by Mary Balogh
She was not sorry for her outburst. If his skin was so thick that he had not got the message during his visit, then he would know now. He would know to stay away from her and Ty-Gwyn.
She tried not to think of the fact that Ty-Gwyn belonged to him and that the annual rent day seemed to gallop up faster each year.
It was the first and the worst of such visits that Geraint paid to his tenant farmers during the coming days. But worst only in the sense that Marged had been his friend and almost his lover once upon a time and now seemed to hate him with an intensity in excess of the facts. No, it was not that she seemed to hate him. Her unexpected outburst when he was leaving Ty-Gwyn, just after he had tried to sympathize with her and compliment her, had cleared away any doubt he might have had. She hated him.
All the other farmers he visited were polite. A few of them were almost friendly—the Williamses, for example. And their daughter too, still pretty, still shy, and still unmarried. Ceris Williams had poured tea for him and found it impossible to converse with him beyond monosyllabic answers to his questions, but she had smiled kindly at him. He found himself hoarding the few smiles he was favored with. Most of the people he visited were polite and little else. With a few he felt hostility bristling just behind the politeness.
It seemed that the past few years had not been kind to farmers. There had been more rain than usual and damage had been done to the crops. Market prices were down for almost all farm products. A few farmers stated, as Marged had done, that they were carrying fewer livestock than formerly. Clearly no one was prospering. Geraint felt rather ashamed that he had avoided learning anything about his estate in Tegfan. He had appointed the best steward he could find to look after it for him and had closed his mind to a place and a past he preferred not to remember. But he should have at least have read reports from Tegfan. He should at least have known that his farmers were struggling. He could hardly blame them for showing some resentment at his appearing suddenly, well-dressed and clearly not suffering financially at all.
Also he had grown past his naivete of ten years before. Ten years ago he had expected to come home to find everyone rejoicing in his good fortune. It was rather like a fairy tale for the discovery to be made twelve years after the birth of a penniless waif that he was the legitimate heir to an earldom and three vast estates—although his mother, of course, had always told him to hold his head high as she held hers because she had been married to his father, the earl's son, before he had been killed, though she had no proof and no one would believe her. In fairy tales everyone always rejoiced at the reversed fortunes of the Cinderella-type characters. But he knew now that it was not so in real life. He knew that his people must resent him just because of who he was.
He was going to have to stay in Tegfan, he thought reluctantly as the days passed. He thought of spring approaching in London, bringing the Season and all the giddy round of social activities with it. But he would have to let it proceed without him this year. He was going to have to stay to convince his people that he was not the enemy, that he did not look down upon them with smug satisfaction because he had now been elevated above them. He was going to have to find out about his property and the true state of his farms. It would not be difficult to do. He was very knowledgeable about his other estates and had a reputation as a fair and approachable master, he believed. He had real friends among his English tenant farmers.
He was going to have to stay.
Of course, there were people he had still not called upon at the end of those few days of intensive visits. One of them was Aled Rhoslyn. Geraint had felt reluctant to renew his acquaintance with his former friend and partner in crime. But if he was to stay for longer than a mere week or so, then the encounter could not be avoided forever.
Finally one afternoon he walked to the village and stepped inside the blacksmith's forge. He had heard a hammer ringing on the anvil from well down the street. The sound was almost deafening once he was inside. Aled had his back to the door. He was hammering out what looked to be a metal wheel rim. A boy at his side, apparently a young apprentice, drew his attention to the customer and faded nervously into the background.
Aled had not changed a great deal. He certainly had not shrunk in size. He was still only two or three inches taller than Geraint, but he was broader, with the powerful arms and shoulders necessary to his trade. He still had rather too much fair hair on his head and hazel eyes that seemed always to be smiling. His face was still good-humored and good-looking.
Geraint observed him as he glanced over his shoulder and then set down his hammer and straightened up and turned slowly, wiping his hands down his large leather apron as he did so. It was obvious from his expression and his whole manner that he was as reluctant for this meeting as Geraint. There was no noticeable hostility in his eyes, but there was a wariness there, a certain embarrassment.
"Aled," Geraint said, "when are you planning to start the hard work for the day?"
Aled smiled slowly. "I did not want to be out of breath and sweating when you came calling," he said. "I thought I would do some light chore while I waited." But he hung back rather awkwardly.
Geraint walked toward him, his right hand extended. He was absurdly nervous, afraid of one more rejection. And this one would hurt most, apart from Marged's. "How are you?" he asked.
Aled looked at his hand before taking it. But his clasp was firm enough when he did. "Well," he said. "And you?"
Geraint nodded. "You are married?" he asked. "There are half a dozen eager little blacksmiths on the way up?"
Aled laughed, but he flushed with what looked suspiciously like embarrassment. "I am not married," he said.
"Then you must have learned to run faster than you used to," Geraint said, it had always been a source of pride to him as a child that he could outrun his friend even though Aled had been a year older and a head taller and a stone or two heavier.
Aled laughed. And looked awkward.
Geraint spoke from impulse. "You have a great deal of work to be done this afternoon?" he asked. "Can it be left? Come and walk with me in the park."
Aled looked down at the wheel rim on his anvil. He pursed his lips, and Geraint could see that he wanted to refuse, that he was reaching for an excuse.
"We can even walk about there openly without having to skulk about among the trees avoiding mantraps," Geraint said. "We will no longer be trespassing."
Aled grinned, genuine amusement in his eyes. "Why not?" he said. "Welcome home, man." He lifted the heavy apron off over his head.
And yet, Geraint thought ruefully as they left the forge together and walked down the street in the direction of Tegfan park, Aled was uncomfortable. He would a thousand times rather be back in his forge than on his way for a stroll with his former friend.
Aled Rhoslyn had not really expected Geraint ever to return to Tegfan, even though he was now the Earl of Wyvern. It would be too difficult for him to face the strange facts of his childhood and boyhood. The child Geraint had never been disliked as much as he had thought. He had been pitied more than anything, as had his mother, although, of course, the strict moral code by which most of them lived as nonconformists had forced them to reject the latter publicly. Most of the children had secretly admired the bold and almost charismatic little ragamuffin.
Most people had not disliked him during his boyhood after the earl had somehow made the staggering discovery that his long-dead son had been legally married to Gwynneth Penderyn when the two of them had run off together. They had been married before the conception of their son. A few of the meaner-minded, of course, had been spiteful with envy and a few others had not been slow to notice that Gwynneth Penderyn—she was never known by her married name of Marsh and Geraint had legally changed his name back to hers as soon as he reached his majority—was sent to live alone in a small cottage on the estate and was never either invited to the house or visited by Geraint.
Most people had not disliked him during his brief visit after the death o
f his mother. But everyone, almost to a person, had felt awkward with him, not knowing quite whether to talk to him as if he were Geraint Penderyn or to show him deference as Geraint Marsh, Viscount Handford. The fact that he had been both had led to an impossible situation.
But Geraint had always felt disliked. Not that he had ever been self-pitying about it. But he had built defenses, of which Aled, as his one close friend apart from Marged Llwyd, had been aware. The defense of not caring a fig for anyone as a child. The added defense of aloofness as an eighteen-year-old and the firm hiding behind his newly acquired Englishness and his gentleman's manners.
Aled had not expected him to return. And over the years he had somehow managed to divorce in his mind his feelings for Geraint as friend and his feelings for the Earl of Wyvern as owner of the land on which he and his acquaintances and neighbors lived and worked. The Earl of Wyvern was that impersonal figurehead who represented the aristocracy, the English owners who cared nothing for Wales or the Welsh except as a source of wealth to themselves. Matters had come to crisis point. The whole system seemed designed gradually to squeeze out the small farmers and replace them with those who could better contribute more and more to enriching those who were already rich.
Aled had never thought of himself as a leader or as an agitator. He had been content to let Eurwyn Evans be both. But Eurwyn was dead and Glynderi and its neighborhood had needed a leader, someone with both firm convictions and a level head, and several people had approached him to take on the position and join the secret committee that had formed to organize protest in almost the whole of northern Carmarthenshire. Marged had asked him and he had remembered that Marged had suffered a great loss.
And so he had agreed. And had somehow blanked his mind to the fact that he had committed himself to organizing protest against his friend among others. He walked now beside Geraint beyond the village and onto the driveway leading to the house of Tegfan and then off it and across a wide lawn—and knew with a dreadful discomfort that Geraint was both his friend and his enemy, and that probably it was going to be impossible for him to remain both those things.
"Aled," Geraint said suddenly, and it was only then that Aled realized they had been walking in silence, "don't."
The few words they had exchanged had all been spoken in English, Aled realized. Just as they had been ten years ago.
"Don't what?" he asked uneasily. If they must talk, let it be on safe trivialities.
"Don't treat me as if I were the Earl of Wyvern," Geraint said.
"But you are." He knew what Geraint meant but did not want to know.
"I am Geraint Penderyn," his friend said, and there was a hint of frustration in his voice.
Aled remembered the talk outside the chapel on Sunday and Marged's suggestion that everyone make the earl feel unwelcome if and when he visited. Apparently he had visited and had been made to feel unwelcome. A village blacksmith tended to hear about such things.
"Yes," he said, "and the Earl of Wyvern too."
"We used to fight," Geraint said unexpectedly. "Wrestling, not boxing. Almost every time we met. You always won. I believe there were no exceptions. Do you want to try to retain that record, Aled?"
Aled looked at him in amazement. "Now?" he said. "Don't be daft, man." His eyes took in Geraint's immaculate clothes.
But Geraint had stopped walking and was stripping off his coat. "Yes, here," he said, and there was the tightness of anger in his voice—and a familiar gleam of recklessness in his eyes. "Come and fight me, Aled. Let's see if you can still put me down. No, don't back away and look at me as if you think I should be consigned to bedlam. Fight me, dammit, or I will slap your face and make you fight."
Chapter 5
The world had taken leave of its senses, Aled thought, watching as white shirtsleeves were rolled up sinewy arms. He had not wrestled since he was a boy. He was twenty-nine years old and a respected workingman. And there had been no provocation. There was no reason to fight. Not that they had ever needed a reason when they were children beyond that simple fact—they had been children.
He shrugged out of his own coat and dropped it to the grass. He was taller, heavier, better muscled, he thought, looking critically at his opponent's body. It should be no more difficult now than it had ever been to win the fight. Though he had never won anything else with Geraint, he thought ruefully. The younger, smaller, scruffier boy had always somehow been the leader. Where he had gone—and it had very often been where he ought not to have gone— Aled had followed along behind.
They fought for a long time, in silence except for their breathing, which grew progressively more labored. They circled each other, engaged each other, tripped each other, rolled over each other, put seemingly unbreakable holds on each other, broke apart, jumped to their feet, circled each other, and began the process all over again. It was sheer luck, Aled had to admit, that finally sent Geraint tumbling at an awkward angle so that Aled's heavier body could bear his shoulders to the ground and hold them there before he could twist free.
And then they were lying side by side on the grass, staring upward and panting to recover their breaths.
Geraint chuckled after a minute or so. "One of these days," he said. "One of these days, Aled. Ah, thank you, man. I have needed that for a long time."
He was speaking Welsh. He sounded quite like the old Geraint, Aled thought. The cultured English accent disappeared when the language changed.
"You needed humiliating?" Aled switched languages too and joined in the laughter. "I could have spat in your eye, man, and saved us both some time and energy."'
Aled knew what was coming in the short silence that ensued. And he knew he was quite powerless to avoid it.
"What have I done?'" Geraint asked him, still in Welsh. He was no longer either laughing or panting. "Is it just that I was Geraint Penderyn and am now the Earl of Wyvem? Is that all it is, Aled?"
Aled grunted. "You cannot expect people to be comfortable with you, man," he said. "Just look at you, or at the way you looked fifteen minutes or so ago anyway. No one was ever comfortable with your grandfather either. You must remember that."
"And why did you know," Geraint asked him quietly, "exactly what I was talking about? It is more than discomfort, Aled. There is hostility. Why? What have I done? Apart from not showing my face here for the past ten years. Is that it? Is it?"
"You are imagining things, Ger," Aled said. "You always had a vivid imagination."
"Goddammit," Geraint said, "we were friends, Aled. You and Marged and I. Marged told me to get away from Ty-Gwyn. She told me I could shove my sympathy for her down my throat—I believe she was itching to suggest a different location. She told me I was not welcome. And you tell me I have a vivid imagination. Don't make this lonelier for me than it has to be, man. What have I done?"
Aled sat up and draped his arms over his knees. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Why the bloody hell had Geraint come home? And wouldn't he be listening to a blistering reprimand if the Reverend Llwyd could listen to the language of his thoughts.
"Made it almost impossible for anyone to live here," he said shortly.
"What?" Geraint shot up into a sitting position beside him and glared. "I have not even been living here myself, Aled. How could I have been making it impossible for anyone else to do so?"
"Yields and prices have been going down," Aled said, "and rents have been going up. Tithes now have to be paid in money, not goods, and enforcement has been stricter. Poor rates have gone up and yet the poor are worse off than ever with the building of the workhouses. The turnpike trusts have been putting up more tailgates and making it more expensive for farmers to transport their goods than to produce or buy them. Trespassing and poaching are being more strictly controlled and punished than ever before. Need I go on?"
He did not look at his friend's face, but he could tell that Geraint was looking aghast.
"But I know nothing about any of this," he said. "None of it is my fault."
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Aled turned his head at last and looked at the Earl of Wyvern with surprise—and for the first time with some contempt. "Ah," he said. "I have work to do. If you will excuse me." He reached for his coat and would have got to his feet, but Geraint's hand clamped on his arm.
"Ignorance is no plea, is it?" he said. "But I cannot be blamed for all those things, Aled. Tithes are the church's, not mine, and I did not make that new law about cash payments. I did not make the new Poor Law or conceive the idea of workhouses. Those grievances at least cannot be laid at my door."
"Are you sure, Ger?" Aled got to his feet despite the staying hand and shook the grass from his coat before putting it back on.
Geraint stayed where he was. "You have me at a disadvantage," he said. "I know nothing about Tegfan, Aled. I have avoided knowing anything about it. I do not know what I am doing here now except that I passed two men on the street in London who were talking Welsh to each other."
"Perhaps," Aled said, "you should have stayed away. Perhaps it would have been better for you and better for the people here." He himself would have found it far easier to fight against the impersonal earldom of Wyvern in its capacity as owner of Tegfan.
Geraint was on his feet too before Aled could walk away. He was rolling his shirtsleeves back down to his wrists. "No, you are not striding off on that note," he said. "You owe me another bout, Aled. You know you won that one by sheer luck, just as you won all our fights as boys. Every one of them a lucky win. How many times did we fight? A dozen? Fifty? A hundred? There will be at least one more. And I make it a rule only ever to wrestle with my friends. Give me time, Aled. Give me time to find out the truth and to decide what I am going to do about it."
