Page 41 of The Laudanum Ladies' Society

‘Take your hands off me!’

She had the presence of mind to clutch her basket tightly, fearing it was about to be stolen. The bottles were safely wrapped in a tea towel and hidden beneath a loaf of bread, a string of sausages and four apples. If she lost the entire batch of tincture, she wouldn’t know how to explain it to Augusta.

Instead the arms gave support and eased her upright.

‘I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t really have done that, but I could see you were about to injure yourself. You didn’t injure yourself, did you?’

The accent more than anything else that had happened in the last few minutes was the biggest surprise to Gwen. It had an unmistakably Welsh lilt. It was very similar to how her own had sounded before the vowels of London had subsumed it, but in a pleasant baritone with melodic hints at the edges.

‘You’re Welsh!’ she murmured in surprise.

‘I am.’ The voice was amused. ‘So are you, I hear, though not for a long time, I think.’

Gwen tested the weight on her leg and found she could stand upright without much discomfort and turned around to face her helper.

‘I’m sorry for shouting at you. Thank you for catching me. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

She pushed her bonnet back into place and looked up. She met a pair of blue-grey eyes, creased at the edges, and a salt-and-pepper set of whiskers. Her hands flew to her mouth, which fell open with astonishment.

‘Daniel Parry?’ she gasped. ‘Danny! It really is you!’

The face she had known since childhood had aged, reminding Gwen of his father who had been the village schoolmaster. The hair around Daniel’s temples had grown greyer and the whiskers more splendid than in his youth but she would have recognised the clear, intelligent eyes anywhere. Currently, they were suspicious, then they widened with surprise and recognition.

‘Gwennie Lewis? It can’t be!’

It had been a long time since anyone had used the diminutive or her maiden name and Gwen’s throat tightened. Danny’s eyes darted to the side and he swallowed, then he looked back at her with a smile.

‘Of all the people I expected to meet, you’d be the last. Do you live in London or are you visiting?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded then realised he’d asked a question that had two answers. ‘I live here.’

He stared around him and wrinkled his nose.

‘Not here, exactly,’ she amended. ‘This isn’t the part of the city I live in, but I do live in London.’

Speaking was not coming easily. Her chest felt tight and her heartbeat was rapid. She’d forgotten the effect he had on her, back when she was of the age when boys might become more than playmates. She tried to suppress her indignation that he would think she belonged in this part of the city, but then whywould he know otherwise? She’d left the village to marryand never returned, only sending letters home to her mother, who would not have shared them with Danny’s mother.

‘I haven’t been home for many years,’ she said quietly.

His eyes had been cool as she babbled, but at that, the smile in them deepened.

‘But you still call it home?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ she said thoughtfully. A pang of longing for the jagged hills and clear skies caught her by surprise and she put her hands to her belly as if that could contain it. ‘Do you still live there?’ she asked.

‘I’ve moved to Swansea. I’m a solicitor now.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ Gwen beamed at him. Danny had been ambitious and clever as a young man, though when Gwen had last seen him, he had been considering teaching like his father.

‘Now, let me look at you. Are you hurt? Do you think you can walk?’ Daniel asked. ‘Are you very far from home?’

‘No. That is, yes, I can walk, but no, this isn’t particularly close to home. I was running an errand.’ She clutched her basket a little tighter to herself. How could she possibly explain what she was doing here? She didn’t have to, of course– it was none of his business, after all, and he’d be gone in a minute.

He had other ideas about that, it seemed, because he held his arm out and raised his brows expectantly.

‘In that case may I escort you where you need to go? This isn’t the nicest area, I think, and we’ve already established that the streets are hazardous. You shouldn’t be walking around somewhere like this alone, Gwen.’

How easily her name slipped from his lips. A mix of astonishment and pleasure ran through her, causing a frisson. It had been a long time since she had felt a spark of interest in a man, but there was no doubt about it now. She knew the feeling of attraction as instinctively as she could tell when the kettle wasabout to come to the boil by the sound it made. That feeling of a lid rattling replicated itself in her belly.