The Price of Peace - A Conspiracy of Silence

By Irene Lewis Ward

This fascinating, full-length historical novel is based firmly upon facts. Set in the nineteenth century it tells how, in order to avoid a war, a new-born child was smuggled secretly into exile abroad simply BECAUSE SHE WAS A GIRL!

From humble beginnings in rural North Wales, the story transports us amid a conspiracy of silence to international political intrigue and a cover-up involving Knights of the Realm, a Church Dignitary, Ministers of State and at least two Crowned Heads.

Its true worth has been vastly discounted in the asking price in order that this secret part of our country's history - and that of Northern Europe -should at last be revealed and the staggering events made available to all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291972610

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The Price of Peace - A Conspiracy of Silence

The Price of Peace

A Conspiracy of Silence

Irene Lewis Ward

First Published 2014 by LULU.com

Copyright © 2014 Irene Lewis Ward

The right of Irene Lewis Ward to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utlised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by LULU.com

ISBN: 978-1-291-97261-0

DEDICATION

IN MEMORY OF MY BELOVED PARENTS

JOHN AND JENNIE LEWIS

AND FOR THE PROGENY OF

FREDERICK AND LOUISE FOR ALL TIME

AUTHOR’S NOTE

BOOK ONE: ‘GENESIS’ is a story woven around facts.  While I have allowed imagination, hypothesis and family folklore to colour the canvas, to everything discovered over more than a decade of careful genealogical research, this story remains true.  No date has been altered and no known facts twisted or ignored.

BOOK TWO: ‘REVELATIONS’, as the title suggests, reveals the identity of Elizabeth’s parents and the reason for her secret exile to Britain.  

2nd February 1995Irene Lewis Ward

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am especially indebted to my late husband, Bob, who made the research possible and assisted me with much of it, and to my late sister, Jennifer Harraway, for her never-failing encouragement.

To the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth, the Welsh Folk Museum at St. Fagans, the late Dr. J.D.K. Lloyd of Montgomery, David Mills contractor of Llansantffraid, Fru Karen Neiendam ex-Director of the Danish Theatre History Museum at Copenhagen, and to others too numerous to mention my thanks are also due.

BOOK ONE: ‘GENESIS’

Map of Llansantffraid and area

PROLOGUE

February 1851

The French ormolu clock on the mantelpiece struck a quarter past two and the smouldering logs collapsed a little further onto the hearth, sending a shower of bright sparks towards the night sky.  Lady Hester Williams Wynn rose from her chair, drew her shawl closer about her and began to pace the floor again.

Dear God! she thought, would this vigil never end?  For more than four hours now they had been waiting, fearful and yet impatient, to discover what drama was being enacted beyond those ornate doors, closed tight against the world.

Gazing across the room at her companion, a woman in her early thirties with straight, fair hair, parted in the centre and caught up in thick braids at the nape of her neck, she wondered yet again at her composure.  Sitting quietly beside the hearth, her hands at peace in her lap, she betrayed not the slightest glimpse of the anxiety that she, too, must be feeling. 

What was it about such retainers? she mused.  Born of generations who had served the same masters, they were as different from the hire-and-fire variety as night was from day.  And that special quality was just as recognisable here, in this foreign land, as it was back home on their estates in the Welsh Borderlands.  Was it their calmness in times of crisis, she wondered, their capability, their fierce loyalty…?  Oh, yes, it was all of these, but something more besides… something indefinable…   Well, let it be whatever it was, she thanked God for it tonight.

A sudden sound startled her out of her reverie and brought her companion swiftly to her feet, and a moment later a woman entered the room, bearing a swaddled babe in her arms.

Lady Hester gasped and felt the colour drain from her cheeks. ‘It’s a girl!’ Her lips formed the words, but her mouth was dry as dust and no sound came.  God help us all, she cried in silent prayer as she reached out to a chair for support.

The midwife sketched a curtsey to Lady Hester as she passed, but hastened directly to her companion.   ‘Suckle her with love, for their sakes’, she charged her as she handed the tiny bundle into her arms, ‘and treat her with the respect that is her due’,

‘I shall guard her with my life’ the wet-nurse vowed solemnly and Lady Hester noticed that, imperturbable though the woman had appeared during the long hours of their vigil, her eyes now betrayed deep emotion.  It struck her that, at any moment, they might all dissolve into tears – and that was a luxury they could not afford; not if the journey back to the capital was to be accomplished before dawn.

‘And what of your mistress?’ she turned now to the midwife. ‘All went well with her, I trust?’

‘All is well, madam, but she is very distressed, poor lady.’

‘And the er…  the father?  He has been informed, of course?’

Recalling the look of torment she had seen in his eyes, ‘Yes, my lady’, was all the woman could offer

‘Please tell them that I am so sorry – so very, very sorry.’   It sounded trite, she knew, but what words were there - in their language or her own – to bring comfort to that hapless pair?

Suddenly she felt an overwhelming desire to escape from this suffocating atmosphere of tension and distress, to be out in the cold, enveloping darkness of the night and, please God, home to the safety of the Embassy and the protection of her husband, Sir Henry, before dawn. 

‘Come, we must hurry’ she announced briskly, and with trembling hands, put on her cloak and bonnet.  Then, aided by the midwife, she arranged a voluminous cloak around the shoulders of the wet-nurse, so as to conceal completely the child beneath.  The next moment, they were on their way, Lady Hester guiding the wet-nurse down a narrow, back stairway to an inner courtyard, where her own closed carriage stood waiting to drive them through the night.

CHAPTER ONE

Barely a week later, the Reverend Richard Bonnor climbed aboard his coach on the forecourt of his country mansion house, ’Bryn-y-Gwalia’.  Lowering himself wearily onto the soft leather seat, he fervently wished himself back home in his Ruabon parish, for he felt that even the most irksome of his clerical duties there would seem as nothing compared to the task that lay before him today.

He tucked a warm rug about his knees and, as his coachman turned the horses’ heads towards the carriage drive, he began to reflect yet again on his meeting with Sir Watkin yesterday and the extraordinary confidential information with which he had entrusted him

Long before he had been appointed his vicar, Richard had been friend and mentor to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn of Wynnstay, and so he had realised, simply from the tone of his summons, that something was seriously amiss.   But he hadn’t expected to find him in quite such a state, for all that, and he was completely taken aback when the first thing he had asked him to do was to take a vow of silence regarding everything he was about to impart to him.

He had shared Sir Watkin’s confidence on countless previous occasions, but never before had he bound him to secrecy in such a way.  And as the baronet began to outline the nature of his problem, it had seemed to Richard that the secrecy aspect had been needlessly exaggerated for, as far as he could make out, all that had happened was that Sir Watkin’s Uncle Henry, who was Britain’s Ambassador to one of the royal Courts of Europe, had pledged himself to care for and rear a young child. 

It had seemed a bit out of character for Sir Henry, he had to admit, but he hardly thought it merited the ‘cloak and dagger’ attitude Sir Watkin was adopting.

‘One would have thought that he and my aunt would have been looking more towards retirement than adoption’, the baronet had declared, ‘and, what is worse, he says he intends to bring the child over here – onto his own doorstep, so to speak - and my God, you can just imagine what will be made of that!

The vicar certainly could – and not only by those on and around their various estates either.  The eyes and ears of everyone throughout North Wales - colliers, tenantry, farmers, traders, townspeople and villagers alike – were forever turned upon the illustrious House of Wynnstay.  The sudden introduction of an infant into Sir Henry’s household would give rise to all sorts of rumours.  But Richard suspected that it was the reputation of his cousin, Marie Emily, Sir Henry’s youngest and unmarried daughter, that concerned Sir Watkin most.

Pulling his rug closer about him, the vicar smiled to himself at the thought.  Forty-two years of age, much-married and the father of a large family himself, he had long considered it high time that the thirty-year-old baronet took him a wife.  Marie Emily would be an ideal choice, but she had spent so much time abroad that he probably still thought of her only as the young schoolgirl he had loved to tease when she returned home on leave with her parents.  The next time she comes over, the vicar mused, his roguish eyes twinkling, we shall have to try to change all that.

The coach was turning to cross the fast-flowing Tanat now and onto the hill road that would take them into the next valley.  He wondered how Sir Watkin was feeling this morning.  Better than I do, I’ll wager, he thought to himself.  How on earth he had come to land himself with such a task, he could not imagine.  Well… he could really, he supposed for, once the baronet had revealed to him the more serious aspects of his dilemma, he had felt the problem to be as much his own as Sir Watkin’s – morally at any rate.  And if he were successful in his efforts this morning, they could well provide the solution they so desperately needed.  But the fact that the parentage of the child was such an enigma, still troubled him greatly.

‘But who on earth is she?’ he had asked Sir Watkin.

‘The Lord knows’, had been his rather ungracious reply.  ‘I find it devilish frustrating that my uncle has not seen fit to tell me.  But you know what these diplomats are: play all their cards so damned close to their chests.’

‘Might she be a… a love-child?’ he had ventured.

‘Oh, definitely not.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  I understand that her pedigree’s pretty good.  Noble, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘But what does Sir Henry plan to do?  Make her his ward?’/

‘I believe that’s what he was planning to do, Richard, yes.  In fact, he might even have been considering adoption, for in his initial communiqué, he reported that he had promised her parents that she should be raised as one of his own: as a Wynn, was how he phrased it.’

‘Oh, I see…’

So that’s what all the fuss was about, Richard had thought to himself: the family name!  And given Sir Watkin’s natural pride in his name, he could well understand that he would not wish it to be bestowed upon any Tom, Dick or Harry. But if, as he had said, this child were of gentle birth, then he couldn’t, for the life of him, see what all the fuss was about.

‘Ah, but you don’t see, Richard’, the baronet had broken into his thoughts, ‘for it now transpires that my uncle will not be allowed to adopt her, after all – nor even to stand guardian over her’.

That had been perplexing enough, the vicar mused now, but it had been nothing to the next bombshell.

‘You see, my friend’, Sir Watkin had added gravely, ‘Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, has declared an interest in this child and both she and Prince Albert wish her to be reared very much further from public gaze than she would be as Sir Henry’s ward.  In fact, to put it bluntly Richard, Her Majesty has decreed that the child must be purposefully hidden.’

The vicar could feel again now the amazement and incredulity he had experienced at Sir Watkin’s words.  Indeed the memory was so strong that he seemed to smell again now the fragrance of smouldering apple wood which had filled the room during the silence that had followed.

‘But… why? he had murmured at length, in a voice unlike his own.

‘To quote Her Majesty’s own words …to preserve the peace of our realm, which is most precious to us The baronet paused and kicked a fallen log back into place on the hearth.   ‘There - that’s your answer, Richard’ he turned to him ‘politics!’

‘In the light of Her Majesty’s involvement, it would certainly appear that way’, the vicar had replied thoughtfully, ‘but what possible effect the advent of a girl child could have upon the peace of this realm, I am utterly at a loss to understand.’

‘And it’s no use looking to me for explanations’, Sir Watkin replied irascibly, ‘for they’ve not seen fit to take me into their confidence.’

For a while, they had fallen silent and Richard had drained the beaker of mulled wine which the baronet had poured to warm him on his arrival, but the contents had gone cold, turning the spices bitter upon his tongue.  He had made no objections when the baronet refilled his cup.  He was not in the habit of drinking so early in the day, but he had certainly felt in need of it then. The announcement of Her Majesty’s involvement had come as a considerable shock to him, but it had also brought him some relief.  He had been experiencing grave doubts as to the ethics of removing a child from the home and family into which the Almighty had placed her. He suspected that He might not look too kindly upon those who interfered in His Divine Plan.

But if peace really were at stake… if, for some inexplicable reason her removal would avoid bloodshed and the loss of innocent lives, then surely God would view their actions in a very different light – especially if, as it seemed, they were in accordance with the will of their Sovereign Lady, the Queen, who was, after all, Defender of the Faith and spiritual leader of His own church, here on earth.

‘Tell me, sir’, he had turned to the baronet at length, ‘would I be right in thinking that they have called upon you to find and feather the nest for their little fledgling?’

‘You would indeed, Richard.’  Sir Watkin had seemed relieved at his perception, but he had gone on to explain that his brief was far more complicated than that.

The carriage swayed and the vicar looked at his watch.  The horses were making good time on the frost-hardened road.  If they kept up this pace, he would arrive sooner than he had expected.  His heart lurched again at the thought of what was before him.

Through the window, he saw that the earth was now coated with a mantle of hoar-frost, so that trees, hills and hedgerows stood stark white against a clear blue sky and sparkled in the winter sunlight.  It was a glorious sight, a day to gladden the heart and he felt a measure of shame that, until now, he had not even noticed.

It was certainly a tall order that poor Sir Watkin had been set, he reflected as the carriage sped on.  Simply selecting a suitable home for the child would have presented no problem whatsoever.  There were plenty of families on his estates who would have been only too willing to foster her.  But what his uncle – and, presumably, Her Majesty – required was not a foster-mother, but a substitute mother.  …a God-fearing and respectable woman from the lower walks of life… was how Sir Henry had described it in his communiqué, …one who would be willing, for a fair reward, to pass the child off as her own and whose loyalty and discretion are beyond reproach.

‘Can you imagine it?’ Sir Watkin had exclaimed, ‘They expect her to have all these virtues and yet at the same time be willing to risk her reputation among her family, friends and neighbours.  And they have allowed me less than three weeks to search out such a paragon!’

‘They are bringing her here as soon as that?’ Richard had made no attempt to conceal his surprise.  ‘But how?’

Sir Henry is returning home on leave and will smuggle her across among his family and retinue.  All very melodramatic, Richard’, the baronet had smiled sardonically, ‘and pretty damned risky, too, if you ask me.  But it seems he is to get his reward, for I understand that the queen intends to honour him -  with a K.C.B., no less! – on Saint David’s day.  You’d better keep that date free.  They look upon you as a special friend, you know, as we all do.’

And then the baronet had gone on to explain that, following the celebrations, the child would be brought in secret to Sir Henry’s seat, near Oswestry, and thereafter the responsibility for hiding her and keeping a watching brief over her would pass entirely to him.  ‘My God, it’s a sobering thought’ he had exclaimed dejectedly.

And that was the point at which the vicar had stuck his neck out and landed himself with the onerous task that was facing him now.

‘Incredible as it may seem, Sir Watkin’, he had heard himself saying, ‘I do believe I know the very one.’

‘The very one what?’

‘Why, the very one ewe to mother your lamb.’

He winced again now at the thought.  How could he have been so presumptuous as to offer services which were not his to command?  And yet the woman was so right for their purpose that he knew he must somehow find a way to procure her services.

‘Both she and her father – a man by the name of William Thomas – have served my family faithfully for many a long year’, he had explained to the baronet, ‘and her late husband did some fine saddlery work for my late father.  But after his death she and her young son went home to her parents, where they still live together – and a brother, too, I believe – in one of the cottages on my estate.  In fact, the woman still goes from there daily, to wait upon my aunt, Marianna.’

‘Oh, I remember your Aunt Marianna very well’, exclaimed Sir Watkin. ‘She’s a charming old lady’.

‘I doubt if she’d thank you for calling her old’, he had replied with a chuckle.  ‘She protests she’s only eighty.   She employs this woman as a sort of companion and general factotum and she can’t speak highly enough of her virtues.  At various times, she has reported her as honest, industrious, loyal, conscientious, discreet and a devout Christian.  Your paragon, in fact!’

And that was how he had talked himself into the problem that had robbed him of sleep throughout the night: how to persuade his Aunt Marianna to part with her paragon and how to persuade that paragon to risk her impeccable reputation by mothering this mysterious infant.

Sir Watkin had questioned him closely about her, of course, and had seemed well pleased with his answers until, that is, they had left the Hall in favour of a walk through the woods, where he had suddenly turned to him with: ‘How old did you say this woman is, Richard?’

‘I don’t believe I did, but I should imagine she must be in her early forties.  Her son is about seventeen, at any rate, and apprenticed to a shoemaker.’

‘Forty-odd?  Sir Watkin had stopped in his tracks, ‘and a widow!’

‘Yes, well, I suppose that’s not ideal’, he had been forced to admit, ‘though certainly not impossible - and a wet-nurse will have to be provided at the outset, in any event.  Besides, with so little time at our disposal, I don’t think we should allow the minor factor of age to cloud the more major requirements.  And I can assure you that in all of those she is eminently suitable.

On leaving the woods, they had paused to lean over a gate which flanked the lakeside path.  The setting sun was lengthening their shadows and spangling the myriad tiny ripples on the surface of the lake.  ‘You must do as you think fit, Sir Watkin’, he had turned to him at length, ‘but before you decide, I would urge you to consider one further asset that this woman possesses.  It is one that might help to assuage poor Sir Henry’s conscience regarding his promise to the parents, for you see it just so happens that this woman’s surname is - Wynn.

CHAPTER TWO

Very much earlier that morning, Ann Wynn had stood before the scrubbed-top table that dominated the only living room in her parents’ cottage.  At her back, the fire crackled and a big black kettle was singing on the hob, but the room had not yet succumbed to the fire’s heat, and the icy grip of the night still clutched at her fingers and toes.

Apart from the fire, the room was lit only by a single candle, which stood on a sturdy workbench beneath the window.  In its flickering light, young Thomas Wynn was already working at his shoemaker’s last, and the regular tap-tap-tapping of his hammer filled Ann with a sense of pride in her son.  He was a good looking lad, broad shouldered and strong, with laughing brown eyes and a mop of black hair that flashed a hint of copper in the candlelight.  And which was as difficult to tame as he himself had been until recently, she reflected as she took a new loaf of bread from the crock and began to slice into it.  But since he had completed his apprenticeship, he seemed to be settling down somewhat, and the extra money he was earning had certainly made life easier for them all – though not so easy as to allow her father to give up his morning job at the farm, she thought ruefully.  At seventy-four, he deserved to be easing up a little, but he was still holding down three part-time jobs.  Sooner or later, it would prove too much for him and then they’d all have to tighten their belts.   She hacked off several large chunks from a piece of cheese and placed them with the bread upon bright cotton kerchiefs; packed lunches for her father and brother.

The job that paid her father least for the hours he put in, was his mid-day shift at the Sun Inn in Llansantffraid village, and now that young Thomas was contributing more, they could probably afford for him to give up that one.  But he wouldn’t hear of it.  ‘Strong as the proverbial ox, I am’, he had protested when she had suggested it, ‘and good for many a long year yet’.  She could understand him, she supposed, for it had always been his dream to have an inn of his own one day, but he had never achieved it in spite of all his hard work and thrift.   No, and never likely to now either…

‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.’  Her thoughts were interrupted by her father’s rich baritone voice as it rose from the scullery where, she guessed, he would be having his usual morning wash in a bucket of icy water.

‘Your taid sounds happy this morning’, she turned to her son.

‘Of course he is’, Thomas looked at her archly, ‘We’re going rabbiting today, aren’t we?’

‘Rabbiting, is it?  Well that’s the first I’ve heard of it.   So that’s why you were up and working so early this morning!’

The boy kept his back towards her and his hammer busy.

‘Well you just make sure you complete your day’s quota before you go’, she told him sharply.  Then, hearing her father approaching,  ‘Du!  He’s a wicked man!’,  she added in a loud voice.

‘Wicked?’ he asked as he entered the room, ‘Who’s wicked?’

‘You are, da’, she told him, ‘persuading my son to leave his work and go off rabbiting!’

‘Now you just listen to me my girl’, he declaimed roundly, ‘That boy of yours spends far too much time cooped up in this room, inhaling the stench of dead skins and tanning.’  He gestured extravagantly towards Thomas, ‘His young body must be crying out for some clean air from God’s glorious countryside - and I defy you or anybody else to tell me I’m wrong in that.  ‘And anyway’, he added, his voice resuming its natural pitch, ‘you enjoy one for the pot as much as the rest of us.  Now come on, bach, you’ve got to admit it.’

‘All right, da.  All right.  You’d convert the Jews with your eloquence and no mistake.’  She turned away to hide a smile, but looked back in time to see Thomas turn a beaming grin upon his grandfather and William give the boy a broad wink.

‘Here’, she said, taking her father’s outdoor garments from a cupboard under the stairs, ‘you’d better get these on, or you’ll be late.’

‘What on earth are you doing with that candle still burning, young Thomas?’, William rounded on the boy as he knotted his muffler.  ‘A ha’penny-a-piece they cost, my lad, and don’t you forget it.  There’s many a soul has perished in hell for spurning God’s daylight.’

Thomas grinned.  His taid had such a funny way of putting things sometimes, but he wouldn’t risk crossing him, for all that.  Peeping through the curtains, he could see that the sun’s first rays were casting long shadows across the snowy hills and sparking a few bright diamonds from their frosted window panes.  ‘Taid’s right!’ he exclaimed sarcastically, ‘Look mam, it’s almost daylight!’

‘Well, daylight or not’, William grinned, ‘I must be away.  Give your Uncle Willie a cold, wet flannel about his head if he’s not down soon’, he told the boy.  ‘And don’t be late to meet me at the inn to go rabbiting.  Half past two, mind - not a minute later.  The light will be fading by four.’

Ann saw him leave, then took her own outdoor clothes from the cupboard.  ‘Don’t let your Uncle Willie forget his lunch cloth’, she told Thomas as she tied her bonnet tightly against the cold.  ‘You know what he’s like in a morning.  And take your nain a cup of tea and a jug of hot water for her wash when she knocks the floor for it.  The kettle has boiled.’  ‘Enjoy your rabbiting, son’ she added as she pulled her well-worn shawl about her shoulders., ‘but not one minute before you’ve finished your work, mind  Do you understand?’ And she shook a warning finger at him.

‘All right, mami, I’ll be a good little boy’, he grinned at her..

‘You’d better!’ she called sternly over her shoulder as, smiling to herself, she set off to work.

*******

’My dearest boy, what a pleasant surprise!’ Marianna Bonnor cried as she hurried into the hall to welcome her nephew.

‘And it’s lovely to see you, too, aunt’, Richard hugged her to him, ‘and looking as young and beautiful as ever’   he added, his eyes twinkling.

‘What a flatterer you are, to be sure’, she beamed happily.

Handing his travelling cloak to a maid, he followed her through to the drawing room, where large latticed windows in each of two walls and a bright fire burning in the hearth, lent the room a cheerful air.

‘I’m afraid that this is not an entirely social visit, aunt’, he began as he settled himself into one of the high-backed chairs beside the hearth, ‘for I’m afraid I have a very large favour to ask of you and, truth to tell, I’m not quite sure how to begin.’

‘Oh dear, that sounds ominous.  It’s not like you to be lost for words, Richard.  You mustn’t be afraid to ask, whatever it is, for here’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, dear boy, if it lay within my power.’

He knew that she meant it, for he was aware of the overwhelming gratitude she felt towards himself and his late father for allowing her the use of this little house among the hills, where she had made a happy and useful life for herself, full of charitable works.  It didn’t make his task any easier.  And neither did the fact that his oath to Sir Watkin allowed him to give her only the very barest of details.

‘I’m sorry I’m not at liberty to explain further, my dear’, he told her when he had finished outlining his request.  ‘Honour forbids it, I’m afraid, but I hope you will believe that nothing but the most pressing needs of those whom I serve would have persuaded me to ask you to part with Mrs. Wynn.  I know what her services have meant to you and I can only beg for your understanding and assistance.’

Gazing across at her, he noticed how the large, winged chair, seemed to shrink her tiny body and for a long time she remained silent.  His heart went out to her.  He longed to hug her to him and tell her to forget what he had said.  But there was no turning back.  He could think of no alternative and time was so desperately short.

‘I cannot deny that I shall be devastated by the loss of Mrs. Wynn’, she murmured at length, meeting his gaze with a smile of resignation, ‘but if you have a need of her and she is willing to serve you, then you may take her with my blessing.  After all’, she added, brightening, ‘it’s little enough repayment for all your kindness.’

‘Nonsense, aunt, nonsense’, he protested, ‘I won’t hear another word of it’.  He rose to his feet and, crouching upon his haunches beside her chair, placed his arms about her.  ‘You’re a dear, sweet, lovable young lady’, he grinned at her archly, ‘and we’re all delighted to have you with us.’

She returned his smile and his hug, then summoned a maid.

*******

Ann Wynn was upstairs in the workroom when she received the message that the Reverend Bonnor had arrived and wished to see her in the drawing-room.  What on earth was the Reverend doing here so soon after his last visit, she wondered to herself as she set aside her mending and tidied her hair.  Ever since he had moved to Ruabon to become vicar to the great Sir Watkin, two or three months at least had normally elapsed between visits.  And so why had he come again today, after only three weeks?   And what on earth could he possibly want with her?

As soon as she entered the drawing-room, Miss Bonnor made her excuses and withdrew, leaving her alone with the vicar.  And her parting words to her nephew:

I shall see that you are not disturbed until you ring only served to heighten Ann’s sense of unease.

Richard noticed how tense she seemed.  ‘Sit down, Mrs. Wynn and make yourself comfortable’ he told her gently.  ‘What I have to say might take a little time, but it’s nothing to be alarmed about, I can assure you.  In fact, it could well be of great benefit to both yourself and your family.’

She threw him a nervous glance and perched herself erectly on the edge of the nearest chair

With his usual sense of fair play, he was careful to make it very clear to her from the outset that the proposition he was about to put to her was only in the nature of a request; it was not an order.  If she decided to grant that request, then he would ensure that she and