Longing

by Mary Balogh

  He took the locket from her fingers and opened it. A miniature—a flattering portrait—of a younger Sir John Fowler looked up at him from one side and one of Siân from the other—except that it could not be Siân.

  “Your mother?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I look like her.”

  “I can understand,” he said, closing the locket and tucking it back into the neckline of her dress, “why he fell in love with her.” He looked into her eyes.

  “I can accept now that it was love,” she said. “I used to tell myself that it was merely lust. But I think I was a product of a love affair.”

  He smiled at her and then sobered. There was something that had been worrying him. “Siân,” he asked, “is there any chance that you are with child?”

  She blushed and bit her lower lip. “No,” she said. “None at all.”

  It was hard to understand the stab of disappointment he felt since the last thing he wanted to have done was to have impregnated her and forced her under his protection.

  “Siân.” He took one of her hands in both of his. He could not let her go. He would not. “Is it really what you want for yourself? This teaching job?”

  “Yes.” She looked back into his eyes. She seemed very calm, very sure of herself. “I know now that I can never belong fully in a place like Cwmbran. I mean, I can never become like everyone else merely by trying or by taking the same sort of job as they have or by marrying one of them. I have to accept the fact that I am somewhat different. I have to find out where I do belong and I have to learn to be happy with who I am and what I am. I know that I belong in Wales. And I am almost sure that I belong here as a teacher. But I need to be in a different place, where I can establish my real identity from the start.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “you belong with me, Siân.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said, “of that at least I am sure. I could never be happy with you, Alexander. I could never be me if I stayed with you. My identity would be submerged in yours as it would have in Owen’s had I married him. Selfish and unchristian as it may sound, I have to be me. My father is going to help me find myself. It is fitting, I believe. I am excited by the prospect of the future.”

  He felt as if a leaden weight had settled in the pit of his stomach. Verity was sailing back toward them, her arms extended again.

  “Siân,” he said quickly, desperate to say it before it was too late, “you know that I love you. I’ll not burden you with the fact and I’ll do no more to persuade you into a way of life that would only bring you unhappiness. But I believe I have said the words before only when we have been making love. I want you to know that they are true even when we are not. I love you.”

  She stared mutely back at him.

  “I will never marry again,” he said. “There will never be anyone else. If ever you need me, I am here. I love you.”

  He watched her swallow and open her mouth to speak.

  And then Verity was on them, happy and prattling.

  She took a hand of each again and raced them down the hill, shrieking with delight when they sometimes moved so fast that she lost her footing and was rushed downward, suspended by her arms. Somehow, before they reached the valley, they were all laughing again.

  24

  THE Crowthers had recently opened a school on their estate in Carmarthenshire. Lady Crowther and her daughter were teaching there at present with some help from the village rector and the nonconformist minister. But Lord Crowther was eager to hire a regular teacher. He had been thinking of a schoolmaster, but he was prepared, as a favor to his old friend, Sir John Fowler, to give Mrs. Siân Jones a try. He understood, though it had never been stated baldly, that Mrs. Jones was Fowler’s by-blow.

  Sir John told Siân about the offer during another afternoon stroll by the river. It was a good offer, he said. The job came with a small cottage on the estate and a newly equipped schoolhouse and a generous salary. She could start after Christmas, in a little over two months’ time.

  “I should take it, then,” she said, feeling breathless. “It is too good a chance to miss, isn’t it?” And yet she was terrified, feeling like a bird being thrust out of the nest. More terrified than she had been after her mother’s death.

  He took her hand. “Only if you want, Siân,” he said. “If it is too far away, then I will keep looking for something closer. Or if you want you can come and live close to me again. The cottage is still empty.”

  No, definitely not that. She could not go back there. She would rather stay where she was.

  “Will you say yes to Lord Crowther for me?” she asked. “And thank you.” She smiled at him a little self-consciously. “Thank you, Dada.”

  He squeezed her hand.

  Gran was upset. Grandad was in a rage. Emrys shook his head and refused to get involved. But Siân began to plan ahead, began to detach herself from the life she had so desperately wanted to be hers. She quietly and doggedly ignored the memory of Alexander’s voice on top of the mountain saying, “Perhaps you belong with me, Siân.” If he had only known at that moment how vulnerable she was, how desperate to be persuaded, she would indeed be his now, housed no doubt in a cottage as her mother had been, receiving his calls two or three times a week and his visits to her bed.

  She was glad he had not known.

  Yet a treacherous part of her desperately wished that he would come to realize it and would come to her to persuade her to stay before it came time for her to leave.

  She did not see him again. Although Verity came several times to spend an hour with her, she was brought and fetched each time by a groom—the one who had come that very first time to summon Siân to the castle.

  She tried to detach herself from what was going on around her. And something was definitely going on. Emrys was out of the house far more than usual, down at the Three Lions, he always said, though he was rarely drunk when he arrived home. There were meetings there, Siân knew, and meetings up on the mountain. There was a tension and an air of expectancy in the town.

  Normally she would have known all about it. Owen would have told her, and Grandad and Emrys would have talked about it at home. And normally she would have been painfully interested in finding out what was going on. Normally her curiosity would have overwhelmed her and sent her up the mountain to find out at firsthand what was being planned.

  But this time, though she knew that something important was happening, probably the approach of the planned march on Newport, she deliberately kept herself detached. She did not want to know. She did not want to be caught up in the passions of her people. They were no longer her people.

  But some of them were, of course. There was still her family and Gwyn’s. Still Iestyn, whom she sometimes felt she loved more than anyone else in the world. She walked home from chapel with him the last Sunday in October, when the trees about them were a riot of autumn color.

  “Iestyn,” she said, “it is going to be soon, isn’t it?”

  She did not have to explain to what she referred. The whole town pulsed with the knowledge that she had been trying to ignore.

  “Any day now,” he said. “John Frost is to send word. Three giant columns of men there are to be, Siân, from all parts of the valleys, one led by Frost himself and the others by Zephaniah Williams and William Jones. There is great pressure being put on us to join the Association. Many men are giving in and doing so. Owen Parry is insistent that the government will sit up and take notice only if all of us march and close down all the ironworks and mines in the valleys.”

  She did not want to know, Siân thought. And yet every night for weeks her sleep had been tense and broken by the expectation of hearing Scotch Cattle in the hills. But expectation had never yet become reality.

  And of course she was constantly worried about Iestyn, who had been whipped once, and who was determined now to hold out against persuasion and
refuse to march.

  Oh, it was impossible to remain totally detached.

  And it was impossible too to try to remain ignorant as the week worn on. Tension mounted. According to Iestyn, who had become Siân’s only confidant, more and more pressure was being put on those men who had not yet joined the Association. They were being called traitors. If they only joined in, Owen had told them, five thousand men would march on Newport, and workers in other parts of the British Isles would rise with them. The government would have no choice but to grant their demands. The Charter would be law within a month. And all would be accomplished peaceably. There was to be no violence.

  Iestyn and a few other men held out stubbornly.

  By Saturday there could be no mistaking the fact that the date had been set, though Siân knew no details. The streets were unnaturally quiet. Men who should have been at work were not there. Siân dared not ask a grim-faced Emrys why he was at home. The unnatural silence had crept even inside the walls of her grandfather’s house.

  And then on Sunday after chapel and Sunday School, during lashing and miserable rain, they were gone. Her grandfather and Emrys were not at home when Siân returned for tea, and when she asked about them, her grandmother turned without a word and hurried upstairs to shut herself behind her bedroom door. Siân felt sick. She understood instantly where they had gone.

  In the pouring rain. They were going to trudge all the way to Newport in the pouring rain—perhaps to violence and disaster. She felt dizzy with panic. And yet she forced herself to pour boiling water from the kettle into the teapot and to sit down at the table.

  It was not her concern. It no longer mattered to her what happened in Cwmbran. She would no longer allow it to matter. She pushed thoughts of Emrys and her grandfather and Huw from her mind.

  * * *

  Angharad was breathless and sobbing—and wet through—when she arrived at Josiah Barnes’s lodge cottage on Sunday afternoon. She knocked urgently on the door twice before it opened.

  “They have gone, Mr. Barnes,” she gasped out as she stumbled into the cottage. “Even though it is Sunday and even though it is raining. I didn’t know the exact time yesterday or even this morning. Honest, I didn’t. Even when my dada went out I wasn’t sure. But I stopped Ifor Richards and he told me. I came as soon as I knew. Don’t be angry with me. I only just found out.”

  But Barnes, though he had not known, was not angry, as she expected him to be. He was even in a good mood—as far as his mood could be good when everything he had worked for in the past dozen years was disintegrating before his eyes. At least now the full disaster was upon them. He would see how Craille would react to all that would follow today’s business. Within the week, if Barnes knew his man, the marquess would be on his way back to England, defeated and humiliated. Barnes would be in charge again. It would not be easy putting things back together, but he had always enjoyed a challenge.

  No, he was not fuming. He had no intention of going out and getting soaking wet himself just in order to go after the men or in order to go up to the house to warn Craille. Let him find out for himself.

  “So they are on their way to Newport,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  “They were going up the mountain first,” Angharad said, “to organize and to wait for the men from Penybont to come down the valley. Perhaps you can stop them yet, Mr. Barnes. There is frightened they will be when they see you. But at least they will be safe.”

  Barnes laughed. “I have better ways to spend my Sunday afternoons,” he said. “Upstairs with you, woman, and get undressed.” And with her father on his way to Newport, he would be able to have her as many times as he wanted before sending her home again.

  Angharad looked at him a little uncertainly, but she went scurrying upstairs willing enough when he helped her on her way with a pat on the backside.

  It was fortunate, he thought less than ten minutes later, that he never wasted time in going about his business with a woman. He had finished and was already relaxing when someone else knocked on his door. But he was warm and comfortable and sleepy. He grunted in protest.

  Whoever was there was knocking as urgently as Angharad had earlier. Barnes grunted again at the third knock, pulled on his trousers, and went downstairs, buttoning them as he went. There had better be a good reason, he thought, as yet a fourth knock sounded at the door.

  It was Gwilym Jenkins, the man who had spread the rumor about Siân for Barnes. He was breathless and wet and frightened.

  “They are on their way,” he said. “They are gathering up on the mountain.”

  “I have been disturbed from my Sunday rest for this?” Barnes asked, frowning. “I knew that half an hour ago. Let the fools go. With any luck they will be mown down by soldiers’ guns and learn a lesson that this valley will remember for generations to come.”

  “I have to hide,” Gwilym said, desperation in his eyes and his voice. “They are after everyone and making everyone go. I saw them drag Iestyn Jones up the mountain. I have to hide until they are well gone. Will you let me stay here, Mr. Barnes?”

  Barnes moved to block the doorway more firmly. “Not here,” he said. “They have probably all gone by now anyway. If you are scared, Jenkins, beg a place in the stables for an hour or two.” He jerked his head up the driveway and viewed the worker with some contempt.

  But as Gwilym turned away, looking as if fear was still clawing at his back, Barnes held up a hand. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Iestyn Jones, did you say?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes,” Gwilym said. “I don’t want it to be me, Mr. Barnes. There is no knowing what will happen in Newport.”

  Barnes beckoned impatiently and moved away from the door, where he was getting wet himself. “Come inside,” he said. He stood frowning down into the fire for a few moments, while Gwilym hurried gratefully into the kitchen, shutting the door firmly behind him. He breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  Josiah Barnes was not normally a vindictive man. He had worked hard at Cwmbran for many years and had made prosperous industries of the ironworks and mine there. He was a hard man and ruled with an iron fist—as one had to in order to prosper, he believed. But he was not usually a spiteful man.

  Times had changed, of course. For many years there had been only the occasional reminder that he was not in fact on an equal footing with the other owners—one of those reminders had come when Sir John Fowler’s bastard had refused to marry him. But now suddenly the truth had been revealed to him in the cruelest of ways. Not only was the real owner in residence at Glanrhyd Castle, and not only was he trying to take charge of the works, but also he was wresting all power from Barnes and making changes that would be disastrous for profits and discipline. Perhaps the last straw—a small one, but the one that had broken the camel’s back, so to speak—was Craille’s hiring of the bastard to teach his daughter and releasing her from where he, Barnes, had put her—in the mine.

  Yes, frustration and anger had made him vicious. And spiteful. And a taste of success had made him greedy for more. The knowledge that Siân Jones had been dragged up the mountain and had her back bared and whipped could still make his mouth water. And the fact that Parry had been humiliated in front of all the men of Cwmbran when he was leveled by the fists of Craille added to Barnes’s pleasure—and the fact that there had been no further mention of a wedding between Siân and Parry.

  Yes, he was greedy for more. Viciously greedy. Iestyn Jones. Her brother-in-law. She was fond of the boy. Word had come to Barnes that she had gone up the mountain after him the night he was whipped.

  “You will go back into town,” he said, turning decisively and looking at Gwilym Jenkins, who was wiping ineffectually at a wet face with a wetter cap.

  Gwilym’s hand paused, mid-wipe. “Oh, no, Mr. Barnes,” he said. “Not yet. I dare not go back there yet.”

  “Nevertheless you will,” Barnes said, “for tw
ice what I paid you last time. All you have to do is get to Hywel Rhys’s house and pass along a message. Mrs. Rhys will no doubt let you hide there until all is safe.”

  Gwilym, saucer-eyed, was shaking his head.

  “You have to tell Siân Jones that her brother-in-law has been taken,” Barnes said. “Embellish the story in any way you see fit. His hands were tied. Maybe there was a loop about his neck too. Maybe they were cuffing him and threatening him with whips. And a gun. They were telling him they would hold a gun to his head all the way to Newport and would use it too if he tried to hold back or escape.”

  Gwilym was turning his cap about and about in his hands. “I would be caught for sure,” he said.

  “But the money would more than buy the rest of the furniture you need,” Josiah Barnes said. “She will follow him and doubtless try to rescue him herself. The bitch will finally get what she deserves. They will not dare let her go, believing her to be Craille’s informer. They will be afraid that she will run straight to him.”

  “Good God, man,” Gwilym said, his conscience pricked, “she is a woman.”

  Barnes smiled. “Did I say twice as much as before?” he said. “Make it three times as much. One third now. Another third when the message is given. And the other if she goes up the mountain and does not come back again.”

  Gwilym swallowed. “I’ll do it,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem right somehow.”

  Barnes stood in the middle of the kitchen after he had sent Jenkins on his way. He smiled at nothing in particular. The bitch! At the very least she would suffer from Jenkins’s tale. But he did not believe she would sit passively at home once she had heard about her precious Iestyn.

  He remembered suddenly that Angharad was in bed upstairs. And a good thing too. Contemplating the sort of fate that might be awaiting Siân Jones had made him uncomfortably hard. It was good to know that there was a woman close by on whom to relieve his discomfort. He unbuttoned his trousers as he climbed the stairs and stripped them off when he reached the top. Angharad was fast asleep.