He was going to have to stay.
Of course, there were people he had still not called upon at the end of those few days of intensive visits. One of them was Aled Rhoslyn. Geraint had felt reluctant to renew his acquaintance with his former friend and partner in crime. But if he was to stay for longer than a mere week or so, then the encounter could not be avoided forever.
Finally one afternoon he walked to the village and stepped inside the blacksmith’s forge. He had heard a hammer ringing on the anvil from well down the street. The sound was almost deafening once he was inside. Aled had his back to the door. He was hammering out what looked to be a metal wheel rim. A boy at his side, apparently a young apprentice, drew his attention to the customer and faded nervously into the background.
Aled had not changed a great deal. He certainly had not shrunk in size. He was still only two or three inches taller than Geraint, but he was broader, with the powerful arms and shoulders necessary to his trade. He still had rather too much fair hair on his head and hazel eyes that seemed always to be smiling. His face was still good-humored and good-looking.
Geraint observed him as he glanced over his shoulder and then set down his hammer and straightened up and turned slowly, wiping his hands down his large leather apron as he did so. It was obvious from his expression and his whole manner that he was as reluctant for this meeting as Geraint. There was no noticeable hostility in his eyes, but there was a wariness there, a certain embarrassment.
“Aled,” Geraint said, “when are you planning to start the hard work for the day?”
Aled smiled slowly. “I did not want to be out of breath and sweating when you came calling,” he said. “I thought I would do some light chore while I waited.” But he hung back rather awkwardly.
Geraint walked toward him, his right hand extended. He was absurdly nervous, afraid of one more rejection. And this one would hurt most, apart from Marged’s. “How are you?” he asked.
Aled looked at his hand before taking it. But his clasp was firm enough when he did. “Well,” he said. “And you?”
Geraint nodded. “You are married?” he asked. “There are half a dozen eager little blacksmiths on the way up?”
Aled laughed, but he flushed with what looked suspiciously like embarrassment. “I am not married,” he said.
“Then you must have learned to run faster than you used to,” Geraint said. It had always been a source of pride to him as a child that he could outrun his friend even though Aled had been a year older and a head taller and a stone or two heavier.
Aled laughed. And looked awkward.
Geraint spoke from impulse. “You have a great deal of work to be done this afternoon?” he asked. “Can it be left? Come and walk with me in the park.”
Aled looked down at the wheel rim on his anvil. He pursed his lips, and Geraint could see that he wanted to refuse, that he was reaching for an excuse.
“We can even walk about there openly without having to skulk about among the trees avoiding mantraps,” Geraint said. “We will no longer be trespassing.”
Aled grinned, genuine amusement in his eyes. “Why not?” he said. “Welcome home, man.” He lifted the heavy apron off over his head.
And yet, Geraint thought ruefully as they left the forge together and walked down the street in the direction of Tegfan park, Aled was uncomfortable. He would a thousand times rather be back in his forge than on his way for a stroll with his former friend.
Aled Rhoslyn had not really expected Geraint ever to return to Tegfan, even though he was now the Earl of Wyvern. It would be too difficult for him to face the strange facts of his childhood and boyhood. The child Geraint had never been disliked as much as he had thought. He had been pitied more than anything, as had his mother, although, of course, the strict moral code by which most of them lived as nonconformists had forced them to reject the latter publicly. Most of the children had secretly admired the bold and almost charismatic little ragamuffin.
Most people had not disliked him during his boyhood after the earl had somehow made the staggering discovery that his long-dead son had been legally married to Gwynneth Penderyn when the two of them had run off together. They had been married before the conception of their son. A few of the meaner-minded, of course, had been spiteful with envy and a few others had not been slow to notice that Gwynneth Penderyn—she was never known by her married name of Marsh and Geraint had legally changed his name back to hers as soon as he reached his majority—was sent to live alone in a small cottage on the estate and was never either invited to the house or visited by Geraint.
Most people had not disliked him during his brief visit after the death of his mother. But everyone, almost to a person, had felt awkward with him, not knowing quite whether to talk to him as if he were Geraint Penderyn or to show him deference as Geraint Marsh, Viscount Handford. The fact that he had been both had led to an impossible situation.
But Geraint had always felt disliked. Not that he had ever been self-pitying about it. But he had built defenses, of which Aled, as his one close friend apart from Marged Llwyd, had been aware. The defense of not caring a fig for anyone as a child. The added defense of aloofness as an eighteen-year-old and the firm hiding behind his newly acquired Englishness and his gentleman’s manners.
Aled had not expected him to return. And over the years he had somehow managed to divorce in his mind his feelings for Geraint as friend and his feelings for the Earl of Wyvern as owner of the land on which he and his acquaintances and neighbors lived and worked. The Earl of Wyvern was that impersonal figurehead who represented the aristocracy, the English owners who cared nothing for Wales or the Welsh except as a source of wealth to themselves. Matters had come to crisis point. The whole system seemed designed gradually to squeeze out the small farmers and replace them with those who could better contribute more and more to enriching those who were already rich.
Aled had never thought of himself as a leader or as an agitator. He had been content to let Eurwyn Evans be both. But Eurwyn was dead and Glynderi and its neighborhood had needed a leader, someone with both firm convictions and a level head, and several people had approached him to take on the position and join the secret committee that had formed to organize protest in almost the whole of northern Carmarthenshire. Marged had asked him and he had remembered that Marged had suffered a great loss.
And so he had agreed. And had somehow blanked his mind to the fact that he had committed himself to organizing protest against his friend among others. He walked now beside Geraint beyond the village and onto the driveway leading to the house of Tegfan and then off it and across a wide lawn—and knew with a dreadful discomfort that Geraint was both his friend and his enemy, and that probably it was going to be impossible for him to remain both those things.
“Aled,” Geraint said suddenly, and it was only then that Aled realized they had been walking in silence, “don’t.”
The few words they had exchanged had all been spoken in English, Aled realized. Just as they had been ten years ago.
“Don’t what?” he asked uneasily. If they must talk, let it be on safe trivialities.
“Don’t treat me as if I were the Earl of Wyvern,” Geraint said.
“But you are.” He knew what Geraint meant but did not want to know.