Page 2 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

Her bosom was her best feature, and Prunella showed it at every opportunity. If one had not been gifted by nature with the pillar-like form approved by modern fashion, like a waif on the cusp of starvation, then one was to make the most of one’s curves by displaying them generously and often.

“Many felicitations on your marriage, my lady.” Prunella’s smile was sincere as they moved through the receiving line. Marriage had not been for Prunella all that a young woman was promised, but who was to say the same would be true for Gwen? “It was a…lovely ceremony. Very unique setting.”

Prunella and Edwin had said their vows at St. George, Hanover Square, with a wedding breakfast after at the London house. Rhydian and his bride had chosen to host their wedding breakfast in the grand old hall of St. Sefin’s that served as a refectory, and not at Penrydd Castle, which would have been the proper thing to do.

“Please, don’t stop calling me Gwen.” The bride turned her cheek to receive Prunella’s kiss.

“But you are Lady Penrydd now. A viscountess.” It felt strange to think that, with the exchange of a few words, Prunella had been relegated from widow to dowager, her title now a mere courtesy.

“Yes, and you, as the other Lady Penrydd and also a viscountess, must tell me how to go on. I haven’t the least notion.”

“I didn’t, either,” Prunella admitted.

Could she even call herself a viscountess? She’d been married a mere handful of years. She had never seen Penrydd Castle. Edwin preferred the townhouse in London, the family seat near Saffron Walden in Essex, and the hunting box in Scotland, where he’d died after taking a bet that he could swim an icy Scottish loch while drunk.

Edwin’s death had meant he passed Prunella’s upkeep, along with the title and all the properties, to Rhydian. Prunella had changed hands, much like a horse, and she must depend on the new Lord Penrydd now.

Well, bollocks to that. The new Prunella Price was going to take up colorful language. A widow was allowed to be eccentric, after all.

“I wish you very happy, Rhydian,” Prunella said to her brother-in-law. “I mean to say, Penrydd.” How very odd it felt to address this wrecked and wayward man with her husband’s title.

She’d not seen much of him during her marriage. Rhydian was sailing with the Royal Navy at their wedding, and he’d gotten himself blown up in some naval battle shortly before Edwin died. Edwin had described his brother as a randy, rowdy, drunken sot, but when Prunella peered into the bridegroom’s eyes, he appeared to be in possession of all his faculties. It was true, then; Gwen had dried him out while he stayed at St. Sefin’s, and he’d settle down and steady on now he was married.

Which Edwin had never done.

“I hope you will stay at St. Sefin’s as long as you like.” Gwen squeezed Prunella’s hand as those in the receiving line behind her began making impatient noises, the local knight’s dame, Lady Vaughn, loudest among them.

“And of course you are welcome at Penrydd Castle,” said the man who owned the place.

All of Prunella’s previous homes belonged to this man now. Save for the family home she’d grown up in, a pleasant little manor in Huntingdonshire, which was owned by Prunella’s father.

But a widow could hold property in her own name. That was the one good thing to come of Edwin’s death. Of course, Prunella didn’t know if she had enough money to buy a property, but in theory, she could possess the title and deed. That was something.

“I knew it.” Lydia sniffed as she regarded the tables laid out with the wedding repast. “I said it, Prunella, did you not hear me say it? Hardly anything fit to eat, and nothing suitable for a viscount’s table.” She sighed. “This would never serve in town. I hope none of my friends in London hear of this.”

“Gwen made her Welsh cakes,” Prunella said, though trying to encourage Lydia was a failed effort from the start. Lydia was one of those people who took a dim view of the sun rising. Prunella possessed a generally agreeable nature, so she endeavored to conciliate the Dowager Viscountess whenever possible, but it was very trying to be about someone whose temperament was vinegar when Prunella would describe herself as a custard pudding, sweet and creamy.

Anne Sutton attached herself to Prunella’s side, as she had more or less done since Prunella first turned up at St. Sefin’s. Anne was an English gentleman’s daughter, though she’d been raised in some Welsh village to the north, and she had once been Gwen’s closest friend, until her brother somehow came between them. Prunella was still sorting out the histories.

Anne had been betrothed to marry Calvin Vaughn, the local knight’s son, who was something of a blade and a dirty dish, from what Prunella could discern of the matter. But after the confusing and highly irregular kidnapping that all the women had recently endured, it seemed Anne’s betrothal to Calvin was broken, and the poor girl was a bit at sea.

Prunella still shuddered at the memory of The Incident. They, all of them—Prunella, Lydia, and Anne, along with Gwen—had been kidnapped, with the help of Anne’s brother, by a criminal mastermind calling himself the Black Hound. The Hound had held the viscountesses ransom on his ship over the matter of some debts he claimed Edwin owed him and which he expected Penrydd to discharge.

The memory of that afternoon was very confused. They had played cards and drunk wine in an oddly civilized fashion, until Penrydd started blowing up the ship with bombs he had been making in the back pastures of St. Sefin’s.

What Prunella remembered most clearly of The Incident was, first, that she had fainted, which she had only done one other time in her life, when she was sixteen and her mother had insisted on putting her in too-small stays for her first ball. She had come to awareness, this second time, in the arms of a very large man who, astoundingly, carried Prunella as easily as if she were a sack of grain.

Prunella was not possessed of a dainty stature, which accounted for her mother’s effort with the stays. She was built more along the lines of one of Titian’s full-bodied Venuses than the slender nymphs of Botticelli. Yet this man had carried her twice: once to the captain’s quarters where the Black Hound awaited, then back to the boat that would take them to shore when he had somehow gone from captor to rescuer.

She wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to that man after all was sorted, the Black Hound dispensed with, and everything turned over to the local magistrate. Prunella had never had the experience of being swept off her feet, literally or figuratively.

She’d never met a man, frankly, with the brawn or charm to achieve either. This one’d had rumpled brown hair and a gap between his front teeth, clearly a peasant and not a gentleman, and she smelled tobacco and leather when she woke with her nose pressed into his enormous arm.

Where was he now? Likely he’d already swung from the gallows for kidnapping a peer’s wife and engaging in general mayhem and destruction. A pity, and a waste. A man of his build would last a good long while in the mines or impressed into service aboard a British vessel.

“Welsh cakes?” said Anne in a forlorn voice. She was a wisp of a thing, with guinea-gold hair, cornflower blue eyes, and porcelain skin. Prunella’s hair showed gingery tones among the blonde, her eyes were a disappointing hazel, and her skin freckled when she simply thought about the sun.

For consolation, Prunella heaped her stoneware plate with cakes. Edwin had liked her curves. He had seen her at a Venetian breakfast, one of the first events of her Season, after her parents had made the great gamble of renting a house and carriage in London, bringing down the younger girls for a bit of polish, and staking all their hopes on Prunella’s making a good match. And that she had, catching the eye of a viscount’s heir back when he was by courtesy the Baron Price and many a mama was pushing her daughters beneath his nose.