Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(54)

Did one also look tense, though?

He could get up and leave as quietly as he had come. He should do it. He did not want any encounter with her. Dash it all, he did not. Yet he continued to sit and gaze at her. Numbness, he thought, sometimes felt a little too much like pain. Yet there had been just one day. One. Six years ago.

And then it was too late to take the initiative. She stood up abruptly, moved out from her pew, and came along the aisle toward the back. She stopped beside him. By that time he was on his feet too.

They gazed at each other in the semigloom. A shaft of colored light caught one side of her bonnet and left her face in the shade. But he could see her well enough. It was not a girl’s face he looked into but a woman’s. She had not changed a great deal, though. She was still dark haired and beautiful—with firm jaw and flashing eyes.

“I am going outside,” she said just as the organ music was building to a grand crescendo. “I need some fresh air.”

“I’ll come too,” he told her, and for a few moments she continued to gaze at him while he wondered if that was what she had intended.

The music came to a close.

“Dad.” Gwyneth turned her head.

But the men were already talking to each other with passionate intensity.

“Dad.” She raised her voice a bit.

They were too involved with what they were talking about to hear her. The man with Sir Ifor—Morgan, had the vicar said?—was leaning forward to play a chord on the lowest keyboard.

“They do not know anyone else even exists,” Gwyneth said. “They probably will not come back to earth for another few hours.”

She turned and led the way outside without looking to see if Devlin was following her.





Chapter Fourteen





Gwyneth had been feeling irritated. Which was a bit of an understatement, for there was more than one cause of her bad mood.

For one, she had not been looking forward to tomorrow and the tea to which they had all been invited at Ravenswood Hall—even Aled. An invitation had been delivered for him just this morning to prove how quickly news traveled. Normally a social event might have been a welcome break from the monotony that often threatened life in the country, and these days events at the hall were rare. But the formal invitations that had been sent out had stated quite clearly that the tea was in honor of the return to Ravenswood of the Earl of Stratton. No mention of Devlin or home or the pleasure their company would give the countess. Even Gwyneth’s mother had remarked that there was something a bit chilling about the card.

Who knew what was to be expected? Opinion had always been divided, quite sharply in some instances, on that scene Devlin had created before leaving home. Some people claimed to have suspected that Mrs. Shaw was the old earl’s mistress and to have been uncomfortable and outraged on the countess’s behalf and that of her children. Those people tended to defend what Devlin had done. Others pointed out that his ill-considered outspokenness had hurt his mother and his sisters and young brother as much as they had chastised his father, perhaps more. Those people were of the opinion that good manners were sometimes of greater importance than the truth. Now a sizable number of both groups, as well as those, like Gwyneth’s parents, who refrained from giving any opinion or passing any judgment, were to gather at Ravenswood to face the very man who had hurt his family and divided the neighborhood.

Gwyneth did not want to be one of them. It was a farce, what the countess was doing. And how would he react? She did not want to know. She did not want to see him. Her connection to him was history, and she would have preferred to leave it that way. But . . . good manners dictated that she go. And since this morning she did not even have the excuse that she ought to remain at home to keep Aled company. He was delighted to have been invited.

“I will be pleased to be your escort, Gwyneth,” he had said, even though Mam and Dad and Idris would be going too, and they had always been escort enough for her—if she needed an escort at all.

She had been feeling depressed about that, then, even before coming to the church this morning—Aled had persuaded her to come, against her better judgment. She had allowed herself to be flattered by his attentions. Foolish her! For one hour passed inside the church and then two, and a third was in progress. And she understood what of course she had already known—that for Aled music was his life and his soul. Everything else was secondary. She did not really doubt that he loved her, but she did not come even close to being the foremost love of his life.

She was going to have to decide if she could live with that reality. At just the time she was feeling all ruffled over Devlin’s return and trying to persuade herself that she was not ruffled at all, that his coming home meant nothing whatsoever to her. She desperately needed the reassurance of Aled’s preference for her, yet all he could think about was that wretched pipe organ. It had been her harp last evening, but that was small comfort today.

Today she was feeling both bored and annoyed. No one liked to feel neglected. And no one liked to feel petty and childish for feeling neglected.

But then . . .

Well, then the church door had opened quietly behind her. She had glanced back and then turned her head sharply forward again. And prayed desperately—she was in the right place for it—that he would close the door and go away. For a few minutes she had tried to convince herself that he had done just that. Tried but not succeeded. For there had been prickles down her spine, and if she did not soon do something decisive, she would surely scream.