Page 37 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

So while status could cover a great number of sins, Pete could not have been responsible for his cousin’s death after all. But then who was?

Prunella turned out of the gate toward her carriage and froze. Jenny was nowhere to be seen. But Calvin Vaughn held the reins of the whiskey, while Creon snorted and stamped, expressing his displeasure at the turn of events.

“And now, my dear Lady Penrydd,” Calvin said with a thin, calculating smile. “You and I shall settle one or two things.”

Prunella put her hand to her middle, trying to quell the trembling there. “Where is my maid?”

“Running some errands. Quick, biddable creature, that’un. Have to see if she’d like a position in my house.”

Prunella knew what happened to maids in the employ of the Vaughns. “Jenny wouldn’t leave me. What did you tell her?”

“Only that I was a friend of your husband’s and would see no harm done to you.”

That chill slithered down her back again, like wet grass down her bodice. “I have no husband.”

“But you did. And he left you quite a legacy, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“A few debts here and there. One substantial sum owed to the Black Hound.”

“The Black Hound is gone,” Prunella bit out. “Rhydian and Pete took care of him.”

Calvin’s smile dripped oil. “I see you haven’t heard the news. I am the Black Hound now.” His smile turned feral. “And I’ll have what’s owed me.”

Chapter Ten

Pete felt more himself than he had in months, ever since his grandmother’s messenger had found him in Newport and dragged him here. Physical activity had a way of distracting his mind the way nothing else could, and his mind was in a riot over Prunella Price.

“When d’ye plan to tell ’er, then?” Morys wanted to know.

Morys, who did not find the same pleasure that Pete did in manual labor, perched on the side of the open cart while Pete helped the farm hands fork hay into the piles they called ricks. Pete wondered why Barnaby or a previous baronet hadn’t built a barn to store the fodder that would feed the sheep over the winter months. For now, the custom was the same as he’d seen in Wales: a farmer made ricks of corn and hay, then hired a thatcher to cover the whole for the winter, paying him in shillings and beer.

“Tell who what?”

Pete was certain that Morys, too, was thinking of Prunella Price. How could a man not? She’d been the most adorable thing one could imagine, sitting in her cloud of skirts in his grandmother’s parlor, her eyes narrowing with calculation as she learned about the death of his cousin all those weeks ago.

Pete didn’t blame her looking at him with wariness. He’d been too stunned with the news of his own new responsibilities to ask many questions, but the more details he gathered about Barnaby’s passing, the more suspicious he, too, thought the whole chain of events.

“Tell ’er yer a hard-hearted criminal what barely escaped the hangman’s noose,” Morys said. “Before or after ye spring the leg shackle? I say after, as there’s not much a mort can do once the marriage lines are laid down.”

“You forget I got a pardon, same as you.” Pete huffed and pitched a thick forkful of hay from the cart onto the growing pile.

It pleased him to see the concrete signs of industry. He was storing forage for his flock to survive the winter until spring came and the grass grew green once more and they could be turned again to pasture. He’d need hay for the horses, too, if he wanted to keep the animals that hauled the carts for the autumn harvest, then drew the plow in the spring.

He might like being a farmer. He liked the stable, sturdy rhythm of it, the idea that life turned with the round of the seasons and a man could make something with his own hands, something substantial and good.

Would Prunella want to be a farmer’s wife? She’d been a viscountess. Her life was something he couldn’t fathom, the world of the great ones with their clothes and their coaches and the way they traveled to and fro for something they called the Season. The way they pretended to behave with courtesy and decorum before the lesser, but in their private circles could be licentious and depraved.

“Besides,” Pete said, eyeing the growing rick, “she already knows what I was. We rescued her from the Black Hound, remember?”

“But will she lower herself. That’s the question, innit?” Morys pressed.

Pete rubbed his face against his arm. He’d taken off his coat so as not to sweat in the fine cloth, and he swore he could still smell Prunella on his skin. For certain he recalled the warm feel of her flesh beneath his fingers, and his ears still filled with her small, shuddering moans as he brought her to ecstasy.

In the middle of the open field beneath the rowan tree, like any common woman. Why would she think of lowering herself for him like that? He was the depraved one.

“What do I have to offer her, Miniken?” Pete asked, the despair a brick in his chest.