Chapter 4
She was furious with herself. She had been proud of the way she had been able to mingle contempt and courtesy and of the impersonality of her manner. She had been delighted to sense that he understood but did not know quite what to do about it.
And then he had startled her by taking her hands in his and turning them palm up and looking down at the calluses. Her first reaction had been horror and shame. Until she married Eurwyn she had always taken pains to dress and behave as much like a lady as she knew how. She had read as widely as she was able and had learned several accomplishments. She had thought that perhaps she would try to persuade the old earl or his steward to open a school so that she could teach the children from the farms and village. But she had been flattered by Eurwyn's attentions and offer of marriage and had accepted. He was a man she had admired. Most of the calluses had come after his death, though she had worked hard even before that.
She wore her calluses with pride. And yet her first reaction to the knowledge that he was looking down at them was shame and embarrassment. Shame that she had to work hard for a living. Embarrasrment that she did not look like a lady.
Her second reaction had been one of acute physical awareness. An awareness of the warmth and strength of his hands against the back of hers. An awareness of his closeness. He really was taller than he had been ten years before. And broader. And he smelled—expensive. She had looked up into his face and he had raised his own eyes almost at the same moment. He had always had the bluest eyes she had ever seen.
When he had spoken, she had managed somehow to think of a fittingly cutting reply. But in reality she had been mesmerized by his eyes and then acutely aware of the fact that their gaze had dropped to her mouth. For a moment she had felt as if her heart would beat its way right through her bosom and be exposed to view. She had thought he was going to kiss her. But she had done nothing to try to prevent its happening.
And then he had released her hands. But not before he must have felt her tremble. She knew he must have felt it. His grip had tightened.
She was furious with herself. Furious that she had felt shame. Furious that she had felt and responded to the pull of his masculinity.
He was the reason there was no pig but Nellie on the farm. He was the reason there were only five cows left and their calves. And only a few chickens. And fewer sheep than there had ever been before. And no new clothes for almost two years now. He was the reason she could not hire a man to do the heavy work on the farm. She did not know if she would even be able to afford someone at harvesting time. He was the reason Eurwyn was not here to do the heavy work himself.
And yet she was one of the fortunate ones. Somehow they were still here at the farm and still functioning, she and Mam and Gran. Some people were not still on their farms. The Parrys, for example, driven out finally by the newest raise in the rents, living up on the moors, hoping somehow to pick up enough casual work that they could avoid the dreaded and final move to the workhouse. And there were plenty more living on the brink, in debt, unable to absorb even one more small raise in the rent or one more poor harvest or fall in market prices.
Geraint Penderyn was responsible for it all. And yet she had felt shame to have him see her ruined hands. And she had been attracted to his male splendor.
She spread a cloth on the kitchen table and set out cups and saucers while her mother-in-law poured boiling water into the teapot and set the cozy over it so that the tea would steep. Marged made no attempt to make conversation, though she could feel the tension while Geraint asked politely, in that very cultured English accent of his, after the health of the other two women and they answered in monosyllables. She enjoyed his discomfort, though he kept talking. Gentlemen, of course, were trained to converse even when there was nothing whatsoever to say.
She did not glance at him. And yet she was aware that he looked all about the kitchen—at the open fire with the bread oven in the chimneypiece beside it and the large pot and kettle suspended by chains over it; at the plain table with its simple wooden benches; at the dresser and the cupboard bed in which she had slept with Eurwyn and now slept alone; at the door into the combined parlor and bedroom, where the other two women slept; at the spinning wheel, which occupied her during the evenings when there was no other work to do; at the harp.
She knew that his eyes lingered on her harp. She had used to play it even as a child. She had sneaked Geraint into the manse one day when her father was out visiting and had played and sung for him. She could remember now her amazement at his rapt expression and at his insistence that she play and sing over and over to him. She had sneaked him in often after that, just as he had sneaked her onto the forbidden territory of Tegfan park, confident that he knew where all the gamekeeper's traps were set and could take her on a safe path. She had taught him to sing with her. He had had a pure and sweet soprano voice.
"Do you still play, Marged?" he asked now, bringing her eyes to his at last.
She picked up the teapot, though her mother-in-law had been about to do so, and began to pour the tea. "When I have the time," she said. "Not often." She concentrated on keeping her hands steady and cursed herself because the effort was necessary.
"Oh, but she do play lovely, our Marged," old Mrs. Evans said from her seat in the inglenook. "And she sings like an angel."
Gran did not do much these days except rock in her chair and gaze into the fire. She did not even knit now, her fingers having become too bent and too stiff.
"Then I must hear her," he said, meeting her eyes as she handed him his cup and saucer. His own were as cold as ever and yet there was something in them that hinted at a challenge. "Sometime."
When hell is dripping with icicles, Marged thought, but she said nothing. She sat down and picked up her own cup of tea. It should have been a rare luxury to sit thus in the middle of the morning, but she would far rather have been at work. He was sitting where Eurwyn had liked to sit. Her own fault—without thinking she had indicated that particular corner of the settle. It did not matter.
Except that she could not stop herself from comparing the two men. Eurwyn had been heavyset, ruddily handsome. He had rarely worn anything but work clothes and had laughed at her for wanting to wash them almost every day. She would wear them out in no time with her scrubbing, he had told her. And he had always drunk his tea in noisy sips. She had hated to sit listening to him. She had always tried to occupy herself with something that would make a noise and drown out the sounds. It had been a silly irritation that she had never been able quite to quell.
Geraint—the Earl of Wyvern—was slim and quietly elegant and immaculate. He had removed his cloak and set it on the settle beside him. Even his boots appeared to have picked up none of the dust of the path. He conversed with apparent ease, though Marged guessed that he felt the discomfort the rest of them were less adept at disguising. Eurwyn had never seemed to feel the need to keep a conversation going. He had spoken only when he had had something to say, though he had not been a morose man. Geraint drank his tea silently.
He was without a doubt the most handsome and the most attractive man she had ever met, Marged decided. And the thought angered her. If his whole life had not changed suddenly at the age of twelve, if he had not been educated as a gentleman, if he had not inherited the wealth with which to dress expensively, would he be any more attractive now than Eurwyn had been? Or any other man of her acquaintance?
Yes, an annoyingly honest part of her mind admitted. Even as a child, as a thin and ragged and frequently dirty waif, he had been beautiful. She had fallen in love with his beauty at the age of sixteen. With nothing else. There had been nothing else to love. Well, she was ten years older now. Ten years wiser. Beauty alone could no longer seduce her.
And heaven knew she had reason enough to hate the man behind the beauty.
He was rising to take his leave, nodding to her in-laws, thanking them for the tea, turning to her with a look of inquiry, commanding her with his eyes and his whole aristocratic bearing to see him on his way. He picked up his cloak and his hat from the settle.
She walked to the gate with him in silence, her chin up. She had called herself his servant earlier, but in reality she was no man's servant. He might own the land on which they walked and he might in a few years, if rents continued to rise and prices continued to fall, force her out, but at the moment it was her land. She had worked for it. She had earned every callus on her hands.
He opened the gate and stepped out into the lane. He closed the gate, turning toward her in order to do so. He looked at her, and she would not look away from his eyes.
"I am sorry your husband died, Marged," he said. "But you appear to be doing very well here on your own."
Something snapped in her. She threw back her head and glared at him. "You are sorry," she said almost in a whisper. But the fury could not be controlled. Her eyes flashed. "You are sorry! You may take your sorrow, Geraint Penderyn, and stuff it down your throat. Go away from here. I have paid my rent and this farm is mine until rent day next year. Go away. You are not welcome here."
He looked startled for a moment. But he did not retaliate. She would have liked nothing better than a fight, which she could not possibly have won. But he kept his gentlemanly calm.
"No," he said quietly. "I realized that from the start, Marged."
He put on his hat—it succeeded only in making him look even more elegant—and turned away from her. She watched him walk down the lane and itched to hurl some choice epithets after him. She knew a few despite the fact that she was her father's daughter and was a regular chapel goer. She would have loved to hurl more than epithets, but her hands were empty. Besides, it would be lowering to yell with shrill hysteria or to throw missiles.
She was not sorry for her outburst. If his skin was so thick that he had not got the message during his visit, then he would know now. He would know to stay away from her and Ty-Gwyn.
She tried not to think of the fact that Ty-Gwyn belonged to him and that the annual rent day seemed to gallop up faster each year.
It was the first and the worst of such visits that Geraint paid to his tenant farmers during the coming days. But worst only in the sense that Marged had been his friend and almost his lover once upon a time and now seemed to hate him with an intensity in excess of the facts. No, it was not that she seemed to hate him. Her unexpected outburst when he was leaving Ty-Gwyn, just after he had tried to sympathize with her and compliment her, had cleared away any doubt he might have had. She hated him.
All the other farmers he visited were polite. A few of them were almost friendly—the Williamses, for example. And their daughter too, still pretty, still shy, and still unmarried. Ceris Williams had poured tea for him and found it impossible to converse with him beyond monosyllabic answers to his questions, but she had smiled kindly at him. He found himself hoarding the few smiles he was favored with. Most of the people he visited were polite and little else. With a few he felt hostility bristling just behind the politeness.
It seemed that the past few years had not been kind to farmers. There had been more rain than usual and damage had been done to the crops. Market prices were down for almost all farm products. A few farmers stated, as Marged had done, that they were carrying fewer livestock than formerly. Clearly no one was prospering. Geraint felt rather ashamed that he had avoided learning anything about his estate in Tegfan. He had appointed the best steward he could find to look after it for him and had closed his mind to a place and a past he preferred not to remember. But he should have at least have read reports from Tegfan. He should at least have known that his farmers were struggling. He could hardly blame them for showing some resentment at his appearing suddenly, well-dressed and clearly not suffering financially at all.
Also he had grown past his naivete of ten years before. Ten years ago he had expected to come home to find everyone rejoicing in his good fortune. It was rather like a fairy tale for the discovery to be made twelve years after the birth of a penniless waif that he was the legitimate heir to an earldom and three vast estates—although his mother, of course, had always told him to hold his head high as she held hers because she had been married to his father, the earl's son, before he had been killed, though she had no proof and no one would believe her. In fairy tales everyone always rejoiced at the reversed fortunes of the Cinderella-type characters. But he knew now that it was not so in real life. He knew that his people must resent him just because of who he was.
He was going to have to stay in Tegfan, he thought reluctantly as the days passed. He thought of spring approaching in London, bringing the Season and all the giddy round of social activities with it. But he would have to let it proceed without him this year. He was going to have to stay to convince his people that he was not the enemy, that he did not look down upon them with smug satisfaction because he had now been elevated above them. He was going to have to find out about his property and the true state of his farms. It would not be difficult to do. He was very knowledgeable about his other estates and had a reputation as a fair and approachable master, he believed. He had real friends among his English tenant farmers.
He was going to have to stay.
Of course, there were people he had still not called upon at the end of those few days of intensive visits. One of them was Aled Rhoslyn. Geraint had felt reluctant to renew his acquaintance with his former friend and partner in crime. But if he was to stay for longer than a mere week or so, then the encounter could not be avoided forever.
Finally one afternoon he walked to the village and stepped inside the blacksmith's forge. He had heard a hammer ringing on the anvil from well down the street. The sound was almost deafening once he was inside. Aled had his back to the door. He was hammering out what looked to be a metal wheel rim. A boy at his side, apparently a young apprentice, drew his attention to the customer and faded nervously into the background.
Aled had not changed a great deal. He certainly had not shrunk in size. He was still only two or three inches taller than Geraint, but he was broader, with the powerful arms and shoulders necessary to his trade. He still had rather too much fair hair on his head and hazel eyes that seemed always to be smiling. His face was still good-humored and good-looking.
Geraint observed him as he glanced over his shoulder and then set down his hammer and straightened up and turned slowly, wiping his hands down his large leather apron as he did so. It was obvious from his expression and his whole manner that he was as reluctant for this meeting as Geraint. There was no noticeable hostility in his eyes, but there was a wariness there, a certain embarrassment.
"Aled," Geraint said, "when are you planning to start the hard work for the day?"
Aled smiled slowly. "I did not want to be out of breath and sweating when you came calling," he said. "I thought I would do some light chore while I waited." But he hung back rather awkwardly.
Geraint walked toward him, his right hand extended. He was absurdly nervous, afraid of one more rejection. And this one would hurt most, apart from Marged's. "How are you?" he asked.
Aled looked at his hand before taking it. But his clasp was firm enough when he did. "Well," he said. "And you?"
Geraint nodded. "You are married?" he asked. "There are half a dozen eager little blacksmiths on the way up?"
Aled laughed, but he flushed with what looked suspiciously like embarrassment. "I am not married," he said.
"Then you must have learned to run faster than you used to," Geraint said, it had always been a source of pride to him as a child that he could outrun his friend even though Aled had been a year older and a head taller and a stone or two heavier.
Aled laughed. And looked awkward.
Geraint spoke from impulse. "You have a great deal of work to be done this afternoon?" he asked. "Can it be left? Come and walk with me in the park."
Aled looked down at the wheel rim on his anvil. He pursed his lips, and Geraint could see that he wanted to refuse, that he was reaching for an excuse.
"We can even walk about there openly without having to skulk about among the trees avoiding mantraps," Geraint said. "We will no longer be trespassing."
Aled grinned, genuine amusement in his eyes. "Why not?" he said. "Welcome home, man." He lifted the heavy apron off over his head.
And yet, Geraint thought ruefully as they left the forge together and walked down the street in the direction of Tegfan park, Aled was uncomfortable. He would a thousand times rather be back in his forge than on his way for a stroll with his former friend.
Aled Rhoslyn had not really expected Geraint ever to return to Tegfan, even though he was now the Earl of Wyvern. It would be too difficult for him to face the strange facts of his childhood and boyhood. The child Geraint had never been disliked as much as he had thought. He had been pitied more than anything, as had his mother, although, of course, the strict moral code by which most of them lived as nonconformists had forced them to reject the latter publicly. Most of the children had secretly admired the bold and almost charismatic little ragamuffin.
Most people had not disliked him during his boyhood after the earl had somehow made the staggering discovery that his long-dead son had been legally married to Gwynneth Penderyn when the two of them had run off together. They had been married before the conception of their son. A few of the meaner-minded, of course, had been spiteful with envy and a few others had not been slow to notice that Gwynneth Penderyn—she was never known by her married name of Marsh and Geraint had legally changed his name back to hers as soon as he reached his majority—was sent to live alone in a small cottage on the estate and was never either invited to the house or visited by Geraint.
Most people had not disliked him during his brief visit after the death of his mother. But everyone, almost to a person, had felt awkward with him, not knowing quite whether to talk to him as if he were Geraint Penderyn or to show him deference as Geraint Marsh, Viscount Handford. The fact that he had been both had led to an impossible situation.
But Geraint had always felt disliked. Not that he had ever been self-pitying about it. But he had built defenses, of which Aled, as his one close friend apart from Marged Llwyd, had been aware. The defense of not caring a fig for anyone as a child. The added defense of aloofness as an eighteen-year-old and the firm hiding behind his newly acquired Englishness and his gentleman's manners.
Aled had not expected him to return. And over the years he had somehow managed to divorce in his mind his feelings for Geraint as friend and his feelings for the Earl of Wyvern as owner of the land on which he and his acquaintances and neighbors lived and worked. The Earl of Wyvern was that impersonal figurehead who represented the aristocracy, the English owners who cared nothing for Wales or the Welsh except as a source of wealth to themselves. Matters had come to crisis point. The whole system seemed designed gradually to squeeze out the small farmers and replace them with those who could better contribute more and more to enriching those who were already rich.
Aled had never thought of himself as a leader or as an agitator. He had been content to let Eurwyn Evans be both. But Eurwyn was dead and Glynderi and its neighborhood had needed a leader, someone with both firm convictions and a level head, and several people had approached him to take on the position and join the secret committee that had formed to organize protest in almost the whole of northern Carmarthenshire. Marged had asked him and he had remembered that Marged had suffered a great loss.
And so he had agreed. And had somehow blanked his mind to the fact that he had committed himself to organizing protest against his friend among others. He walked now beside Geraint beyond the village and onto the driveway leading to the house of Tegfan and then off it and across a wide lawn—and knew with a dreadful discomfort that Geraint was both his friend and his enemy, and that probably it was going to be impossible for him to remain both those things.
"Aled," Geraint said suddenly, and it was only then that Aled realized they had been walking in silence, "don't."
The few words they had exchanged had all been spoken in English, Aled realized. Just as they had been ten years ago.
"Don't what?" he asked uneasily. If they must talk, let it be on safe trivialities.
"Don't treat me as if I were the Earl of Wyvern," Geraint said.
"But you are." He knew what Geraint meant but did not want to know.
"I am Geraint Penderyn," his friend said, and there was a hint of frustration in his voice.
Aled remembered the talk outside the chapel on Sunday and Marged's suggestion that everyone make the earl feel unwelcome if and when he visited. Apparently he had visited and had been made to feel unwelcome. A village blacksmith tended to hear about such things.
"Yes," he said, "and the Earl of Wyvern too."
"We used to fight," Geraint said unexpectedly. "Wrestling, not boxing. Almost every time we met. You always won. I believe there were no exceptions. Do you want to try to retain that record, Aled?"
Aled looked at him in amazement. "Now?" he said. "Don't be daft, man." His eyes took in Geraint's immaculate clothes.
But Geraint had stopped walking and was stripping off his coat. "Yes, here," he said, and there was the tightness of anger in his voice—and a familiar gleam of recklessness in his eyes. "Come and fight me, Aled. Let's see if you can still put me down. No, don't back away and look at me as if you think I should be consigned to bedlam. Fight me, dammit, or I will slap your face and make you fight."