Page 57

“Mrs. Lambe.” The vicar swept her a deep, awkward bow, reaching for his hat and finding he lacked one. “I regret the strange circumstances under which you find us, but I’m afraid we must beg your?—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, speak straight,” Eilian snapped. “What has happened?”

“We, er, were caught up in a, em?—”

Anne stared with fascination as the vicar, whom she had always known to be eloquent grace, stumbled over his words. “That is to say?—”

“Vicar,” Widow Jones called, coming from the chapter house, “His Grace wants you.”

“Ah. I must go. The duke wants me.” Stanley vanished down the hall.

Anne tried to catch Hew’s eye, but he was staring at Eilian, who stared back. Anne noticed for the first time they shared the same straight nose and decided tilt to the jaw. The same changeable eyes, now green-tinged like the Irish Sea.

Dovey cocked her head as she loaded the tea tray. “Cerys, pwt , with me,” she said. “Widow?” They whisked away to attend the duke, while footsteps sounded from a different hall.

“Eilian, my lamb?—”

The woman pulled up short at the sight of them. “Miss Meredith?” Anne asked, confused.

The older woman’s gaze riveted on Eilian’s face, then Hew’s. “Ah,” she said. “You know.”

“I just learned,” Hew said softly.

“Learned what?” Calvin brushed at the shoulder of his coat. “By God, I could use a brandy.”

Miss Meredith cleared her throat. “She is your sister.”

Calvin recoiled. “Not mine .”

“Half-sister.” Hew turned on him. “And I am your half-brother.”

Calvin blinked. “The devil you say.”

“Eilian is my daughter. Your father sired her when Lady Vaughn brought me here as her lady’s maid upon her marriage. She and Hew are three months apart in age. My lady and I might have gone through our time together.”

Miss Meredith turned to Calvin, her lips tight. “I am not your mother, however. She was a chambermaid. Your father believed everything at Greenfield was his, including the help.”

“And my mother turned you off for it.” Hew’s voice cracked with tension. Anne slipped her hand into his, wondering at these revelations. He’d never been sure of his place in this family to begin with, and now to learn it was nothing like he’d believed … what might this mean for him?

For them?

“She wasn’t—where’s th’ other, then? The one you say is m’mother.” Calvin licked his lips, his eyes wide with confusion.

“Dead, now, may her soul be at peace,” Miss Meredith said. “The good burghers of Newport wouldn’t have her in the town, staunch Christians as they are, and there was no place like St. Sefin’s to take her. I fear her lot was a hard one, and unhappy.”

“I’m the favorite. Mother always favored me. Father, too.” Calvin looked to be sweating, his gaze darting everywhere. The hatred when his gaze fell on Hew was palpable. Anne squeezed his hand all the harder.

Miss Meredith spoke for him. “Sir Lambert wished to punish my lady because she refused, after you, to take in any more of his bastards. She vowed he would sire no more children on her until he was faithful. He never was.”

“You knew this?” Hew asked.

Both Eilian and Anne watched Miss Meredith’s face, the wistful sorrow turning up the corner of her mouth. “I said I was not welcome at Greenfield. She is free to call at Pensarn Cottage whenever she likes.”

“But she sent you away. You and your daughter.” Hew’s voice was low, the emotion kept at bay. Such control the man had, Anne thought.

“Mother, you needn’t,” Eilian began.

Miss Meredith held up a hand, her eyes filled with pain. “It is time for the truth, my darling. Yes, I had to send Eilian away. Everyone knew what had happened. Milady gave me the cottage at High Cross so I would not starve, but the councilmen—the rules—I could not keep her.”

“I had a happy childhood.” Eilian curled her fingers around her mother’s hand. “I was loved. They spoke well of you, and I understood why you could not visit often.”

“You’re lying!” Calvin yelped. “Filthy lies. I won’t stay to hear this.” He turned and darted out of the kitchen. The outer door slammed.

“How will he get home, I wonder?” Eilian’s eyes were wide.

Hew shrugged. “I’ll deal with him later. For now, I owe you both an apology, but Anne … she fell in the water. Is the bath ready?”

“Come, chick.” Eilian held out her hand to Anne, but her gaze lingered on Hew. “I need no apology from you, Captain Vaughn. Only—I have wanted you to know me.”

“I won’t be my father,” Hew said, a grim set to his mouth.

“I won’t put my honor above what is right.

I would be proud to acknowledge you, in public if Miss Meredith wishes, and in private if she would have it so.

You have been an inspiration to Anne.” He turned to press a kiss to her forehead, and Anne melted into him.

“You need a wash as well. You smell like gunpowder still.” She hesitated, clinging to his hand. “You’ll stay? Here?”

Hew nodded. “We needs must settle some matters, you and I.”

“Yes, we must,” Anne said softly.

She made short work of her bath, cleaning herself in the hip tub that Eilian and Cerys filled for her. She dried quickly and drew on a wrapper, an old one of Gwen’s, and went to find where they’d put Hew.

She found Leah first, dozing in the mothers’ ward. She opened her eyes at Anne’s soft footstep and smiled tenderly. “Come in, my dear. He’s awake. I think he knows it’s you, and he wants to say hello.”

“He knows me?” Anne took the baby with delight. Daniel opened his eyes in that foggy way newborns peered toward voices they recognized. “Then I am indeed one of his people.”

“May you be blessed for the help you have given us, and may you be blessed in your own children,” Leah said, pressing Anne’s hand.

“May it be so.” Anne nodded, swallowing down the lump in her throat. A warm rock filled her belly, heavy, solid. She had done this, helped this woman and her child. And she could do this again and again.

Hew was in a smaller room that had once been bedroom to a long-ago nun. He sat on the narrow bed, coat and waistcoat discarded on the covers, trying to pull his shirt over his head.

“Let me help.”

“No.” He turned suddenly, clamping her wrist. “Don’t—I don’t want you to see.”

“Hew.” She swallowed that aching lump. She wanted so badly to touch him. “If you are to be my husband, darling, you must let me see you.”

His eyes flared, turning that dark blue she knew now meant interest and desire. “No jilting?” he asked softly. He turned his hand to slide his palm against hers.

She caught her breath and shook her head. “Unless you want?—”

“I want you .” Before she could finish the thought he hauled her to him, his arms a hot vise across her back, her breasts pressed against his chest. He fell on her mouth as if he’d been starving for days, kissing her as she’d wanted to kiss him in the meadow.

Land and sky tilted and fell away, leaving only his arms, and the world between them.

“You would marry me?” he growled. “You would say yes?”

“Yes.”

His kiss stole her breath and gave it back again, as if he were drawing out the last of the old, broken Anne and giving her back to herself, new, whole. As if the flame lit within her found its answer and twin inside him.

She tugged at the hem of his shirt, wanting to touch him, wanting him as close to her as possible.

“Off.”

He laid a hand over hers, his face sobering. “It will frighten you. Disgust you. I can’t imagine what it looks like.”

“Let me, my love.” Gently she tugged, and he opened his hand. She pulled the shirt over his head and stifled her gasp as he turned to cast it aside.

She stretched out a hand but caught herself an inch above the angry wounds. “Does it hurt still?”

“Phantom pain. I cannot feel a thing from here—” he pointed a finger to the top of his shoulder— “to here.” He moved the finger to his waist.

The stretch of skin between was a coil of red welts, healing to scars. Anne pressed her palm to the raised ridges of flesh. “How many lashes?” She held back a sob.

“My major ordered a hundred, which is a light punishment for the Navy. The colonel came in and stopped him at fifty. He said the major had no right to use official discipline for a personal grievance, and not on a man weak from prison fever.”

Anne laid her cheek against his back and slipped her hands around his waist. He was warm and firm, so very solid.

She drifted her palms over the light hair dusting his chest and felt beneath the muscle the strong, steady beat of his heart.

His strong, valiant, courageous heart, bent on justice and right.

“I will take your scars if it means I can have you.”

He turned to press a kiss to the top of her head.

“Anne.” His voice came out rough, like the gravel against her hands when she’d thought she would drown on that sandbar before he could reach her.

“God knows I want you, but I cannot—I must not bind you. It would not be fair. I might yet be court-martialed, despite what the duke said. He is not the one who will decide my sentence. The judgment will come, and I could not bear for you to suffer because of me.”

“I will rise with you, and I will fall with you, if you let me,” she whispered. “I want to be with you, Hew.”

She slipped her hand lower, across his belly, and smiled against his shoulder at his sharp intake of air. He wanted her, and being a man, bless him, he could not hide it. She peeked downward and smiled all the wider. There was the evidence, stretching out his buckskin breeches.

“Minx.” He clasped a hand over hers. She loved the rough weight of his palm, the corded muscle in his forearms, the dizzying strength of him. He was so much more than her, a huge sturdy cliff she could curl beneath, and know she would be safe always.