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Anne’s half boots sank into the thick sand as they disembarked, a heavy pull at her ankles.

A small, sleek two-masted brig sat nosed in beside the stone wharf, sails rigged but deck empty.

A wooden crane on the wharf lifted heavy casks from a second, larger brig pulled up along the sand, swinging the cargo into a waiting wagon.

Anne anchored a hand on her hat to hold it against an uprush of wind.

Hew would have something to say about this, some design already sprouting in his clever brain about how to improve the loading mechanism. She wished again he had come with them.

But he was not hers to keep. She had not won him fairly in the first place.

Whatever happened with her family—and she would not marry Calvin under any circumstance she could imagine—Anne could not let them force a marriage to Hew.

She could not let him sacrifice his future.

Not when he had already escaped prison once.

He was the very man she would have drawn for herself if given a sketchbook, down to the gleam of mischief in his eye and the cowlick at the back of his head that showed he was not a man to be subdued. And she would not have him take her out of pity.

A man approached them, a little man with tousled brown hair and a leather jerkin. “You!” Anne recognized him. “Minikin.”

“Morys,” he said, tugging the brim of his cap. “Ladies, guvna, won’t you come this way?”

Anne turned to her father. “This roustabout worked for the Black Hound. He helped kidnap me.”

“Helped save your hide, I did,” Morys cried, nimbly bracing Aunt Gertrude as her shoe turned on the sand. “And the Hound got as he deserved.”

Anne surveyed the shapely curve of the ship before them, rolling on the Usk’s gentle tide.

The rain was coming; she smelled the wet underside of the clouds rolling up the channel.

She’d come to know not only the rains of south Wales but the clouds that presaged them.

A quick fist of longing squeezed her chest. When she broke with Hew, where would she go? Where would she find a home?

“I do not like this,” Anne’s mother announced as a crew member directed them to sit in the small rowboat hung by ropes along the side of the ship. The yawl swayed as men cranked the winch to raise them, the shore dropping away like Anne’s stomach.

“Daron!” Elizabeth called when her son’s golden head appeared at the rail above them. “Why must we take a ship, my darling? I’d do very well to have my feet on solid ground after the past days.”

“I’ve a surprise for you, Mother,” Daron called back. His face looked eager and tense, his eyes resting on Anne. “You’ll like it.”

“Salmon cakes for tea?” Aunt Gertrude asked. “I do adore salmon.”

“Something better,” Daron promised, then directed a scowl to the sailors operating the winch. “Hurry.”

“But why would you not invite Lady Vaughn or the others, dear?” their mother asked as her face came level with her son’s. “If she is to be our hostess, it seems polite.”

“Her ladyship mislikes boats. She’ll be waiting for us at Greenfield when we return.” Daron, disregarding his mother’s outstretched hand, reached for Anne.

She ignored him, climbing over the rail herself, hauling her muslin skirts after.

Calvin, waiting at Greenfield when she and Hew had arrived, had barely let Anne meet her disheveled parents and accept a kiss on the cheek from Aunt Gertrude before insisting they change and meet Daron at the dock for the welcome he’d planned.

Mair had laid out the gown Anne wore to Gwen and Penrydd’s wedding, and Anne, too upset over what the appearance of her parents portended, had not quarreled.

“Is Hew here?” Anne asked, looking about. The deck of the ship was empty save for a few crewmembers about their tasks, securing sails, pushing casks toward the crane. “I do not understand what all this is about.”

“Come, then.” Daron towed Anne at his side like a child pulling a wheeled toy.

The smooth planking of the deck rolled and shifted, the cool breeze nipping around the collar of her pelisse with a playful bite.

Daron’s fingers were cold through his gloves.

The sails belled and snapped in the wind, and the masts creaked in ominous chorus.

Daron pulled her down a short set of wooden stairs leading belowdecks, and Anne blinked as the dim engulfed her.

Her heels echoed on the polished planks of the captain’s quarters.

Light filtered through tall, narrow windows set like a row of smiling teeth in the stern of the ship.

The dark wood of cabinets and heavy furniture curved around them, but the middle of the room was bare.

In it stood Rafael Darch and beside him Calvin Vaughn, wearing a dark suit and a smug smile.

Anne’s throat closed on sudden dread. She swallowed hard, reaching for bravery. “What is he doing here?”

Calvin crooked his fingers toward a shadowed alcove. “Come forward, vicar. We’ve the witnesses and her parents. No time like the present.”

“Calvin, what does this mean?”

Behind her, Daron filled the stairwell as if standing guard. He tugged a finger beneath his cravat, his gaze shearing away from her narrowed glare.

“Delighted to have you here at our happy event. Sudden, but needs must. Can’t wait a moment longer to become the happiest of men.” Calvin chortled, baring his teeth in the shape of a smile. “Haven’t you sussed it out yet, pet? They’re here for our wedding.”

“Tell me I misheard you, madame.” Hew fixed a stare on his mother. “Anne isn’t to marry Calvin. She’s to marry me .”

The back of his neck prickled as panic rose in his chest. He hadn’t persuaded her of this yet, of course.

He’d been so close to asking her today in the grassy verge beside the Fourteen Locks.

Had wanted to bend a knee, take her hand, and, in the sight of God and the crew of the narrowboat with its cargo of iron from the Welsh hills, ask this most elusive and maddening of women to marry him.

When he had nothing to offer her. Except his heart. But that was better than what she would gain from his brother.

Lady Vaughn huddled into the plush chaise as Hew approached. The drawing room felt shadowed and close, the lamps failing to penetrate the dull afternoon light. A storm brewed in St. George’s Channel, and it would sweep up the Bristol Channel soon; the rising pressure rang in his ears.

“Hew, she’s turned your head. I do not blame you. The girl is more wily than any of us thought. But Calvin secured her long ago.”

And what Calvin wanted, went the unspoken logic, Calvin got.

It had always been that way. Hew was the eldest, but Calvin was the favored child.

Hew had always been too loud, too coarse, too thoughtful, too idealistic, too ambitious, too gentle, or too stubborn, depending on his father’s mood.

Calvin was made in his father’s image and could do no wrong in his father’s eyes.

Hew must be denied, disciplined, bent to his father’s will to shape him as the heir and successor to Greenfield and the family name.

Calvin might do what he liked, and every treat he pointed to was placed in his hand.

Hew curled his hands into fists. Not Anne. Calvin could not have Anne for the asking. She belonged to Hew. She had given herself to him, and he’d accepted this most precious gift. No more needed to be said.

“Where have they taken her?”

“I don’t think?—”

“Madam.” Hew gritted his teeth. “I know my wishes are not your primary concern in this instance. I know you do not like her. But her brother has been dealing with dangerous men, and if he has caught Anne up in it, the consequences could be grave.”

“Hewitt!” her ladyship cried. “You are my son—my only son. I think of nothing but you.”

Hew reared back his head. “You have two sons, madame, and the second is determined to bring us both grief, I fear.”

His mother spread her hands over her face, a gesture he had never seen from her. He had never known her to despair, to crumple, to weep. She was never anything but the brittle statue of a lady, ruling her kingdom but little pleased by it.

“Calvin is not mine,” she said from behind her hands. “I took him in at your father’s command. He sent away the daughter, but insisted I take the son.”

Hew stared, afraid to move toward her, feeling the floor might crumble. An enormous piece of his life had just fallen away. “Calvin has a different mother?”

“A maid. I sent her away at once, as I had all the others, but a son, your father would not forfeit.”

“Did you say I have a sister?” Hew put a hand out in the air, looking for something to lean on. There was nothing nearby.

“By my lady’s maid. My trusted Rowena.” Her ladyship lowered her hands and stared at them bitterly. “My husband took both of us at my marriage, but when I found he had used her, I-I turned her out. I thought that would be the end of it.”

She curled her hands into fists. “After Calvin, I at last knew the man he was. I swore to him then I would take in no more bastards, nor would he have any honest children from me unless he could be faithful.” Her voice broke. “He was not.”

“This explains it,” Hew realized. “Why he was so hard with me. To punish you .”

His mother shook her head and raised her face, full of pleading. “I was not his choice,” she said. “I was never his choice. He considered it too high a price for an heir. I would not see you make the same mistake and bind yourself a woman you cannot love.”

Hew crossed the rug and dropped to one knee beside the chaise. His mother’s expression tore at his heart, even as his mind warned he was losing time.

“I chose Anne for myself, Mother. I love her already. Out of every woman in the world, I would choose her, again and again. She cannot marry Calvin. What I will do if he takes her from me—let me simply say, the consequences will shame us all.”

His mother managed a watery smile. “No worse than being found in your bed again.”

So that was the reason she turned so hard against Anne.

Her betraying his brother was a treachery skating too near her own humiliations, her own old heartbreak.

And for him to choose one who might be unconstant …

Hew took his mother’s hands, stopping her nervous plucking of the ribbons and her waist.

“She is good,” was all he could manage to say.

When there was so much Anne was, and so much she meant to him.

She brought the sun with her when she stepped into a room.

She made him feel strong and capable. She looked at him and saw not the soldier or the son or the brother or the Greenfield heir, but the man he was aside from all these things.

And when he held her in his arms, felt the heat of her desire, tasted her surrender, he felt a whole man again, reformed, not the bloody, scarred mess left after the siege of Acre and the slice of the cat-o’-nine tails. He was himself again, thanks to Anne, and if he lost her?—

If he lost her, he would never again be the man he saw in her eyes. And losing her , her own beautiful self, was the worst harm he could ever be dealt.

“When I bring her home,” he said softly, “I hope you will take the chance to know her. But you must tell me where they have taken her first.”