“Marged,” he said. “She was positively identified. She was seen from close up. There is no physical resemblance at all between the two of you.”
“It was dark,” she said.
“She was seen in full moonlight,” he said.
It was not going to work. She was not going to be able to free Ceris, and now she had betrayed herself too. But she could not feel fear—yet. Only a deep hopelessness.
“Geraint,” she said, using his given name without thought. She took a few steps toward him. “She is innocent. She came to warn us. She must have heard what someone else had heard too, that there were constables coming, and she came to warn us. Because she loves us and cares for us even though she disapproves of what we are doing. She had no part in what happened. Let her go. Please?” She blinked her eyes furiously when her vision blurred.
“Marged—” he said.
“Take me instead,” she said, “and let her go. Please, Geraint. I have already confessed to having been there myself last night. I have been at each of the gate breakings. I have helped destroy them with my own hands. If I am being honest about my own guilt, why would I lie about Ceris’s innocence? Let her go. What can I do to persuade you to let her go?” She took another step toward him.
He stood very still, an arrested look on his face. “What are you prepared to do, Marged?” he asked her eventually.
What was she prepared to do? She realized suddenly what she had insinuated, what she had only half consciously been offering. She thought briefly and with a deep stabbing of pain of Rebecca and the glorious night of love they had shared a mere few hours ago. And she thought too of how she had visualized Geraint during the second and third lovings because she had no mental picture of Rebecca. She thought of Geraint, the boy she had loved for so long and the man who had become a part of her being, however unwilling she was that it be so.
She took the remaining two steps that brought her toe to toe with him. She saw that her hand was trembling as she lifted it to set her palm over his heart. “Let her go.” She set the other hand against his chest and let both slide up to his shoulders as she swayed her body against him. She set her forehead just beneath his chin. “I will do whatever you ask of me. Geraint, remember what it is like to be poor and in need and frightened.”
He had not moved. His hands were still behind his back. His body was hard and unyielding. He was about the same height and build as Rebecca, she thought unwillingly. She did not want to think about Rebecca. She had to do what must be done to save Ceris, and then she must face whatever must be faced after her rash confession. She must not think of the man she loved.
“It is quite an offer,” he said, his voice curiously flat. “Your body in exchange for your friend’s freedom, Marged? Your body to be used however I will and as many times as I will?”
Geraint. He was Geraint. He was that vibrant, charming boy she had loved. This cold, hard man.
“Yes,” she said.
“Your friend is already free,” he said. “It seems there was a mistake. Her fiancé, Matthew Harley, explained that they were out courting, or otherwise amusing themselves in the hills, when a slight, ah, quarrel sent her running down onto the road at quite the wrong place at quite the wrong time. But it was a good enough alibi to satisfy both me and Sir Hector Webb. No one can doubt the honesty or loyalty of my steward, after all. He escorted her home. I wonder that you did not pass them on the road.”
He had deliberately held back that information from her. He had allowed her to weave her own rope, fashion her own noose, and tighten it about her own neck. She withdrew her head and her hands and her body from his and stood a couple of inches in front of him, her hands clenched loosely at her sides, her head bowed, her eyes closed.
“Marged,” he said, “who is Rebecca?”
“I do not know,” she said, her voice low and toneless. “And if I did, I would not tell you. Ever.”
“There are ways of extracting information from unwilling witnesses,” he