Page 89 of The Ladies Least Likely
For a moment, from some deep and primitive part of herself, Gwen thrilled to his physical strength, his domination. The Hound gasped and staggered to his feet.
“Christ,” he croaked, “have mercy.”
“Mercy? The same mercy you showed me?” Some transfiguring rage had overtaken Pen. He began a flurry of punishing blows, shouting incoherently. “This is for the Jew. This is for Arwen. This is for Bowen—for Nelson’s arm—for every man at Tenerife who—should—be—here?—”
The Hound’s face had nearly disappeared under blood. Pen’s fist shot out again, fingers clenched around the man’s throat. “Do you know what youdidto me?”
The Hound’s fingers weakly scrabbled at his arm. He couldn’t answer with his airway choked off. Gwen fought down her fear that she was about the lose the man she loved and ran forward over the pitching floor.
She laid a hand on Pen’s iron forearm. “Pen. Don’t kill him. We have to get out of here.”
“He doesn’t deserve to live.” This wasn’t a Pen she knew. This was a feral animal.
“Then let the courts hang him. Pen! Please!”
Her cry was lost in another explosion as the rest of the room disappeared. Pen lurched against her, dropping the Hound and shielding her with his body as the ship came apart around them. A beam crashed across the stairwell, narrowing their only avenue of escape. The rest of the room was a wall of fire.
With one hand, Pen grabbed the collar of his enemy, and with the other he shielded Gwen as they fought their way up the stairs. On the main deck one of the masts broke and fell, its huge cross beams swinging through the air. They half-stumbled, half-crawled over the disintegrating deck toward the yawl where Evans and Ross gestured wildly. Pen launched the Hound’s inert body over the side, then spread himself against Gwen as another explosion erupted.
His body lurched against hers as he took the hit. Grasping her arms about him, Gwen threw herself against the rail as the deck tipped, tumbling both of them into the boat. Evans and Ross heaved wildly at the ropes, letting them down as fast as possible, while the crossbeam of the mast followed them, plowing through splintering wood. One last explosion filled the air with smoke and ash, and Gwen’s entire body jolted as the boat hit the ground. She waved her hands before her face, choking, then reached for Pen. Evans and Ross helped her haul him onto the sand. Rockets of light from the exploding ship fell about them like streamers at a market fair.
“Argh!” Pen groaned as Gwen examined his shredded back. “Not as bad as canister shot. And the right side this time. Balances things out.”
“You.” Gwen swallowed a sob. “Didn’t I tell you the third time I found you like this, I’d roll you under a hedge and leave you there?” She searched his body for other wounds, wiping away blood and what appeared to be scorched manure.
Pen staggered to his feet and let Evans help him toward the cart, laden with the rescued. “You can’t. I have your selkie skin. I found it and kept it, and now you are bound to me.” He turned his head, his face changing expression. The feral animal was gone, and he was her Pen again, only chagrined. “But then I gave St. sodding Sefin’s to Dovey, and now you’ve no reason to stay with me.”
“My love, I’ll never leave you. I’ll go anywhere you wish.”
“Is that Penrydd?” Sutton leaned forward from among the women seated in the back of the pony cart.
“You!” Pen limped to the side of the cart. Before Sutton could recoil, Pen grabbed his cravat in a bloodied hand. “You worthless son of a bitch. If you ever raise a hand against my wife—if you everthinkabout my wife?—”
“I won’t! I won’t,” Daron bleated, batting at Pen’s fist, his eyes huge.
Pen breathed through his teeth. “If you say one word about my wife, to anyone?—”
“She’s dead to me. Dead!”
“She never existed for you at all,” Pen snarled. He let go, and Sutton sat back, gasping for air.
“But the Hound?” Anne asked uncertainly.
A low roaring sound rose from the river, and as one they turned to see the dark, high wave, like the fin of some great water monster, rolling up the Usk. It broke apart the last hulk of the brig, which fell into separate pieces that quietly burned themselves out in the water. The wave lifted the yawl bearing the Hound’s unconscious body and carried it northward, toward Newport, toward Caerleon, toward places beyond, faster than a man could run.
“Well,” Evans said into a silence edged with the sound of burning wood and the smell of sulfur and ash. “A new moontonight, isn’t it? So that’d be the Severn bore, with the high tide behind it.”
“Where’s he going?” Ross asked in a hushed tone.
“I don’t care.” Pen turned to haul himself into the plank seat of the cart. “Let’s to the King’s Head and see what Trett’s done with the men we sent him. I’m for Gwen’s nursing and a good stiff drink, so long as it isn’t rum.”
Gossett met them at the King’s Head with roughed-up knuckles and the report that, intoxicated on the darnel beer, the Hound’s men had been easily rounded up by the constable—with some coaxing by Gossett.
“The villains are mewed in the lock-up, which is the noise you hear yonder,” Trett added, looking pleased with the part he had played in bringing peace back to Newport. “Sir Robert’s clerk will have a busy morning, writing out all the charges.”
Pen grunted with satisfaction. “I am therefore allowed to say I told you so,” he said to Ross.
They left the Suttons to shift for themselves at the King’s Head, and Gwen took her people back to St. Sefin’s. Lydia consented as, she said, her luggage was there, and Prunella for her part did not want to be parted from Gwen. The dowager viscountess caught Gwen as she came to the kitchen for another basin of hot water and herbs for Pen.
