Page 48 of The Ladies Least Likely
She panted for breath as he lifted his head. His eyes were dazed with passion, and she felt a burst of triumph along with the other hot sensations roiling around her insides. He’d been affected.She’daffected him.
“Your tea,” she said weakly.
She could tell he wanted to kiss her again. She wanted to kiss him. But she pushed his cup at him, then tended to Mathry’s tea and avoided meeting his gaze. She needed some air, a bit of distance to get a rein on her emotions. He was too much, suddenly.
“Let me know when you want that again,” Pen said, and she closed her eyes against the delicious heat that flared and danced. And the bolt of satisfaction, too. He wanted her.
She turned to bank the fire for the night so they would have warm coals in the morning. “I need you to keep another secret. Calvin Vaughn fathered Mathry’s child.”
He merely nodded. “I hope she’ll be all right,” he said softly.
She stared at him, soaking up every line of his strong-featured face, the gleam in his eyes, the shape of his lips still damp from their kiss. The shadow of stubble along his jaw, the strong column of his throat. That deep, steady ease within him.
When had that happened? The Penrydd she’d met in the Bristol tavern couldn’t sit still for a second. Even his hands had quavered. The Penrydd who’d floated to her shore injured and wiped of his memory had paced and snarled like a caged cat. This man stood quietly, as if he’d reached peace within himself. Knew his own strength, and knew how to use it wisely. The Penrydd of before might have taken Calvin Vaughn’s part in the matter of a cast-off mistress. This man cared that Mathry not be hurt.
She lifted her fingers and traced them over the prominent line of his cheek, where the bruise from his beatings had faded. “I knew there was a good man in there,” she whispered. Solid, and decent, andgood.
He caught her fingers and kissed them. “I had a thought up there, in the bracing cold, while I listened to you,” he said. “What if I have a Mathry out there?”
“What if you—?” She stumbled on the words, her lips growing thick.
“What if there is someone looking for me? Someone who’s in trouble because I am gone.” He held her hand cupped against his cheek, his stubble prickling her palm. “Or something I need to make right.”
She nodded, her throat closing. She needed to make things right with him.
She would talk to Dovey first. It wasn’t fair to do this without her consent, considering all they had at stake. But it was time for the charade to end.
She needed to tell Pen who he was.
And she would have to bear losing him once he knew what she’d done.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She was going to kill him.
Not on purpose, Pen knew. But not having Gwenllian ap Ewyas—not being able to hold her, touch her, win her for his own—was going to shred him into a million tiny fish-bite sized pieces. And she would doubtless laugh as she fed his chum to the salmon he’d seen fishermen hauling by the netful out of the River Usk.
He’d claimed the privilege of driving her to her harping appointment at Pencoed Castle. That was the first foolish thing.
What hadn’t been foolish was kissing her. But not kissing her again was going to drive him out of his mind.
He borrowed a horse and trap from the King’s Head, with Mr. Trett’s blessing, and she insisted on checking the harness before they set out. Yet another instance in which she refused to rely on anyone else, yet having heard her story, he could understand. She’d lost her mother, her remaining parent sent her to strangers, and then she’d been dishonestly wooed by the son of the house. Pen had no doubt the lad had pursued her with everything he had in him. A girl of her beauty, with the grace of a queen and that quick mind and sweet nature, under his roof and his for the taking? She hadn’t a chance.
And after trusting the boy’s blandishments and empty promises, she’d been turned out of that home, too.
Pen tried to imagine giving birth alone and unaided in the bleak of winter, with nothing but a dead babe to show for the effort. How had she not become hardened and cruel?
Yet at her lowest point, she’d found her way back to life by caring for others. Dovey. Evans. Everyone else who came to her, turned out of their rightful home. He could see how it weighed on her that she could lose the place and didn’t have the money to buy it from this lord, whoever he was. The lord represented by the black-clad solicitor who had looked at Pen holding a wheelbarrow of dung and called him filth, because of the work he did and the poor appearance of his clothing, when he knew nothing of Pen himself.
Of course, Pen knew nothing of himself, either, but the man’s insult had burrowed deep. It was unfair and it was untrue. He hoped, in his real life, he was a better judge of character and didn’t dismiss people by sight.
But some deep, lurking fear told him he hadn’t been any better. Some evil came roaring out of him at night, in his dreams—it had to be evil, to have such a terrifying grip on him. And he had a sense, a knowing that came with the bloody torments of his dreams, that he too had been in a position like Gwen’s, torn apart body and soul, hanging to life by a thread. And instead of rising and pulling himself together, building something that could shelter himself and others, he had chosen a path of self-destruction and selfish absorption, if not outright cruelty.
But he could change. Just as he could prove he wasn’t the scrum that the solicitor had called him, he could build himself back as a man of integrity and honor. Gwen had given him that chance, dredging him from the river and knitting him back together. He was doing his best to show her he was worthy of saving. He was even coming to appreciate those other brokensouls. He didn’t care for them as Gwen did—he wasn’tthatsoft-hearted, or soft-headed, either—but he knew better than to scorn them for their poor state. He knew what they’d survived.
Gwen had survived. And so had he.
“Hawthorn blossom for your thoughts,” Gwen said.
