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His eyes had darkened to a storm over the sea. He looked at her as if he meant to swoop her into his arms, carry her back to his bed, and do all the things he had sworn he would do and hadn’t.

“Good day, sir,” Anne said, giving him a prim smile. Then she turned and left him, doing her level best to glide like a swan, like the carefree hussy who had just kissed her chosen lover and would do so again as soon as she pleased.

She wouldn’t be anyone’s pawn any longer. And she could act a part, too.

She took not a groom but Daron, and she drove the pony cart, not he.

To her surprise, he did not protest but sat beside her, lost in gloom.

Anne wondered if he remembered that years ago he had taught her how to drive a horse, taught her how to be gentle on the ribbons and look for the smooth part of the road and think of the space her vehicle would need to make a turn.

She drove now to assert her own independence, to show that she could do a thing all by herself, though the cob was unfamiliar to her.

But Daron seemed uninclined to applaud her moves toward self-reliance.

“Calvin did not tell you where he went?” she asked curiously. “I had thought you two as thick as thieves.”

Daron glowered at the passing countryside as Anne guided the cart down the steep and narrow paths. The clouds held a blue-violet cast to the gray, reminding her of Hewitt’s eyes. Everything called to mind Hewitt Vaughn. The man had planted himself in her psyche.

“Peeled off without a word,” Daron muttered. “When the plan was for us both. I’m the one as found out about Gertrude.”

“What do you mean, found out?”

A man emerged from the Tredegar Arms, the coaching inn that stood where the road branched at Bassaleg.

He was dressed the gray flannel of the Welsh working man and tipped his black felt hat to Anne as she drove past. She raised the tip of her riding whip in acknowledgement, accustomed to male regard.

But when Daron slouched on the bench seat and quickly looked away, she wondered if the stranger’s small, mocking smile had been aimed at her brother instead.

“Read their post,” Daron muttered. “Had to know how bad it was, didn’t I?

The pater was too busy rating me for trying to hold my head up as a gentleman to give me the finer point of the matter, and you know Mumsy can’t keep a figure in her head for a minute, much less add two to make a sum.

Knew she was fretting to Aunt Gertrude about how to dispose of you, so took a peek at the matter. ”

“And?” Anne’s lungs compressed. She was far too desperate for answers to affect modesty and chide him for being indiscreet.

“Dear old Gertrude told Mum not to worry her head, you’d be provided for.” Daron crossed his arms over the bright bronze buttons on his waistcoat and slumped further.

“Daron, you fool.”

Anne had never in her life talked back to her brother, never dreamed of scolding him.

Not when he wheedled her for pin money, which she gave him, only to find out later he had lost it at play or spent it on drink for his friends.

She had not chided him when he squandered the small payment from the breach of promise lawsuit when the baronet’s daughter he was meant to marry jilted him for her Italian music master.

She had kept her mouth shut when Gwenllian, her friend and companion, was sent away because she had tried to tempt Daron into marriage.

Anne held her peace as her dowry disappeared and her marriage prospects dwindled to one Calvin Vaughn, who would agree to take her dowry-free on the basis of his father’s long friendship with hers.

She had not shrieked down curses upon Daron’s head when he brought Anne to Newport to try to win Gwen back, once they learned she was an heiress; she had helped him.

And she had not screamed at him when she ended up trapped on a criminal’s boat with dung bombs going off all around them.

She had stayed calm like a lady, proving her birth, and had never spoken against the brother she had loved from youth.

Because that boy was engraved on her heart.

And when she looked at Daron, she saw still the boy who laughed and held out his arms when young Anne toddled to him, flowers clenched in a chubby fist. He’d swoop her under his arm so she could fly like a goose.

He had called her Nanny, a treasured name she allowed no one outside the family to call her.

She still saw that boy who had walked alongside her pony as Anne clutched its mane, terrified of falling, and who had as a young man looked over all the other young men coming to call on his sister to ensure they were upright and well-mannered and would never insult her.

She had gone so long thinking of Daron as her protector that she still could not quite believe he would use her with such calculation.

She had been willing to give her all to make him laugh, make him happy, keep him from disgrace.

But she saw now that boy who had always accepted her worship as his due had become a man who believed the world ought always fall in line with his wishes, and whatever resources he could find were his, no matter whom else he injured.

“Fool?” His head snapped up. Above all, Daron could not stand an insult to his pride.

“A-a nincompoop ,” she said, hurt overtaking her.

Had he ever thought of her in all his calculations?

No. “Aunt Gertrude might not have meant she would leave me money. I doubt she has any to give me. Likely she meant that if I didn’t marry, I could come live with her and be a companion, and not be a charge on Mama and Papa. ”

He straightened his shoulders, offended. “There must be money. Look at the way she lives.”

“And you think it must all go to you, instead of disposed as she would wish?”

Daron gaped at her. “I am the heir!”

And that was the heart of it. He was the golden boy, the shining hope of their house, the proof that a collier’s son had leapt into the ranks of the gentry.

Anne was their ornament, but Daron was their legacy.

Daron was born to command all, and Anne was born to bend with grace as she gave it to him.

As women had been shaped to do from the first moment in the Garden of Eden, or so they were told.

Anne recalled the tiny, wicked hope that had reared its head at dinner when Calvin Vaughn leered at her about being a dried-up spinster who would be eager for his touch.

She had thought about taking Aunt Gertrude’s money herself, if it came to her.

Ruining herself at the hands of Hewitt Vaughn—she veered away from the specifics of that memory—and walking away with money to establish herself on her own.

Where? How? And in defiance of everything her family requested of her? Everything she owed to them?

“Besides, Nanny,” Daron said, and his tone was pure, scandalized hurt. “I am the one who is acting in the interests of this family. You would leave us with nothing, the way you’re going on. Thinking only of yourself these days.”

“I refuse to marry Calvin Vaughn. Daron, you see the way he is. Surely you’ve heard the whispers, what the servants say. I cannot marry a dirty dish.”

“He’s the one as would share the money with us,” Daron grouched. “Can’t say your Hewitt would. Or is any better than Calvin, come to that. Don’t you know why he was sent home from Acre in disgrace? Did he tell you that, or is he too busy weaving pretty lies to lure you into his bed?”

Anne’s neck grew hot. Hew hadn’t needed cajoling to lure her into his bed. She’d leapt in feet first.

What money? he’d asked, as if he didn’t know.

As if it weren’t part of the consideration—the sole consideration—why he would want to marry a woman no one else wanted, a woman whose suitors and admirers and friends had peeled away one by one, going off to begin their lives as gentlewomen and viscountesses.

While Anne was left all alone with her beauty and her virginity and all the dainty charming skills she’d been taught, and which had gained her nothing.

“Why was Hew sent home? Mister—Captain Vaughn. I thought he was supposed to be a hero.” She caught the slip, but she’d betrayed herself.

“Ask him, as you’re bedfellows now. Cutting your true groom and your brother out of everything. Seizing the kitty all for yourself, aren’t you? Bet you won’t have a penny for your brother when it’s all done.”

“Hew said he would ensure our parents are not in penury. They won’t lose Vine Court.” Anne gritted out the words. Once again, his focus was all on Daron. Not a thought for her future happiness. Not a single question whether any of this was what she wanted.

“And what if I want more than a tiny house and plot of farm in the Welsh hills, in the hind end of nowhere? What if I want some stature in the world? Your Hewitt can’t give that to me.”

“Neither can Calvin Vaughn,” Anne argued.

She pulled up the horse as a clump of sheep wandered across their path, their sheepdog nipping to move them along.

One of the animal’s black ears flopped down endearingly, and it looked up at Anne with a grin.

“I don’t think he can be trusted, Daron. I wouldn’t rely on him.”

“Much you know, Nanny. But that’s why I’m meeting Darch. He’s a man as can set me up in the world. Could have as much influence as the Black Hound did, if he wanted.”

“I hope you are not getting caught up with Mr. Darch. He does not seem an honest businessman.”

Anne steered the cart along the narrow track passing the ancient hillfort.

The ridge commanded a view of two rivers, the Ebbw and the Usk, and Hew said the fort was likely used by the Saxons, and perhaps the Romans, and perhaps the British who ruled the isle before them, the descendants of Brut.

Lords of the land, those who held the hill encampments, and come what may to the people who lived in the valleys.

The ones born to be pawns for the greater, and at their mercy.