“Car—?”
“Car, as in carry,” he said, “and trev as in the name Trevor. The emphasis is on the first syllable. The r in both syllables is slightly rolled. It is the first Welsh word I have learned, and since it will probably also be the last, I am determined to pronounce it correctly. It means home.”
“You have gone through that explanation and learned a whole new foreign word,” she said, laughing, “just to inform me that most people work at home?”
“No,” he said. “Cartref is the name of a particular home. Let’s ride along to the end of the street. The road crosses the bridge there, the one that gives its name to the village. Though how anyone can fish off it when the river that flows beneath it is so close to the sea I do not know.”
“Perhaps no one does,” she said. “Perhaps it is so named because it leads across to where all the fishing boats are moored.”
They passed a few people on the street, and Samantha inclined her head to them and smiled. She guessed that her visit here would be the subject of several conversations for the rest of the day. She wondered what the nature of those conversations would be. Would it be remembered that her great-aunt had raised a half-Gypsy girl and that that girl had been her mother? But of course it would. Mrs. Price knew it. Would these people resent the fact that she had inherited the cottage and come to live here? Or was she being oversensitive?
She would find out soon enough, she supposed.
It was a picturesque bridge, humpbacked and built of gray stone. A shallow river bubbled beneath it on its way to the sea. She gazed ahead to the small boats bobbing on the water and thought it one of the prettiest sights she had seen. Would she ever have a chance to go out in one of those boats?
“Ah,” Ben said. “I was told I would be able to see it from here.”
“See what?”
He was not looking at the boats. His horse was turned the other way, and his gaze was fixed upon something inland. She turned to look too.
There was no need for him to answer her question. There were low hills a mile back from the sea. Halfway up one of them, nestled within a horseshoe of trees, was a great mansion, which gleamed white in the sunshine. Even from this far away she could see that it had large windows on all three floors, diminishing in size from the ground floor to the top. There must be magnificent views from every one of those windows. A bright green lawn, which was obviously well kept, swept down the slope to the plain. The rest of the garden or park was hidden from view.
“That is Cartref?” she asked. “It looks very grand indeed, does it not? I did not expect to find any large estates outside of England. To whom does it belong, I wonder. Do you know?”
He did not answer. His horse had become suddenly restless, and he was concentrating upon bringing it under control.
Then the truth struck her, rather like a fist colliding with her stomach.
“Oh, no,” she said.
He looked apologetically at her, as though the answer to her question was his fault.
“It is my grandfather’s?”
“He is as rich as a nabob, Samantha,” he told her. “He owns coal mines—plural, I understand—in the coal mining valleys in the east part of the country. He inherited those from his father. He also owns ironworks in the valleys close to Swansea, where industry has been springing up and thriving.”
If she had not been on horseback, she might well have swooned.
There were seagulls crying overhead, sounding almost human.
“And I have always imagined,” she said, “that he was a laborer or a wanderer, a ne’er-do-well who married a professional nomad and then, when she abandoned him, foisted his child upon a sister who had somehow gained ownership of a run-down hovel. Why did my mother never tell me?”
“I suppose she would have,” he said, “if she had lived until you were older.”
“I would never have come if I had known,” she said.
“Why not?”
She wheeled her horse about to face him. “He had no legitimate reason for abandoning my mother. He had the home and the means with which to raise her himself. He had the means with which to go after her when she went to London, and to attend her wedding, and to visit her after her marriage. He had the means to come to see me. And what, do you suppose, is the tidy sum that was left my great-aunt and then passed to my mother and so to me—with the interest it has gathered? Ben, how wealthy am I? I do not want to be wealthy. Not in this way. I do not want any of it.”
“Think a minute.” He was annoyingly calm. “That money, however much it is or is not, was left to your great-aunt by your great-grandfather. None of it came from your grandfather.”
She frowned at him for a few moments. He was right, of course. But even so … Oh, all the sparkle and joy were gone from the afternoon.
“I wish I had never known,” she said. “I almost wish I had not come.”
“Where else would you have gone?” he asked her.
“I could have married you,” she said, “and wandered footloose and carefree for the rest of my life.” But the look on his face restored some of her humor and she smiled. “I had a premonition that I would be opening Pandora’s box by coming here. Once that box had been opened in the myth, there was no stuffing all the troubles back inside it, was there? I cannot now leave here and forget what I have learned. Am I talking sense?”
Her grandfather had not wanted her mother or her. John had not wanted them either. All she had ever had were her mother and father, and they were both gone. She felt awash with a terrible sense of aloneness. Yet nothing had changed. As Ben had said, everything was as it had been ten minutes ago and last week.