Longing (19 page)

But a servant forced a change of plans by arriving in the schoolroom with the direction that Mrs. Jones was to bring Lady Verity down to the drawing room as soon as possible and stay there with her for tea with his lordship and his guests.

Siân sighed inwardly as she hurried to clear away brushes and paint pots with Verity and then whisked the child to her room in order to help her change her dress and wash her hands and comb her hair. There would be no practice after all today. How very dreary.
There was another whole day to live through before she could touch that most glorious of all pianofortes she had ever seen.

Perhaps she had misunderstood, she thought as she descended the stairs to the drawing room, Verity's hand in hers. Surely she would not be expected to stay to tea. She would merely accompany Verity into the room and then make her escape. It would be quite pleasant to be home an hour earlier than usual.

Despite herself she found her heart pounding as they approached the doors to the drawing room and a servant opened them from the outside. She would see him again. For a few moments she would be in the same room as he. It was a thought and a feeling she tried to quell by thinking hard about Owen.

And then they were inside the room and even the shock of seeing him again paled beside the necessity of standing calmly while being introduced to Sir John and Lady Fowler and Miss Tess Fowler.

I
T
was the most acutely embarrassing moment of her life, she was sure. It was several years since she had set eyes on Sir John Fowler. Strangely enough, she had never come face-to-face with either his wife or his daughter. She had only ever seen them from a distance. Tess had been a child the last time Siân saw her. Siân could remember her mother crying the day news of Tess's birth was brought—seven years after the birth of her own daughter. Perhaps she had thought that that was one thing she had been able to do for him that his lawful wife could not.

“I would like you to meet Verity's new governess,” the marquess was saying now after his daughter had made her curtsy to his visitors. “Mrs. Siân Jones. She is quite a gem, educated in England, able to give instruction in music as well as in everything else. And also in Welsh, which is important to me as I explained to you before.”

Siân fixed her eyes on him. She was not even sure if the ladies knew her, though surely they knew of her existence. Sir John had visited her mother twice every week.

“May I present Sir John and Lady Fowler to you, Mrs. Jones?” the marquess said. “And Miss Tess Fowler? Sir John owns the Penybont works, but then I daresay you know that already.”

“Yes.” Her lips felt stiff and did not easily obey her will. She looked at Sir John and inclined her head to him. “How do you do?” She could not look at the ladies, though she could tell by their very stillness that they did indeed know.

“Mrs. Jones?” Sir John had got to his feet on their entry and
bowed to her now. He looked rather pale, Siân thought. He seemed thinner than she remembered him. She marveled now, as she always had, that he was her father. She felt no kinship with him. She wondered why her mother had loved him—she undoubtedly had done so. He had always seemed cold and humorless to Siân.

“I am sure Mrs. Jones is grateful to be employed in your service,” Lady Fowler said with a hauteur that would have done justice to a duchess. “We must thank her for bringing dear Verity down for tea.”

It was an attempt at dismissal that Siân would gladly have accepted. But the door had closed behind her and the marquess was motioning her to a seat, and she understood that she really was expected to stay for tea.

It was a dreadful half hour. Siân sat in silence, pointedly ignored by both ladies, while she felt the eyes of both men on her a great deal more than was comfortable. The only saving grace was that Verity was as exuberant and as talkative as usual and smoothed over what might have been a very awkward occasion for all of them. Siân wondered if the marquess could feel the atmosphere of tension in the room, and did not know how he could not.

Her eyes strayed to Tess at one point. The girl was small, dainty, pretty, blond. Dear Lord, Siân thought, they were half sisters. It seemed impossible to believe. And then she glanced at Sir John and found his eyes on her. Their last bitter encounter came back to her mind. If she would not marry Josiah Barnes, he had told her—and it was a better match than she could ever have hoped for—then he would wash his hands of her. Not only would she not marry Barnes, she had answered, but she would not touch a penny of Sir John's money for the rest of her life. No, not if the alternative was to starve. Two headstrong people battering their wills against each other. Perhaps after all she had inherited something from him.

Verity's conversation centered embarrassingly about Siân and what they had been doing together during the past week.

“. . . and I went to Sunday School with Mrs. Jones and met lots of boys and girls and they all spoke Welsh but I didn't mind because I am going to learn it too. I already know lots of words. Don't I, Mrs.
Jones? And Mrs. Jones is going to sing in the eist—in the
eisteddfod
. There, I got it right. I think she is going to win this year though she only came second last year. But she has the best voice I have heard. And I am going to get Papa to let me go with her over the mountain because it is the most fun of anything the whole year, she says. Don't you, Mrs. Jones?”

“Dear me,” Lady Fowler said, interrupting this excited monologue, “I am sure your papa will allow no such thing, Verity, dear. Such amusements are very well for your papa's Welsh workers, but they are hardly the thing for a young English lady.”

“I have never mingled with Papa's laborers,” Tess added. “It would be lowering, dear Verity. You have to remember that your papa is their master and that they all look up to you as the lady of the manor.”

Siân was aware that her shoulders had straightened and her chin had lifted only when she caught the marquess's eye. He was looking steadily and unsmilingly back at her, though Tess was simpering at him for his approval.

“Mrs. Jones does indeed have a lovely voice,” he said. He had said very little for half an hour. “But then, being Welsh, she has an unfair advantage over the rest of us poor mortals. Will you sing for us, ma'am? The one about the bird?”

Verity clapped her hands.

If the floor would only open up, Siân thought, she would gladly drop through it. Had he not sensed her extreme discomfort? Or the intense, spiteful dislike of his lady guests? She looked up at him as he got to his feet and held out a hand for hers. She had not even had a chance to feel the embarrassment and discomfort of being in company with him. Only a little more than a week ago in this very room . . .

“We should be leaving soon, John,” Lady Fowler said.

“In a little while,” he said. “Let Mrs. Jones sing to us first.”

Siân set her hand in the marquess's and allowed him to escort her to the pianoforte. At least this week, she thought, she could play with greater confidence. But she would rather be anywhere else on
earth than where she actually was. She set her fingers on the keys and began to play the opening bars of “
Y Deryn Pur
.” The marquess stood quietly behind her for a while after she began to sing and then went back across the room to join his guests.

She thought he had come back again, but when she looked up from the keyboard, it was to find Sir John Fowler standing close to the pianoforte.

“Well done,” he said when she was finished. “Will you sing another?”

“Yes, please, Mrs. Jones,” the marquess said.

Siân looked at her hands and realized she had no choice. Saying no would cause more of a stir than complying with the request. “‘
Llwyn On
,'” she said, naming the other competition piece that she was to sing at the
eisteddfod
. “‘The Ash Grove.' It sounds lovelier with a harp accompaniment, but the pianoforte will do.”

Lady Fowler began to talk rather loudly when she was only partway through the song, Siân heard. She continued anyway.

Sir John was still standing to one side of the instrument when she finished. His wife was talking to the marquess, pointedly pretending that she had not even noticed the ending of the song. Tess was talking to Verity and laughing.

“Your voice has matured,” Sir John said quietly. “It is lovelier than ever.”

“Thank you.” She did not look up at him.

“I have heard,” he said, “that you are going to be married again.”

“Yes,” she said.

“To a puddler?” he said. “Not a miner this time?”

“Yes,” she said, “to a puddler.”

“Your first marriage, of course,” he said, “was a thumb of the nose to me. You went as low as you could go.”

The old antagonism she had always felt toward him was back. “Gwyn was a worthy and hard-working human being,” she said. “I married him for myself. I was fond of him. I was grieved by his death and by the death of our son.”

“I would not have allowed you to go back underground if you
had let me know you were with child,” he said. “I did not know until it was too late.”

“You would have had no say in the matter,” she said angrily. “You are not a part of my life.”

“Siân—” he said.

“John.” Lady Fowler's voice, sounding brittle, hailed him from across the drawing room. “Do come along. We have already stayed far too long for good manners. The marquess will think we have grown rustic indeed. Do come out to the carriage with us, Verity, dear, and wave us on our way.”

She acted as if Siân was not even in the room. Sir John bowed silently to her before turning away and joining his wife and daughter at the other side of the room.

“Wait here, please, Mrs. Jones,” the marquess said as he left with his guests and Verity.

She sat on the pianoforte stool, staring downward at the keyboard, feeling numb and very close to tears. He was her father. Her father! He had not even known that he was to be a grandfather. Because she had not wanted him to know. Because he was the last person she would have thought of informing. Because it should have been his business to find out what was going on in her life. But he had not cared. Not a word when she had married Gwyn. Not a word when he had been killed. Not a word when her baby—his grandson—had been born dead.

Siân reached out a finger and dusted off an already spotless key. She did not look up when the drawing room door opened and then closed quietly again.

*   *   *

He
had invited her down to tea purely to convince Lady Fowler and Tess that he really had hired a competent governess for Verity and that his daughter was happy with his choice. They had been hinting since their arrival that Tess was still willing to come two or three times a week to instruct Verity—not for remuneration, of course. They had both been hasty to insist that it would be a labor of love and not by any means in the nature of employment.

Perhaps too, he admitted to himself, he had sent up the invitation because it gave him an excuse to see her again after more than a week of keeping himself very strictly away from her. He had even refused to take Verity back to the chapel on Sunday. He felt almost starved for a sight of her and for the distinctive sound of her voice with its musical lilt. He should not have given in to temptation at all, of course, but then he had the other reason for sending for her.

He certainly had not intended to arouse any sort of situation to cause anyone discomfort. It was quite unexceptionable to have his daughter's governess accompany her to tea. No one could be expected to take umbrage over having to take tea with a social inferior under such circumstances.

Perhaps things were different in Wales, he thought at first. So much was different in Wales. Perhaps there the social lines were observed more strictly. Certainly the atmosphere in his drawing room seemed thick enough to be cut with a knife, and Lady Fowler lost no opportunity of making Siân feel three inches high.

Alex blessed his daughter for being her usual garrulous self and for seeming totally unaware that anything was amiss. And something definitely was. It was not just that he was in a different country and did not understand its ways.

He thought he understood after he had tried to cover up for a particularly cutting rudeness of Lady Fowler's by suggesting that Siân sing to them. He noticed how Fowler got up and crossed the room to listen to her. He noticed how he talked quietly to her after she had finished singing. Even from across the room he could see the tightness and anger in her face, though he could not hear anything that was said—Lady Fowler and Tess were too loudly busy ignoring her very existence.

She was a beautiful woman. An unusually attractive woman. He knew that to his own cost. She was attractive to Fowler too. Perhaps there had once been something between them. Perhaps there still was. The thought made Alex clamp his teeth together with unreasoned fury. And perhaps now he was molesting her, though he was speaking quietly to her. Perhaps he was making suggestions . . .

And then another thought struck Alex.

Of course. But of course! It would explain everything. The whole ghastly atmosphere that had pervaded tea so that he was not certain if he had eaten food or cardboard. But it seemed an unbelievable idea. Looking at the two of them over at the pianoforte, it seemed unbelievable. Looking at Tess, it seemed impossible.

When the Fowlers were taking their leave, he took Verity by the hand to lead her outside to see them on their way. He asked Siân to stay where she was. It was perhaps not a wise thing to have done, he thought as he took his daughter back upstairs to the nursery and left her in the charge of her nurse. Siân had been looking upset, but he was hardly the one to comfort her. And the rest was none of his business.

It was going to be dangerous to be alone with her.

He stepped into the drawing room and closed the door quietly behind himself. She was still seated at the pianoforte. She did not look up.

“The second song was lovely,” he said. “It was familiar. ‘The Ash Grove,' did you say? What did you call it? It began with that most unpronounceable of Welsh sounds.”

“‘
Llwyn On
,'” she said. “It sounds lovelier with a harp accompaniment.”