Chapter Three
Dessert had beenserved, and all congratulations and well wishes to the families were given, though none were returned. Drystan didn’t expect to be acknowledged, but it was required of him to make the necessary pleasantries. He cursed his duties, wanted to roar at the politeness.
One breath, another, until even that became impossible. His entire world was in this room, and it was shattered before him. He wasn’t so naïve to think John wouldn’t propose, but Drystan believed he had time to turn the estate’s fortunes around, so Elizabeth could rightly refuse!
The management of the estate fell on his shoulders, and he failed her. All he had now were these last moments she’d been pleading with him with her delays and her eyes and he—
Drystan refused to suffer anymore. A quick nod to Galoncryf to confirm he could be dismissed; he pivoted out of the room and barrelled through the house. Servants jumped out of his way, but he didn’t care for their comfort. He couldn’t maintain any control if he spent one more breath in that room.
He was only a man, after all, a boy charmed beyond all reason by a brave girl who, with both hands, seized life within a Christmas pudding. He was also a coward to leave Elizabeth to her fate. Her stricken eyes, her trembling lip. Her distress gutted him. All the more because he couldn’t provide the comfort she needed. It did little to relieve his distress that her mother was by her side while the rest congratulated the soon-to-be union.
It did nothing to ease his heart that Mrs. Galoncryf, Deryn, looked at him with pity in her eyes as if she knew what Elizabeth meant to him.
Cursing again, he stormed out of the house toward the empty fields. The night was pitch black, cold with nary a star. He let his feet carry him when his eyes could no longer see the landscape clearly. What care did he have if it rained ice and he stepped in mud? Falling into an abandoned cellar and breaking a leg might distract him from a true, never-ending pain.
Drystan could do nothing for his fate. He loved Elizabeth, and he knew she cared for him in return. But that was all it would ever be. John Evans had proposed, Galoncryf had accepted. It didn’t matter if Elizabeth was revolted by John. It was a sound financial pairing. Two years of bad weather had made Galoncryf vulnerable. Galoncryf was doing what needed to be done for the estate.
However, if Galoncryf had listened to him three years ago when he first suggested diversifying the estate, this wouldn’t be an issue. Already, other estates were changing practices since taking livestock to higher or lower land wasn’t efficient, not to mention concentrating grain in one location weakened the estate to weather calamities.
With snow on the ground, his clothes and shoes not suitable for the elements, but Drystan kept on. He slipped, almost fell, stumbled more than once, but his lungs and heart burned and, until that eased, until he could breathe, he’d stay outside. The way he felt, he would cover the entire estate.
Galoncryf’s land was large but not vast. Others would say the estate needed a bailiff, not a steward; however, tradition had always called his position a steward, and so it continued even when he took over after his father’s death. Him taking the position was unusual. Though he trained well, his father wasn’t of fine family nor had any connections. He also had no formal study.
What he had, however, was fate when his father’s sudden death during a particularly bad snowstorm necessitated someone taking over…and that’s what he did. Within those first days, Drystan discovered his father’s health had been more on a decline than he realized. The outer reaches of the property hadn’t been regularly inspected. Coin and opportunity were lost.
By the end of that first winter, he’d proven himself, and Galoncryf had allowed Drystan to continue on. Immediately, Drystan attempted to change the estate’s fortunes.
Though Galoncryf allowed him to be steward, he didn’t listen to Drystan then, nor did he listen to him when he brought it up again a year later when they had coin to buy land, crops, livestock not only in Wales but Scotland and England, too.
He didn’t blame Galoncryf for not listening to him the first time. After all, he’d only assumed Steward duties when his father had died six months before. However, two years had passed since then, and now, there was no certain way to increase the land. He resented Galoncryf for not listening to him when it could have saved Elizabeth from John’s proposal.
If only his father had better stewardship! If only he could have turned everything around in time!
Then Elizabeth would be yours?He hated that mocking, insidious voice. Even if the estate prospered, Elizabeth wouldn’t be his. He was a servant; she, the daughter of a landowner. But he wished, fervently, to protect her, or at least for her to marry someone she wanted, though that mere thought sent him into some sort of fevered rage.
Slipping from the gravel paths to crisp short grass, he could almost make out the outline of the barns to his left and across a fallow field, the crooked oak tree in the distance. Such an odd tree, but it provided shade on those rare hot days, and so it stood alone—nary a tree or shelter by it.
He changed direction. It didn’t take long to reach it. By then, his feet were almost numb, and he had reached one of the borders. If he desired, a few more steps would have him stumbling across the Evans’s estate.
He felt like stomping on it; a useless, helpless anger he gave into. Kicking the snow, the rocks, digging his frozen heels deep in the mud and, when that wasn’t enough, he reached down and threw whatever he could clasp until his hands were torn up as much as the ground.
This tree… Its roots spanned across the estates. At some point in the past, Galoncryf’s estate had been happily merged, but somewhere between medieval times and now, a misunderstanding had occurred with this border, and new alliances and marriages had been made. The land eventually sold to Evans. If he had his wish, he’d go back in time and repair those alliances or perhaps persuade that Galoncryf to purchase it. But what did he know of the past or of persuading a Galoncryf? Nothing!
Kicking again, his foot connected with something immovable, and he fell. Forget the past, he should have kissed Elizabeth, ruined her for any decent marriage, and had her for himself. Frustrated, he booted the immovable object again.
Again, it didn’t move. That need to rail at fate forced him to his knees, and he dug with his hands. This rock, this root, this object would move. This he could do., But the moment he clasped it, he realized it wasn’t a rock or a branch or a root. It was small but a substantially thick chest. Too dark to see, he dug because fate was answering him.
*
‘What is it?’Elizabeth rubbed her tired eyes but couldn’t quite wrap her thoughts with what was before her. Drystan was covered in muck from his hair to his shoes. In the process of walking through the kitchen door, he littered the floor, doors, everything with dripping water, mud, and snow as he dropped a warped wooden chest on a table.
But Drystan being disorderly when he strived for orderly wasn’t the oddest thing. What was odd was earlier when he threw pebbles at her shutters until she looked out into the night from her window. She hadn’t been asleep but very tired.
His frantic pointing toward the kitchens finally registered what he was doing there and what he wanted. Throwing on some shoes and a dressing gown, she swept through the house toward the kitchens. The hour was late, or early, enough no one else was awake, else her state of dress would have been scandalous. Not that dubious behavior mattered since her marriage was accepted. Because it was a financial decision, it didn’t matter what she did now. John Evans had what he wanted.
Stepping on only the non-squeaky floorboards and staying in the shadows, Elizabeth crept out of the manor house and along the well-worn path to the kitchen buildings. This wasn’t their first secret meeting in the dead of night, but it was the first he’d instigated. Something of that made her heart hammer. Did Drystan realize, like she did, what a mistake they made? They should have kissed and run away together when they could!
Standing next to him, one lone candle and a crusted chest resting on the table in front of her, she wasn’t too certain what Drystan thought. She wasn’t certain what she should think.
