he brought you safely here. The road offers many perils to the unwary traveler.”
Geraint had been half-afraid, half-hopeful that it would have been Marged who had opened the door to him a few minutes before. But Marged was only two years his junior. She must be twenty-six now. She would no longer be here at the manse. She was probably not even in Glynderi.
“I trust Miss Llwyd is well,” he said. She was probably no longer Miss Llwyd.
“Marged?” The minister stopped rubbing his hands. “Well indeed, I thank you, my lord, the dear Lord be praised. Busy, of course. Always busy. It do not seem right for a woman to be doing a man’s work, but she do refuse to come back here to live with her dada, though she would be very welcome, I always tell her. But she do feel responsible for Eurwyn’s mam and gran, and I can only honor her for that.”
“Eurwyn?” Geraint raised his eyebrows. She was married, then? He had known she must be by this time. The slight sinking of the heart that he felt was involuntary.
“A nasty business, that.” The Reverend Llwyd looked almost flustered and he drew off his glasses to polish them with a large handkerchief. “It was handled in the only way possible, of course, by the authorities. It is a pity the outcome was so tragic, but it was no one’s fault. These things happen. They are in the Lord’s hands.”
Eurwyn Evans? Old Madoc Evans’s son? The child Geraint had kept himself well beyond reach of Madoc’s boot after once being kicked painfully in the backside with it. Marged had married his son? And he had died in some tragedy?
“She lives on the farm?” he asked.
“At Ty-Gwyn, yes,” the minister said. “The White House, that is,” he translated, perhaps assuming that the Earl of Wyvern had forgotten every word of Welsh he had ever spoken. “Still white it is, my lord. Marged whitewashed it just last spring. She is a good worker, I will give her that.”
He tried to picture Marged living on a farm, doing the work of a man. Whitewashing the longhouse. Refusing to move back home because there were two other women who presumably could not carry on without her help. Marged, who had loved books and music, who had played the harp well enough to draw tears to the eyes and yearning to the heart, and whose singing voice had been unequaled in a country of lovely singing voices.
But yes, he could imagine that it was true. There had never been anything soft or shrinking about Marged. Quite the opposite. She had been the first child to adopt him when he was seven and she was five and she had spied him hiding in a hedgerow behind the village, wistfully watching while she gathered berries with a crowd of other children, all singing and laughing. He had been a mere waif, with skinny arms and legs and rags and bare feet. She had smiled at him and spoken politely to him as if he were a real person and had offered him a palmful of berries.
She had continued to be his friend even after her father, the Reverend Llwyd, had explained to her that Geraint Penderyn was not a suitable playmate for the children of Glynderi. And even at the age of five she had done so openly, defying her father, scorning to deceive him.
Aled had become his friend too. Aled and Marged. Until he was torn away from them and forbidden to have any further dealings with them, even by letter, though his mother had taught him to read and write.
He got to his feet now to take his leave of the Reverend Llwyd and received with a curt nod the man’s bow and his effusive thanks for the honor of the visit.
Chapter 3
HE had intended making one or two other calls in the village. One in particular. Aled Rhoslyn had succeeded his father in his blacksmith’s business a few months before Geraint came home for his mother’s funeral. And he still was the village blacksmith. His forge was beside the chapel. Geraint had intended to call there.
But he found himself unexpectedly reluctant. One of his few good memories of childhood was Aled’s friendship. But time had passed. They would have grown apart. Geraint was content with his life as it now was, and he had a number of close friends. But he did not want to be confronted with the knowledge that