Page 35 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

The High Street of Corsham was a tiny lane of golden-brown stone and marching lines of tall, multi-paned windows. Brightly painted storefronts invited the eye, and people idled and chatted in the lanes, hailing acquaintances and sharing news and gossip.

The town reminded Prunella of Bath, saving that peacocks screamed from the green of Corsham Court next door. A few birds slipped between buildings to roam the street, threading through the ladies doing their morning shopping and spreading the fans of their tails when startled.

Altogether it was unbearably bucolic, and Prunella gritted her teeth as she thought how much, under any other circumstances, she would want to stay and explore this town. It wasn’t bustling London, crowded and noisy, where one risked one’s life stepping into the street, and it wasn’t Bath, with its self-conscious display. Nor was it Newport, which had been a picturesque place to visit but a shade too rustic for Prunella’s tastes. Corsham was a pleasure with its shops and parks and the occasional elegant iron work of a lamp curving into the street.

Prunella asked at the milliner and the pub and heard the same response, then stopped at the bakery for confirmation. Mrs. Mary Grist, the former housekeeper at Rowan Hill, wasn’t a difficult woman to locate, but she wasn’t at all where Prunella had expected her to be, and that simply deepened the mystery she meant to get to the bottom of.

In each place, Prunella was met with inquisitive welcome, then avid courtesy the moment Jenny uttered a “ladyship” or “mum.” Corsham was not a town accustomed to high titles, though the town had been, so she was told, a royal manor from the first days that England was England.

The more amazement it excited, the more often Jenny emphasized that her mistress was a viscountess, married to a former viscount and now a relict living out her quiet days. Jenny would not be suppressed by the occasional severe look—she was enjoying too much the status of being a lady’s maid to a real live lady—but Prunella managed to glean the information she wanted, and a twist of baked cinnamon sticks into the bargain.

“They’s that man watchin’ ye again,” Jenny remarked as they stepped from the baker’s shop back into High Street, which was pleasantly paved on the sides near the shops, leaving a track of dirt in the middle for horses, carts, and the occasional streams of effluvia. “That un’s a dandy, and no mistake.”

Prunella cast an innocent look about, pretending to search out her next shop, and saw him, a step away from the butcher’s.

Jenny had not been wrong in her characterization. He wore a blue cloth coat with extravagantly broad lapels and buckskin breeches with long tassels dangling above the cuff of his boots. His riding coat cascaded with capes, he carried a tall crowned hat in one hand, and he leaned on a knobby walking stick that looked more like a cudgel than a walking accessory.

His starched shirt front, tall stock, and jauntily tied neckcloth were bright white, the luxuries of a man of leisure. She thought him young, but his pale blond hair was thinning at the scalp, and his eyes had a mean, cold set to them as he stared directly at her. A prickle bit the back of Prunella’s neck. She knew him, but how?

“Jenny,” she murmured, “go find the boy holding our horse and lead him to us.”

“But mum, to leave ye alone?”

“I shan’t be abducted in broad daylight. Not again,” she amended. “I’ve nothing to fear from a dandy. Go along now, and I’ll save a cinnamon twist for you.”

Jenny went, but with a glower that conveyed to all watching her opinion that her mistress would come to trouble without her. Prunella parked herself in front of the display window of the tea room, pretending to study the different canisters decorating the shelves. Jenny was going to be something to manage if Prunella did want to set up her own household and have affairs.

Jenny would enjoy tending to the mistress of Rowan Hill, however. She would enjoy being an upper servant in a fine home immensely.

“You’re much too fine a lady for a village as out of the way as this. How did you come to Corsham, pet?”

The dandy smelled of wet wool and tobacco, not the pleasant, rich blend that Edwin had preferred but a sharp, bitter snuff. He tapped his walking stick on the paving stones and studied her with watery eyes. Dread slithered down her spine. Where had she seen this man before?

Prunella straightened her shoulders. The Prunella of that spring or any time before would have rushed to be cordial to a well-dressed man. She would have heard her mother’s voice in her head, and Lydia’s, and the voice of Society overall telling her a lady must be conciliatory to a gentleman and hasten herself to fulfill his every need.

She had left that Prunella in Bath over the summer. She was Prunella of the autumn now, and that Prunella did not hasten to bend herself to the will of a man. In fact she might be done conciliating herself to anyone. Fate and the hand of Pete Wilkins had brought her to Corsham at the turn of the season so she might take this moment to know herself, Prunella Price, and take the further chance at creating a life she chose for herself.

Deliberately she looked up and down the street, but not at him. The direct cut; Prunella had never been devastating in her life. “Did someone lose a pet?” she said. “How distressing for them.” And she turned and walked on, down to the milliner’s display.

She had no reason to re-enter the milliner’s shop, having been in not half an hour before to ask about Rowan Hill’s former housekeeper. Perhaps the man knew that, if he had been watching them for long. But Prunella would be cold and dignified, and she would count on that to carry her through.

He followed, his walking stick making an ominous clang on the pavers. “You must forgive me if I am being familiar. I am simply very surprised to find you here.”

She did not think Corsham need be so easily dismissed—it had its charm—and his cajoling tone set her teeth on edge. “Familiar indeed, as we have not been introduced.” She turned to stare him in the eye.

His eyes were a cold blue, his expression flat and self-contained. This was a man who never spent a thought beyond his own wishes and needs. How different from Pete’s warm brown eyes and the open way he studied others, learning them, seeing them. Pete was a man with a soft heart as enormous as that stupidly overlarge chest of his. She realized that, now the opposite stood before her.

Pete might rough up a man he thought deserved it, but he would at least hesitate at taking a life. But this man—

“Come now, Lady Penrydd. You cannot have forgotten me?”

Prunella scrambled through her memories. Not in London—Newport. Lady Vaughn, a dowager knight’s lady, keeping a grand house nearby, and eager to be friends with Lydia. And her pale, blond son, plump in that way of self-satisfied men who never denied a single urge. The one who had cornered Anne at the wedding breakfast, so certain any woman would be flattered by his attentions.

“Calvin Vaughn,” Prunella said, with a hint of derision she couldn’t keep from her tone.

This was the man who had tried to force Gwen into marriage by accusing her of turning St. Sefin’s into a brothel. This was the man who had cozened the maid Mathry into his bed and then had her turned out of the house when she sprung a belly.

“At your service.” He answered with a leer and a shallow bow, nothing near what her superior social status deserved. “Will you walk with me?”