Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(37)

“Mama’s life is going to be difficult, to say the least, from this day on, Dev,” Nicholas said. “One wonders if it will ever be bearable again, in fact. Pippa is having a sleepless night and has apparently been vomiting. One can only imagine how it is all going to affect Steph and Owen.”

Devlin glared at him. “Did you know?” he asked.

“No,” Nicholas said. “I did not, though I cannot say I was surprised. I suppose I have been like a lot of other people, you included apparently, not wanting to know and so not asking questions I might otherwise have asked. Is it really credible, for example, that our father has spent a few months of every year of our lives alone in London, during the height of the Season, without mounting mistresses? Ever? I just wish he had kept them there and not brought one of them home here with him. For that I will find it difficult to forgive him. If I ever will.”

“Yet you said nothing in the drawing room earlier,” Devlin said.

“No,” his brother admitted. “No, I did not, Dev. What was there to say?”

“That our father is nothing but a damned whore himself, perhaps?” Devlin suggested.

“Good God,” his brother said, and stopped to swallow rather loudly. “I just think you may have destroyed more than you realize tonight, Dev. We cannot simply tear down the whole framework of our lives in the name of righteousness. Yet I believe that is what you have done. What will be left now—for Mama, for our sisters and Owen? For you?” He inhaled slowly and audibly. “For me?”

“I have destroyed an awful lot,” Devlin said. He did not even bother to make it into a question. “Yes, it was all my fault. I understand, Nick. It was not our father’s fault, but mine. He is only guilty of adultery and debauchery and blatant disrespect for his wife and family. I am guilty of something far worse—of telling the truth.”

He did understand too. At long last. He had misunderstood his world all his life. He had assumed it was built upon truth and light and honesty and decency. But it was not. It was all about appearances, about respectability, about preserving a facade that was essentially empty. And by misunderstanding, he had torn down that flimsy illusion to discover there was nothing left. Only human suffering. In particular, his mother’s. And he was the cause of that suffering. Not his charming, laughing, philandering father, whose infidelities she had somehow managed, preserving a life for herself despite them. Not his father, but him, Devlin, with his unconsidered righteousness.

And what had happened to Gwyneth? He had not even missed her until he had come up to his room here in obedience to his grandfather’s command. How deeply had he embarrassed her?

He looked at his half brother, who had not said a word yet, either in the drawing room earlier or now. “And what about you, Ben?” he asked. “Do you have anything to add? Any further coals to heap on my head?”

Ben eyed his bags, packed and ready to go, and then looked at him. “When are we leaving?” he asked.

Devlin regarded him in silence for a moment.

“What?” he said then. “We?”

“I am going with you,” his brother said.

“Why?” Devlin asked.

Ben half smiled, though there was no amusement in his expression. “I am the son of one of his whores, am I not?” he said. “The only mistress he ever had, of course. Because he loved her dearly and passionately. Or so he has told me more than once. He would have married her, but he was an earl’s heir with obligations, and she was not an eligible bride. His heart broke when she died, and would never quite mend. Though he has me to remember her by. A favored son though he cannot in all good conscience have actual favorites among his children. It would seem, Dev, that I have been as na?ve as you but with less excuse. I am older than you. I have always believed him because I have wanted to. But I have always known that I am nevertheless the bastard son of a whore. It is now obvious that my mother—my mother—was just one of countless numbers of whores our father has used. Does that answer your question?” His voice, trembling with bitterness, was almost unrecognizable. Tonight, Devlin realized, had shattered Ben’s illusions as surely as it had shattered his own. Ben’s mother had been dishonored tonight just as much as his own had.

Nicholas had turned his back on the room. He was weeping silently, Devlin realized with a terrible lurching of the heart.

What had he done?



* * *



—

Stephanie was an early riser. When Devlin tapped on the door of her bedchamber just before seven o’clock and opened it cautiously, he found her fully dressed and sitting on her bed, reading, her back propped against the pillows, one braid over each shoulder, her knees drawn up before her. Her eyes took in his travel garments and she snapped shut her book, smiled sunnily, and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Are you going riding?” she asked. “Let me come too. I can be ready in a minute.”

“Owen is still sleeping,” he said. “I need to talk to the two of you.”

“He will grumble and complain and hide his head under his pillows if you try to wake him,” she said. “Then he will be in a bad mood all morning. He is going to have to get up for church later, but not quite yet. Tell me and I’ll tell him.”

“Come with me to his room,” he said.