by Mary Balogh
"That was a lifetime ago," she said. "Longer even than that."
"It was what happened when I came home?" he asked. "You cannot forgive me for the liberties I tried to take? You were a very desirable girl, Marged."
She laughed, though she did not sound amused. She was matching him stride for stride along the path, he noticed.
"It was a long time ago," he said. "Ten years."
"Yes," she said. "Ten years. Another lifetime."
"Your singing voice has matured," he said, changing the subject. "It is even lovelier than it used to be. You are even lovelier than you used to be."
He was not quite sure what he was trying to accomplish. Perhaps he was trying to make her soften, to make her smile, to make her show pleasure in a compliment. But he knew he was being clumsy. He was not usually clumsy with women. Perhaps because he did not usually feel awkward or on the defensive with women.
She stopped walking and turned to him. her back straight, her head thrown back, her face tense with anger.
"What is it that you want?" she asked. "But I need not ask, need I? You think to get from me what you almost got but did not quite get last time you were here? Perhaps if I smile nicely enough it will not even be on the hard ground in the hills as it was then. Perhaps it will be in the earl's feather bed in the earl's grand bedchamber. Or am I being foolish? Whores do not merit being taken to the earl's bed, do they? You will not find whores for your pleasure in this part of the world, my lord. You should have stayed in England for that."
He reacted instinctively. He held himself erect and stared at her coldly. "Have a care, Marged," he said, his voice quiet and under rigid control, "and remember to whom you speak."
But she was not to be cowed. "Oh, I do not forget," she said, her voice a passionate contrast to his own. "I do not forget who you are, my lord. Murderer!" She turned with a swish of her skirts and started up the path toward Ty-Gwyn and the hills.
He did not pursue her farther. He stood looking after her, startled and frowning. Murderer? She might have called him a number of derogatory things with some justification, but he had certainly not expected that. It sounded very dramatic, but it had no meaning. She was obviously very angry over something, though, and there was no point in following her. There was no chance of holding a rational conversation with her in her present mood.
He turned around and stood staring down into the water of the river for several minutes. Marged had always been one to espouse a cause, especially when it was more someone else's cause than her own. She was probably angry over the way he was squeezing every last penny out of his people, herself included. He could hardly blame her. And he would not use ignorance as an excuse, even to himself.
He would change a few things after a little more careful investigation, and then perhaps he would redeem himself somewhat in her eyes.
He wanted to redeem himself, he thought. Especially in Marged's eyes. He had had mistresses and flirts in the past ten years. Twice he had considered marriage. Once he had been on the very brink of making his offer. But he had loved only once in his life. And could love very easily again.
The same woman.
The realization surprised him. And disturbed him.
She was right. He wanted to bed her. But he wanted to impress her too. He wanted her respect and her liking and her friendship. And perhaps more than that again.
But she hated him. Perhaps for personal reasons, perhaps for broader reasons. And she had called him a murderer. What the devil had he murdered in her life? Her faith in him?
Could one restore faith when it had once been lost?
One could but try, he supposed.
He had been flirting with her. He had walked at her side, his body straight like an iron bar, his face like granite, his blue eyes roaming over her as if she had no clothes on, and he had paid her those ridiculous compliments.
Were English ladies so easily pleased, so easily deceived? So easily seduced. For flirtation was too mild a word. He had been attempting seduction, just as he had ten years ago. Except that she was no longer the naive girl she had been then. Not by any means.
How dare he. Oh, how dare he!
He had known exactly what he was doing, sitting next to her in chapel without a word or a glance in her direction, just letting her feel his warmth and smell his expensive cologne. He was a master seducer—he had improved in ten years. He must have known that tension had built in her to such a degree that she could not afterward say even what the text of her father's sermon had been, let alone its contents. She could not even remember what hymns they had sung, even though she had chosen them herself last week.
Marged fumed for the rest of the day. She could do little else. It was Sunday. No unessential work could be done on a Sunday. While she had lived at home with her father, there were not even any hot meals on Sunday and no dishes were washed. Sunday was a day of rest, a day in which to recoup one's energies for the hard week ahead.
After dinner, when Gran was already nodding in the inglenook by the fire and Mam was settling opposite her, Marged drew her shawl over her shoulders and went out walking. She took some Welsh cakes with her, freshly baked the day before, and some butter and cheese, and strode upward into the higher hills until she was on the bare moors. They had been common ground once upon a time. All the farmers had grazed their flocks there during the summer. Now they belonged to Tegfan, and only Tegfan sheep were allowed to fatten themselves on their scrubby grass.
But there were buildings up there too, if they could be dignified by such a name, ugly little sod huts with sparse thatch to keep out the cold and rain. There were not many, fortunately, but enough to testify to poverty and despair and suffering. Their inhabitants usually left for the workhouse eventually.
The Parrys had never been good farmers. Eurwyn had often used to cluck his tongue over the inefficiency and waste and lack of organization so evident on their farm. They had never been prosperous. But they had not been bad people, either. They had been honest and proud and there had always been love within the family.
Now they were living on the moors and there were not many farmers in a financial situation to be able to offer Waldo Parry any regular employment. There were three children, and Mrs. Parry was expecting another. It was one more evidence of their impracticality, Marged thought. The new baby must have been conceived after they were forced off their farm. But then, who was she to condemn an unhappy man and woman for indulging one of the few pleasures left to them?
Marged felt the old pang of regret that in five years of marriage and almost nightly intimacies she had never conceived a child of her own. She suppressed it, as she always did.
She made her deliveries, sat for a while with Mrs. Parry while one of the little girls hovered at her side and then climbed onto her lap, and continued on her walk. She strode across the moors, breathing in the spring air, gazing about her at hills that stretched to the farthest horizon in all directions. The hills of home. She could not imagine living anywhere else. The hills were a part of her.
She missed Eurwyn with a sudden pang so intense that she stopped walking and closed her eyes. She missed Eurwyn and she missed being married. She had never felt any wild passion for her husband, but she had liked him and admired him and loved him too. She had liked those brief nightly intimacies. They had become very much a routine part of her life, not consciously enjoyed, though never disliked either.
It was a part of her life that had ended when Eurwyn was taken from her. Now sometimes she tossed in her bed, unable to sleep, yearning for the physical touch of her man. And now at this moment she yearned. She ached. Not just in her emotions but in her body. Her breasts felt tender and her thighs ached and she throbbed in that place where Eurwyn had joined his body to hers for a few minutes each night.
Oh, Eurwyn, I want you back. I need you, cariad.
What had brought that on? she wondered, opening her eyes and walking resolutely onward. She had put grief and longing behind her long ago. They
were destructive emotions when carried on too long. There was too much living to be done to bury oneself in the past.
But she knew what had brought it on. Geraint Penderyn, the Earl of Wyvern. Who had killed Eurwyn and asked her only this morning what he had done to her. Who had tried ten years ago to seduce her and had tried again just this morning. Who had… Ah, there was no point in enumerating his offenses over and over again.
Sheep let loose on his lawn! It was a pitiful protest. If only Aled and his committee would get moving. If only they could find a Rebecca. Did no man have Eurwyn's courage?
And then she saw that she was not the only person strolling in the upper hills. A young man and woman were walking toward her some distance away, hand in hand until they spotted her and released each other. Foolish people, she thought. As if she would mind seeing such an innocent sign of affection.
They were Glenys Owen and one of the grooms from Tegfan. Marged did not know his name—he was not from Glynderi. And it was obvious from Glenys's flushed face and the indefinable air of dishevelment about both of them that they had been indulging in a little more than just walking. Marged smiled and greeted them and could feel only envy. Her father often preached from the pulpit about the wicked hills. Hasty marriages following upon summer courtships in the hills were far from uncommon. But Marged was envious.
And then she had a thought. She did not know where it came from unless it was the sight of Glenys combined with her angry thoughts about Geraint and the recent memory of her accusing him of being unwilling to take his whores to the earl's bed.
The earl's bed.
"Glenys!" She turned and called after the disappearing couple, who were hand in hand again, she noticed.
They both turned to gaze back at her.
"Glenys," she called. "May 1 have a word with you?"
Marged had once taught Glenys in Sunday school. The girl had shown little aptitude for reading, but she had been sweet and affectionate and had often stayed after the other children to chatter about nothing in particular. She came back now toward Marged. Her young man stayed where he was.
It was a foolish idea. But then all ideas for making nuisances of themselves to the Earl of Wyvern were foolish ones. Until there was a Rebecca, they could do little else but annoy him.
"Glenys," she said, "do you ever have reason to go to the Earl of Wyvern's bedchamber?"
Glenys stared blankly at her. It really was a stupid question. Fortunately the girl did not read any meaning into the unintentionally suggestive query.
"Oh, no," she said. "I am just a kitchen maid, Mrs. Evans."
"But you know where it is, his bedchamber?" Marged felt herself flushing.
"Yes," the girl said, frowning.
No, it would not do. She should have thought more carefully before calling Glenys back so impulsively. It would be asking too much. Even if the girl did have reason to go near his room on occasion, it would be dangerous. She might be caught red-handed, or else it might be traced back to her. No, the idea was not a good one at all. Not as good as tomorrow's. Tomorrow there was to be a large delivery of coal to Tegfan. But that coal, every lump of it, was to suffer an accident on his lordship's driveway. It was to be spilled out in every direction.
She smiled in some embarrassment at Glenys. "It does not matter," she said. Unless… It was madness. Sheer madness. But sometimes madness was necessary when there were great injustices to be fought. That was what she could remember Eurwyn saying on one occasion. "No, wait."
Glenys, half turned back to her young man, looked politely at her.
"Glenys," she said, "could you show me where his bedchamber is? Could you show me how to reach it? Without being seen?" She listened to her own words, appalled.
"His lordship's bedchamber?" Glenys sounded mystified, as well she might.
"You have heard about the sheep?" Marged asked. "Your brothers must have told you, I am sure. They were both with me last night. And you were in chapel this morning."
Glenys smiled, her eyes dancing with amusement. "We all thought Mr. Vaughan would start foaming at the mouth this morning," she said, naming Tegfan's head gardener.
'"But none of us knew that the sheep did not get out by accident. There is a good joke it was, Mrs. Evans."
"There will be more," Marged said. "You heard too what happened to Glyn Bevan yesterday?"
Glenys sobered. "Yes," she said. "Oh, I do hate that Mr. Jones, I do. He loves his job. A person ought not to love such a job."
"No," Marged said. "Can you show me the room and the way to it, Glenys? Without getting yourself into any trouble at all? It will be just another joke. I promise."
Glenys swallowed and then nodded.
Marged laughed as they parted a couple of minutes later. '"Watch for the coal delivery tomorrow." she said. "It should be amusing."
But it was not amusement she wanted to feel. And indeed it was not amusement she felt. It was excitement. And determination. Soon he would know that it was not just a series of clumsy accidents that was making his life less than comfortable. Soon he would know himself to be the victim of hatred.
It would happen the night they planned to let the horses out of the stables. Friday night. She would do it that same night. Before the night was over he would know.
Finally Marged directed her steps downward, it must be almost teatime.
It was not a good week for Geraint.
He talked to his steward, and Matthew Harley chose to be indignant and to take offense at the suggestion that there was something wrong at Tegfan and on its farms. He pointed out that the estate was the most prosperous in West Wales and was the envy of every other landowner. He explained with some pride that other stewards and even some landowners had visited him to ask his advice on a wide range of topics concerning estate management. He pointed out that tithes and road trusts and the poor rate were beyond his power to control but that rents certainly were not. By raising rents annually, he had ensured the continued prosperity of Tegfan and the continued superiority of the farms.
"How so?" Geraint asked, questioning that last point.
There were many more farmers than there was land for them to rent. It was a competitive business. If a man with land could not afford his rent, he was proving that he was a poor manager. It made perfect business sense to see that he was replaced by a better man. The knowledge that they might be replaced by someone better able to run their farms was incentive enough to keep everyone working hard.
It sounded reasonable. It sounded admirable. But Geraint had always suspected that business was often an impersonal thing, ignoring the human factor. He could not shake from his mind the image of Idris Parry, thin and ragged and poaching on his land. And the memory of what it felt like to live in stark, frightening poverty.
He talked to his neighbors. One of them, who was also in full possession of the tithes of his parish, stared at him in incomprehension when Geraint raised the matter. Tithes were a part of the whole establishment of the church. Church and state would collapse without them. And if one man refused to collect them on the grounds that he did not need them, then the whole fabric of society might crumble.
"One might almost call such a man a traitor," the neighbor said severely.
It seemed extravagant to Geraint. But it was a disturbing idea that perhaps he was not free to act alone on a matter because it was something that concerned the whole of society. Perhaps at least he could see that the tithes were spent on the church—or, better still, on the chapel.
And all his neighbors were agreed that rising rents were desirable for all concerned. They trotted out arguments so exactly like Harley's that Geraint realized anew why he was so envied in his steward. He could find no one sympathetic to the idea of lowering rents or at least freezing them for a few years until there had been a few good years for crops and until the demands of the market had improved.
"It is a mad idea and one you had better not institute,Wyvern," Sir Hector Webb told him sharply. "You would not be
popular with your relatives and friends, and your tenants would see you only as a weak man. They would not respect you for it."
"It is just the sort of thing I would expect you to suggest," Lady Stella said coldly. "'You are still one of them at heart, are you not, Wyvern? But you must remember that according to Papa's will, I will inherit Tegfan if you fail to marry and produce a legitimate heir." She put slight emphasis on the adjective.
"Your aunt is right, Wyvern," Sir Hector told him. "I would not take kindly to your wasting her inheritance."
Geraint merely nodded. He refrained from arguing or from reminding them that he was only twenty-eight years old and perhaps capable of producing a dozen sons.
Life was not going to be easy.
Chapter 8
He sought out Aled again, early one evening, entering the forge just when Aled was finishing work for the day and dismissing his apprentice. They walked into the park of Tegfan as they had before.
"You were right," he said, bringing to an end the meaningless exchange of talk that had occupied them for a few minutes. "Things have not been well done since 1 inherited Tegfan. And I cannot plead ignorance, though I have been deliberately ignorant. My problem now is seeing a solution."
Aled maintained a silence.
Geraint told him about his visits to his neighbors. "And it seems that I have no power over the road trusts at all," he ended by saying. "Although I draw lease money from them, their actions are beyond my control. And even when the lease is due for renewal, mine is only one voice among many. I would be outvoted."
Aled still said nothing and Geraint sighed.
"But the problem is mine, not yours," he said. "You do not have a great deal of respect for me, do you, Aled?"
His friend shrugged and looked intensely embarrassed. "I can understand your situation well enough to know that I would not wish to be in your shoes," he said.
