HE had miscalculated the distance. He had not expected still to be riding this long after nightfall. And it was rather a dark night too, so that he was unable to cover the last few miles at any speed. But he had hated the thought of putting up at another inn and had pressed onward to his destination. Tegfan. Home.
Was Tegfan home?
It belonged to him certainly, had done since the death of his grandfather two years before. But was it home? He had not been there for ten years, and even that had been a short visit. He had deliberately avoided going there since. He was not sure he wanted to be there now. He was not even quite sure why he had come.
It had been a whim, a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had overheard a snippet of conversation on the street between two passersby he had never seen before and would never see again. Men who did not belong in London. Drovers, probably, he had guessed, men who had driven a herd of cattle to market and who had not yet returned home.
“—so much to do here all the time.”
“But I miss the hills and—”
It was all he had heard. Words that had no real significance. Except that they had been spoken in Welsh and he had not even realized it or the more surprising fact that he had understood the words until he had felt a stabbing of unidentified longing so powerful that he had stopped walking for the moment and stood on the pavement, frowning, his eyes closed.
But I miss the hills—
And the words themselves had taken meaning in his mind. No, not his mind—his heart. They had become a nameless yearning, something he had been unable to shake off.
The hills had beckoned to him. And he had been unable to resist their call.
And so here he was, without any warning, without any reason, in Wales, in Carmarthenshire, one of its western counties, very close to Tegfan. And wondering even now if he should turn back. That chapter in his life—really a very brief chapter—was best left closed.
Except that deep down he had always known that one day he would come back.
He was riding through open, hilly country, as bare and as bleak as he remembered it. And chilly, of course, as one could expect of early spring in any part of the country. But more than chilly. Almost damp, though there had been no rain. And gusty, though there was no steady wind. Although he had not lived in Wales for sixteen years, and then he had been a mere boy of twelve, he felt the familiarity.
The road was bad. He huddled inside his cloak and slowed his horse’s pace even further. Although he had passed through tollgates every few miles of his journey today, and although he knew that there were turnpike trusts set up everywhere, there was little evidence that the money extracted from travelers was being spent to make their journeys safer or more comfortable.
He was glad he had left his carriage to travel after him with his baggage and his valet. Traveling this road in a carriage would be a severe trial.
But suddenly the night was not so dark—and yet darker too, in a way. The line of distant hills to his right was lit from behind, almost as if he had ridden the night through and the sun was about to rise. Except that the direction was more northerly than easterly and the light flickered and danced against the sky instead of remaining steady. And the time could surely be no later than midnight, if that.
There was a fire burning. He could not see the flames or smell the smoke or hear any sounds of human alarm. It was too far away to investigate and in too different a direction from Tegfan to cause him any personal alarm. But he shivered with a little more than just the chill of the air. Fires at night had no logical explanation. He had passed the industrial valleys of South Wales, in which iron furnaces might be kept alive night and day. Besides, this fire had sprung suddenly to life.
It was not his concern. He rode onward until a bend in the road and the changing contours of the hills brought darkness again. There was only a faint glow of light about the far hills when he looked deliberately back at them. He surely could not be far from Tegfan now. And yet there was