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 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 naïveté 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.
