you ask me why I hate you? There is no one in this world I hate as I hate you, Geraint Penderyn. Are you going to have me arrested now? Perhaps I will live to see Van Diemen’s Land, as Eurwyn did not.”
“I will see you home,” he said.
“I will see you in hell first,” she said.
“You need not walk at my side,” he said. “You need not make conversation with me. You need not see me. But I will see you safely home.”
She stared at him for a long while before turning sharply and striding away in the direction of home. He followed behind her, keeping his distance, keeping her in sight so that he might protect her from any danger that presented itself.
He watched her let herself in through the gate when she reached Ty-Gwyn and stayed where he was until she had entered the house without looking back at him.
He still did not know quite what had happened, though it was not difficult to piece together the main events. Eurwyn Evans must have been caught poaching for salmon on Tegfan land. He had been arrested and taken before the nearest magistrate for trial. He had been found guilty and sentenced to seven years transportation. And he had died in the hulks.
Marged had written to him, begging him to intervene on her husband’s behalf. He could have done so. He was not a magistrate, but it was on his land Eurwyn had been caught. All he needed to have done was to have written to the appropriate authority explaining that Evans had been fishing with his permission.
But he had never read the letters. His steward at Tegfan had been instructed not to bother him with estate business, and his secretary in London had been instructed to intercept anything that came directly from Tegfan and deal with it himself. He did not know if Marged’s letters had been presented at Tegfan or sent to London. He did not know which servant had withheld them from him. But it did not matter. Whoever it was had done so on his instructions.
It was his fault that the letters had not reached him.
It was his fault that Evans had been transported.
It was his fault the man had died.
Yes, he had in effect killed Marged’s husband.
By the time he arrived home, Geraint was bone weary. Even so he doubted that he would sleep. But he must lie down. Perhaps somewhere between now and dawn sleep would catch him unawares and give him some moments of oblivion.
But when he had undressed and entered his bedchamber and threw back the covers to climb into bed, he found himself staring down at black ashes over which a pitcher of water must have been dashed.
Geraint began to realize the enormity of the problem.
His efforts to come to some arrangement with the other owners of the road trust and the man who had leased it from them came to nothing at all. No one was willing to budge an inch. And everyone was downright angry with him for even suggesting that change was necessary. Was it not enough that the lower classes were seething with discontent? Was it not enough that in other parts of West Wales the rioting and gate breaking had resumed after three years and even in their own area Mitchell’s hayricks had been burned?
It was time to stand firm, not time to display even the slightest sign of weakness or wavering.
Besides, Geraint came to realize, the trust of which he was part owner was only one of several in the county. Even if he could gain concessions for his people in the immediate area of Tegfan, they would find the same oppressive tolls to pay as soon as they ventured farther afield—as they must in order to reach markets and in order to haul lime.
In fact, he came to realize that the whole problem was too large for him. If he lowered rents on his land, countless farmers on other people’s land would still be suffering. If he gave back the tithe money in services to his people, no other landowner would do so for theirs. The poor would still grow poorer and the workhouses would become increasingly places filled with human despair. He toured the one in Carmarthen with Sir Hector Webb and an alderman of the town. They displayed it with pride. It haunted his dreams for the coming nights. The upland hovel he had shared with his mother had been paradise