“Well, then,” Geraint said, “it is a blessing that she chose this night of all nights to absent herself from her post.”
Sir Hector stood glaring about him, his eyes taking in the women gathered there with the men, the feast spread out on the table, the Bible tucked beneath the minister’s arm, the newly betrothed couple, flushed and hand in hand in the middle of the room.
A cough drew his attention behind him. “Nothing, sir,” Matthew Harley’s subdued voice said. “Except that his lordship’s horse is in with Ninian Williams’s.”
“Well?” Sir Hector impaled Geraint with a glance.
Geraint raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?” he said haughtily. “Is my horse incriminating evidence, Hector? Is the Earl of Wyvern expected to walk to a tenant’s party?”
It was evident from the slumping of Sir Hector’s shoulders and the dying light in his eyes that he was giving in to defeat. But he rallied briefly. “We will leave you to your party, then,” he said. “But just remember, the whole lot of you, that the next time you decide to go out smashing tollgates, we will be waiting for you.”
“Gracious, Hector,” Geraint said, “you have us all shaking in our boots. I shall have to give up being Rebecca. And Aled will have to give up being—Charlotte, was it? And all these men will have to give up being my children. Whatever are we expected to do for amusement now?” Scorn and sarcasm dripped from every word.
Sir Hector turned and strode out the door.
Matthew Harley stood there for a moment, looking at Ceris before transferring his gaze to Geraint.
“You will have my resignation tomorrow,” he said.
“And you will have a letter of warm recommendation to take to your next employer,” Geraint said quietly.
Harley turned to follow Sir Hector and the constables. A minute or so later horses could be heard leaving the farmyard and cantering along the lane to the main path back to Glynderi.
“My lord?” Eli Harris spoke hesitantly. “It has been you all the time, then?”
“It was me all the time,” Geraint said. “Do none of you remember how I had to be in the thick of every piece of mischief when I was a child?”
They all gawked at him.
He grinned about at them. “I am merely that child grown to manhood,” he said. “Did you think that wealth and a title and an English education would change me into a different person? I was getting nowhere fast as the Earl of Wyvern when I returned here. Come, you must all admit that. I met suspicion or coldness or open hostility wherever I turned. All my suggestions for change and reform were spurned—either by you or by my fellow landowners. And so I had to become Geraint Penderyn again. And once I was Geraint, then I had to become Rebecca. There was no one else to take the job, was there? And I was ever a leader, especially when it was mischief that I must lead others into.”
“He convinced me and the rest of the members of the committee,” Aled said, “that he was the man for the job. And I believe his actions have proved that we were right.”
“Well, I for one,” Ifor Davies said boldly, “will thank you, my lord, and will shake your hand too if you will shake mine.” He walked toward Geraint, hand outstretched.
“Me too,” Glyn Bevan said.
The ice was broken and the men formed a rough line to move forward for the privilege of shaking their Rebecca by the hand.
“I think it is not being too optimistic to say that our goal has been reached,” Geraint said. “Mr. Foster of The Times has assured me that his editor and the paper’s readers are avid for more details of the Rebecca Riots, and that they appear to be sympathetic to our cause. And a commission of inquiry is almost certain to be set up here—I have heard that one of the commissioners is to be Thomas Frankland Lewis, himself a Welshman and familiar with life on a Welsh farm. And I have heard too that the commissioners will allow everyone who cares to testify to have his say—or hers—rich and poor alike. We will all have a chance to give our side of the story.”
“Duw be praised,” Morfydd Richards said, and her words were greeted by a flurry of fervent amens.
“It is more than praise we must give to our God tonight, Morfydd Richards,” the Reverend Llwyd said sternly. He waited until everyone’s attention was on him before continuing. “We must pray for forgiveness for all the lies we have spoken here tonight and for our Lord’s pardon so that our souls do not spend eternity writhing in hellfire.”
Everyone gazed mutely at him as he raised his arms.
“Let us pray,” he said.
All heads bent and all eyes closed.
Except Geraint’s. He looked all about him as unobtrusively as possible. But he was not mistaken.
Marged was gone.
Chapter 29
SHE should have gone home. But her mother-in-law and probably Gran too would be sitting up with Mrs. Phillips, and they would all be bursting with curiosity to know what had happened at the Williamses’.
She could not have gone home.
She should have gone somewhere else, then. Anywhere else. But she had not been thinking. She had been acting purely from instinct. And she did not have the will or the energy to go somewhere else now. She leaned her arms along the roof, as he had done on another occasion, and rested her face on her hands as he had done then.
Except that then she had known him only as Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern. She had not known . . .
But her mind shied away from what she had not known.
She knew he would find her there. Perhaps that was why she had come, though she wished herself a thousand miles away. She had never been one to shirk reality or to avoid confrontations.
A confrontation was inevitable.
She did not hear him coming, but she was not surprised to hear his voice close behind her.
“Marged,” he said.
“Go away,” she said without raising her head. The confrontation might be inevitable, but there was no reason why she should not fight the inevitable.
“No,” he said. “I am not going anywhere.”
He was speaking Welsh, she realized. In Rebecca’s voice. She shuddered. “Then I will go away,” she said.
“No.” His voice was soft, but she knew he meant it. He was behind her. A quite solid building was in front of her. He was not going to allow her past. Well, she had known it was inevitable. But she was not going to lift her head or turn to him.
“It was rape,” she said.
“No, Marged,” he said.
“I did not consent to lie with the Earl of Wyvern,” she said.
“I was Rebecca,” he said—and oh God, he was Rebecca. Why had she never realized it was the same voice, speaking a different language? “You consented to lie with Rebecca, Marged.”
“Rebecca was a mask,” she said. “There is no such person.”
“You always knew there was a man behind the mask,” he said.
“But I did not know it was you. I hate you. You know I hate you.”
“No,” he said. “When I asked you yesterday to marry me, Marged, you almost said yes. I saw the tears in your eyes and the agony behind the tears. You want to hate me, but you cannot.”
“I hate you,” she said.