Truly

by Mary Balogh

  Reaction was setting in and the realization of what might have happened tonight and what might yet happen. She could see behind her closed eyes Rebecca riding up against the skyline and calling down to the men hiding inside the tollhouse—men with guns. And she could feel the near panic there had been all around her down on the road when Rebecca had quickly and firmly—and quite calmly—sent them on their way. He had not rushed himself. As usual he had been the last to leave, focusing all the real danger on himself so that the rest of them might get away safely. He might so easily have been caught or shot. As Aled had been shot at. She turned dizzy at the remembered sound of that shot.

  The horse had stopped galloping. Rebecca's breath was warm against her ear. "You are shaking," he said. "You are just beginning to understand, aren't you?"

  Her teeth chattered when she tried to speak. "Y-yes," she managed to get out at last. "I am b-beginning to understand what my husband must have felt like on that night at T-Tegfan and I am beginning to remember how I felt. I am beginning to realize what might have happened to you tonight and to all the others. But fear and't-trembling are not an indication of cowardice or a sign that like a good girl I will now go home where I belong and stay there."

  He chuckled. "No, Marged," he said. "You do not have to go at me so fiercely. Cowardice is the last thing I would accuse you of. And feminine weakness is the second-last thing. I am shaking myself. It is a natural human reaction to danger that is past."

  "And perhaps not even that," she said. "We still have to get safely home. I have just recognized where we are. We are up on the moors above Tegfan. I am close to home. Let me down and ride on as fast as you can. Perhaps when I am gone you will take off the disguise and be a great deal safer. It is because of me you will not take it off, isn't it? You still do not trust me. But I don't blame you. Set me down."

  And yet she clung to him and breathed in the smell of him. She did not want it to be over so fast. She was only just realizing that he had taken her up with him, that she was this close to him again, that she might never be this close again. But he must go. He must get safely home.

  "Not just yet," he said. 'There is a shelter up here somewhere. An old building. Close to here—I have seen it. Come there with me. We both need time to calm down."

  Geraint's old hovel. He must be referring to that. Her stomach turned over when she remembered what had happened there just the day before. She had felt such a strange, unwilling tenderness… But she did not want to think of that. She was with Rebecca, the man she passionately loved.

  "Besides," he said into her ear, "I don't want to say good night yet, Marged. I want to make love to you."

  Her stomach turned over again.

  "Will you?" He was whispering.

  "Yes." It did not matter that it would happen inside Geraint's old home. Perhaps being there with Rebecca would purge her memory and her emotions of an unwelcome attachment—though it was not quite that, surely.

  He found her mouth with his own briefly and rode on a short distance. They had been closer than she had realized. He dismounted, lifted her to the ground, and tethered his horse at the dark, higher side of the house before taking down the blanket rolled behind his saddle, and leading her by the hand to the dark doorway of the old house.

  He had not consciously ridden up onto the moors. Or in the direction of the old hovel. But as soon as he knew where he was, he understood the unconscious workings of his mind. He had needed to come back here. With Marged. He needed to go inside the hut as he had not been able to bring himself to do yesterday. With her. It would be pitch-dark inside. He would not be able to see anything. But he needed to go in anyway—to face any ghosts that might be lingering there.

  He needed Marged there with him. He needed her as he had needed her yesterday. She had responded to him with sympathy and a little more than sympathy yesterday as Geraint Penderyn. She would respond to him tonight as Rebecca. He put out of his mind the meanness of the deception. He needed her warmth. He needed her love.

  He stopped in the doorway and peered inward, his heart beating uncomfortably. How often he had raced in and out of this door, a surprisingly carefree boy. He could see only a foot or two inside the door. But the dirt floor still seemed hard-packed and covered with no more than the expected rubble of soil and leaves. He could not see farther in, but the darkness would work to his advantage. He led Marged carefully inside, over to the far wall, against the outside of which he had stood the day before. He spread the blanket.

  "Lie down," he said to her. "You are not frightened?"

  "No," she said. "Not with you."

  He pulled off his wig and his mask and was grateful for the cool air he felt against his face and head. He knew that even if the sky cleared and the moon beamed down, the light of it would not penetrate to this corner. He hesitated a moment and stripped away Rebecca's gown and the clothes he wore beneath except his trousers. If anyone came, then he would be the Earl of Wyvern keeping a romantic tryst with one of his tenants.

  Not that that would lead to a comfortable situation with Marged, of course.

  Her hands came against his bare chest when he joined her on the blanket. Her fingers spread and then moved upward and over his face and hair.

  "Ah," she said, and her voice was husky, "you are beautiful. I think you must be beautiful."

  He held her palm against his cheek and turned his head to kiss it.

  "Strange," she said softly.

  "Strange?"

  "Do you ever have things blink in your mind, but you cannot grasp them in time to see what they are?" she said. "It happened then. Have I ever met you before?"

  "On Wednesday night," he said, trying not to tense. "I made love to you. Remember?" He should not have kissed her hand.

  "Yes." She laughed softly. "I remember. I thought you were telling me afterward that this would not happen again.It would not be a good situation, you said. I thought you did not care."

  "Marged," he said against her mouth.

  "And then you sent Aled with the money so that I could hire Waldo Parry to help on the farm," she said. There was a catch in her voice, suggesting that she was close to tears. "And I knew that you did care."

  "Marged." He set his arms about her and drew her close against him. "How could you ever have doubted it?"

  "I gave myself willingly," she said. "There was no compulsion on you to care. There is no compulsion."

  "But I care." He licked at her lips. "I care very much."

  "Oh," she said.

  "I believe I said it would not be a good situation for you," he said. "I said it would not make you happy. You know me only as Rebecca, Marged. Perhaps you would not like the man behind the mask."

  "I love you," she whispered.

  Ah. Honest, reckless Marged.

  I love you. She loved Rebecca. Strangely, the man behind the mask felt almost bereft. She had given comfort to Geraint Penderyn yesterday, had held his hand and listened to him and seemed almost tender in her sympathy for him—for a while. But it was Rebecca she loved, that mythical hero of the people. That man who did not even exist.

  "And I love you too," he said, setting his mouth against hers and abandoning himself to the self-indulgence of telling a truth that would horrify her if he told it in his own person.

  "Oh." It was as much sob as exclamation. "Make love to me. Let's make love."

  It was not a cold night. And the fire of passion lent extra heat. She helped him free her of her jacket and shirt and of her breeches and underclothes. And she helped him unbutton his own trousers and wriggle out of them.

  She was beautiful. She was Marged, he told himself in some wonder—warm and shapely and soft and yet firmly muscled too. The calluses on her hands, pressing over his chest and back and buttocks, were surprisingly arousing. Not that he needed much arousing. He was hard and throbbing for her.

  "You are beautiful," she said before he could say the words first to her. She moved her hands around to hold him and stroke him. He dre
w breath sharply. "Why am I so bold with you? I have never been so bold."

  He had been given the impression that first time that she was in many ways innocent. She jerked when he moved his hand down to touch her as intimately as she touched him. But she relaxed and sighed as his fingers stroked and parted and probed. He could not wait much longer. And he could feel that she was slick with wetness and ready for him.

  "The ground is hard," he said when she turned onto her back to receive him. "Come on top of me tonight."

  She had clearly never done it this way before. He had to guide her to kneel over him, her knees and thighs hugging his sides, her hands gripping his shoulders. She drew an audible breath when he positioned himself at her entry, and cried out when he spread his hands on her hips and brought her firmly down.

  He moved in her with slow, deep strokes, giving her a chance to accustom herself to a new posture for love. He could feel her hair on either side of his face as her head came down close to his, and the tips of her breasts touching his chest occasionally. And then he lost himself as she caught his rhythm and matched it and rode to it. Faster and faster until they came together to a shared and frenzied climax.

  She was hot and damp with exhaustion when he brought her down to lie on him and straightened her legs on either side of his own without uncoupling them—and came back to reality.

  "I love you, Marged Evans," he said, wrapping his arms and the edges of the blankets over her. When Rebecca dropped permanently out of her life—as he must if he did not first get her with child—he wanted her to be able to look back and believe that he really had loved her. And if she ever discovered the truth, he wanted her to know that Geraint Penderyn had not only betrayed her, but had loved her too.

  "Mmm," she said.

  He allowed himself the luxury of imagining what it would be like to have Marged in his bed each night, falling asleep after his lovemaking. What further compliment could a man be given for his prowess as a lover?

  And he remembered where he was. It was in this corner that his mother had placed his bed, or what had passed for a bed, since it was the warmest and the least drafty. His mother had loved him, he thought. For those twelve years, life had been indescribably hard and lonely for her. But he knew—she had told him often enough—that he had been the light of her life, her reason for living. He would be willing to bet that during the six years before her death she would have exchanged the comfort of her cottage and the security of warm clothes and furniture and regular meals and the friendship of people like Mrs. Williams—she would have exchanged them at any time for this hovel and his return.

  No, she would not have. Knowing his mother, he could guess that she was happy for him, that she was glad that at last he would be brought up and treated as his father's son. And she would have understood about the absence of letters. She would have understood that they would not allow him to write to her—just as they must have forbidden her to write to him. She would have known that he loved her, that he never forgot her.

  Yes, of course she would have known. How foolish of him ever to have doubted it. How foolish to have dreaded this place, as if he would find here the ghost of an unhappy, disillusioned woman. Her one consolation in her final years would have been the fact that he was being well cared for and that one day he would be the Earl of Wyvern and the owner of Tegfan.

  How foolish he had been to be afraid to come back. And afraid to know anything about Tegfan. Afraid, as if there would be malevolent ghosts here to haunt him.

  This sorry hovel had been a place filled with love. And there was love here again. A love that had somehow purged all the old doubts and pain.

  His fingers played gently through Marged's hair as she slept.

  She was wonderfully comfortable and surprisingly warm. And warm right through to the heart, she thought. He loved her. He loved her! And he was still inside her. She could feel him hard again, though he was relaxed. His fingers were gently massaging her scalp.

  "I did not want to come here, you know," she said. Perhaps she should not be mentioning this to him, when it involved another man and her disturbing ambivalent feelings for that other man. But she knew that part of loving was being perfectly open and honest with the beloved. "He lived here as a child. The Earl of Wyvern, I mean."

  His hand stilled in her hair. "You loved him as a child," he said. "You have memories of this place?"

  "One memory is very recent," she said. She hesitated for a moment and then told him about her meeting with Geraint the day before.

  He stroked her hair again and said nothing.

  "He has had a hard life," she said. "Almost unbearably hard. It is not easy to believe, is it, when he was taken at the age of twelve to a life of wealth and security and privilege and when he is probably one of the wealthiest men in the country now. But happiness does not come from things, does it? I don't believe he has known either love or a home since he was in this place."

  "Perhaps," he said, "he felt comforted by your sympathy yesterday, Marged. Perhaps he felt something like love. Was there some love in what you did for him?"

  "No," she said quickly. "I love you."

  "But there are many kinds of love," he said. "If we love one person, we do not necessarily not love everyone else."

  "We are talking about the man we both hate," she said. "Of course I feel no love for him."

  "I am fighting against a system, Marged," he said, "against an injustice that is larger than one person. I do not hate anyone."

  "It shows," she said. "You are so very careful that no one is hurt during the smashing of gates, either on our side or on the other side. And somehow you arrange it that those who suffer material loss are compensated. You are a compassionate man. Is that why you are doing this, then? You are fighting against a system rather than against people?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "It is better than hatred," she said. "Hatred—hurts."

  "Yes." He kissed the top of her head.

  And he lifted her off him at last, turned her so that her back was against the blanket, and knelt over her, his thighs on either side of her legs. He began to make love to her again with skilled, sensitive hands and mouth and tongue.

  She gave herself up to the physical joys of love. But something had happened, she realized, and she could not seem to do anything about it. She was feeling Geraint's arms about her as he held her and cried, and Geraint's hand holding hers. And she was lying in the darkness of this hovel with Geraint and feeling the tenderness she had experienced yesterday blossom into a different kind of love.

  Because she had never seen the man behind Rebecca's mask and could not visualize him as he made love to her, she substituted the face and form of Geraint. She made love with Rebecca and poured out to him all that she had felt for Geraint yesterday. She tried to give him back some of the love he had known here as a child and had never known since.

  The rational part of her mind told her that she would be horrified tomorrow when she remembered this, and that she would doubt her love for Rebecca when she recalled that she had made love to Geraint as much as she had made love to him. But the emotional part of her being was far more powerful at the moment than the rational.

  "Cariad," she whispered to him when he finally knelt between her thighs and lifted her with his hands to cushion her for his penetration. "I love you. I love you."

  It was Rebecca she loved. It was Geraint she visualized behind her closed eyes. She gave her body and her tenderness, trying not to wonder to whom she gave.

  He came inside her and she loved—the man who loved her in return.

  Chapter 22

  Ceris clung to Aled, numb with relief. She had passed large numbers of men fleeing from the road, but the road itself had been in darkness until she was right down on it. She had looked wildly about her. What had happened? Had some of them been caught in the trap? Some of the leaders? Aled?

  Then the moon had broken free of the clouds and she had been able to see where the tollgate and house
had been. There had been just a heap of rubble left. And there had been no one in sight. No one except for two men scrambling down from the opposite side from the one by which she had come, and a horseman galloping down from her side—a horseman looking like a woman in a dark dress, with long dark hair.

  He galloped up beside her and swept her up with one powerful arm. Aled. He was Aled and he was safe. He had not been caught. She clung to him, numb with relief. For several moments after the shot was fired, she did not realize what it was. And then she did realize and the numbness deepened. That shot had been fired at them. At Aled.

  "Get out of here!" Aled yelled suddenly. "What are you waiting for?"

  She turned her head on his chest and opened her eyes. There was another horseman, clad all in white. Even his hair and his face looked white in the moonlight. Rebecca! Ceris's stomach felt as if it turned a complete somersault.

  She turned her head the other way as both horses galloped off so that she would not have to see Rebecca. And she clung harder. They had been shot at! The truth of it was only just beginning to hit her. She still had her eyes open as the horses turned to go uphill again. Three men on foot watched them go by. She wondered that they were standing motionless and were still so close to the road. Crowds of men had been fleeing when she had been on her way down.

  Several moments passed before the fact registered on her brain that one of the three men—the one whose eyes she had met—was Matthew. The truth dawned upon her at the same moment. He had used her to lead him to Rebecca and all her followers. To Aled. If anyone had been caught or hurt, it would have been her foolish fault.

  She remembered Marged's concern that inadvertently she might betray some of her knowledge, and her own indignation that her friend should think she could ever do such a thing.

  She might have killed Aled tonight. She buried her face against his chest again, moved her hands higher up his back, and tightened her hold.