Longing

by Mary Balogh

  “Sweetheart,” he said, “what is it?”

  He knew very well what. For more than a week he had been persuading himself that with the resilience of childhood she would forget and return to her more normal sunny nature. But he could not forget. The ache inside him was still raw—it was pain more than ache.

  “Nothing,” Verity said crossly. “I just don’t want to go for a silly walk.”

  “A book, then?” he asked. “Will you read to me? Or shall I read to you?”

  The poor doll was tossed down onto the floor. “I don’t want to do anything,” Verity said, and stared at him with hostile, unhappy eyes.

  He looked back. The name had to be spoken. He did not want to say it. He did not want to think it, though for more than a week he had thought nothing else. “You are missing Mrs. Jones?” he asked.

  “No!” Her eyes blazed for a moment. “I hate her. I don’t ever want to see her again. She was not a good teacher.”

  He inhaled slowly. “Why do you hate her?” he asked.

  “Because she doesn’t like me,” Verity said. “She went away without saying a word to me. But I don’t care. I hate her anyway.”

  He reached out a hand to her. “Come here,” he said.

  She looked sullenly at his hand for a minute and then came to climb onto his lap. She set her face against his waistcoat and began to cry noisily. “Am I a bad girl?” she managed to jerk out. “I tried not to be a bad girl, Dada. She shouldn’t hate me. I tried to be good. I hate her.”

  He held her in the warm cocoon of his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I didn’t tell you what happened to Mrs. Jones,” he said. “I thought you would be upset. I told you only that she was not feeling well that day she went to bed in one of the guest rooms. I think I had better tell you.”

  “She didn’t feel well because she didn’t like me,” Verity said.

  “No.” He kissed her head again. “Some wicked men had whipped her the night before and made her back all swollen and raw. Do you remember the wild animals you heard out in the hills one night?”

  He told her about the Scotch Cattle and about what they had done to Siân and why.

  “She went home,” he said at last, “because the people of this town would always have been suspicious of her if she had kept coming here, and she loves the people of Cwmbran.”

  Verity was silent for a while. “Doesn’t she love us, Papa?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes and saw Siân naked below him on the bed, her body joined to his, her eyes soft and luminous with love. He felt as if a knife tip were needling at his heart.

  “Yes,” he said, “she loves us. But she belongs with them.”

  “And we don’t, do we?” Verity said sadly.

  That feeling of intense yearning with which he was becoming familiar was so strong on him for a moment that it was almost like despair.

  “Yes, we do,” he said, “but in a different way. We live here in Glanrhyd Castle and are very wealthy. Papa owns all this land and pays the wages of the people who work here. I am responsible for seeing to it that their lives are comfortable. We are English.”

  “But I speak some Welsh,” she said. “Mrs. Jones said that soon I would be able to speak it fluently.”

  He laughed softly. “My little Welsh Verity,” he said. “but we will always be a little apart, sweetheart. It is part of the price we pay for the privileges of our life. But we can always work for the respect and loyalty and even affection of our people.”

  She seemed comforted and fetched him some of her books a short while later. She read him one and he read her three. When he tucked her into bed, she seemed quite her old self.

  Yet much later in the night Alex was woken by his valet, who had been sent by Verity’s nurse. Verity was crying inconsolably and the woman was beside herself, not knowing what to do. Alex dismissed her when he reached his daughter’s bedroom, and scooped the child up and sat with her as he had on a previous occasion, a blanket wrapped warmly about her.

  “What is this all about?” he asked, kissing her. “A pain?”

  “I want Mrs. J-o-n-e-s,” she wailed.

  God. A thousand devils. Damnation. So did he.

  “Mrs. Jones will be sleeping,” he said.

  Her wailings increased in volume.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “You stop crying and Papa will put you back to bed and tuck you in, and tomorrow I will take you to visit Mrs. Jones. How does that sound?”

  She sniffed and hiccuped. “Will she see me?” she asked.

  “If she is at home, I am quite sure she will,” he said.

  “Will she come back here?” She looked up at him suddenly with reddened eyes and glistening cheeks.

  “No,” he said, kissing her eyes one at a time. “But I think she will agree to let you visit occasionally. I’m sure she will, in fact.”

  It was not quite the answer she had hoped for, but he could see that she was very tired. She settled her head against his shoulder and sighed. Though he could not see her face, he could tell five minutes later that she was asleep again. He held her close. He could not think of a warmer, more comforting feeling than to hold one’s sleeping child in one’s arms. To feel oneself so trusted. So loved. He set his head against the chair back and closed his eyes.

  He had not seen her in more than a week. She had not come to the meeting in the chapel. He had not expected her to do so and had been disappointed when she had not. He had not once set eyes on her.

  Siân!

  He should not have let her go. He should have persuaded her to stay until her back was properly healed. He should have refused to allow her to leave her job. He should have pressed ahead with the impossibility, with the idea that had terrified him at the time and still terrified him now.

  But no—he had been right to let her go. He could not possibly make her his wife. She was an ironworker’s granddaughter, a coal miner’s widow. She was illegitimate. It was unthinkable. He would never be able to take her back to England with him. She would not fit into his world. It was not that he would be ashamed of her, but it would be impossible for her. And here in Wales the lines seemed to be even more firmly drawn. He could not pull her over into the loneliness of his world.

  But he needed her. His need for her was almost a tangible thing. He wondered if her need for him was as powerful. He wondered if she lay awake at nights longing for him, reliving those three occasions when they had come together.

  Well, tomorrow he would take Verity to her and ask if his daughter could spend an hour with her. He would go back for her after the hour was over. For two brief spells he would be able to feast his eyes and his senses on Siân Jones. For two brief spells he would be able to torture himself.

  Alex fell asleep, his daughter curled up warmly on his lap.

  * * *

  Siân was on her knees on the floor, singing while she rubbed blacking into the grate. It was a hard and a dirty job, but she liked to be able to sit back on her heels every so often and admire the gleaming surface of what she had already done. She looked ruefully down at her blackened hands and smiled. Not so long ago blackened hands and face and hair and body had been the norm of her days. And yet now she was wrinkling her nose at a small area of dirt. She sang on and polished on.

  It was not that she was feeling happy. She wondered if it would be possible ever to feel happy again. But life was reasserting itself, and life, when all was said and done, was worth living. She knew that from the ups and downs of past experience. And she had had more than her fair share of downs, it seemed.

  Sir John Fowler—her father—was going to find her a teaching job. It would not be easy to find a good one since most of the teachers in Wales were men, but she trusted him to find her something suitable. He had sent her a note the day after her visit and a silver locket that had been her mother’s. She wore it about her nec
k now despite the dirtiness of her job. Soon she would be moving away to a new job—there was a great emptiness in the pit of her stomach at the very thought. But there was also a welling of optimism. She would be able to start a new life.

  She needed to get away and start afresh. It was painful now to live in Cwmbran. She dreaded coming face-to-face with Alexander, yet it was bound to happen sooner or later if she stayed. And she did not want to live in the same town as Owen. She could never quite forgive him for what he had done to her or herself for what she had done to him. And yet there was a leftover affection for him that pained her. She had come so close to loving him. She had come so close to living the life she had always dreamed of living.

  She would miss her family. And Iestyn. He had called on her the evening before and gone walking with her. She had not even known about the Chartist meeting up in the hills. She did not even know if Emrys or her grandfather had been to it—it was not so easy to know now that she slept upstairs. It seemed that everyone was being very careful to withhold from her any information that she might leak to someone who did not know, she thought rather bitterly. Iestyn had not attended it—he had gone to the meeting in the chapel instead. She did not ask him about it.

  “Is the demonstration still planned, then?” she had asked him.

  “Yes,” he had said. “It will be soon too, I think, Siân. I have heard that there are piles of iron-tipped pikes up in the caves and some guns.”

  “Oh, Iestyn.” She had looked at him sharply. His face was rather pale. “There will be trouble.”

  “I am afraid of it,” he had said, “though everyone insists that it will be peaceful, that the weapons are just for defense.”

  She had caught at his arm. “You will not go, Iestyn? Oh, please don’t go,” she pleaded.

  He patted her hand. “No, I will not go,” he had said. “I believe in the Charter, Siân. I signed it. But I cannot agree to using force. Better to put up with years more of oppression than to risk revolution. And here in Cwmbran we have it good. We have a good master. Dada is to have a pension. Did you know?”

  She shook her head and he told her about the new pensions. She would be eligible for one, she realized with a jolt. But she was going away. Anyway, she did not want to hear anything about Alexander. Not even about his kindness. Perhaps especially not about his kindness.

  “Iestyn,” she had said, returning to the former topic, “they will not try to make you go on the march? The Scotch Cattle will not come after you?” She shuddered violently at the mere thought of Scotch Cattle.

  “I don’t know,” he had said. “There has been no mention of them yet. Only some private attempts at persuasion at work. But I will not go. I will sign any petition that is made up, but I will not take part in anything that might turn violent.”

  They had left it at that. But Siân was hopeful. Perhaps the violence of the last few months—the two separate visits of Scotch Cattle, the fight up on the mountain—had taught their own lesson. Perhaps all the people of her town were yearning for the atmosphere of the eisteddfod day to be the more dominant mood again. Perhaps they were all beginning to realize that force and suspicion and hatred could only drive them permanently apart and destroy them.

  Perhaps the march would never happen after all. And perhaps, if it did, it would involve only those men who chose to participate. Perhaps her people could finally agree to disagree. It would be a giant step forward.

  She sat back on her heels to admire a section of work she had completed and brushed back a lock of hair from her face with the back of her hand. She noticed ruefully after she had done so that the back of her hand was dirty too.

  And then there was a knock on the door. Siân waited a moment for the door to open to admit Mari or one of the neighbors—her grandmother had gone down to the shop. But whoever was there was waiting outside. She got to her feet, wiped her hands ineffectually on her apron, and opened the door.

  And felt rather as if a giant fist had shot through it and punched her full on the stomach.

  * * *

  Her cheeks and forehead were smudged black. Her hair was caught back in a rather untidy knot, but several errant locks had fallen down over her shoulders. Her dress was old and faded, her apron dirty. Her hands were black. She looked quite incredibly lovely.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Jones,” he said. “Verity wanted to come and visit you.”

  Verity was hiding half behind him. Siân’s eyes dropped to her. She did not return his greeting.

  “It looks as if we have chosen a bad time,” he said. “You are busy.”

  But she seemed to have recovered from the shock of seeing him. “Hello, Verity,” she said. She smiled, and something turned over inside him. “I have missed you.”

  Verity, he saw, looking down, was regarding Siân warily from one eye as she hid behind him.

  “I thought perhaps,” he said, “she could stay with you for an hour if you are not too busy. I will come back for her.” He looked directly at her. “She has been crying for you.”

  She bit her lip and looked down. “Verity,” she said, “I did not leave because of you. I left because of—other things.”

  “Because you love us but belong here,” Verity said.

  Siân flushed and then smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Something like that. I am awfully dirty. I have been cleaning the grate. But of course you can stay—for an hour or longer. Just give me a moment to wash my hands. Oh, and my face too. Is it dirty?” The flush returned.

  She was ignoring him, Alex realized, acting rather as if he were not there. He greedily drank in the sight of her.

  Verity giggled.

  Siân whisked around to pour water into a bowl.

  “I’ll leave her, then?” Alex said. “And return in an hour?”

  She nodded in his general direction and plunged her hands into the bowl.

  “I want to climb the hill to the top,” Verity said, all her usual animation suddenly returned.

  “We will do so,” Siân said. “It is nice and sunny today and not nearly as cold as it has been. We will go all the way to the top. Don’t you like the look of my shiny black grate? You can almost see your face in it.”

  Alex, standing in the doorway, turned for one last wistful glance back. She was drying her face with a towel.

  “You must come too, Papa,” Verity said. “I want you to come up the hill too.”

  He found his eyes locked on Siân’s. The towel had stilled over her mouth. She lowered it slowly.

  “You might as well,” she said. “It is hardly worth going home for an hour just to have to come all the way back again.”

  He hesitated, but more because he felt he ought, he realized, than because he was seriously considering refusing. How could he refuse? A whole hour with her? Perhaps longer? He had missed her so very much. He felt as if he had not seen her for a year.

  “Very well, then,” he said, addressing himself to Verity. “You are sure it has to be the very top?”

  She giggled again. It felt so good to see her looking like a happy child once more.

  They climbed the hill, the sun almost warm on their backs, the breeze cooling their faces and blowing back their hair. Verity had placed herself between the two of them, holding to a hand of each, skipping along when the gradient was not too steep, prattling about everything she could think of that had happened since Siân had left, practicing her Welsh, singing some of the songs Siân had taught her. Siân joined in, and Alex hummed along until Verity decided to teach him the words and Siân corrected her pronunciation. There was an absurd moment near the top of the mountain when all three of them were singing the same tune with varying degrees of recognizable Welsh words.

  “Whee!” Verity cried when they were at the top and she could look down at the valleys on both sides, her arms stretched out to the sides. “We are at the top of the world.”
/>   “Only to find that there is no stairway to heaven,” Alex said. “Thank goodness for that. No more climbing.”

  Verity laughed and twirled around and around. She raced off along the top, arms out, screeching with exuberance. Alex and Siân watched her go, both smiling at her, and then turned and looked at each other. Their smiles faded.

  He acted from pure instinct. He leaned down and set his mouth, open, over hers for a brief moment.

  “How is the back?” he asked.

  “Much better,” she said. “I can move freely now, at least.”

  “I couldn’t deny her, Siân,” he said. “She needed to see you.”

  “I needed to see her too,” she said softly. “I love her.”

  Siân as Verity’s mother. And as the mother of his other children. Siân as his wife and his companion and lover. The impossibility became yearningly real suddenly.

  “Siân.” He reached out a hand and touched her cheek.

  “Sir John Fowler—my father—is going to help me find a teaching job somewhere else in Wales,” she said quickly. “I am going to be moving away.”

  She might as well have plunged a knife into him.

  “It is what you want?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I like teaching,” she said. “I think I would enjoy teaching in a school. There would be challenge in teaching more than one child. And I need to get away. I need to start over again.”

  “Do you?” he said. “It would not work here, Siân?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said, “it would not work here.”

  He took his hand away from her cheek. Verity, he could see, was absorbed with something she had found on the ground some distance away.

  “Your father,” he said. He raised his eyebrows. “Your father, Siân?”

  She nodded. “He came to see me at Glanrhyd Castle after you had sent word to him,” she said. “And he came to Grandad’s house a few days ago.” She smiled fleetingly. “Yes, my father.”

  “Well,” he said, “I am glad.”

  She pulled on a silver chain he had noticed about her neck and drew a locket out from inside her dress. “He sent me this,” she said. “It was my mother’s. He took it after she died.”