Sinners and Shadows by Catrin Collier Page A

stepmother continued to expound arguments that had become all too familiar. She hadn’t needed Mabel’s warning about Geraint Watkin Jones’s intentions, any more than she’d needed to hear her disparaging judgement on her appearance.
    She wondered if it would be so terrible to have a husband who’d only married her for her money? At least he would have cause to be grateful to her. Geraint Watkin Jones was tall, good-looking and had been brought up as a gentleman, even if he had come down in the world. The fortune she had inherited on her mother’s death, which Mabel so bitterly resented, would enable them to buy a decent house anywhere they chose and fund a comfortable lifestyle. They could have carriages, servants, fine furniture and clothes, and possibly even a social life that included real friends.
    Closing her ears to Mabel’s prattling, she imagined herself walking into a ballroom with her arm resting on Geraint’s, sitting next to him in a theatre box, travelling to a seaside resort in the summer – and lying next to him in bed. She knew about her father’s problems with Mabel. Everyone in the house did, because there was no escaping their increasingly ugly rows. Could sharing a bed with a man possibly be as awful as Mabel said?
    If that was the case, why had her mother never complained? And what about all the other married women she was acquainted with who seemed to be happy? People like Sali Evans, who was always laughing and smiling whenever she appeared with her husband at the town’s social and charitable events.
    She couldn’t help pitying her father, even if it was his own fault that he was tied to Mabel. But then he, like her, had found himself marooned in a terrible emotional wasteland after her mother’s death. They had been too crushed to reach out to one another for comfort, because each had been deeply enmeshed in their own selfish grief. She suspected that he had turned to Mabel because he had been unbearably lonely, and the one thing she understood only too well was the desperation of absolute loneliness.
    Geraint Watkin Jones was kind and attentive, even if he was only after her money, and Mabel was reason enough for her to leave her father’s house. She was of age and able to dictate her own destiny. The only problem was how could she see more of Geraint without exciting Mabel’s suspicions? Because if Mabel discovered what she was up to, she would take great delight in telling her father that his only daughter had developed an interest in an ‘unsuitable’ man.
    She knew her father would realize that Geraint was only after her money, and that would lead to even more arguments in the house, between them, as well as between him and Mabel. If she pretended to shop, Mabel would accompany her, and Geraint Watkin Jones would never dare to invite her anywhere while they remained within Mabel’s earshot. It was up to her. She would have to wait for an opportunity – or make one. And when it came, swallow her pride and risk incurring her stepmother’s wrath by inviting Mr Watkin Jones to spend time with her.
    As Sali had predicted, they found Harry and Joey in the stables with Robert, Ynysangharad House’s groom-cum-chauffeur. Harry was perched on Joey’s shoulders and all three were gazing into the stall where the new foal was tottering around his mother on unsteady legs.
    â€˜Come and see Toffee, Auntie Rhian,’ Harry shouted when he spotted her in the doorway with his mother.
    â€˜That’s a strange name for a horse.’ Rhian glanced sideways at Joey as she stood alongside them.
    â€˜Dad said I could name him and ride him as soon he’s old enough to be broken in. I called him Toffee because of his colour,’ Harry explained.
    â€˜The exact same shade as the toffee Mari makes from Golden Syrup.’ Sali stood the other side of Joey and her son. ‘I think you’re more enamoured with the