Page 6 of The Ladies Least Likely
Gwen did know, because Lady Vaughn’s elder son, Hewitt, was her ladyship’s favorite theme of conversation. “When is he coming?”
“Hewitt?” Calvin’s brow wrinkled. “Whenever they squash Old Boney, I suppose.”
“Lord Penrydd. The viscount.” Gwen applied the tuning key to the bray pins, listening for the tone she wanted, trying to calm her thundering pulse.
Calvin shrugged. “No nailing Penrydd down! He’s been a cat on a hot bakestone ever since Tenerife.”
Gwen knew only the vaguest outlines of the debacle that had been the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. She steadied herself with the strings beneath her fingers. Barlow had ordered themto vacate, and the viscount was following to turn St. Sefin’s to his own purposes. The room was too small, the ornate cornices of the recessed ceiling descending upon her, the gilded trim on the enormous mirrors closing in. Her head swam. The pattern on the silk draperies clashed with the equally garish tracery of the rugs. The crystal chandelier hung so low that the older dowagers with their towering wigs of a bygone decade had to avoid it for fear of fire. Everything in this room was a trap.
Penrydd was coming. She drew in a long breath. “Perhaps you could arrange for me to meet him.”
“Suppose you couldentertainus while he’s here,” Calvin said with a leer.
Gwen’s hopes swayed like a flat-bottomed dory caught in a tidal surge in the Severn. She had to stay on Calvin Vaughn’s good side if she wanted his support. Which meant she, the harper, must suffer innuendos he’d never make to the other unmarried ladies dropping curtsies to his mother. She stroked the lace at her throat, hiding the flush over her chest, reminding herself of that long-lost babe, its lost mother. The promise she’d made to herself.
“I’d welcome the commission to harp for you, Mr. Vaughn.” Gwen tossed her head. “If Lord Penrydd enjoys the sound of thetelyn.”
Calvin’s smile bared his teeth, crooked and stained. “Want to make sure he enjoys it? Wear something more fetching. A frock that shows a bit more, you know,here.” He circled a hand over the top of his chest.
Gwen gritted her teeth and pulled the harp firmly against her shoulder, hiding her bosom. She needn’t be reminded there were only two reasons a man like Calvin Vaughn, or the Viscount Penrydd, would look twice at a nameless Welsh lass.
But he was coming to Newport. She’d have Mr. Stanley write him and arrange a meeting so she might lay her case beforehim. Beard the lion in his den, so to speak. She couldn’t wait to tell Dovey. Penrydd might have a disconcerting reputation, and she couldn’t admire anyone whom Calvin Vaughn considered a crony. But surely a war hero and a lord of the realm would not be so hard-hearted as to turn her away.
“No.”
A man’s harsh voice drifted from the housekeeper’s parlor as Gwen approached. Her fingers ached from harping for hours and her throat was parched. She hoped Mrs. Harries might make her a posset while she counted out Gwen’s fee.
“It wasn’t me that had at her,” the man said viciously. “She wants coin for her trouble, I s’pose?”
A young woman’s voice rose in a cry, the words muffled. Gwen paused in the servant’s hallway, candles flickering in their sconces in the wall. She knew that sound. It landed like an arrow in her chest.
“She wants you to take up your part in the matter.” Mrs. Harries sounded calm despite the ragged weeping. “She swears thebabanis yours, sir.”
“Not if I say it isn’t! And she won’t get a Druid penny from me.”
The door to the small parlor slammed open and Calvin Vaughn appeared, smoothing the front of his detestable orange waistcoat. Gwen froze as his eyes lit upon her.
“Lurking about in hallways, Miss Ewyas? Not well done of you. Trust you won’t spread any lies you hear told about me, eh?”
The pale, weak blue eyes pinned her. Gwen swallowed the words of accusation that surged to her lips.
“I don’t spread lies, sir. But as to the truth…” In the heat forcing open her chest, of rage and old, old shame, she saw her own hope cracking and falling away.
Many a young maid had been turned off from Greenfield, sacked, it was said, for trying to ensnare the second son of the house. And now that she’d caught Calvin Vaughn out in his villainy, there would be no help from him with the Viscount Penrydd.
“Mrs. Harries, the harper is here for her fee.” Vaughn threw the words over his shoulder, into the room where the weeping ensued, then turned to eyeball Gwen once more. “A fortnight,” he snapped. “Penrydd is due in Bristol then, and you can throw yourself at him all you like.” His eyelids thinned. “Now see that you don’t misunderstand things.”
The cad. Buying her silence with the information she desperately wanted. Gwen went to the door of the parlor.
A young woman knelt on the carpet. Her pale, work-roughened hands concealed the face under a white linen mob cap, her slight frame quaking in a plain grey muslin dress.
“You poor dear.” Gwen laid a hand on one trembling shoulder. “Poor, sweetgeneth,sweet girl.”
Mrs. Harries sighed. “Mathry, I have done what I could. But you know what Lady Vaughn will require.”
The girl drew a quivering sob. “I’ve nowhere to go. Me mam won’t take me, and there’s no work in me village for one with a bellyful.Ach!I’m not such atwmffatI thought that he’d wed me, but todeny—” She fractured into sobs.
Gwen couldn’t take in one more soul, not when they balanced on the edge of eviction. But she could not simply leave this girl.
