How can I make a markup-text with a concatanation of italic text and the \sustainOn symbol?

[Robert Blackstone]

Dear all,

I am presently re-engraving a number of almost forgotten piano pieces.

One of them has under the first bar of the LH staff the text: "sempre 2 Ped", Ped being the usual standard notation as generated by \sustainOn.

Although the LilyPond documentation tells me somewhere that "Pedal indications may be placed in a Dynamics context, which aligns them on a horizontal line." this does obviously not imply that a markup-construction such as

"\markup {\line {\concat \italic { più } { \dynamics f } }}" can be used in my case. 

What should I do here to align "sempre 2" with \sustainOn? 

Thanks in advance for any  advice.

Best regards,

Robert Blackstone