by Mary Balogh
He was unwelcome. He could see it in her eyes, could sense it in every line of her body. The foolish curtsy and her words, spoken unexpectedly in English, merely confirmed the fact. He did not realize until that moment how much he had hoped she had forgotten that foolishness of ten years ago. Or perhaps she had forgotten. Surely she had. It was just that circumstances had changed. Ten years had passed. She had been married and widowed during those years. He was the Earl of Wyvern now. She would expect him to have changed. And she would be right.
But he was disappointed. She had been his first friend. His wonderful friend. That was how he had described her to his mother that first day, when he had bounded back up the mountain, his mouth stained purple from berries. I have a wonderful friend, Mam. His mother had held him tightly, his face pressed against her too thin body, and smoothed her thin fingers gently through his curly hair.
"I hear that you run the farm yourself," he said now in English. "I hear that your husband passed away. I am sorry about that, Marged."
Her jaw tightened and her eyes grew hard. It was an expression he remembered from her childhood, though it had usually been used then against those who would have driven him away or scolded her for playing with him.
"I run the farm myself," she said, "with a little help from laborers when I can afford it. Did you think it impossible for a woman to do? I have always paid the rent, even this year. And the tithes."
Even this year? What was significant about this year? he wondered. He did not ask. But he understood her bristly manner suddenly, her belligerence. And it was so typical of Marged as he remembered her. She was afraid he had come to question her ability to run a farm herself. Her hackles were up.
"Perhaps," he said, "you could show me the farm." He looked about the yard and at the house. It all looked very well kept to him.
For a moment she did not move. She continued to look at him with her hard eyes and unreadable expression. And then she dipped into her curtsy again. "Certainly, my lord," she said, "I am your servant."
If she had been, he thought with a flash of annoyance, he would have put her in her place in a moment. He did not tolerate insolence from subordinates.
"The pigpen is too large for our needs," she said, indicating it with a sweep of one arm. "My father-in-law built it years ago. But one does not rebuild a stone pigpen to accommodate one's needs. We have only Nellie now, and she is still here only because on my marriage I made the mistake of naming her and making a pet of her and now cannot bear the thought of slaughtering her."
She turned toward the house. And yet, he thought, it would be wise surely to buy or breed more pigs. When he had been a child, all the farmers had had half a dozen or so. Bacon and ham had been a staple food, though not with his mother and him, of course. He followed her across the yard toward the house. There were a few chickens pecking away at some grain in one corner. He could see some sheep grazing in a meadow to one side of the yard.
"The cows are still being kept inside," she said. "I will be letting them out soon, but one can never assume that spring is here to stay merely because there has been some nice weather. I would not wish to put the calves or the milk at risk."
She spoke briskly, impersonally, entirely in English. She walked with long, purposeful strides and no enticing swaying of the hips. And yet she looked utterly feminine, nevertheless.
He stepped after her through the front door and into the dark, cool passageway beyond. The cow barn was to his right. One cow lowed contentedly. Geraint counted ten stalls. Five of them were occupied. Three of the cows had calves with them. Although there were the inevitable smells of a barn, it was clean and orderly, he saw. The straw on the ground looked fresh.
"The stalls were all full five years ago," she said. "We have had to sell half the herd gradually."
He did not ask why.
'They look well cared for," he said. "You do all the work with them, Marged? And all the milking?"
"My mother-in-law does most of that," she said. 'There are other things for me to do and only a certain number of hours in each day."
He had seen no sign yet of the mother-in-law or the grandmother.
She led him through the passageway and out into a lean-to built onto the back of the house. It was a dairy, he saw. The dirt floor and the slate surfaces of the work area were clean. There were both butter and cheese in the making.
"You sell the produce?" he asked. He had used to envy the children of farmers, on their way to market with their parents, the carts in which they rode laden with produce.
"When there is a market for it." she said. "There have been strikes in the coalfields and at the ironworks. There is no money there now for Carmarthenshire butter and cheese. And prices have fallen."
"Have they?" He looked at her. "That is a pity."
"Yes," she agreed, her voice tight with anger, "it is."
As if he was responsible for the shrinking market and the drop in prices.
"And your crops?" he asked. "You hire laborers to put them in for you?"
"I do it myself," she said. "Plows are not so hard to use if one has well-trained horses. Ours are getting old, but they are good. I work the land myself. At harvesttime I need help."
He had seen men pushing the heavy plows behind the horses or oxen, struggling to keep the furrows straight and uniformly deep. He did not believe for a moment that plows were not hard to use. Was she too stubborn to hire a man to do the work for her? Did she have to prove to every man about Glynderi and Tegfan that she was their equal?
He reached out on an sudden impulse and took both her hands in his. He turned them palm up and looked down at them. It was only as he did so that he realized that touching her was not such a good idea. Holding the backs of her hands cupped in his palms suddenly seemed unwisely intimate. And he had had to take a step closer to her in order to do so. He was holding her thumbs back with his own, he realized.
He looked up into her eyes. Another mistake. She had always had the steadiest eyes he had ever known. He could not remember ever trying to stare Marged down, but it would have been a useless game, one impossible to win. And he remembered now how those gray eyes had always been fringed by long lashes, several shades darker than her hair. They had not changed.
"Calluses," he said softly, tightening his grip as he felt a tremor in her hands.
"You know the word and its meaning," she said equally softly. There was no suggestion of sarcasm in her tone, though it was there undisguised in her eyes. "They come from hard, honest work, my lord."
She licked her lips when his eyes lowered to them, though he knew she did not do so with any intention of being provocative. He felt his breath quicken even so. Belatedly, he released her hands.
"My lord," she said, "would you care to step into the kitchen and take a cup of tea with us?"
Why did she hate him so much? he wondered. Could a boy's fumbled attempts at seduction have made her so angry even ten years later? Or was it merely the fact that he was now wealthy and she was not? The possibility that Marged of all people could be so mean-minded annoyed him. He inclined his head curtly.
"Thank you," he said.
For a few moments longer she stared into his eyes, unconcealed resentment and hostility in her own. And for those same moments he stared back, angry himself, on the verge of asking her straight out what he had done to offend her. But he had learned years and years ago, perhaps from his birth, but certainly from his twelfth year, not to open himself deliberately to disappointment or hurt or rejection.
He recognized danger with Marged and closed himself off against it.
And then she turned and strode off back down the passageway to the low doorway leading into the kitchen of the house. He followed her and found himself standing on the flagstones of the kitchen floor, turning toward the large open fireplace. Sitting in the inglenook beside the fire was an elderly woman, whom he could not remember seeing before. She was nodding her head, presumably in acknowledgment of his appearance. In front of the fire, the
Mrs. Evans he remembered—Madoc Evans's wife—was bobbing a curtsy and directing her flustered gaze at his feet.
He inclined his head to them both and bade them a good morning.
"His lordship is doing us the honor of taking a cup of tea with us, Mam, Gran," Marged said, still speaking in English. "Do take a seat, my lord." She motioned him toward a bare wooden settle close to the fire and turned toward the dresser to lift down cups and saucers.
Geraint sat.
Chapter 4
She was furious with herself. She had been proud of the way she had been able to mingle contempt and courtesy and of the impersonality of her manner. She had been delighted to sense that he understood but did not know quite what to do about it.
And then he had startled her by taking her hands in his and turning them palm up and looking down at the calluses. Her first reaction had been horror and shame. Until she married Eurwyn she had always taken pains to dress and behave as much like a lady as she knew how. She had read as widely as she was able and had learned several accomplishments. She had thought that perhaps she would try to persuade the old earl or his steward to open a school so that she could teach the children from the farms and village. But she had been flattered by Eurwyn's attentions and offer of marriage and had accepted. He was a man she had admired. Most of the calluses had come after his death, though she had worked hard even before that.
She wore her calluses with pride. And yet her first reaction to the knowledge that he was looking down at them was shame and embarrassment. Shame that she had to work hard for a living. Embarrasrment that she did not look like a lady.
Her second reaction had been one of acute physical awareness. An awareness of the warmth and strength of his hands against the back of hers. An awareness of his closeness. He really was taller than he had been ten years before. And broader. And he smelled—expensive. She had looked up into his face and he had raised his own eyes almost at the same moment. He had always had the bluest eyes she had ever seen.
When he had spoken, she had managed somehow to think of a fittingly cutting reply. But in reality she had been mesmerized by his eyes and then acutely aware of the fact that their gaze had dropped to her mouth. For a moment she had felt as if her heart would beat its way right through her bosom and be exposed to view. She had thought he was going to kiss her. But she had done nothing to try to prevent its happening.
And then he had released her hands. But not before he must have felt her tremble. She knew he must have felt it. His grip had tightened.
She was furious with herself. Furious that she had felt shame. Furious that she had felt and responded to the pull of his masculinity.
He was the reason there was no pig but Nellie on the farm. He was the reason there were only five cows left and their calves. And only a few chickens. And fewer sheep than there had ever been before. And no new clothes for almost two years now. He was the reason she could not hire a man to do the heavy work on the farm. She did not know if she would even be able to afford someone at harvesting time. He was the reason Eurwyn was not here to do the heavy work himself.
And yet she was one of the fortunate ones. Somehow they were still here at the farm and still functioning, she and Mam and Gran. Some people were not still on their farms. The Parrys, for example, driven out finally by the newest raise in the rents, living up on the moors, hoping somehow to pick up enough casual work that they could avoid the dreaded and final move to the workhouse. And there were plenty more living on the brink, in debt, unable to absorb even one more small raise in the rent or one more poor harvest or fall in market prices.
Geraint Penderyn was responsible for it all. And yet she had felt shame to have him see her ruined hands. And she had been attracted to his male splendor.
She spread a cloth on the kitchen table and set out cups and saucers while her mother-in-law poured boiling water into the teapot and set the cozy over it so that the tea would steep. Marged made no attempt to make conversation, though she could feel the tension while Geraint asked politely, in that very cultured English accent of his, after the health of the other two women and they answered in monosyllables. She enjoyed his discomfort, though he kept talking. Gentlemen, of course, were trained to converse even when there was nothing whatsoever to say.
She did not glance at him. And yet she was aware that he looked all about the kitchen—at the open fire with the bread oven in the chimneypiece beside it and the large pot and kettle suspended by chains over it; at the plain table with its simple wooden benches; at the dresser and the cupboard bed in which she had slept with Eurwyn and now slept alone; at the door into the combined parlor and bedroom, where the other two women slept; at the spinning wheel, which occupied her during the evenings when there was no other work to do; at the harp.
She knew that his eyes lingered on her harp. She had used to play it even as a child. She had sneaked Geraint into the manse one day when her father was out visiting and had played and sung for him. She could remember now her amazement at his rapt expression and at his insistence that she play and sing over and over to him. She had sneaked him in often after that, just as he had sneaked her onto the forbidden territory of Tegfan park, confident that he knew where all the gamekeeper's traps were set and could take her on a safe path. She had taught him to sing with her. He had had a pure and sweet soprano voice.
"Do you still play, Marged?" he asked now, bringing her eyes to his at last.
She picked up the teapot, though her mother-in-law had been about to do so, and began to pour the tea. "When I have the time," she said. "Not often." She concentrated on keeping her hands steady and cursed herself because the effort was necessary.
"Oh, but she do play lovely, our Marged," old Mrs. Evans said from her seat in the inglenook. "And she sings like an angel."
Gran did not do much these days except rock in her chair and gaze into the fire. She did not even knit now, her fingers having become too bent and too stiff.
"Then I must hear her," he said, meeting her eyes as she handed him his cup and saucer. His own were as cold as ever and yet there was something in them that hinted at a challenge. "Sometime."
When hell is dripping with icicles, Marged thought, but she said nothing. She sat down and picked up her own cup of tea. It should have been a rare luxury to sit thus in the middle of the morning, but she would far rather have been at work. He was sitting where Eurwyn had liked to sit. Her own fault—without thinking she had indicated that particular corner of the settle. It did not matter.
Except that she could not stop herself from comparing the two men. Eurwyn had been heavyset, ruddily handsome. He had rarely worn anything but work clothes and had laughed at her for wanting to wash them almost every day. She would wear them out in no time with her scrubbing, he had told her. And he had always drunk his tea in noisy sips. She had hated to sit listening to him. She had always tried to occupy herself with something that would make a noise and drown out the sounds. It had been a silly irritation that she had never been able quite to quell.
Geraint—the Earl of Wyvern—was slim and quietly elegant and immaculate. He had removed his cloak and set it on the settle beside him. Even his boots appeared to have picked up none of the dust of the path. He conversed with apparent ease, though Marged guessed that he felt the discomfort the rest of them were less adept at disguising. Eurwyn had never seemed to feel the need to keep a conversation going. He had spoken only when he had had something to say, though he had not been a morose man. Geraint drank his tea silently.
He was without a doubt the most handsome and the most attractive man she had ever met, Marged decided. And the thought angered her. If his whole life had not changed suddenly at the age of twelve, if he had not been educated as a gentleman, if he had not inherited the wealth with which to dress expensively, would he be any more attractive now than Eurwyn had been? Or any other man of her acquaintance?
Yes, an annoyingly honest part of her mind admitted. Even as a child, as a thin and ragged and frequentl
y dirty waif, he had been beautiful. She had fallen in love with his beauty at the age of sixteen. With nothing else. There had been nothing else to love. Well, she was ten years older now. Ten years wiser. Beauty alone could no longer seduce her.
And heaven knew she had reason enough to hate the man behind the beauty.
He was rising to take his leave, nodding to her in-laws, thanking them for the tea, turning to her with a look of inquiry, commanding her with his eyes and his whole aristocratic bearing to see him on his way. He picked up his cloak and his hat from the settle.
She walked to the gate with him in silence, her chin up. She had called herself his servant earlier, but in reality she was no man's servant. He might own the land on which they walked and he might in a few years, if rents continued to rise and prices continued to fall, force her out, but at the moment it was her land. She had worked for it. She had earned every callus on her hands.
He opened the gate and stepped out into the lane. He closed the gate, turning toward her in order to do so. He looked at her, and she would not look away from his eyes.
"I am sorry your husband died, Marged," he said. "But you appear to be doing very well here on your own."
Something snapped in her. She threw back her head and glared at him. "You are sorry," she said almost in a whisper. But the fury could not be controlled. Her eyes flashed. "You are sorry! You may take your sorrow, Geraint Penderyn, and stuff it down your throat. Go away from here. I have paid my rent and this farm is mine until rent day next year. Go away. You are not welcome here."
He looked startled for a moment. But he did not retaliate. She would have liked nothing better than a fight, which she could not possibly have won. But he kept his gentlemanly calm.
"No," he said quietly. "I realized that from the start, Marged."
He put on his hat—it succeeded only in making him look even more elegant—and turned away from her. She watched him walk down the lane and itched to hurl some choice epithets after him. She knew a few despite the fact that she was her father's daughter and was a regular chapel goer. She would have loved to hurl more than epithets, but her hands were empty. Besides, it would be lowering to yell with shrill hysteria or to throw missiles.