people who worked long, hard hours through the week, many of them on farms too far distant from each other or from the village to allow for much company, Sunday morning was the time to look forward to, the time to cherish. The best morning of the week.
Glenys Owen, kitchen maid at Tegfan, had never felt quite so important in her life as she did on this particular Sunday morning. This morning she had come to chapel, bringing with her the news that the Earl of Wyvern had arrived unexpectedly from London in the middle of the night and thrown the whole household into consternation. Glenys had not yet seen him herself but he was there right enough.
“Praise the Lord,” the Reverend Llwyd said. He was standing at the top of the stone steps leading down from the porch to the street, shaking hands with his departing congregation. He raised both arms as if in benediction. “Praise the Lord for bringing him safely home.”
Not everyone agreed.
“After all this time?” Glyn Bevan, a farmer, said. “I wonder what for, then?”
“He has never shown much interest in the place before,” Gwen Dirion, a farmer’s wife, remarked to Blodwyn Jenkins, who kept the general store next to the chapel. “Glad to get away from here, he was.”
“And never came to see his poor old mam,” Miss Jenkins said, nodding about to include others in her remark, “until she was in a wooden box. Too late it was then.”
“Geraint Penderyn.” Eli Harris, the harness maker, turned his head to spit into the dirt roadway, perhaps forgetting for the moment that he was wearing his Sunday best and should therefore be on his Sunday-best behavior. “Come here to show off his fine clothes and his fine English ways and his fine English voice, I suppose. Come to lord it over us, is it? It do make me sick to my stomach.”
“Eli,” Mrs. Harris said reproachfully, glancing furtively at the minister.
“Well, it do, woman,” Eli said, half-sheepishly, half-defiantly.
“Penderyn,” Ifor Davies, the cooper, said. “Who broke his mam’s heart, as Blodwyn has said, and does not care the snap of his fingers for us. A cheek, I do call it, mind, coming down here to sneer at us all.”
“Not that any of us treated his mam very well for many years, mind, to be fair,” Mrs. Olwen Harris said with ruthless honesty, nodding about at the other women for approval. “Not until we knew, that was.”
“Geraint Penderyn,” Aled Rhoslyn, the village blacksmith, said almost pensively, not talking to anyone in particular. “It is not the best time for him to come down here, is it? He may be sorry that he did. And so may we.”
“Perhaps,” Ninian Williams, a farmer, suggested, his hands spread over his ample stomach, “we should wait and see why he has come and what he intends to do. He has every right to be in his own house, after all. Perhaps we should give the man a chance.”
“Yes, Dada.” Ceris Williams, small and slim and dark and mild-mannered, rarely spoke in public. But she possessed a certain courage that occasionally impelled her to speak out. “I was only fifteen when he came for his mam’s funeral. That was ten years ago. I felt sorry for him then because he seemed to feel so out of place and everyone was watching him so closely, more prepared to find fault than to welcome him home. Perhaps we should not judge him now that he is the Earl of Wyvern. Perhaps we should wait and see.” She blushed furiously, bit her lip, and lowered her eyes.
“Perhaps we should at that,” Aled said, his eyes fixed on her, their expression softened. “But we will not expect too much, is it? He has been the earl for two years, after all, and things have got worse here since then rather than better.”
Ceris looked up and held his gaze for a few moments, her own eyes filling with a longing that was quickly hidden when she lowered them again to the ground at her feet.
“Wait and see? Give him a chance?” Marged Evans’s voice was incredulous and taut with fury. “I do not need to give him a chance. For two years he has had his chance. That is long enough. Too long. Can Eurwyn be given a second chance? Eurwyn is dead, thanks to Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern.” She almost spat out the name, her back straight, her bosom out, her chin up. As always Marged,