by Mary Balogh
Ceris heard Matthew exhale through his mouth. She stared woodenly downward at the floor.
"There has been a dreadful mistake," Matthew said. "And I am not surprised she has said nothing. She belongs to the chapel here, you know, and it would be considered sin enough to have her expelled and driven up the mountain."
He knows about Aled, Ceris thought desperately. She looked up fleetingly to see the earl raise haughty eyebrows.
"Ceris and I got engaged yesterday," Matthew said. He sounded almost embarrassed. "We went walking last night. We went quite a distance across the hills. And then we got to kissing and then to other things and"—he laughed— "well, I suppose I tried to go too far and she took fright. She went running off, and before I could catch up to her to apologize, we got all caught up in whatever was going on down on the road. Suddenly there were black-faced men fleeing to all sides of me and Ceris was down on the road. And then a rider in dark women's clothes snatched her up and made off with her. I have been worried silly. That was why I sent this gatekeeper over to you, Sir Hector, instead of dealing with the matter myself. I am sorry. I neglected my duty."
"It is my duty to be up and dealing with such matters," the earl said.
"Ceris?" Matthew came into her line of vision. "Are you all right? Oh, please let them untie her hands, sir. She has been an innocent victim. Did you recognize him, love? Or anyone else? And what did he do with you? If he—"
"I did not recognize him," she said, looking down rather than into his eyes. She did not know quite what was going on. "He dropped me from the horse's back when, I suppose, he thought he was safe from pursuit."
"Thank God." Matthew drew a ragged breath.
They believed him. She did not really listen to all that was said over the next few minutes, but they believed him. Her hands were released and were soon so painful with the pins and needles of returning circulation that she had something to concentrate on.
"I'll take you home, Ceris," Matthew said, setting an arm loosely about her shoulders. "If you can trust me after last night, that is."
Never did words have more of a double meaning, Ceris thought.
Chapter 23
Idris had told her. He had come darting into the farmyard while she was there with his father, talking over with him what his duties were to be. Idris had told both of them.
"They have come for Miss Williams," he had gasped out. 'They have dragged her down to Tegfan with her hands tied behind her back."
No longer than five minutes later—she paused only long enough to run into the house to remove her apron and grab her shawl —she was striding from the farmyard and through the gate and down the hill. She did not even listen as she passed Idris trying to persuade his father that it would be all right, that the Earl of Wyvern would not do anything dreadful to Miss Williams.
Ceris had been recognized. Foolish woman. She had gone running out onto the open road without any attempt at disguise. Those two men who had shot at her and Aled must have seen and recognized her. That particular gatekeeper—if he was one of those two men—had used to live in Glynderi. She had been recognized and it had been assumed that she was part of the crowd that had destroyed the gate. And now she had been arrested.
But what had she been doing down on that road? Marged had had no chance to run down to the Williams farm during the morning. She had half expected that Ceris would come up to Ty-Gwyn.
Marged quickened her pace so that she was half running by the time she neared the bottom of the hill and turned in the direction of Glynderi and the gates into Tegfan park beyond it. Ceris was the one who had been caught and dragged off to Tegfan with her hands bound. How ironic. Ceris, who was so adamant in her disapproval of the Rebecca Riots that she had broken off her relationship with Aled and almost destroyed her friendship with Marged.
Ceris had been caught.
Marged felt sick over the fact that she had been so very happy this morning. He loved her. Rebecca loved her. They had made love three times in the hovel on the moors before he had brought her home. She had been disappointed that he had donned his whole disguise before doing so, but she had understood. For her own safety as well as his, it was important to him to guard his identity. She refused to be hurt by it. She was too happy. He loved her.
But now this. While she had been wandering about the farm this morning, dreamy-eyed and absentminded, and while she had been talking with Waldo Parry, only half her attention on what they were both saying, disaster had been coming to Ceris.
What would they do to her? What would he do to her? Marged had unwilling memories of the nightmare of two years before when Eurwyn had been captured—the trial and conviction, the sentencing, the knowledge that he had been taken away, that he was in the hulks, that… She shook her head and hurried on.
She had to stand aside when she was halfway up the driveway to Tegfan for a carriage to pass. She caught a glimpse of Sir Hector Webb of Pantnewydd inside. There were other people with him, but there was no chance to see who they were or even what gender. What if one of them was Ceris being taken off to jail? Marged was already breathless and her legs already felt like jelly, but somehow she stumbled into a run.
She banged the knocker on the front door, not even thinking about going around to the servants' entrance. And she faced the footman who answered the door and the butler who was in the hall with such fierce determination despite the fact that the latter looked at her as if she were a worm, that she was allowed to step into the hall. The butler went to see if his lordship was at home.
It seemed that his lordship was in the library and that he would see Mrs. Evans there immediately. The butler managed to look expressionless and contemptuous all at the same time. Marged hardly noticed. One sweeping glance about the library when she stepped inside revealed to her two walls lined with books, a high coved ceiling, a large desk strewn with papers, a thick carpet underfoot. But they were details her mind did not dwell upon. Geraint was setting down a quill pen and rising from his chair at the far side of the desk.
"Marged?" he said, his eyebrows raised.
He was immaculate and handsome and she hated him. "Where is she?" she demanded. "What have you done with her?"
Geraint, eyebrows still raised, looked pointedly beyond her shoulder until she heard the door close behind her. "She?" he said, bringing his eyes to hers.
"Where is Ceris Williams?" she demanded.
He came around the desk, though he did not come close to her. He stood with feet apart and hands clasped behind his back. The cool, inflexible aristocrat. "News travels fast in a small community," he said. "Doubtless you have heard that she was arrested for involvement in the destruction of a tollgate last night."
Hearing it from his lips suddenly made it all horribly real. Marged feared for a moment that she was going to succumb to panic. She threw back her head and glared at him.
"Ceris?" she said. "A gentler, more timid woman would be impossible to find. Or one more firmly opposed to lawlessness and violence. Someone has made a ghastly mistake."
"Timid?" he said. "I would say it would be impossible to find a braver lady. She said nothing, Marged. Nothing at all. You do not have to fear that she betrayed all your friends and neighbors. She did not."
But if Ceris had refused to say anything, they would be incensed. They would try to make her talk. What would they do to accomplish that? There were instant images of torture and rape. She drew a sharp inward breath.
"There was a mistake," she said. "She was seen on that road, wasn't she? When she went back down to find a lost h-handkerchief that might have been traced back to her. That was it, wasn't it? But that was not Ceris. It was me. I was out with Rebecca last night, smashing gates, not Ceris. It was me."
He looked at her long and hard and she found herself for some absurd reason wondering if Rebecca's eyes were as blue as Geraint's, or if they were gray. Perhaps she would never know. Probably she would never know. She was glad suddenly that she did not know Rebecca's identity. She
was not sure how well she would stand up against torture or—or that other.
"Marged," he said. "She was positively identified. She was seen from close up. There is no physical resemblance at all between the two of you."
"It was dark," she said.
"She was seen in full moonlight," he said.
It was not going to work. She was not going to be able to free Ceris, and now she had betrayed herself too. But she could not feel fear—yet. Only a deep hopelessness.
"Geraint," she said, using his given name without thought. She took a few steps toward him. "She is innocent. She came to warn us. She must have heard what someone else had heard too, that there were constables coming, and she came to warn us. Because she loves us and cares for us even though she disapproves of what we are doing. She had no part in what happened. Let her go. Please?" She blinked her eyes furiously when her vision blurred.
"Marged—" he said.
"Take me instead," she said, "and let her go. Please, Geraint. I have already confessed to having been there myself last night. I have been at each of the gate breakings. I have helped destroy them with my own hands. If 1 am being honest about my own guilt, why would I lie about Ceris's innocence? Let her go. What can I do to persuade you to let her go?" She took another step toward him.
He stood very still, an arrested look on his face. "What are you prepared to do, Marged?" he asked her eventually.
What was she prepared to do? She realized suddenly what she had insinuated, what she had only half consciously been offering. She thought briefly and with a deep stabbing of pain of Rebecca and the glorious night of love they had shared a mere few hours ago. And she thought too of how she had visualized Geraint during the second and third lovings because she had no mental picture of Rebecca. She thought of Geraint, the boy she had loved for so long and the man who had become a part of her being, however unwilling she was that it be so.
She took the remaining two steps that brought her toe to toe with him. She saw that her hand was trembling as she lifted it to set her palm over his heart. "Let her go." She set the other hand against his chest and let both slide up to his shoulders as she swayed her body against him. She set her forehead just beneath his chin. "I will do whatever you ask of me. Geraint, remember what it is like to be poor and in need and frightened."
He had not moved. His hands were still behind his back. His body was hard and unyielding. He was about the same height and build as Rebecca, she thought unwillingly. She did not want to think about Rebecca. She had to do what must be done to save Ceris, and then she must face whatever must be faced after her rash confession. She must not think of the man she loved.
"It is quite an offer," he said, his voice curiously flat. "Your body in exchange for your friend's freedom, Marged? Your body to be used however I will and as many times as I will?"
Geraint. He was Geraint. He was that vibrant, charming boy she had loved. This cold, hard man.
"Yes," she said.
"Your friend is already free," he said. "It seems there was a mistake. Her fiance, Matthew Harley, explained that they were out courting, or otherwise amusing themselves in the hills, when a slight, ah, quarrel sent her running down onto the road at quite the wrong place at quite the wrong time. But it was a good enough alibi to satisfy both me and Sir Hector Webb. No one can doubt the honesty or loyalty of my steward, after all. He escorted her home. I wonder that you did not pass them on the road."
He had deliberately held back that information from her. He had allowed her to weave her own rope, fashion her own noose, and tighten it about her own neck. She withdrew her head and her hands and her body from his and stood a couple of inches in front of him, her hands clenched loosely at her sides, her head bowed, her eyes closed.
"Marged," he said, "who is Rebecca?"
"I do not know," she said, her voice low and toneless. "And if I did, I would not tell you. Ever."
"There are ways of extracting information from unwilling witnesses," he said.
"Yes." She kept her eyes closed. "I think I am brave. But I do not know for sure. Perhaps I would break. I am glad he has refused to tell me who he is."
"You have spoken with him, then?" he asked.
"Yes." She felt a sudden surging of anger and of spite. A sudden need to hurt, though she did not know if he would be in any way hurt by the information. "I have loved him too. I have made love with him. I love him. I believe his secret would be safe with me even if he had trusted me with it. But he did not."
It seemed to her that the silence lasted a very long time.
And stupidly, inexplicably, insanely she felt suddenly bereft. She wanted to reach out a hand to touch him again, to tell him that she had not quite meant it that way, that she still cared for him, Geraint. That part of her still loved him and always would. And she wondered how she could love Rebecca as deeply and passionately as she did and yet still love Geraint too.
"Marged," he said, "'what you have told me in this room must never be told outside it. Do you understand me? You have been typically rash and outspoken and untypically dishonest. You have lied to save a friend who did not need saving. Your motive was admirable. Your method was foolhardy. If you tell this story to someone else, he might believe you."
She lifted her head at last and looked into his eyes. They were so close to her own that she almost took a step backward. But she held her ground.
"I do not have to tell you what jail is like, do I?" he said. "Or what is involved in a sentence of transportation. Your lies would lead you to be transported."
She knew that he knew she had not lied.
"Geraint—" she began.
"Go back home now," he said. "Your mother-in-law and your grandmother-in-law need you."
"Geraint—" She bowed her head again and set her hands loosely over her face. She found herself wanting to tell him that she had lied in what she had said about her feelings for Rebecca. And yet she had not. She did love him—with all her being. And she noticed at the same moment that he was not wearing his usual cologne this morning, that he was wearing no cologne but smelled merely—clean. One of those moments caught at her consciousness again but refused to be grasped.
"Go home, Marged." His voice was suddenly and unexpectedly gentle. "It must be a wonderful thing to have you for a friend. In fact, I know it is. You were my friend once. I remember running home to tell my mother that I had a wonderful friend. My first friend. Go home now. Your lies trulv will go no farther than me and I will remember our friendship."
"Geraint." Her voice was high-pitched and quavering, she heard in some alarm. "Why is life so far beyond our control even when we try to abide by all the rules? Sometimes life frightens me."
She turned, bent on following his advice before she made a greater fool of herself than she had already done this morning. Fortunately he had made no move to reach out to her. If he had done so, she would have gone all to pieces and despised herself for the rest of her life. But the door was flung back before she could take a step toward it.
"What the devil is going on. Ger?" Aled Rhoslyn said, striding inside—the butler hovered helplessly behind him. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Marged.
"I take it," Geraint said, "that you have come to bargain for the release of Ceris Williams as Marged has done, Aled?"
Aled was looking deathly pale, Marged noticed. But then the news would have been worse for him than it had been for her. Aled loved Ceris.
"Say nothing, Aled," she said quickly. "Ceris has been released. It was all a mistake."
His eyes met Geraint's over the top of her head.
"Her fiance vouched for the fact that they were out together, involved in the business of courtship, when they somehow got caught up with a gang of Rebecca rioters about their work," Geraint said. "'Miss Williams is a friend of yours, Aled?"
For one moment Marged thought he was going to faint. "You might say so," he said.
"Ah," Geraint said softly from behind her.
It was str
ange, Marged thought—the three of them together again as they had often used to be as children, Geraint usually leading them into some mischief. And yet now there was the yawning gulf between him on one side and her and Aled on the other. And the terrible tension.
"I am free to go?" she asked.
"Why ever would you not be?" the haughty voice of the Earl of Wyvern said from behind her. "Good day to you, Marged."
She fled, sparing only one hasty look at Aled as she passed. Thank heaven at least that she had been there and had been able to warn him in time against being as foolhardy as she had been.
Why had he pretended not to believe her? she wondered. Why had he let her go? Was he trying somehow to make amends for what he had done—or not done—to Eurwyn? Did he still care?
He took her on the shorter route home, up over the hill at the north end of the park and then across the hills to her father's farm. He took her by that route in order to avoid having to pass through the village. They walked side by side and in silence until they stopped by unspoken but mutual consent close to the top of the park. Close to the place where they had picnicked and become betrothed the day before.
Her eyes were downcast, her face expressionless. He felt heartsick.
"Ceris," he said, "did they hurt you?"
"No." There was almost no sound, but she shook her head.
"You betrayed me," he said.
She looked up at him then. Her eyes were large and calm, though there was pain in them too. He knew that he ought not to have said that. The betrayal had been mutual, but his had perhaps been worse because he had deliberately set out to trap her.
"And I betrayed you," he said.
"Yes." Her gaze was steady and now definitely sad. "Why did you lie for me?"
"Because it was all my fault," he said. "Because you were not guilty of anything except loyalty to your people. Because I love you."
She lowered her eyes again.
"Who was he?" he asked.
