Longing Read Online Free PDF Page A

ironworks.
    â€œA proper Englishman,” Emrys said, seated at one side of the dying fire, his legs stretched out, almost touching those of his father, who was seated at the other side. “Wasn’t he, Dada? You should have seen him, Mam. Strutting about the works like a prize turkey, nodding about at all of us just as if he was really interested in us instead of just in the money he makes off our sweat. I almost spit at his back, but Barnes was watching like a hawk.”
    Does he have blond hair?
Siân wanted to ask. But she just rubbed hard at a plate that was already dry. She would bet a week’s wagesthat he was blond. And tall. The man who had been up on the mountain. The man who had kissed her.
    â€œNow, now, Emrys,” Gwynneth Rhys said to her son. “We have not heard any bad of him have we, now? And the fact that he is English is not his fault, poor man. We will have a little respect for your employer in this house, if you please.”
    â€œWe do not know any bad of him?” Emrys looked at his mother incredulously. “When he and his uncle before him have been bleeding us dry all our lives, Mam, and hiding behind the coattails of Barnes? When we work like dogs just to feed ourselves and keep a roof over our heads and are threatened with the sack if we try to get together to improve our lot? I’ll give him bloody marquess and English airs.”
    â€œEmrys!” His father’s frown was thunderous. “You will apologize to Mam and to Siân for using such language in this house. You may be thirty-five years old, but I am not too old and feeble to take you out the back and blacken both your eyes.”
    â€œSorry, Mam, Siân,” Emrys said sheepishly.
    â€œPerhaps he is not a bad man,” Hywel Rhys said. “Perhaps there will be some changes around here once he has seen for himself and assessed the situation.”
    Emrys snorted. “There is stupid you are sometimes, Dada,” he said. “Nothing will ever change. We exist to make the rich richer, more is the pity. That is why the Charter is our only hope.”
    â€œI think,” Gwynneth said, squeezing out the cloth over the bowl of water as if to wring every last drop out of it, “Dada had better blacken those eyes for you after all, Emrys. There is disrespectful you are, calling your own father stupid.”
    â€œIt is what comes of stopping going to chapel,” Hywel said. “Emrys has become godless.”
    Emrys had given up on God, Siân thought sadly, when his wife and infant son had died in a cholera outbreak ten years ago—and two years before Siân came to Cwmbran to live. Apparently he had taken exception to the Reverend Llewellyn’s preaching at the funeral that such was the will of God and that the bereaved husband mustgive praise that the two of them were in heaven where they were needed more.
    Emrys had stood up in chapel in front of most of the people of Cwmbran and sworn profanely before pushing his way out of the front pew and past the coffins of his wife and son out of the chapel, never to return.
    There were those in Cwmbran who still looked at him as if they expected to see horns sprouting from his head.
    â€œI get tired of listening to fools,” Emrys said now. “Though the Reverend Llewellyn did go up the mountain last night, to give him his due. And prayed long enough that I expected to see dawn in the sky before he had finished.”
    His mother clucked her tongue but said nothing.
    They were going to talk about the meeting, Siân thought. And blank terror gripped her again. She could not understand why the whole day had gone by and nothing had happened. But something surely would happen. It was the Marquess of Craille himself who had witnessed the meeting and who had had a good look at least at Owen and at the Reverend Llewellyn. And he would recognize her. He would perhaps think himself able to squeeze more names out of her.
    Perhaps