“Good night,” she said, returning the pressure of his hand. “Good night, Rebecca. And thank you for riding so far out of your way.”
He released her hand, but she did not turn away from him fast enough. She paused long enough to smile at him. Too long. He set his hands at her waist again, drew her against him, and kissed her.
He could feel nothing but her lips, trembling against his own—the wool of his mask kept his face from touching hers. But it was enough. Too much. He deepened the kiss, parting his lips over hers, licking at them with his tongue. Marged! Love, he was discovering, could lie dormant for ten years but did not die. It could flower again with one kiss. Flower into a more intensely glorious bloom than before. Yes, it was like the flowers of springtime, blooming out of plants seemingly dead at the end of a long winter.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes and her voice dazed when he lifted his head. Her hands were stroking across his shoulders. “Who are you? Who are you?”
“Go in now,” he said. “Go now, Marged.”
She gazed into his eyes for a moment longer and for the first time he saw a frown between her brows and doubt in her eyes as if she were recognizing him. But she shook her head and turned away. Before he could assist her, she was through the gate and hurrying across the farmyard to the house. He could scarcely see her by the time she opened the door, but he thought she turned to wave to him. He lifted a hand in response and kept it there, motionless.
If only he had not been so foolish as a boy, he thought. If only he had not cut himself off from Tegfan so ruthlessly that even a personal letter from the woman he had loved had not made it into his hands. She could love him again. He had seen it in her face and heard it in her voice and felt it in her kiss. If only he had not done things to make her hate him, he could woo her back. But those things were irreversible. He could not bring her husband back to her. And if he could, he would lose her anyway.
He would do it gladly, he thought with a jolt of pained surprise, if only it were possible. He would bring back the husband she had admired and loved. And so cut himself off from her forever. It would be enough to know that she was happy.
And that perhaps she would remember him with some kindness.
He stood at the gate for a long time before turning back to his patient horse and swinging himself back into the saddle.
She was in chapel at the usual time on Sunday morning. She sat very erect, looking straight ahead instead of giving in to curiosity and looking about to see how many of last night’s Rebeccaites had managed to get themselves out of bed in time.
She realized that she had had no more than four hours of sleep. What surprised her was the fact that she had had that much. She had not expected to sleep after scrubbing her face and undressing and climbing into the cupboard bed, exhausted as she had been. There had been too much teeming around inside her head.
But she had found as soon as her head was on the pillow and the blankets up beneath her chin that there was only one image in her mind after all. There was Rebecca’s face covered by the pale mask, surrounded by the blond ringlets. And Rebecca’s light eyes, beautiful and compelling. Eyes that for a moment before she had come inside had had her reaching for something in the recesses of her memory that just would not come into her conscious mind.
And Rebecca’s mouth, warm and inviting and wonderful—and giving the startling lie to any lingering myth that there was no man behind the mask.
She had relived his kiss and the memory of the feel of him, burrowing farther beneath the blankets and keeping her eyes firmly closed, unwilling to let go of the magic of it. She had been kissed again after so long. She had been desired again. And she had desired. A man she had never seen without the disguise, a man she would not know if she passed him in the village. But there had been desire between them.
And she would see him again. Perhaps never to talk again. Perhaps he would never look at her again. But she would see him. And follow him as Rebecca wherever he chose to lead her. Because she admired and trusted him.
Because she had fallen a little in love with him. She had smiled at the thought. And fallen deeply asleep.
She wondered now if it was wicked to be sitting in chapel after such a night. She had been part of a mob that had destroyed a tollgate and a tollhouse. She was a criminal in the eyes of the law. And she had kissed a stranger and desired a man who was not her husband. Oh, yes, she had desired him. She had wanted to lie with him, all the disguises stripped away. She had wanted him in her bed and in her body, man and woman together.
But she would not feel ashamed.
And then someone sat in the empty seat next to her, Eurwyn’s place that no one had taken since his death. Except that one Sunday. And again today. Without turning her head, she knew. She could feel that it was he. And she could smell the distinctive musk of his cologne. She stiffened with resentment.
“Good morning, Marged,” he said very quietly.
So he had decided to notice her this morning, had he? She considered ignoring him, but she was in chapel. Not that that should make any difference. If she acknowledged him only for that reason, she was being very hypocritical. She turned her head to find his blue eyes steady on her. They gave her a jolt of awareness.
“Good morning, my lord,” she said equally quietly.
It was the limit of the communication between them, and he did not try to walk home with her after chapel as he had the time before. It would have been difficult, anyway. She drew Mrs. Williams and a reluctant Ceris away from the crowd far sooner than usual after service, linked her arms through one each of theirs, and marched them off homeward, talking determinedly about the spring flowers blooming wild along the banks of the river.
But he had ruined her morning. She had been unable—again—to concentrate on any part of the service though it had sounded as if her father had been fuller of hwyl even than usual if the chorus of responses from the congregation during the sermon was anything to judge by.
And what was worse, he had ruined last night for her. She had tried to ignore her awareness of him by concentrating her mind and her emotions on Rebecca and their ride home together and their shared kiss. But it had not worked. Not as well as it had the night before when she had gone to bed.
He had merely been a stranger being gallant. And taking advantage of the situation a little at the end by stealing a kiss. Though there had been no theft involved, of course. He must have known that she was pathetically willing. It had been nothing more than that for him. Perhaps he even had a wife at home, wherever home was.
Only she had felt the magic.
And damn Geraint Penderyn for making her see that sooner than need be. Yes, she would use the word again quite deliberately in her mind.
Damn him!
Ceris walked with Marged but did not participate at all in the conversation. She had always known her friend’s views and had always sympathized even if she could not agree. Marged after all had lost a husband cruelly. It was enough to make any woman bitter. If it had been Aled . . .
But Marged had gone beyond talk. She had joined Rebecca last night, as had Aled, and they had gone to smash a tollgate. A legally erected tollgate. She knew they had gone. Her father would have gone too if the distance had not been so great. But he was no longer a young man and found it difficult to walk great distances. Aled had advised him against going, he had explained last evening to Mam and her. But he would go another time, when it was a gate closer to home.