her eyes briefly. “And see you home at the same time, Marged. Women should not be out alone in the hills at night.”
She could not refuse any more than she had been able to refuse outside chapel on Sunday. But twice within a week! She had been teased after Sunday by the group who had joined her in planning the pranks at Tegfan and carrying them out. This could lead to more than teasing. It could lead to gossip.
But it was not the gossip she cared about. It was being alone with him in the hills at night. Though even that was not her primary concern. Did he not understand that he was the last man on earth . . . Ah, it sounded like a cliché.
She tried. “It is quite unnecessary for you to go out of your way, my lord.”
“It will be my pleasure, ma’am,” he said, sounding for all the world as if he were preparing to escort an English lady home from an English ball.
He was ready to leave by the time she had drawn on her cloak and raised the hood over her head. He lifted her harp and followed her out into the night.
Chapter 10
IT was a walk of over a mile, first across the crest of a hill and then upward. It was a dark night, with not much moonlight to light the way, and they had not brought a lantern. She found herself hoping that he would not be as surefooted as she, though the thought seemed absurd when she remembered him as a child. And she hoped that he would find himself unequal to the task of carrying her harp the whole distance. It was a heavy instrument and awkward to carry. She hoped that soft living would have him puffing and taking frequent rests. But he carried it with apparent ease.
They did not talk. They walked side by side in the darkness and in silence and she wondered if the air between them really did pulse with tension, or if only she felt it. She had never been more thankful to be the owner of a harp. Would he have insisted on escorting her home if there had not been the harp? She imagined what it would be like now, walking together across the lonely hills, if there was nothing to burden his arms. And she became more breathless than the walk and the climb could justify.
She tried to think of Eurwyn and succeeded better than she had hoped. There had always been work to occupy both of them for most of their waking hours. And the longhouse had always been occupied by his mother and grandmother as well as the two of them. She had loved those few occasions when they went out together and could walk home alone together, relaxed and comfortable. It had happened so rarely. She had liked to walk with her arm linked through his. He had not been a fat man, but he had been large and solid. She had always felt softly feminine, protected, almost fragile with Eurwyn. They were not images of herself that she cultivated, but sometimes it had felt good to believe that her man would protect her from all of life’s harms.
Sometimes she had wished that he would stop in the darkness and kiss her. She had even suggested it once, not long after their marriage. He had been almost embarrassed. Eurwyn had not been a romantic man. What happened between a man and his wife to give them both ease should happen only at a certain time of day and only in their bed. He had never stated that in words—Eurwyn had never been able to talk about intimate matters—but it had been his belief.
She had loved him for his firm beliefs and principles, for his solidity, for the gentle affection he had shown her even though he had never put it into words, even during his courtship of her.
And then they were home and she was opening the gate into the farmyard so that the Earl of Wyvern would not have to set her harp down in the dust. And she was aware of him again, alive and there with her while Eurwyn was long dead, nothing to her but a memory. She hurried across the yard to open the door into the passageway and then the one into the kitchen. It was in darkness. Her mother-in-law and Gran would have been in bed for an hour