Page 32 of The Ladies Least Likely
“I don’t care where we go. And as for what we’ll do…” He leaned toward her, leaving but an inch between their faces. She needed to close that last distance; he wanted her surrender. Wanted her to admit what flared between them. That beneath her impatience and dismissiveness with him was a deeper yearning. He felt it, too.
A pointed pressure against his left side brought him out of the swirl of fantasy. He stepped back and she lowered the stirring stick.
“You’re shoveling muck today. That’s what you’re doing,” she said.
“All day,” he said. “You won’t want an interlude, or—” He rubbed the lock of hair wrapped around his finger. “Even a brief few stolen minutes with me?”
“I will be making the soap,” she said, deliberately turning away.
But her hands were unsteady as she stirred the kettle on the stove. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing he’d unsettled her. But she was no pure maiden to blush and titter when a man showed he desired her. He’d eat his hat if she wasn’t an experienced woman who knew exactly what he was proposing.
But she didn’t desire him. Or she did, but refused to act on it. Worse yet.
“You needn’t deny yourself, or me,” he said peevishly. “And I don’t see why you would want to stay in this ramshackle place. Whatever I can offer you would be better.”
She whirled back to face him, stick raised, her eyes narrowed. “We help people here,” she hissed at him. If she were a Medusa, he’d be stone already. “We helped you, only you’re too thick-headed to admit it. I belong here. This is my home. And even if it weren’t, don’t think I would leave it for the kind of man who—” She cut off the next words.
“What?” he challenged her, stepping towards her again, a different heat shooting through his veins. What had she meant to say? “What kind of man am I?”
She turned her back and plunged her stick into the liquid on the kettle, stirring madly. “The kind who leaves,” she said shortly. “If you’re going, begone with you. If you come back, bring a barrow full of manure, if Mr. Trett will spare some. Dovey can use fertilizer on the garden.”
Impossible, interfering,irritatingwoman. She was lying to herself and denying him. A dalliance would be the one good thing to come of his cursed time here. Pen looked for his hat, a battered old wool cap he’d borrowed from Evans, and set out.
The girl Mathry met him as he crossed the yard to fetch Evans and the wheelbarrow. She wore a shawl about her waist in what seemed the manner of these Welsh women, who used it for apron, basket, and cleaning cloth. He guessed in a few months’ time, Mathry would be using hers as a sling for a babe. She had that ripe look of a woman increasing, a glow to her skin, her uncovered bosom swelling in generous curves. He took a moment to appreciate the view, but it didn’t improve his mood.
“Mr. Pen.” She paused before him with a coy look, setting one hand on a curving hip. “Where you to?”
“Shoveling muck with Evans, it seems. A Herculean task to be sure.”
The reference was lost on her. She wouldn’t know who Hercules was, much less his seven labors. He bet Gwen would recognize the allusion. And then scoff at his comparing himself to Hercules. She still saw him as inept. Inadequate. One more thing she had to take care of.
Mathry made a sympathetic click with her tongue. “Poor darling,” she cooed. “You haven’t had much to make your stay here agreeable, you haven’t.” Her sweat smelled spicy. Did they not bathe at St. Sodding’s? But Gwen always smelled like a summer afternoon, and occasionally whatever she’d been cooking.
Mathry drew closer. Her hand, cradling a shawl full of plant cuttings, nearly brushed his groin. Did the lass know what she was about? He suspected she did.
She pitched her voice low. “If I can help you in any fashion, Mr. Pen, I will.” She slid her tongue over her lips.
He watched, fascinated. Had he fallen for such lures in his past life? There was something vulgar about her obvious offer, though he had to credit her good sense. He was a cut above the other men in her orbit. He was merely surprised she’d waited this long to make her play.
“The only thing that would help me right now,” he said with complete honesty, “is finding out who I am and going back to my life.”
She leaned in, which gave him a near-entire view of her breasts, lifted as they were by her tight stays. “Take me with you.”
“You and your babe?” His lip curled. “A merry little band of three?”
She faltered, withdrawing, the sultry look turning to concern. “How did you?—”
“I don’t dally with mothers,” he said shortly. “Sink your hooks into a man who’s a better bet than I am.” And he stalked across the shorn yard to take out the rest of his irritation on Evans, who was man enough to handle it.
Maybe he’d just walk on from Newport and never come back. Leave Evans and all the rest of them to the manure and the poisons and the chamber pots and the bloody belligerent goats. He owed Gwenllian ap Ewyas nothing; she had no hold over him.
Or if she did, he wouldn’t heed it. He would cut rope the instant opportunity presented itself.
Proving her right after all: that he was a man who ran.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“He’s back.” Dovey came in from the garden, setting a basket of rosemary leaves on the kitchen table.
