“You did not listen to me, Marged,” he said. “But no matter. If you are determined to see me as the blackhearted villain of your life, I suppose there is nothing I can say. Except that I love you and always have. Except that I will continue to want to marry you and will ask you again. Come, take my arm. We had better get you home out of the rain. It is getting heavier.”
“Don’t ask me again,” she said as they resumed the uphill climb. “If you keep on doing so and I keep on saying no, I may put a dent in your insufferable arrogance. That would be dreadful.”
“Yes.” She looked up to find that his whole face was lit up with laughter. He looked so startlingly handsome and attractive that all her insides seemed to be performing somersaults and cartwheels. “I cannot think of a worse fate, Marged.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. He escorted her right to the door of Ty-Gwyn but would not come inside. She stepped into the passageway and closed the door before leaning back against it. He had asked her to marry him. The reality of it was only just beginning to hit her. Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern, had offered her marriage. She might have been a countess. She might have been Geraint’s wife.
Ah, Geraint. The sharp pain was back.
Idris had watched the Earl of Wyvern go inside the old hovel quite early in the evening and Rebecca came out several minutes later. The boy was well hidden and he had not moved a muscle since he had seen the earl riding up the hill. But even so, as Rebecca mounted the earl’s horse and turned its head to the slope on the opposite side from Tegfan, he spoke quietly and conversationally.
“You may go home now, Idris,” he said. “Is it too much to ask that for once you stay there all night, where it is safe?”
He did not wait for an answer, but Idris grinned to himself. Yes, it was too much to ask. There was going to be too much to be observed tonight for him to waste the time sitting with his mam and his sisters or sleeping. He rose out of his hiding place and bounded down the hill in the direction of Tegfan.
It was amazing how inefficient and inept they were, he thought scornfully an hour later. It had obviously not entered any of their heads to check the gamekeeper’s hut to see that the bundle was still inside. Or to think that perhaps the earl would leave earlier than he needed for the supposed meeting with the man from London. Idris had been in hiding for some time before three constables took up their positions, ready to pounce on Rebecca when he emerged from the hut.
It was almost enough to make a person laugh, Idris thought. They all thought themselves so well hidden, and yet a herd of oxen could hardly have made more noise. Even without Idris’s warning the earl would have been perfectly safe. He would have detected their presence a mile off.
And then finally, along came Mr. Harley in a fine state of excitement, not even trying to keep quiet.
“He has gone already,” he announced when he was close to the hut, and all the constables came shuffling out of hiding. “That fool of a servant failed to inform me that he left early. Perhaps he planned another gate smashing before his appointment with Foster. But no matter. Vanity will take him there eventually—how could he resist having his name in the London papers? And there are four constables awaiting him and his right-hand man when they get there. But we are going to have to be doubly sure of bagging him now that the simple way of doing it has slipped through our fingers.”
Idris concentrated on not moving an eyelash.
“I have been sent a dozen more constables,” Harley said. “They are at the house now. Come back there with me and I will give you all your orders. I am going to station you all at various points around the park and a few of you about the smithy in Glynderi. If they escape capture elsewhere, they will be caught before they can reach home. This is the last night for Rebecca and her daughters, you may rest assured.”
The constables moved off behind the steward as he strode back downhill in the direction of