“Have you?” he said. “I am glad, Marged. I was under the impression when I saw you picking stones off the field that you could not afford to hire anyone.”
How dared he!
“I have afforded my rent each year,” she said, “and my tithes. What other money I have and how I spend it are my concern, my lord.”
“Quite,” he said, and they walked on in silence for a while. But he was not finished with her. “Marged,” he said when they were a short distance from Ty-Gwyn, “I would hate to see you lose your help almost before you have him. If Waldo Parry—or any other man of your acquaintance—is a follower of Rebecca, it might be as well for you to warn them that I am hot on their trail. It is a mere matter of time before the whole foolish trouble is at an end.”
“And there will be no mercy on any of them,” she said. “I know that. But you cannot make me tremble with fear, Geraint Penderyn. If I knew any of Rebecca’s followers, I would encourage them to continue what they are doing. Perhaps I would even become one of them myself. And perhaps I would see Rebecca as a hero, as someone to be admired and respected. Someone to be followed.”
She did not care about the recklessness of her words. She had promised herself on a previous occasion that she would not allow him to play cat and mouse with her.
“He is a criminal, Marged,” he said. They had stopped outside the gate and he was looking at her with his hard blue eyes—eyes that had been tear-filled and beautiful up on the moors just a short while before. “He has no way of winning.”
“Sometimes”—she leaned a little toward him and looked directly into his eyes—“people, both men and women, would prefer to fight a hopeless cause than not to fight at all. Sometimes the worst that can happen to a person is that he lose his self-respect or his soul. Or hers. Don’t threaten me, my lord, or try to make me run in a craven panic to warn off anyone I may know who marches with Rebecca. You are wasting your breath.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Yes,” he said, “I can see that. Be careful, then. Far more careful than you were the night you put wet ashes in my bed. I caught you then, remember?”
She had just told him that he could not make her tremble with fear. But she felt cold with it as he took her right hand in his, raised it to his lips, and kissed the palm as he had done with both hands on a previous occasion. He knew. Not just about the ashes—of course he knew about those. He knew that she followed Rebecca. He was warning her that he could easily catch her, as he had that night. And that he would not help her when he did.
Was he warning her in the hope that he would not have to catch her and see her punished? Was it his way of acknowledging that he had once cared?
He turned without another word and continued on his way down the hill. She watched him go, the man who was so much a part of her that not even hatred, not even her love for another man could quite dislodge him.
She could not love him, she thought, frowning slightly for a moment. She had loved him once, then Eurwyn, now Rebecca. That at least made sense—one man at a time. She could not have loved him while she loved Eurwyn. But she knew she had. She certainly could not love him now while her passionate love for Rebecca was so new and so wonderful—and so painful. But she knew that she did in some strange, strange way.
In some way she would always love Geraint Penderyn. Unwillingly and with denial on her lips and in her mind at every turn. But in this moment of painful truth she knew that he would always be there—in the depths of her heart.
Where she did not want him to be.
But where he was and always would be.
Matthew Harley was taking a Friday afternoon off. It was something he rarely did, though he was entitled to it and to far more spare time than he ever took. Usually he did not look for time off. He was happiest when at work. But work was no longer satisfying. He had even wondered if he should start looking for a post elsewhere.
Except that he did not want to go elsewhere. He had begun to think of Tegfan almost as his. He had made it as prosperous and efficient as it was. He had made a reputation for himself. He had won the respect of every landowner in Carmarthenshire. He did not want to have to begin again somewhere else.
It did not seem fair to him that he would always be someone’s steward, that he would never own land for himself. But then life was not fair and he had never been one to complain about what could not be helped. But he had begun to think of Tegfan as his own. He had begun to believe that the Earl of Wyvern would never want to live there himself. He had two larger estates in England, after all, and he was known as a man who preferred life in London to country living, anyway.
It had seemed safe to Harley to give in to the fantasy that Tegfan belonged to him. It had never mattered that he drew only a salary from it and not all the profits. Money had never meant a great deal to him provided he had enough for his needs.
But Wyvern was back and it seemed that he was going to stay. And he had become tougher lately and had fallen more in line with what was expected of him in this part of the British Isles. It was he who was conferring with Sir Hector Webb and the other landowners on what must be done about the threat the Rebecca Riots was posing. It was he who was talking with the special constables, planning strategy with them.
Harley had hoped at the start that Wyvern would return to England soon. He still hoped it though it was seeming less likely than it had. And he hoped for a way of reasserting his own importance. If only somehow he could be the one to trap the mob, particularly their Rebecca! His mind returned sometimes to that conversation he had had with Sir Hector, when the baronet had suggested that he find an informant.
Harley spent the Friday afternoon with Ceris. It was a beautiful day, and warm. They took a picnic up into the hills behind Tegfan—inside the park so that they could be alone together. But he could not think seriously of informants or riots or even his own frustrations as a steward on such an afternoon and in such company. He put it all out of his mind. He would think about it some other time.
“Now tell me,” he said, lying back on the grass after they had finished eating, and setting one arm over his eyes to shield them from the sun while he reached for her hand with the other. She was seated on the grass beside him, her knees drawn up, her dress pulled decently down so that he was given not even a glimpse of her ankles. “Did you cook all those cakes and biscuits yourself? Or was it your mother?” He smiled, though he did not remove his arm to look at her.
“I baked them all myself,” she said primly. “Mam was busy making the cheese. Did you think I was incapable?”
“Not for a moment,” he said. He had tried very hard not to fall in love with her. When he had started to think about leaving his present employment, he had started to think too about England and a more suitable bride. His parents would not appreciate a Welsh peasant for a daughter-in-law. His grandfather was a baron. “Come down here to me.”
She had turned her head to look down at him when he withdrew his arm to look. He tugged on her hand and then reached up his other arm to her waist. She came down rather awkwardly, half across him. But she kissed him as sweetly as ever, her lips pouted softly and closed. He felt the familiar rush of heat and tightening in the groin. He set his arms about her and turned her until she was lying on the grass and he was bent over her.