Longing

by Mary Balogh

  He was enjoying himself despite the fact that Siân Jones’s hand was in Owen Parry’s and Parry bent his head to kiss her briefly. Alex pursed his lips. He would swear that the kiss was for his benefit. Parry was putting the stamp of his possession on Verity’s governess.

  * * *

  Although Emrys Rhys was thirty-five years old, he was still a handsome man. His straight dark hair was still untainted with gray and was still as thick as it had ever been. He was still lean and hard-muscled. He still drew admiring glances from the women of the other valleys and soon had one of them clinging to his arm and laughing and chatting with him.

  Angharad felt a pang of regret that she could not somehow combine his best qualities with those of Josiah Barnes—Emrys’s good looks and virile strength and Mr. Barnes’s power and money and house.

  Angharad wanted to scratch the eyes out of the other woman, who was not even pretty in her estimation. She could not understand what Emrys saw in her.

  And yet she did not care either, she told herself. Pretty soon now Mr. Barnes was going to realize just how comfortable she made his home. And he was going to realize that it would be far more pleasant to have her in his bed all night every night than for just brief snatches of time in the afternoons.

  Let Emrys have his woman, whoever she was. Angharad did not care.

  And yet in the pavilion, when all the Cwmbran people were seating themselves in a block together, the better to cheer their own, Angharad took the empty chair beside Emrys quite by accident—she was looking the other way as she did so, waving enthusiastically to some imaginary friend.

  “Oh,” she said, turning her head when she was seated, “it is you, is it?”

  “Hello, Angharad,” he said. “You are looking very pretty today.”

  His eyes had a way of looking her over from head to toe so that she felt warmed and caressed. She had forgotten it.

  “Oh,” she said tartly, “I am surprised you have noticed, Emrys Rhys. You seemed to have eyes only for the woman who was hanging on your arm outside.”

  He smiled at her. “Jealous, are you, Angharad?” he asked.

  “Jealous?” She tossed her head. “You can have two women on each arm and it will not matter to me. I have my own interests.”

  “Yes.” The teasing smile faded from his face and he looked toward the stage, where the first competition was about to begin. “Yes, and so you do, Angharad. We had better be quiet or we will be frowned on by Cwmbran and hissed at by everyone else.”

  “I have nothing to say to you anyway, I am sure,” Angharad said.

  She sat silently at his side, stealing glances at his hands—strong, capable hands, their backs dotted with dark hairs, the square, short fingernails kept clean despite his job. And she remembered that whenever he had made love to her up on the mountain, he had always kissed her and whispered love nonsense to her while doing it and had always taken his time over it so that she could enjoy what everyone knew was really meant only for a man’s pleasure. The only other two men she had known—her husband and Josiah Barnes—had always gone at it hard and fast.

  Sometimes she longed for some of Emrys’s tenderness again.

  But she wanted more out of life than Emrys could offer. Mr. Barnes was her ticket to a better life.

  After the first competition, when everyone got up to stretch and move about, Emrys found a different place to sit.

  Angharad wiped away a tear with one knuckle. She did not care.

  * * *

  The soprano section of the solo competitions came last. Siân could have wished it was first so that she might have enjoyed the other three sections. And by the time her turn came the weight of responsibility was heavy on her shoulders. Cwmbran had taken second in both the tenor and baritone solos and an ignominious fourth in the contralto solo because Dilys Jenkins folded under the pressure of competition and breathed in all the wrong places.

  Siân, cold and clammy and sick with dread, lost her fear as she usually did once she was standing on the stage looking down at the audience and once she heard the familiar opening bars of “Llwyn On” on Glenys’s harp. She forgot everything except responding with her voice to the beauty of the music and the poignancy of the words.

  Always the most wonderful moment came at the end when the large audience applauded politely and the Cwmbran segment of the pavilion erupted in cheers and whistles and stampings. Siân always knew that it was for themselves and their own pride that they cheered more than for her individual performance, but that was the very fact that was precious about it. She never felt more a part of the community than she did at such a moment.

  And this year that sense of belonging was to be multiplied tenfold. For the first time the judges placed her first and the Cwmbran part of the pavilion went wild. Before they had all spilled outside while the stage was being set up for the next competition, Siân marveled that she had an unbroken bone left in her body. She had been hugged and kissed by almost everyone she knew and even by a few that she hardly knew at all. She had, it seemed, done Cwmbran proud.

  Owen swept her up outside the pavilion and twirled her about before kissing her hard. And then Emrys and Huw and Iestyn and several other men she knew from the mine converged on her and lifted her up bodily until she was riding, laughing and clinging, on the shoulders of two of them.

  “There is proud I am of you, fach,” Emrys said when her feet were finally on the ground again. He held her in a bear hug for a few moments and kissed her loudly on one cheek. “I am going all around now, bragging that my niece is the winner of the soprano solo.”

  “Siân”—Iestyn smiled at her and hugged her—“you sang like an angel.”

  Huw kissed her heartily on the lips. “Gwyn would be proud of you today, Siân,” he said. “I am proud of you, girl.”

  And then it was Mari’s turn and Siân’s grandparents’. Her grandmother had tears in her eyes.

  “Siân,” she said, hugging her granddaughter, “you came by it honestly, fach. Marged had a lovely voice. It did my heart good to hear you in there.”

  It would be hard to remember a happier moment, Siân thought.

  “Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones.” Someone was tugging at her skirt. “I knew you would win. I just knew it. I told you, didn’t I? The other ladies didn’t sing nearly as well as you. I am going to tell everyone that you are my teacher.”

  Siân bent down to hug Verity. “Thank you,” she said. “I am so very happy.”

  “Mrs. Jones. Many congratulations. It was a well-deserved win.”

  She smiled radiantly at the Marquess of Craille as he took both her hands in his, squeezed them tightly, and raised them one at a time to his lips.

  “Thank you.” She swayed toward him and lifted her face to his as she had done to a few dozen people before him—both men and women.

  He kissed her. Briefly and fully on the lips.

  It felt rather like being doused with water. Or more appropriately, perhaps, with fire. She realized what she had done, what she had invited, what she had forced him into, only when it was a few seconds too late to do differently. And having realized it, it was too late also to proceed in the only way that might have given the incident its least significance. She gripped his hands convulsively, felt herself blush from her toenails to the roots of her hair, and let her smile fall away to oblivion.

  And then he released his hands from her hold and turned away.

  Fortunately, there were a few other people crowding up to hug her and congratulate her.

  * * *

  The male voice choir competition as usual was both the climax and the highlight of the day. And as usual Cwmbran defeated their closest and bitterest rival by a few points—won by their tenor soloist in “Hiraeth,” the adjudicator explained. And so it was the tenor who was hoisted to shoulders and borne in triumph out of town and to the foot of the mountain on the way home in the
late twilight. Three firsts for Cwmbran—Siân Jones, little Lloyd Pritchard in the children’s recitation, and the male voice choir. It had been a happy day, a day to make one proud.

  Darkness fell as they toiled up the mountain, the children far more subdued than they had been that morning—a few of them rode their fathers’ shoulders. But it was not a deep darkness, the sky being clear and star-studded. The moon would be up before they reached the top, someone predicted.

  “Well, fach.” Owen’s arm was about Siân’s waist. “I get to escort the heroine of the day, do I?”

  She laughed. “Your choir won too, Owen,” she said. “I felt goose bumps when you sang.”

  “I am glad you won,” he said. “You should have won last year too.”

  “It did feel good, I must admit,” she said. “Everyone was very kind afterward.”

  He was silent for a while. “Craille is lucky I did not ram his teeth down his throat,” he said. “Could you not have avoided that grand display he made, Siân?”

  She had hoped that by some miracle Owen had not been watching. “His congratulations?” she said. “But everyone was congratulating me, Owen, and hugging and kissing me.”

  “On both hands and the lips?” he said. “People will be talking, Siân. I don’t like it. You are my woman and pretty soon I am going to have to start using my fists to stop the gossiping. But you are not doing much to help.”

  “Don’t spoil the day,” she said. But it was already spoiled. “No one is talking. There is nothing to talk about. He was happy for me. Everyone was happy for me. I think there can be scarcely a man in Cwmbran who did not kiss me after the winner was announced. And what do you mean by saying I am not doing much to help?”

  “I am beginning to look like a fool,” he said, “who cannot control my own woman.”

  “Don’t,” she said again, distress turning to annoyance. “I don’t like it when you talk tough, Owen. I don’t like being talked about as if I am a possession to be controlled, as you put it, by my owner.”

  “I think perhaps,” he said, “Gwyn was too soft with you, Siân. Perhaps because you are Fowler’s daughter and were educated in an English school and everybody thinks you are something a little bit special. You won’t find me so easy to rule. You had better learn that now.”

  “What exactly am I meant to learn?” She could hear her voice shaking.

  “That you are mine,” he said. “That you will not shame me by giving anyone even the whisper of a chance to link your name with any other man’s. That you will learn to toe the line if you know what is good for you.”

  “I think you had better complete that thought,” she said, “so that you can be quite sure that I understand you, Owen. If I know what is good for me. What would not be good for me? What if I do not—toe the line?”

  “I don’t want to quarrel,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that, Siân. We should be enjoying our triumph now, not going at each other’s throats. We haven’t quarreled before, have we? I didn’t mean to spoil the day for you, fach.”

  “What would happen,” she asked, “if I did not toe what you perceived to be the line, Owen?”

  He tutted. “A stubborn woman you are, Siân Jones,” he said. “I am going to have my hands full with you, aren’t I, fach? I will not put my hand to you unless you force me to it. There. Are you satisfied now? I am not a drinking man, Siân, or one given to sudden rages. And you are right. Everyone was kissing you and I did not think to object until he did it. He makes my blood boil if the truth were known. At least we know where we stand with Barnes. This man is pretending to be our friend just so that he can keep us beneath his broad thumb without our even realizing we are there. I hate that kind of hypocrisy.”

  I think he does care. Siân was about to say the words aloud, but she kept her mouth closed. She did not want to discuss the Marquess of Craille with Owen. He would not agree with her opinion anyway and perhaps he would twist the facts to distort her own image. He would accuse the marquess of slyness or oppression, for example, in stopping Blodwyn Williams from going to work while she was pregnant and in paying Blodwyn’s husband compensation for the injury he had got at work—something no other owner had ever done.

  Besides, she did not want to talk at all for a while. All the joy had gone out of her day. I will not put my hand to you unless you force me to it. She could not think of anything she would find more degrading than to be beaten by Owen, or any man. And yet if she forced him into it—or if he perceived that she had forced him—he would do it. She would have no recourse. He would be her husband in less than a month’s time. He would have the right to discipline her in any way he saw fit.

  Everyone was stopping on top of the mountain, as they had done in the morning, though not for a picnic this time. They were stopping for the traditional gymanfa ganu, the community singing that was always the windup to eisteddfod day. Glenys’s harp would be set up, and everyone would sing in the moonlight until tiredness and good sense sent them trickling down the mountain in twos and threes and family groups toward their beds and sleep.

  It was the part of the day Siân had looked forward to since her win. Now it was all spoiled. Now she wished she could just continue on down the hill. She disengaged herself from Owen’s arm and went to sit with some of the women.

  13

  ALEX was sitting apart from everyone else and out of sight of them too, behind an outcropping of rock. He sat with his knees drawn up, his arms draped over them, looking down to the moonlit valley that had somehow come to feel like home. He had stolen some moments for himself, Verity having attached herself to a group of Sunday School children who were now sitting in a ring among the adults, singing with them.

  He was not feeling lonely. Not really. Certainly not in any unpleasant way. In fact he was feeling remarkably happy. And at peace with himself and the world and quite ready to tackle the hard task facing him in the coming week. He had been privileged today, he felt, and more thankful than he could express that Verity had pressed him to come and that he had given in all too readily.

  What was happening there on the mountaintop should be hilariously funny. Almost a whole town was camped out there in the moonlight when they could be tucked up cozily in their beds, singing in glorious harmony. Glenys Richards was seated in full state at her harp, its little cart standing close by under the guardianship of her husband. And the Reverend Llewellyn, still immaculate in clerical black, was conducting with his baton.

  It should have been funny, but it was not. It was expressive of the whole warm and wonderful culture into which he had stepped quite unsuspectingly just a few weeks ago. The sounds of harp music and singing somehow blended with the wild landscape and the moonlight. Man in tune with nature—despite the industry that was raping their valley down below.

  The lives of these people were hard, he knew, and he was responsible for having made them harder than they need be. But even so they seemed to have the capacity to live and to love and to reach beyond themselves for what was permanent and beautiful. They were a people who had added a spiritual dimension to lives that might have been unutterably dreary. He was glad suddenly that he had it within his power to improve their daily lives. Soon. Starting next week, as soon as he had met with the other owners.

  He looked up suddenly as someone came around the rock that shielded him from view. He expected to see Verity, but it was Siân. She stopped when she saw him but did not retreat. She appeared to be alone.

  “Come and sit down,” he said, and was surprised when she did so, without saying a word. She sat down quite close to him and clasped her knees with her arms.

  “You are not singing with everyone else?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “It has been a wonderful day,” he said. “There is a warm and strong sense of community in this part of the world.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It means a great deal to be a p
art of it.”

  “And yet there is a mingling of communities too,” he said with a smile. “I noticed that your brother-in-law was a great favorite with the girls from the other towns today. He was hand-in-hand with one of them before the day was out.”

  “Iestyn?” she said. “Yes. There will doubtless be many treks over the mountain for him in the coming weeks. The girl will be fortunate who wins Iestyn’s heart.”

  “You are fond of him,” he said.

  “He was just twelve years old when I married his brother,” she said. “He wanted so badly to go to school and to college. He wanted to be a minister. He used to try to learn what I remembered from school and taught him. But he never complains. He smiles his way through life.”

  They were quiet for a while. Companionably quiet while music surrounded them.

  “This is all so beautiful,” he said, indicating the valley with one arm. “Peaceful. It is well worth the climb.”

  She nodded and lifted her face to the moonlight. Her eyes were closed, he saw.

  “Has something happened?” he asked. “To send you away from everyone else, I mean?” He did not believe she had come seeking him.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. “No,” she said. “Nothing has happened. Just reaction to the excitement of the day, I think. I wanted to be alone.”

  “And I had stolen your spot,” he said. “Do you want me to go away?”

  She shook her head.

  “It was a wonderful day for you,” he said. “I was very happy that you won.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and grasped her knees more tightly so that she could rest her cheek on them.

  She wanted quietness, he saw, and gave it to her. He leaned back against the rock so that he could watch her. It was hard to tell if she was tired or peaceful or unhappy. She had her eyes closed again. But she was not uncomfortable in his company, as he might have expected her to be. And her presence only added to his contentment. It was the icing on the cake of a happy day.