Page 24 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Telling him puts us at his mercy,” Dovey hissed, keeping her voice low while the vicar drank the last of his soup. “I like him better at ours.”
But there was no mercy for liars, Gwen thought. And this was her greatest falsehood yet.
She hadn’t beento see him in hours. There was noise in the kitchen. It must be mid-morning, and Pen thought he heard her voice now and again. But the light-skirted maid brought his breakfast, winking and flirting the whole time. Pen flirted back—what was a man to do when a woman flattered so prettily?—but he wanted Gwen.
He wanted to hear her. See her. Find out if she’d come again to his room last night. He had a vague memory of gunfire and screaming, some men shouting at him about money, and then the smell of blood turned to bluebells, and the clobber on his head was instead a warm hand and a cool cloth scented with witch hazel. After that he slept without dreaming.
The man with the missing arm, he’d forgotten his name, brought Pen his clothing. His breeches were mended and his coat had been brushed, but his suit was growing shabbier by the day. Was he a dandy, that he cared about his garments? Pen said curtly he could valet himself and sent him away. The sight of the man’s empty sleeve and limping walk unsettled him. Made him feel guilty. Why should that be?
Why couldn’t he remember a bloody thing about his life?
It was like a great fog in his brain box. Every time he reached for something he should know, it slipped away to airy mist. All that was left were feelings, but no knowledge. He couldn’t recall his family. His home. His profession. He knew his likes and dislikes; he knew, for instance, that he badly wanted a glass of rum. But how could he not even know hisname?
Pen. That was what she’d said. He knew, in some way he couldn’t articulate, that was what people called him. But it wasn’t his name.
He was turning maudlin, lying in this cot in the empty room, nothing but time on his hands, life going on just out of reach. He was also bloody bored.
He straightened his neckcloth, buffed the buttons on his coat, and walked into the kitchen. Into an uproar.
There was a mad howling going up from some great buffoon who sat in a chair by the wall, rocking and sobbing. Gwen sat beside him holding his hand, bound with bandages. An old crone with white hair and a puckered expression sat in another corner, angrily stabbing knitting needles into a snarled mass of wool and spewing gibberish in the direction of the howling young man.
From a room beyond, a stillroom or cellar of some sort, came the sound of two women quarreling. And the whole room smelled like wet goat. Because an actual goat stood in the door to the scullery, dripping water onto the floor, a rope around its neck leading to the boy who stood within, working a handpump at the basin.
“Good Lord,” Pen said, “I’m in Dante’sInferno.”
“What doyouwant?” Gwen snapped, her head rearing up.
He was surprised. What was she taking his head off for? “There’s an awful lot of noise,” he said, gesturing to the boy beside her. “Is it because he’s an idi?—”
“Don’t,” Gwen warned him, her voice full of wrath. “Tomos caught his hand in the winch when he was drawing water this morning. He’s upset.”
“It happened an hour ago,” said the crone.
“Poen,” the boy sobbed.
“Yes, you’re in pain.” Gwen patted the boy’s arm and he leaned against her shoulder. He had an oddly round head, hiseyes small slits spaced wide apart, his nose flat between chubby cheeks. A simpleton of some sort. Pen looked away.
“What are the hens fighting about?” He nodded his head toward the small room where bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, and where the volume of voices, and the acrimony in them, was escalating.
“Cerys has the putrid throat today that Ifor had yesterday,” Gwen answered. “We cannot agree on the best remedy.”
“Boiled mutton suet and beeswax plaster,” said the crone with confidence. “Wrap her from ear to ear and let her be.”
“Fetch down to the barber surgeon for leeches,” came the voice of the young, flirty maid. “That’s what Mrs. Harries always did, and don’t tell me you think you know better than she.”
“A bolus of conserve of rose mixed with powdered frankincense,” came the voice of another woman, older but still mellifluous. “Mr. Wesley says so in hisPhysick.”
“There’s a licorice tea steeping on the stove,” Gwen said. “Just mix in a bit of honey and lemon juice. I think we’ve one lemon left.”
Their arguing was better than a Punch comedy held at seaside resorts in the summers. He must have been to many as a child—what seaside? What resort?
“Add a spoonful of rum,” Pen said helpfully. “And then you might give me the rest of the rum, and the lemon.”
Gwen stood and moved to stand before him. She was wearing the same plain, worn gown, with that red woolen shawl draped around her waist and a ruffled kerchief concealing what he knew to be a shapely bosom. Why did she go about hiding her assets from the world? At least she wore nothing to hide her hair, which was bound into a loose braid about her head. He wanted to run those ashy brown curls through his fingers. He would wager they were softer than silk.
He blinked as she leaned forward to peer into his eyes, then lifted his hands to look at them. He clenched his fingers to hide the tremor.
“No more grog for you, Pen,” she said softly. “We’re drying you out.”
