The head groom did not argue. He made his way back downhill, leaving Geraint where he was.
The trouble with foolish pranks like this, Geraint thought, was that one dared not show how furious one was. For that was just what the pranksters hoped to provoke. They would like nothing better than to have him storm into the village tomorrow and about the farms, breathing fire and brimstone, demanding confessions. He would play right into their hands by doing that. But the impotent feeling of knowing that there was nothing he could do merely fed his fury.
He watched the grooms return to the stables. He watched one of them come from behind the house and dart quickly, doubled over, across a stretch of lawn and into the trees opposite. The same groom reappeared a few moments later higher up, just below where Geraint was standing. He stopped and looked back, gazing downward, shielded by the trees just below him. Geraint frowned.
As a boy he had learned to move quickly and silently. Often his safety and his very freedom had depended on his being able to do so. It was amazing how some skills never quite left one even if they had not been used a great deal for many years. It did not take Geraint even a minute to descend the slope and to come up behind the still-motionless figure of the lad.
Except that he was not a lad. He was dressed in breeches and a man’s jacket, but he was hatless, and his long hair was twisted into a knot at the nape of his neck.
“The show is over,” Geraint said softly. “Everyone is on the way back to bed.”
The lad spun around and gazed at him in dismay.
“I believe I told you last night that it is dangerous for a woman to be out on the hills alone,” he said coldly.
She did not try to run away. Doubtless she realized it would have been pointless. Neither did she speak. She lifted her chin and stared back at him.
“What do you know about all this, Marged?” he asked.
Still she said nothing. He saw scorn in her eyes, and perhaps hatred too.
“You were a part of it?” he asked. “You were one of them?”
He waited for her to reply but she did not answer him.
“Tell me who your leader is,” he said. “Tell me who has organized all this. There is a modicum of humor in it all, I suppose, but I have ceased to be amused. Who is he?”
She still did not speak, but the corners of her mouth turned up into a smile that was not really a smile.
“Why?” he asked.
The half smile faded and now the look of hatred was quite naked.
“Why do you hate me?” he asked her. He could feel his temper rising and fought to keep it under control. “Marged, I was a boy with a boy’s cravings and a boy’s gaucheness. I thought you were willing and did not stop to ask you or to consider that perhaps it was unwise even if you were. For this must you hate me for the rest of my life?”
Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed and her hands curled into fists at her sides. At last she spoke.
“You did not even answer my letters,” she hissed at him. “When I had groveled before you, you would not even say no.”
“Your letters?” He frowned.
“I begged you to show mercy on Eurwyn,” she said. “You would not even deign to answer me.”
Oh, God!
“What happened to your husband?” He could scarcely get the words past his lips.
“You do not even know, do you?” she said, scorn and fury mingled in her eyes and her voice. “You washed your hands of him and did not even care to find out what happened to him afterward. He died in the hulks. He did not even get as far as Van Diemen’s Land to begin serving his seven-year sentence of transportation. He died on the ship. He was a strong man, a healthy man. But he could not survive those inhuman conditions. He died. My Eurwyn died like a vicious, depraved criminal.”
She was not crying or hysterical, but he could tell from the clenched fists and the tautness of her posture that she was reliving the agony of her loss.
“Marged—” He reached out a hand toward her.
She leaned back sharply. “Don’t touch me!” she said to him. “What did you need with all the salmon? You were not even living here. There were hungry people. The harvest had been bad. Eurwyn cared. We were not hungry. But he cared about those who were.” She laughed suddenly. “He died because of some salmon. Your salmon. And because you would not intervene to save him.”
“Marged—” he said.
“You killed my husband,” she said. “You did not put a bullet through his heart, but you killed him. And you ask me why I hate you? There is no one in this world I hate as I hate you, Geraint Penderyn. Are you going to have me arrested now? Perhaps I will live to see Van Diemen’s Land, as Eurwyn did not.”
“I will see you home,” he said.
“I will see you in hell first,” she said.
“You need not walk at my side,” he said. “You need not make conversation with me. You need not see me. But I will see you safely home.”
She stared at him for a long while before turning sharply and striding away in the direction of home. He followed behind her, keeping his distance, keeping her in sight so that he might protect her from any danger that presented itself.
He watched her let herself in through the gate when she reached Ty-Gwyn and stayed where he was until she had entered the house without looking back at him.
He still did not know quite what had happened, though it was not difficult to piece together the main events. Eurwyn Evans must have been caught poaching for salmon on Tegfan land. He had been arrested and taken before the nearest magistrate for trial. He had been found guilty and sentenced to seven years transportation. And he had died in the hulks.
Marged had written to him, begging him to intervene on her husband’s behalf. He could have done so. He was not a magistrate, but it was on his land Eurwyn had been caught. All he needed to have done was to have written to the appropriate authority explaining that Evans had been fishing with his permission.
But he had never read the letters. His steward at Tegfan had been instructed not to bother him with estate business, and his secretary in London had been instructed to intercept anything that came directly from Tegfan and deal with it himself. He did not know if Marged’s letters had been presented at Tegfan or sent to London. He did not know which servant had withheld them from him. But it did not matter. Whoever it was had done so on his instructions.
It was his fault that the letters had not reached him.
It was his fault that Evans had been transported.
It was his fault the man had died.
Yes, he had in effect killed Marged’s husband.
By the time he arrived home, Geraint was bone weary. Even so he doubted that he would sleep. But he must lie down. Perhaps somewhere between now and dawn sleep would catch him unawares and give him some moments of oblivion.
But when he had undressed and entered his bedchamber and threw back the covers to climb into bed, he found himself staring down at black ashes over which a pitcher of water must have been dashed.
Geraint began to realize the enormity of the problem.
His efforts to come to some arrangement with the other owners of the road trust and the man who had leased it from them came to nothing at all. No one was willing to budge an inch. And everyone was downright angry with him for even suggesting that change was necessary. Was it not enough that the lower classes were seething with discontent? Was it not enough that in other parts of West Wales the rioting and gate breaking had resumed after three years and even in their own area Mitchell’s hayricks had been burned?