by Mary Balogh
“John Frost?”
“He is the leading Chartist here in Wales,” he said. “He is the one trying to organize everyone. We will give him our support. We will inform him that he can count on us. We are going to invite him here to speak to us.”
“Here?” she said. “Just to the men who were at the meeting this afternoon, Owen? You don’t mean another mass meeting on the mountain, do you?”
“Everyone has the right to listen to what Frost has to say,” he said. “If everyone is to be expected to march when the time comes, then everyone must have a chance to listen and decide. Everyone will have to be persuaded.”
The kettle was boiling. He got up to make a pot of tea.
“Oh, Owen,” Siân said, “is it wise? There could be trouble over it. The Marquess of Craille knows about the last meeting. He has decided to do nothing about it, but he will not be so indulgent the next time. He has said that the government will be expecting trouble and will not stand for it.”
Owen sat down at the table again, leaving the tea to steep in the pot. He looked at her steadily. “He has spoken to you about it?” he asked.
“By way of a warning, not a threat,” she said. “I believe he is genuinely concerned, Owen. He wants to work on a more local level and find out what needs doing here to improve life and conditions. Perhaps it would be better that way. Perhaps something really would get done.”
Owen laughed, though he did not sound amused. “And you believed him,” he said. “I wondered why he suddenly decided to put in an appearance here, Siân, when we all know the opinion the bloody English have of the Welsh. Haven’t you wondered? Haven’t you worked it out for yourself by now? He is a part of the government. He is a member of the House of Lords, isn’t he? Parliament never had the smallest intention of discussing the Charter and perhaps passing it into law. Craille came here to keep us in line, Siân. To show muscle. To confuse us and quieten us down if he can—we are only the ignorant, barbaric Welsh, after all. He came to squash us if we will not be quietened. He’s a bloody snake. You had better not listen to a word he has to say.”
Siân felt shaken. Was it true? It sounded so very reasonable. “He seemed genuinely concerned,” she said, “about the fact that there are no waterworks in town. About the large number of children who die here.”
“And when did he express this concern?” He was looking closely at her.
She flushed. “After Sunday School,” she said. “He and his daughter asked me to take a stroll beside the river with them.”
He was quiet for a while before getting up once more to pour the tea. It was almost black, Siân saw. He had used far too much tea. But perhaps he liked it that way. It was something she must remember. She found the silence uncomfortable. She felt guilty for agreeing to take that walk, though it had been quite innocent with Verity present.
“And they came to chapel this morning and you sat with them,” Owen said at last. “There will be people who saw you walking with them.”
“I was not trying to hide,” she said. “Was there something wrong in doing so, Owen?”
“I had to fend off several remarks this afternoon,” he said. “All of them jokes, Siân. Certainly nothing to take offense over. No one would have dared. But all the jokes concerned a handsome Englishman and the loveliest Welshwoman in Cwmbran.”
“Owen,” she said, “it was with Lady Verity Hyatt I sat this morning and with her I walked this afternoon. I am going to be her governess. Of course I am going to be in company with her a great deal.” She knew she was not speaking the strict truth. It was with the marquess she had walked this afternoon. Verity had amused herself.
“Just be careful,” he said quietly. “Sometimes, Siân, it is possible to get a bad reputation even when you are innocent. And people will remember who you are.”
She was on her feet in an instant, white with anger. “What is that supposed to mean?” she hissed at him, hands on hips. “How dare you, Owen. How dare you!”
He got up too, his chair scraping on the bare floor. He took her wrist in one large hand. “Calm down,” he said. “Hush, fach, or Mrs. Davies next door will hear and think I am beating you.”
“People will remember who I am,” she said, her eyes flashing at him. “The daughter of a whore, Owen? Is that it? Like mother, like daughter? They will expect me to whore with him? The Marquess of Craille?”
Owen made a sound of frustration and pulled her into his arms. She found them about her like iron bands when she tried to pull free. “Spitfire,” he said. “I am only warning you of what could happen if you are seen too often in his company as well as his daughter’s. You know what people can be like with their nasty gossiping tongues. I trust you.”
“Do you?” Anger was gone from her suddenly to be replaced by guilt as she remembered that the Marquess of Craille had kissed her twice, and that the second time she had participated fully in what had developed into something more than a kiss.
“Cariad.” His arms had loosened and were cradling her. “I have had an idea. I have put it from me before because things are unsettled this year and I wanted them all to be behind us before we came together. But I think it would be wise for us to have the wedding this year after all. Next month, perhaps. And then no one will dare even joke about you and Craille.”
For a few moments Siân felt weak with longing. This year? Next month? She could be living here next month as Mrs. Owen Parry? She would have her own home, as she never had before. She would be the wife of one of the most skilled and respected workers in Cwmbran. Perhaps within another month or two she would be expecting a child. She would belong fully and finally. She would be able to reverse the process she had begun when she had accepted her new job. Owen would not want her to work outside the home once she was his wife.
“Owen,” she whispered.
He kissed her firmly, almost fiercely. “I don’t want you there,” he said. “I thought I did when it meant getting you out of the mine and when I thought it would mean someone in that house to keep an ear open for what might be going on. But seeing you with him in chapel this morning, fach, made me realize that I don’t want my woman within a mile of him. We will marry, will we, and you will come here to keep house for me and to warm my bed. And to have my little ones.”
She turned her head to rest her cheek against his shoulder, and closed her eyes. She wanted to be rescued. She wanted it more than anything. She had felt the pull of her attraction to the Marquess of Craille in chapel during the morning and on the walk beside the river during the afternoon. She could still feel a strange somersaulting of her insides when she remembered walking close beside him, her arm linked through his, Verity playing ahead of them, just as if . . . She had begun to like him. She had begun to believe that he really was concerned about the people of Cwmbran. She was so very gullible, if Owen’s interpretation of events was correct.
She needed rescuing. She wanted to be rescued. She willed her body and her emotions to feel the solid safety of Owen’s arms and body.
“I want little ones,” she said. “You cannot know how it hurt, Owen, when my Dafydd was stillborn.”
His arms tightened comfortingly. “We will have sturdy sons like their father and beautiful daughters like their mother,” he said. “I will talk to the Reverend Llewellyn, then? Next month, is it, cariad?”
She quelled an unreasonable panic and nodded against his shoulder. She had felt no panic when agreeing to marry Gwyn. And yet she wanted Owen more than she had wanted Gwyn. She needed him more.
He nudged her head from his shoulder and kissed her again. He was smiling and looking happy. Siân felt panic once more and guilt once more. His kisses did not ignite her as the marquess’s had done. She was agreeing to marry him as a type of escape, she thought. And yet that was not so, either. She loved Owen. She had had her eye on him and had begun stepping out with him and had hoped for marriage with him long be
fore the Marquess of Craille had taken up residence at Glanrhyd Castle.
“Come upstairs with me,” Owen said, and she realized with a jolt of surprise as she listened to his husky voice and looked into his heavy-lidded eyes, that he was aroused. “We will make love in bed, will we, cariad? Where you will lie every night as my wife. Where I will put our little ones in you. Where they will be born. We will make love there now to seal what we have agreed to this evening.”
She gazed back into his eyes. Yes, an insistent voice in her head urged her, do it. It will be good. With Owen it will be good. It would make her safe. She would belong to him. And it was something she both wanted and needed. It had been almost three years. All that time without what Gwyn had given her almost nightly. She had liked it. It had made her enjoy her womanhood.
“Cariad,” Owen said, “I am on fire for you.”
“I could not face Gran and Grandad or the Reverend Llewellyn with our news, Owen,” she said, “if I had already lain with you.” They were foolish words and surprised even her. “They will be pleased, I think. They will expect us to remain pure.”
He held her for a few moments longer and then surprisingly chuckled and let her go. He seated himself at the table again and picked up his cup. “There is a good chapel woman you are, Siân Jones,” he said. “It is like trying to storm a fortress with you, isn’t it? Drink your tea before it gets cold. I will take you home as soon as you are finished. Expect punishment on our wedding night, though, girl. I will keep you awake and hard at it all night. It is a promise.” He grinned at her.
Siân blushed. “Thank you, Owen,” she said, weak with relief, dismayed at her own inability to save herself from she knew not what. “You are a gentleman.”
“I will ask you to repeat that,” he said, “the morning after our wedding. If you are not too exhausted to speak, that is.”
She gulped down her tea without sitting down again. She took her shawl from behind the door and wrapped it up over her head and about her shoulders, though she could see through the window that the rain had come to nothing.
“Owen,” she said, her back to him, “I want to belong to you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.” Her words were passionate, almost desperate. As if she was trying to convince herself. She felt his knuckles brush the back of her neck through the shawl.
He opened the door and took her arm through his as they stepped outside. “Fach,” he said, covering her hand with his, “be careful. I am happy for you that tomorrow you will go to work that is not dirty and will not exhaust you. But stay away from him if you can and don’t listen to anything he will say to you. He is the enemy. It is as simple as that. Remember that the man who pretends to want to help us has already lowered our wages.”
“I am unlikely to see him at all,” she said. “I am to teach his daughter, Owen. I will be just a lowly servant.”
“And say nothing to him,” he said. “Nothing at all, do you hear me? He will try to worm things out of you that he will turn back against us if he can. Not a whisper about this afternoon’s meeting or about John Frost or the demonstration. Very angry I will be if you betray us.”
She shot him a look of indignation. “Was that necessary?” she asked. “What do you think I am, Owen?”
He patted her hand. “I am sorry,” he said. “But there was one man at the meeting this afternoon—and others who murmured agreement—who suggested that I tell you nothing since you will be going into the lions’ den every day. You cannot tell what you do not know, he said. I have paid you the compliment of trusting you, Siân.”
She did not know whether to be pleased that he had done so or offended that he had even had to make a decision to do so.
* * *
Alex had told himself a dozen times that he would not meet her personally when she arrived on Monday morning to begin teaching Verity. It was quite unnecessary. It would be far more appropriate if Miss Haines met her and took her up to the nursery. He could find out later what planned course of studies she had.
But of course when the time came he could not resist. He was finding her altogether too attractive for his own good. It was time, he thought, that he went visiting Fowler again and had another look at Miss Tess Fowler, though the idea was far from appealing. It was time, then, to arrange a meeting with the other owners he had heard about but not met. Perhaps they had some daughters, or at least some women of his own class with whom he could make social contact. Loneliness was doing alarming things to his common sense and self-control.
It was the first time he had seen her with her hair up. She looked very brisk and businesslike as he came down the stairs. And quite as lovely as always. She was wearing the same dress as she had worn yesterday. He guessed it was her best dress. He had only ever seen her in one of two dresses, if he did not count the work clothes she had been wearing in the mine. It struck him suddenly that perhaps she owned no more than the two dresses.
“Good morning, Mrs. Jones,” he said when she looked up, suddenly aware of his descent of the stairs. He recalled that he had dreamed of her the night before. She had been lying on green grass beside a clean, fast-flowing river, smiling up at him as he leaned over her. The dream had disintegrated, or he had woken up, before he had had a chance to touch her. Dreams always seemed to deprive a person of fulfillment.
“Good morning,” she said.
He wondered if she would ever call him by any name or title. If he were worth his salt he would establish certain ground rules with her from this moment. She should call him sir even if she could not get her tongue around my lord. It was a simple courtesy expected of a servant. She had called him Alex in his dream, he remembered suddenly. “Alex,” she had murmured, reaching up her arms to him in warm invitation. Even her lilting accent had been there in his dream.
“I’ll take you up to Verity,” he said with stiff dignity, lest she see into his thoughts. “She found it difficult to settle to sleep last night. One would have thought today was Christmas Day.”
“Oh, dear,” she said as she fell into step beside him to climb the stairs.
“There are some books,” he said, “a few that my mother-in-law bought for Verity, some that I had as a boy. Perhaps during the day you can assess your needs as far as more books and other supplies are concerned. Perhaps also you can make some plan for a course of studies. She is very eager to learn your language, but that, of course, must be considered secondary to all else. Perhaps it can be taught during walks and play rather than in a formal manner.”
“Yes,” she said. “It will be more easily learned that way.”
He spoke on the spur of the moment. “You will take tea with me in the drawing room at four,” he said. “At that time you can present me with a list of your needs and an outline of your plans. For today Verity will take tea in the nursery.”
“Very well,” Siân said, pausing outside the nursery door, to which he had guided her.
He reached across her to open the door, looking down at her as he did so. It was a mistake. She was looking back, her gray eyes quite calm and steady. But they were only inches from his own. She smelled quite unmistakably of soap. For a moment it seemed more enticing to him than any of the costly perfumes he had ever bought for his wife or a mistress.
He opened the door hastily and drew back. He had almost, he realized with an inward shudder, closed the gap between their mouths and kissed her. At nine o’clock in the morning outside his daughter’s nursery. And though she had stood quite impassive, he had felt something flash between them. Just as he had on almost every other occasion when he had encountered her. He wished suddenly that he had not employed her to teach Verity. And that they were not living in such a small, closed community. His desire for Mrs. Siân Jones was becoming quite a persistent need.
Verity was standing just inside the door, obviously expecting their arrival. She looked flushed and excited. “Bore da, Mrs. Jones,”
she said, and giggled. “I have books, but I can read them already. My grandmama taught me. I am going to show you all my toys. I want you to take me walking in the hills today. I want to climb right to the top and see what is on the other side. I—”
“Verity,” Alex said firmly, “Mrs. Jones is your new teacher. She will decide what you need and what you are to do. Any arguments and I shall be interested to hear about them and discuss them with you later. Is that understood?”
She smiled sunnily. “Yes, Papa,” she said. “But I—”
Siân held out a hand and took one of Verity’s. “I would love to see your books and toys first,” she said. “Then together we will decide how to spend the rest of the day, shall we? The walk will be for this afternoon, I think. But it is a very stiff climb to the top.”
Alex, apparently forgotten, stood in the doorway watching for a minute or two while his daughter lifted her favorite doll carefully from its crib and laid it in her teacher’s arms. Siân rocked it and cooed to it so that for a moment it seemed almost like a real baby and she its mother.
Alex left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He had a busy day planned with Josiah Barnes. It was high time he got started on it. Four o’clock seemed very far distant.
It was a busy day. They did not settle to any definite studies, but Siân used the time to discover what was available by way of books and supplies, to find out what her new pupil knew already and where her greatest needs as well as her greatest interests lay. In some ways Lady Verity was going to be an easy pupil. She was eager and energetic and she seemed to like her new governess. There was none of the sullenness one might expect to find in such a situation. In other ways she might not prove easy to teach. She was a stubborn child who would want to do only what she wanted to do. The trick, Siân realized before the day was over, would be to make her want to learn what she ought to learn.