Page 62 of The Ladies Least Likely
She had the fleeting and unworthy wish that she’d worn a gown more fitting for such a dramatic moment. She’d dreamed of this reunion, in those first early dark and hopeless nights. She’d dreamed Anne Sutton would seek her out, weeping and penitent about her parents’ cruelty. A hundred times she’d imagined Daron Sutton crawling back, begging for forgiveness, a return of her love. And here she stood in her worn flannel gown, her much-used woolen shawl, her hair straggling free of its ribbon like Medusa’s snakes.
“Can’t see why you refuse me. Me!” Daron looked truly surprised.
“You cannot?” Her voice strangled in her throat. “Past circumstances aside, I have nothing to offer you. I have nodowry. No property. No family, not any longer. What possible interest could you have in me?”
Anne stirred. “Gwen, dear, your father?—”
“Not now, pet,” Sutton said. He advanced toward Gwen with a fulsome smile. She held the teapot before her as a shield.
“Rushed my fences, I see!” he exclaimed. “Too much, too soon. Of course, you’re overwhelmed. Take a day or two to consider, Gwen, but I know what your answer must be. You gave your heart and your troth to me long ago, and I have come to claim them.” He placed a pale, fleshy hand on his embroidered waistcoat beneath the elaborate cravat.
Gwen glanced at Dovey. Her friend clutched Cerys’s hands, her face brave and resolute. At Gwen’s look she briefly nodded, as if giving her permission to depart.
The longings Gwen thought dead and buried stirred in the ash of her old sorrows. This was the fantasy that had sustained her through many lonely years. Daron before her. Asking her to be his wife. Offering her a home.
Vine Court was a beautiful place, and she could be its mistress. She liked Llanfyllin, a market town nestled on a river near the foot of the mountains. People would know her yet, though it had been eight years since she left. There were other great houses nearby that could offer her society, and she would be considered a gentlewoman. She would be safe. Supported.
She would not have children to raise, not with the damage the previous birth had done to her womb. And Daron would be her husband, the boy who had pleasured himself with her body in tall grasses and dark halls, moaning desperate vows that came to nothing when his family intervened. He would be a husband who followed his whims wherever they led and he would expect to be obeyed.
She would have his name, but, she suspected, not much else. And for that, for Vine Court, she would give up the homeshe’d built here with Dovey and the others. She would give up her freedom to carry her basket around town upon her own business. He might ask her to give up harping.
And she would have to give up Pen.
Pen wasn’t hers anyway. She stifled a bolt of pain at the thought. She was stealing him and would have to give him back eventually. But in his embrace she had healed at last of the wound dealt her soul when she was cast out of her former life. With Pen she was desired, adored. Cherished. He was her match in passion, in intellect, in determination. And in him she had found a man of wit and humor, a man who had himself struggled to heal, and who had learned self-awareness as well as compassion for others. He had changed.
Daron Sutton was simply an older version of the boy he’d been, petulant, self-interested, glib of tongue and shallow of nature. Daron Sutton and Vine Court were not what she wanted, not any longer.
Penrydd was the man she wished she could have. Pen and St. Sefin’s and her life with her people here, even though she knew one or all would be taken away from her. She couldn’t have Pen any more than she could have had Daron, all those years ago.
A sudden grief surged through her breast, climbing her throat in a choking wave. She had to escape before any of them saw her tears.
“I’m afraid I must decline the great honor of your hand, Mr. Sutton,” she said, clinging to the last shred of her self-control. “I?—”
She rushed from the room.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She thought Dovey might pursue her, or Daron, to press his incredible suit. But it was Anne who found Gwen in the brewhouse, poking the vat of mash with her stick.
“After all this time.” Gwen stabbed at the thick, lumpy liquid and wiped tears from her cheeks. “For him to find me—to tell me—to think that I—” She stared at Anne, groping for words. “Why?”
Anne withdrew a delicate handkerchief and rubbed the lid of an upturned cask before she sat upon it, arranging her muslin skirts about her legs. Then she sighed.
“We haven’t any money.”
Gwen pushed a dank lock of hair away from her face. “Your parents have wealth enough and more.”
Anne stared into the distance. Outside the small enclosure, grey clouds inched up from the Severn, slowly overtaking the watery spring sun.
“It’s gone. My father made poor investments, then borrowed to recoup his losses. Then he was voted out as magistrate, so he couldn’t collect fees from that anymore. About a year ago he put every last farthing into a shipping venture to the West Indies.” Anne swallowed, her slender throat tensing. “The shipwas seized by buccaneers and the cargo was lost. He had a tiny insurance settlement that we’ve been living on. But if we don’t marry well, Daron and I, we’ll be paupers.”
She stared at Gwen, her eyes a shimmering blue. Gwen rubbed her brow with a knuckle, the reek of yeast puckering her nose.
“Surely the Vaughns will help you once you marry.” She could understand, if not appreciate, Anne’s dilemma. Gently reared, she had always had money, and now that the money was gone, she must cast about for someone to replenish her funds and take charge of her. It would not occur to people like the Suttons to make do with less, or to earn their own keep.
Anne bit her lip. “Mr. Vaughn won’t have me unless my parents can furnish the dowry he was promised. And Sir Lambert has said he won’t support my parents. They’ll never agree to support you and Daron, too.”
Gwen stirred the heavy liquid, poking at the bubbles. “What happened to the girl Daron told me he would marry?” The baronet’s daughter he’d left her for. The reason he would acknowledge neither her nor her babe.
