Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(105)

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The church choristers and some extras from the youth choir were squeezed into the choir stalls and onto a row of chairs that had been placed in front of them on each side. The church pews were packed with invited guests. There were even a few people standing at the back and along the sides, Devlin saw with one quick glance back. He had no idea what time it was. Still before eleven? After? Right on?

Did all bridegrooms at this point feel sick with fear that the bride had changed her mind and would simply not show up? Did it ever happen? But even if it never had before, there was always a first for everything, was there not?

“Did you feel like this before your wedding?” he murmured to Ben, who was sitting beside him on the front pew. It was probably not the best thing to ask. He had had the suspicion yesterday and this morning that his brother was a bit melancholy. Dash it all, it was not quite a year since his wife died, even though it seemed more like a decade. Did it seem so to Ben?

“Nervous, do you mean?” Ben asked. “No. When I married Marjorie, she went with me to the chaplain, if you remember. She had to. I had her firmly by the hand, and Joy was well on the way in her. I was not going to take no for an answer.”

“I do not believe she was reluctant,” Devlin said.

“Only because of the fact that I was the son of an earl,” Ben said. “Daft woman.”

But he spoke with a fondness that almost brought tears to Devlin’s eyes.

And then the vicar, clad in his full vestments, came from the vestry and strode along the nave to the back of the church, where there seemed to be an extra flurry of activity, and a few moments later Idris appeared, escorting Lady Rhys to the front pew across from Devlin’s. She smiled at him before seating herself, and Idris winked.

She must be coming, then. Good God, his bride must be coming.

The vicar returned along the nave. Philippa and Stephanie, looking exceedingly pretty, followed him, side by side, Joy between them, clinging to a hand of each, so frilled and flounced that she looked like a snowflake winking and glittering in the sun. When they stopped walking, she bounced a few times on her feet and then spotted Ben.

“Papapapapapa,” she cried, and dashed toward him, her arms raised, her hair ribbon somewhat askew. He scooped her up and she looked behind him over his shoulder and pointed to Devlin’s mother in the next pew. “Grandmama,” she said quite distinctly. “Owen.”

But Devlin’s attention was fixed on the back of the church as the congregation rose to its feet. A single note sounded from the pianoforte beside the organ, and the choir began to sing, unaccompanied.


Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above



The first verse was sung by the treble voices alone, in perfect unison with one another. The following verses were sung by the whole choir in three-part harmony. But Devlin was only partially aware of how exquisite they sounded and how carefully the music and the words had been chosen—and rehearsed. For his bride was approaching on the arm of her father, and she had never looked more startlingly beautiful. Like a bright piece of Christmas, with all its promise of love and hope and peace.

But she was not like anything at all. She was Gwyneth. Unique and vivid and lovely. His wild child grown to womanhood. And his bride. His love.

She was smiling at him.

While he, like an idiot, was blinking back tears. He was almost not aware that he was also smiling, turned to face her as she came along the nave, and facing too his family and hers and their neighbors and friends from miles around.

There was a faint aah of sound from the congregation quite apart from the music of the choir. But whether it was for the beauty of the bride or the fact that the bridegroom’s face was lit with love and happiness was not at all clear.

And then she was beside him and taking off her gloves to hand to Stephanie while Pippa was removing her cloak and draping it over her own arm. There was a gasp from those people gathered there as Gwyneth was revealed in all the figure-hugging, slightly shimmering simplicity of her white dress. She set her hand in her father’s again, and he transferred it to Devlin’s.

They turned to face the Reverend Danver, and Devlin swallowed against what felt like a lump in his throat. The wedding was beginning.

“Dearly beloved,” the vicar said moments after the last note of the opening hymn had died away.

Feeling had been ruthlessly suppressed for many long years. It had been denied, fought against, explained away for several months since then. He had admitted to facts—the fact of love—but not to feeling, which was long gone. Which could never be resurrected. Denial could be a powerful force.

But now feeling came back in a wave of emotion.

Love was not a feeling, she had told him. No, it was not just feeling, though by God it could be felt. It was not anything that could be confined to the body or the mind or the spirit. It was not something to be understood or explained. Or owned. But whatever it was, suddenly it was fairly bursting from him.

He loved Gwyneth Rhys. He had loved her since he was a boy and she had seemed as unattainable as the wind. Or the sun.

More than that, though, he loved.

He was not just an observer of this life. He was a participant in it. And he wanted all it had to offer—every day, every experience, every pain and pleasure, every feeling from this moment until he took his dying breath. With Gwyneth. Had he told her she was the air he breathed? He thought he had. But he had not fully understood what he had meant until this moment. The air he breathed was love.