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CHAPTER TWELVE

T he vicar struck off in his own direction, and Hew had Anne to himself.

He sensed she was not in the mood for wooing as they walked down High Street to the King’s Head.

She thought he’d come to collect her for dinner, and the regal lift to her head, along with her pointed silence, said she did not welcome his pursuit.

That look she’d tossed him when he’d issued his instruction, desperate for reassurance that she was not fleeing him, that she would return.

Hew feared anything more he could say would only harden her to him.

She had come to his arms, but he had broken her trust in him when he snapped the shackle of marriage around her ankle.

Because he could not let her be turned out of Greenfield, shamed and ruined. And he could not let her go now.

She took care to keep her skirts from sweeping the dirt and seemed oblivious to the attention she drew.

Men stopped their business on the street.

Tradeswomen came to the doors of their shops to look at the well-dressed lady.

With the modish pelisse over her round gown and the smart cap with its bows and feathers, she was a fashion plate come to life, all leg and bosom.

Newport could have seen nothing of the like in years, the way passersby stared, drinking in her beauty. Hew wanted to drink of her, too.

Was it haughtiness, that she did not acknowledge the stares? Or was she simply unaware of how mesmerizing she was?

She’d known she need only step into his room last night and remove her shawl, and he would drop to his knees at her feet like the clodpole he was. Starved for a gentle touch, nearly unable to bear the sweetness of her body, the softness of her skin. Memories taunted him, thick in his blood.

Hew sobered when he found the Greenfield pony cart and the draught horse stabled at the inn, and the information that Calvin Vaughn had inquired about stagecoaches north.

“Did he leave on one?” Hew demanded.

“Nay, he’d his own cart and cattle. Set out on the road to Chepstow shortly after noon,” said the proprietor, a Mr. Trett.

Anne said nothing, but her gaze flickered to Hew’s set jaw, the leap of muscle as he clenched his teeth.

The taut silence held as Hew helped her into the cart, then drove back up Church Street to St. Sefin’s.

She didn’t step inside as he collected his horse from the pen holding a nanny goat and kid.

She merely waved to a strapping young man who was at the well, drawing water, who gave her a broad grin and an awkward flap of his arm.

Hew joined her in gazing from the heights of Stow Hill to the marshland that embedded the River Usk as it wended its way to the Bristol Sea.

Spits of sand clogged the channel, and the bank of the river changed with the tide, the mudflats growing and shrinking again each day.

Towers of purple loosestrife clustered empty land dotted with marsh orchids and meadowsweet, flinging its fragrance onto the breeze.

The view would look brown and dull to many, but to Hew, it was balm of Gilead spread over the wounds of Acre. He’d thirsted, all those long, dry days in the desert, mouth burning with the taste of dust and brine, for exactly this.

“I spoke to Vicar Stanley about our marriage ceremony,” Hew said. “I thought it best that word spread of our betrothal ahead of the rumor that you were found in my bed.”

“I mentioned as much at St. Sefin’s, and for the same reasons.” She drew her bottom lip between her teeth. “Where do you suppose your brother went?”

She wasn’t coming to him a glad bride, smiling at her chosen one; she was escaping a worse fate. Best he remember that.

“I’d say he took off in a pelter, sulking that he did not get his way.

” Hew looped the reins of his horse around the back panel of the cart so the animal could follow them home.

“But if it were me, I would be off to the bishop at Gloucester Cathedral to obtain a common license. Then he could marry you without banns.”

She lifted her chin, a tiny gesture of defiance. “But not without my consent. I was kidnapped once and didn’t like it.”

Anyone who thought about harming Anne, or attempting to harm her, would find themselves in range of Hew’s cannons. But he sensed she might mount her own resistance. There lay a streak of adamant in her that it seemed she was just now discovering for herself.

“Is that the canal you spoke of? At dinner.” Pink touched her cheeks, as if she were guilty of something. The color brightened her wildflower eyes. He could make a life’s study of the shades and colors that moved across Anne Sutton’s face, and never weary of the task.

“This is the Monmouthshire Canal.” Hew pointed north toward the wooded hill of Malpas and, beyond it, the land hefting itself into mountains full of iron and ore.

“That is the main arm and runs up to Pontymoile Basin. Over twelve miles long, with forty-two locks.” He knew the names and numbers would mean little to her.

His family didn’t care for the venture either.

“That,” he pointed to the west, though the hills obscured the view, “is the arm that comes down from Crumlin, the one I am most invested in. Eleven miles and thirty-two locks. The Cefn Flight, which alone is fourteen locks, is there.” He shifted his arm, and she dutifully peered in that direction.

“That, my dear, is a marvel of engineering. Raises the water level one hundred sixty feet over a span of eight hundred yards.”

He moved his arm a click west. “I hold that parcel of land, there where the tramway runs, so I am allowed to charge a toll on my stretch. The Morgans of Tredegar are doing the same. We stand to make a great deal of money once traffic increases. But the problem is not enough water is filling the flight, and we need more volume of water to ship more volume of goods.”

Anne turned toward the east, holding her hat to her head as the wind kicked up, thick with the scent of mud and salt. She smelled of wildflowers, too. “And they are loaded onto ships there?” A horse plodded south along a towpath that followed a curve in the Usk, towing a boat laden with limestone.

“There, on that stretch we call the Town Pill.” Hew pointed to the small inlet where the canal ended south of Newport Castle and the Green. From this distance, the wooden cranes used to lift and lower walkways looked tiny, like matchsticks, flimsy evidence of mighty human endeavor.

“The larger ships simply pull up on the sand. You see there is only one wharf. There needs must be more. At first the canal stopped at the castle, but there is a current near the bridge, so they built a bit farther.” He led her eye south, where an elbow in the Usk created a natural wharf.

“What we should do is extend the canal all the way to Pillgwenlly, then build up more wharves around. Then the ships need not come up as far, and there will be less congestion in the river.”

He gestured toward the bridge where the wooden scaffolds were going into place to hold the workers as they ferried and sank stone. “I contributed funds to the bridge as well, over and above what was levied. Newport is growing. Greenfield’s fortunes can grow with it.”

There was so much to think about, so much to decide. Bleddoe had laid out all the opportunities, and all the problems, in one great line that rose before Hew as steep as the Fourteen Locks, and as slow to navigate.

“Is that what you mean to do, now you are home?” Anne faced him, her face guarded but curious despite herself, as if she didn’t wish him to see her interest but couldn’t stop herself asking. “That is, are you done with the Royal Artillery?”

His back prickled, that ever-present weaving of dull pain punctuated by a sharp startling fire, as if he still felt the lash. Nothing of what he’d done, or was doing now, was a secret; surely he could tell his erstwhile bride.

He took the ribbons and clicked his tongue at the horse to walk on along the dirt road toward Bassaleg, leaving Stow Hill. “I do not know yet if the Royal Artillery is done with me.”

It hung before him like an axe on the wall, the threat over his future. Anne couldn’t marry a man who’d been court-martialed. It would give her the perfect reason to cry off, of course, but the scandal around her would worsen. An extra cloak of shame to follow her, all because of him.

“For the moment, I’ve been charged to look at ways to reinforce the Monmouthshire Militia.

Design defenses if we must for this area, to protect the shipping and prevent invasion from the French.

They’ve done it before and may try it again.

The Monmouthshire could be enfolded into the regular Royal Army if there is a threat from the French, and their going would leave Newport undefended. ”

“Like Fishguard.” Anne nodded. “When La Légion Noire invaded Britain. But there the Welsh women lined up with their black hats and red shawls so they looked like soldiers, and they frightened the French into submission.”

The truth of Fishguard, Hew had heard, was that the invading force, mostly recruited prisoners and pardoned criminals, had turned their attention to looting the local homes and public houses.

When the locals massed, armed with farm implements and fury, the threat of the coming militia on their heels, the drunken soldiers quickly surrendered.

Fishguard may have been a debacle for the French, and the Irish who backed them, but the short-lived invasion also served up a lesson on Irish weather and British defense to any canny generals paying attention.

“If you admire those women, then you are not like other Saes , who view all things Welsh beneath them.” He couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease her and was rewarded by the heightened blush and flash of color in her pure blue eyes.