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CHAPTER NINETEEN

“ O f course you must marry Calvin. We made all the agreements with Calvin. He could very likely bring a breach of promise suit against us for this, and how on earth would we pay? Whatever were you thinking, Anne?” Her mother, huddled in the deep leather seat of the Vaughn family coach, pulled her Norwich shawl around her neck and sent Anne a reproachful look.

“Daron won two thousand pounds when his gel ran off with her Italian music master.” Her father, seated beside Anne on the facing seat, grabbed for a leather strap as the coach jounced over the now-familiar road to Bassaleg. “Where do you suppose we would find those kinds of funds, child?”

“It was good of you to travel all this way to ensure that I marry a man who will be kind to me,” Anne said. “I am so overcome by your concern for my welfare, I know not what to say.”

She clung to the strap on her own side of the vehicle.

The coach, despite being a newer, London-made model with the latest springs, was a far less comfortable ride than the pony cart, and her teeth clattered in her head.

But Eliza Sutton would throw herself into the salt marsh before she would put herself atop a horse.

Her mother frowned. “Are you being pert? Richard, is she being pert? After I suffered how many thousands of miles of travel through the wildest country?”

Aunt Gertrude, snugged into the seat beside Eliza and taking up the greater portion of it with her enormous petticoats, guffawed with laughter. Aunt Gertrude was not standing anywhere close to the lingering specter of death, as Daron had led Anne to believe.

“’Twas scarcely above a hundred miles, Eliza, and the Brecons are the most beautiful country God ever made. ’Tis time you set foot out of your valley.”

“England is the most beautiful country God ever made,” Anne’s mother answered with a haughty sniff. “Sometimes I wish I’d never left Telford.”

“Calvin compelled you to travel all this way,” Anne asked, “merely to insist I marry him, and not Hew?”

Her mother glared. “How free you are with the given names of both your intendeds. I never thought to raise a pert daughter.”

“Nor a lightskirt.” Her father’s look was just as severe. “Vaughn had best be mistaken in his accounts of what you’ve been about with his brother.”

Anne looked to her aunt. “And how did you get caught up in this, if I might ask? Of course, I am delighted to see you, Aunt Gertrude. It has been far too long.”

“It has, indeed. I find there are one or two matters I must settle.” Her aunt stretched her legs out, compelling Anne’s father to bend his knees to the side, which he did with another glare. “Writing letters has become tedious, and this seemed the best way to speak with you.”

“We have time now,” Anne said. “Until we reach—where did Daron insist we meet him?”

“Some place called Pillgwenlly,” her father grumbled. “Friend of his wants to take us for a pleasure cruise. Poor day for it, boding rain.”

“It always bodes rain in south Wales,” Anne replied. “Wait an hour, and you’ll see what kind.”

Her mother pressed her lips together. “How is there more than one kind of rain?”

“There are many. There’s the glaw trwm, the glaw bras, and the glaw gyrru , all types of heavy rain, and then?—”

“You’re becoming a Welshwoman, then?” Aunt Gertrude said with a chuckle.

Anne smiled softly, remembering sitting with Mother Morris in the kitchen of St. Sefin’s pressing nettles for their juice while Cerys pattered in and out with her baskets. “I’ve never lived anywhere else, and am not like to.”

Hew would stay at Greenfield, she suspected. He was planning his future there, putting down roots. He was done with the Royal Artillery, or they were done with him.

Would he stay if Anne were forced to marry Calvin?

She would not agree, and they could not force her without her consent. They lived on the cusp of the nineteenth century, not the mediaeval age. No vicar would pronounce them wed without hearing Anne’s vows.

She wished Hew had come with them, though there was no room in the coach to seat him. He could have ridden alongside on Cadfael, like a knight of old on his destrier. She would feel safer if Hew were with them.

Calvin had made a great fuss about uniting the Suttons as a family, and Daron had made plans to host his newly arrived parents in some grand fashion. As Daron’s plans of late had been little devoted to the welfare and pleasure of others, Anne admitted some degree of apprehension about the business.

“This is all about the money, I imagine.” Anne spoke above the creak of springs, the rustle of fabric, and the whining of the wooden planks of the carriage as it shifted over the uneven terrain.

“Daron took it into his head, Aunt Gertrude, that you meant to make me a bequest of some sort, and he believed he ought to stand in line for an inheritance as well.”

She could not bring herself to say outright that Daron wanted to take whatever came to Anne. She could not bring herself to say aloud that her playmate and guardian of old had abandoned her and the golden boy she had once worshipped had become a man she could not respect or even like.

“He never would be so—” her mother began, speaking over her father’s “I never told him to?—”

Her parents fell silent and looked at one another nervously.

Aunt Gertrude folded her hands in her lap, fingers encased in dainty lace mittens. “How interesting,” she said. “Yet I could have sworn I addressed that letter to Anne, and sealed it.”

“It is as though nothing we do or make is our own,” Anne said to her aunt. “Not our property, neither our skills nor our earnings, not even our decisions over our own bodies.”

Her aunt nodded. “It is why I counsel every young woman to become rich and independent. That was my plan for you, at any rate.”

“I thank you for it. That seems wise advice.”

Her mother chewed a lip, a gesture she herself held to be unladylike. “Daron would never to do anything to hurt us or this family.”

“Indeed? That was not your sentiment when he filled Gwen with a babe,” Anne said sharply. “I recall he was forbidden to contact her after she was turned out of our house.”

“That was his own choice,” her father grumbled. “I counseled him to take responsibility for her. Own his mistakes like a man, and pay the girl to go away.”

“He did not,” Anne said, her voice catching as she recalled the conversation, sitting in the kitchen of St. Sefin’s, when she learned the truth from Gwen.

The frothy scent of yeast rising in the air, undercut by the acrid sting of soap.

Her friend’s taut face as she recalled her disgrace.

“He had nothing to do with Gwen until the news came that David Carew had been knighted and died, leaving all his wealth to his daughter. Daron brought me south because he thought we could persuade Gwen to marry him. Did you know that?”

Her father directed his scowl out the window. “I said it was brazen of him.”

Her mother picked at a thread on her shawl, frowning. “It would have solved our problems. Carew left Gwenllian his mines, Richard. All of them.”

Aunt Gertrude looked back and forth between the couple, a wry smile twisting her lips. “How very, very interesting,” she said. “This is all because that ship sank, Richard? But I thought the insurance paid handsomely.”

Her father’s expression darkened. “Insurance paid for that,” he said. “But not the debts my son has accrued since then.”

Anne’s mother twisted a fringe of her shawl around one gloved finger. “We raised him as a gentleman, Richard. He is accustomed to that life. You cannot expect a young man?—”

“I was given my wealth, too,” her husband interrupted. “I do not deny it. But I stewarded my inheritance. I thought of my wife and children. I could have spent it on stables and hounds and the quarterly races, taken you shopping in Shrewsbury twice a year. But did I?”

“No.” Eliza gave her husband a sour look. “There were no shopping trips.”

“I suppose it is time to turn him out,” Anne’s father said grimly. “See if he lands on his own two feet, like the other did.”

“Gwen married a viscount,” Anne remarked. “So it all turned out rather well for her.”

Her mother stifled a small cry. “A peer of the realm. The Penrydd title and estates, we heard. Anne, could you not even?—”

“Oh, I made a bid for him,” Anne retorted.

“I’m not a complete ninny. But he was well caught by then, set on Gwen and none other.

He foiled Calvin’s plan to ruin Gwen and thus force her into marriage, and then he saved all of our necks, including Daron’s, after Daron went to the Black Hound to try to trade Gwen for the viscount’s debts.

So you see, Mother, Calvin threw me over first. I turned to Hew so I too might—how did you put it, Father? Land on my feet.”

Aunt Gertrude’s eyes flared wide. “So you were kidnapped, gel? I thought you were embroidering the story.”

Anne breathed through her nose, remembering the terror.

“Daron proposed me as a bride for the Black Hound. He knew Penrydd would pay a ransom for Gwen and the viscountesses, his stepmother and sister-in-law who were captured with us. There was no one to pay ransom for me. So he had arranged a bride-price if the criminal wanted me.”

“He would never,” her mother cried. “Anne, such vile accusations?—”

“He did ,” Anne said fiercely. “And he has been consorting with blockade runners and free traders and other criminal elements since then. So beware whatever invitation my brother has extended, I beg you. I fear it will not be to our best interests.”

Her father set his expression in stony lines. “I won’t be tricked by my own son. Take him over my knee if I have to.”

“It’d be too late for that, Papa.” Anne curled her hand around the leather strap. “Why have we stopped?”

Aunt Gertrude peered out the glass window at the sight of a tall, two-masted brig tied up at the wharf. “I take it we’ve arrived for our cruise? How lovely. I haven’t been boating in an age.”