Page 35 of The Ladies Least Likely
Of course he wouldn’t. In his proper life he was a viscount. Men bowed and scraped and licked his boots, seeking his patronage, influence, favors. Women vied for his attention, hoping to become his viscountess.
Her lungs squeezed again, caught in that odd grip. Did he have someone in sight already? The mysterious Arwen?
Gwen pondered the incredible exchange, and hopeless ways to raise fifteen hundred pounds, while she crumbled chopped rosemary atop the molds filled with simmering soap. They’d dry in an aromatic top layer and, when used, soothe the skin. At least there was one task she could manage, right now, while everything else was tumbling about in her head.
“Brought you something.”
She startled as Pen appeared at her elbow. He had changed into a suit of Evan’s old clothes. His hair was damp, curling over his forehead, and he smelled like her soap. He held out a canvas sack.
“Evans and I mucked out Trett’s stables, then went to the butcher’s and moved some offal about for him. His wife sent this. She says a proper Welsh soup must have salted bacon. And swedes.”
Gwen unwrapped the paper to find a thick packet of bacon. Her mouth watered. “This is…” Astonishment bound her tongue.
“You’re welcome.” He looked smug, so pleased with himself for bringing something to the table. She had expected nothing but complaints over the task he’d been assigned.
“Trett says Gossett hasn’t been back in since he trounced me. But Mrs. Gossett’s been seen at the miller’s, with two perfectly sound eyes.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and grinned at her.
Gwen hauled out the frying pan with unsteady hands. He had mucked the innyard’s stables, performed a service for the butcher, and brought home food. And he had known she would want to hear that Mrs. Gossett was enjoying a reprieve from her husband’s fists.
He hadn’t recognized Barlow the solicitor. And Barlow hadn’t recognized him.
“That’s good news, it is.” She sliced the bacon while Widow Jones stepped into the cellar.
“Swedes!” Pen called after her, rolling his left shoulder. “I’ve a hankering to try them.”
“I think we have some left from last autumn.” Gwen kept her eyes on her knife.
She wondered if the day’s work had been a strain on his injuries. She’d make him a rub for his sore muscles before bed, though she doubted the wisdom of offering to apply it herself. He was so large, so clean-smelling. So confident. She’d seen a sweet, calm side of him when she awoke on the side of his cot and listened to birdsong while the morning sun fell through the window. The moment bound her like a golden net, catching her every time she turned, tapping at some deep, soft space in her heart that had long been buried.
“Have they found who murdered the Jewish man from Merthyr Tydfil?” Dovey asked.
“No news, but Trett says there’ve been reports of ark ruffians and knights of the blade lurking about the wharves and the common houses, robbing and threatening and bullying people. Some gang from Cardiff or Bristol, not sure where. I’ve not found yet how I got caught up in it, but to be sure there’s some cloven foot in the business.”
“Cloven foot?” Gwen asked. If he was asking around town about who attacked him, he would eventually find out who he was. Her knife wobbled and veered over the meat on her cutting board.
“The devil’s in it,” Pen said. “Hey now, don’t be stingy! I earned that bacon, and I’ll have nice thick rashers, if you please.”
He reached for her knife, sliding his hand over hers, and the contact rattled her to her core. She leaned back, bumped into his shoulder, and leapt away.
“I wonder what they want. These ruffians,” Gwen gasped. There were new elements coming in droves into sleepy Newport, immigrants seeking work in the coal fields and mines, but mostfound honest if brutally demanding employment. “There are always some who will try thievery, but in the past the men have settled it.”
“Could be the crimps again.” Evans entered, he too having cleaned up from his day. “They’re the ones as kidnap men for the East India ships and the African slavers.”
“Twpsyn!” Dovey cried, shaking a wooden spoon at him. “You’re tracking your muddy boots all about my clean kitchen, you are! Cerys has more sense than you do!” She made shooing motions and Evans ducked into the storeroom, where Widow Jones scolded him for stepping on the swedes.
“Better him than me,” Pen whispered in her ear, and Gwen smothered a laugh.
This light-heartedness was absurd in her, not at all suitable. Her emotions were such a tangled skein—the panic with Barlow, her confusion when the solicitor didn’t recognize his employer, the entwined hope and despair that Pen had offered her St. Sefin’s, and his being with them now, at ease with the crowd in the kitchen, though he owned this place and held sway over all of them. She couldn’t find her feet. She retreated to the stove, and he followed her.
“Do I stink?” he asked, leaning close.
She shivered. He smelledgood. She wanted to press her nose into his neck. Heat crept down her back and she focused on arranging the rashers of bacon on the griddle.
“That’s an outrage, woman!” She sucked in air when he wrapped his hand about hers, taking possession of her wooden spatula. “You can’t cook the bacon that hot, you’ll burn it. You want to build the heat, slow and easy, and then bring her to a nice, hot sizzle. Just like handling a—” He cast her a sidewise look. “Never mind.”
Gwen bit back an infatuated smile. She didn’t want him to see she’d grasped the innuendo, that his flirtatiousness madeher bloom like a daffodil. “And when did you become an expert in preparing pork, mm—Mr. Pen?”
“I can’t say. Perhaps while I was soldiering? It’s a skill women admire, isn’t it?” Aware she was watching, he slid the spatula along the pink curves of the bacon as if he were caressing the body of a lover.
