“Have you heard of the coffers of Rebecca?” he asked Marged.
She frowned and shook her head. “No,” she said, but her stomach lurched just at the sound of his name.
“There is a fund,” he said, “to help those in need. Some goes to the gatekeepers who lose their homes and their livelihood. Some goes elsewhere.”
Oh, what a wonderful idea. She wondered whose it had been and who financed it.
Aled cleared his throat. “Rebecca has directed me to call on you,” he said. “You need a laborer on the farm, especially with the seeding coming up.”
She stared at him.
“And Waldo Parry needs a job,” he said. “His wife has another little one on the way. I suppose you know.”
She nodded, not saying anything and not taking her eyes off his face.
“I am to ask you to accept this money to pay him for working for you,” he said, patting a pocket and looking downright embarrassed. “We all know how proud you are, Marged. We all know that you are capable of running this farm as well as any man. But you could use the help. And Waldo will end up in the workhouse if he finds no job this spring. I do not know who else can afford to offer him employment. You know what happens in the workhouse. He will be separated from his wife and she will be separated from her children. And they will all come close to starvation. Do it, girl. For them, is it?”
Marged was very much afraid that she was about to disgrace herself. If she moved or tried to open her mouth, she would end up bawling. He cared! He did care. She did not for one moment believe that his primary concern was for Waldo Parry. He could have persuaded anyone to take Waldo on. But he had chosen her. Because she needed help. Because he cared.
She nodded.
Aled looked surprised and relieved. “Good. Then it is settled,” he said, taking a package out of his pocket and handing it to her. “This should be enough for six months’ wages. You will speak to him, Marged? It would be better, perhaps, if he did not know the story behind his new job.”
Marged nodded again.
Aled looked uncertainly at Ceris and cleared his throat again. “Will I walk you home, then, Ceris?” he asked.
She stood for a long time without moving. But then she nodded and stepped forward. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
She hugged Marged as she passed. “I am so happy that you will have help and that Waldo will have work,” she said. “Perhaps some good will come of all this after all.”
Marged nodded and made no attempt to leave either the barn or the house with the two of them. She stood where she was, looking down at the package in her hand. She used her free hand after a minute or two to swipe at a couple of tears that had escaped from her eyes and were trickling down her cheeks.
Chapter 18
SHE had agreed to allow him to walk her home, but she had pretended not to notice his offered arm. She held her shawl with both hands and kept her eyes on the path ahead of them. She kept two feet of clear space between them. And she made no attempt at conversation.
They had used to hold hands when they walked, except when they were among the hills, off the beaten track, when often he had set an arm about her shoulders and she had set one about his waist. Her eyes had always sparkled at him and there had always been a brightness in her face, a smile on her lips. She had always chattered to him about anything and everything.
He thought about three smashed gates and the letters Geraint had written and sent to local landowners and to various people in England. He thought about the odds against success and the odds in favor of capture and punishment. There were constables actually posted at Tegfan—there at Geraint’s invitation. Aled’s childhood admiration for his friend had returned and doubled in force over the last couple of weeks. He was as daring as ever, but now there was a sense of purpose and a sense of responsibility to temper the daring. Geraint was no longer reckless. Except perhaps where Marged was concerned. Aled knew they had ridden off home together on both gate-breaking nights. But Geraint had fixed his aristocratic blue stare on his friend when Aled had suggested to him that it was perhaps unwise.
Aled thought again about what they had done and what there was still to do—all the uncertainties and all the dangers. And for that he had given up this. He turned his head to look at the woman he had loved with single-minded devotion for six years. Sometimes it seemed a poor exchange.
“You are stepping out with Harley, Ceris?” he asked. He had not meant to ask the question. He knew the answer but did not want to hear it from her.
“Yes,” she said.
He felt deeply wounded, as if he were hearing it for the first time. But he could not leave it alone.
“You care for him?” he asked.
“Yes.” There was a dullness to her voice—so unlike Ceris.
“And he is good to you?” He did not want to know how good Harley was to Ceris, God damn his soul to hell.
“Yes,” she said. He thought their poor stab at conversation was at an end, but she continued after a short silence. “He is courting me.”
Well, he had invited it. He should not have asked the first question. Courting was rather more serious than stepping out. Courting was a preliminary to a marriage offer and to marriage itself.
