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Their visitor mumbled something grim.
“Mama,” repeated Tamara in a different tone. “I might have considered the source.”
Merlin covered his face with his hands.
“I see that it was wrong of me to kiss you,” Tamara continued. “I am sorry.”
He let his hands drop and stared at her.
“Would you like to sit down?” Sarah asked him. “Are you hungry?”
This earned her nearly identical appalled glances from Kenver and his sister, but Sarah couldn’t help pitying the man. And half their meal had come from his garden.
“Elys roasted a chicken,” Merlin replied.
Trust him to know that. “Yes, she did.” Sarah signaled to Jowan, who had stuck his head around the door at the first sign of shouting and listened to every word. The boy disappeared, returning a few minutes later with a loaded plate. Merlin/Oliver began shoveling in food with his usual concentrated intensity.
“Why in the world are you calling yourself Merlin?” Tamara asked him after a while.
“Like Merlin, I retreated into the wilderness and lost myself.” He made a grand gesture at their surroundings, a little diminished by a forkful of potato.
“You call this a wilderness?”
“It was untiltheycame and made it all…”
“Comfortable,” suggested Sarah.
“I did not want to be comfortable! I had nothing to live for.” He bit into a chicken leg and pulled off the meat with his teeth.
“Are you telling me you’ve been living in a cave for eleven years?” Tamara looked astonished.
“He broke into the house and lived here,” Kenver put in.
Merlin/Oliver finished the leg and set down the bone, gazing at it on his plate. After a bit, he shook his head. “I took two other tutoring positions after the Tremarthen lads went off to school. And then I was a schoolmaster for a while.” He shuddered. “That was wretched.”
Sarah noted his accent grew more and more educated as he spoke about this work.
“I quit that and came back to this neighborhood where I had been happy.” He shot Tamara a tragic look.
“So how long have you actually been at Tresigan?” Kenver asked.
“Two years?” His hands moved aimlessly. “I lost track.”
The rest of them sat at the table as if they were not sure what to say next. Sarah felt as if she’d stumbled into a play, like those her friend Tom acted in London.
“Well, you know, Mr. Welden,” Tamara began finally. “We should call you Mr. Welden now, should we not?”
“Or Oliver perhaps, since we are part of the same household,” Sarah suggested, only slightly mischievously.
“No,” said Kenver and Merlin at the same time, then looked at each other in unhappy surprise.
“No to Mr. Welden or…”
“I am Merlin,” he declared, his face set in stubborn lines.
“Very well, Merlin,” replied Tamara. “If you have really been pining after me all this time—”
“Do you call me a liar?”
