Page 22 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

The mines of Wales, like any mines, were brutal places. Peter’s father would have been worked to death. And how a baronet’s son ended up in a mine, and not living the life of a gentleman, was a question she burned to have answered.

She could put some of the pieces together. Pete’s father had been banished with no support from his family, and too young to have finished the education that could ensure him a profession. He might have tried apprenticing to a trade and had no luck with it. The life of a miner’s family would have been difficult. And Pete—well, look at the man. He had the physique for strenuous tasks, including intimidation.

He’d swept her into his arms as if she were a feather. As if her size were no challenge to him.

It wasn’t difficult to puzzle out how he’d ended up with a career working as enforcer for a notorious criminal. Given his size and his strength, he would have been drawn into such work even if not naturally disposed. What puzzled her was how he felt about inheriting Rowan Hill. Coming into possession of the house that his father had grown up in, living under the same roof as the woman who might have played a part in sending the boy away. What a very different life he would have led as Peter Wilkins of Easton. What a very different life it must be now.

She knew a bit about being introduced, very suddenly, into entirely foreign surroundings. She knew a bit about living in uncertainty.

“I… How did we meet?” He looked to Prunella in appeal.

She could read his expression easily; he was not a person who made it a habit to dissemble. He did not want to say anything that might tarnish her in his grandmother’s eyes. He was a man all through, and yet there was something boyish about his bewilderment.

The sunlight through the multi-paned windows streaked his hair gold and bronze and teased out the rugged definition of his face. Though he sat at some distance, his scent lingered in her nostrils; she’d inhaled him earlier, imprinting herself with his taste, his textures.

Her middle warmed, and not because the buttered greens were still fresh and hot from the kitchen. She wanted to print herself with him again, as soon as possible.

“Pete rescued me from a kidnapping.” The smile wobbled on her lips. She wasn’t certain how much he would care for her to reveal. “I—the current viscountess, the dowager, and I were all delivered—tricked, actually—into the clutches of a man who insisted the current viscount owes him a debt.” She wouldn’t add that it was her husband, curse his taste for betting, who had gone into debt, and they’d all been in danger because of it.

Barbara placed a hand over the lace fichu tucked into her neckline. “Good heavens. How vexing.”

“It could have been, but Pete was there. He and his friend Morys.” Prunella looked around the dining parlor, suddenly remembering. “Where is Morys?”

“Took himself off to the Easton Inn. Swore he’d be more comfortable there,” Pete answered.

“Where he might convince travelers to buy him an ale in return for a story, and sing at the top of his lungs if he pleases,” Prunella said.

Pete grinned at her, humor and relief breaking through his guard. “You have the measure of Morys.”

That grin added dollops to the warm mush already moving about in her belly. Good heavens, this was ridiculous. She hadn’t mooned over a man since she was a girl. Not once she realized what a gentleman’s daughter truly required of a man: the protection of his name and the security of his fortune. Everything since then had been a negotiation.

There had been nothing businesslike about Pete’s kiss.

As if he caught the drift of her thought, Pete’s expression turned smoky. His gaze darkened, his eyelids lowering, and one corner of his mouth turned up. The mush within melted into a puddle. She had the most unladylike urge to walk to his chair, thread her fingers into the hair that he’d attempted but not quite succeeded in styling, and settle into his lap for another long, leisurely bout of kissing.

That would progress to more than kissing this time.

“How kind of you to pay him a visit while you were passing through the area,” Barbara said coyly. “But a distinguished lady such as yourself could not have been unaccompanied?”

“I was traveling to London to join Lydia, the Dowager Lady Penrydd,” Prunella said. “She went ahead to open the house in town for the season. My maid quite inconveniently decided she did not wish to attend me in a visit to the country. I think she only took up with me in Bath because she wanted to see London.”

“And who among us would not wish to see London,” Barabara said. “But that means you are under my grandson’s roof without a chaperone.”

Her expressions were as transparent as Pete’s, but unlike her grandson, who showed his hand due to a native honesty, Barbara thought herself so clever that another wouldn’t guess what she was plotting. Prunella guessed quite easily, well before the woman began to belabor the point.

“I would not wish, for your own sake, my dear Lady Penrydd, for there to be talk among the neighbors,” Barbara simpered. “A comely young woman such as yourself, visiting my bachelor grandson, when there is no family relationship or prior acquaintance to excuse such informality? We would not want anyone to say things you would not like.” She let a deliberate pause unspool and ignored Pete’s look of warning. “Some might try to press you into marriage.”

Pete scowled.

The warm mush turned acid, fermenting in her belly. Did he loathe the thought of such an attachment with her? He’d been avid enough for her company in the garden. His heavy hand at her breast had said he wanted her. So had other parts of his anatomy, pressing into her bottom.

“Oh, I have no intentions of marrying again,” Prunella said, forcing her tone to brightness. She’d declared such very firmly to herself, at Gwen’s marriage to Rhydian and again when Miss Carruthers said her vows to Turbeville. No marriage. No more being beholden to a man. No more being the property of a man. No more being at the beck and call of a man, or to anyone, as soon as she could get free of Lydia.

“I intend to live very quietly on my own, with my small circle of friends, pursuing my own interests,” she said, to ensure Pete understood she would not be taking his grandmother’s suggestion to trap him into marriage.

“But you are too young to bury yourself in grief,” Barbara said. “Don’t you long for children to look after?”

A small needle of regret tugged at Prunella’s heart. Out of long practice, she pushed it away. Her marriage with Edwin had not yielded children, and not for lack of trying, nor any obvious deficiency on the part of either of them. But she was not one to hang her heart on might-have-beens. Had a child come to her, she would have doted on it. As one had not, she would go on as she was.