“They look well cared for,” he said. “You do all the work with them, Marged? And all the milking?”
“My mother-in-law does most of that,” she said. “There are other things for me to do and only a certain number of hours in each day.”
He had seen no sign yet of the mother-in-law or the grandmother.
She led him through the passageway and out into a lean-to built onto the back of the house. It was a dairy, he saw. The dirt floor and the slate surfaces of the work area were clean. There were both butter and cheese in the making.
“You sell the produce?” he asked. He had used to envy the children of farmers, on their way to market with their parents, the carts in which they rode laden with produce.
“When there is a market for it,” she said. “There have been strikes in the coalfields and at the ironworks. There is no money there now for Carmarthenshire butter and cheese. And prices have fallen.”
“Have they?” He looked at her. “That is a pity.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her voice tight with anger, “it is.”
As if he was responsible for the shrinking market and the drop in prices.
“And your crops?” he asked. “You hire laborers to put them in for you?”
“I do it myself,” she said. “Plows are not so hard to use if one has well-trained horses. Ours are getting old, but they are good. I work the land myself. At harvesttime I need help.”
He had seen men pushing the heavy plows behind the horses or oxen, struggling to keep the furrows straight and uniformly deep. He did not believe for a moment that plows were not hard to use. Was she too stubborn to hire a man to do the work for her? Did she have to prove to every man about Glynderi and Tegfan that she was their equal?
He reached out on an sudden impulse and took both her hands in his. He turned them palm up and looked down at them. It was only as he did so that he realized that touching her was not such a good idea. Holding the backs of her hands cupped in his palms suddenly seemed unwisely intimate. And he had had to take a step closer to her in order to do so. He was holding her thumbs back with his own, he realized.
He looked up into her eyes. Another mistake. She had always had the steadiest eyes he had ever known. He could not remember ever trying to stare Marged down, but it would have been a useless game, one impossible to win. And he remembered now how those gray eyes had always been fringed by long lashes, several shades darker than her hair. They had not changed.
“Calluses,” he said softly, tightening his grip as he felt a tremor in her hands.
“You know the word and its meaning,” she said equally softly. There was no suggestion of sarcasm in her tone, though it was there undisguised in her eyes. “They come from hard, honest work, my lord.”
She licked her lips when his eyes lowered to them, though he knew she did not do so with any intention of being provocative. He felt his breath quicken even so. Belatedly, he released her hands.
“My lord,” she said, “would you care to step into the kitchen and take a cup of tea with us?”
Why did she hate him so much? he wondered. Could a boy’s fumbled attempts at seduction have made her so angry even ten years later? Or was it merely the fact that he was now wealthy and she was not? The possibility that Marged of all people could be so mean-minded annoyed him. He inclined his head curtly.
“Thank you,” he said.
For a few moments longer she stared into his eyes, unconcealed resentment and hostility in her own. And for those same moments he stared back, angry himself, on the verge of asking her straight out what he had done to offend her. But he had learned years and years ago, perhaps from his birth, but certainly from his twelfth year, not to open himself deliberately to disappointment or hurt or rejection. He recognized danger with Marged and closed himself off against it.
And then she turned and strode off back down the passageway to the low doorway leading into the kitchen of the house. He followed her and found himself standing on the flagstones of the kitchen floor, turning toward the large open fireplace. Sitting in the inglenook beside the