“Ah, yes.” The old familiar hatred and contempt were coming to her rescue. She embraced them eagerly. “Of course it was all his fault for being greedy enough to want the salmon for the people when the owner of Tegfan—the single, absentee owner—needed them all for himself.”
“You did not listen to me, Marged,” he said. “But no matter. If you are determined to see me as the blackhearted villain of your life, I suppose there is nothing I can say. Except that I love you and always have. Except that I will continue to want to marry you and will ask you again. Come, take my arm. We had better get you home out of the rain. It is getting heavier.”
“Don’t ask me again,” she said as they resumed the uphill climb. “If you keep on doing so and I keep on saying no, I may put a dent in your insufferable arrogance. That would be dreadful.”
“Yes.” She looked up to find that his whole face was lit up with laughter. He looked so startlingly handsome and attractive that all her insides seemed to be performing somersaults and cartwheels. “I cannot think of a worse fate, Marged.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. He escorted her right to the door of Ty-Gwyn but would not come inside. She stepped into the passageway and closed the door before leaning back against it. He had asked her to marry him. The reality of it was only just beginning to hit her. Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern, had offered her marriage. She might have been a countess. She might have been Geraint’s wife.
Ah, Geraint. The sharp pain was back.
Idris had watched the Earl of Wyvern go inside the old hovel quite early in the evening and Rebecca came out several minutes later. The boy was well hidden and he had not moved a muscle since he had seen the earl riding up the hill. But even so, as Rebecca mounted the earl’s horse and turned its head to the slope on the opposite side from Tegfan, he spoke quietly and conversationally.
“You may go home now, Idris,” he said. “Is it too much to ask that for once you stay there all night, where it is safe?”
He did not wait for an answer, but Idris grinned to himself. Yes, it was too much to ask. There was going to be too much to be observed tonight for him to waste the time sitting with his mam and his sisters or sleeping. He rose out of his hiding place and bounded down the hill in the direction of Tegfan.
It was amazing how inefficient and inept they were, he thought scornfully an hour later. It had obviously not entered any of their heads to check the gamekeeper’s hut to see that the bundle was still inside. Or to think that perhaps the earl would leave earlier than he needed for the supposed meeting with the man from London. Idris had been in hiding for some time before three constables took up their positions, ready to pounce on Rebecca when he emerged from the hut.
It was almost enough to make a person laugh, Idris thought. They all thought themselves so well hidden, and yet a herd of oxen could hardly have made more noise. Even without Idris’s warning the earl would have been perfectly safe. He would have detected their presence a mile off.
And then finally, along came Mr. Harley in a fine state of excitement, not even trying to keep quiet.
“He has gone already,” he announced when he was close to the hut, and all the constables came shuffling out of hiding. “That fool of a servant failed to inform me that he left early. Perhaps he planned another gate smashing before his appointment with Foster. But no matter. Vanity will take him there eventually—how could he resist having his name in the London papers? And there are four constables awaiting him and his right-hand man when they get there. But we are going to have to be doubly sure of bagging him now that the simple way of doing it has slipped through our fingers.”
Idris concentrated on not moving an eyelash.
“I have been sent a dozen more constables,” Harley said. “They are at the house now. Come back there with me and I will give you all your orders. I am going to station you all at various points around the park and a few of you about the smithy in Glynderi. If they escape capture elsewhere, they will be caught before they can reach home. This is the last night for Rebecca and her daughters, you may rest assured.”
The constables moved off behind the steward as he strode back downhill in the direction of the house. Some of them murmured complaints, though Idris did not listen to their exact words. His heart was beating up into his throat and almost deafening his ears. The earl was for it. And Mr. Rhoslyn. Even if they left their disguises up on the hill, somehow Mr. Harley and Sir Hector and the constables would not be thwarted this time. Somehow they would trump up damning evidence.
The trouble was, Idris thought, he could not decide what to do. There was no one to run to. The earl was gone and so was Mr. Rhoslyn. So were his dada and most of the other men. Probably Mrs. Evans too. Suddenly and unwillingly Idris realized how helpless he was as a child. He could run to the Cilcoed gate, he supposed, as he had done to that other gate, to warn everyone. But what were they to do if they could not return home? There was no one to turn to. Only women—and Idris never expected too much of women. And Mr. Williams, but he was so very far away and in the opposite direction from the Cilcoed gate.
There was only one person left that he could think of. And he disapproved of the rioting. And what could he do anyway? But at least he was adult and male and close by.
Idris wormed out of his hiding place and took to his heels as if he was being pursued by fleet-footed hounds.
The Reverend Meirion Llwyd was sitting at his desk in the small box of a room at the manse that passed for his study, writing his Sunday sermon. He was frowning in concentration over the exact wording, though the whole task was unnecessary, he knew. Once he started speaking from the pulpit and got launched into his text, the emotion of the moment always took him and provided him with both the ideas he was to expound upon and the words with which to do so.
His frown deepened when someone started hammering at his front door—with the sides of both fists, by the sound of it. One of these weeks he was going to be able to get his whole sermon prepared without interruption. He sighed and got to his feet, pushing his chair clear of the desk with the backs of his knees.
“Idris Parry,” he said when he had opened the door. The boy all but fell inside. “And what are you doing so far from home at this time of night?” It struck him that the child might have been poaching and was being pursued. And the Reverend Llwyd would hide him or provide him with an alibi, though he would be supplying the devil with one more coal for his fire by doing so.
The boy’s eyes were wild. “They have lured Rebecca and all the others out,” he said, gasping between words. “And they have set a trap for them when they return. They will never get home.”
The Reverend Llwyd had tried not even to think about Rebecca or the fact that almost every man from his congregation—and Marged, he suspected—followed the man, whoever he was. The Reverend Llwyd believed that vengeance was the Lord’s prerogative. But they were his people, the sheep of his flock—and one of them was his daughter, his own flesh and blood.
“Tell me quickly, boy,” he said. “Everything you know.”
Idris told—everything, even down to the identity of Rebecca. It seemed that the Earl of Wyvern was in grave danger even though he knew about the one trap that had been set for him and would probably get close to home safely. And Aled Rhoslyn was in equal danger. And perhaps all the men who lived in the village. Lurking constables would see them return home and would draw their own conclusions—especially if the men had blackened faces.