“Why?” he asked. “Give me the reasons.”
There were too many to number. “You killed Eurwyn,” she said.
“No, Marged,” he said. “There was a whole tragic set of circumstances there and they took the life of a courageous man who fought for his people. I was only one link in that chain. I accept responsibility for my ignorance and neglect, but I did not murder him. Does your hatred rest solely on that?”
It did. She did not want to think of the rest. It was too painful.
“Marged?”
“I thought you had come to apologize to me,” she cried, surprising even herself by the passion in her voice. “I thought you had come to reassure me, to tell me that you loved me. But all you could do was talk with Dada and looked me up and down as if I had forgotten to put my clothes on.”
He had nothing to say for a moment. “Ah, Marged,” he said, “I was such an insecure, guilty, embarrassed young puppy. You looked so proud and so scornful and I was so terribly ashamed.”
“And then you went away!” All the pain of it was back again, as if she was still sixteen and wore all her emotions on the outside. “You just went away without a word. You never wrote. You stayed away for ten whole years. And when I wrote to you—twice!—about Eurwyn, you did not even reply. You will never know what it cost me to write those letters, to write to you when I had married Eurwyn. You did not even acknowledge receiving them.”
“Because I did not, Marged.” There was pain in his voice too now. “I went away with raw emotions. I did not know who I was. The only anchor of my existence—my mother—was dead and I had made a total disaster of my first love affair. I felt unwanted here and yet did not know where else I was to belong. I only knew it was not here, though my heart ached for this place and these people. And for you. I was too young to deal with the pain. I thought I could end it by cutting it off instead of suffering through it. So I put it all behind me. When I inherited, I appointed Harley to run the estate for me. He had strict instructions to keep everything concerning the estate from me, and my secretary in England had similar instructions to deal with any correspondence from Wales without showing it to me. I thought it had worked. I thought I had forgotten Wales. And you. I was wrong on both counts.”
It was Geraint, she thought, her eyes closed against her hands, who had been her lover. It was his body that had loved her own, penetrated her own. It was Geraint. Her mind could not yet quite grasp the reality.
“Marry me, Marged,” he said.
“No!”
“Why not?” he asked her.
“You deceived me.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
She hated him anew for not trying to justify himself, for simply admitting his guilt. He gave her nothing to fight against.
“Marry me,” he said.
“No.”
“Marged,” he asked, “why did you tell me yesterday that Rebecca had promised not to abandon you?”
She froze. Oh God, oh dear God, yes, she had said that to him. Her wretched tongue!
And then he touched her for the first time. One of his hands slid around her and spread itself lightly over her abdomen.
“Do we have a child growing here, cariad?” he asked her softly.
She felt that somersaulting and cartwheeling again.
“I think so.” She wished she found it easy to lie.
“You must marry me, then,” he said.
“No.” She considered trying to push his hand away, but she did not think he would remove it and she did not want to wrestle with him.
“Marged,” he said, “I know what it is like for a woman shunned by her family and her community and living alone up here. And I know what it is like to be the child of such a woman. To love her to distraction because there is no one but her to love and to sense her unhappiness and her loneliness without fully understanding them or being able to do anything about them. Is that what you want for yourself? And our child?”
She heard herself moan before she clamped her teeth together.
“I will not allow it,” he said.
He ought not to have said that. She bristled.
“I love you,” he said. “Marged, I love you. I always have. I always will.”
And he ought not to have said that either. She was not made of stone.
“Marged.” His hand began stroking over her abdomen. “Remember how this child got here. On whichever occasion it happened, it was good. It has always been good. It was always done with love, from the first time to the last. Love on both sides. Our child was begotten and conceived in the right way and for the right reason. It is a child of our love.”
Again the moan. This time she did not cut it short.
“Marry me,” he said.
He knew she was close to saying yes. But she did not say it. And suddenly he did not want her to say it. Not like this. Not with her face hidden on her arms. Hidden from him. From the truth.
His hand rested, splayed, against her. Against the place where their child grew. Their child—his and Marged’s. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against her neck.
“Marged,” he said softly, “forgive me. Forgive me.”
She turned then, after shrugging her shoulders sharply and batting away his hand. Her face was angry.
“As easily as that?” she cried. “I forgive you and shed a few tears over you? I marry you because I am with child by you? We live happily ever after?”
This was better, he thought, though he could think of nothing to say.
“I told the Earl of Wyvern that I followed Rebecca,” she said. She was yelling at him, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I told him that I loved Rebecca, that I was his lover. And I told Rebecca that I had offered myself to the Earl of Wyvern. I admitted that I had wanted him.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I abased myself,” she said. “I was honest. I felt that a relationship with Rebecca could not possibly work if I was not honest.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you say nothing but yes?” She was almost screaming at him.
“You have been nothing but honest with me,” he said. “I have been nothing but deceitful with you. Except in one thing, Marged. I have always loved you. I love you now. I can only beg for your forgiveness.”
There were tears in her eyes suddenly and she was biting her lower lip. “It was you,” she said. All the passion had gone from her voice. “It was all you. You who kissed me that first night. You in chapel the next morning when I was still tingling with the memory. You in the wood. You inside the hut. You who tricked me into offering my body in exchange for Ceris’s freedom. You who tried to persuade me to inform against the followers of Rebecca. You who . . .” She threw up her hands in a gesture of frustration.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Marged. And I who started the child inside you.”
She moaned again as she had done earlier. “You are Rebecca,” she said, looking at him with incredulity once more. “And you are Geraint. You are both.”
“Yes,” he said. “And the Earl of Wyvern, Marged. I am all three. None of them is a mask. I am all three. I cannot offer you one without the other two. I cannot offer you Rebecca, whom you admire, without Geraint, to whom you feel an unwilling attachment, or without the Earl of Wyvern, whom you hate and despise. I am all three. I offer you myself as I am, unforgiven if it must be so.”