Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(42)

“We all have to compromise?” Devlin asked. “I suppose you agreed with everyone last night and saw me as the big villain, the one who would not condone the Big Lie. Why the devil did you come with me today, then?”

“I told you why,” Ben said. “My mother may be dead, but she was and is and always will be my mother. And you were the only one of all of us who was right, Dev. That does not necessarily make what you did right. But you made me see the truth that I suppose I have always known and have pretended not to know—that my mother was no more to my father than a cheap whore. Or maybe not so cheap. I will never know, but I hope for her sake she demanded and got an exorbitant price. She meant so little to him that he went and married your mother even though there was me. And then he kept on whoring while keeping up that pretty image of devoted husband and father and friend and neighbor. The perfect aristocratic family in the perfect setting. Even I was somehow folded into the image without tarnishing it. You were the only one who ultimately could not be folded in. You need looking after, Dev. I don’t know how you will manage otherwise.”

“The army probably does not allow brothers to accompany its officers to war,” Devlin said.

“Then I will go as your servant,” Ben said, shrugging. “As your valet.”

“I believe they are called batmen in the military,” Devlin said. “You really want to go with me to play nursemaid and polish my boots and clean my weapons, do you?”

“I’ll probably tell you to do them yourself and mine too while you are at it,” Ben said. “But yes, I am going with you.”

Another half hour or so passed before they spoke again.

“Ben,” Devlin said. “I always knew your story. I knew that though you were older than me you could never inherit the title or Ravenswood. I knew you were sent to a different school from the one Nick and I attended and now Owen. And all because you are not a Ware, though your father is. But I can honestly say, for what it is worth, that I have never thought of you as somehow inferior to the rest of us. You have always been my brother, as important to me as the others. I swear this is true.”

“Yes,” Ben said after drawing the curricle farther to the side of the road as they passed a stagecoach coming in the opposite direction. “Yes, I know.”

“You did not come with me just because you thought I would need you, did you?” Devlin asked him. “You came at least partly because what happened last night made you feel very alone. It made you feel you did not belong at Ravenswood after all. You need me as much as I need you.”

“You talk too much,” his brother said, which was a funny thing to say when they had been traveling side by side for hours in almost complete silence.

“Well, that makes two of us,” Devlin said. “Not talking too much, I mean. All alone. Not belonging.”

“The difference being that you are still the heir,” Ben told him. “You cannot not belong, Dev. Sooner or later you will have to go back whether you want to or not.”

“Would to God it were not so,” Devlin said. “I envy you your freedom from all that nonsense, Ben. But you will never be entirely alone, you know. Not as long as I am alive.”





PART TWO





1814


    SIX YEARS LATER





Chapter Eleven





Leaving home forever was not possible, of course, when one happened to be the heir to an earldom and everything that went with it. In the case of Devlin Ware, forever lasted for six years and one month. At the end of that time he was on his way back home. Or, more accurately, on his way back to Ravenswood, which was not quite the same thing. Not nearly the same thing, in fact. Ben Ellis was with him.

Devlin had indeed purchased a commission in the 95th Regiment of Foot (the Rifles). He had not purchased any of his later promotions. He had earned them on the battlefield. It had not been impossibly difficult. The mortality rate of British officers during the Peninsular War had been shockingly high, and vacancies had to be filled, if not by purchase, then by merit and seniority.

He had arrived on the Peninsula in time to be part of the brutal winter retreat of the British forces under the command of Sir John Moore from Spain to Corunna in Portugal. He had been there for the Battle of Corunna. After that he had fought in so many engagements, ranging from minor skirmishes to sieges to massive all-out battles, that they tended to blur together in his mind so that he could not always remember whether a particular incident had happened at the Battle of Talavera or at Bussaco or Almeida. Or perhaps Vitória or Roncesvalles. He had been there for all of them and more.

He did remember the Battle of Toulouse, however, fought in the South of France on April 10 of 1814, because it was the final battle of the war. Over several years, British regiments had gradually trudged and fought their way out of Portugal and across Spain and over the Pyrenees into France, where they fought again, and finally it was all over. Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor, Marshal Soult agreed to an armistice with the Duke of Wellington, and Bonaparte was sent into exile on the island of Elba. Captain Devlin Ware—the only name by which he would allow anyone to address him—had had enough. The war was all over for him too. He returned to England, sold his commission, dealt with other necessary business in London, and was now on his way to Ravenswood.