Page 17 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“Then you’re Welsh, too.” She proceeded from the drawing room into the sitting room beyond, the more informal parlor used by the family, which now consisted of his grandmother and Pete. This was a lighter green, trimmed with gold. Prunella nodded with approval.

“Cymry to the bone,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true, because his father had been born an Englishman. But Wales was his mother’s country and Pete’s country too. England was a foreign land, for all that the Brits had done their damnedest to English the Welsh for the last hundred years and more. His mother’s family had helped raise and feed him, a thicky hearty cawl in the winter months, laverbread for breakfasts, and to stave the hunger between meals a handful of cockles straight from the shell with a dash of vinegar atop.

Would Prunella like the fare his table provided? He’d only a plain cook, who knew nothing about the fancy French delicacies that adorned the tables of the great. St. Asaph’s eyeballs, he’d thought none of this through. He’d let Morys talk him into a caper when he knew damned well Morys was the cunning one and Pete was the muscle, and now they’d all be hanged for kidnapping a viscountess. There would be no pardon this time.

He simply had to ensure she liked it here. Stayed of her own volition, even.

How to do that? St. Brychan’s biscuits, it was hot in this room. He was sweating. Pete tugged at his neckcloth and glanced toward the tall windows leading outside. “Would you care to see the gardens?”

“Will I be accosted there, too?”

“Will ye—no. Yer safe here, Lady.”

She tilted her head at him. “Prunella.”

He couldn’t call a viscountess by her given name. Good Lord, that was a hanging offense in itself. “Nell,” he stammered, voice strangling, when it was clear she wouldn’t move until he acknowledged her.

Her face softened. Her coral lips parted, and the sweetest blush of color touched her cheeks. “Oh,” she said.

“Or would ye rather see yer bedchamber?”

That was the wrong thing to say. He was thinking about her comfort, that’s what, and not how it would sound, that he might be trying to lure her toward a bed.

Though, God above, he wanted to. The memory of Prunella in his arms filled his brain again, only now he had the recent press of her body still imprinted on him, her breasts pressing against his shoulder, her rounded rump beneath his hand—

“It had better be the gardens,” she said with the most adorable scowl. Her face, curved and rosy, wasn’t made to scowl, and he wanted to kiss away the tiny lines between her brows.

Though he, of course, was the one who had put them there. “This way.”

His grandfather had made an effort to lay out a parterre behind the house, beside the walled kitchen garden. Barbara was but an indifferent gardener, so several of the plant beds had given way to wildflowers and egregious mingling, producing a profusion of colors. Pete liked the wildness, and while he was making an effort to acquaint himself with the names of the plants, he’d had other priorities to occupy him over the summer as he sorted out the requirements of his new station.

The garden needed work; flowers were overgrowing their beds, the gravel needed to be raked and weeded, and it was possible the plumbing of the small central fountain could be repaired so the thing would spout water. He saw the ruin through Prunella’s eyes and wanted to kick himself for showing her the shabbiest aspects of his home. She wouldn’t want to stay in a place that—

“Oh,” she said again, her voice dreamy. “Oh, my. A real English garden.”

“It needs tending,” Pete admitted.

Was it possible she didn’t require perfection? But she was so perfect herself.

She drifted past a clutch of helleborine and plucked a purple-tinged flower, tucking it into one of the fastenings on her bosom. Pete tried not to gape like a lout at the delectable shape of her breasts. Prunella Price was no mere handful; she was an armload, or more.

Just the right size for his arms.

“Do you know their names? I don’t recognize a one.”

She wasn’t frightened, or wary, or suspicious any longer; the garden had charmed her as it charmed him, with the honeysuckle and white bryony creeping over the garden wall. Spindle and elder crowded the edges of the parterre, creating a space set apart, rich with autumn berries and birds at the feast.

At one corner a black poplar had taken root, and no one had seen fit to move it. Instead, a past gardener had placed a bench there, creating a gentle bower with green-tipped lords-and-ladies clustered in the shade. A rich blend of scents swirled on the breeze, and the sky unbound into an endless blue, flocked with white clouds the way the green hills of the Cotswolds were flecked with sheep.

It wasn’t Wales, but it was beautiful in its own way. With Prunella in his garden, Pete had a new appreciation for the attractions of his home.

He looked around for a means to impress her. “There, that is red bastia, I believe it’s called. Harebell you likely know. What you just plucked, that is eyebright.”

“We have this at home. In Huntingdonshire.”

Ah, a tidbit about her. There was so much he wanted to know.

And he didn’t deserve a minute of her time, not such as he was. But she was in his house, and he had good reason to keep her. At least for a while.