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CHAPTER TWO

D aron waited at the rear of the priory, where outbuildings ranged around a spacious courtyard hemmed by a low wall separating it from the pasture beyond.

The heap perched on a hill that afforded a lovely view of the River Usk and the Severn Estuary beyond, where the Bristol Channel eventually poured into the Irish Sea.

Around and to the north of them, the shadowy hills of south Wales sat crowned with thick woods and seamed with coal and precious ores.

The sky, studded with clouds that promised a light rain later, looked as if it might swallow the land.

Anne wished it could swallow her. Pluck her up and toss her onto the waves of cloud, carry her away like a bird. How nice it would be to fly for the first time in her caged life.

Daron looked awful. Every one of his recent sins was stamped upon his face.

A healing wound above his temple marked the blow by which the moneylender had defeated Daron’s foolish attempt to barter with him.

His complexion was sallow and his eyes fever-bright.

He had been living with the Vaughns since he couldn’t set foot near St. Sefin’s.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Anne said. A regular Cassandra, she was, croaking of doom to her listeners, none of whom heeded her.

“Anne,” Daron said. “Listen to me. You must marry Vaughn.”

Calvin slid a hand inside his waistcoat and rocked on his heels, smug. “See now?”

She didn’t see. “Why?”

“The money,” Daron said simply.

Anne narrowed her eyes. “My dowry is gone.” And how unkind of Daron to rub a fistful of salt in that open wound.

Once, her brother had been her protector, her hero, her knight in shining armor.

There was nothing Daron did not know, nothing that could daunt or defeat him.

He walked the streets of Llanfyllin like a minor god, adored, fêted, a model for all to imitate.

Even after their ward had thrown out her scarf for the Sutton heir and they’d had the unpleasant business of turning her out, Daron was untouchable.

He was engaged to be married to an heiress, the daughter of a man whose coal mines had earned him a gentleman’s estate and a baronet’s title.

As the man had no son, he’d likely make Daron his heir.

Daron Sutton was climbing his way up the ranks.

And then, somehow, his fortunes changed.

Anne shivered and plucked at her shawl as a playful breeze swirled up from the Usk, nipping at the bare skin between her short sleeves and gloves.

The baronet’s daughter had run off with her dancing master, breaking the engagement.

Daron brought a suit for breach of promise, and while he was within his rights to do so, the persecution had made him slip further in the eyes of his peers.

Tradesmen stopped extending him credit. Others came forward with debts of honor that Daron had accrued while gambling on the fortune that was to be his.

Anne’s dowry trickled away into the hands of Daron’s creditors.

Then her father attempted to make up the losses with investments that proved too good to be true, and?—

Here they were now. She, standing in a thin gown and a cold breeze, the air blowing through her.

The brother who had betrayed her on one side, the betrothed who had abandoned her on the other.

Both holding up the sides of the chute meant to funnel Anne, like a reluctant calf, to the cart that would bear her to slaughter.

“It’s all right, pet.” Daron’s eyes shifted to a point over her shoulder. He looked wary, as if he expected attack from an unseen menace. “Calvin will marry you and make everything right.”

“I don’t have to marry anyone,” Anne lied. Of course she did; there was no other future for her. What, she was to live here at St. Sefin’s like the widows and idiots, working her hands to sticks, living on scraps from the butcher? She’d—she’d trade her modesty first.

“You have to marry him, you worthless tart,” Daron said, impatience edging his tone.

The breeze turned cold and plunged down Anne’s spine like a sluice. Daron had never spoken to her like this.

“Calvin can apply for probate for his father’s estate,” Daron said.

“The plantations. The ships. He’ll own all of it.

He’ll say Hew is dead at Acre. No one’s heard from him in months, and the siege ended in May.

Calvin will gain control of the money, and he’ll marry you, so you’re taken care of. It’s the only option you have.”

Anne pointed her nose toward the sky and hugged her shawl around her trembling shoulders. “I have options aplenty.”

Another lie. Her mind reeled, clawing and keening like a bird trapped in a cage. Marry Calvin Vaughn? With what she knew about him?

“What options, Nanny?” Daron sneered.

That hurt, that he would dredge up her childhood nickname now.

Using their old affection against her. “I’ll go home to Mother and Father.

They’ll arrange a new betrothal for me.” There had to be someone left.

Someone who, in the years since Anne had reached a marriageable age, they hadn’t passed over or alienated in their calculations.

Gwen’s betrayal and abandonment had changed Anne’s fortunes, too.

Once she had been the most sought-after maid in Powys.

She’d been flooded by invitations from the genteel families of Oswestry, turned heads when she and her mother went to Shrewsbury for the shops.

She’d had offers from young men across Wales.

She didn’t quite understand what connection her father had to Sir Lambert Vaughn, or how Calvin Vaughn became the candidate of choice, but surely her father would never wish her to cast herself away on a dirty dish.

She would return to Vine Court—it was a rough, bumpy journey of at least two days by coach, and that was without dumping rain—and she would begin anew.

“You can’t go back to Vine Court.” Daron shook his head. “Mother and Father are about to lose the place.”

“What?” Anne whispered. The cold swooped and dove around her, like a great hawk that might carry her away. The talons pierced straight to her heart. “That cannot be.”

“They’ve mortgaged the place twice over for money to live on. They’ll lose it unless we can find them money to pay.” Daron trained his stare on her, his eyes the exact shade of her own. Anne had always thought she could see her soul reflected in Daron’s eyes.

Not anymore. She didn’t know where her brother’s soul had gone, but it wasn’t with them.

“Marry Vaughn,” Daron repeated. “He will have money. He can help save Vine Court so our parents aren’t turned out into the street. But he won’t have any reason to help old friends, will he? Unless he has married their daughter.”

“No.” Anne’s heart did something strange then. It turned on itself like a small, frightened animal and dove down to her belly, seeking shelter. Her lungs bellowed for air. “I cannot marry him.”

Daron shook his head sorrowfully. “Can you really be that selfish, Nanny? When Calvin could help me, our parents, and give you a place in the world—you can’t do this for your family? For all of us?”

Why me ? Anne wanted to shriek. Her dowry was gone.

Her looks would go soon, worn down from having her future in doubt for so many months and years.

She and Daron had come south with the intent of securing Daron’s marriage to Gwen so her fortune, left her by her father, could restore their prospects.

Clearly, a certain viscount had ruined those plans.

Daron was nothing if not clever; she was certain he had other recourse. But this ?

“A home,” Daron whispered. “A family. Pretty curtains at the window, Welsh cakes on the table at every meal. Gowns from London. And you, alone, would be the saving grace of your family. We would all be uplifted by St. Nan.”

Anne tugged at the lace around her throat, which strangled suddenly.

“Silk curtains,” Daron crooned. “Silk gowns.”

“The fashion is for muslin, now.”

“Muslin gowns, then. All pretty and white. And you like Greenfield, don’t you?

Such a pleasant house. All those gardens.

Such grand families here about, living in grand homes.

You’d be the reigning hostess, queen of the neighborhood.

Travel to Bath or London whenever you wished. Perhaps even Paris.”

Paris . Anne’s mind whooshed away, snared by the long-held fantasy come to life.

Of course, no one wanted to go to Paris now, with the streets still running revolutionary blood, but elsewhere on the Continent—there was a whole magical world shimmering just beyond the blue waters of the Channel.

Anne had dreamed of it for so long, of seeing the lands beyond her stolid Welsh hills.

“And Calvin,” Daron added, “dotes on you entirely.”

“Developed the most violent attachment,” Calvin agreed with a grunt. He shifted his weight, and Anne’s gaze flitted, against her will, to the small bulge in his groin. “Go mad if I can’t have you.”

The wings of the sudden dream broke, and Anne crashed back to earth.

To this green hill, this cruelly chill breeze, the smell of smoke on the air—she swore she could still smell the wreck of the burning boat she’d barely escaped from.

The scent of sulfur and dung had clung to her for days.

Daron had led her to that trap, and he meant to trap her again.

The brother of her heart, her childhood hero and her first love, turning against her—why? The tart she’d eaten lay like bitter ash in her mouth.

“You don’t want me ,” Anne said to him. “You want something you can get through me.”

“Anne, don’t be a—” Daron began, but Calvin cut him off, stepping closer to Anne.

“Anne, old girl, don’t be a ninny,” Calvin admonished. “You’re not all bad. Can bear to have you in my bed, I wager. And you won’t get a better offer.”

That goat beneath the lean-to across the way would be a better bedmate than Calvin Vaughn, Anne knew, but the words couldn’t make their way through her lips. This? This was to be the end of all her girlhood hopes, her passionate dreams? What had she done to deserve this?

Her lips were glued shut. It was as if she’d eaten that dratted seaweed and it had sealed her mouth.

Her heart battered her chest, but no more than a whimper escaped her as Calvin Vaughn lifted her hand to his lips.

Her gloves were silk, the thinnest barrier, and somehow his lips were not warm, but clammy.

“Bring you back to Greenfield with us,” Calvin said confidently.

“Mother’ll be in transports. Post the banns and find you a frock.

Wed within a month. All falling into place.

” He leered and winked. “Have a mind I’ll enjoy the marital bed.

Usually like my ladybirds with a bit more here —” He shaped hands along his own curved hips— “but s’pose I can make do, eh?

Plant a babe and a girl fills out nicely, I’ve found. ”

Anne stared in disbelief, waiting for Daron to slap the man’s face and call him out for speaking to her in such a degrading manner.

Daron laughed. “Name one after me,” he said.

Anne turned and bolted back into the building, using the first door she could find.