Page 14 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“Who are they for?” Prunella studied the long stone building, the plain front sliced with tall narrow windows, the sequence of gabled dormers lined up in a uniform wave. These, too, called up a medieval era, a life sterner than she’d ever known.

“Poor women that the old Lady Hungerford wanted to help,” said the bear. “There’s a trust oversees it now. People still live there, and that, on the side, that’s the charity school.”

Prunella rubbed her arms against a prickle of unease. These almshouses weren’t a pleasant stone cottage set in a flowering garden. They were lodgings better than a workhouse or a doorway in an alley, but they were the kind of place for the destitute to go if they didn’t have a St. Sefin’s to shelter in.

Prunella might very well end up in such a place, without family and bereft of funds. If Penrydd didn’t provide for her. If the Black Hound found her and demanded she pay Edwin’s debt.

If this man beside her hadn’t offered, absurdly, to protect her. Again.

“I don’t know your name.” She turned back to her captor. “I should, if you’re…”

“Rescuing ye,” the little man supplied.

She frowned at him. “You are Morys?”

“Morys Morgan, at your service.” He doffed his short brim hat, a battered brown wool that looked as if the horse had walked over it. He pointed to the bear. “And thas Pedr.”

“Pete,” rumbled the bear man.

Morys scoffed. “Saes.”

“As I am now, more’s the pity.”

Prunella curled her gloved hands into fists. “I am Prunella Price, the dowager—never mind.”

The bear, Pete, glanced at her. “Lady Penrydd.”

“There are too many of us with that name. I should like to be called Nell.”

He flicked that glance over her again, taking in her cap and her wide eyes, letting his gaze rest on her mouth. “Lady Penrydd,” he growled.

Oh, this was alarming. She ought to be frightened near out of her wits, held captive by two men who were near strangers. She ought to be indignant, at the very least, to have her plans interrupted. She ought to be scheming about ways to make her escape.

Instead, she kept having the most shocking response to his long, intent looks.

It was only that it had been so long since a man had looked at her. And clearly liked what he saw, much as he tried to hide it.

She would remember who she was and not lose her head. Prunella straightened her shoulders. “How much longer until we reach the place where I am to be detained? I have been on the road all the day.”

This walled garden was going on for a good length, and the scenery she glimpsed behind it was sheer delight. Undulating land sprouted copses of trees and leafy crowns of foliage turning orange, shading walks and lanes. A glimpse of a pond gleamed in the distance.

“Not much longer. We pass Corsham Park and Westrop, then we be in Easton.”

“And this baronet who has for some reason agreed to house me. What will his wife say at my arrival?”

“He’s not married,” the bear, Pete, rumbled. “Only the grandmother to contend with. Lady Wilkins.”

“I’ll be alone in the house with him?”

Pete raised a thick eyebrow. “Did ye not hear the bit about the grandmother?”

“This had best not be a trap,” Prunella grumbled. “Tell him I’ve no money, won’t you? Not three thousand pounds. Not a pony. There’s no dowry to try to marry me for, and…”

A new thought occurred to her. Perhaps it ought to have surfaced before, but Prunella was not, in the ordinary way of things, prone to keep company with scoundrels and thieves.

They said they meant to hide her from the Black Hound, but what if they were taking her for him? And only telling her lies so she didn’t scream and break her neck trying to throw herself out of this perilously small whiskey?

She only half-listened as they passed another lane and Pete pointed up it, remarking that the Guys lived in the Old House and might have some daughters she would find entertaining. As if she would be staying in the neighborhood for a length of time.