Marged continued on her way across the room to hug her father, who was standing with his back to the fire. “Thank you, Dada,” she said into his ear. She was just beginning to understand what was happening. The trap must have been set in the village and this had been her father’s idea to give all the men an excuse to be away from home. But Rebecca need not have shared the danger. He might have ridden safely home.
The Reverend Llwyd patted her waist. “Get rid of that disguise quick,” he said, looking across the room at Rebecca. “There is no hiding the truth from everyone any longer. Get it off and we will have Ceris push it under the manure pile with Aled’s.”
Marged caught her breath in a gasp and whirled about to gaze across the room. Of course! But she did not want it this way. She had wanted it to happen when they were alone together. She did not want it to happen now. She was not ready for it. She was not sure she wanted it to happen at all. She would be staring at the face of a stranger—her lover.
The wig came off first. Mrs. Williams took it from his hand. The mask, as Marged had suspected, was a cap that fitted right over his head and face. It was peeled away next and handed to Mrs. Williams.
The silence became almost a tangible thing.
“Duw,” someone said softly.
“We have been betrayed. We are done for after all.” It was Dewi Owen’s voice spoken into the silence though no one responded to it.
“Off with the gown!” the Reverend Llwyd said. “Ceris, take those things but with Aled’s now. The Lord be praised that everyone is safe. And everyone is safe, Dewi Owen. His lordship, the Earl of Wyvern, has been your Rebecca from the start.”
Geraint Penderyn dragged the white gown of Rebecca off over his head and Ceris whisked it away with the rest of his disguise and Aled’s.
Then he looked across the room and met Marged’s eyes.
There was no shock in her eyes, no accusation, no anger, no bewilderment. Nothing. She stared at him blankly.
And then someone came darting through the door and broke the tension like a knife slicing through butter.
“They are coming,” Idris Parry called in his piping child’s voice. “A whole crowd of them on their way up the hill. All of them on horseback.”
“Thank you, Idris.” The Reverend Meirion Llwyd, from his position of command before the fire, raised both arms, his Bible clutched in one hand. “Let us show these men, my people, how the Welsh celebrate an engagement, the solemn promise of a man and a woman to enter into matrimony together in the sight of the Lord. Not with noisy frivolity but with the singing of the praises of our Lord.”
Incredibly, Geraint saw, everyone gave the minister his or her full attention and all put on their Sunday faces. And yet there was no sense of false piety. Ceris had come back from the manure pile and had joined Aled in the middle of the room. They smiled at each other with warm love and joined hands.
“Let us give them Sanctus in full harmony,” the Reverend Llwyd said. “And think about the words we are singing, if you please. You will start us, Marged.”
Marged hummed a note and without further ado the house was filled with the glorious music in four-part harmony. “Glan geriwbiaid a seraffiaid,” they sang. Geraint joined his tenor voice to the next line. “Fyrdd o gylch yr orsedd fry.”
The room was crowded. Nevertheless there was a space all around him, as if he had some sort of contagious disease that no one wanted to come in contact with. He was going to look suspiciously unlike a partygoer. But someone must have had the same thought—two people actually. Idris moved to his side and gazed worshipfully up at him. Geraint smiled and set a hand lightly on the boy’s head. And then Marged was at his other side, her shoulder almost brushing his arm. He turned his head to look at her, but she was singing and resolutely watching her father, who was rather ostentatiously conducting. If she felt his eyes on her, she did not show it.
The door, which Idris had closed behind him, crashed inward.
Sir Hector Webb, Matthew Harley, and a dozen special constables filled the doorway and the space beyond it until the third and final verse of the hymn came to its glorious conclusion.
“Sanctaidd, sanctaidd, sanctaidd Ior!” everyone sang, clinging to the words and the melody with all the passion of a deep faith and an equally deep love of music. Holy, holy, holy Lord.
Sir Hector and Harley looked about the room with sharp eyes. Harley’s lingered on Ceris and Aled and lowered to their joined hands.
The Reverend Llwyd kept his arms raised to hold the people silent and looked politely at the new arrivals. “Good evening,” he said in heavily accented English. “Ninian, here are more guests for your party.”
“What is going on here?” Sir Hector asked, his frown ferocious.
“We are celebrating as a community the engagement and impending marriage of two members of my congregation,” the minister said. “Ceris Williams and Aled Rhoslyn.”
Harley’s head snapped back, rather as if he had been punched on the chin. He drew back among the constables.
“Aled Rhoslyn!” Sir Hector exclaimed. “Aled Rhoslyn was out with Rebecca tonight, smashing tollgates. He is Rebecca’s chief daughter, the one called Charlotte.”
“I am flattered,” Aled said. “Second only to Rebecca? It sounds like a great honor, sir.”
“And you.” Sir Hector’s arm came up and he pointed accusingly at Geraint. “Rebecca! Traitor! I’ll see you hanged, Wyvern. There will be nothing as soft as transportation for you.”
“Hector.” Geraint clasped his hands behind him and strolled toward the door. “You are making an ass of yourself. Do I understand that Rebecca has been out again tonight and has slipped through the fingers of these constables—again? And that somehow you think Aled and I were involved? Ceris would not have been amused if her betrothed had decided to go gallivanting with a white ghost instead of attending their engagement party. And I had the honor of being invited—Aled and I have been friends since boyhood, you know. You had better go and search elsewhere— unless Ninian would care to invite you to join the party?” He turned his head and raised his eyebrows.
“You would be very welcome, sir,” Ninian Williams said. “And all your men too. There is plenty of food for everyone.”
“Harley,” Sir Hector called over his shoulder, “take the men and search every inch of this farm. And what did you do with Mrs. Phillips, Wyvern? Kill her and hide her body with all the rest of your things?”
“Mrs. Phillips?” Marged sounded startled. “From the Cilcoed tollgate down the road, do you mean? She is spending the evening and night with my gran at Ty-Gwyn. She is lonely out there at the gate and sometimes slips away for a night. She says that no one ever wants to pass through at night anyway. Is she in trouble?”
“No,” Geraint said. “She is elderly. I will have a word with the lessee of the trust on her behalf.” He turned back to Sir Hector suddenly. “It was not her gate that went down tonight, was it?”
“You know it was, Wyvern,” Sir Hector said between his teeth. His face was deeply flushed. He was realizing, perhaps, that he had come too late, that he had lost the game, and that there would be no other chance.