe returned with a small basket she handed to the vicar.

“For you, Mr. Stanley, your almond loaves.” Stanley’s face lit with a bashful grin.

“Miss Sutton. A tort for the servants of Greenfield.” She held out a second basket.

“Only for the servants, mind. With my compliments to Mrs. Harries.”

Anne took the basket. “I shall see it delivered.”

Mrs. Lambe smiled, finally, but only for Anne.

“Do call again, Miss Sutton. Here, if you like, or at St. Sefin’s. I am as often there, these days, but Mrs. Reece can see to anything here. She is my partner and my right hand.”

“And you are mine,” sang a woman’s voice from the back room, with an accompaniment of giggles that suggested she was not alone there.

“I shall.” Anne smiled back. This woman, this midwife and baker and maker of pies, had, in the span of an afternoon, won Anne’s trust and regard.

Hew could admit he was jealous. He wanted Anne’s regard.

And he’d done nothing to deserve it. He never would. He wasn’t that man any longer.