Chapter 21
Matthew Harley had taken longer than he expected to get back to the constable, Lavcr. He had been unable to find the Earl of Wyvern and had wasted precious time searching for him. No one seemed to know where he had gone. But luck was with Harley in the form of one of the other constables, who had stayed at Tegfan in case he was needed for some emergency. And of course Laver would make sure that Ceris did not leave her father's house without having her movements shadowed.
Ceris! Harley had to quell a pang of guilt. But if she stayed at home as she ought, then no harm would have been done and she would have won his trust.
But would he have been worthy of hers?
He took the other constable with him, and they found Laver in the village. Ceris was there, going from one house to another, it seemed. She had gone to the house behind the smithy first.
Harley felt that his heart must be somewhere in the area of his boots. And then he saw her for himself, hurrying from the harness maker's house. She went straight down the street, not stopping again. Her pace quickened. She was running by the time she left Glynderi behind.
It was not difficult to follow her. She alternately ran and walked fast. She did not once look back. A few times, when clouds obscured moon and stars, it was difficult to see her, but she made no attempt at evasion. She led them on a straight, if hilly, path to the road and a gate a few miles away.
They were too late. That was obvious as soon as they came over a rise and could see the road below them. The gate and the house were down and men were fleeing in every direction. Some even passed close enough that they might have been apprehended if Harley and the constables had not already decided to pit their meager forces only against Rebecca herself or one of the daughters in their distinctive women's garb.
Either the job had been completed and the men had dispersed in the natural course of things, or they had somehow been warned that someone was coming—someone who might pose a threat. Perhaps there had been spies in the hills. Certainly it could not have been Ceris. She was not far enough ahead. Even as Harley looked he could see her rush onto the road and look wildly about her. She must have seen everyone fleeing, just as he had. It seemed almost as if she was searching for one man in particular.
The blacksmith?
And then he tensed, and he could feel the constables on either side of him tighten their grip on their guns. There was a horseman on his way down, a horseman with flowing dark locks, wearing dark women's robes. There was a moment when perhaps—there was a slim chance—one of the constables might have got off a shot at the rider. But it was gone almost before it was there. He scooped up Ceris and turned back uphill and came within definite range of the guns. But Ceris might be hit.
Harley spread his hands to the sides, fingers wide and rigid. "No!" he said curtly at the same moment as there was a shot. But not from beside him. There were two men on the far side of the road, one with a gun pointing after the fleeing horseman—and Ceris. Harley felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. But neither she nor Rebecca's daughter appeared to have been hit.
And then he saw what he might have seen before if he had not been so intent on what was happening down on the road. There was another horseman on the slope some distance away, motionless, also looking down. There were actually two riders on the same horse. One of them was clad in white flowing robes and had long blond ringlets.
Rebecca herself. Harley felt the breath hiss into his lungs and was instantly aware of the constable beside him raising his gun to his shoulder and taking aim. But the other rider and Ceris were almost up to her and were going to come abreast of her on the near side.
"No!" he said again with quiet urgency.
A hero's prize was his for the taking moments later when both horsemen came galloping his way before veering off to continue uphill. But again the dark-clad horseman rode between Rebecca and any shot one of the constables might have had at her—him. And Ceris was pressed so close to the daughter's body that there was no getting a shot at him. Yet had they stepped into the open and demanded that the riders stop and surrender, they would as like as not have been ridden down.
And so heroism passed him by and he knew bitter defeat.
It became more bitter when the dark rider turned upward and Harley found that Ceris's head was turned to one side and that her eyes were open. For a fraction of a second that stretched into eternity they looked full into each other's eyes.
Betrayer and betrayed. Though which way around it was, he did not quite know.
Marged clung wordlessly to Rebecca. She had never been on a galloping horse. Seated sideways without the benefit of a saddle beneath her, and with uneven hill country beneath the horse's hooves and darkness all around, she could only sit very still and put her trust in the horsemanship of the man to whom she clung.
Were they being pursued? Or were they riding into an ambush? What on earth had Ceris been doing down on the road? What would have happened if she or Aled had been hit by that one bullet that had been fired? What if Rebecca had been caught? What if he were still caught? Her arms tightened involuntarily.
"Was that Idris Parry?" she asked, speaking for the first time since they had watched Aled rescue Ceris. "What did he say?"
"Is that his name?" Rebecca asked. "The child? He warned that there were people coming—presumably special constables. He pointed in the direction of Tegfan. The woman must have been bringing the same message. Aled Rhoslyn knows her?"
"Ceris Williams," she said. "They were to marry, but Ceris is opposed to violence and destruction. She broke off their engagement."
"But she came out tonight," he said, "to warn him. I believe we are safe, Marged. We must have left any pursuit behind and I have taken a circuitous route."
She looked around her for the first time. She had not realized that he was not taking the direct route home.
"You see how dangerous this all is, Marged?" he said. "Some of us could have been captured or killed tonight. Aled and his woman came very close. And things are not going to get easier. This is just the beginning."
She turned her face in to his shoulder again. "I know," she said fiercely. "I know. But don't continue in the way I know you are planning to continue. Don't. And do stop and take off your disguise. You are far more likely to be seen and caught while you look this way."
Reaction was setting in and the realization of what might have happened tonight and what might yet happen. She could see behind her closed eyes Rebecca riding up against the skyline and calling down to the men hiding inside the tollhouse—men with guns. And she could feel the near panic there had been all around her down on the road when Rebecca had quickly and firmly—and quite calmly—sent them on their way. He had not rushed himself. As usual he had been the last to leave, focusing all the real danger on himself so that the rest of them might get away safely. He might so easily have been caught or shot. As Aled had been shot at. She turned dizzy at the remembered sound of that shot.
The horse had stopped galloping. Rebecca's breath was warm against her ear. "You are shaking," he said. "You are just beginning to understand, aren't you?"
Her teeth chattered when she tried to speak. "Y-yes," she managed to get out at last. "I am b-beginning to understand what my husband must have felt like on that night at T-Tegfan and I am beginning to remember how I felt. I am beginning to realize what might have happened to you tonight and to all the others. But fear and't-trembling are not an indication of cowardice or a sign that like a good girl I will now go home where I belong and stay there."
He chuckled. "No, Marged," he said. "You do not have to go at me so fiercely. Cowardice is the last thing I would accuse you of. And feminine weakness is the second-last thing. I am shaking myself. It is a natural human reaction to danger that is past."
"And perhaps not even that," she said. "We still have to get safely home. I have just recognized where we are. We are up on the moors above Tegfan. I am close to home. Let me down and ride on as fast as you can. Perhaps when I am gone you will take off the disguise and be a great deal safer. It is because of me you will not take it off, isn't it? You still do not trust me. But I don't blame you. Set me down."
And yet she clung to him and breathed in the smell of him. She did not want it to be over so fast. She was only just realizing that he had taken her up with him, that she was this close to him again, that she might never be this close again. But he must go. He must get safely home.
"Not just yet," he said. 'There is a shelter up here somewhere. An old building. Close to here—I have seen it. Come there with me. We both need time to calm down."
Geraint's old hovel. He must be referring to that. Her stomach turned over when she remembered what had happened there just the day before. She had felt such a strange, unwilling tenderness… But she did not want to think of that. She was with Rebecca, the man she passionately loved.
"Besides," he said into her ear, "I don't want to say good night yet, Marged. I want to make love to you."
Her stomach turned over again.
"Will you?" He was whispering.
"Yes." It did not matter that it would happen inside Geraint's old home. Perhaps being there with Rebecca would purge her memory and her emotions of an unwelcome attachment—though it was not quite that, surely.
He found her mouth with his own briefly and rode on a short distance. They had been closer than she had realized. He dismounted, lifted her to the ground, and tethered his horse at the dark, higher side of the house before taking down the blanket rolled behind his saddle, and leading her by the hand to the dark doorway of the old house.
He had not consciously ridden up onto the moors. Or in the direction of the old hovel. But as soon as he knew where he was, he understood the unconscious workings of his mind. He had needed to come back here. With Marged. He needed to go inside the hut as he had not been able to bring himself to do yesterday. With her. It would be pitch-dark inside. He would not be able to see anything. But he needed to go in anyway—to face any ghosts that might be lingering there.
He needed Marged there with him. He needed her as he had needed her yesterday. She had responded to him with sympathy and a little more than sympathy yesterday as Geraint Penderyn. She would respond to him tonight as Rebecca. He put out of his mind the meanness of the deception. He needed her warmth. He needed her love.
He stopped in the doorway and peered inward, his heart beating uncomfortably. How often he had raced in and out of this door, a surprisingly carefree boy. He could see only a foot or two inside the door. But the dirt floor still seemed hard-packed and covered with no more than the expected rubble of soil and leaves. He could not see farther in, but the darkness would work to his advantage. He led Marged carefully inside, over to the far wall, against the outside of which he had stood the day before. He spread the blanket.
"Lie down," he said to her. "You are not frightened?"
"No," she said. "Not with you."
He pulled off his wig and his mask and was grateful for the cool air he felt against his face and head. He knew that even if the sky cleared and the moon beamed down, the light of it would not penetrate to this corner. He hesitated a moment and stripped away Rebecca's gown and the clothes he wore beneath except his trousers. If anyone came, then he would be the Earl of Wyvern keeping a romantic tryst with one of his tenants.
Not that that would lead to a comfortable situation with Marged, of course.
Her hands came against his bare chest when he joined her on the blanket. Her fingers spread and then moved upward and over his face and hair.
"Ah," she said, and her voice was husky, "you are beautiful. I think you must be beautiful."
He held her palm against his cheek and turned his head to kiss it.
"Strange," she said softly.
"Strange?"
"Do you ever have things blink in your mind, but you cannot grasp them in time to see what they are?" she said. "It happened then. Have I ever met you before?"
"On Wednesday night," he said, trying not to tense. "I made love to you. Remember?" He should not have kissed her hand.
"Yes." She laughed softly. "I remember. I thought you were telling me afterward that this would not happen again.It would not be a good situation, you said. I thought you did not care."
"Marged," he said against her mouth.
"And then you sent Aled with the money so that I could hire Waldo Parry to help on the farm," she said. There was a catch in her voice, suggesting that she was close to tears. "And I knew that you did care."
"Marged." He set his arms about her and drew her close against him. "How could you ever have doubted it?"
"I gave myself willingly," she said. "There was no compulsion on you to care. There is no compulsion."
"But I care." He licked at her lips. "I care very much."
"Oh," she said.
"I believe I said it would not be a good situation for you," he said. "I said it would not make you happy. You know me only as Rebecca, Marged. Perhaps you would not like the man behind the mask."
"I love you," she whispered.
Ah. Honest, reckless Marged.
I love you. She loved Rebecca. Strangely, the man behind the mask felt almost bereft. She had given comfort to Geraint Penderyn yesterday, had held his hand and listened to him and seemed almost tender in her sympathy for him—for a while. But it was Rebecca she loved, that mythical hero of the people. That man who did not even exist.
"And I love you too," he said, setting his mouth against hers and abandoning himself to the self-indulgence of telling a truth that would horrify her if he told it in his own person.
"Oh." It was as much sob as exclamation. "Make love to me. Let's make love."
It was not a cold night. And the fire of passion lent extra heat. She helped him free her of her jacket and shirt and of her breeches and underclothes. And she helped him unbutton his own trousers and wriggle out of them.
She was beautiful. She was Marged, he told himself in some wonder—warm and shapely and soft and yet firmly muscled too. The calluses on her hands, pressing over his chest and back and buttocks, were surprisingly arousing. Not that he needed much arousing. He was hard and throbbing for her.
"You are beautiful," she said before he could say the words first to her. She moved her hands around to hold him and stroke him. He drew breath sharply. "Why am I so bold with you? I have never been so bold."
He had been given the impression that first time that she was in many ways innocent. She jerked when he moved his hand down to touch her as intimately as she touched him. But she relaxed and sighed as his fingers stroked and parted and probed. He could not wait much longer. And he could feel that she was slick with wetness and ready for him.
"The ground is hard," he said when she turned onto her back to receive him. "Come on top of me tonight."
She had clearly never done it this way before. He had to guide her to kneel over him, her knees and thighs hugging his sides, her hands gripping his shoulders. She drew an audible breath when he positioned himself at her entry, and cried out when he spread his hands on her hips and brought her firmly down.
He moved in her with slow, deep strokes, giving her a chance to accustom herself to a new posture for love. He could feel her hair on either side of his face as her head came down close to his, and the tips of her breasts touching his chest occasionally. And then he lost himself as she caught his rhythm and matched it and rode to it. Faster and faster until they came together to a shared and frenzied climax.
She was hot and damp with exhaustion when he brought her down to lie on him and straightened her legs on either side of his own without uncoupling them—and came back to reality.
"I love you, Marged Evans," he said, wrapping his arms and the edges of the blankets over her. When Rebecca dropped permanently out of her life—as he must if he did not first get her with child—he wanted her to be able to look back and believe that he really had loved her. And if she ever discovered the truth, he wanted her to know that Geraint Penderyn had not only betrayed her, but had loved her too.
"Mmm," she said.
He allowed himself the luxury of imagining what it would be like to have Marged in his bed each night, falling asleep after his lovemaking. What further compliment could a man be given for his prowess as a lover?
And he remembered where he was. It was in this corner that his mother had placed his bed, or what had passed for a bed, since it was the warmest and the least drafty. His mother had loved him, he thought. For those twelve years, life had been indescribably hard and lonely for her. But he knew—she had told him often enough—that he had been the light of her life, her reason for living. He would be willing to bet that during the six years before her death she would have exchanged the comfort of her cottage and the security of warm clothes and furniture and regular meals and the friendship of people like Mrs. Williams—she would have exchanged them at any time for this hovel and his return.
No, she would not have. Knowing his mother, he could guess that she was happy for him, that she was glad that at last he would be brought up and treated as his father's son. And she would have understood about the absence of letters. She would have understood that they would not allow him to write to her—just as they must have forbidden her to write to him. She would have known that he loved her, that he never forgot her.
Yes, of course she would have known. How foolish of him ever to have doubted it. How foolish to have dreaded this place, as if he would find here the ghost of an unhappy, disillusioned woman. Her one consolation in her final years would have been the fact that he was being well cared for and that one day he would be the Earl of Wyvern and the owner of Tegfan.
How foolish he had been to be afraid to come back. And afraid to know anything about Tegfan. Afraid, as if there would be malevolent ghosts here to haunt him.
This sorry hovel had been a place filled with love. And there was love here again. A love that had somehow purged all the old doubts and pain.
His fingers played gently through Marged's hair as she slept.
She was wonderfully comfortable and surprisingly warm. And warm right through to the heart, she thought. He loved her. He loved her! And he was still inside her. She could feel him hard again, though he was relaxed. His fingers were gently massaging her scalp.
"I did not want to come here, you know," she said. Perhaps she should not be mentioning this to him, when it involved another man and her disturbing ambivalent feelings for that other man. But she knew that part of loving was being perfectly open and honest with the beloved. "He lived here as a child. The Earl of Wyvern, I mean."
His hand stilled in her hair. "You loved him as a child," he said. "You have memories of this place?"
"One memory is very recent," she said. She hesitated for a moment and then told him about her meeting with Geraint the day before.
He stroked her hair again and said nothing.
"He has had a hard life," she said. "Almost unbearably hard. It is not easy to believe, is it, when he was taken at the age of twelve to a life of wealth and security and privilege and when he is probably one of the wealthiest men in the country now. But happiness does not come from things, does it? I don't believe he has known either love or a home since he was in this place."
"Perhaps," he said, "he felt comforted by your sympathy yesterday, Marged. Perhaps he felt something like love. Was there some love in what you did for him?"
"No," she said quickly. "I love you."
"But there are many kinds of love," he said. "If we love one person, we do not necessarily not love everyone else."
"We are talking about the man we both hate," she said. "Of course I feel no love for him."
"I am fighting against a system, Marged," he said, "against an injustice that is larger than one person. I do not hate anyone."
"It shows," she said. "You are so very careful that no one is hurt during the smashing of gates, either on our side or on the other side. And somehow you arrange it that those who suffer material loss are compensated. You are a compassionate man. Is that why you are doing this, then? You are fighting against a system rather than against people?"
"Yes," he said.
"It is better than hatred," she said. "Hatred—hurts."
"Yes." He kissed the top of her head.
And he lifted her off him at last, turned her so that her back was against the blanket, and knelt over her, his thighs on either side of her legs. He began to make love to her again with skilled, sensitive hands and mouth and tongue.
She gave herself up to the physical joys of love. But something had happened, she realized, and she could not seem to do anything about it. She was feeling Geraint's arms about her as he held her and cried, and Geraint's hand holding hers. And she was lying in the darkness of this hovel with Geraint and feeling the tenderness she had experienced yesterday blossom into a different kind of love.
Because she had never seen the man behind Rebecca's mask and could not visualize him as he made love to her, she substituted the face and form of Geraint. She made love with Rebecca and poured out to him all that she had felt for Geraint yesterday. She tried to give him back some of the love he had known here as a child and had never known since.
The rational part of her mind told her that she would be horrified tomorrow when she remembered this, and that she would doubt her love for Rebecca when she recalled that she had made love to Geraint as much as she had made love to him. But the emotional part of her being was far more powerful at the moment than the rational.
"Cariad," she whispered to him when he finally knelt between her thighs and lifted her with his hands to cushion her for his penetration. "I love you. I love you."
It was Rebecca she loved. It was Geraint she visualized behind her closed eyes. She gave her body and her tenderness, trying not to wonder to whom she gave.
He came inside her and she loved—the man who loved her in return.