Longing (13 page)

Owen Parry looked at it as if he suspected some trap and then lowered himself gingerly into it. He looked steadily into Alex's eyes. Alex found himself wondering quite irrelevantly if the man was gentle or rough with Siân.

“Parliament has rejected the Charter,” he said bluntly. “I had word this morning.”

Parry's jaw hardened for a moment and then his face went blank and slack. Stupid. “What is that to me?” he asked after a short silence, which Alex had decided not to break.

“A great deal, I would imagine,” he said. “Since you campaigned for it and chaired a large meeting up on the mountain for it.”

Still the blank, stupid look. The man shook his head slowly. “I don't know what you are talking about,” he said.

Alex sighed. This was not going to be easy. “I am not setting a trap,” he said. “I am as sorry as you that it was rejected. Or perhaps not quite as sorry—I believe it was very dear indeed to your heart. I watched your meeting. If I had been going to take any disciplinary measure concerning it, I would have acted before now. But I need to know what your future plans are likely to be.”

Owen Parry had a gift for making himself appear totally without character or intelligence. If Alex had not seen him on a few previous occasions, he would surely have been convinced. He waited again for an answer.

“You have the wrong man,” Parry said. “I don't know anything about any Charters. What are they anyway? And what does Parliament have to do with them? I don't know anything about any meeting on the mountain. I don't know what it was you saw. I should get back to work if you will excuse me.”

“Not for a while,” Alex said. “I pay your wages. You will not lose them for the hour or so you are away from your job this morning. Let me put it this way, then. The government is expecting trouble and in no mood to take it. Having said no, they have to flex their muscles and show that they mean no. It would be unwise to do anything further—for a while anyway. Let it rest for a year or two.”

Owen Parry stared at him. He shrugged. “Whatever you say,” he said. “Whatever it is you are talking about. My English is not as good as it could be. I don't understand too well what you are saying.”

“I would hate to be put in a position of having to enforce law and order when I am basically in sympathy with you,” Alex said.

The man merely shrugged again.

“Don't put me in that position,” Alex said quietly.

Parry laughed. Just as if he really did not know what was going on. Just as if he really was all at sea in a foreign language.

Alex sat back in his chair and surveyed his visitor for a few silent moments. Siân's lover. He assumed they were lovers. They had been walking hand in hand up into the hills last night. It was unlikely they were doing so merely for the exercise. Besides, he knew from
experience how mere kisses and the light roaming of hands could turn her hot and ready. Had she been like that last night for Parry? It was none of his business. Absolutely none whatsoever. He pursed his lips.

“Perhaps we should work on a local scale rather than on a national one for a while,” he said. “Perhaps we could talk, you with some other representatives of the people, and I. There are many things I do not understand, many things that disturb me, many that I need explained. Perhaps we could talk. See what we could do together to improve conditions, to make life happier and more prosperous for all of us. Would you care to attend such a meeting if I arranged it?”

For a moment the mask of stupidity slipped and Alex glimpsed naked hatred and incredulity. He felt quite taken aback. Was he, then, so much the enemy that he was hated and his every word disbelieved? Then the mask was firmly in place again.

“I don't know anything about meetings,” Parry said with a laugh. “Who would come with me? And what would I say? You have the wrong man. I just do my job by day and mind my own business by night. I don't need to be made happier. Or more prosperous. I have my wages.”

“You are content that they have gone down ten percent?” Alex asked.

The man shrugged yet again. “I take what I am given,” he said. “I am not a troublemaker.”

Alex drummed his fingers on the desktop. “What do you know about Scotch Cattle?” he asked.

Owen Parry laughed. “This is Wales,” he said. “Not Scotland.”

For the first time Alex felt patience deserting him. “If you were as stupid as you are pretending to be,” he said, “I doubt you would have a job as one of Cwmbran's most skilled workers, Parry. Do you know who any of them are? I would be willing to bet you do. It would be strange indeed if one of the leaders of a movement did not know the identities of any of the enforcers of that movement's decisions.”

“Look”—Parry spread his hands before him, palms out—“we don't mess with Scotch Cattle. We don't talk about them. And we certainly don't know them.”

“They are disembodied spirits,” Alex said. “Totally unknown to anyone but themselves. I have a message for them, Parry. I trust it will reach them somehow. I will not have my people terrorized. Chartists want freedom and democracy for all British men. Well, then, let Chartists grant that freedom of choice to its followers and to those who choose not to follow. Perhaps I will let the property damage and the whippings of two nights ago pass this time. But if it happens again I will hunt down the Scotch Cattle, especially their leader, and I will see to it that they are treated as they treat their victims—with a strong dose of their own medicine. See that they are informed of that.”

The blank look became blanker, if that were possible. “How am I supposed to do that?” Owen Parry asked.

Alex got to his feet. “I am sure you will find a way,” he said curtly. “Good day, Parry. You may return to work.”

Owen Parry got to his feet without a word and left the room. Alex felt the childish urge to pick up a book and hurl it after him. Instead he curled his hands into tight fists at his sides. The man looked as strong as an ox. Alex just wished—damn it, he just wished he had an excuse to fight him. He wanted nothing more at this precise moment than to punch that blank, stupid look off the face of the Chartist leader.

God, he wanted to fight someone.

*   *   *

Siân
went up to Glanrhyd Castle in the evening. The summery weather seemed at last to have broken. It was a cloudy, chilly evening, with a suggestion of rain in the air. But she had promised to go and so she would do so. She still convinced herself as she walked through town and past the ironworks that she had not quite made up her mind. She had not even told Gran where she was going when she left the house. But deep down she knew that she had decided.

She wanted the job badly. She hated the one she already had, and
no telling herself that other women did it and had no choice and that she wanted to be like other women could take away one iota of the hatred. There had been an accident during the day—a cave-in, as usual. It was not fatal this time or even very serious—one man had broken his arm. But Siân had been close when it had happened and her heart had chilled to his single scream and she had felt the paralyzing terror that all miners felt at such moments that the whole seam was going to come down on their heads and crush them or bury them alive.

She wanted to be Lady Verity Hyatt's governess. She liked teaching and was good at it—she taught at Sunday School. She liked children. And she liked cleanliness and fresh air and civilized living, though she felt almost guilty admitting as much.

Only one thing made her seriously hesitate. And it was a big something. She found him so very handsome and attractive—as what woman would not? And she knew that she had attracted him—on a purely base and physical level. A man like him would not think twice about seducing a woman like herself. Sir John Fowler was such a man. And yet, to be fair, she had to admit, the marquess had been the one to end their last embrace on the mountain. She had been witless with desire. It was a humiliating and rather frightening admission to make to herself. She would be playing with fire by taking a job in his home.

She was shown into the same room as before in Glanrhyd Castle. It was a large, high-ceilinged, square room, with an ornately painted ceiling and heavy-framed portraits hanging on the walls. There was a carpet underfoot. She had once heard that there were seventy-two rooms inside this building. To house one man and his daughter. It seemed almost obscene.

And then the door opened and he stepped inside. She felt rather as if she had been punched in the stomach. He was so very immaculately and elegantly dressed and so very blond and handsome. And he looked so formal and remote as if he could not possibly be the same man who had kissed her and touched her and desired her on the mountain.

“Mrs. Jones,” he said briskly, advancing into the room as someone closed the door behind him, “you did come. Good. What have you decided?”

He had called her Siân on the mountain. He had obviously put the encounter behind him. This was a business meeting. His manner was totally impersonal.

Well, then, she would act the same way. She looked him calmly in the eye. “I would like to give it a try,” she said. “But on one condition.” She had known all along that she could do it only on that one condition.

“Oh?” He lifted one eyebrow and clasped his hands behind him. Those two gestures reminded her quite decisively of the fact that they were from two different worlds. He was utterly the autocrat, unaccustomed to having his will so much as questioned.

“I will not live here,” she said. “I will continue to live with my grandparents.”

He regarded her silently for a moment. From very blue eyes. Beautiful, compelling eyes. She wished she had not come. She hoped he would be unable to accept her one condition.

“I can see no serious objection to that,” he said, “though I believe you would be more comfortable here.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I would not.”

“Very well,” he said. “You will start next week. At nine o'clock on Monday morning. You will consider your other employment terminated as of this moment. I shall see to it that you are paid for the full week.”

She felt a rush of elation. And then a wave of panic. It all seemed so irrevocable suddenly. And she was still not sure she wanted to come.

“How did it come about,” he asked her, “that you were educated at a private school in England?”

She had not prepared an answer to the question. She stared at him for a moment. “Someone paid for it,” she said.

“Oh?” Again there was that autocratic lifting of his eyebrows.

She clamped her teeth together and stared back at him.

“My curiosity is not to be satisfied,” he said. “But your case is unusual, Mrs. Jones. Are not most people here illiterate?”

The question angered her. It was the old English perception of the Welsh as barbarians.

“Most people can at least read and write,” she said. “They learn at Sunday School as children. Most people would like to learn more, but there are no schools and no money to send their children to school elsewhere.”

“Except for that spent by your benefactor,” he said. “Why did my question anger you? Is it a sore point with you that there are no schools?”

“Perhaps some of the children would prefer an alternative to laboring in the works or the mine,” she said. “Perhaps some of them would like to be clerks or lawyers or—or preachers.”

“I am new here,” he said quietly. “Give me time, Siân.”

She flushed at his use of her name and was aware for the first time that they were quite alone in the room. And what did he mean? Give him time for what?

“How is the boy?” he asked.

It was another reminder of their last encounter. She felt her flush deepen.

“He has been at work,” she said, “though he should not have been.”

“I suspect,” he said, “that his slender, boyish form hides a great deal of courage and stubbornness. Why else would he not have paid his penny? There have been no repercussions? No other threats?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“If there are,” he said, looking at her very directly, “or to anyone else of your acquaintance, I would be grateful if you would let me know.”

No. Oh, no. She almost took a step back but stood her ground. He was not going to be using her as a spy any more than Owen was. She was coming here to teach his daughter.

He smiled suddenly. “You now look,” he said, “exactly as your lover looked when I summoned him here this morning to question
him about the Chartist movement and about the Scotch Cattle. I could have sworn through most of our interview that there was no one at home behind his eyes. I am not the enemy, Siân, though I suppose I cannot expect you to believe that yet.”

He had summoned Owen? But he had told her that he intended to do nothing about the meeting he had witnessed on the mountain.

“The Charter has been rejected by Parliament,” he said softly. “Had you heard?”

She closed her eyes and swallowed. Oh, dear Lord God. What now? She dreaded to think of what was likely to follow. She shook her head.

“Siân,” he said, “give him some advice from me. Will you? Tell him not to do anything that will force a confrontation with the authorities. It is a confrontation these men cannot win. There are other slower, more patient ways to go about bringing change. He is a stubborn man. I believe it is a Welsh trait. But give him that advice. Perhaps he will listen to you.”

It was a firm and implacable warning. Quietly and courteously expressed but quite unmistakable. She felt weak in the knees and dizzy for a moment.

“Damn you,” he said more quietly still. “Damn you, Siân Jones. Do you want him in jail? Or dead? I'll not wait for your answer. You people are expert at giving the silent treatment. Go now—you are dismissed. You will return on Monday. Verity will be pleased by your decision. She said good night to me in Welsh last night. Is it really
noster?
As in
pater noster?