Excerpt 1: Chapter 3.
In which Gwen approaches the viscount to offer to buy his property, and he thinks she’s soliciting something else.

“Lord Penrydd?”

Pen’s boots hit the floor as he sat up. Speaking of pleasure. His capricious God had consented to smile on him for once. The most exquisite female-shaped creature he had ever beheld stood at the parlor door.

She wasn’t dressed like a lady of the night. Her petticoat was clean and white, over it a gown of buttermilk muslin trailing vines of red flowers. It was a quaint style, quite outdated, but one that followed a woman’s curves. A delicate lace crossed her bodice, tied at her back. He wanted to unwrap her, like a present. 

An absurd cap of lace and silk roses covered curls of a dusty brown, the color of the paths at his favorite hunting property when they had baked in the sunlight on a summer afternoon. Her face was extraordinary. She didn’t have the pasty complexion of a woman who never went about in the sun, rather a healthy glow and the tiniest dusting of freckles along a nose that suggested a personality both strong and pert. Independently the wide thick-lashed eyes, high cheekbones, lush lips, and arrowed jaw were pleasing yet unremarkable, but put together, the effect was mesmerizing.

“Fifty pounds,” Pen blurted.

Her eyes rounded in surprise. They were some shifting, undefined color, the grey-green of the sea on a cloudy morning. Was she worth more? “A night,” he added. He’d pay anything. He wasn’t even going to pretend to negotiate. 

His secretary, Ross, raised his thick brows. Pen ignored him, as usual.

“A night?” Her voice rang clear and fine, trained, the voice of a singer. But her tone held dismay. The lace over her bosom fluttered as she put a hand there. Long, delicate fingers, a fine-boned wrist with an elegant turn. He stared at her hands and imagined them trailing over his skin.

His rough, scarred, contemptible skin. “Not enough? Name your price.”

“I hadn’t arrived at a number, actually. I suppose I ought to have asked Mr. Barlow.”

Who was Barlow? Her flesh broker? Her go between? Pen envied the man who had any hold over her. But she had a proud tilt to her head, that of an independent woman who answered to no one. He’d make her forget Barlow. He’d make her forget everything but her name. What was her name?

“In truth, I’m not certain what the going rate for such things is,” she said.

Pen’s head reeled with a grand, desperate notion. She wasn’t a hedge whore or a public ledger, open to all comers. But a lady of easy virtue nonetheless, perhaps a high flyer or a quality courtesan. Pen wiped his sweating palms on his breeches. He couldn’t afford her. Look at her skin; she wasn’t starving or diseased, nor beaten into submission. Her eyes were clear and steady, if her expression was somewhat baffled, and she smelled like spring. A field of bluebells filled his mind, kissed by a warm sun.

Ah, God. For the first time he understood why a man would go to the trouble of keeping a mistress. So he could have sole access whenever he wished and keep her hidden from the outside world. He swallowed. How could he manage to keep her? Most of the letters on Ross’s blasted table were bills and accounts of some sort, reminders of funds his rotter of a brother had died owing.

“I’m certain we can come to an agreement.” Pen’s voice scratched his throat. Where was the boy with the rum? The tremor was starting again, but the need this time was not for alcohol. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted anything that had to do with another person. Wanted closeness. Affection. Approval. 

Ah, yes. He’d wanted affection from his mother, approval from his father, company and camaraderie from his brother. And the evil-minded universe had laughed in his face and stretched him out upon the rack. Pen sweated underneath his neckcloth and worked with a finger to loosen it. This woman wouldn’t be withholding, mocking, or cruel. She was warm and soft all over, inside and out.

She blew out a stream of air and Pen stared, arrested by the shape of her anemone-red lips. They would purse in exactly that fashion when he kissed her.

“I don’t suppose you would consider simply giving it to me,” she said. “Out of charity, you know.”

Giving her—oh, he’d any number of notions of what he could give her. Starting with certain attentive parts of his body. Then the rest, all of him, for eternity.

Excerpt 2: Chapter 4
In which Gwen rescues a beaten Penrydd from the beach in Newport and tends him at the priory of St. Sefin’s, then waits for him to wake up.

Dovey brought Gwen’s dinner, steamed cockles and sauteed mallow leaves with laver sauce poured over all, and a large slice of bara brith, their native bread. She handed Gwen her knitting and they kept watch, talking as if it were any given evening and they sat before the fire in the chapter house with the rest of their community gathered. They discussed whether they could buy a side of beef from the butcher. If the Morgans would summer at Tredegar House this year, and host parties where they might invite Gwen to harp. Where next to apprentice Tomos, if anyone would take him, and what to do about Mathry, who wandered about blank-faced and prone to bursts of weeping.

All the while, the sun inched from the east windows to the west and the man on the bed breathed, a looming shadow, an ever-growing threat. Gwen was about to lose her mind and pounce on him, throttling him awake to demand he pronounce their sentence and end the suspense.

When it came, the hoarse whisper from the bed nearly made her shriek and drop her mending.

“Where the devil am I?”

Gwen melted into a puddle of relief. Not dead. She’d been fearing what she must say to Mr. Stanley, Mr. Barlow, that awful sly secretary, if Penrydd died. They’d have every reason to think she’d wanted it.

“This is St. Sefin’s,” Gwen croaked, and then held her breath. Perhaps if he looked about, saw the place through her eyes, his heart would soften toward them.

Dovey sat up and put her knitting aside. She held still as a mouse.

“Who are you?” 

His voice was a low rasp. She passed him a wooden cup filled with water from their own well, clear and safe to drink. He tried to raise his right hand, groaned, and let it fall.

“God’s teeth. Every part of me hurts. What happened?”

Her fingertips tingled as she touched him. Odd. She slid her hand behind his neck and urged his head forward, bringing the cup to his lips. He drank, coughed, and without thinking she dabbed the corner of his mouth with her sleeve. The man was weak as a newborn lamb, yet she still felt a thrill of terror course through her.

She presumed it was terror, at least. Any moment now, he’d recognize her.

His eyes were a reddish brown, like hazelnuts. The outer corners slanted upward, giving him a faintly devilish look. His nose was straight, very aristocratic, and his lower lip was full and almost womanly. What obliterated any impression of softness or femininity was the jut of his chin and the straight, bold jaw, creasing as a muscle clenched.

“Who are you?” he breathed.

“Gwenllian ap Ewyas.” Her voice scratched from her dry throat, barely audible. It stung that he couldn’t recall her from mere days ago, but she mustn’t appear weak or simpering. She had to keep the upper hand.

“And who am I?” he asked.