Nev drew back, disconcerted. “You are very bitter against the poachers.”

“It’s these men from London.” The farmer’s wife shuddered comfortably. “Murderers and thieves, all of them, who’ve made town too hot to hold them. Then they come up here, and they work on our boys with their promises of easy money…”

“Then-you don’t think the men poach because they’re hungry?”

“Not on your life, my lord!-meaning no disrespect. The folk here poach because they hate hard work. They’d rather take eight shillings for stealing your hare than for a week’s honest labor.”

Nev privately thought that was understandable. But he could not have armed men running about the home woods. “Do you know who they are?”

Mrs. Kedge looked discomfited for the first time. “Of course not! No one knows who they are.” In her tone Nev heard clearly, Everyone knows who they are, and smothered a groan.

“The poachers aren’t so bad, really,” Josie told Penelope. “And they are hungry.” She darted an angry glance at Mrs. Kedge, whose cheerily grim monologue could be heard all across the churchyard. “They’ve got family who are hungry!”

“Hush, Josie!” Agnes said.

Penelope got the distinct impression that Josie also knew exactly who the poachers were. But asking a little girl to tattle on her friends seemed monstrous. Penelope sighed. “I’m sure they do.”

Josie eyed Penelope. “You’ve been to school, haven’t you?”

She nodded.

“Do you think God has chosen me to be lowly because he knew my soul needed the guidance of my betters?”

Agnes grabbed her daughter’s hand. “We’re going, Josie. Good day, my lady.”

Penelope’s heart went out to the little girl. “Please stay.”

Josie was quoting directly from Mr. Snively’s sermon, which had been on the text, Be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’s sake. Nev had rolled his eyes so much through Mr. Snively’s many references to Nev ’s “wise governance” and “benevolent authority” that Penelope had half feared they would stick.

And Agnes Cusher had no choice but to bring her child to church to be insulted, because Tom Kedge made all his people go. For the first time, Penelope wondered whether Loweston’s people really would riot. They had reason to be angry. Even now Agnes was giving her a sullen, trapped glare.

Penelope did not know what would be the best answer to help Josie navigate her world. She did not know the best answer to prevent a breach with the vicar, who, though out of earshot, would very likely have her words repeated to him by a dozen eager tongues.

But she knew the only answer she could give. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Really?” Josie asked.

Penelope nodded. “My parents were as poor as yours when they were born, you know.”

“Really?” Josie’s eyes were wide as saucers. “You mean-you’re the same as me?”

The other girls at school had thought they were better than she was. Penelope believed it too, in some small part of herself, and always had. For a moment a hot rebellious spark inside her almost wanted the laborers to rise up and demand what was theirs. “I don’t know why God makes some people rich and some poor. We have to believe He knows best. But I’m sure of this: no one’s soul is any higher.”

Josie did not look as if she could quite bring herself to believe this good news. “But Mr. Snively said that lords are the king’s angels. Angels are higher than regular people, aren’t they?”

Penelope bit her lip. Josie had been listening carefully. Penelope was not sure she could quote that particular lengthy metaphor about the divinely granted rights of the peerage, and here this child had been brooding over it.

She looked across the churchyard at Nev. He did look like an angel to her-the sunlight cast a halo in his cinnamon hair. But how did he look to his people? Would they think he was pleased by Snively’s groveling?

Was Nev in danger?

Someone, people Josie knew, had been prowling around the Grange a few nights ago, armed and desperate. Something had to be done; someone had to keep them all safe. Maybe a firm hand was the answer; Penelope did not know. But she looked Josie in the eye and said, “We are all the same on the inside.”

“I hate that man,” Nev said with suppressed fury, as they walked the short distance from church to the Grange. “How could he talk to them that way and expect me to be flattered?”

“Your father must have had a reason for giving him the living,” Penelope said without conviction.

“It was supposed to be Percy’s,” Nev said bitterly. “My father always intended it for Percy.”

“What happened?”

“Percy would have made a terrible parson. But my father thought Percy could just collect the money, give a sermon every now and again, and be set for life. He didn’t understand that Percy couldn’t do that.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s just as well now.”

“And when Percy refused the living?”

“My father had a friend who had just married Snively’s cousin, and Snively was willing to toady to him and make a fourth at whist. My father looked no further.”

Penelope tried to remember if Nev had ever said anything good about the last Lord Bedlow. “Forgive me if this is impertinent, but-did you like your father?”

“Of course it’s not impertinent,” he flashed. “You’re my wife!”

She shrank back a little, but it was clear that his anger wasn’t directed at her.

“I don’t want us to be like that, Penelope. That’s how my parents always were. Like strangers who just happened to have spent twenty-five years together. If my mother ever asked what he had done when he was out, he told her that what a gentleman did when he was not at home had nothing to do with his wife.”

Penelope thought of her own parents. If her father had ever told her mother that anything he did had nothing to do with her, Mrs. Brown would have thrown the teapot at his head. And it would have been a vulgar display and Penelope would have been mortified, but-it seemed like the right response, somehow.

“And then he spent her jointure,” Nev said, “and he got himself shot. I daresay he would have thought that had nothing to do with her either.”

“Do you miss him?”

Nev shrugged. “It was impossible not to like him. But-that’s all he was: charming. Likable. You couldn’t rely on him.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to meet her eyes. “I don’t want to be like that, Penelope.”

It was exactly how she had pegged him, from the first moment they met, but she found herself saying, “ Nev, listen to me. No one trained you for this. Neither of us know what to do, and I wish to God one of us did, but-you’re here. You haven’t gone off to the Continent to live well on little money and left someone else to do the hard work.” She smiled at him. “I plan to rely on you for a good long time.”

He opened his mouth to answer her, and it began to rain-lightly at first, then harder. Within a minute it was pouring, and Penelope was half soaked. Nev stripped off his coat and put it around her. “I can’t even keep you out of the rain.”

“Yes, I blame you for the weather.”

He smiled, finally.

“Is there anywhere nearby we can take shelter?”

“The folly isn’t far off. Do you mind running for it?”

They pelted up a hill through the rain, Penelope holding up her skirts and hugging Nev ’s coat around her. When the folly came into view, she stopped running and stared. “Oh, my Lord.”

It sat on an outcrop of rock at the top of the hill: a round, squat tower with the roof gone from the upper floor. A broken wall and a great arch sprouted out of its side and straggled down the hill. It was much larger than she had expected-thirty feet high, at least. It was absurd and enormous and the most adorable thing she had ever seen.

“Come on!” Nev urged, and they ran the rest of the way. He held open a wooden door in the side of the round tower for her, then followed her in and slammed the door.