Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(24)
The earl gave the signal to start when the first two contestants were ready, standing before their respective logs, feet apart, axes in hand. “Away you go, men,” he said, and shot a pistol into the air.
A cheer greeted the sound and was succeeded by prolonged shouting and cheering and yelled encouragement as the two men attacked the logs with their axes. Cameron’s split apart a mere second before his rival’s. There was a renewed roar from his supporters and groans from his rival’s. Gwyneth, beside Devlin, was actually jumping up and down with unladylike excitement and clapping. She glanced sideways at Devlin, her cheeks flushed again, her eyes sparkling. His father, on the far side of the area roped off for the contestants, was laughing too and cheering, one hand resting lightly upon the shoulder of Mrs. Shaw.
Devlin was annoyed at the twinge of renewed uneasiness he felt. His father was never a man to keep himself apart from others. He had always been a hand shaker, often a hand wringer. He was a hugger, a cheek kisser, a shoulder squeezer. It was part of his appeal, perhaps, that he was never the distant aristocrat, holding himself physically aloof from all who were inferior to him in rank. Instead he was the friend and supporter of all. Devlin had never heard even a whisper of a complaint that his father’s touches were unwelcome or inappropriate. He looked around for his mother, but she had not come for the log splitting. And by the time Devlin looked back, a mere few seconds later, Mrs. Shaw was standing alone in the same place, and his father, beaming happily, was shaking the hand of Oscar Holland, the blacksmith, no doubt congratulating him on his son’s qualifying for the final round.
The second pair were less evenly matched than the first. One of them, an enormous giant from a neighboring village, cut through his log as though it had no harder a consistency than butter, while the other man labored mightily over his, though, to his credit, he did not give up until he had chopped through it.
“Not fair,” he said, panting and grinning as he shook the hand of the giant. “Yours was made of soft wood while mine was made of iron.”
“Well, man,” the giant said, grinning back. “You have to know who to bribe.”
The final bout was scheduled for an hour hence.
“Is it disloyal to confess that I do not hold out much hope for Cam?” Idris asked of no one in particular. “I am quite prepared to eat humble pie if he does win, but who the devil is that brute? I have never set eyes on him before. He has no neck. Did any of you notice? It is all shoulder muscle with a little bullet head on top.”
“I would not let him hear you talk about him that way if I were you, Idris,” Ben said. “I think it would be unwise to pick a quarrel with that particular man.”
“Perhaps he is a gentle giant,” Gwyneth said. “Someone over there told me he is a blacksmith, new to this part of the country.”
“I am off to find a tree to sit under for the next hour,” Idris said. “With a glass of ale. Did you put in a special order for this heat today, Dev?”
“Ben is in charge of organizing the weather,” Devlin said. “Blame him if you do not like it. A cool drink does sound like a good idea, though. I’ll come with you. Gwyneth, come for some lemonade?”
He did not expect her to agree. But a man could hope.
“Yes, please. That would be very welcome,” she said, and when he offered his arm she slid her hand through it, as she had earlier, and he thought he must be the most fortunate man alive. Almost every single man between the ages of eighteen and thirty had been seeking her out today—except Nick—and she had spent some time with a number of them, though never with one exclusively for very long. Now here she was with him for a second time—and with her brother too, of course. Even through the sleeves of his coat and shirt he could feel the warmth and softness of her hand. He could smell her perfume, or the soap she used. It was a faint scent but very enticing. He had noticed it earlier too.
“Are you coming, Ben?” he asked.
“I’ll stay and make sure everything is properly set up for the final,” his brother said.
Light refreshments had been set out on the terrace—plates of fruit and sweet biscuits, pitchers of lemonade and ale, and an urn of tea, which many people favored despite the fact that it was a hot drink on a hot day. Devlin poured glasses of ale for Idris and himself, lemonade for Gwyneth.
“I see Mam and Dad are talking to Alice Barnes,” Idris said. “Under a tree, wise parents. I am going to join them.” Alice was Nanny Barnes’s great-niece and was a rather pretty young woman.
“The courtyard will probably be cooler,” Devlin said to Gwyneth. “Do you want to go and see?”
“Only if you can promise coolness,” she said, and walked beside him under one of the arches.
There was still a buzz of activity about the sketch artist. A couple of people waited outside the fortune-teller’s tent.
“She is not as popular as the usual fortune-teller,” Gwyneth said, nodding in that direction. “I overheard someone saying she had come out of the tent in tears because she had been told that her betrothed was going to cancel their engagement the day before their wedding. But she was not to despair, for she would meet someone else very soon after. What sort of a thing is that to tell a woman at a summer fete?”
“My poor mother,” Devlin said. “If she hears any of these stories, she will consider the whole fete a miserable failure and will take all the blame upon herself.”