Samantha’s cup, held between both her hands, was still. Her eyes had lifted briefly to her grandfather’s and then returned to her cup.
“We were happy for a year or so,” Bevan said, “though we had to keep traveling about. She did not like to be in one place for very long. And then your mother was born, and only a few months after that my father died—my mother was already deceased. I had to take over the running of the businesses. I had been working in them, though not as much as I had before I met Esme. The baby needed a stable home. Esme did not like it, but she understood and she tried to settle. She tried hard. We went on for a few years, but then the Gypsies came back—her own group. She spent some time with them while they were here, and she went to say goodbye to them on the last night. She never came home. I thought she had stayed the night, but when I went looking the next morning, they were gone and she with them. I didn’t go after them. What was the point? She had been withering away at Cartref here. She died four years after that, but I did not know it for another six.”
Samantha leaned forward and set her cup down carefully on its saucer before sitting back in her chair. Ben wished he were sitting beside her.
“I took to drink,” Bevan said. “I made sure your mother had a good nurse and everything she needed, and I made sure that I had a good manager who would look after running the mines, and I dedicated my life to forgetting and dulling the pain—at the bottom of a glass of liquor. A year or so after Esme left, I was in the library one night drinking and feeling sorry for myself as usual. Except it was worse than usual. It was the anniversary of our wedding. After a while I hurled my glass against the wall beside a bookcase, and the glass shattered. And someone started to cry. Gwynneth had come downstairs without her nurse’s seeing her. And she had curled up under a table just below where the glass hit.”
Samantha spread both hands over her knees and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers.
“The next morning,” Mr. Bevan said, “I took her to Dilys at the cottage where you now live, Samantha. We had never seen eye to eye. She had thought me wild and irresponsible as a boy. She had thought my marriage insanity. She was furious when she discovered that our father had left almost everything to me when she was the one with the business head. But I took your mother to her and asked her to take the child until I got myself properly sober. She told me I never would, that I would always be a worthless drunkard. She said she would take Gwynneth but only on condition that she had the sole raising of her, that I would give her up and never see her again except by chance.”
Samantha was looking at him now. Ben was looking at her.
“I drank for six more months,” Bevan said, “and then I stopped. I did not drink at all for years. Now I do occasionally, but only in a social way, never when I am alone. I applied myself to my work. I challenged myself by interesting myself in industries other than just coal. Hence the ironworks. And in the meanwhile, every penny of the money I ever sent to help Dilys with the upbringing of your mother and every gift I sent for birthdays or Christmas was returned. Every time I glimpsed Gwynneth, she was whisked away by my sister when she was younger—she turned away of her own accord when she was older. I wanted her back. I wanted to get her a proper governess. I wanted to get her ready for the life she could have lived as my daughter. I wanted to … Well, I wanted to be her father, but I had forfeited my chance with her. When I heard she was not allowed to go on picnics with the local lads and lasses, though, and was not allowed to go to the village assemblies even though she was seventeen and ready for a bit of life of her own, I went and had it out with Dilys, and we both ended up shouting like fools and behaving like two snarling dogs fighting over the same bone. And Gwynneth was in the house and heard it all. The day after, she was gone. Just like Esme all over again.”
“And as before, you did not go after her,” Samantha said.
“I did,” he said. “She would not have anything to do with me. She would not let me pay for her lodgings. She would not let me give her some spending money. She would not let me help her find decent employment. And she would not come home with me. She got a job acting. I was … proud of her spirit of independence at the same time as I was terrified for her. And then she met your father, who was close to me in age and was everything I was not. I think maybe she was happy with him. Was she?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It was the old story after her marriage,” he said. “She returned my letters and my wedding gift and my christening gift to you and all the other gifts I sent. Though after she … died, the letters and gifts I sent you stopped coming back, and sometimes your father would write to tell me about you and to include little messages of thanks from you for the gifts. I often thought of suggesting that I come to see you, but I could never quite get up the courage. You were the daughter of a gentleman, and his letters were always polite, but not exactly warm. I thought maybe the two of you would say no. And then all hope was gone. You married the son of an earl, and it seemed to me the last thing you would want was a visit from your maternal grandfather. I even stopped sending gifts after the wedding one.”
Samantha was pleating her dress again.
“I daresay your father felt sorry for me,” Bevan said. “But I suppose he felt even more loyalty to his wife, your mother, and agreed with her that it was best you not know me. You did not read any of those letters or see any of those gifts, did you?”