Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(50)

“Stratton,” she said. Her eyes did not quite meet his. “Hello, Ben. And Joy.”

Stephanie had grown a great deal, as was to be expected between the ages of nine and fifteen. She was slightly taller than Pippa. But otherwise she still looked much the same, was just a larger version of herself. Her flaxen hair, in heavy plaits, was wound over the top of her head like a double halo. Her face was round and shiny. She had not lost any of her baby fat. Poor Steph. The only real difference, apart from height, was the paleness of her face and the dullness of her eyes.

“Steph,” he said, and held out both hands, perhaps a little recklessly, as any rejection on her part would be avidly noted and reported upon by the silent lines behind him.

“Devlin.” She set both hands in his and even wound her fingers about them. She raised her eyes to look into his face and roam over it. “You got wounded. No one told us.” Her words and her expression accused.

“I lived,” he said.

She nodded and removed her hands from his before turning to their brother. “I am glad you are home, Ben,” she told him. “And I have been longing to meet Joy. Will she let me see her face? She has awfully pretty hair.”

It was short and curly and unruly at the best of times. Now it looked rumpled. But she peeped—and smiled widely before ducking her head back under the safety of Ben’s greatcoat.

“And she has a pretty face too,” Stephanie said. “I am Aunt Stephanie, Joy. I have been waiting for you to come and play with me.”

Devlin had turned to his youngest brother, grown surely to nearly twice the height he had been at the age of twelve. He was slender almost to the point of thinness. He was also a handsome lad with his shock of fair hair and his blue eyes, which gazed at his brother with an inscrutable look.

“Owen.” Devlin extended his right hand and found that he was looking slightly up at his brother.

“Do all officers have that same look about them as you do?” Owen asked, shaking Devlin’s hand with a firm clasp. “Hard, I mean. And scarred. I am glad you are home, Devlin, even though I do not know quite what it is going to mean. And you too, Ben. It will be good to have brothers around again. To outnumber our sisters.” He actually grinned, the first of them to smile, and in his face Devlin saw the impish boy he had known—and also the alluring sort of family charm that had passed him by and was going to make Owen irresistible to women in a few years’ time. Or perhaps already? He was eighteen, after all. A young man.

“You will wish to go to your rooms to freshen up before joining us for tea in the drawing room,” their mother said. “Mrs. Padgett will direct you. Will you take the child to the nursery, Ben? One of the maids has been appointed as temporary nurse, unless you have brought your own.”

“I have not, Mother,” Ben said. “Not yet. But Joy will stay with me in my room, at least for a while. And she will come to tea with me if it is permitted.”

“Of course,” she said.

Devlin was about to say that they would not need Mrs. Padgett to show them to their rooms. But which were their rooms now? It was altogether possible—even probable—that his mother had moved out of the earl’s suite above the drawing room and had it prepared for Devlin. Ben might have been moved from his old room to Devlin’s since it was front-facing and a bit larger. Or perhaps his mother was now there.

Did it matter?

“Thank you,” he said, and turned to find the housekeeper waiting to escort them upstairs. Like visitors in their own home. He felt more like a stranger than a visitor actually. An unwelcome stranger to all except perhaps Owen, who on the last Saturday of July six years ago had had three older brothers at home, just one the following day, and none a couple of months later. And no father either four years after that.

As he followed a silent Mrs. Padgett from the hall, a silent Ben at his heels, Devlin wished with all his being that he was back in France somewhere with his regiment. As Captain Ware, who had somehow been in control of his own world even while the larger world around him was in chaos. The Earl of Stratton did not sound like himself. Or feel like himself.

Ravenswood did not feel like his home.





Chapter Thirteen





It was amazing, Devlin thought over the following few days, how he could spend time with people—his own family in this case—take his meals with them, occupy a drawing room with them during the evenings, converse with them enough that there were no awkward stretches of silence, and yet find that he did not feel he knew them any better than he had the day he returned.

Though he learned one startling piece of news. When he asked at tea on the first day about the extended family—his grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins—he was told that his paternal grandmother, the dowager countess, had died last year during the summer. She had been Ben’s grandmother too, of course. Had he known of her passing? Devlin had not asked him.

After dinner on that same day he told them all that he would be spending much of his time during the coming days with his steward, familiarizing himself again with his properties, reminding himself of his duties, talking with his workers, making sure everything was functioning as it ought.

“But are you not going to be the steward here again, Ben?” Owen had asked. “I do know Mr. Mason has been feeling a bit anxious about it.”