Page 21 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“And where is your mother now?”

He sawed at the duck. “Buried in St. Mellons beside my brothers and sisters who were carried off by the smallpox the same time she was.”

“Oh, Pete,” Prunella said. “Do you have anyone?”

“My sister, Bethan, is still alive.”

“And where is she?”

“Working in a pub in Rumney that caters to the coal merchants.”

“But why haven’t you brought her here?” Prunella asked, puzzled.

Pete lifted his head to stare at his grandmother. Barbara nibbled a forkful of French beans and stared at a massive oil painting on the wall above the sideboard. A well-fed man in a white periwig and the crimson coat of a British officer with the distinctive black trim on his lapels and cuffs stared back.

“Pete,” Prunella said, “you ought to bring her, at least for a visit.”

“I fear it will be too drastic a change for a girl like her,” Barbara said. “Going from the life she’s known, to this? It would be cruel if she didn’t succeed.”

“Don’t you suppose she ought at least have the choice?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Pete said.

“Really, Peter.” Barbara lifted her chin and her wine glass. She took a long sip. “You behave as if inheriting were a burden. As if I didn’t save you from moldering in the backwoods, beyond the reaches of civilization. Why, I do believe I delivered you from the hangman’s noose.” She set down her glass but did not release the stem. “Perhaps I should not say such things in front of a guest. Peter hasn’t told me how he knows you, Miss Price.”

Prunella chewed a bite of lamb. She was accustomed to navigating treacherous waters. She’d charted the undercurrents of her parents’ marriage early in life and guided her sisters through her father’s tempers and her mother’s pets. She’d learned in her first season how to follow the nearly impossible course that would win her Society’s approval, and avoid, or survive, the malicious gossip that followed when a viscount’s heir honored her, a plump gentleman’s daughter from a tiny town in Huntingdonshire, with his attentions.

And she had survived how many years of Lydia, who was a pale pattern of Lady Wilkins, but following the same stamp.

Pete regarded his dinner plate with a guilty expression, as much as admitting he’d given his grandmother a false name for her. Prunella couldn’t puzzle out the current between them. Pete resented his grandmother, but what hold did she have over him? And what were the motives of the woman herself? She didn’t approve of her grandson, that was clear. She approved of herself a great deal, though.

Prunella smiled at the older woman, the sunny smile she had practiced so often. “I met Pete in Wales, actually.”

Barbara looked alarmed. “Are you from there?”

“No, but my husband’s family was Welsh originally. My late husband, I should say. The title is Welsh also. Perhaps you have heard of Penrydd Castle?”

Her ladyship’s expression went as alert as a fox on the hunt, though wary, and Prunella guessed that she didn’t recognize the title. Lady Wilkins wasn’t one of those who consumed the London newspapers, then, or the lady’s magazines which would have kept her informed of the trials and misfortunes of the Price family.

“Your husband was—related to them?”

“My husband was the 3rd Viscount.” Prunella was a veritable beam of sunshine. “But he passed away almost a year ago. I traveled to Wales with my mother-in-law, the Dowager Lady Penrydd, to attend the wedding of the 4th Viscount. My brother-in-law,” she added, so there could be no mistaking.

“That would make you…” Barbara’s fingers tightened on her wine glass.

“The second Dowager Lady Penrydd,” Prunella said pleasantly. “But you may call me Prunella, of course.”

“Nell,” Pete rumbled.

Prunella beamed at him. Her middle went all soft when he used that form of her name. Like mulled wine poured on top of the most delicious pudding. It was as if he saw a part of her that no one else ever had.

Barbara’s eyes widened, smoothing her face with delight. She looked a score of years younger with ambition lighting her eyes. “But that would make you a viscountess.”

“Dowager,” Prunella confirmed. No need to inform Barbara that she had nothing else to her name but that title and the assorted clothing in the trunk currently perched in the darling boudoir she’d been given.

“Peter Wilkins.” His grandmother granted him a brittle smile. It seemed an expression she did not practice often, not with any sincerity. “You did not tell me you have made the acquaintance of a viscountess. But how on earth did you meet him, Lady Penrydd, given the people with whom he was associating?”

Pete studied his plate with great intensity. Prunella waited to see what excuse he would manufacture. Just what did his grandmother understand of his old life? Probably less than Prunella did. She’d only been in Wales a few weeks, but she had ears, and the other women at St. Sefin’s had included her in their chores as well as their gossip.