“Thlann-nearis about two hours’ ride to the southwest.” Vee grinned at her sister as she corrected her poor attempt at the proper Welsh pronunciation. “I consulted a map because I knew you would ask. If we leave now, we should arrive by one.” She nudged his leg again, but unsubtly this time. “I say we strike while the iron is hot. What say you, Giles?”
Staying close to her sister was proving impossible because Vee either galloped on ahead with Dalton or hung back, confirming all Diana’s suspicions that the traitor was doing it on purpose to leave her alone with Giles.
An unusually subdued Giles who was lost in his own thoughts.
She hated the silence. Hated more that hers had caused it.
“We have made good time.” As they crossed a bridge, she pointed to a sign. “Only five miles left. I hope we find something so that I can tell you that I told you so. My gut tells me the Welsh connection is significant, and my gut is never wrong.”
He said nothing for a moment then turned to stare at her. “I am sorry about what I said yesterday. It was a moment of madness that I have regretted since.”
She covered the unexpected slice of disappointment with a sunny smile. “Thatisa relief.”
“I am sure it is.” His gaze was cold. Wounded. Desolate.
“It was a fraught situation and emotions were running high.You have so much going on, Giles, I doubt you know which way is up, so I forgive you for your moment of madness and I am glad we can put it behind us.” Of late they seemed to put a lot behind them. So much that it felt as though they were towing boulders through a bog.
“You see, that’s the darndest thing…” His dark eyes seemed to bore into her soul. “I have spent every second since pondering what I feel and why I feel it, and the situation and the state of my mind have nothing to do with it. They have amplified things certainly. Perhaps even hastened things, but to quote you, the roots sprouted long before the shoots. I know I shouldn’t have said anything—I should have taken the unfortunate truth to my grave—and Lord only knows I have no expectations, but this is a fraught situation. My emotions are running high. I am exhausted and so sick of all the lies I have to tell that it turns out I do not have the capacity to lie to you—even though I know that I should.”
“What are you saying?” Part of her wanted to hear it. Needed to hear it. Yearned with every fiber of her being to have to face her own truth. The other part, the suspicious, jaded, terrified part, wanted to stick her fingers in her ears and run screaming into the hills.
His smile was so hopeless she could not bear it. “That even though circumstances and my own conscience dictate that I can never have you, the cruelest irony of all is that despite the futility of it, I love you with all my heart, Diana. I have since you first took my breath away, and I shall love you until the last breath leaves my body.”
And with that he kicked his own mount into a gallop and left her dumbstruck on the road.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Remind me again what we are looking for?” Dalton surveyed the graveyard of St. Llyr’s. It was a question Giles was glad the reprobate had asked because he was buggered if he knew, either.
Not that he understood much of anything anymore. Somewhere between the duke’s death and this impromptu trip to Wales he had been sucked into a whirlpool that spun faster and faster and sucked him deeper and deeper every day. As he had no energy left to fight it and had no clue where it was taking him, he had apparently decided to live moment to moment, doing and saying whatever popped into his addled head.
“Any link to Harpenden that we can find—no matter how tenuous.” Diana had already begun the search and was busy brushing away a tuft of overgrown grass from a headstone to read the inscription. She had taken his second ill-considered and futile declaration with the same stony silence as the first. To be fair, he hadn’t expected anything else when the words had tumbled from his mouth. He only knew, in that strange moment, it had been imperative to say them. He was buggered if he knew why, unless he was caving under the pressure and going mad. Lord only knew he had enough incentive.
“So a needle in a haystack.” Dalton rolled his eye, then asked the second question that was on the tip of Giles’s tongue. “Anybody here speak Welsh? Because from what I can see, almost every gravestone is written in it.”
“A detail that might well work in our favor, as the English will stick out like a sore thumb.” Diana offered Dalton her most withering look, as if she were the only one present with a brain, careful not to so much glance in Giles’s direction despite his position next to his butler. “The numbers are the same, though, so just hunt for 1796.”
“Or 1795.” She might be keen to ignore him and the emotions simmering between them, but Giles did not have the energy to. “A grave needs to settle for at least six months before you can set a headstone into it.”
The brief flick of her eyes his way followed by the begrudging nod told him that she hadn’t thought of that, so he patted himself on the back for not being entirely useless in the fearsome Sentinel’s revered presence.
Beside him, Vee gasped. “Good heavens… why on earth did that not occur to us before? When is your birthday, Giles?”
“The duke always said it was the third of September, but then he also said that the duchess was my mother, so I wouldn’t take that date as gospel.”
The youngest Merriwell’s lips moved as she did a quick sum in her head. “That fits! You came into the world at the beginning of September 1795, and the receipt for the headstone was for the end of February six months later. That cannot be a coincidence.”
Knowing that Diana did not believe in coincidences, he surveyed the haphazard stones all around him. “You think my mother is here?” That prospect unsettled him some more because he hadn’t realized until that second how much he had hoped she wasstill alive. “You think she died having me?” That possibility made him queasy as the whirlpool sucked him deeper.
As if she read his mind Diana decided to cease ignoring him long enough to smile in sympathy. “Women have babies knowing the risks, Giles. I doubt she blamed you for it.”
“Easy for you to say when you didn’t kill her.” In case she was right his fingers went to the dented pocket watch hanging from his waistcoat, seeking reassurance from the stranger inside it who already felt so dear.
“I know.” Her lovely green eyes clouded. “This was never going to be easy and I did warn you that you might not like what we found. But this is still just a theory, Giles, and could well be a wild goose chase, exactly as you said. Your mother might still be around for you to meet.”
Grief swamped him as the truth seemed to bleed from the watch. “She isn’t.”
“Why don’t we split up?” Sensing a potential thaw in relations, the matchmaking Vee surveyed the area. “Dalton and I can take that half of the churchyard and leave you and Diana to this side.” She shot him a look that said she was trying to help himstrike while the iron was hot. “We’ll get through it all quicker that way.” Then she yanked the butler away.
