Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(11)

“I came with Dev to choose new ribbons for the maypole,” Stephanie told him. “I got to pick the colors. Just wait till you see them. And now Dev is taking me for lemonade in the coffee room and Gwyneth has come with us because her papa is playing the organ in the church and Lady Rhys is going to sit and listen, but he is likely to play for a long time because he forgets about the time until he is reminded. But Lady Rhys will not remind him for a while yet. Do you want to come in with us, Papa?”

“Go on in and have a sit down,” their father said, smiling genially. “I’ll finish my ale and my conversation out here and see you at home later. I am delighted you are helping your mother with the fete. It will be the best one ever and a fitting testament to all her hard work. Am I the most fortunate husband in the world, or what? Though maybe your father would have something to say about that, Gwyneth.”

The coffee room was empty and quiet and cool. After Stephanie had chosen a table by the window Devlin ordered drinks for them all: lemonade for his sister and Gwyneth, coffee for himself.

“If I were grown-up and really, really pretty,” Stephanie said as the landlord withdrew to fetch their drinks, “and if my husband had just been killed in some war in India, I do not believe I would go to live somewhere in the depths of the country where I did not know a soul and no one knew me. Would you, Gwyneth? Would you, Dev?”

He had wondered about that himself. Mrs. Shaw was quite young, twenty-five or -six at the most. She was also extremely lovely. She dressed fashionably, and was very . . . He did not know quite what word his mind was searching for. Provocative, perhaps? But that was a bit harsh. She lived with an older woman, who was not, apparently, her mother or any relative. Devlin had never seen her, but he had heard her described as sharp-nosed and sour-looking and always dressed in black. Mrs. Shaw did not wear black—or even the gray or lavender of half mourning.

“I suppose she has her reasons,” he said. “And they are her business, not ours.”

“But I would like to know,” his sister said with a sigh. “No one tells you anything when you are nine.”

“Perhaps,” Gwyneth said, “she is so distraught over her husband’s death that she does not care where she lives, provided it is somewhere quiet.”

“But then she would not care how she looks either, would she?” Stephanie said with irrefutable logic. “She clearly does care. I would not wear clothes like the ones she is wearing today just to take my dog for a walk. In the country. It would be silly. Did you notice her parasol, Gwyneth? It was all lace and show. It would not shield a person from a single ray of sunshine. I bet those are the sort of clothes ladies wear when they go walking in Hyde Park in London. Or on Bond Street. Or in the Pump Room in Bath. When they want to attract attention from men.”

“I hate to dampen your need to know, Steph,” Devlin said as their drinks were set before them. “But really, Mrs. Shaw’s motivations are none of our business, are they?”

“I think Hyde Park is one place in London I would like to see,” Gwyneth said. “And Vauxhall Gardens. By night, of course. It is said to be a magical place in the moonlight and lamplight. What would you like to see, Stephanie?”

Mrs. Shaw made Devlin feel a bit uneasy. And she did indeed remind him of London, which had not left a favorable impression upon him last year, when he had expected to enjoy himself but did not really do so. Because he was a dull dog, of course.

“St. Paul’s Cathedral,” Stephanie said. “And Carlton House. And all the galleries and museums. I wonder if Mrs. Shaw went to India with her husband. If she did, she surely would have needed more substantial parasols than that silly one she is carrying this morning. I think it would be awfully exciting and wondrously romantic to follow the drum with the man you loved. Don’t you, Gwyneth?”

Gwyneth flushed a little and Devlin waited for her answer. He often wondered about her and Nick, though he had never talked to his brother about her. Were they sweethearts now that they had grown up? Surely they must be. Did they have an understanding? Was there likely to be a formal betrothal before Nick left in September to join his regiment? Was there any question at all of her following him? But he was only nineteen.

“I think it would be uncomfortable, moving from billet to billet,” Gwyneth said. “Never having a settled home. It sounds romantic, Stephanie. I grant you that. But I doubt it is in reality. It also would be very stressful, though no more so, perhaps, than remaining at home and awaiting news. Military men fight. They get wounded and maimed. They get killed. Their wives surely live in a state of constant fear and anxiety. That poor lady might have lived through hell. We ought not to begrudge her that silly parasol now.”

Stephanie was gazing at her, her half-consumed drink forgotten. “She does not look as if she has lived through hell,” she said.

“People do not always show on the outside what they feel on the inside, though,” Gwyneth said.

Ah. Devlin almost sighed aloud. No, indeed they did not.

“Is falling in love too risky a thing to do, then?” Stephanie asked. It was seemingly a rhetorical question. She did not wait for either of them to answer. “If I were in love, and if the man I loved returned my feelings, I would go to the ends of the earth with him and face dragons and volcanoes and invading armies with him. If anyone tried to stop me, I would elope with him and marry him and live happily ever after.”