Longing

by Mary Balogh

  They took the promised walk up the hill outside the castle park after luncheon. And of course Siân had underestimated Verity’s energy. She bounded up the slope like a mountain goat and was not satisfied until she was at the top and could look down into the next valley.

  “Oh, look,” she said, pointing. “It is just like ours. A river and a town and houses along the sides of the river like a snake.” She wrinkled her nose. “And smoke.”

  “Yes.” Siân sighed. “The beauty of our valleys could be destroyed in another ten or twenty years.”

  “You sound sad.” Verity slipped a hand into hers. “Are they your valleys?”

  “Yes.” Siân smiled. “They are the valleys and hills of Wales. Quiet and beautiful and useless to anyone except the Welsh for hundreds and hundreds of years. But now people all over the world need our coal and our iron ore and our finished iron and so we are famous. But perhaps we have lost something too.”

  Verity was quiet.

  “But that is too sober a thought,” Siân said. “That town down there will soon be the scene of an eisteddfod—a festival of music and poetry. Poets and choirs and soloists and harpists will come from Cwmbran and Penybont and all the other valleys to compete. It will be great fun.”

  “You will be going?” Verity asked.

  “I would not miss it for the world,” Siân said. “And I will be singing a solo. More important, the choir you heard from outside the chapel will be competing. My grandfather and my brothers-in-law sing in it and Mr. Parry, whom you met yesterday, and several friends. They very rarely get beaten. All the people from Cwmbran will walk over the mountain to hear them win again and to cheer them on.”

  “Walk?” Verity said. “You will not go in carriages?”

  “There are too many of us,” Siân said. “And the way over the mountain is far more direct than the road that goes around.”

  “I am going to come with you,” Verity said.

  Siân wished then that she had said nothing. “It would be lovely,” she said, “but I don’t think your father will be willing. It is a very Welsh event. The English usually stay away.”

  “I’ll persuade him,” Verity said confidently. “You did not teach me any Welsh on the way up. Teach me some now.”

  Siân pointed out various objects and gave them their Welsh names. Verity repeated the words until Siân was satisfied with her pronunciation. They both laughed a great deal over the “ll” sound peculiar to the Welsh language. But soon enough the eternal attraction to a child of a downward slope took Verity’s attention and she released Siân’s hand in order to rush down the hill, whooping with glee. Apart from the costly clothes, Siân thought, watching her, there was very little difference between this child of the aristocracy and the children of the town.

  Except that this child was lonely. Siân knew all about a lonely childhood.

  It was a busy day but not by any means an unpleasant one. And always in the back of her mind was the awareness, half dread, half excitement, that it would not be over when her workday finished at four o’clock. She was to take tea with the Marquess of Craille.

  It was to be a purely business meeting. He wanted to see the list she had been compiling all day of books and supplies she would need for Verity’s education. And the course outline and lesson plans she had made during the past few days and today. There would be nothing more to it than that.

  But all day she could not keep her mind off what had happened outside the nursery that morning. Or perhaps even before that. Try as she had to concentrate her mind on last evening and the excitement of knowing that she was now officially engaged to Owen and their wedding being planned for next month—try as she had, she had been unable to prevent herself from feeling that strong physical awareness of the Marquess of Craille that was tormenting her dreams. And then outside the nursery, when he had bent across her to open the door and had turned his head while she was being incautious enough to be looking directly at him, something had passed between them. Something unmistakably sexual in nature. She would be willing to swear that she had not been alone in feeling it.

  And so she found herself all day dreading the approach of four o’clock and longing for it. And cursing the weakness of her very human nature.

  10

  HE was standing at the window, looking out, when his butler opened the drawing room doors and she stepped inside, looking as calm and as neat as she had in the morning, despite the fact that she had spent all day with Verity and had taken her to the top of the hill after luncheon. He knew because he had seen them up there and had resisted the urge to go to join them.

  “You are very prompt,” he said, “as you were this morning. Verity was willing to let you go?”

  “I believe she enjoyed the day,” Siân said. “She kissed me when I left just now.” She flushed and bit her lip. “I was touched.”

  “She is an affectionate child,” he said, “and has no mother to kiss. My wife died when Verity was six months old. I suppose she will look upon you as some sort of mother figure, provided you continue to make school seem like great fun to her. I gather that is what happened today. Do have a seat. Tea will be here directly.”

  She took the chair he indicated and sat on the edge of it, very straight-backed. The tea tray was brought in almost immediately, and he signaled the servant to place it before her. He wondered if she was accustomed to drawing room etiquette, but she poured their tea with a hand that looked only slightly unsteady. He crossed the room to take his cup and saucer from her.

  “I shall arrange for you to spend a little time with Miss Haines tomorrow,” he said, “to be measured for some suitable work clothes. I shall have her order them.”

  He was up against Welsh pride again, he realized immediately. Her lips tightened and her eyes flashed. “Thank you,” she said, “but I will choose and buy my own clothes as I can afford them.”

  Some things had to be set straight. “I must make it clear to you, Mrs. Jones,” he said, “that I have always considered it my responsibility to clothe the servants who work in any of my homes. I believe you fall into that category.”

  Perhaps, he thought, seating himself, he would feel better, more in command of himself, now that he had put her in her place. He had done it in the icy tone of voice he always used when his authority most needed to be exerted. She was staring down into her cup, her face pale and set. All injured dignity. He resisted the quite inappropriate urge to laugh.

  “I saw that Verity had her walk up the hill,” he said. “She dragged you to the top?”

  “Of course,” she said. “What is the point of climbing a hill unless one goes to the very top?”

  Having established the master/servant relationship between them, he ought not to spoil matters, he knew. But he could not resist. She was looking so very prim and injured and—beautiful. “I believe,” he said, watching her face closely, “you have shown me at least one answer to that question on more than one occasion.”

  Her cup rattled against her saucer and color rushed to her cheeks.

  “It is a favorite spot for lovers?” he asked.

  “It is the only place to find some privacy when two people are stepping out,” she said.

  “Stepping out.” He smiled as she looked up at him at last. “A quaint expression. Do couples who are . . . stepping out not keep running into others doing the same thing?”

  “If they keep to the lower hills,” she said. “Sometimes it is pleasant to meet other couples.”

  He could tell by the way her eyes had become locked on his and by the look in those eyes that she knew where he was leading her. It was very unwise of him. Teasing Siân Jones was a rather dangerous business, he realized.

  “Ah,” he said softly. “And if they want to avoid that possibility?” He watched her swallow and lick her lips. He knew she was acutely embarrassed. “Have you ever walked higher into the hills while
—stepping out, Mrs. Jones?”

  He had gone too far, he knew. And he knew he would be sorry. The air was charged between them.

  She looked down suddenly and managed to set her cup and saucer on the tray despite a shaking hand. She had not drunk any of the tea, he noticed. “You wanted to know my plans for Verity’s schooling,” she said. “I have written down some ideas and a list of what I will need. I have kept it as short as possible.”

  Even then, while he was feeling some relief at her changing the subject, he could not leave it alone. “Perhaps one day,” he said, “you will do for me what you did for my daughter today. Perhaps you will take me high up into the hills—so that I may see over to the other side, of course.”

  Her lips compressed again. One thing at least was clear. Mrs. Siân Jones knew nothing about the game of dalliance. Not that he had any business trying to play it with her. It was not something he was accustomed to doing, anyway.

  “Leave the papers with me,” he said. “I will see to it that you have what you need. And I will summon you if I need to question any of your plans. How musical are you? That is an insulting question to ask a Welshwoman, I know. But are you capable of teaching Verity? Do you play the pianoforte?”

  “There was a pianoforte at my mother’s house while I was growing up,” she said. “Her—My—Someone paid for lessons for me. I had lessons while I was at school. Since my mother died I have not had access to a pianoforte, only to the chapel organ. There is quite a difference.”

  “Let us see how rusty you are,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching out a hand for hers. There was a grand pianoforte in the drawing room, which looked rather magnificent to him though he had never learned to play himself.

  She looked at his hand as if reluctant to set her own in it. But she did so. It was slim and dainty—and he could feel the calluses on the palm. It was a powerful reminder of the fact that this woman was from a different world from his own, that she was his employee and had been for some time—as a coal cart puller in the mine. Who had paid for her music lessons? he wondered. Who had paid for her schooling?

  “I am out of practice,” she said, gazing at the pianoforte. But she looked almost wistful. “I have no music.”

  “There is some inside the stool,” he said, “though I imagine it is all very old. Do you know nothing from memory?”

  She bit her lip. He wondered who exactly she was and what had caused the crash downward to a life she had not been brought up to. He wondered how painful it was to her to be reminded like this.

  “Only a few Welsh folk songs,” she said. “Nothing that would interest you.”

  “You know my taste in music, then?” he asked her. “Let me hear one of these songs, Mrs. Jones.”

  She hesitated before seating herself on the stool and looking along the keyboard as if it was something quite strange to her experience. He hoped she was not so totally out of practice that she would humiliate herself. He had head her sing with the congregation in the chapel. He knew that music was dear to her.

  “This song is called ‘Y Deryn Pur,’” she said, setting her fingers on the keys. “It is about a bird.”

  At first he thought that she really was going to bungle it. Her fingers stumbled over the opening bars. But then a simple melody emerged and she seemed to be calmed by it. He stood behind her and watched her bowed head and her hands. He wondered how long it would be before the calluses on her palms disappeared.

  She loved music, he thought. It was there in her touch and in the posture of her body. But she had lost her pianoforte as a girl.

  “You are rusty,” he said when she had finished. “Very rusty. But you have a delicate touch and a feel for melody. I am going to shorten your workday by half an hour so that you may spend an hour a day in here. Starting tomorrow. I will give you one month before requiring that you teach Verity what you know. Agreed?”

  She did not turn around. She bowed her head a little lower. “Alone?” she asked almost in a whisper.

  “I don’t believe I would derive a great deal of enjoyment from listening to you stumble your way through scales and finger exercises,” he said, knowing very well that for an hour each afternoon the drawing room was going to act like a magnet on him. “Does that song have words?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Welsh ones.”

  “Let me hear them, then,” he said. “I know that your voice is not as rusty as your fingers.”

  He thought for a while that she would refuse. But then she began to play again, making no more than one mistake in the introductory bars. He did not know if she made any after she began to sing. He had ears only for her voice.

  It was a sweet soprano voice, which sang with such depths of feeling that he found himself with an unfamiliar aching in his chest and realized that he was on the verge of tears. Had she not said the song was about a bird? He was close to crying about a bird? But he closed his eyes tightly and was washed away on that flood of longing that he had experienced only ever in this particular part of the world. That longing to which she had put a Welsh name. Heer—? “Hiraeth.” Yes. “Hiraeth.”

  “Well,” he said, aware at last of silence, “you have made my pianoforte seem almost redundant, Siân. It is a haunting melody. Do all Welsh tunes make one want to cry?”

  “We make music straight from the heart,” she said, getting to her feet. “We are an emotional people.” She turned. He guessed that she had not realized he was standing so close.

  “A romantic people,” he said. “A passionate people. Do you share those traits, Siân?” One step forward—half a step—and they would be touching.

  “I—”

  “Yes, of course you do.” He lifted one hand to touch his fingertips to her cheek. “It is there in your voice when you sing. And in your body when you kiss.”

  If she had said something or moved, perhaps he would have been saved, he thought afterward. But she did neither. Her large, calm gray eyes focused on his.

  And so his arm slid about her shoulders and the other about her waist, and he lowered his head and opened his mouth over hers. And took instant heat. Manual labor had hardened the muscles of her shapely woman’s body and had made her wonderfully different from any of the other women he had ever held close or bedded. She was magnificent and infinitely desirable.

  He teased her lips with his tongue until they trembled apart, and eased his way past her teeth and deep into her mouth. Her body came arching against his. He could feel her fingers winding tightly into his hair. She moaned. And turned hot in his arms. He hardened into full desire.

  But there was one part of his mind that stayed aware of the fact that they were standing in his drawing room with the door unlocked and that it was possible, though unlikely, that some servant or even Verity could come inside at any moment. Had it not been for that sensible part of himself, he thought later, it was altogether possible that he would have had her down on the carpet and would have completed what they had begun. He was almost sure she would not have stopped him. Just as perhaps she would not have stopped him on the mountain the night the Scotch Cattle had come.

  He softened his kiss and loosened his hold after a long time and took his mouth away from hers with the deepest regret.

  “This is getting to be a habit,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He could tell that she had not yet pulled herself mentally free of their embrace.

  “What are we going to do about it?” he asked.

  He watched awareness begin to come back to her eyes.

  “Are we going to keep fighting it?” he asked. “We are not doing a very good job of that, are we? Or are we going to give in to it?”

  Full awareness was back. “Give in to it?” Her eyes widened. “I’ll not be your mistress.” Color flooded into her cheeks.

  “Won’t you?” he said, sorry and relieved at the same time. “I suppo
se we will have to keep fighting it, then. You are a very beautiful woman, Siân Jones. More than that, you are wondrously attractive and desirable. I would make it well worth your while.” Those last words seemed to speak themselves.

  But she was quite firmly back in command of herself and pushed away from him. Anger, he could see, had come to her rescue as nothing had come to his, except that little corner of common sense that had kept him from tumbling her a few minutes ago.

  “I’ll be no man’s little bit of afternoon fun,” she said. “I’ll bear no man’s bastard children. I’ll be no kept woman even if you were to offer me all the comforts in the world and all the material advantages my children could need.”

  Like an expensive private school in England and pianoforte lessons and an instrument to practice on? He understood in a sudden flash. His uncle? Was she his uncle’s by-blow? The thought turned him cold. Was she his cousin?

  “No,” he said. “Such affairs are unequal things, are they not? All pleasure and convenience for the man, all danger and humiliation for the woman. And ostracism from a deeply religious community like this, I do not doubt. We will fight it, then, Siân. You are my daughter’s governess; I am your employer. I am the Marquess of Craille; you are—an ironworker’s granddaughter. Yes, we will fight it.”

  “I should not come here again,” she said. “I should not have come here in the first place. I knew the danger.”

  Ah, yes. She was an honest woman. She had known, just as he had. And yet neither of them had done the obvious thing to avoid the danger. And how could he let her go now? Verity wanted and needed her. And she needed this job. And he? He needed to see her occasionally. He needed to know that she was able to return somewhat to the kind of life he suspected she had lived while growing up. As some wealthy man’s illegitimate daughter. He did not think he was wrong about that.

  “But you will come?” he said. “Verity has been so very excited at the prospect of having a young woman here, whose time will be devoted just to her. She needs a woman’s touch. And some schooling.” And I need to see you.