Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(47)
He was coming home. Forever had not lasted forever after all.
The carriage was drawing to a halt on the terrace before the house, but it was impossible to see who would alight from it or even how many persons. There had been some discussion about whether Ben Ellis was likely to return with his brother, or even Major Nicholas Ware. Nobody knew, however. It was known only that the Earl of Stratton was coming.
Gwyneth, watching intently though she could see very little, told herself that she had arrived at this particular place at this particular time purely by chance. Why would it be otherwise? Once upon a time she had fixed both her twelve-year-old eyes and her girlhood dreams upon a seeming impossibility—a boy several years older than she, her brother’s best friend, a boy with a title and the prospect of a far more illustrious one. A boy beyond her reach, not because of the titles, but because he was older, and his serious demeanor made him seem older still, and he did not know she existed. She had been quite lovesick over him for years, even while she had enjoyed a close friendship with his younger brother. And then for one day—just one out of all the days she had lived in her twenty-four years and a few months—that infatuation had blossomed into a glorious, unlikely romance, complete with a kiss on a darkened hillside and a mutual declaration of eternal love. And a proposal of marriage.
The very next day, he was gone.
Such a grand, sad tragedy. One day. A long time ago. There was no reason for the news of his impending return to have brought her up here on the chance that she would witness it. And what was she seeing anyway? A carriage and horses that might have brought him from London. So what? What did it have to do with her?
Perhaps Nicholas had come with him. She tried to pin her thoughts upon that possibility, for Nick had once been her dearest friend, and she had wept bitterly the day he left Ravenswood to join his regiment. She had died a number of little deaths over the following years as this corner of the world had received news of deadly battles fought and won or lost weeks, even months, before. Sometimes word of wounds Nicholas had sustained and somehow survived had seeped out of the hall by the usual means. It had been heartsickening to know that every bit of news was old by the time she heard it. To know that perhaps he had been wounded again. Or worse. He might be dead and no one here knew it yet.
There was never any news of him. Except that he became Earl of Stratton upon his father’s death two years ago, so he must at least have been still alive then. Now he was coming home. He had survived the wars.
The carriage was moving off from the front of the hall and Gwyneth’s horse snorted and pawed the ground, eager to be moving again. She held it still. Whoever had descended from the carriage had gone inside, and she was none the wiser.
She thought of him as the Earl of Stratton. Nick’s elder brother, who had succeeded to the title two years ago. She did not think of him by any other name. A girlhood infatuation, a one-day flaring of exuberant, passionate romance when she was eighteen and on the cusp of womanhood—what, after all, had it left behind that was of any significance except a few memories she might draw out and dust off when she was old and gray and rocking in her chair before the fire and smile over a little sadly for the pain she had allowed herself to suffer just because she was young? At present the memories were safely packed away somewhere deep inside herself where they caused no pain at all.
She had moved on from that brief, seemingly unbearable agony, that girl who had been herself. She had gone to Wales with her family a couple of weeks after and been caught up within the warm affection of the larger family there with all their friends, who lived boisterous, passionate, laughter-filled and music-centered lives—or so it had always seemed to her, though doubtless they experienced their own upsets and tragedies and disappointments. They had been a balm to her shattered dreams that year, and she had almost got herself betrothed to a pleasant young man she had known most of her life.
Almost but not quite. She had found herself saying no to his stammered marriage proposal when she had fully expected to say yes. Then she had watched his expression change, not to one of anguish, but to one of . . . relief? It had suggested to her that he had offered out of pity more than romantic love. Her mother had had much the same look on her face when Gwyneth had told her. She had been wise to refuse, her mother had said, for accepting would not have been entirely fair to the young man.
She had not needed her mother to tell her that, though. She had liked him too well to use him to soothe a bruised, perhaps even broken, heart. The whole family had hugged and fussed over her far more often than usual that summer and dreamed up all sorts of treats for her amusement and otherwise showed her how much they loved her.
It had been soothing and devastating.
They had gone to London the following spring. Her father had leased a house in a fashionable part of Mayfair, and he and Gwyneth’s mother had used connections she had not even realized they had to secure introductions to influential people. Gwyneth had even been taken to one of the queen’s drawing rooms to make her curtsy to Her Majesty. After that she had been caught up in a dizzying round of social entertainments—balls and routs, theater performances and Venetian breakfasts, strolls and rides in Hyde Park and drives to Kew Gardens, dinners and one dazzling evening at Vauxhall Gardens, listening to music, dancing, and watching the fireworks. She and her mother had been sent vouchers to Almack’s, a coveted mark of distinction indeed. She had received two very eligible marriage offers, one from a baron, and had given serious consideration to both before declining. Since then she had attended several house parties to which she had been invited by friends she had made in London. She had attended part of another Season two years ago with one of those friends and had received and rejected another marriage offer.