But there was something she wasn’t telling him.
He watched her carefully, waiting for his moment as they arrived at Pencoed Castle, a majestic structure sitting incongruously at the end of a farm lane. Gwen pointed to the tall rectangular gatehouse as they approached from the west. “The same red sandstone used to build St. Sefin’s,” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely color?”
But instead of proceeding through the gate to the courtyard at the front of the house, Gwen directed him around a tall stand of trees toward a dower house and the outbuildings to the side, which included the carriage house. Inside she was warmly greeted by the housekeeper and shown the room she was given for the night, high in the third story among the servants’ quarters.
Pen was greeted with friendliness, too, but he felt odd entering the house from the back. Perhaps his former self used the front entrance to such homes. Pencoed was a fortified manor house on a grand scale, with the ruins of an old wall encasing the front courtyard and battlements along the roof. Inside, the walls of dressed stone and timber-framed ceilings lent a severe beauty to the large staterooms, while the leaded glass windows let in gracious light and the plentiful hangings and thickly upholstered furniture offered luxury. Gwen looked as at ease in the grand surroundings as she did in the kitchens of St. Sefin’s. While the guests gathered for their dinner and Gwen set up with her harp in the formal parlor among the other musicians, he thought with her beauty and quiet grace she belonged more among the gentry at the table than she did among the servants.
That was where Pen was, pressed by the butler to help serve at table and then carry refreshments among the guests as the diners mingled after, chatting and only half-listening to the music. An impressive livery was found and brushed for him, the thick cotton finer than anything he’d worn at St. Sefin’s. He wondered what Gwen would think when she saw him in the saffron breeches and stockings, the embroidered gold waistcoat and cuffs over a cutaway tailcoat of navy blue with large bronze buttons. He looked well in it—so he was informed by the glances of the maids and the female diners alike—but all he cared for was Gwen’s smile when she saw him moving about holding a platter of Champagne flutes, one gloved fist behind his back.
Something told him he had never done this in his life—served a crowd of people, donned borrowed livery in a rich man’s house. He vowed he’d never do it again, when one too many of the self-important gentleman ignored him as if he were furniture, simply a man-shaped sideboard holding his beverage, and one too many of the women managed to run a gloved hand along his arse or thigh. He clenched his teeth and looked unaffected. But he swore, deep down, that when he went back to his former life, he would never again treat someone in his employ like a furnishing. He would never demean a man for honest labor, even if it were shoveling shit. And he would never, under any circumstances, lay hands on a woman unless she had unambiguously specified he might do so.
“Aren’t you tired yet?” he asked Gwen when he found her in the servery as he went to refresh his platter of glasses. The evening was well-advanced, the revelry growing louder as the guests imbibed. They were a free-spirited group to begin with, most of them military men and their wives, friends of Sir Mark and his daughter’s bridegroom. Major James Blackwell had served in India and recently married Miss Maria, daughter to Sir Mark by a local woman who had been his Indian wife during his time with the Bengal engineers in Calcutta, and the union was new enough to still provide grounds for celebration.
Pen sensed that in certain English circles, high sticklers would look down on a match with a wife who was not British, not legitimate, and only half-white, but this group regarded the new Mrs. Blackwell with admiration for her beauty and her established situation, for it was said her father had settled three thousand pounds on her at her marriage. The musicians carried on, but Gwen had been instructed to fetch refreshments, for the others, a viol and a cello player, were men, and she was expected to serve them. Pen gauged by the shadows under her eyes and the red marks on her fingers that she was weary and her hands growing sore, but her sweet smile at him, her eyes heavy-lidded, brought the memory of their kiss in the bluebells leaping to life.
“It’s a pleasant group. Sir Mark intends to pay well, and I like the house.”
Pen set aside the platter he held and the one she’d taken up. The music continued, and he held out his arm in the form a country dance. He remembered how to dance, at least.
“You should be mistress of a house of your own, one as grand as this,” he said. “With a husband who adores you, as Mrs. Blackwell’s husband dotes on her.”
She paused a moment, watching him with wide, wary eyes that color of a forest’s heart. Some inner struggle took place, and he held his breath, hoping that he would win. That this pull between them, this cautious new trust—and, yes, the heavy current of desire—would draw her to him more than whatever cautions held her back.
Then she laughed and lifted her hand to his, and the tight fear in his chest broke and fell free. She moved with him, beginning the simple figure, turning one way while he turned the other, his bow to her curtsey. They turned again, hands touching, and her hip brushed his leg. The confines of the servery pressed them close, and her heat, her scent, her intoxicating touch wrapped around him as they went through the familiar steps.
“I, too, thought I would have those things once,” she said, and her voice held an odd, strained note. Her eyes moved over his face. “But I am certain you will. Have a grand house, that is, and an adoring wife.”
He hadn’t wanted a wife before. But he did now. He knew that with an utter, profound clarity. It stilled him mid-figure.
She paused, too, following his lead. He stared into her eyes, caught by how perfectly in tune she was with him. Against his will, against all wisdom, his head lowered. He oughtn’t kiss her here. It was too easy to be surprised. It was already enough that they should be dancing; a kiss would end whatever reputation she had, were they caught by someone who wouldn’t turn a blind eye. He feared the Pen of before had never been the kind to consider a woman’s reputation; he did so now. But he could no more resist trying to kiss her than he could keep the sun from rising in the east.
She was wiser. She stepped away, her eyes dark with desire—he was gratified to see it—but something else. Her expression looked as if she were torn in two.
“Gwen,” he said, his voice rasping from a dry throat. “Would you ever consider if—”
“I cannot,” she said. She caught up a tray of glasses as if she were an embattled knight and he the dragon on the attack. “I must—they’ll be looking for me.”
And she was gone, leaving the imprint of her on his hand, and his heart.
She knew what he’d meant to say. Something he had never offered any woman, never thought he would want to offer a woman. What he wanted to spread before her like the lavish courses set upon that glittering table, his heart laid out and ready for carving.
And she didn’t want him in return.
CHAPTERTWELVE
“What did you say it was called?” Pen asked as they rattled down another rutted farm lane, this one lined with brambles and blackthorn.
Gwen was tense this morning, her eyes heavy and shadowed from staying up late harping for Sir Mark’s guests, and then dancing again in the kitchen as the Pencoed servants cleaned up after the great folk and enjoyed the leftovers of their lavish supper. Pen had perhaps nipped too much of the leftover drink. The revelry had lasted far into the night, but all Pen really recalled was dancing with Gwen. Gwen’s face glowing with laughter as she looked up at him, Gwen’s blush when he put his hands on her waist to lift her or let a hand slide over her hip as they completed a figure. Gwen’s indrawn breath when he stole a kiss in the shadowed hallway before she squeezed his hand and went upstairs to bed.
That Gwen was gone. She was prim again in a traveling gown, her wild hair stuffed under her bonnet, her hands in leather gloves because she wanted to stop every few yards to gather weeds from the roadside. It would take them hours to get back to Newport as it was, and the fine day was turning on them. The sun that burned off the mist that morning as they left Pencoed Castle had given way to clouds rolling in from the east, a low grey ceiling threatening rain. He’d wanted to head straight back to town to stay ahead of the weather, but Gwen insisted on a detour to the north, another great house that she wanted him to see.
“It’s called Penrydd.”
Gwen was driving this stretch, and she had a steady hand on the reins. Pen didn’t mind being her passenger; it gave him a chance to study the countryside. “That’s the name of the house,” she said. “And the title given to the family.”
Her eyes flickered to him. She said the name as if it meant something to her.
He knew it meant something to him. He felt a pull deep in his mind. That name had some hold over him—what?
