She could have known by now who he was. She had sensed earlier that he was about to tell her everything. Why had she not wanted him to do so? Her reluctance had taken her by surprise. Was it that she was enjoying this fantasy? As long as she had never seen his face or heard his name, as long as she knew nothing of his life except what pertained to Rebecca, she could make him into any man she wanted him to be. Had she idealized him? Was he quite as wonderful in real life as she thought him?
Perhaps she did not want to know the reality. A real-life man was a complex person. If one lived closely with a real man, one had to adjust to his ways, learn to accept him as he was, with all his faults and annoying habits. The adjustment with Eurwyn had taken a year or more—perhaps all five years of their marriage. A close love relationship was something that had to be worked on every day of one’s life.
Maybe she was enjoying this fairy-tale romance into which real life had not yet intruded.
But she wondered if it must soon face the test of reality whether she wanted it to or not. She had just been doing mental calculations. She had been avoiding the same calculations for a few days. Her suspicions were quite correct. She was four days late. It was not a great deal of time and probably meant nothing at all. She remembered being five days late once fairly early in her marriage, but the sixth day had shattered her hopes with the indisputable evidence that she was not pregnant. This time she was only four days late.
For a moment she felt the dizziness of panic. But she would not give in to it. The chances were that she was only late. And even if it was not that, even if there was a child in her womb, he would not abandon her. He had told her that. And he had told her she could always communicate with him through Aled.
She believed him implicitly. If he had said he would not abandon her, then he would not, even though to do so would be very easy. How would she ever find him if he did not want to be found?
But she trusted him. He had withheld truths from her, but he had never lied to her. He loved her. He had told her so, and she believed him.
She rubbed her cheek against his bare chest and sighed with contentment. She allowed herself to relax into sleep.
Matthew Harley was cursing himself for a fool. It was almost dawn. He had spent most of the night out on the hill below Marged Evans’s farm, chilled to the bone, watching for something that even at the start he had been far from sure would happen.
He had just about impoverished himself lately, paying out bribes—two to the constables who had accompanied him in his pursuit of Ceris and knew the truth of that night’s events, and one to a footman at the house. The two had been paid because he had made a fool of himself over a mere tenant farmer’s daughter. The third had been paid because he desperately wanted to get revenge on someone for all the troubles that had come into his life lately. And who better to avenge himself on than the Earl of Wyvern himself?
He was sure that Wyvern was also Rebecca, incredible as the suspicion seemed.
And so he had a footman spying for him at Tegfan. And tonight Wyvern had slipped out without a word to anyone. It was impossible to know where he had gone, though Harley would bet his last penny that tomorrow would bring the news of another gate or two having been pulled down—by Rebecca and her children. Harley pinned all his hopes on witnessing Wyvern’s return and somehow seeing the evidence that Wyvern and Rebecca were one and the same person.
But where was he to wait? Outside Tegfan itself was not good enough. By the time he arrived home, doubtless all disguise and all evidence of Rebecca would have been shed. From which direction would he be likely to come? There were as many possibilities as there were directions.
But it was not difficult for Harley to decide which one he would gamble on. The last time he had seen Wyvern coming home in the early morning, he had been riding across the hill, coming from the direction of Ty-Gwyn. Harley had concluded at the time that he had been coming from a tryst with Marged Evans. It was very likely that Marged was a Rebeccaite. Her husband had been trouble, and the constable who had been stationed outside the Williams farm had seen her—or a lad Harley suspected had been her— going down the hill at a late hour.
It was very possible that Marged and Rebecca were lovers.
And so Harley stationed himself in such a position on the hill that he could see both Ty-Gwyn above and Tegfan below and yet was himself hidden from anyone who did not actually ride or walk right on top of him. And yet for all he knew, he was on a fool’s errand. There were hours and hours of chilly boredom to live through and probably would be nothing for his pains at the end of it except a sleepless night and increased anger.
It was time to return home, he decided at last. Probably Wyvern had been tucked up in his bed at Tegfan for hours already. But not so. Before he could move his cramped limbs and show himself to an empty hillside, something caught at the corner of his vision despite the fact that it was still dark. Something light.
There was a horse with two riders outside the gate of Ty-Gwyn. One of the riders swung down from the saddle and lifted down the other. For a few moments their images merged, and then the smaller of the two, the one dressed in dark man’s clothes, opened the gate and disappeared from sight inside the farmyard. The other stayed where he was and watched and raised a hand in farewell a few moments later. Then he remounted his horse and turned it across the hill, in the direction of Tegfan.
The rider, Harley saw with mounting excitement, was all white. He wore a flowing white robe, a blond wig, and what looked to be a white mask. He was Rebecca, the same figure Harley had seen last watching the roadway from which the blacksmith was rescuing Ceris.
He must be Wyvern. Unless his path changed, he was riding toward the northern, uphill entrance to Tegfan. Harley wished he could follow him, but he was on foot. There was nowhere he could conveniently have hidden a horse. Besides, he could not have followed on horseback without being seen.
The man on the horse stopped and looked back when he had put some distance between himself and the farm. He must have ridden out of sight of the gate already. Harley watched, wide-eyed, as he pulled off first his wig and then his mask, which appeared to be some sort of cap that he had pulled over his whole head. Then the gown came off and all were bundled up quickly and wrapped in the cloak or blanket or whatever it was bundled behind the saddle. The rider resumed his journey.
Dawn had not yet broken and there was some distance between the rider and Harley. But Harley was left in no doubt at all about the identity of Rebecca. He was the Earl of Wyvern.
He almost laughed aloud in his excitement. He had him. By God, he had him. If only he had a gun or had brought one of the constables with him! He could have taken Sir Hector Webb a far more significant prisoner than Ceris had been. But there was no point in making his presence known since there was no way of effecting a capture tonight. But tomorrow morning early he would ride to Pantnewydd with his news and his eyewitness account of the transformation of Rebecca into the Earl of Wyvern.
He watched from his position on the hill until Wyvern turned into the northern entrance to the park and disappeared from view among the trees. He was tired, Harley thought, but he doubted that he would get any sleep for what remained of the night.
If only he could put the finger on the blacksmith too. He would like to see Ceris Williams suffering through a trial and a conviction and the transportation for life of her lover.