Longing (16 page)

She nodded and smiled her farewell to Verity.

“You are going to teach me and play with me tomorrow,” Verity said. “It is going to be fun. Only one more sleep.” And she bounded off up the hill.

“I shall see you tomorrow,” Alex said. Without thinking he did what he very rarely did with any woman. He took Siân Jones's hand in his and raised it to his lips. She looked startled and blushed deeply before turning sharply and continuing along the river path past the coal mine without saying another word.

Looking after her, he felt a welling of loneliness that was becoming almost familiar to him. They were worlds and universes apart. The only way they could ever come together was physically, and he
was not even sure of that. Not by any means sure. But it would not be enough anyway, he realized uneasily. He wanted her liking, her friendship, her respect. He wanted them to be able to meet on terms of equality. He wanted them to inhabit the same world.

He sighed and set off upward in pursuit of his daughter.

O
WEN
coaxed the fire in the grate back to life with a poker and set the kettle to boil. Siân took a seat by the table and watched him. It was not often Owen brought her to his own house, but the clouds had moved back over with evening and it was trying to rain.

“Just for a cup of tea, is it?” he had said, taking her arm and leading her toward the house.

It was one of the few houses in the valley that had only one occupant. It was kept clean and neat, Siân saw, though there was a pile of unwashed dishes on one end of the table. Angharad came in twice a week to clean and tidy. Sometimes, when Siân had still been working in the mine, she had almost envied her friend her job—except that she could never have brought herself to go into Josiah Barnes's house. It was after Angharad had gone to work for him that she had stopped seeing Emrys—and that she had seemed almost embarrassed with Siân.

This could be her home next summer, Siân thought. No, it would be her home. She had no doubts about marrying Owen. She wondered if she should get up and set out cups and saucers, but she left it to him to entertain her. She did not belong here yet.

“How did the meeting go?” she asked. She was insatiably curious about such things at the same time as she dreaded to find out that trouble was brewing.

“Well,” he said, “everyone was angry, of course, that the Charter was rejected out of hand. What we were asking for was so
reasonable. But no one was prepared to leave it at that. I was glad to find so much strong feeling and determination.” He turned to the dresser and lifted down two clean cups. No saucers. Siân hid a smile.

“What is going to happen, then?” she asked. “Not another petition, surely. Isn't it a waste of time, Owen?”

“There will be something,” he said. “Some big demonstration, probably. Some show of solidarity. Signatures on a page sometimes do not mean a great deal to men without imagination. Perhaps it will mean more to see the men behind the signatures.”

Siân's heart sank. “Here?” she said. “Demonstrations in Cwmbran?”

He shook his head and sat on a chair at the table. “That would be meaningless,” he said. “It would be on too small a scale. It has to be something bigger, Siân. Some big march by all the men of all the valleys on one place. Newport, probably. John Frost is from Newport.”

“John Frost?”

“He is the leading Chartist here in Wales,” he said. “He is the one trying to organize everyone. We will give him our support. We will inform him that he can count on us. We are going to invite him here to speak to us.”

“Here?” she said. “Just to the men who were at the meeting this afternoon, Owen? You don't mean another mass meeting on the mountain, do you?”

“Everyone has the right to listen to what Frost has to say,” he said. “If everyone is to be expected to march when the time comes, then everyone must have a chance to listen and decide. Everyone will have to be persuaded.”

The kettle was boiling. He got up to make a pot of tea.

“Oh, Owen,” Siân said, “is it wise? There could be trouble over it. The Marquess of Craille knows about the last meeting. He has decided to do nothing about it, but he will not be so indulgent the next time. He has said that the government will be expecting trouble and will not stand for it.”

Owen sat down at the table again, leaving the tea to steep in the pot. He looked at her steadily. “He has spoken to you about it?” he asked.

“By way of a warning, not a threat,” she said. “I believe he is genuinely concerned, Owen. He wants to work on a more local level and find out what needs doing here to improve life and conditions. Perhaps it would be better that way. Perhaps something really would get done.”

Owen laughed, though he did not sound amused. “And you believed him,” he said. “I wondered why he suddenly decided to put in an appearance here, Siân, when we all know the opinion the bloody English have of the Welsh. Haven't you wondered? Haven't you worked it out for yourself by now? He is a part of the government. He is a member of the House of Lords, isn't he? Parliament never had the smallest intention of discussing the Charter and perhaps passing it into law. Craille came here to keep us in line, Siân. To show muscle. To confuse us and quieten us down if he can—we are only the ignorant, barbaric Welsh, after all. He came to squash us if we will not be quietened. He's a bloody snake. You had better not listen to a word he has to say.”

Siân felt shaken. Was it true? It sounded so very reasonable. “He seemed genuinely concerned,” she said, “about the fact that there are no waterworks in town. About the large number of children who die here.”

“And when did he express this concern?” He was looking closely at her.

She flushed. “After Sunday School,” she said. “He and his daughter asked me to take a stroll beside the river with them.”

He was quiet for a while before getting up once more to pour the tea. It was almost black, Siân saw. He had used far too much tea. But perhaps he liked it that way. It was something she must remember. She found the silence uncomfortable. She felt guilty for agreeing to take that walk, though it had been quite innocent with Verity present.

“And they came to chapel this morning and you sat with them,” Owen said at last. “There will be people who saw you walking with them.”

“I was not trying to hide,” she said. “Was there something wrong in doing so, Owen?”

“I had to fend off several remarks this afternoon,” he said. “All of them jokes, Siân. Certainly nothing to take offense over. No one would have dared. But all the jokes concerned a handsome Englishman and the loveliest Welshwoman in Cwmbran.”

“Owen,” she said, “it was with Lady Verity Hyatt I sat this morning and with her I walked this afternoon. I am going to be her governess. Of course I am going to be in company with her a great deal.” She knew she was not speaking the strict truth. It was with the marquess she had walked this afternoon. Verity had amused herself.

“Just be careful,” he said quietly. “Sometimes, Siân, it is possible to get a bad reputation even when you are innocent. And people will remember who you are.”

She was on her feet in an instant, white with anger. “What is that supposed to mean?” she hissed at him, hands on hips. “How dare you, Owen. How dare you!”

He got up too, his chair scraping on the bare floor. He took her wrist in one large hand. “Calm down,” he said. “Hush,
fach
, or Mrs. Davies next door will hear and think I am beating you.”

“People will remember who I am,” she said, her eyes flashing at him. “The daughter of a whore, Owen? Is that it? Like mother, like daughter? They will expect me to whore with him? The Marquess of Craille?”

Owen made a sound of frustration and pulled her into his arms. She found them about her like iron bands when she tried to pull free. “Spitfire,” he said. “I am only warning you of what could happen if you are seen too often in his company as well as his daughter's. You know what people can be like with their nasty gossiping tongues. I trust you.”

“Do you?” Anger was gone from her suddenly to be replaced by guilt as she remembered that the Marquess of Craille had kissed her twice, and that the second time she had participated fully in what had developed into something more than a kiss.

“Cariad.”
His arms had loosened and were cradling her. “I have had an idea. I have put it from me before because things are unsettled
this year and I wanted them all to be behind us before we came together. But I think it would be wise for us to have the wedding this year after all. Next month, perhaps. And then no one will dare even joke about you and Craille.”

For a few moments Siân felt weak with longing. This year? Next month? She could be living here next month as Mrs. Owen Parry? She would have her own home, as she never had before. She would be the wife of one of the most skilled and respected workers in Cwmbran. Perhaps within another month or two she would be expecting a child. She would belong fully and finally. She would be able to reverse the process she had begun when she had accepted her new job. Owen would not want her to work outside the home once she was his wife.

“Owen,” she whispered.

He kissed her firmly, almost fiercely. “I don't want you there,” he said. “I thought I did when it meant getting you out of the mine and when I thought it would mean someone in that house to keep an ear open for what might be going on. But seeing you with him in chapel this morning,
fach
, made me realize that I don't want my woman within a mile of him. We will marry, will we, and you will come here to keep house for me and to warm my bed. And to have my little ones.”

She turned her head to rest her cheek against his shoulder, and closed her eyes. She wanted to be rescued. She wanted it more than anything. She had felt the pull of her attraction to the Marquess of Craille in chapel during the morning and on the walk beside the river during the afternoon. She could still feel a strange somersaulting of her insides when she remembered walking close beside him, her arm linked through his, Verity playing ahead of them, just as if . . . She had begun to like him. She had begun to believe that he really was concerned about the people of Cwmbran. She was so very gullible, if Owen's interpretation of events was correct.

She needed rescuing. She wanted to be rescued. She willed her body and her emotions to feel the solid safety of Owen's arms and body.

“I want little ones,” she said. “You cannot know how it hurt, Owen, when my Dafydd was stillborn.”

His arms tightened comfortingly. “We will have sturdy sons like their father and beautiful daughters like their mother,” he said. “I will talk to the Reverend Llewellyn, then? Next month, is it,
cariad
?”

She quelled an unreasonable panic and nodded against his shoulder. She had felt no panic when agreeing to marry Gwyn. And yet she wanted Owen more than she had wanted Gwyn. She needed him more.

He nudged her head from his shoulder and kissed her again. He was smiling and looking happy. Siân felt panic once more and guilt once more. His kisses did not ignite her as the marquess's had done. She was agreeing to marry him as a type of escape, she thought. And yet that was not so, either. She loved Owen. She had had her eye on him and had begun stepping out with him and had hoped for marriage with him long before the Marquess of Craille had taken up residence at Glanrhyd Castle.

“Come upstairs with me,” Owen said, and she realized with a jolt of surprise as she listened to his husky voice and looked into his heavy-lidded eyes, that he was aroused. “We will make love in bed, will we,
cariad
? Where you will lie every night as my wife. Where I will put our little ones in you. Where they will be born. We will make love there now to seal what we have agreed to this evening.”

She gazed back into his eyes.
Yes
, an insistent voice in her head urged her,
do it. It will be good. With Owen it will be good.
It would make her safe. She would belong to him. And it was something she both wanted and needed. It had been almost three years. All that time without what Gwyn had given her almost nightly. She had liked it. It had made her enjoy her womanhood.

“
Cariad
,” Owen said, “I am on fire for you.”

“I could not face Gran and Grandad or the Reverend Llewellyn with our news, Owen,” she said, “if I had already lain with you.” They were foolish words and surprised even her. “They will be pleased, I think. They will expect us to remain pure.”

He held her for a few moments longer and then surprisingly
chuckled and let her go. He seated himself at the table again and picked up his cup. “There is a good chapel woman you are, Siân Jones,” he said. “It is like trying to storm a fortress with you, isn't it? Drink your tea before it gets cold. I will take you home as soon as you are finished. Expect punishment on our wedding night, though, girl. I will keep you awake and hard at it all night. It is a promise.” He grinned at her.

Siân blushed. “Thank you, Owen,” she said, weak with relief, dismayed at her own inability to save herself from she knew not what. “You are a gentleman.”

“I will ask you to repeat that,” he said, “the morning after our wedding. If you are not too exhausted to speak, that is.”

She gulped down her tea without sitting down again. She took her shawl from behind the door and wrapped it up over her head and about her shoulders, though she could see through the window that the rain had come to nothing.

“Owen,” she said, her back to him, “I want to belong to you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.” Her words were passionate, almost desperate. As if she was trying to convince herself. She felt his knuckles brush the back of her neck through the shawl.

He opened the door and took her arm through his as they stepped outside.
“Fach,”
he said, covering her hand with his, “be careful. I am happy for you that tomorrow you will go to work that is not dirty and will not exhaust you. But stay away from him if you can and don't listen to anything he will say to you. He is the enemy. It is as simple as that. Remember that the man who pretends to want to help us has already lowered our wages.”