Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(19)

That amused everyone.

Devlin took the ribbon and glanced ruefully at Gwyneth. The sparkle in her had made a rapid disappearance, and he was unwillingly reminded of how she had been as a girl when forced to be in a room with him. She had always hidden in a corner or behind her mother and turned mute and become a totally different person from the wild, free, laughing girl he glimpsed from afar. She could not have made her dislike of him more obvious. He had found it a bit hurtful. Why exactly did she dislike him? What had he done?

“It is not as easy as it looks,” she warned him now.

“It does not even look easy,” he said, and her eyes lit with laughter.

He stayed for a quarter of an hour or so, until another group of would-be dancers had gathered. And actually it was as easy as it looked—which meant it was not very easy at all, but not impossible either, provided everyone listened carefully and followed the very clear instructions that were given before they danced and again while they danced. Devlin felt a bit as though he had two wooden legs at first, but he took his ribbon where he was supposed to take it and did not bang heads or collide with anyone else. He was not responsible for ruining anyone’s day.

It was hard not to be distracted, though, for Gwyneth soon recovered her spirits, and smiled and even laughed as they danced. She looked directly at him a few times, and her smile did not dim. If anything, it grew brighter. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling.

“You see what happens when people cooperate as a group instead of asserting their individuality?” he said to her as they relinquished their ribbons to the next comers. “Everything proceeds smoothly and everyone is happy.” He was smiling, he realized—which was just as well. Perhaps the smile would blow the dust from his words.

“I do believe you have just devised a solution to the world’s problems, Lord Mountford,” she said, and she laughed and then kept on smiling the sunny Gwyneth smile he had seen a hundred times or more at Cartref, but never before directed at him.

It was by far the happiest moment of his day so far.

Mrs. Shaw was standing talking with his father. Pippa was being borne away by James Rutledge on one side of her and Cousin Clarence Ware on the other. She had a hand through an arm of each and was tripping along between them. Stephanie was making her way along the terrace with Douglas Danver and Ariel Wexford.

“I am going to check on the fortune-teller and the portrait painter in the courtyard,” Devlin said to Gwyneth, and he kept speaking before he lost his courage. “Would you like to come with me?”

She hesitated for a moment and he was quite sure she was about to make some excuse. She did not, though. “I intend to have my fortune told today,” she said. “I have not had the mettle any other year. I want to discover that I am about to meet someone tall, dark, and handsome.”

“Well,” he said. “I am tall and dark. Tallish, anyway. Will two of the three suffice? Or maybe one and a half of the three?”

“Oh, and you are handsome too,” she said, and laughed again—and was all rosy pink beauty from her exertions about the maypole.

“Sometimes,” he said, “fishing for compliments meets with quite spectacular success.”

And were they actually . . . flirting?

She laughed once more and took his offered arm.



* * *



—

Had he been flirting with her? Devlin Ware? And had she been flirting right back? But here she was, Gwyneth discovered, actually walking with him, her arm drawn through his as they crossed the lawn toward one of the archways and the courtyard beyond. He might not be quite as tall as Nicholas or as dazzlingly handsome or as openly genial, but she actually found him more attractive. She always had.

The children’s races had already begun, and he changed their course slightly so they could watch one or two of them. He congratulated the winner of a little girls’ race and commended the rest for running so hard. He did the same after the little boys’ race, and he would have turned away then. But the child who had come in eighth out of a field of ten—he was Eddie, Gwyneth saw, son of one of her father’s grooms—burst into sudden tears and would not be consoled either by his mother’s hugs and soothing murmurs or by his father’s hearty reminder that big boys do not cry.

“But he is not a big boy,” Gwyneth murmured. He was four.

“There is no point in coming in first in a race if there is no one coming up behind in second or eighth place,” Devlin said, raising his voice to address himself to the child. “You have performed an important role, lad. That race needed every one of you.”

Eddie looked up at him, sniffing and frowning. Unconvinced.

“Do you have any brothers and sisters?” Devlin asked.

“My sister. She is nearly three,” the boy said. “And the baby.”

His father was holding the baby.

“So you are the eldest,” Devlin said. “There would be no point in calling yourself the eldest, though, would there, if there were no younger ones to make you feel older?”

The little boy thought about it. “But it would still be more fun to win,” he said.

“My lord,” his mother murmured to him.

“My lord,” the child added.

“Alas, winning is more fun,” Devlin said. “Keep trying. What are you really good at?”