“Money has been sent from the coffers to the Penfro gatekeeper and his wife to compensate them for the loss of their home and livelihood,” Geraint said. “The same thing will happen in future. And money has been sent or soon will be to people who are suffering badly from the way the Earl of Wyvern and other landowners treat them. Charlotte will doubtless be asked about it. I mention the existence of the coffers so that your jaw will not hang and make you look stupider than usual.” He grinned again.
“Is it necessary, Ger?” Aled frowned. “None of the committee will be able to contribute.”
“I have not asked for help,” Geraint said. “They are the coffers of Rebecca and I am Rebecca. I must go, or anyone who is timing me will think I am flaying you alive. Wednesday, then.”
Aled nodded curtly.
Marged was doing another backbreaking round of the field that would be sown to wheat soon. She had ignored some of the smaller stones during the first round, convincing herself that they were too small to matter. But with the larger stones gone, the smaller ones had suddenly looked bigger themselves and they had stared accusingly at her every time she was busy about something else in the farmyard.
So she was picking stones again. She had been at it since early in the morning. By early afternoon she was feeling hot and stiff and dirty. Dirt was encrusted under her fingernails, she saw with distaste. And the soil of the field must be on her face, rubbed there by the back of her hand, with which she frequently and ineffectually pushed back tendrils of hair that had worked themselves loose from her bun.
There was going to be a bath tonight despite the inconvenience of hauling and heating all that water. And clean clothes. And relaxation before the fire until bedtime. But tonight seemed a whole era away. She straightened up to look across the field, trying to convince herself that she was halfway.
And then she turned her head sharply toward the yard. Her nostrils flared. He looked so immaculate that she wondered if he did anything else at home but soak in a tub of hot water and send down his clothes for laundering and ironing. And of course he had just the sort of short curly hair that hardly moved in the wind. He probably did not know what sweat felt like. Or soil—though he had felt it constantly many years ago beneath his bare feet.
He was standing by the gate into the field, watching her. There were two other women on this farm. If this was a social call, he might have knocked on the door of the house and entertained himself with Mam’s conversation and Gran’s for however long he had decided to favor them with his company. But oh, no, it was she he had to take from her work.
She rubbed her hands hard up and down her dirty apron and strode toward him. She could not have felt dirtier or scruffier or uglier if she had tried, she thought. And with every stride her anger mounted because it mattered to her that he was seeing her this way. It did not matter. She did not care how he saw her or what he thought of her.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asked in that hateful cultured English voice.
“You have caught me playing instead of working,” she said tartly. “I am picking stones off the field when I could be doing some real work like feeding Nellie. What does it look as if I am doing?”
“Marged,” he said, “this is man’s work.”
“Oh, of course.” She smote her forehead with the heel of one hand. “How foolish of me. I shall go to the house without further delay and call out all the men who are sleeping in there or in the barn.”
He stared at her with his cold blue eyes and impassive face. She did not care what he thought of her insolence or what he would do about it. And then he swung off his cloak and slung it over the rough wood of the gate. He hung his hat over the gatepost and pulled off his frock coat.
“What are you doing?” Her eyes widened.
His coat joined his cloak over the gate. He was undoing the buttons of his waistcoat. “It would seem,” he said, “that there is only one man available to do the job.”
Marged snapped her teeth together when she realized that she was gaping. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no, you don’t. I don’t want your help. Get off my land.”
He looked at her coolly as he rolled up one immaculately white shirtsleeve above his elbow. “The last time I checked, Marged,” he said, “it was my land.”
“I have paid my rent on it,” she said. “I was not even a day late.”
But she had lost her audience. He was striding out into the field. His boots were so highly polished that he could probably see his face in them when he bent down, she thought. And he was walking into a bare field with them? His trousers were dark and obviously very expensive and hugged his legs well enough to show that they lacked nothing in shape or muscle. His shirt was flapping in the breeze but was anchored at his very slim waist, where it was tucked into his trousers. Even when the breeze died for a moment, the breadth of his back and shoulders prevented the shirt from collapsing about him. The hair on his arms was as dark as that on his head.
Marged caught the direction of her thoughts and snapped her teeth together once more. She strode after him. This was her farm and this was her job. But by the time she came up to him, he was already bending down and picking up stones and tossing them into the wagon that she would have the horse pull away when the task was done or when it was full. Well, she thought vengefully, leaning down beside him and resuming her work without a word, she hoped he would get filthy. She hoped that his back would get so sore from the unaccustomed manual labor that he would be unable to straighten up when he was finished. She hoped he would never come back, for fear that she would have some other heavy task awaiting him.
And damn him, he was moving faster than she. And he was picking up two stones with each hand, except for the larger ones, as Eurwyn had used to be able to do.
She could not believe how quickly they finished. They worked for perhaps a couple of hours, stopping only at the end of every second row to drink from the water jar she had brought out with her after luncheon, not speaking a word to each other. And it was done. She had expected to work until dark and even then perhaps not be quite finished.
And then, when they were back in the yard together, she watched as he prepared one of the horses and led it out to the field, hitched it to the wagon, and led it to the stone pile, which he must have seen for himself at one corner of the distant pasture. Eurwyn had used the stones to build some walls. His father before him had used them to build the pigpen.
Marged was tempted while he was gone to rush into the house to wash her hands and face, to comb her hair, and to change her apron. But she would be damned before she would do anything to make herself look more attractive in his eyes.
Besides, she thought, watching him in some satisfaction as he brought the horse back, he was not looking very immaculate himself any longer. His boots were dull with dust and caked with soil, his trousers looked gray rather than black, and his shirt was liberally stained with dirt. And there were circles of wetness beneath his arms. His face and hands looked grimy.
She had wondered at one time whether he would look so splendid if he were not dressed so immaculately. She had her answer, she thought grudgingly. Geraint would be beautiful even if he still lived up on the moors, scratching a living mainly from poaching. But she was glad he was dirty and sweaty. She hoped that he felt uncomfortable. She hoped that tomorrow he would be too stiff to move.
He came and stood in front of her, rolling down his shirtsleeves as he did so. And he spoke for the first time in hours. “What do you know about the destruction of the Penfro gate on Saturday night?” he asked.
Her heart skipped a beat, but she had prepared herself for this.
