Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(39)

“Come,” he said. “I’ll take you to Miss Field.”

“No,” she said. “I do not need my governess. You are not going to do it, are you? You are not going to talk to Mama. Just go, then.”

He hesitated.

“Go,” she said again. “Go, go, go.”

He turned to the door.

“Ben,” she wailed then. “Ben, I don’t want you to go. Don’t go.”

Devlin left the room as his brother’s arms were closing about her.

Oh, God, Devlin thought. Let this be over. Please let it be over. Let us be gone. But . . . His mother. Would she have changed her mind this morning? Ought he to talk to her directly? Apologize? Tell her he wanted to stay?

But did he? Would he if she offered a reprieve? Would he stay here in a house with his father? But ought he at least to say goodbye to her?

A few minutes later he was tapping at the door of her dressing room. It was opened partway a moment after that and his mother’s longtime dresser peered out at him—minus her customary smile.

“Millicent,” he said. “Ask my mother if I may take a few minutes of her time, will you?”

She shut the door without saying a word and left him standing outside, hoping his father would not come out of his room as he waited here. All of two minutes must have passed. They felt more like ten. Finally Millicent half opened the door again and fixed her gaze somewhere in the area of his chin.

“Her ladyship says no, Lord Mountford,” she said, and closed the door quietly again before he could react.

Her ladyship says no.

His mother.

His mother had refused to see him.

Philippa was out behind the carriage house, pale almost to the point of greenness, with dark circles beneath her eyes; she was hugging her arms and hunching her shoulders because the early morning was chilly and she had not brought a shawl with her. She was standing beside Devlin’s curricle, which was ready to go. A groom had just finished strapping his bags and Ben’s to the rear of it. Ben was rubbing the back of her neck with one hand.

She looked at Devlin with haunted eyes.

“Go and talk to Mama,” she said. “Please, Dev? She cannot possibly have meant what she said last night. And even if she did, she will have changed her mind this morning. This whole . . . thing will be patched up soon and forgotten about. It is what always happens. Go and talk to her. Grovel if you must. Just please do not go away.”

“She will not see me,” he told her.

She walked into his arms then and pressed her face to his shoulder while reaching out one arm to draw Ben too into her embrace.





Chapter Ten





Sometimes I find myself quite annoying,” Lady Rhys said. “I have a very late night and think to myself that it does not matter. I will simply make up for it by sleeping on in the morning. But does it happen? It does not. I wake up at my usual time notwithstanding, and when I direct myself quite firmly to go back to sleep, myself does not listen.”

“And it seems you have trained us all to be just like you, Mam,” Idris said. “Here we all are to prove it.”

All four of them were up and seated about the breakfast table at their usual hour, and Lady Rhys was talking for the sake of talking, in Gwyneth’s opinion. With unnatural cheerfulness, just as though the world had not come to an end last night. Just as though she had not noticed that her daughter was toying with the food on her plate, moving it from place to place but not into her mouth.

“I needed to be up anyway,” Sir Ifor said in an identical tone of voice. “I want to get to church early. I have no idea how many of the choir boys and girls will turn up today and which of them will bring their voices with them. There may not be enough of them to drown out my mistakes, and I chose some tricky pieces for this week.”

Her father never made mistakes, Gwyneth thought. The more complex the piece of music, the more brilliant his playing became. She knew a few people who were willing to admit that they went to church for the sole purpose of listening to Sir Ifor Rhys play the organ.

“I’ll go with you, Dad,” Idris said. “We can take the gig. It’s a nice enough morning. Mam and Gwyn can come later in the carriage.”

All this hearty cheerfulness was going to make her scream in a minute, Gwyneth thought. It was time someone addressed the issue that was on all their minds and had probably kept them all awake half the night. More than half in her case. But before anyone could broach the topic, her mother and Idris both turned their heads sharply toward the window, and Gwyneth heard it too. Some sort of carriage. Pulled by more than one horse.

“There is someone coming here at this hour?” her mother said. “On a Sunday?”

Idris pushed back his chair, got to his feet, and went to the window. “It is Devlin,” he said. “And Ben Ellis. In Dev’s curricle.”

Gwyneth felt a great surge of joy. He had come. But it lasted no longer than a moment, for everything was wrong with the picture that had rushed to her mind. It was very much too early. It was a Sunday morning before church. He had his half brother with him. And after last night it was impossible that he was coming courting. She was very glad she had not leapt up from her chair.

Idris went striding out of the room while Gwyneth’s parents exchanged glances and Lady Rhys looked with some concern at her daughter.