Page 3 of The Ladies Least Likely
Widow Jones was wise in the household arts but too old to go into service. She, like Mother Morris, like the boys, had nowhere else to go.
Mr. Barlow’s expression turned as stony as the walls of St. Sefin’s. “Five, so far, squatting on milord Penrydd’s property. How many more of you are there, Miss Ewyas?”
“Twll din pob Saes!” Mother Morris shouted. Widow Jones shook her elbow gently.
“You forget the Penrydds are Cymry, Mother,” Widow said. “They only left for London when the mad English king made the old knight a baron. Have you never seen Penrydd Hall, so splendid there up in the hills toward Wentwood? As grand as Tredegar House it is, or could be, with some tending.”
“The late Lord Penrydd thought it right to take his seat in the House of Lords,” Mr. Barlow said, his lips a grim line. “And thenew viscount believes it time to take his lands in hand. Past time, I will hasten to inform him.”
“All right, Miss Gwenllian?” Evans limped around the corner of the priory, and Gwen stifled a groan. Normally she relied on his ready hand and good cheer, but he couldn’t have turned up at a worse time.
The solicitor curled his lip into a sneer. “Six.”
“Yes, six, Mr. Barlow.” Gwen grasped at a slim hope. “Six souls in need of shelter. Tell his lordship we wish to arrange tenancy, a proper tenancy, and—and we’ll pay.”
A strangled cry drew every gaze to Dovey, coming up from the gardens, her basket laden with leeks and spring cabbage. “Pay? Gwen, we’ve no money for a lease on—” She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Seven.” Barlow recoiled. “And you keep African slaves, I see.”
“Mrs. Van der Welle is as free as you or I, Mr. Barlow,” Gwen hissed. She fisted her hands in her shawl. She must show restraint. She was at this man’s mercy.
Mr. Barlow thrust out his chest, hugging his black leather case as if he suspected Gwen meant to steal it. “I’m afraid tenancy is out of the question for your sort of people. I refuse to propose any offer to his lordship on your behalf.”
Evans laughed. “It can’t be Penrydd property. We’ve been here for years.”
“The Penrydd boy?Coc oen!” Mother Morris swore. “He’s atwpsyn, he! A ne’er-do-well from the cradle, I’ve heard, and now that he’s been cocked up by the war?—”
“Come away, Mother, and let’s to tea!” Widow Jones chirped, drawing the older woman away along with Tomos, who rocked and hummed with increasing vigor.
“I had heard young Penrydd was injured in battle,” said Mr. Stanley, who took the London papers and thus knew of doings inEngland and the larger world. “And then to lose his brother, too! Quite a shock. But I’m sure he’ll honor the agreement to let Miss Gwen and Mrs. Van der Welle continue their work at St. Sefin’s, won’t he?”
“I’ll eat my hat if an agreement of any sort exists between the estate of Penrydd and Miss Ewyas!” Barlow lifted his nose in the air. “In fact, I will counsel his lordship to bring a suit for the degradation his property has suffered while such…personshave made use of it.”
Gwen shuddered as a cold wind pinned her to the porch. She wished she could say the situation felt unreal, being cast from the place she’d thought her home, exorcised like a demon, swatted out like an unwanted cat.
But she’d stood in this place before. Twice. And each time found herself cast into the outer darkness, fingers frozen, chilblains blistering her feet.
“You cannot turn us out, Mr. Barlow. We’ve nowhere to go.” Her voice was as thin and sharp as the breeze sweeping off the river, the one promising rain. The kind of torrential rain that lashed with the full fury of Mother Nature, flattening all before her mighty fist.
There was no lease, no agreement. The new Lord Penrydd had no way of knowing his dilapidated medieval priory housed anybody, because she’d never asked his permission. In fact, she’d never taken the steps to discover whether the old abbey belonged to anyone. She’d needed a roof over her head, and so had Dovey, and so had Evans, and she simply grew their community and went about their sustenance without a thought for whose land she occupied. Or whether their tenancy was in fact legal.
Fool. No, greater than a fool. Now they would all suffer for her ignorance.
She couldn’t look at their faces. Dovey was her dearest friend. Evans had been part of St. Sefin’s from the first. Ifor and Tomos had been disowned by their parents. The widows, like a pair of cuckoos, had no nest of their own. To take their home would be an act of unspeakable cruelty.
But Gwen had learned long ago there was no shield against cruelty. Not humility. Not innocence. Not youth. And certainly not beauty.
“I’m afraid your future actions are not my concern,” the solicitor snapped. “My duty is to discharge the wishes of the Viscount Penrydd, and he wishes to divest himself of this property as soon as might be arranged.” He firmed his hat on his head. “You must vacate at once, Miss Ewyas, or you will all find a new home in the workhouse, and I promise you it will be far less accommodating than this.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Iwould not stake money that the Vaughns will help us,” Dovey said when she heard Gwen’s plan.
Gwen sucked in her breath to close the last button of her jacket. Her chest hurt, her ribs fragile and bruised as if Barlow’s words that afternoon had dealt a physical blow. She winced as she pinned a neckerchief to the lapels of her collar and pricked her skin.
Once she’d been offered rooms of gowns. Hats, shoes, chemises, the finest silks from France, linens white as the snow on the head of Yr Wyddfa. Now she slept in a drafty stone room that had housed a medieval prioress, and her best gown was a redingote with a too-small bodice and a striped silk skirt long out of fashion.
“I would not take their money if I could help it,” Gwen said. The Vaughn fortune came from a plantation in Jamaica and part ownership of a slaving ship that sold kidnapped Africans into lives of misery in the Americas, then brought back the fruits of their forced labor in the form of cotton and sugar to British shores. “But I don’t know who else to ask.”
