Truly

by Mary Balogh

  He grinned to himself as he strode down the driveway, the wind buffeting him and threatening to dislodge his hat. And he realized that it felt good to smile, to feel amused. Even the wind felt good. There had been precious little to feel cheerful about for the last week, especially the last couple of days.

  His gardeners certainly had not been amused to find that a whole flock of sheep had broken out of the pasture during the night and were grazing contentedly on the lawns before the house. He had rather liked the look of them himself when he had gazed down on them from the window of his bedchamber. They had made for a pleasantly rustic scene. But the sight of gardeners and grooms trying to shoo them away and merely causing them to wander in a bewildered circle instead had caused him first to grin and then to pull on his boots to go down there.

  It had been his idea to send for the dogs, but only after he had done some sheep chasing himself. And even then he followed the flock and the dogs and the irate head gardener all the way to the pasture and watched the gate being securely shut. It was hard to know how such a secure clasp could have come accidentally undone. Most likely someone had been careless enough to leave the gate unlatched. Or so the gardener had said, menace in his voice. And he would find out who the culprit was too.

  Geraint had commented that no harm was done. The sheep had merely been grazing peacefully on the grass. There were no flowers yet for them to destroy. His gardener had given him a hard, tight-lipped, almost pitying look. And the reason was now obvious. As he had set out for church. Geraint had noticed a whole army of gardeners sheepishly scooping up sheep droppings from the sacred expanse of the Tegfan lawn. He grinned again, enjoying the pun.

  But he sobered as he reached the village and could see ahead of him along the street several people entering the chapel. This was not going to be easy. He had never attended the chapel as a boy—he had been kicked out of it when he was still inside his mother's womb. Sometimes, unknown to his mother, he had lurked outside it on Sunday mornings, usually to one side or at the back rather than on the street, listening to the singing, learning the hymns, hoping to attract Aled's attention or Margcd's when the service was over. He should have hated the chapel, but he had always perversely longed to be a part of it.

  He had never attended a service there. And now he felt even more self-conscious than he had expected to feel. His grandfather had always attended the church when he was at Tegfan. It would be assumed that he would do likewise. He would not be welcome here. He had not felt particularly welcome in any of the homes he had visited in the past week. Even Aled had told him it would have been better if he had not come. And now he knew at least some of the reasons for the hostility he had felt everywhere beneath the surface courtesy he had been accorded by everyone— everyone except Marged.

  He had a great deal of work ahead of him.

  The chapel seemed alarmingly full to him when he stepped into the doorway between it and the porch. He was unaccustomed to seeing churches with apparently no empty pews. But this seemed to be one. There was nowhere to sit. And yet it was too late to retreat. A few heads had turned to see who the newcomer in the doorway was, and without looking directly at anyone, he was aware of eyes widening and eyebrows rising and elbows digging at neighbors. During the few seconds he stood there hesitating, he guessed that at least half the congregation became aware of him. The buzzing of muted chatter diminished significantly.

  And then he saw an empty place. Inevitably it was close to the front, no more than three or four pews back. But it was either that or stand where he was through the service or turn and leave. Neither of the last two seemed a viable option. He walked down the aisle.

  Throughout his life he had been conspicuous. He had never quite been part of a group. First there had been his outcast nature in Glynderi, then there had been the ghastly years at school, when he had been a Welsh waif among the sons of English gentlemen, and most recently there had been his position as a peer of the realm and one of its most wealthy and propertied members. He was used to being stared at. And yet he could not remember an occasion when he had felt quite so conspicuous or quite so alone.

  Instinctively his spine stiffened and his features hardened into impassive and naughty lines.

  He seated himself in the empty space next to a woman and stared at the pulpit, willing the Reverend Llwyd to make his appearance soon. He should, he supposed, turn his head casually from side to side and nod affably at any of his people who were looking back at him—it felt as if everyone was. But he felt almost as if his neck would snap in two if he tried turning his head.

  And then he became aware, when it was too late to acknowledge the fact naturally, that the woman beside him was Marged. He did not—could not—turn his head to confirm the fact. But he could feel that it was so. She was wearing a blue dress. That much he could see out of the corner of his eye. It was absurd that he could not simply turn, nod politely, and face the front again.

  At last the minister came from the vestry, the congregation stood, and the pianist thumped out the opening bars of the first hymn. If Geraint had been in any doubt, it fled immediately. Although the whole chapel was suddenly filled with the rich sounds of four-part harmony, the soprano voice of the woman beside him could belong to no one but Marged.

  He would not sing himself. Could not sing, though he held a hymnbook open in his hands. Nostalgia, bitterly sweet, making his throat and his chest ache with unshed tears, was washing over him.

  But I miss the hills…

  Oh, God, oh Dim; I have missed Wales. I have missed home.

  It seemed to Marged that she had felt nothing but bitter hatred for a week—since last Sunday when Glenys had brought the news from Tegfan that the Earl of Wyvern was home. She pulsed with hatred now and felt all the unhappy incongruity of such an emotion while she sat in chapel and tried to concentrate her soul on the love of God.

  But she could not feel God. And her body was overpowering her soul. What she could feel was the heat of Geraint down her left arm and side. When they had sat down after the first hymn, Mrs. Griffiths on her other side had sat closer, forcing Marged to sit closer to him. She had to be very careful to keep her arm pressed to her side so that she would not touch him. But there was the heat of him. And the smell of him, that same expensive smell she had noticed at Ty-Gwyn. A musky smell. She had not known any man who wore any sort of cologne. But he did. And yet it was not a strong perfume and it was definitely not effeminate. It seemed a part of him and of his undeniable masculinity.

  He had been at Tegfan for a week. For a week he had established his lordship over them all, visiting them dressed in clothes so splendid that their own shabby garments appeared mere rags in contrast, treating them to his own brand of coldness and arrogance that quite put the old earl in the shade. Yesterday his bailiff and a few of his hefty servants had called at Glyn Bevan's farm and confiscated one of his horses and some of his cows because Glyn had not paid his tithes. How was Glyn to plant his crops without enough horses? And how was his wife to prepare sufficient butter and cheese for market without enough cows?

  And yet he had dared to come to chapel this morning, to spoil the one day of the week when they could all come together to worship and relax and enjoy a friendly chat afterward. And he had dared to sit beside her and ignore her. And ignore everyone else. He had nodded in acknowledgment of her father's greeting from the pulpit, but he had looked neither to left nor to right. He had not joined in the singing. Probably he had forgotten every word of Welsh he had ever known. And yet the whole service was conducted in Welsh—except for that brief greeting to the Earl of Wyvern.

  Why had he come? To make them all uncomfortable? He had succeeded.

  She noticed, without looking directly at them, that his hands were well cared for, that his fingernails were well manicured. His fingers were long. She could remember telling him as a child that he should be a harpist or a pianist. There had been a great deal of music in him.

  And unwillingly she remembered Geraint
as he had been, a bold little urchin, always up to mischief either for its own sake or out of necessity. He had explored Tegfan land for the sheer excitement of avoiding the mantraps the gamekeepers set and of evading capture. But he had done it too in order to snare rabbits and catch salmon from the salmon weirs—so that he and his mother would not starve. He had climbed trees and scrambled over fences and bounded across streams and raced up and down hills with energy and a certain wild grace. He had been thin and ragged and frequently hungry and yet had talked ceaselessly and laughed and sung as if he had not had a care in the world. The hungrier he had been, the merrier he had laughed. He had been good at disguising his feelings, at avoiding being pitied.

  She had pitied him and admired him and followed him and scolded him and fed him—he had always taken half home to his mother.

  She had loved him. She had worshiped and loved him. With the love of one child for another.

  He had been taken from a life of indescribable poverty to one of unimagined wealth. He had been taken from her. She had rejoiced for him and wept for herself. She had made excuses for him when he did not write or come home for the holidays—even when word had it that he did not even write to his mother. She had found reasons, good reasons, why he did none of these things. She had continued to love him.

  And her love for him had blossomed, briefly and gloriously—and ultimately painfully—into the love of a woman for a man when he had finally come home, grown up and handsome beyond belief and displaying the magical transformation that six years in England had wrought in him.

  The pain of that love had never left her. And of his betrayal. It was terribly wrong, she thought, to think of the love of sixteen-year-olds as puppy love, as something less serious than real love, whatever real love was. She had loved Eurwyn. She had grieved terribly at her loss of him. Part of her would always love him and grieve for him. But that love and that grief had not been more painful, for all that, than the first love and the first grief.

  That thought, which blossomed into her conscious mind in the middle of her father's sermon, surprised Marged and alarmed her. But it was true, she knew. There was no point in denying it. It was true.

  And the object of that first love was seated silently and stiffly at her side. She had loved him from the age of five to the age of sixteen. She had grieved for him for a number of years after that. And now for two years she had hated him. She had hated him in his absence. But the hatred was intensified many times now that he was here in person.

  Geraint. Ah, Geraint, how could you have changed so much ?

  She wondered how much damage the sheep had done. It was a shame it was not later in the year, when there would have been flowers and more destruction to be done. But then she did not want to be destructive or violent. Merely a nuisance. She hoped he had been annoyed. She hoped he would be more than annoyed in the coming days.

  The Reverend Llwyd kept Geraint talking at the top of the chapel steps after service was over, and Ninian Williams joined them there. Everyone else stood about in groups in the street, Geraint noticed, as they always had done, though it seemed to him that their gossip was quieter, more self-conscious than it had used to be. It seemed to him that everyone studiously avoided looking at him, as if they were afraid to be caught staring.

  It had not been a good idea to come. But he had hoped that by attending chapel he would be able to demonstrate his good will, his desire to be a part of the lives of his people, though he knew that both his strange past and his present position would always keep him apart from them. There could be friendly relations, though, he hoped, as there were on his English estates.

  But it was not going to be easy. And perhaps it had been a mistake to come today, so soon. Aled had been right in what he had said. Geraint had spent two days discovering that rents had been raised quite steeply for the past five years in a row. There did not seem to be any good reason for quite such a rise. Matthew Harley, his steward, had explained that there were too many potential farmers in Wales and too few farms. If one could not pay the rent, therefore, there was always another able and willing to do so.

  It did not sound like a good enough reason for raising rents. To Geraint it sounded more like greed.

  And he had discovered something he was ashamed of not having known sooner. The living of Glynderi parish was in his possession and therefore all its tithes were paid to him. He had a bailiff with a sound reputation for gathering outstanding tithes. Apparently Bryn Jones was the envy of all the neighboring gentry. It seemed to Geraint rather as if he were the beneficiary of double rents. Tithes had originally been devised as a way of financing the church, had they not? Yet almost all the people of Glynderi and its surrounding farmland attended the chapel while almost no one attended the Anglican church and the Earl of Wyvern received the tithes.

  Something was wrong. It would have been farcical if it were not also deadly serious.

  The road trust that had the responsibility of repairing the roads on his property and the right to set up tollgates was partly owned by the Earl of Wyvern. But for the past two years—since Geraint had inherited the title—the trust had been leased out to a company that could more efficiently look after the roads and collect the tolls. Until the leasehold expired, the earl and the other landowners who held the trust had no control over its operation.

  And poaching on Tegfan land was still punishable by transportation. It was still discouraged by the presence of several gamekeepers and the strategic placement of mantraps. The salmon weir on the river as it flowed through the park still hoarded all the salmon for the use of an earl who rarely set foot on the estate and even then was only one man in possession of only one stomach.

  His discoveries had shamed Geraint.

  He conversed politely with the minister and with Ninian Williams on the chapel steps while he watched Marged talking in a group that included Mrs. Williams, Ceris, and several other women. He wished she was not quite so hostile to him. It would have been good to have two friends here still—Marged and Aled. Though he was not sure of Aled, either. Aled had not come near him this morning.

  Someone was calling for silence and waving his arms above his head to draw everyone's attention. Ianto Richards, Geraint saw, one of the farmers he had visited during the week. He was laughing and red-faced.

  "Hush this noise for a minute, then, is it?" he said when he had finally succeeded. "And let a man get a word in edgewise. Morfydd's mam is having her eightieth birthday this week on Thursday. And she has not been over the doorstep since last summer on account of her legs. Morfydd and I would be very pleased if you would all come by our house in the evening to help us celebrate. It is choir night, but the choir can practice for Mam to hear. Ninian has offered to carry Marged's harp over. He has not offered to carry Marged, mind."

  There was a burst of laughter.

  "Duw, man, how will you get us all in?" Ifor Davies asked.

  "We will squeeze you in with a shoe lift,'' Ianto said with a laugh, "if everybody will come, we will find room for you all. Won't we, Morfydd, fach?"

  "We will that," his wife assured everyone, her voice raised loud enough to be heard. "We want every one of you to come. For Mam's sake, is it, then?" Her eyes swept over the crowd and up the steps to include the minister and the other two men standing there. But she looked hastily away when her eyes encountered the earl's.

  "And we will all bring food as well, Morfydd," Mrs. Williams said. "It is too much for you to feed all us lot, girl. We will help out, is it? And fancy your mam being eighty already. How time do fly, indeed. She has lived to a good age, mind."

  The crowd was beginning to disperse. Geraint noticed. Marged was saying something to the group of women and then she turned away to stride along the street. She was holding her shawl about her shoulders with both hands. The blue dress swayed pleasingly about her hips and legs.

  He acted hastily and without any real wisdom, especially considering the fact that there was still a large audience. He touched his hat
to the Reverend Llwyd and Ninian Williams, bade them a good morning, though morning had passed into afternoon during the long sermon, skirted around the crowd still standing on the street, and hurried along it, not toward home but away from it in pursuit of Marged.

  Chapter 7

  He caught up to her at the end of the street just where it became a path proceeding along beside the river. The wind was in their faces. She had not heard him come. She turned a startled face toward him as he fell into step beside her.

  "A woman should not be left to walk home from chapel alone," he said.

  Her face flushed. But her lips thinned and her eyes grew arctic as he watched. "Thank you," she said to him in English, "but I would prefer to walk alone."

  "Than with me," he said. "That is how your sentence ended even if the words were not spoken. What have I done to you, Marged?"

  He knew what he had done to her, what he had done to all his dependents. He had made life hard for them, unnecessarily hard. He never behaved hastily. His education and training had taught him that every coin has two sides and that both must be examined with care before one commented on the whole coin. But he would make changes, he was sure of it. He could not imagine finding any reason why he should not. Tegfan was a very prosperous estate. And even if it were not, he was a very wealthy man.

  "You have denied me my freedom to walk alone," she said.

  "We were friends," he said. "You and Aled were my only friends."

  And yet how could he expect either of them to be his friends now? The improbability of if struck him fully even as he spoke. Another thing his training had taught him was that one could expect friendship only from people of one's own station, and sometimes not even from them. There were still men — mostly men he had known at school—who despised his background even though his birth and lineage were impeccable. Though not quite, he supposed. His mother had been a commoner, a mere governess, even if she had been his father's legitimate wife.