on the vendors who depended on the gentry for a living. “Surely we can spare the ready better than he can.”
“You’re not in London any longer,” Sloat said. “Or even the Peninsula. It will take time for you to understand how we do things here.”
But as Jack watched Sloat stroll the market, patting, prodding, assessing, he thought he understood very well.
The steward accepted two pints in the tavern’s silent taproom, helped himself to an apple from a stall. At the baker’s, he poked holes in two loaves before deeming a third fit to eat. No one questioned, no one protested his actions.
Jack looked from the crumbs littering his steward’s waistcoat to the baker’s frown in his orange beard and laid a shilling on the counter.
The baker’s gaze darted from the money to Jack to Sloat. “What’s this, then?”
“Payment,” Jack said.
The baker wiped floured hands across his wide middle. But he made no move to touch the coin.
Sloat swallowed his bread. “Our credit is good here.”
“No longer,” Jack said. “We pay ready money from now on.”
Sloat’s cheeks puffed. “I really cannot advise—”
“I am not asking your advice,” Jack said. “Inform the other merchants in town I expect them to send their bills directly to me. We will settle our accounts before beginning business on the new footing.”
“You will regret this,” Sloat said.
“To me directly,” Jack repeated. “By the end of the week.”
Their eyes met.
The steward’s gaze fell. Without a word, he turned and slammed his way out of the shop.
“Well,” said the baker in the silence he left behind. “That’s two things I never thought to see all in one day.”
They were the first words anyone had directed to Jack all morning. He turned from the door. “Two things?”
“Woman came in before you,” the baker said. “Wanted to buy a loaf with a pearl. Big as an egg, it was.”
Jack’s brows drew together. He was half convinced the baker was gammoning him. But why make up such a story? “Did you sell her the bread?”
“I did not.” The baker picked up the shilling from his counter. “I had no change to give her for her pearl.”
Jack met his gaze in acknowledgment. “Perhaps next time you will not have to send her away empty- handed.”
The baker scratched his hairy jaw, half hiding a blush behind his floury hand. “Nay, I gave her a bun,” he confessed. “Face like an angel, she had.”
Jack’s pulse kicked like a pack mule. “Morwenna.”
“Who?”
He exhaled. “The . . .” But he would not call her a whore. “The lady who was in here.”
The baker looked blank.
“From the cottage beyond the bluffs,” Jack said.
“That cottage has been empty a dozen years or more.”
“But she was here,” Jack said. She must have been.
The baker shook his head. “Never seen her before in my life.”
Perhaps he needed an incentive to remember.
Jack pulled out sixpence and set it on the counter. “For her bun,” he said. “Let’s settle all accounts today. How much more do I owe you?”
The man rubbed his beard again, leaving matching white streaks along his jaw. “I do not do the fine baking up at the hall. Only bread for the staff. Say, six quartern loaves a week, one shilling sixpence?”
A quartern loaf weighed four pounds. The price was more than fair. Jack nodded.
“Then . . .” The baker’s lips moved as he calculated. “Nine shillings a week for six months.”
“Six months,” Jack repeated. A slow burn ignited in his gut. “You have not been paid in all this time. Since my cousin died.”
Since Sloat took over the management of the estate.
The baker nodded warily.
Grimly, Jack began to count out sovereigns on the counter.
A commotion in the street outside filtered through the stone and daub walls.
“Thief!” The cry penetrated to the shop.
Sloat’s voice.
Jack’s head shot around. Through the dirty windows, he could see his estate steward’s broad, round- shouldered back nearly blocking the view of the street. And beyond Sloat, at the center of a tightening knot of villagers, was a woman in a sky blue dress with a cloud of hair pale as moonlight and floating like thistledown.
The fire in Jack’s gut shot to his chest.
Dropping the money on the counter, he strode to the door.
“I am not a thief.” Her voice rose above the crowd, clear and cool and edged with irritation like ice. “I offered to pay.”
“With stolen coin,” Sloat blustered.
“With gold, yes.” She drew her shawl more tightly over her elbows. “I thought he would prefer it to jewels. The other man said—”
“And where does the likes of you get gold or jewels?”
“Enough,” Jack ordered.
The word dropped into the crowd like a stone, sending ripples through the square. The villagers eddied and ebbed away, leaving him a clear path and a clear view of Morwenna. She stood in the street, straight as a Viking maiden at the prow of her ship, her loose hair tousled by the wind.
His heart slammed into his ribs. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered.
His breath stopped.
Sloat, the great, fat idiot, was too intent on his target to understand he had lost command of the situation. “Answer me, girl. Where would you get gold?”
She turned those wide, bright eyes on him. “I found it.”
He sneered. “Stole it, you mean.”
“Mr. Sloat.” Jack did not raise his voice, but any man in his battalion would have recognized and responded instantly to his tone. “You have no evidence of a crime, only of an offer to pay. Which I understand is more than you have managed these last six months.”
His estate manager flushed. But he did not back down. “No honest woman would have such a coin in her possession.” He scanned the circle of witnesses before beckoning forward a dark, thin man in a shabby brown coat.
Jack recognized the shopkeeper.
“Tell him,” Sloat said.
The thin man fidgeted. “Well, she came in wanting some shoes, you see. I had some half boots ready-made. Not fine, but serviceable for a lady, and—”
“The coin,” Sloat snapped.
“Right.” Hobson looked once, apologetically, at Morwenna, before addressing Jack. “It was gold. And, er, old.”
Jack held out his hand. “Show me.”
