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 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 fiancé 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 strange, 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.
She shook her head slightly.
“The blacksmith?” The disguise had been impenetrable in the brief glimpse he had had of the man close to—and even then his eyes had been more on Ceris than on the man with whom she rode—but all night he had been haunted by the conviction that it was the blacksmith.
She stared at the ground between them.
“Did you spend the night with him, Ceris?” He knew that she had. He had had to return on foot from that road whereas she had had a ride. The chances were good that she would have been home long before he reached the end of the lane leading to her father’s house. But he had spent the rest of the night watching it, anyway, waiting for her to come home, trying to persuade himself that she was inside, fast asleep all the time. She had returned, walking up from the direction of Glynderi, at dawn.