Page 79 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Haia, Miss Gwen!” Ifor called from his perch atop a low wall, the foundations of a former building long scavenged for its stone. “Two fancy ladies here to see you. They’re the viscount’s people, they are.”
Pen groaned. “Of course they wouldn’t stay in Bristol, though I told them I would bring you to them. Ifor, I’m putting my horse and Ross’s in the pen. Will Gafr have it?”
Ifor’s face broke into a broad smile. “Croeso, Mr. Pen!”
“That means welcome,” Pen said to Ross as he swung Gwen down from the horse. She gripped his forearms in terror, and he smiled, pleased at this tiny sign that she needed him. His stubborn Gwen pretended to need no one, but she’d needed him today in the courtroom. He had to prove she required him in other ways, too.
“Still holding to your courage, I hope?” he murmured in her ear, catching her arm again as he dismounted and Ifor helped Ross pen the horses. He sensed Ross’s discomfort; his secretary didn’t know what to make of the unusual community of St. Sefin’s, or Pen’s interest in it. But Pen’s concern was for Gwenllian, whose face was white with terror.
“You’ll see how they will receive me,” she warned him. “It will be the same everywhere. No one will ever allow you to make a Welsh farm girl your viscountess.”
“I don’t need anyone’s approval,” Pen said. “I need you.”
He detected a softening at the corners of her mouth in response to his words, and debated whether to kiss her. Instinct won out over propriety and at the door to the chapter house, where the others had gathered, he bent and pressed his lips to the enchanting curve of her cheek. She pulled away but couldn’t repress the small smile that told him she was delighted by his declaration.
An instant clamor arose as Gwen stepped into the room, shouts, cries of welcome, exclamations of relief. His stepmother and sister-in-law rose from two upholstered chairs, holding themselves apart from the rest. Prunella looked intrigued, and Lydia furious.
Evans stepped forward and held out his hand to shake Pen’s. Lydia’s lip curled at this gesture of familiarity and Pen added a thump on Evans’s back for good measure.
“Miss Gwenllian didn’t end in the bridewell, I take it,” Evans said. “What did Sir Robert decide, then?”
“Not guilty,” Gwen said. “By reason that the Viscount Penrydd appeared and made Mr. Sutton and Mr. Vaughn think very carefully about the accusations they wanted to level against a peer.”
She hugged Dovey, who wiped a tear of relief from her cheek. Dovey, Pen guessed, had been in Gwen’s confidence this wholetime, while she had told him nothing, even though it was his property under discussion.
The thought should have made him furious. But it made him simply more determined to prove that he, too, was worthy of her trust.
“We’re free of them?” Dovey asked. “Truly?”
“Doubt they’ll be back,” Mother Morris cackled, rising and hobbling to Gwen to claim a hug of her own. “No use lifting your petticoat after you’ve peed.”
“Will we see the girl, though?” Widow Jones asked, giving Gwen a squeeze of welcome. “Anne?”
“I told her to come to us, though she’s used to better,” Gwen said. “She threw out her scarf for the viscount, and I can’t say I blame her. I imagine Calvin Vaughn won’t take her without a dowry, and she is better off free of him.”
Mathry moved in for an embrace, but Cerys dived in first, clinging to Gwen’s waist. Mathry threw her arms around them both. Tomos, holding to Gwen’s apron with one fist, beamed at them all.
“Well, she can’t have me. Lydia, Prunella,” Pen greeted the two women. Prunella was a lush woman with large, sweeping curves, just the shape Edwin preferred, and she had a habitual sleepy, languid air from which it was difficult to rouse her. Pen was frankly surprised she had bestirred herself to travel from the comfortable London townhouse, and in the company of Lydia, whom she did not particularly like.
“What brings you here, Lydia? At least you have finally relieved yourself of Miss Carruthers,” Pen said. “I found her very tedious.”
“Mr. Turbeville took her with his sisters on an excursion to his family’s cottage in Weston-super-Mare,” Lydia said in a tight voice. “Penrydd, we must speak with you at once. Ross advisedme of your ridiculous intentions, and I have come to make you see sense.”
“Very well.” Pen seated himself in the bishop’s chair, of which he’d grown fond. He urged Gwen to perch on the carved lion’s paw arm, hooking his elbow around her hips. She blushed at the blatant signal of possession, but didn’t argue, for once.
Lydia narrowed her eyes. In opposition to Prunella’s generous lines, she was a thin, shrewish woman as tense as a coiled spring. She’d brought an admirable dowry and an impeccable bloodline to her marriage, and she had suffered her stepson’s rowdiness during his breaks from school or visits home. Now, with no children of her own and that family of impeccable bloodline having no inclination to take her in, she depended on the income she drew from the estate that Pen controlled, and her every interaction with him bristled with her resentment for living at the mercy of the boy she had always despised.
“You might as well have it out here, Lydia,” Pen said. “I daresay Gwen has already gone over all your objections.” He enjoyed the way everyone was listening avidly to the exchange, including Ifor, who had come in from outside.
“Very well.” Lydia gathered her dignity. She wore an open robe of striped grey silk with white flowers embroidered at the hem and a lace fichu tucked into the bodice. The ensemble was plain for Lydia, but he saw Gwen eying the finery. Dovey in turn was studying Prunella’s robe of white muslin spotted with tiny red flowers, cinched with a pink sash at her waist and ruffles of lace about her neck.
“You must think of your family, Rhydian. You cannot sink us this low. To marry a Welsh woman?—”
“You forget your husband’s family was Welsh, and had been for centuries,” Pen said.
Lydia was the daughter of a lesser son born to one of the oldest English earldoms, so she could and did boast of her high connections. Prunella too was a gentleman’s daughter and could be sure of her reception anywhere. They were not of the fast, dashing set that would laugh at conventions and thumb their nose at the strictures of the moral middle class.
No, they were of the sort that guarded carefully the borders of class and rank, and they would do their best to ensure that someone like Gwen was kept out. They would be the first to criticize her conduct and her birth, to ridicule her Welsh ways and forthright manner of speaking. They would somehow make it shameful that she had run a refuge for the destitute and castaway, and if they ever found out she had borne a child out of wedlock—he had a sense, as most men did, of the cruel, strict way women held other women in line. Bringing Gwen into this world would be like throwing a virgin martyr into the Coliseum to be devoured by lions.
