by Rosie Harris
He could pretend no longer.
He had tested her, and far from finding her wanting he had only proved that David had made a sound choice.
He lay with closed eyes thinking of what life might be like if David were to marry Penelope Vaughan. He recalled the last time he had seen her. A flamboyant figure in her dark red velvet riding habit, the skirt divided like a pair of men’s trousers, so that she could ride astride. Her fiery red hair had been topped by a black riding hat. She had been standing with legs astride, tapping the side of her black leather boots with her riding crop, her green eyes gleaming as she recounted the kill she had just witnessed.
He shivered with distaste as he admitted to himself that life would become intolerable, not only for David but for himself as well, if Penelope Vaughan should be installed as mistress of Llwynowen.
‘How long did you say it was before your child is due?’
‘I refuse to discuss such matters,’ she told him coldly.
Her eyes became impenetrable blue shields and he had the odd feeling that she was laughing at him.
Suddenly his life was full of purpose. A son to follow on after David, someone to work and scheme for and ensure that he, too, became a man of wealth and power.
His initial regret that his coal mines would never be linked to those of Tomos Vaughan’s ironworks faded. It was better this way. There would be no compromising, no shared profits. Whatever money Fforbrecon and the Llwynowen estates generated would belong entirely to the ap Owens.
The demand for coal was increasing all the time. Subdue the Chartists and get rid of all the other agitators and there was no telling how vast the ap Owen empire could become eventually.
He would put in hand some of the schemes he had been contemplating to make Fforbrecon the most efficient mine in South Wales.
He grabbed hold of Kate’s hand, needing to tell someone of his ideas.
‘I’m going to lay a track to link up Fforbrecon with the railway so that the coal trucks can be loaded at the mine and then be taken straight to the ironworks at Blaenafon.’
‘And where will you house all the extra workers? Here at Llwynowen, or in the railway arches?’ she asked ironically.
‘I shall build more houses. There’s sufficient land at Fforbrecon for another twenty if they are built in two rows, one behind the other up the mountainside,’ he told her eagerly.
‘Forty more families!’
‘That could mean an addition of seventy or more workers if you take into account the children as well.’
‘I think you should rest.’ Firmly she disengaged his hand. ‘Try and sleep for a while.’
‘Nonsense! I must get back to work right away. I’ve wasted valuable time lying here for so long,’ he grumbled.
‘You are rambling.’ Frowning, she placed a cool hand on his brow. ‘Perhaps I should send for Dr Wynne!’
‘Stop talking rot! I’m as fit as a fiddle.’
‘Are you?’ She regarded him with raised eyebrows. ‘You haven’t even spent a full day downstairs yet and now you are talking about returning to work.’
‘And I intend to do so right away.’
‘I would have thought you would behave more sensibly at your age!’
‘My mind is made up.’
‘Without any consideration for David,’ she said angrily. ‘He has worked very hard to keep everything operating smoothly. If you suddenly return to work you will undermine his confidence completely.’
He lay back and closed his eyes. She was right, of course. He had automatically taken a back seat when he had put David in charge. He would have to handle things very diplomatically.
A slow smile spread across his face. Now that he was reconciled to the idea of David marrying Kate their wedding could take place with his blessing.
He tugged his white beard thoughtfully. He could send them abroad on an extended honeymoon. His eyes gleamed. While they were away he would once more be in complete charge and able to carry out all his schemes without any interference.
Chapter 41
David listened to Kate’s account of the conversation that had taken place between her and his father with growing trepidation.
Whenever she had tried previously to persuade him to speak to his father about their future together he’d placated her, telling her to be patient for just a little longer.
‘I must pick the right moment to tell him. He is bound to be shocked, you know that.’
‘But he already knows you have no intention of marrying Penelope Vaughan, so it really shouldn’t come as very much of a surprise,’ she contended.
‘He still harbours dreams of amalgamating our coal mines with the Vaughans’ ironworks, so probably he still hopes to persuade me to change my mind about Penelope.’
‘Surely your happiness matters more than any grandiose schemes he may have,’ she protested.
‘I doubt if he thinks so!’
‘But you can’t be certain,’ she persisted obstinately. ‘Surely you could talk things over with him and dispel the awful tension that is hanging over our heads all the time.’
Telling her that she was worrying needlessly had little effect. He wished there was someone she could confide in who would lend an impartial ear, and whose opinion he could trust. She seemed to have an attachment to Morag Lewis, but it would be reckless for her to visit Newport in case the constabulary were still looking for anyone who had been involved with the Chartists.
He had been angered by his father’s assumption that Kate must be pregnant. At first he thought she must have misunderstood what had been said but when she repeated the conversation word for word he knew there was no mistake.
The fact that his father had voiced such suspicions made him sharply aware that he must define the relationship between himself and Kate. Until this moment it had not seemed necessary. He had accepted her presence without feeling the need for any positive commitment. All his thoughts had been centred on avoiding marriage to Penelope Vaughan and he had not admitted even to himself the possibility of a permanent future with Kate.
Perhaps he needed someone to confide in just as much as Kate did, he thought. He decided to write to Helen and ask her to come and visit.
From the moment he despatched the letter, explaining that their father had had a slight heart attack and that Kate was at Llwynowen nursing him, he felt a tremendous sense of relief.
Kate’s reaction when he told her what he’d done was one of uncertainty. She was anxious about how Helen and George would react to her being there and thought he should have waited until Helen arrived before saying anything about her presence at Llwynowen.
David knew she was under considerable stress looking after his father but the sharp disapproval in her voice bewildered him.
‘I thought you would be pleased that I had written to tell Helen and invited her to come on a visit. You’ve always liked each other and she has always shown great kindness towards you.’
Tears dimmed Kate’s eyes. Her fears that something would happen to stop David marrying her crowded her mind.
‘No, you did what was right,’ she said bleakly.
‘I know this has all been very difficult for you, Kate,’ he murmured, drawing her into his arms and burying his face in her hair. ‘You mustn’t let anything my father says upset you. Do you understand?’
Tenderly he tilted her chin, his eyes studying her face, willing her to have faith in the way he was handling things. As their lips met, the reaction she aroused in him overpowered all other feelings.
‘I’d better go up and tell my father I’ve written to Helen, I suppose,’ he sighed as he released her.
Kate watched in silence as he passed a hand through his hair, and straightened his jacket and cravat.
‘Are you also going to tell him that I’m not pregnant?’
‘Of course! Now don’t worry, it’s all a misunderstanding that will easily be put right,’ he assured her.
‘David… you do love me?’ she challenged,
her breath catching in her throat.
‘Come here!’ He gathered her into his arms again, crushing her to him. ‘That’s what I’m going up to tell my father, isn’t it!’
After he went upstairs, she felt as if she was standing on the edge of an abyss. She stood in the hallway, rooted to the spot, listening to the murmur of their voices from the room above, unable to discern what was being said, but filled with a feeling of dread.
Finding the waiting intolerable, she went into the library. Nervously she pulled book after book from the shelves, glancing through them unseeingly, replacing them, unable to concentrate on either words or illustrations.
Time seemed to stand still. She wondered what the two men were saying to each other. She was sure that Tudor ap Owen still thought of her as a servant and would be aghast at the idea of David marrying her. As the ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece chimed the hour she went out into the hallway again to listen.
She found the silence was more distressing than raised voices would have been. If they had been arguing then at least she would have known that David was trying to make his father see his point of view.
She moved into the drawing room, pacing backwards and forwards in front of the long window that looked out on to the terrace and garden. The sun had melted the early morning frost and the damp grass sparkled with diamond brightness, but the mountains beyond were grey, deadened and wintry. It was all so harsh and alien, so very different from her native Wiltshire countryside that she wondered if she would ever grow to love it.
‘I’ve talked everything over with my father,’ David said, coming into the room and shattering her reverie.
‘You’ve told him you are planning to marry me?’
‘Yes. And I’ve made it quite clear that you aren’t pregnant!’
‘Oh, David!’ Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
‘I told him I was marrying you because I loved you and for no other reason.’
‘Was he terribly upset?’ She studied his face anxiously.
‘No! Amazingly enough, he gave us his blessing!’
‘Oh, David, I am so relieved… so happy!’
As he took her in his arms, she felt as if an unbearable burden had been removed from deep within her. Then, as she drew back and looked up into his face, the brief period of exhilaration vanished and a shiver ran through her as she saw the strange, melancholy expression in his eyes.
‘Is anything wrong, David? Is there something you haven’t told me? You look so distraught.’
‘No, no! It is just everything is happening so quickly that I feel as if I am being swept along by a tide. So many commitments,’ he added, pressing a hand to his temple. Kate bit her lip, unsure what to say.
‘Father wants our wedding to take place right away, before Christmas, in fact.’
‘That’s barely two weeks away!’
‘Can you manage to be ready in such a short time?’
‘I’m ready now,’ she told him with a smile.
‘I must write again to Helen immediately and tell her the news. They must all be here for the ceremony. Is there anyone you wish to have present?’
‘It would be wonderful to be able to ask Dr Elwyn Pugh and…’ she hesitated, then added firmly, ‘and Morag and Iestyn Lewis.’
‘That’s out of the question! My father would certainly draw the line at the idea of inviting Chartist sympathizers,’ David said emphatically.
Her heart thudded uneasily. If she and David were going to make their home at Llwynowen then it was important to establish right from the start that she had the right to lead her own life, and have her own friends. And now, before they were married, was the time to do this, she determined.
David heard her out in silence.
‘If I accept my father’s generous offer that we make our home here at Llwynowen, then he will expect you to put our family first. As mistress of Llwynowen, you will hold an important place in the community so your actions, and the company you keep, must be beyond reproach,’ he explained.
‘But David, surely I can have my own friends!’
‘Of course! You’ll make a great many once we are married. Ladies who are important in the community will be eager to know you.’
‘I’m not marrying you to achieve social status, I just want to keep the friends I have,’ Kate flared. ‘And I’m not having your father dictating what I can and cannot do. I want the right to lead my own life, and when we have a family I want to be able to bring up our children in my own way.’
‘And so you shall. Just think, by this time next year you could even be holding our son in your arms,’ he whispered huskily.
‘Oh, David!’ Their lips met in a sweet, lingering kiss that confirmed his love for her and dispelled all the shadows of fear that had haunted her for so long.
‘You must be prepared to make some compromises,’ he warned gently.
‘I’ll do my best,’ she promised. ‘Once we have a baby though I might not have the time for social commitments. Feeding, bathing and walking him in the fresh air will take up most of my day, you know.’
‘Nonsense, my love. There will be a wet-nurse and nursemaids to take care of such chores.’
‘Wet nurse! You think I would let my child be fed by a stranger!’ Her blue eyes were stormy with astonishment.
‘Most ladies do, it is the custom,’ he observed blandly.
‘Amongst the gentry it may be acceptable,’ she told him scornfully, ‘but the people I grew up with believe in feeding their own babies.’
‘You won’t have the time or the energy once you take your place in local society,’ he warned.
‘David, the idea of handing my baby over to a stranger to be fed is unthinkable. Anyway,’ she added sadly, ‘I’ve seen what happens to the child of a wet nurse. The one she has been hired to feed flourishes while her own baby, starved of milk, is weak and puny. Some even die.’
She felt dismayed by David’s request. Her joy that Tudor ap Owen had agreed to their marriage had turned to unease. It was almost as if David was confronting her with these problems as some sort of test. There was something in his manner that troubled her. A sadness in his eyes that she couldn’t understand.
‘Kate, please try and be reasonable. We all have to compromise. I’ve had to make a number of sacrifices before he would agree to our marriage.’
‘What sort of sacrifices?’ she asked, startled.
‘Ideals… dreams,’ his scarred face twisted. ‘Nothing you need worry about…’
‘But you must tell me,’ she insisted.
‘I’ve had to agree to shoulder my full responsibilities as far as the family business is concerned.’
‘Isn’t that what you want to do anyway so that you can take over from your father when he is ready to retire?’
‘Common sense tells me it’s the right thing to do,’ sighed David. ‘It’s not easy to take such a decision, though. It means giving up forever my hopes of either returning to university or teaching. I doubt if I shall ever be a good businessman; I’m not hard-headed and ruthless like my father.’
Her throat constricted as she heard the bitterness in his voice. For a moment she hated Tudor ap Owen.
The memory of the house in Coalbrookvale Terrace, of the huddle of barefoot children, skinny and hollow-eyed, old at ten, as they set off in the bleak October morning, clad only in rags, to spend twelve or fourteen hours below ground, came sharply into focus.
Shivering, frightened four-year-olds, who sat in the darkness, waiting to open the safety doors or made to chip away at the ore with pickaxes they could barely wield. Boys of ten handling molten metal that could spit and sear, burning through to the bone and leaving jagged slugs of metal wedged into swollen flesh. Young girls, their tender bodies harnessed with belt and chains, crawling on all fours along the narrow tunnels, hauling loaded trams: such memories would haunt her for ever.
She recalled the heated discussions with Iestyn and Morag, their determination to stop women and
children being exploited as cheap labour, and wondered if her destiny lay in marrying David so that she could help overcome such distress. If she asked him to do so, would David be strong enough to stand up to his father and persuade him to make changes? she wondered.
She was sure that if one owner led the way, and improved conditions for the workers, then the others would follow. How could God-fearing men, such as they claimed themselves to be, subject other human beings to such degradation? They treated animals with more compassion, she thought bitterly.
She loved David so much, but she felt sickened that the privileges of the new life she was about to enjoy were at the expense of such women and children.
If only David wasn’t dependent on his father but had enough money to start a school of his own like the one William Barnes had run, she thought wistfully, but that was sighing for the moon again.
‘So if I can put away my books and dreams, can’t you make just this one sacrifice?’ his voice cut into her thoughts.
Kate refused to discuss the matter any further. She needed time to think. She loved David so deeply that she wondered if perhaps, after all, it would be better if she released him from his promise and went away. That would leave him free to make his escape from Llwynowen and lead the kind of life he dreamed about.
The arrival a few days later of Helen and her family temporarily took her mind off the matter.
Sir George was as brusque and as supercilious as she remembered. Helen looked older, more subdued. Beth and Mary welcomed Kate with kisses and exclamations of delight about the wedding.
Kate was quick to notice that as the two girls told her over and over how much they had missed her, Sir George’s scowl deepened and Helen became increasingly flustered.
As she accompanied them up to the rooms that had been prepared for them in the north wing, so that they could remove their cloaks and refresh themselves after their journey, Beth and Mary chattered excitedly about the dresses they would be wearing at her wedding. Listening to their girlish raptures, for a brief moment Kate felt as though they had never been parted.