Aled smiled slowly. “I did not want to be out of breath and sweating when you came calling,” he said. “I thought I would do some light chore while I waited.” But he hung back rather awkwardly.
Geraint walked toward him, his right hand extended. He was absurdly nervous, afraid of one more rejection. And this one would hurt most, apart from Marged’s. “How are you?” he asked.
Aled looked at his hand before taking it. But his clasp was firm enough when he did. “Well,” he said. “And you?”
Geraint nodded. “You are married?” he asked. “There are half a dozen eager little blacksmiths on the way up?”
Aled laughed, but he flushed with what looked suspiciously like embarrassment. “I am not married,” he said.
“Then you must have learned to run faster than you used to,” Geraint said. It had always been a source of pride to him as a child that he could outrun his friend even though Aled had been a year older and a head taller and a stone or two heavier.
Aled laughed. And looked awkward.
Geraint spoke from impulse. “You have a great deal of work to be done this afternoon?” he asked. “Can it be left? Come and walk with me in the park.”
Aled looked down at the wheel rim on his anvil. He pursed his lips, and Geraint could see that he wanted to refuse, that he was reaching for an excuse.
“We can even walk about there openly without having to skulk about among the trees avoiding mantraps,” Geraint said. “We will no longer be trespassing.”
Aled grinned, genuine amusement in his eyes. “Why not?” he said. “Welcome home, man.” He lifted the heavy apron off over his head.
And yet, Geraint thought ruefully as they left the forge together and walked down the street in the direction of Tegfan park, Aled was uncomfortable. He would a thousand times rather be back in his forge than on his way for a stroll with his former friend.
Aled Rhoslyn had not really expected Geraint ever to return to Tegfan, even though he was now the Earl of Wyvern. It would be too difficult for him to face the strange facts of his childhood and boyhood. The child Geraint had never been disliked as much as he had thought. He had been pitied more than anything, as had his mother, although, of course, the strict moral code by which most of them lived as nonconformists had forced them to reject the latter publicly. Most of the children had secretly admired the bold and almost charismatic little ragamuffin.
Most people had not disliked him during his boyhood after the earl had somehow made the staggering discovery that his long-dead son had been legally married to Gwynneth Penderyn when the two of them had run off together. They had been married before the conception of their son. A few of the meaner-minded, of course, had been spiteful with envy and a few others had not been slow to notice that Gwynneth Penderyn—she was never known by her married name of Marsh and Geraint had legally changed his name back to hers as soon as he reached his majority—was sent to live alone in a small cottage on the estate and was never either invited to the house or visited by Geraint.
Most people had not disliked him during his brief visit after the death of his mother. But everyone, almost to a person, had felt awkward with him, not knowing quite whether to talk to him as if he were Geraint Penderyn or to show him deference as Geraint Marsh, Viscount Handford. The fact that he had been both had led to an impossible situation.
But Geraint had always felt disliked. Not that he had ever been self-pitying about it. But he had built defenses, of which Aled, as his one close friend apart from Marged Llwyd, had been aware. The defense of not caring a fig for anyone as a child. The added defense of aloofness as an eighteen-year-old and the firm hiding behind his newly acquired Englishness and his gentleman’s manners.
Aled had not expected him to return. And over the years he had somehow managed to divorce in his mind his feelings for Geraint as friend and his feelings for the Earl of Wyvern as owner of the land on which he and his acquaintances and neighbors lived and worked. The Earl of Wyvern was that impersonal figurehead who represented the aristocracy, the English owners who cared nothing