Sydnam was not intimidated by the prospect of their coming to Glandwr, then. He was only a little overwhelmed by it. They were all married now. He had met some of their spouses-Lady Aidan, Lady Rannulf, the Marquess of Hallmere-and he had found them all amiable enough. And they all had children now. Perhaps if there were some small feeling of intimidation, that was its cause. They were very young children who would very possibly look at him with fear and not understand.

And even apart from all else there was the fact that the house, large as it was, would be unceasingly busy with so many people coming and going and making noise.

Sydnam was not a recluse. As Bewcastle’s steward he had to see all sorts of people on business. There were also neighbors who liked to consult him on farming issues and other matters to do with the land and the community in which they all lived together. And he had a few personal friends-the Welsh minister and the schoolmaster in particular. His acquaintances were almost exclusively male, though. There had been one or two women during the past five years who had indicated a willingness to pursue a relationship with him-it was no secret, he supposed, that he was a son of the Earl of Redfield and independently wealthy even though he worked for a living. But he had given them no encouragement. He had always been very well aware that it was his social status and his wealth that had encouraged them to overlook a physical revulsion that none of them had been quite able to hide.

He had been content to live a quiet, semireclusive life since coming here. He liked this part of southwest Wales, which was in many ways anglicized but in which one nevertheless heard lilting accents in the English language and often the Welsh language itself being spoken, and where one sensed a love of sea and mountain and heard a love of music and was aware of a deep spirituality that denoted a culture both ancient and richly developed.