by Iris Gower
She leaned back in her chair. ‘And in the morning we shall do some shopping for my trousseau.’
Shanni put down her cup and stared long and hard at Madame. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘I won’t ever love anyone else. I know my own mind and nothing will change it.’
Before Madame Isabelle could make any comment Shanni left the parlour and hurried up the winding stairs. She was conscious that the house smelt of beeswax and lavender, and the homely aroma of bread baking in the oven. Despair possessed her. Was she doomed to spend her days alone, never to have a home of her own? Would she be unloved for the rest of her life?
Shanni heard the rattle of wheels outside and realized that Graves had left for Swansea. Here she was in Madame Isabelle’s house, and here she would have to stay. Suddenly there were tears in Shanni’s eyes. Her whole life had taken a turn for the worse and her future was uncertain. Llinos Mainwaring had a lot to answer for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JOE SAT IN the large, airy drawing room of the house his father had left him and stared through the window at the rolling green countryside. Out there, somewhere on the horizon, was the border between England and Wales. Swansea seemed a million miles away.
He missed Swansea: it had become his home; it was where he had married and where his legitimate son had been born. Now, miles away from all he loved, life seemed meaningless. He had once had a wife and a mistress, a legitimate son and a love-child. Now he had nothing but ghosts and memories.
Joe was honest enough to recognize that the fault was his: Llinos had been so hurt when he had taken another woman. Like a thoughtless fool he had moved Sho Ka into the house in Neath, in close proximity to Swansea. In doing so he had ground Llinos’s pride into the dust.
Joe was racked with pain whenever he thought of his wife in bed with Dafydd Buchan. It had been like a knife twisting inside him when he saw them together. Llinos had been flushed with the joy of it, her features softened by passion. Once that passion had been his. Now he had thrown it away, and Dafydd Buchan had stepped in to take advantage of the situation.
The man was brave enough, and Joe gave him due credit for that: Buchan had stood his ground even though Joe was acting the outraged husband, bursting into the house and threatening him. Buchan was the sort who would defend himself and Llinos to the death, and it might well come to that.
Joe glanced at his pocket watch. Lloyd would be arriving soon. He wanted to talk to his father, to find out exactly what was happening. How would he take it when Joe told him that Llinos had left him?
But, whatever happened, Lloyd was finished with college. He had made that perfectly plain in his letter. He wanted to travel the world, to see different nations, his father’s nation of American-Indians. Lloyd was searching for his roots, which Joe understood.
Joe was eager to see his son again, but dreaded telling him about his mother living with another man. It was agony to think of it. Had Llinos suffered like this in imagining him with another woman?
Joe could not deny that he had enjoyed making love to Sho Ka. She was beautiful, exotic. She had shown him great passion. Perhaps he even loved her a little. But to admit that was the ultimate betrayal. And, in the end, it had all been for nothing. Joe remembered how he held Sho Ka in his arms until the big sleep took her. And then their son had drifted into another, remote world. Now there was no heir to take up the leadership of the Mandan tribe, no great chief to fight for the survival of the few remaining people who had escaped the terrible plague. Had it all been in vain? Had his entire life been in vain?
Joe felt desperate. He stood up and squared his shoulders: sitting in the large empty house feeling sorry for himself did no good at all. He would go out and walk, see the fields and rivers, and feel the cool breezes bathing his brow.
A heavy rain had begun to soak the fields and gather on the leaves of the strong English oaks, which bent under the weight. It was as if the whole world was encased in grey, a tearful world where only misery had free rein.
Perhaps he should shake the dust of England from his feet and go back to the plains of America. There, the hills towered above deep rivers; there, a man had space to breathe. And yet, in his heart, Joe knew he had unfinished business in Swansea. He could not walk away from his wife. He must at least make an attempt to win her back. But was it a hopeless task? Had he lost her for ever?
That night Joe ate no supper. Not even the cajoling of the rheumy old cook, hired for the duration of his stay, could make him enjoy the hot soup and the roly-poly pudding soaked in wine.
He took a drink of port to his bed, and sat up against the pillows, staring into the darkness beyond the windows and wondering if his spirits could possibly sink any lower. At last he slept, but it was a restless sleep where images taunted him. He saw the ghosts of his mother and Sho Ka. He felt the pallid skin of his dead baby son. And through the long hours of the night he felt as though fire consumed him.
It was in his bed of sickness that Lloyd found him the next day. Joe heard his voice: he spoke low as a man does in the presence of sickness. A cool hand rested on his brow and he saw Llinos, her dark hair tangled about her face, her eyes wide with fear. Had she come to him in a dream?
‘Come, Joe,’ she said, her face floating before him, ‘you are a brave, strong man, you must fight the fever.’ She crept into bed beside him and he held her close. He made love to her with the last of his strength and then, spent, he slept. He woke briefly and saw her beside him. He clung to her, knowing that with the coming of morning she might disappear, but in his heart there was hope that Llinos still loved him.
One morning Joe woke to find the sun washing palely through the bedroom. He felt very weak, could barely lift his head from the pillow, but his mind was clear.
‘Llinos?’ He murmured her name and she was there, her hand on his cheek.
‘Joe, you’re awake. The fever has broken!’ She sat at his side and held his hand close to her breast. ‘Oh, Joe, you’ve been so sick, I thought we were going to lose you.’
‘Llinos,’ he whispered, ‘my life is meaningless without you.’
‘Hush, I’m here now and so is Lloyd.’ She forced a smile. ‘Our son took charge. He hired a nurse then came to Swansea to fetch me.’
‘You came willingly?’
‘How could I not come when you needed me so badly?’
Joe felt his eyes begin to close but he knew that a healing sleep was claiming him. His wife was there, at his side, and that knowledge gave him the strength to face life again.
‘So.’ Lloyd stood in the drawing room, his hands thrust into his pockets. ‘You are going back to him, aren’t you, Mother?’ Lloyd’s face was filled with anxiety. ‘Buchan, I mean.’
Llinos swallowed hard. ‘Lloyd, I don’t know what your father has told you but . . .’
Her voice trailed away as Lloyd held up his hand. ‘Father told me nothing, at least not intentionally.’ Lloyd sighed. ‘My father ranted in his fever about another man, Dafydd Buchan, who had taken you away from him. How could you, Mother? How could you betray my father with another man like that?’
‘I can’t begin to justify what I did, Lloyd.’ Llinos rubbed her eyes tiredly. ‘I was so beaten when Joe took Sho Ka as his mistress and even had a child by her. I felt I was no longer a real woman. I felt that no man would ever love and desire me. Then Dafydd came into my life.’ She shrugged. ‘I can’t give him up, Lloyd, I just can’t.’
‘But you will stay with Father for the time being.’ Lloyd spoke forcefully. ‘We will take him home with us to Swansea. There we can nurse him back to health. He’s a broken man, Mother. Can’t you see that?’
‘What about me, Lloyd?’ Llinos was suddenly angry. ‘What about my feelings? I suffered the humiliation your father inflicted on me. I died a thousand deaths thinking of him in another woman’s arms, loving her, giving her his baby when I could no longer conceive. Was I supposed to take all that without protest?’
‘Most women do,’ Lloyd sai
d mildly.
‘I am not most women!’ Llinos was on her feet. ‘I wrested a livelihood from clay. I dragged my father’s business out of poverty and fought back against fate with all my strength. I am not cut from the same mould as the spoilt, rich wives who turn a blind eye to their husband’s infidelities.’
‘I know you are a proud woman, Mam,’ Lloyd spoke to her now in Welsh, his voice softening, ‘but if he can forgive, can’t you?’
‘I can try,’ Llinos said. ‘But I won’t give Dafydd up. I can’t give him up. If you don’t understand, then so be it.’ She paced across the room. ‘How do you think he feels with me running off to nurse my sick husband? Dafydd is not happy with my decision to come here, but he supports me in it.’
‘You can’t expect me to condone what you are doing, Mother,’ Lloyd said. ‘I can see how it’s affecting Father. I saw how sick he was, all because of you. He might have died of the fever.’
‘That’s why I came.’
Lloyd stared moodily out of the window and Llinos saw that his upper lip sported a moustache and that on the strong curve of his chin a beard was growing.
‘Of course, the real reason for Father’s sickness is a broken heart. He can’t bear it that you have left him.’
‘I told you, your father has no monopoly on broken hearts. I had a broken heart and spirit when your father left me for another woman,’ Llinos said. ‘Lloyd, this is not revenge. I just have to be with Dafydd, that’s all.’
‘Don’t you love Father any more?’
‘Yes! I don’t know. Oh, just leave me alone, Lloyd, please. My head is reeling with all these questions.’
Without another word, Lloyd disappeared through the door soundlessly, the way Joe did. Llinos sank into a chair and shut her eyes. Behind the lids, she saw Dafydd’s worried face, heard the fear in his voice when she said she was leaving. She had hugged him to her and promised faithfully she would be back. And she would return to him, but when?
Another week had passed before Lloyd decided that his father was well enough to undertake the coach journey back to Swansea. Joe accepted his son’s decision with unaccustomed meekness, grateful to let Lloyd take charge. He appeared, as Lloyd had claimed, to be a broken man.
As she sat beside him in the coach, Llinos looked out at the rolling green countryside. The Marches were the no man’s land between England and Wales and to Llinos meant separation not only from her home but from her lover.
She felt Joe reach for her hand beneath the woollen rug and her first instinct was to draw away from him. Then she relaxed. What harm could it do to give him a little comfort on the long journey? And long it was. The overnight stops at coaching inns were a nightmare, Llinos forced to share a bed with him. The first night, she put as much distance between herself and her husband as was possible, but when she woke in the morning, she was curled up in Joe’s arms.
‘Dafydd, my love!’ Llinos could not believe she was home at last. As soon as she stepped through the door of Dafydd’s house he was there, waiting for her. And then she was in his arms, breathing in the scent of him, wanting the fit young hardness of him against her.
She pressed her lips to his and his tongue probed hers. Desire flamed through her. ‘Take me to bed, Dafydd,’ she whispered. ‘Make me your own again.’
The house was silent as they went upstairs, even the cook and the maid were absent. Dafydd had planned it that way so that he and Llinos would meet for the first time in weeks with no distractions.
‘Let me undress you. I need to look at your perfect body. I can’t wait to make love to you again.’ He buried his face in her neck. ‘I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back to me. I can’t believe it even now with you here in my arms.’
His hands were gentle, untying ribbons, opening buttons but his need was great. Llinos could see the urgency in his eyes, feel it in the tautness of his body. She lay naked before him, praying she would be beautiful in his sight. She was a mature woman and Dafydd was a young man. How could he love her so much?
He kissed her lips, her neck, and then his mouth was hot on her breasts. She closed her eyes feeling as if she was melting in the intense heat of their desire. He moved into her easily – she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Llinos arched against him. Sensations of pleasure ran through her thighs and belly and seemed to reach to her very heart. Dafydd’s hands were beneath her, lifting her even closer. He needed to possess her and she understood that need because she felt it as much as he did.
They rode together on waves of love and delight. Llinos risked looking up at him and his eyes were bright, shining down into hers, loving her with every glance. Every movement of his body was a message of love, and when the shuddering moment of release held them both in its spell Llinos cried out his name.
Afterwards, they lay entwined in each other’s arms. He smoothed Llinos’s tangled hair away from her face and kissed her brow. ‘My girl has come home to me,’ she could hear the tears in his voice, ‘my sweet girl is here in my arms. I must be the happiest man in the whole world.’
Later, when they had bathed and dressed Dafydd took her to a coaching inn and ordered a meal of sizzling beef steaks stuffed with oysters. He filled her cup with fine wine and, content, they sat together silent and sated like an old married couple.
The wine loosened Dafydd’s tongue, and he leaned even closer to her as they sat side by side on the oak settle near the fire. ‘You haven’t slept with him again, have you, Llinos? Please tell me the truth.’
‘I made a mistake once and I won’t do it again,’ Llinos said softly. ‘I didn’t allow Joe to touch me, not even to rest his hand on my shoulder, and I can swear that on the Bible, if you like.’
He touched her cheek. ‘I believe you, my little girl,’ he said softly. ‘I saw the love and joy in your face when you came to me. I know you are mine now, and only mine. I will hold you like the greatest treasure on earth and I will never let you go, not until death do us part.’
Llinos shivered. It was as if a shadow had fallen over her heart. She reached for him. ‘Hold me close, Dafydd,’ she said softly. ‘Just hold me close.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SHANNI COULD SEE the difference in Dafydd as soon as he came into Madame Isabelle’s house. He stood in the hall, happiness shining from him like a beacon, and all because Llinos Mainwaring had come back to him. Anger and pain warred within her. She was young, she was much prettier than Llinos Mainwaring, and she was free. She had no husband, no lover, and if Dafydd came to her he would find her a virgin.
‘Isabelle!’ Dafydd took Madame in his arms and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘More lovely than ever. Do I hear wedding bells by any chance?’
‘You do indeed, Dafydd.’ She spoke in a low voice. ‘And you are looking much better. You’ve been going around like a man ready to throw himself off a cliff. I presume your love life has taken a turn for the better?’
He tapped his nose playfully. ‘You can be so nosy, Isabelle,’ he teased. ‘And you, Shanni, can put your eyes back into your head now because there’s no gossip to relate.’
A moment before, Shanni had congratulated herself on being young. Now she felt her youth was a disadvantage. She allowed Dafydd to hold her lightly in his arms and breathed in the scent of him – the freshness of the evening air, the aroma of tobacco – and her heart lurched. She would have Dafydd for her own, even if she had to wait for ever.
He released her and she smiled up at him. He was so tall, so handsome, such a brave, strong man. Dafydd was her hero, he was everything her heart desired, and she would fight Llinos Mainwaring to the death for him if she had to.
‘How is Pedr, these days? Behaving himself, is he?’ Dafydd waited until the ladies were seated then took a seat himself.
Shanni made an effort to smile but she resented the implication that Pedr and she were involved with each other. ‘I suppose he’s fine,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen anything of him for ages.’ She folded her fingers together and sa
t back in the shadows of the big armchair, unaware of the mutinous look on her face.
‘Your brother is well now?’ Isabelle broke the silence that followed Shanni’s petulant words. ‘I saw Ceri out riding the other day and he looked well. It seems he’s fully recovered from his injuries.’
‘He is well enough,’ Dafydd said. ‘He’s still furious with me, of course. He thinks I should be on the side of law and order. Ceri pays lip service to the plight of the farmers but he is, first and foremost, a businessman.’ Dafydd shook his head. ‘And as such he believes it to be in his best interest to stay away from political debate.’
‘I can’t say I blame him.’ Isabelle leaned forward. ‘However, it’s left to people like you and me to do something to right the wrongs of this world. If you are not too busy, shall we begin to map out our plans?’
Dafydd rubbed his chin, and his head was bent so that Shanni could not see his expression. She felt, rather than saw, that he would rather speak of his foolish, disgusting affair with Llinos Mainwaring than think of the wrong done to the farmers. ‘Well, I suppose we should think up a strategy.’ He spoke almost reluctantly. ‘It must be something big, though. What if we plan for the middle of summer? That would give us plenty of time and lull the authorities into believing we have given up the fight.’
Shanni saw him glance at Madame Isabelle as if waiting for her approval. He did not even think to seek Shanni’s opinion.
‘With the element of surprise working for us,’ he went on, ‘we can strike hard and swift at the structure of the law.’
‘You could be right,’ Madame Isabelle said quietly. ‘But the men are getting restless. I’ve arranged a meeting here for tonight. I thought you would want that.’