by Mary Balogh
Ceris looked up and held his gaze for a few moments, her own eyes filling with a longing that was quickly hidden when she lowered them again to the ground at her feet.
"Wait and see? Give him a chance?" Marged Evans's voice was incredulous and taut with fury. "I do not need to give him a chance. For two years he has had his chance. That is long enough. Too long. Can Eurwyn be given a second chance? Eurwyn is dead, thanks to Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern." She almost spat out the name, her back straight, her bosom out, her chin up. As always Marged, tall, lithe, and beautiful drew both eyes and attention.
"Eurwyn committed a crime, Marged," the Reverend Llwyd said firmly, ever courageous despite her obvious anger.
She turned it on him, her cheeks flushing, her eyes flashing. "A crime," she said. "A crime to try to stop his people from starving. Oh, yes, a crime, Dada. A capital crime, as it turned out. A crime for which he died. My husband died, leaving behind him a farm to be run by three women, by his wife and his mother and his grandmother. Eurwyn died because Geraint Penderyn cares for no one but Geraint Penderyn. And we are to give him a chance? A chance for what, pray? To raise our rents again? To force the tithes from us even if we starve as a result? To force us to pay ever more and higher tolls at the gates so that we cannot go to and from market or bring the lime we need to fertilize our fields? To force us from our land into the workhouse?"
The Reverend Llwyd, Marged's father, raised one hand again. "It is not for us to break the law, even to right a wrong," he said. "Two wrongs do not make a right. We must leave the righting of wrongs to the Lord. 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'"
There was a chorus of murmurings from the gathered congregation, which had not this morning broken up into several smaller groups, as it usually did. But it was not clear who was murmuring assent and who was indicating disagreement. The two combatants stood facing each other at opposite sides of the crowd, the father on the chapel steps, the daughter on the street.
"Well, sometimes, Dada," Marged said, uncowed, "the Lord needs a helping hand. And here are two." She raised two slim hands, callused palms out. "I say that if and when the Earl of Wyvern shows his face in Glynderi or on any of our farms, we give him the welcome he deserves."
"Which can be interpreted more than one way, mind, Marged," Miss Jenkins said.
"I know how I will welcome him if he dares to come to Ty-Gwyn," Marged said.
"He has a right to go there, Marged," Ninian Williams reminded her. "Your farm belongs to him just as mine does. Just as all the farms around by here do. It would be best to be polite and to wait and see."
"Perhaps," Aled said, "we would not be feeling quite so angry if he were anyone but Geraint. We think of Geraint as a person. It is easier to focus our displeasure and our protests just on owners generally. It is too bad he has decided to come back here just now. I don't like it."
"But he has come and he is Geraint Penderyn," Marged said, drawing her cloak more closely about her. "I am going home. Are you coming, Ceris?"
Ceris glanced at Aled to see if he would say more. But he had turned away. "I will go on ahead with Marged, then, Mam," she said, turning toward her mother and smiling too at her father before stepping out into the street to begin the long walk home along the river and up into the lower hills—one and a half miles for her, two for Marged.
The crowd outside the chapel split, according to age and gender, into its more usual smaller groups.
Chapter 2
Marged and Ceris had been close friends for most of their lives despite the fact that they were almost as different from each other as it was possible to be. But they had one thing in common that perhaps accounted for their relationship. They both believed passionately in goodness and right.
Marged shortened her stride to match that of her smaller friend. "'Aled has an incurable sense of fairness, you know," she said. "He will not immediately turn to violence. He was one of Geraint's few friends when we were children. He was one of the few who bothered with him when he came back here ten years ago. He will give him a chance now. You must not worry that he will die as Eurwyn died."
Ceris bowed her head, so that for a few moments the brim of her bonnet hid her face. "I do not worry about Aled Rhoslyn," she said. "He is nothing to me, Marged."
Marged sighed. "The old story," she said. "I am your friend who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, Ceris. Perhaps better in some ways. Why are you still unmarried and living with your mam and dada at your age if Aled means nothing to you?"
"I have not found the right man," Ceris said.
"You have," Marged told her. "That is the trouble. He will not go to burn Geraint in his bed tonight, you know. More is the pity." She laughed briefly.
"You do not mean that, Marged." Her friend looked at her reproachfully.
"No," Marged admitted. "Not quite, I suppose."
"But it does not matter, don't you see?" Ceris's voice and face were unhappy. "Aled is committed to disobedience, to worse than disobedience. As soon as he agreed to represent Glynderi—"
"On the committee?" Marged completed the sentence for her. "The less said out loud about that the better. So far it has been kept so secret that no one who ought not to know about it does. Let us pray it stays that way. None of us know who the other members are. Perhaps it would be better to pretend we do not even know Aled is a member. Perhaps it would be better not to talk about it openly among friends."
"Aled was more than a friend," Ceris said with unusual candor. "I know it in my heart, Marged. Even if I must never talk about it, even if I must pretend even to myself that I do not know it, I do know it. Aled represents this area on the committee that is to decide what we can do to show our displeasure to the landowners and perhaps to draw the attention and sympathy of the government in London. There, it is said. I cannot love such a man. I cannot."
Marged sighed again. "Then it is better to suffer oppression and injustice in silence?" she said. "It is better to be driven from our land and our means of livelihood? It is better to watch children starve? It is better to see families forced into the workhouse, where they are separated from one another and where they are slowly starved? Where their spirits are broken even before their bodies die?"
"Oh, Marged." Ceris looked up at her, tears in her eyes. "You have learned it from your dada, that way of talking you have. You make it sound like a glorious thing to fight against oppression. You make it sound cowardly to refuse to use violence. But violence does nothing but breed more of itself. Look what happened to Eurwyn. Ah, I am sorry. I ought not to have said that."
"Eurwyn would rather be dead than alive and at home now, afraid to act on his convictions," Marged said. "And I am proud of him even though I have been left alone without him. Yes, I am, though it was cruel. Ah, it was cruel, the way he died. And nothing from Geraint Penderyn, from the Earl of Wyvern, though I lowered myself to write him letters and remind him of a time when I had befriended him. Oh, yes, I could almost wish that Aled would go and burn him in his bed tonight."
"No, you do not, Marged," Ceris said.
"I did say almost." Marged was tight-lipped and angry. They lapsed into silence.
She did not want him back at Tegfan, Marged thought. She had been hurt too deeply by him. When he was a child and smaller than she even though he was two years older, she had befriended him. She had championed him even though it was her father who, with the deacons, had driven his mother from chapel. She had continued to champion him throughout his boyhood after he had been sent away to England and never came back or wrote letters to any of his former friends. She had always been one for causes, she thought rather bitterly now.
Clouds were moving across the sky from the west, heavy clouds. It would rain later. She drew her hood up over her head and wished her cloak was not so old, so close to being threadbare. There was so little money for anything but the bare necessities. But then for some there was not even that much.
Even when he came back to Tegfan for his mother's
funeral, she had been prepared to take his part, even though he was silent and morose and arrogant in manner and spoke nothing but English—in a very cultured way. She had told herself and everyone else that he was merely shy, that he needed time. And she had been very eager at the age of sixteen to fall in love with his handsome face and figure. He had been unexpectedly tall and attractive—and attentive.
Until he had made it very clear to her one day that he saw her as nothing better than one of his London whores. And the next day, when she had thought he came to the manse to apologize, he had talked exclusively with her father and had ignored her apart from one cold and insolent look.
It was the last time she had seen him, she realized now.
He had had his revenge for his slapped face and unrequited lust that afternoon. He had ignored her groveling pleas for Eurwyn. And Eurwyn had died.
Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern, had killed her husband.
"Oh, Marged." Ceris fell back, panting. "I cannot keep up with your pace, girl. You will have to go on ahead."
Marged slowed her pace again with a smile of apology. Ceris had always contended that the Earl of Wyvern had never received her letters. She herself would not excuse him so easily.
And now he was back. Oh, yes, if he dared to come near Ty-Gwyn, though it was his and she only paid rent on it, she would know how to welcome him. She could hardly wait. And yet for all that she wished he had not come. She wished he had been content to keep his person and his wealth and his consequence and his—oh. his Englishness—in London for the rest of his life.
"Do you really think there is going to be trouble?" Ceris sounded desperately in need of reassurance.
"I sincerely hope so," Marged said. "It is high time. Other parts of West Wales have not been as slow and as cautious as we have. Perhaps the arrival of the Earl of Wyvern will have one positive result."
"Rebecca?" Ceris asked unhappily.
"If someone brave enough will play her part," Marged said. "I would do it myself except that no man would accept a woman as Rebecca. Ironic, isn't it? I thought that perhaps Aled—"
"Oh, Duw, no!" Ceris wailed. "Not that he is anything to me, of course."
"Perhaps now that Geraint Penderyn is here in person, people will be able to see that the enemy is very real," Marged said. "Perhaps now someone will be goaded into leading the protest. There are enough of us, heaven knows, who are willing and eager to follow."
"Us?" Ceris stopped walking, having reached the lane that led to her father's farm. ''Us, Marged? Surely you would not—"
"Oh, yes, I would," Marged said fiercely. "I have to be the man at Ty-Gwyn, Ceris. I have to stand in place of Eurwyn for his mam and his gran. Well, then, I will stand in place of Eurwyn in other matters, too. I would like to see the man who will stop me."
Ceris sighed. "Oh, Marged," she said, "how wrong you are, girl. Home for dinner now, then, is it?"
"Yes." Marged smiled. "Home for dinner. Home to wait and see what will happen. But not for long if I have anything to say in the matter."
She turned to stride onward up the grassy hill track to the white longhouse that had been home since her marriage seven years before to Eurwyn Evans.
Ceris stood at the end of the lane, watching her go. Poor Marged. There was so much bitterness in her, so much hatred. And so much potential violence—as there was in so many people these days. Even Aled… Sometimes she wondered if she was the one who was wrong. But it seemed so clear to her that violent protest would only bring more suffering. And hatred had never mended any bridges.
But her thoughts were interrupted before she could turn in the direction of home. Someone hailed her from a short distance across the hill, and she waited for him to come up to her. He was neither a very tall nor a very robust man, but he was dressed smartly in a greatcoat and boots, and he was removing a top hat to reveal smooth fair hair. He was good-looking, Ceris thought, if not exactly handsome.
"Good morning, Mr. Harley," she said in English.
"Good morning, Miss Williams," he said. "And a fine morning it is too. I decided to take a walk after church."
She smiled at him. He frequently took walks after the Anglican service, and their paths often crossed. Deliberately, she believed.
"I am not ready to go home yet," he said. "I suppose you would not care to stroll with me for half an hour, Miss Williams?"
"I have to help my mother with dinner, Mr. Harley," she said, making an excuse as she always did when he issued such invitations. But she was still feeling somewhat upset over the morning's events. And she was twenty-five years old, she reminded herself, and would no longer allow herself to love Aled. Could she do better than Matthew Harley? He was English, which fact she must not hold against him. He was also the Earl of Wyvern's steward, a man of some importance. A man who would be able to support a wife in some comfort—she shook off the thought as unworthy of her. He was a man who must not be blamed for being tough over rents and tithes and other matters. He was merely doing a job.
He had already bidden her a good morning and turned onto the downward path she had just walked with Marged.
"Mr. Harley," she called impulsively, and when he turned back to her she had no choice but to continue. "Perhaps later this afternoon? Perhaps you would like to come to tea? Mam would be pleased. And we could take a walk afterward."
"Thank you," he said. "I should like that." He touched his hat to her and continued on his way.
She was left feeling breathless and almost panic-stricken. What had she just started? She was not at all sure she even liked him. She felt almost repelled when she imagined him touching her—or kissing her. But that was only because for years she had thought of no man that way but Aled. It felt like being unfaithful to invite another man to tea, to suggest walking out with another man. And that was ridiculous.
Besides, he was only coming for tea and a little walk. There was nothing in that.
* * *
For two days after his arrival at Tegfan, his large Welsh Carmarthenshire estate, Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern, did not venture beyond the house and park. It felt strange to be back.
He had other estates in England and other grander houses, including the one in London. And yet this one felt strangely large and empty despite the presence of servants. He should perhaps have brought some friends down with him. He had not thought of it at the time.
Of course, the house really was unfamiliar to him. He had lived in it for only a few weeks at the age of twelve before being packed off to England and the waking nightmare that had faced him there. Tegfan had been bewildering and intimidating. His grandfather had been terrifying. His mother had been absent. He had not been allowed to see her. Despite his twelve years and despite the fact that he had been a bold urchin from infancy, he had begged and pleaded for her. And cried for her.
They had been as hard as nails, his grandfather and the servants appointed to look after him for those few weeks.
And he had lived in this house for three weeks at the time of his mother's funeral. Three weeks before fleeing back to London and vowing never to return, a bewildered boy caught between two worlds. And in love for the first time—and the only time—and gauche and foolish. And very unhappy.
During those two days of rain and heavy clouds, he stood a great deal at the window of his bedchamber, gazing broodingly out over the rolling land of the park and across the distant river, or wandered about the house, or paced through the stables, or strode over soggy grass and among dripping trees. Wishing he had not come. Wondering why that snippet of a conversation between strangers had impelled him to such uncharacteristically impulsive behavior. Wanting to go beyond the park. Wanting to return to London and the familiarity of his life there without further ado.
On the third day he rode over to Pantnewydd, the neighboring estate, smaller than his own, its lands less prosperous, its house less grand. Sir Hector Webb lived there with his wife, Geraint's aunt, his father's sister. They had not met many times. There was
no closeness between them. Understandably, he supposed. Tegfan was unentailed. For twelve years after the death of her brother, Lady Stella had fully expected that the estate would be willed to her and her husband.
And then Geraint had stepped suddenly and unwillingly between them and their expectations.
He was given a correct, if somewhat frosty welcome. He was regaled over tea with an account of the shameful goings-on at a neighbor's estate a few nights before, when a mob had burned down Mitchell's hayricks merely because his bailiff had been seizing goods in lieu of unpaid tithes among the farmers there.
"As if it were the right of every man, woman, and child to refuse to pay lawful taxes on the grounds that they cannot afford them," Lady Stella said. "I have always said this is a barbaric country in which to live."
"'Before we know it, we will be back to the Rebecca Riots of thirty-nine," Sir Hector said. "The leaders of that should not have been left with the impression that they had won. They should have been hunted down and hanged, or transported for life at the very least."
"They won?" Geraint asked politely.
"Three new tollgates there were," Sir Hector explained. "All erected to catch the farmers hauling lime from the kilns and evading other gates. The mob pulled down all three, the one at Efailwen several times when the trust kept replacing it. Eventually the trust took all three gates away and no more was said. It was a fatal show of weakness, as I said at the time."
"At least with Jones and Tegid you do not have to worry about trouble on your land, Wyvern," Lady Stella said grudgingly. "They have never stood for any nonsense and all your people know it."
Bryn Jones was his bailiff, Geraint knew. He had met the man just that morning and not much liked him. Huw Tegid had used to work with his grandfather's gamekeeper and was quite possibly the gamekeeper himself now. Geraint knew precious little about his Welsh estate. He had always deliberately avoided knowing anything about it, although he had been at pains to learn everything there was to be learned about his other estates.