Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(53)

“The head at school told me he had had a heart seizure,” Owen said. “That is what everyone here believes too. Or pretends to believe. Everyone always pretends. Have you noticed that, Dev? Did they do that during the wars too? It is as if truth does not really matter, but only what you want to believe is the truth.”

Oh yes, that Devlin noticed right enough. The noticing had ended life as he knew it six years ago. It seemed that at the age of twenty-two he had been more na?ve than Owen was now at eighteen. “Perhaps,” he said, “some people find it more comfortable to see their world the way they want it to be. Do you think?”

“Instead of the way it is,” Owen said, shrugging. “Look, Dev, I don’t know exactly what happened the night of that fete. You did not tell us before you left, and no one would tell us the next day or anytime after. But it must have been drastic for everything to change as it did. Not just everything, but everybody. I worked it out, of course. Twelve-year-olds are not stupid, and they have ears. I think I am almost certainly right. But I do not know, and it irks me now that I am grown-up. Anyway. You will tell me one of these days. And you will tell me what it was like out on the Peninsula. But here we are coming up on the shop. Now, what did I do with that piece of paper Mama gave me? She will roll her eyes if I go back with the wrong color silks and mutter darkly that she might have known to come herself. Ah, here it is.”

They were indeed in the village by then, and a few heads had turned their way. One woman whom Devlin did not recognize, someone’s servant by the look of her, curtsied hastily to him. The last thing he felt like doing was to go right into the Misses Millers’ shop. He would have preferred a bit more time alone with his brother, getting to know him, sharing thoughts and even perhaps some memories. But Owen plunged on inside and Devlin followed.

He was greeted by the sisters and their two customers with surprised curtsies and obsequiousness—no, perhaps that was unfair. He was addressed at least four times as Lord Stratton and a few more times as my lord. He tried to recall if that was what everyone had always called his father and supposed it was. How else would they have addressed him?

He went as far as the rectory with his brother, and stood at the gate watching him dash inside to join his friend after the vicar and his wife both came to the door to invite him in—and to greet him as Lord Stratton.

“I will not come in, thank you,” Devlin told them. “But I hope I will see you both at Ravenswood tomorrow afternoon?”

He would indeed, they assured him.

“Is that Sir Ifor Rhys playing the organ in the church?” he asked.

“It is,” the vicar told him. “He has a famous conductor with him—Mr. Aled Morgan. He is a guest out at Cartref. The Prince of Wales shook his hand after an orchestral performance in London a year or two ago. They have been in the church for an hour or more.”

“Perhaps I will step inside, then, and listen for a while,” Devlin said. “I will try not to disturb them.” The church would be somewhere to hide for a while since he did not fancy strolling about the green alone but did not want to go back home so soon either. More important, though, he had always loved the sound of the organ in this church. When Sir Ifor was playing it anyway. It was not just music that came from the instrument when he played. It was sheer emotion. Sheer beauty.

He opened the church door quietly and slipped through. He closed it softly behind him and was engulfed in familiarity. There was a certain quality to the light inside here as it filtered through the stained glass windows. Something suggestive of eternity. Something that induced serenity. There was a familiar chill too, which was not quite coldness. And there were the mingled smells of ancient stone and prayer books and candles and incense.

He had been given similar impressions by other churches, but there was something unique about this one. It spoke of home as Ravenswood no longer did. He felt a sharp stabbing of nostalgia—pain and regret and a wish that history could be changed. And a knowledge that it could not. Not if one was honest with oneself about what was real, that was, and what was merely wishful thinking—like his father having died of a heart seizure.

Somewhere—if he allowed it in—there was terrible pain in knowing that he had turned into a drunk.

The organ was playing something both intricate and majestic, though he did not recognize what it was. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he could see Sir Ifor seated on the organ bench while another man stood behind and to one side of him, bending forward, apparently totally absorbed in what he saw and heard.

Devlin went to sit at the end of the back pew, and for the first time since coming home, it seemed to him, he relaxed. Perhaps it was the first time since he returned to England. He closed his eyes briefly and gave himself to the comfort his senses brought him. But sight was one of those senses, and he loved the sight of the church interior on a sunny day. He opened his eyes again.

And found himself looking at a fourth occupant of the church. Someone he had not noticed when he came inside. She was sitting with her back to him, several pews ahead. She was still and quiet and gazing toward the organ.

Gwyneth.

Was she not married and gone from here, then? He wished like the devil that she had gone away. He felt rather as though he had been punched low in the abdomen.

It was impossible to know if she had heard him come in or, if she had heard someone, whether she knew it was him. Perhaps it could not be inferred from her utter stillness that she did. When one was immersed in the total enjoyment of something, one did not fidget.