Page 9 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“’Twere a lovely wedding breakfast, weren’t it?” Jenny said, still enchanted with the wedding they’d lately attended.

Prunella sighed. Another wedding. She wished them happy, she did. Miss Carruthers was the young maiden that Lydia had slotted out for Rhydian as his bride, culled from the herd during the last London Season and brought west with them when Lydia determined to track down the missing viscount, drag him out of whatever ditch he’d fallen drunk into, and steady him with marriage.

Miss Carruthers, being a poor traveler and absolutely opposed to going by boat, not even to cross the Bristol Channel in possible hopes of becoming a viscountess, had stayed in Saltford and fallen across the path of one Mr. Turbeville, gentleman, a former rogue and scoundrel ripe for reform.

The result was that Miss Carruthers had given her hand to Mr. Turbeville and would now devote her life to steadying him, and Prunella had confirmed her belief, after sitting through yet another wedding ceremony and then breakfast, that she had the better part of the bargain as a widow and dowager. One had the status of a husband’s name and title, without the man himself to contend with.

If only she had her jointure to contend with. Rhydian was gone on his wedding trip, his secretary was concerned with getting the estate and Penrydd Castle in order so he might offer marriage to Mathry, and Lydia, who had dispensed with Miss Carruthers the moment Rhydian married, had gone ahead to open the London townhouse in anticipation of the Season.

Lydia had no qualms about living on the credit of the Penrydd title, trusting it was Rhydian’s responsibility to see to her upkeep. That would be Prunella’s fate too. She had a few coins in her purse that constituted the last of her pin money, and she had a few baubles Edwin had given her—or won at the gaming tables—and these she could pawn, in a pinch.

But the baubles and the pawnshops were in London, and so by now was Lydia, and Prunella was in no haste to join her. There was something almost unbearably lovely about the Wiltshire countryside this time of year, and she found herself of a mind to dawdle.

The leaves of the beech and elm trees were turning yellow, as if gold guineas dangled from the branches. Here and there a shrub in a hedge or garden blazed a fiery bronze. Sheep grazed hock-deep among late-summer wildflowers, buttercups and fritillaries showing purple and yellow, and in the hedgerows the wild clematis were cascades of whiskery white seeds. The tops of the occasional ancient oak were banded with orange and persimmon in broad gentle strokes, as if Mother Nature came through at night with an enormous brush.

Perhaps Wiltshire was the place Prunella might find a small cottage of her own. She considered the edges of the town as they stopped at the roundhouse to pay the toll, the postillion hallooing for the tollkeeper and the horses stamping and snorting in their traces.

A grand manor perched on a nearby knoll, sprouting steep gabled dormers and narrow windows, proof of the family’s stature. If she took lodgings in a grand home she’d be stuck in the same dreary round as she was with Lydia, playing lady of the manor, keeping up appearances at all costs, looking the other way when servants were pert or the housekeeper trimmed from the household accounts.

A small stone cottage like the one across the way, that was the thing, Prunella decided while they waited for the tollkeeper to emerge. Thatch and plaster were too rustic for her, and she wasn’t about to keep a pig or chickens, at least not that she must tend herself. A snug, square cottage of dressed stone with a slate roof and white moldings around the sash windows, a small garden lane draped with dogwood and wild roses, that was more her style. The neighborhood ladies would sip tea in her sunny parlor while they watched people pass on the lane outside, and she would hope the local vicar was handsome, mild-mannered, a man of clean tidy habits, and single.

“Will I like London, milady?” Jenny had been born in a village near Bath and had not moved from it her whole life until she came to town to enroll with an agency that placed maids for ladies, which was how Prunella had found her—or rather, how Lydia had found and procured her for Prunella, without Prunella’s having much say in the matter.

Prunella didn’t mind. Jenny was neat of person and nimble with a needle and thread, she didn’t spit or swear, and so far she was happy enough with her new position that she didn’t complain when Prunella forgot her sewing basket in her room, or wanted another scone with her cream tea, or got a spot on her hem on her walks. Prunella couldn’t bear a maid who wasn’t as placid-tempered as she was, and being free from Lydia’s disapproving stares was a liberty Prunella had begun to relish.

She sighed and peered out the window, wondering if she might ask the postillion to stop at the inn ahead so she could inquire about quaint nearby cottages in good condition, available to let for a reasonable fee.

“London is noisy, and busy, and big. The river stinks, the coal fires stink, and a ball can become such a crush, with all the ladies wearing toilet water, and if some of the men haven’t bathed and the lamps are smoking and they’ve put salmon out for supper too early—” Prunella shuddered. “That’s a smell you can’t imagine.”

Jenny rounded her eyes. “But the King is there, and the Queen and all her palaces, and the Tower. I’d like to see Spitalfields market, I would.”

“I can take you to Covent Garden, I suppose. I don’t go much to the east end of town.” All the fashionable homes and activities were on the west end.

It was astonishing, how narrow the bounds of her life had been, even after she married and left Huntingdonshire. Newport, though she didn’t find it very lovely, was a revelation. And here in Wiltshire, with the hills of the Cotswolds in the distance and the bucolic views of farmland and pasture and forests and sheep, Prunella was realizing how little she’d been exposed to, really. How lacking her life was in adventure.

A man’s voice sounded outside on the road, a deep bass voice, and the back of Prunella’s neck prickled. She knew that voice, without being able to place how she knew it.

The door opened, and Prunella blinked. An enormous man stood framed against the afternoon light. A bear of a man. A great, brawny beast of a man. His mouth opened in surprise, and the gap between his front teeth gave him away.

“You!” Prunella cried.

“And you yourself,” he rumbled in return.

Then he slammed the door shut.

A burst of conversation ensued, not in English. Welsh, she thought, having overheard enough at St. Sefin’s to identify the cadences, though she didn’t understand a single word. Prunella grabbed the edge of the wooden seat, as if the chaise were rocking, which it wasn’t.

The door opened. “Where’s th’other?” he demanded, speaking English now.

“Who?”

Her mind had halted, routed in confusion. What was he doing here? Was she imagining things?

Her thoughts galloped off like startled sheep. She was going mad. She had thought too much of being held in his arms, that strange, brief moment of enjoying a safety she had never known. She might be faint with hunger and in need of a mid-day nuncheon and hallucinating.

There was no mistaking the jut of that brow, the lock of tousled brown hair that fell across his forehead, or the stone-hewn square of his jaw. Jenny shrank into the corner as if wishing not to be seen.

“The old crow,” he clarified.