Longing

by Mary Balogh

  All his insides seemed to perform a complete and painful somersault suddenly. His knees almost buckled under him. He could feel the blood draining from his head and leaving it cold and clammy. The air in his nostrils felt icy. He clasped his hands very tightly at his back.

  Several seconds passed before he felt sufficiently master of himself to move. He crossed the room to the bellpull and jerked on it. He waited beside it until Verity’s elderly nurse came puffing into the room.

  “Stay with Verity,” he told her. “Perhaps you could take her for a stroll in the garden. I have some important business to discuss with Mrs. Jones.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the nurse said as Verity looked up in surprise and began to protest.

  “You may take your doll with you,” he said, smiling at his daughter, “and bring her downstairs with you for luncheon with me later.”

  Verity’s protests stopped in the middle of a sentence. It was a rare treat to be able to take luncheon downstairs with her father. She bounded up from the table.

  “Mrs. Jones too?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Mrs. Jones will not be joining us.” He looked at her. “Come with me, please, Mrs. Jones.”

  She got slowly and stiffly to her feet while his stomach somersaulted again. He could not go to help her. He would not know where to touch her. Her face registered no expression at all.

  “Along here,” he said, following her from the nursery and directing her toward some guest bedrooms farther along the corridor.

  She made no protest, even when he opened the door into one of them and motioned her inside. She made no protest when he followed her inside and closed the door behind him. She stood still and straight-backed in the middle of the room, facing away from him.

  “The Scotch Cattle were out again last night,” he said, leaning back against the door, wondering if it was possible for a man to faint, half expecting that he was about to find out.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They howled three times,” he said. “I believe that means that there was only one victim.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?” he asked. “Who was it, Siân?”

  There was a lengthy pause. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I have not heard.”

  He came up behind her. She did not move though she must have felt him there. She did not turn her head to look back at him.

  Perhaps he had been mistaken after all, he thought. Surely he must be mistaken. Surely to God. He contemplated the top button of her dress, wondering how he could undo it without touching her flesh. He lifted his hands to it. He could feel her inhaling slowly as he worked the first button free of its buttonhole and moved his hands down to the next and the next. It took him a long time, but finally her dress was open to below the waist. He took the corners of the neck and moved them back.

  She was wearing a shift. Even so he could see that he had not been mistaken. He wondered again for a moment if he was going to faint. Or vomit. He moved her dress down her arms and hooked two fingers beneath the straps of her shift just in front of her shoulders. He lifted them as gently as he could and drew her shift down to her hips.

  “How many?” he asked through lips that seemed too stiff to obey his will. He was looking at raw, inflamed welts crisscrossing all that was exposed of her back.

  It took her a while to answer. “Fifteen,” she said.

  Fifteen. Iestyn Jones had been given ten. Alex remembered watching and counting the ten and thinking them endless. He remembered the state the boy had been in afterward.

  “Why?” His voice had become a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Why, Siân?”

  “They believe I was your informer,” she said. “They believe I told you about the meeting.”

  “Bloody hell!” he said.

  He could remember Owen Parry demanding to know who his informer had been and his own refusal to give the man’s name—he did not even know the man’s name. He could remember Parry telling him that he would find out.

  Bloody, bloody hell!

  “Come,” he said, and he crossed to the bed and drew back the covers. “Come and lie down.”

  She was holding her dress and shift to her breasts at the front. Her mask had come off, he saw, looking at her. Her eyes were pain-drugged.

  “Come, Siân,” he said. “I am afraid to touch you. I may hurt more than help.”

  But he did take her hands when she came close to him and unclenched her fingers from the fabric of her dress so that it could fall to the floor. Her shift lodged about her hips. He was in no mood to be aroused by her near nakedness, or she to be embarrassed by it.

  “Lie down,” he said.

  He hovered over her helplessly while she got herself onto the bed facedown. She lay there eventually, clutching the pillow to her face, breathing loudly and raggedly. He knew that she was fighting pain.

  He forced himself to look long and hard at the welts the whips had made on her back. All were red and swollen. Some had bled.

  “How has this mess been treated?” he asked. “What did your grandmother do for you?”

  “She bathed it with water,” she said.

  “It needs ointments,” he said. “And you need something for pain. Whose idea was it that you come to work today?”

  “Mine,” she said. “They might have misinterpreted my staying away.”

  He did not question her meaning but told her he would be back and left the room. He should send Miss Haines to her, but this was something he must do himself. Good God, she had been whipped because of him. She had been whipped! Fifteen times. By Scotch Cattle. Up on the mountain, spread-eagled and confined on the ground. Siân. His Siân. The feeling of cold dizziness in his head was becoming almost familiar.

  He returned to the guest bedroom less than ten minutes later with a basin of tepid water and a soft flannel cloth, ointment that both Miss Haines and the cook swore was a miracle cure for minor bumps or major cuts, and a double dose of laudanum.

  She was lying in the same position as before except that she had turned her head to the side, the better to breathe. She watched him come into the room and cross to the bed. Pain almost pulsed from her pale face and her dark, shadowed eyes.

  “This first,” he said, indicating the laudanum. “You will have to raise your head to drink it, and that will be painful, but it will dull the pain after a few minutes and help you sleep. When was the last time you slept?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Laudanum,” he said.

  “I have never taken it.” She eyed it suspiciously.

  “You will now,” he said firmly.

  Her eyes were closed and she was breathing raggedly through her mouth by the time she had raised herself, drunk it down, and lowered herself to the bed again.

  “You are unlike any other woman I have ever known,” he said, dipping the flannel into the water, squeezing it out, and feeling his knees turn weak as he eyed her back and knew that the time had come to touch it and cause her more pain. “Have you cried at all?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Did you scream?”

  “No.”

  She flinched when he touched the cloth to her back, and then lay still. He cleansed the welts and cooled them with the cloth and then spread the ointment liberally over her back, moving his fingers over her as lightly as he could. Even after the cooling water, her back felt as if it were on fire.

  “Siân,” he said, “I could have prevented this. Why did you not tell me? Why did you extract that promise from me?”

  “What better way would there have been to suggest that I really was guilty than appealing to you for help?” she asked.

  “What was their warning four nights ago?” he asked.

  “That I leave my job,” sh
e said. “That I not come back here.”

  “And yet,” he said, “you came.”

  “Yes.”

  “Knowing that you were going to get the whips last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your grandfather and your uncle do nothing?” he asked.

  “They were tied to chairs before I was taken away,” she said. “And cursing fit to be driven from chapel.”

  “Did Parry do nothing?” he asked.

  There was a pause. “No,” she said.

  “How did you get down from the mountain?” He was moving a sheet gingerly up her body.

  “Grandad and Uncle Emrys came for me,” she said. “And Huw and Iestyn.”

  “Not Parry?”

  Again the pause. “No,” she said.

  He went down on his haunches beside the bed and looked into her face. Her eyes were closed. The laudanum should be taking effect soon, he thought. She would be able to sleep and forget her pain for a time—while he went out hunting. His mouth tightened into a grim line.

  “Siân,” he said.

  She opened her eyes and looked into his. She was still in pain, he could see.

  “Did you know any of them?” he asked. “Did you recognize any of them?”

  “No,” she said hastily. “They were wearing hoods. They were whispering.”

  He watched her silently as she closed her eyes. Her eyelashes grew wet as he watched.

  “They are usually men from other valleys,” she said. “I would not have recognized them even if they had not worn the hoods and even if they had spoken in their normal voices.”

  He remained silent, watching one tear trickle diagonally down her cheek to be absorbed in the pillow. The tear from the other eye pooled against her nose.

  “Siân?” he said after a while. “Who were they?”

  She sobbed then, a wrenching sob that seemed to have been dragged out from deep inside her. She lifted one shaking hand to cover her face and sobbed as if her heart would break. Alex stayed where he was, watching her. He could not draw her into his arms. He did set one hand lightly against the side of her head.

  “Who were they?” he repeated.

  He knew the answer. He sensed it. But he had to hear it from her own lips.

  “I wouldn’t have known,” she managed to jerk out between helpless sobs. “He was whispering like the others. He pleaded for ten lashes instead of twenty and they changed it to fifteen. He stopped them after a few strokes to put a cloth between my teeth so that I would not bite my lips raw. I didn’t think I noticed or heard him. But he forgot to whisper when he was pushing the cloth into my mouth.” She could say no more for a while.

  He watched her, feeling the cold knot of fury ball inside his stomach.

  “Who was he, Siân?” he asked.

  “O-w-e-n,” she wailed, misery and despair stark in her voice. “He was Owen.”

  He stroked the side of her head as she wept. His hand was warm and gentle. His heart was as cold as steel.

  “It’s over now,” he murmured to her while the crying eased and he could tell from the lesser tension in her body that the pain was receding. “You defied them and you faced them with more courage and dignity than I have ever known in a woman—or in most men for that matter. When you stand on your own feet, Siân Jones, you stand quite firmly and quite alone on them, don’t you? Some would call you a fool. I would wager that many have in the last few days. I honor you. I deeply honor you.”

  She smiled fleetingly. “That was strong medicine?” she asked. “I feel fuzzy all over.”

  “It was strong medicine,” he said. “Are you comfortable?”

  “I can never sleep on my stomach,” she said.

  “You would prefer your back?” he asked. “Let me help you, then.”

  It would be safer to help her, now—her eyes looked heavily drugged, but no longer with pain. He helped ease her over onto her back and covered her nakedness with the sheet and with two blankets. She was very nearly asleep.

  “I should go home,” she said, her words slow and slurred.

  He looked down at her, watching her eyelids droop over her eyes. He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek and then leaned over her and set his mouth lightly to hers.

  “You are home, Siân,” he whispered.

  He did not believe she heard him. Her eyes were closed and remained closed. Her breathing was quiet and even.

  * * *

  She opened her eyes once to see Miss Haines standing beside her bed.

  “I have brought you a drink,” the housekeeper said. “Would you like it? May I help you sit up?”

  But Siân shook her head and closed her eyes again. She was floating on cotton wool. She was cotton wool. She could not remember why, but she had a feeling that this was a state to be clung to for as long as possible. She vaguely wondered what Miss Haines was doing leaning inside her cupboard bed.

  “I have sent a message to Mr. Hywel Rhys,” Miss Haines said, “to inform him and Mrs. Rhys that you will be staying here at least for tonight.”

  Yes, that was good. Gran would not worry now. Siân sank gratefully back into fuzz. I honor you. I deeply honor you. She wrapped herself about with his voice and the soft gentleness of his words. They had been more soothing than the ointments. They had made the whipping worthwhile. No, not that, perhaps. But they had made its aftermath bearable.

  Alexander. She opened her eyes and looked about the room for him. But he had gone away. There was no one else in the room.

  You are home, Siân. She could hear his voice saying the words, though she could not remember where or when he had spoken them. You are home.

  She sank back into sleep.

  She woke up later to find someone else beside her bed. He was standing there gazing silently down at her. She had seen that look on his face only once before.

  “Siân,” he said softly as she closed her eyes again, “Siân, my little one.”

  She wanted him to go away. She did not want him in her dreams. Not with that look on his face. Not with those words on his lips. It could only be a cruel, mocking dream, the sort she could remember from childhood. Never reality. Only a dream.

  “My little one,” he said, “what have they done to you? Why didn’t you come to me? Why have you never come to me?”

  Because it was a dream, she said what she had always longed to say to him and never been invited to say. “Dada,” she said, her eyes closed.

  She had heard him cry once before. It was also when she had seen him look like that before. When her mother had died and he had come to the house. He had never cried over her, Siân. Or laughed with her. Or shown any emotion over her. She had never existed for him. But this was a dream. Anything could happen in a dream. In the dream he was crying over her.

  “Things are going to change,” she heard Sir John Fowler say before she sank back into sleep. “By God things are going to change. They are not going to hurt you again, my little one.”

  Where was Alexander? She opened her eyes to look about for him, but he was not there. There was no one there. She was in a strange room, she saw. She did not recognize it. She did not know quite why she was there. Alexander had brought her there. There was a twinge of discomfort when she tried to move. But she did not need to move. She was comfortable and warm and deliciously sleepy.

  She sank back into sleep.

  * * *

  The atmosphere at the ironworks and in the coal mines and in the houses of the town was always somewhat subdued the morning after Scotch Cattle had dealt out punishment. Everyone knew about it and everyone knew who the victim or victims had been, yet no one wanted to discuss it. There was always a dual feeling of almost shamed sympathy for the victim on the one hand and approval of what the enforcers had done to safeguard the will of the majority on the other.

  The
atmosphere was more marked than usual this morning. No one could remember a time when a woman had run afoul of Scotch Cattle. But Siân Jones had. It was almost beyond belief that she had defied their warnings when she could so easily have complied with their one demand. But she had defied them.

  Everyone knew by the morning that she had been dragged up the mountain last night and given the whips. Everyone even knew how many—fifteen lashes. Those who had been willing to discuss the matter in the days previous to it had bet on ten. Perhaps even five. She was a woman.

  But she had been given fifteen lashes—with damp whips. She had been spread on the wet ground and her back bared for the whips, just as if she had been a man. Emrys Rhys had carried her home across his own back. Hywel Rhys had used enough curse words to be expelled from chapel for at least two eternities if anyone had cared to take the matter up with the Reverend Llewellyn and the deacons.

  Owen Parry had not been able to control her obstinacy, the shocked whisper went around. There were those who had predicted that he would give her backside a good tanning before the Scotch Cattle could get at her, and thus save her from herself. But he had not been able to stop her. And he had not gone to her after the Cattle had howled the end of the whipping and their departure. Only her kin and Gwyn Jones’s kin had gone up the mountain to bring her home.

  Owen Parry was at work today among the puddlers, his face hard and set so that no one spoke to him unless he had to or stepped into his path.

  Another amazing fact was that Siân Jones had gone to work this morning—a few hours after being dealt fifteen lashes with wet Scotch Cattle whips. One could not help but be rather awed at her spirit.

  And one could not but be rather uneasily aware that such defiance and such courage did not seem quite to denote an informer. There were very few who had ever wholeheartedly believed that it was she who had informed against them. Why would she have done so when her own man would be the one most in danger from discovery? She must have known that Parry was to chair the meeting. And if she had been the informer, why had she apparently done nothing after the warning to enlist the help of the Marquess of Craille? Why had she done nothing to avoid the whips?