She said nothing.
“You told me yesterday,” he said, “that you were a virgin. Could the same be said today?”
She looked up at him again. “No, Matthew,” she said softly. “I am sorry. You will want to withdraw the offer you made me yesterday, and I must change my answer. I am sorry.”
“Would you have gone to warn them last night if he had not been with them?” he asked her. He could hear the bitterness in his voice.
“They are my people, Matthew,” she said. “I do not like what they are doing, but they do it in the earnest conviction that it is the only way to protest the intolerable conditions of our lives. I went because they are my people.”
“And because you love him.” He could not leave it alone. “Say it, Ceris. You stayed with him last night. You would not do that for less than love, would you?”
“I am sorry, Matthew.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I should never have said yes to you. I was fond of you and I thought that would be enough. You deserve better.”
She had been fond of him! His hands clenched at his sides.
“You do not need to come farther with me,” she said. “It will be better if I go alone from here.”
He nodded and watched her turn away. And imagined her small, shapely body spread naked beneath the blacksmith’s.
“Ceris,” he called after her. She turned to look back at him. “Tell your lover that I am going to catch him and see that he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Enjoy him while you may. It will not be for long. He will spend the rest of his life in transportation.”
She looked at him for a long time, saying nothing, before turning away again and walking off across the hill. He sat down on the ground and set his elbows on his raised knees and the heels of his hands against his eyes. He should have had her yesterday when he had had the chance. If only he had known how things were going to turn out, he would have enjoyed her to the full. He would have done to her some of the things he liked doing with whores who were willing to earn something in addition to their basic fee. Her blacksmith would have found her slightly worn and bruised when it came his turn last night.
It must have been the blacksmith. Harley raised his head and draped his arms over his knees. He had been a large man, the right build. The blacksmith was one of Rebecca’s daughters. And Rebecca herself—or himself, of course—had waited on the hill until the blacksmith came safely back up with Ceris. He had put himself in greater danger by waiting, especially given the distinctive shade of his disguise. Why would he have waited? Because he too knew Ceris and was anxious about her? Because he felt a loyalty to his “daughter”? Because that particular daughter was a close friend of his? Was Rebecca also from Glynderi, then, or close by?
Or was Rebecca closer yet? The idea seemed as preposterous now as it had seemed last night when it had first flashed into his mind. But it might as well at least be pulled out and given some consideration. He ran mentally over some facts, in random order. He was not yet trying to make a coherent whole out of them.
Rebecca had had someone else up on his horse with him. A young man or lad, it had seemed. But he had sat sideways on the horse, his arms about Rebecca’s waist. A woman? It seemed very possible. The Earl of Wyvern had been from home last evening when Harley had looked for him, and no one seemed to know where he had gone. His valet had thought he had retired early. The Earl of Wyvern had returned home not long before dawn. He had not seen Harley as he rode across the hill higher up than the Williams farm. He had been wearing neither greatcoat nor cloak nor hat, but there had been a rather fat bundle behind his saddle and he had been running the fingers of one hand through his hair, rather as if he had just removed a hat.
Had he been coming home from a romantic tryst with a whore or mistress? Harley did not know where he was likely to find either in this corner of nonconformist Wales. But he did know one thing. He had learned it in talking to one of the older gardeners after Wyvern’s arrival from England. As a boy, before his legitimacy had been established, Wyvern had had two close friends. Aled Rhoslyn, now the blacksmith of Glynderi. And Marged Llwyd, now Marged Evans, who lived—without a man—at the farm of Ty-Gwyn, higher up the hill from the Williams farm. Eurwyn Evans had died in transportation after trying to destroy the salmon weir. His widow must be an angry young woman as well as an attractive one—and probably a lusty one.
When he first arrived at Tegfan, Wyvern had disapproved of rising rents, the strict enforcement of tithe collection, and the high and frequent tolls the people had to pay at the tollgates. He had ordered the destruction of the salmon weir and directed the removal of the gamekeepers’ mantraps. He had offered employment to the farmer who had lost his farm last year when he was unable to pay the rent. But Wyvern had made no attempt at further changes lately. Not since the Rebecca Riots had flared in this part of the country, in fact. Waldo Parry was now working for Marged Evans, Harley had heard.
Despite a stern, cold manner, Wyvern had been far more ready to believe his lies this morning and release Ceris than Sir Hector had been. Sir Hector had not called him a liar, but he had still believed that Ceris might have seen someone close enough—her kidnapper, for example—to identify or might have heard something that could be useful as evidence. He had still wanted to keep her in custody for questioning. It was Wyvern who had said that they could not so insult his steward as to interrogate Harley’s fiancée.
What did it all mean? Harley asked himself at last. It made no sense to think what he was thinking. Or did it? Certainly he knew what he wanted to believe. Wanted quite desperately to believe. It would be wonderful. It would get rid of Wyvern and leave Harley free to continue as before under his new employers, Sir Hector Webb and Lady Stella. And it might also get rid of the blacksmith. Then Harley could watch Ceris suffer.
He wanted to see her suffer.
He wanted them all to suffer.
But how could he prove it?
Chapter 24
IT was destined to be a wholly turbulent day, Geraint realized soon after Aled had left. His friend had been satisfied that Ceris Williams’s name had been cleared and that there was no fear of her being arrested again. He had been less satisfied with the alibi that had been presented to clear her. Geraint had not realized before last night that there was a romantic attachment between the two of them. Neither had he realized that Aled had been shot the night before. It seemed that Ceris had dressed the wound and that there was no sign of inflammation this morning. But Aled had been in pain. That had been obvious from the paleness of his face.
There had been no time for Geraint to mull over in his mind the events of last night. Or the events of the morning. It had been a close-run thing. Ceris Williams’s courage had been unexpected, Harley’s lies in order to provide an alibi more so. Why had he lied? Because he loved Ceris? There appeared to be a love triangle at work in that situation, something that might yet cause trouble.
And there had been Marged’s visit and her rash and altogether characteristic attempt to save Ceris by taking her place. And her offer of herself to him if that was what it would take to win her friend’s freedom—an offer he had found rather unpalatable. And yet he could not help feeling a fierce pride in her and an almost agonized love of her. It had been a real agony this morning to play the part of the Earl of Wyvern, to be cold, to feel her touch and show no reaction to it. And yet his body—and his emotions—were still feeling the effects of several hours of lovemaking with her that had been both tender and passionate.