Chapter Twenty-Two
Grace’s remorse was palpable.
It had Owen tangled in knots. At night, they still shared a bed—although it wasn’t unusual to find Grace asleep in the adjacent room, next to the baby, in the morning—but they avoided each other during the day.
Partly, Grace was tired and wanted to stay near the baby, and partly, Owen had a lot of business away from the house, especially now that Grace was less able to run the estate.
But there was a distance between them that Owen didn’t like and didn’t know how to close, an impasse Owen couldn’t figure out his way through.
On a warm morning, toward the end of the summer, they had breakfast together in the morning room, and Grace handed him a couple of envelopes.
“What are these?” Owen asked.
“The letters I wrote you that I could not post before Dafydd was born. I want you to read them.”
Owen stared at the envelopes. Each had his address in London neatly printed on them. “I will,” he said.
“The doctor is coming today to see about my recovery,” Grace said.
“Good.” Owen slid the letters into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I will read these later.”
“All right.”
Owen polished off his breakfast and left the room.
He decided to make himself scarce while Grace visited with her doctor.
He had no particular business today, so he got on his horse, Glyndwr, and decided to ride out to the castle.
On the way, he mulled over this tangle. On the one hand, he knew Grace was sorry.
On the other, he didn’t know how he could trust her again.
And he couldn’t figure out a way back from that.
After securing his horse in the stables near the castle, he found Morfudd overseeing some work on the exterior, where some old stones looked to be crumbling.
“Ah, Owen. What a pleasure to see you! I heard a rumor you had returned to our ancestral homeland.”
“I apologize for not coming to see you sooner,” he said, leaning over to give Morfudd a kiss on the cheek. “My wife did an admirable job with the estate in my absence, but I had some odds and ends to attend to. And, as I’m sure you know, she has not been feeling well.”
“I’m sure you also spent some time with that adorable baby.”
“Yes, that as well.”
“I was about to stop for luncheon. Would you care to eat with me?”
“I’d love to.”
When she worked on the castle, Morfudd often stayed in rooms in a squat, three-story building across the street from the castle that had been owned by her late husband.
The first floor was taken up by a shop from which Morfudd sold trinkets to castle visitors.
She led Owen to her flat above the shop and then went about putting some water on to boil. “I’ll make tea,” she announced.
“All right.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I suppose a little. You promised luncheon.” Although, truth be told, Owen hadn’t eaten much lately. He’d felt sick to his stomach since he and Grace had talked a few nights before, since he realized he didn’t trust her anymore. That was the crux of their current woes.
Morfudd produced a loaf of bread and some salty butter, and she also offered a bit of ham and some pickled vegetables. “I’ve got some tea cakes I stole from your kitchen when I came by to check on your wife yesterday. Shame you were not there.”
“I was meeting with the Williams men to discuss some mundane matters related to shearing. I enjoy Arthur’s company, but I enjoy yours more.” He smiled.
Morfudd grinned. But then she seemed to take in his overall countenance. “I take it you and your wife are at odds about something.”
Owen sighed. He wouldn’t disclose Grace’s secret identity, but he did say, “Did you know she did not tell me about the baby? I found out when I arrived in Wales.”
“And this bothers you.”
“Grace and I exchanged letters weekly. I read every one at least twice. Could she not have at least mentioned her condition?”
“What brought you back to Wales? Grace and I have been handling most of the estate business, so it wasn’t that.”
“The Parliament session was nearing its end, but honestly, the haste was because she stopped writing.”
“The birth was very hard on her. Did you know that?”
He nodded. “Yes, I was told.”
Morfudd reached across the table and put her hand on Owen’s. “Truly, it was more than just hard on her. I arrived at the house shortly after the baby was born. She was in a bad way. We thought we’d lost her. I’ve never seen so much blood.”
“Oh, God.” Owen hadn’t known it had been that bad. He’d gathered she’d bled a lot if she’d had to replace the mattress and bedding, but he hadn’t known she’d nearly died.
“Thankfully, she survived. And she dotes on that boy. I know your mother had all the maternal instincts of a stone, but Grace took to motherhood quickly, and she loves that little baby deeply. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you he was on the way, but I think she’s been punished enough.”
“That’s not how this works. She wasn’t meant to do penance. She lied by omission, and her not trusting me with that information is deeply hurtful. So how can I trust her back?”
“What are you really upset about?”
“Is that she lied not enough? It wasn’t just the baby. There were other things she didn’t tell me about. They aren’t my secrets to share, but they were things I found out about on my own and not because Grace told me.”
“Look, my marriage was short, sadly. And George and I had time to court and get to know each other before we married, so we weren’t strangers.
Obviously I never had children. And I’ve had no notion to remarry.
I enjoy my friends and my castle and I’m perfectly content in my life.
So I don’t know what it is like to be in a marriage like yours.
But I’m guessing that you are upset because you care about her, and thus you view her sins of omission as a betrayal. ”
“Yes,” said Owen.
“And thus your relationship is not what you expected.”
“That is exactly it.”
“But, and I know you know this, but let me remind you: you have not been here. You drove your wife out here, deposited her in your great house, and then went back to London.”
“It’s what she wanted.”
“And you would do whatever your wife wanted.”
“Yes. Within reason.”
Morfudd leveled her gaze at him. “Have you asked her what she wants now?”
“She lied to me.”
The tea kettle started to whistle. Morfudd got up to turn it off. She poured tea for herself and Owen. “So you have not yet gotten past feeling betrayed.”
“How else should I feel? Yes, I was in London, but I thought we’d grown close.
All those letters. They were precious to me.
And I came home because I was worried about her, but I was also hoping to have this happy reunion, and while I find Dafydd to daily be a delightful surprise, I can’t seem to reconcile the fact that she didn’t tell me about him. Not once did she mention it.”
Except she had, hadn’t she? Owen suddenly remembered the letters in his pocket. He reached into his jacket and pulled them out.
“What are those?” Morfudd asked.
“Letters Grace meant to post but didn’t because the baby came early.” Owen turned them over in his hands. “She gave them to me this morning.”
“You should read them.”
Morfudd busied herself with preparing luncheon while Owen read the letters.
The first one said everything: they were to have a baby, due around the end of August, which was now.
The baby had come early, Owen had already done the math on that.
This letter was dated at the end of July, so Grace must have thought she’d be giving Owen just enough time to get back to Wales.
The letter also confessed that she was Gerard Makepeace.
She said at the end that all of this was news she would have liked to tell him in person, and she hoped they could discuss when he came home.
The second letter was dated a week after Dafydd’s birth, and it was informing Owen that he had a son and that Grace greatly regretted her earlier letter had not made it into the post with enough time to summon Owen home for the birth.
From all this, Owen inferred that Grace had put off telling him as long as she could so that she did not take him from his business in London—perhaps because she knew he’d drop everything and rush home as soon as she told him about the baby—but suddenly the baby’s birth was almost upon her.
If only she’d gotten that first letter in the mail sooner.
When he finished reading, Morfudd was staring at him expectantly.
He grunted. “I wish I’d been here when she went through labor. I don’t know if I could have helped, but maybe I could have offered some comfort. By her delay in informing me that the baby was on the way, she didn’t let me make my own choice about whether to come.”
Morfudd nodded. “So she was wrong. I understand why you are angry. I suppose the question is, what will you do about it? Has she apologized?”
“Several times, yes.”
“But you are still angry.”
Angry was the wrong word. Hurt was closer. And the letters helped soothe it somewhat. It was clear that she intended to tell him. “I am upset.”
“What did she say in the letters?”
“She told me about the baby and some other things. She had been reading my letters and knew I was doing some difficult work in Parliament. She didn’t want to force me away from that, wanted me to have my moment to do something meaningful, so she postponed telling me about the baby as long as she felt necessary.
And, of course, that was too long, it turned out, because the baby came early. ”
“Was it important? Your business in Parliament?”
“I thought so at the time, but it wasn’t more important than my family. And it came to nothing anyway.”
“What happened?”
Owen gave her a brief summary of the situation with the compromise road bill and the Luddites and how Owen wanted to act, but how no one else in Parliament seemed interested.
He concluded, “As we so often do, we sent troops instead.”
“That is the English way.”
“But I am not English.”
“No. Perish the thought.”