farms, breathing fire and brimstone, demanding confessions. He would play right into their hands by doing that. But the impotent feeling of knowing that there was nothing he could do merely fed his fury.
He watched the grooms return to the stables. He watched one of them come from behind the house and dart quickly, doubled over, across a stretch of lawn and into the trees opposite. The same groom reappeared a few moments later higher up, just below where Geraint was standing. He stopped and looked back, gazing downward, shielded by the trees just below him. Geraint frowned.
As a boy he had learned to move quickly and silently. Often his safety and his very freedom had depended on his being able to do so. It was amazing how some skills never quite left one even if they had not been used a great deal for many years. It did not take Geraint even a minute to descend the slope and to come up behind the still-motionless figure of the lad.
Except that he was not a lad. He was dressed in breeches and a man’s jacket, but he was hatless, and his long hair was twisted into a knot at the nape of his neck.
“The show is over,” Geraint said softly. “Everyone is on the way back to bed.”
The lad spun around and gazed at him in dismay.
“I believe I told you last night that it is dangerous for a woman to be out on the hills alone,” he said coldly.
She did not try to run away. Doubtless she realized it would have been pointless. Neither did she speak. She lifted her chin and stared back at him.
“What do you know about all this, Marged?” he asked.
Still she said nothing. He saw scorn in her eyes, and perhaps hatred too.
“You were a part of it?” he asked. “You were one of them?”
He waited for her to reply but she did not answer him.
“Tell me who your leader is,” he said. “Tell me who has organized all this. There is a modicum of humor in it all, I suppose, but I have ceased to be amused. Who is he?”
She still did not speak, but the corners of her mouth turned up into a smile that was not really a smile.
“Why?” he asked.
The half smile faded and now the look of hatred was quite naked.
“Why do you hate me?” he asked her. He could feel his temper rising and fought to keep it under control. “Marged, I was a boy with a boy’s cravings and a boy’s gaucheness. I thought you were willing and did not stop to ask you or to consider that perhaps it was unwise even if you were. For this must you hate me for the rest of my life?”
Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed and her hands curled into fists at her sides. At last she spoke.
“You did not even answer my letters,” she hissed at him. “When I had groveled before you, you would not even say no.”
“Your letters?” He frowned.
“I begged you to show mercy on Eurwyn,” she said. “You would not even deign to answer me.”
Oh, God!
“What happened to your husband?” He could scarcely get the words past his lips.
“You do not even know, do you?” she said, scorn and fury mingled in her eyes and her voice. “You washed your hands of him and did not even care to find out what happened to him afterward. He died in the hulks. He did not even get as far as Van Diemen’s Land to begin serving his seven-year sentence of transportation. He died on the ship. He was a strong man, a healthy man. But he could not survive those inhuman conditions. He died. My Eurwyn died like a vicious, depraved criminal.”
She was not crying or hysterical, but he could tell from the clenched fists and the tautness of her posture that she was reliving the agony of her loss.
“Marged—” He reached out a hand toward her.
She leaned back sharply. “Don’t touch me!” she said to him. “What did you need with all the salmon? You were not even living here. There were hungry people. The harvest had been bad. Eurwyn cared. We were not hungry. But he cared about those who were.” She laughed suddenly. “He died because of some salmon. Your salmon. And because you would not intervene to save him.”
“Marged—” he said.
“You killed my husband,” she said. “You did not put a bullet through his heart, but you killed him. And