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 haughty 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 Duw, 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.