by Mary Balogh
Miss Haines looked doubtful. “Mrs. Jones is quite a young woman, sir,” she said. “But I am not sure she would be willing to take on the task. It is merely a suggestion.”
“Mrs.?” He raised his eyebrows.
“A widow, sir,” she said.
He nodded. “Will you send for her?” he asked. “Ask her to call on me here at her earliest convenience?”
He liked the thought of it. Someone to give Verity organized lessons. Someone to give her companionship and some outings and exercise. Someone to teach her something about the country in which he had property and in which they were to live for a while. Perhaps for a long while. For two days he had felt like a stranger in a foreign land. But he had also felt somewhat invigorated by the challenge of learning about something that was totally new to him. And then there was that feeling he had had up in the hills the evening before, that strange yearning for something he could not put a name to. It was a feeling he felt the need to explore.
He waited with some impatience to see what Mrs. Siân Jones was like. He would have to see if she was suitable—and willing—to be Verity’s governess. He had not thought to ask Miss Haines what she did in Cwmbran. If she was not suitable, he would have to decide whether to send to his man of business in London to find him a governess or to go down to Newport and look for someone himself.
4
ANGHARAD Lewis lived with her coal-miner father. She had lost her husband in the same cave-in as had killed Gwyn Jones. Unlike her friend Siân Jones, she had not gone back to work in the mine afterward. She wanted something better. She yearned for something better, for a grander home and for pretty clothes and money for some luxuries. She dreamed of a rich husband. She had found a job cleaning house for the Reverend Llewellyn and for Owen Parry. She had begun stepping out with Emrys Rhys two years after her husband’s death, and there had been a growing fondness on both sides. But then she had got a job at Josiah Barnes’s house to add to the other two, and finally her dreams had seemed within her grasp. She had stopped seeing Emrys.
Angharad was lifting a small tray of cakes from the oven when Josiah Barnes returned to his house from showing the marquess around the mine. She set it down and smiled at him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Barnes,” she said. “I have made you some little currant cakes for your tea. Your favorites.”
He grunted. “I think you forgot to tell me something, Angharad,” he said.
She tried to look blank, but her eyes slipped from his. She knew instantly what he was talking about. “Oh?” she said.
He took her by one wrist and squeezed hard so that her fingers splayed wide. “What were Scotch Cattle doing out last night?” he asked.
“It was to warn the Chartists, Mr. Barnes,” she said. “Or rather, those who will not join them.”
“Oh, aye,” he said. “And when were they asked to join, pray?”
She looked flustered and tried in vain to flex her fingers. “There was a meeting on the mountain the night before last, Mr. Barnes,” she said, not looking at him. “I didn’t know anything about it. Honest, I didn’t.” The lie would make her afraid to go to chapel on Sunday.
“Angharad,” he said sternly, “I don’t like having things kept from me. I don’t like being made a fool of. I thought you understood that.”
“I didn’t know about it until today,” she said. “Honest.”
He grunted and released her wrist. “Upstairs,” he said, patting her on the bottom. “And out of those clothes.”
She smiled at him. “Yes, Mr. Barnes,” she said.
She pleased him, she knew—always keeping his house clean and tidy, cooking for him although it was not part of her original duties. And giving him his pleasure in bed. He was a single man and a lonely man, Angharad believed. And she had begun to believe in dreams. She would do anything to make her dream come true—including giving him information that she judged would not harm anyone in particular.
He did not undress when he followed her up a few minutes later. He merely loosened his trousers and lay heavily on top of her on the bed. She opened her legs for him, and he thrust himself inside her and rode her with vigor while his hands took hold of her naked breasts and squeezed them hard. He grunted and relaxed his full weight on her when he was finished before rolling to one side of her. He kept hold of one of her breasts.
“You are wonderful, Mr. Barnes,” she said, gazing worshipfully at him. “I do like a masterful man.”
“You must just remember, Angharad,” he said, “that a good woman does not keep secrets from her man. You must trust me. If I am your master, you must tell me everything you know. I have everyone’s interests at heart, after all. You know that. I would be displeased with you if I thought you did not trust me and deliberately kept things from me.”
“I trust you, Mr. Barnes,” she said earnestly. “I think you are wonderful. It is just that I did not know this time. I’ll tell you next time. I would do anything for you.”
“I will expect better next time, then,” he said. “Lie still now while I rest. I’ll have you again before you go.”
“Yes, Mr. Barnes,” she said. She closed her eyes and dreamed of life in the stone lodge cottage. Her own spacious home to do with as she liked and money to buy ornaments for it and clothes for herself. The man who lived there with her in her dreams had Emrys Rhys’s face.
* * *
The workers were paid in the Three Lions Inn, as they always were. It was owned by the company and many of the men never did make it out the doors before their pay pack was seriously depleted. Many a wife waited at home for her man to come, angry at his weakness, anxious about how much or how little money there would be left to stretch over the week’s needs. Many thought with a sinking heart of the already impossibly high advance taken up at the truck shop and the resulting smallness of this week’s pay, now being drunk up. Tomorrow or the next day they would be asking at the shop for an advance on next week’s wages.
This evening many of the men drank deeper than usual—not with the once-a-week pleasure of having some money in their pockets, but with the impotent anger of their reaction to the news that wages were to drop ten percent during the coming week. Take it or leave it, the paymaster had said with a shrug when some of the more vocal men had protested. Profits were down. It was either a reduction in everyone’s wages or layoffs. There were always more workers ready to move into the valley and work for even less if all they wanted to do was grumble. The Irish were always willing to work.
Siân waited at the end of a long line. The coal miners were always paid last, the women after the men. She thought of the long, hard hours spent underground each day and the almost inhuman conditions. And all for so little pay that it would scarcely buy sufficient food for the coming week. What would happen with a ten percent reduction? Yet she was one of the fortunate ones. Grandad and Uncle Emrys worked at the furnaces and were higher paid than most men. There were three wages going into their house and only four mouths to feed. There were no children. She tried not to listen to the complaints of some of the men with large families.
There were the usual murmurs about a union. Not loud murmurs with the paymaster still present, but quite unmistakable nevertheless. Owen was sitting with a large group of men at the far side of the room, Emrys among them. Her grandfather was sitting with a group of older men.
It was all they would need, she thought with an inward sigh of despair. As if they did not have enough troubles without that. There had been a curious silence at work during the day about the activities of the Scotch Cattle last night. And yet there had been a very definite awareness of the one topic that dominated all their minds. Siân had walked home from work with Iestyn, as she often did, and had asked him directly.
He had smiled at her. “Don’t worry your head about it, Siân,” he had said. “You are tired after a day’s work.”
“And you are not?” she
had said. “What am I not to worry my head about? Did they give you a warning? Did they, Iestyn?”
“It is not right to give in to threats,” he had said. “It is only right to go with one’s conscience, Siân. I am not afraid of them.”
“You will not join the Association, then?” She had been whispering.
He had shaken his head. “You are not to worry about it.” He had smiled again, but she had been able to see from the paleness of his face behind the coal dust that he was afraid. His face had reminded her for a moment of Gwyn’s when he had been carried up from the pit, dead.
She was terrified for Iestyn. He was going to ignore a warning from the Scotch Cattle! As she waited in line for her wages, she thought for a moment that she was not going to be able to get her breathing under control but would collapse, gasping, on the floor.
Oh, Iestyn, she thought, as he passed her and smiled, his pay pack in his hand. Foolish, brave boy. She would have a word with Owen. Maybe Owen could do something about it. Maybe he knew someone who belonged to the Scotch Cattle, though she had never known anyone who was willing to admit as much. But if anyone knew, Owen would. She would have a word with him, plead with him. He knew that she was fond of Iestyn. She felt marginally better.
And yet now the men were reacting to the news of the wage cut with anger and the murmurings of a strike. Where would it all end? And what sort of a waiting game was the Marquess of Craille playing? But she dared not think of that. Oh, she dared not, she thought as her heart started to palpitate again.
“Well, Siân Jones,” Ceridwen Hughes said, digging her in the ribs with one bony elbow and grinning to reveal crooked teeth. Unlike Siân, Ceridwen had not bathed before coming to the Three Lions for her pay. She had merely scrubbed her cheeks and the palms of her hands. “What did you think of him, then?”
Him today could mean only the Marquess of Craille, who had appeared underground during the morning to inspect the mine without any of the warnings they usually had if Josiah Barnes was expected. Siân had been trying not to think of that visit and the terror it had occasioned her. Life had been so full of terror in the past few days. She was mortally tired of it.
“I think he found it unpleasant,” she said. “His nose was wrinkled.” She remembered how she had stopped just in time before butting into him headfirst and how she had looked up and almost gaped at his immaculate splendor, so out of place in the mine. And at her realization that now it was beyond all doubt. The man on the mountain and the Marquess of Craille were one and the same man. And then she remembered the fear, almost amounting to nausea, as she had waited to be recognized.
“I saw him close-up,” Ceridwen said. “He looked right at me.” She lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t mind stepping up the mountain with that one for a good go. What do you say?”
“I don’t think he would go with either of us, Ceridwen,” Siân said with a smile. She tried to feel real amusement at the thought. She was tired of feeling afraid. “Ah, at last. It is almost our turn.” Her back ached with the long wait following upon a day of work.
She raised a hand in farewell to Owen as she turned to leave a few minutes later. He and the men with him were deep into their beer and animated talk. She shut her mind to what they were undoubtedly saying. She would not think of it anymore.
She sighed as she let herself into the house a few minutes later and smelled the dinner her grandmother was cooking. It was good to be home and to close the door behind her. If only all her troubles and fears could be shut outside and left there. She smiled wearily at her grandmother and kissed her cheek.
“The line seemed to move even more slowly than usual,” she said. “I am sorry to be late, Gran.”
“There is no point in waiting for the men, at any rate,” Gwynneth said, her voice curt as it usually was on payday. “Sit down, fach, and eat.” She spooned generous ladlefuls of stew onto Siân’s plate at the table. “They can eat it cold later. There is wicked it is of the owners to pay the men in the pub. And clever too. They get their money back almost before it leaves their pockets. And women and children go hungry.”
“Wages are going down next week,” Siân said quietly. “Ten percent, Gran.”
Her grandmother sank onto the chair at the other side of the table. “Oh, Duw, Duw,” she said. “How can we live on less, then? Are we supposed to eat grass?”
Siân slid her pay package across the table. “We will manage, Gran, as we always do,” she said. “I just worry about Gwyn’s folk.” Gwyn’s father had the coughing sickness that so many miners ended up with after spending years working underground. He was not able to work any longer. Only Gwyn’s older brother Huw and his youngest brother, Iestyn, were working in that house and yet there were eight mouths to feed, counting Huw’s three young children. “Perhaps . . .”
Her grandmother spread the money before her on the table and divided it in half. She pushed the one half back toward Siân. “Yes, take it to them, fach,” she said. “For the little ones, is it?”
“But Huw is so proud,” Siân said with a sigh. “I will have to slip it to Mari on the sly.”
“Men!” Gwynneth Rhys said. “I suppose they are all drowning their sorrows down at the pub and whispering about a strike—Grandad and Emrys among them.”
“And Owen,” Siân said. “I can’t really blame them, Gran. For some it is a matter of life and death. Really and truly. But we do not need that kind of trouble on top of what we already have with all this business over the Charter—and Scotch Cattle last night.” She swallowed. “They called on Iestyn. He has been given three days to join the Chartist Association. But he says he will not.”
“Oh, Duw.” Her grandmother was about to say more, but she was stopped by a knock on the door. Owen? Had he left the pub early, then? But the door was not opened as it usually was if it were Owen or one of their neighbors. Siân got up to open it.
“Mrs. Siân Jones?”
She did not recognize the man, though he was well dressed.
“Yes,” she said.
“You are wanted at the castle,” he said in English. “By his lordship. You had better be quick about it. He does not like to be kept waiting.”
Siân felt suddenly as if she were looking at the man through a long tunnel. This was it, then. He had recognized her after all this morning and had found out who she was and where she lived. She concentrated on not showing the sick dread she felt. She would not show fear before one of his servants. Or before him either.
“Me?” she said with studied calm, speaking too in English. “The Marquess of Craille wishes to see me? What about?”
“Don’t be daft, woman,” he said, betraying his Welsh origins for a moment even though he kept to the other language. “Would he tell me? Wash your hands and face and get yourself up there if you know what is good for you.”
Siân’s lips tightened. And anger rescued her from perhaps cringing after all. She had bathed and washed her hair and changed into clean clothes not two hours ago. Her grandmother had hauled water from the pump and heated it so that she could clean herself after work. And yet this man—a mere servant when all was said and done—thought to treat her like a worm beneath his well-polished boot?
“It is very late,” she said. “I have just come home from work.”
The groom turned away in disdain. “I would be there in half an hour if I were you, missus,” he said. “Or it may go badly with you.”
Yes, badly. It would go badly whenever she went. She wondered if the Marquess of Craille would punish her merely for being there as a spy at the meeting, or if he hoped to coerce her into giving some of the men’s names. Perhaps after all he found himself unable to identify any of them, including Owen. She felt a glimmering of hope. But he had summoned her to the castle. Absurdly she had a mental image of dungeons and racks. The castle had been built less than a hundred years before. It was not a real castle at all
. Besides . . . She closed the door and turned to stare at her grandmother.
“Duw!” was all her grandmother said from her place at the table. She held one hand over her heart.
“He must have found out who I was,” Siân said. But she must not worry her grandmother before she had to. Or anger her. Gran would be very annoyed if she knew that Siân had gone up the mountain at midnight. “I almost ran him down this morning, Gran, when he came down the mine with Mr. Barnes. He must be going to dismiss me. But he would not lower himself to do that in person, would he? Whatever can he want?”
“Don’t go,” Gwynneth said, her eyes round with fear. “Stay here, fach. We will send Grandad when he comes home.”
“No,” Siân said. “It is me he has summoned, Gran. I had better go and see what he wants. Probably something we will laugh about afterward.” She tried to smile.
“Don’t go,” her grandmother repeated. “My Marged—” She spread her hands over her face. Marged had been Siân’s mother.
“Oh, Gran,” Siân said, realizing suddenly what her grandmother’s fears were. She hurried across the room to put her arms about her. “No. He has not even seen me except this morning when I must have looked anything but inviting.” And once up on the mountain, when he kissed me. “That is ridiculous. Besides, you cannot think that I would . . .”
“Mr. Barnes,” Gwynneth said without removing her hands. “It is the sort of thing he would do, Siân. I have heard about wicked English gentlemen and their her—har—”
“Harems?” said Siân.
“It would be just like Mr. Barnes to have you brought up to the castle first,” her grandmother said. “There is wicked he is, fach. And all because you would not marry him. Don’t go. Wait for Grandad to come home, is it? Or run along and see if the Reverend Llewellyn is at home.”
Siân kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “No, I shall go,” she said. “He cannot very well kidnap me, after all, can he?”
“Then I will come with you.” Gwynneth got determinedly to her feet, undoing the strings of her apron as she did so.