Page 7 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“Wool has long been a profitable industry in this area,” Miss Elizabeth remarked.

“And cheese,” Pete said. “I’m becoming fond of the local cheese. I might start a dairy.”

“You’ll need cows for that,” Miss Elizabeth said, bored with his ignorance.

Her dismissive tone touched a nerve. Folk looked at him, saw his size, and assumed his mother’s womb had diverted all his essence to muscle and bone and saved nothing for the brain box.

It was useful to be underestimated when one worked for a criminal, and Pete’s size and skill at fighting had made him an excellent enforcer. Less welcome to be underestimated by the Wiltshire gentlefolk who were, like it or not, his new peers.

“You want the longhorn cattle for the Wiltshire loaf.” Jane twisted around on her seat. “They’ve flocks of them up Swindon way.”

“Thank you, Miss Jane. I shall take that under consideration.”

They arrived at the Guy residence, which was not as fine as his own house but made a good showing of itself, a two-story block in the local style of rubble stone covered with roughcast plaster and painted a pristine white that made an overall tidy impression. A drapery moved in one of the front windows as the whiskey rolled up.

Miss Elizabeth consented to touch Pete’s hand to aid her descent, but only to keep from tipping herself and her neat blue frock into the dirt. Jane hopped down from her platform, cheerfully beating the dust of the road out of her apron and skirts.

Miss Elizabeth swept into the house, but Miss Jane lingered, watching Pete with a sober, assessing gaze.

“Bear baiting’s a cruel sport and ought to be outlawed,” she said, a note of reproach in her tone. “But I don’t think you’re a bad sort overall, Sir Peter.”

He blinked, startled not at her boldness—he appreciated directness in anyone—but at the address. He still couldn’t make himself accustomed to it. Who was this person referred to as Sir Peter, Bart., and what had happened to Pedr Wilkins, ruffian about town and muscle for hire?

Jane reached into her basket and withdrew a jar of jam. “Lizzie’s stingy because she doesn’t like Lady Wilkins,” she confided. “The jam’s very good with scones, specially if they’ve just come from the oven.” She pressed the jar into his hand, then flounced into the house.

Pete dithered for a moment in the drive, unsure of the courtesies demanded of his new station. Was he dismissed, or was he obliged to step inside and deliver greetings to the master of the house? Anthony Guy was a gentleman, born to the kind of man who was appointed High Sheriff by royal warrant and kept a pack of hunting hounds. Was he supposed to make his bow to the lady of the house and suffer through a stiff exchange of small talk designed to illuminate him on the family’s advantages and the accomplishments of their daughters?

Neither option appealed. Pete decided he was free to leave and hefted himself back into the whiskey. Then he sat a moment, holding the ribbons.

If he returned to Rowan Hill, he would be trapped in the drawing room while Barbara scolded him for his boorish conduct with the Guy girls. There would be another lecture about upholding the dignity of the Wilkins of Corsham, Wiltshire, and a history of how Ebeneezer Wilkins achieved his title after serving as a gentleman of the bedchamber to a previous George. They were to be accounted one of the important families of the neighborhood, even if they didn’t possess the riches of the Methuen family or the pedigree of the Awdrys, Barbara would remind him once more.

The Duke of Cumberland would sell him a pint, and so would the Pack Horse Inn, which catered to travelers on the London-Bath Road. But Pete turned his horse down Lacock Road toward Easton Inn. He liked the ale; he liked the barkeep, a bawdy mistress who never let her customers get the better of her; and he liked that the place wasn’t above half a mile from his house, which meant he looked a fool for rolling up in a whiskey like some sporting Corinthian or a gentleman of means, when in truth he was neither.

The interior was dark, the plaster between the timbered beams of the public room blackened with the smoke of centuries. The room smelled of onions and yeast, old sweat and wet dog. A muddy hound raised its head and regarded Pete as he entered, then resumed its resigned position at the feet of his master, a local farmer with a tankard before him who appeared to be well into his cups. By the fire a stocky child in a dirty, too-big coat perched in a wooden chair.

“By Saint Beuno’s beard,” the one by the fire remarked. “It’s Pedr Wilkins. I’d recognize that bear shape anywhere.” The form unfolded into the shape of a little man with a shock of tousled brown hair, a craggy brow, and sharp black eyes that missed nothing.

“Miniken!” Pete cried.

“Hsst, it’s Morys Morgan, I’ll have you know.” Morys straightened his coat. “An honest to God trader now, on the straight and narrow path.”

“I won’t perjure my soul by calling you honest.” Pete’s handshake engulfed the other man’s palm, and Morys jolted as Pete slapped him on the back. But he was overcome to see a familiar face. “How is it you weren’t hanged for a rogue? I heard you took up with the smugglers after we blew the Black Hound to bits.”

“Not hanged, and not branded neither.” Morys held up his palm, the lines blackened with dirt and the skin roughened by hard labor, but indeed, there was no magistrate’s mark. “Did the new knight a good turn helping him rescue his lady, and the Duke of Beaufort put the Black Hound in prison.”

“This calls for a pint or two.” Pete pulled out a chair at an empty wooden table, still sticky from usage by the previous occupant, and signaled the barmaid, who wasn’t the usual ruddy cheeked matron but a well-endowed girl with straw-colored hair and a fichu tucked into the generous swell of her neckline.

“At last. It appears ye’ve inherited some sense alongside yer new baronet’s boots.” Morys pulled a high stool from those lined up before the counter and clambered atop it. “Doing well for yerself, it’d appear.”

He subjected Pete to a lengthy inspection, from the styling of his hair, which his grandmother had insisted be barbered, to the stripes on his pantaloons, part of the wardrobe Barbara had forced him to acquire when she took him to the shops in Chippenham. Morys picked up Pete’s round hat, punched the inside of the velvet, then placed it back on the table.

“My grandmother’s a right harridan,” Pete reported. “She’ll turn me into a gentleman or die trying. Might be what offed my cousin, come to think of it.”

“But you’ve gelt in the pocket now. A flash cove.” Morys pointed to the chains and fobs attached to Pete’s waistcoat, another new affectation he could not grow accustomed to. The coats of silk and broadcloth and velvet weren’t as accommodating for movement as his rough fustian working clothes, and pantaloons rode into a man’s nether regions where cloth had no business to be.

“After a fashion. I’m not dealing with the kind of money that your smuggler boss, Darch, was taking in. And not loaning out thousands like the Black Hound, either.”

“Darch ain’t a smuggler no more, he’s reformed.” Morys took a long pull from the pewter tankard the barmaid set before him, his gaze following her rear as she bustled away. “So’ve I.”