Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(56)

He folded his arms along the top of the stone balustrade and leaned against them. “I thought you would be married by now, Gwyneth,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.” Had he hoped she was married and gone from here? Did it matter to him either way? Did she matter? But how could she? There had been that one day. Sometimes she chastised herself for having made so much of it. One day out of all the days of her life.

He nodded.

“What happened?” she asked, desperate to change the subject, though then she wished she had not asked something so personal.

He turned his head her way, and she looked into the rough hardness of his scarred face. She tried not to remember what he had looked like on that one day when they had been in love with each other.

“Here?” he asked, indicating his scar by moving one finger diagonally in front of his face. “I did not step back from an enemy saber quite soon enough for it to miss me altogether. I do not look nearly as pretty as I did as a young man, do I?” His tone was mocking. His eyes searched her face. “You, on the other hand, are prettier than you were. Did you dance about the maypole at the fete this year?”

He did not know? “There was no fete,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Bad weather?” he asked.

“There has been no Ravenswood fete for six years,” she told him.

He gazed at her, his look inscrutable. “And the Valentine’s treasure hunt?” he asked. “The Christmas ball?”

She shook her head. “Only the children’s party on Christmas Eve,” she told him.

“And the village assemblies and the children’s drama nights?” he asked, frowning.

“There have been dances in the assembly rooms above the inn,” she said. “There will be one next week, in fact, to celebrate the harvest. The church has proved big enough for special school events.”

He continued to gaze at her, nodding slowly. If it was possible, he looked harder than before, his eyes colder. He really had not known, she realized. The past six years were a blank to him as far as this part of the world was concerned. Oh, Devlin. Why did you do that to yourself?

“I do not suppose I have been very popular in these parts if I am blamed for all these changes,” he said, a curious twist to his lips that was not quite a smile. “Or was it my father who was blamed?”

She stared at him mutely, but he held up a staying hand before she could frame an answer. “That was altogether an unfair question,” he said. “I beg your pardon. Why are you not married, Gwyneth? I cannot believe no one has ever asked you.”

She could feel her cheeks grow warm. For he ought to remember that one man at least had asked her. Six years ago, not even a mile from here. And she had said yes. But really, how dared he ask such a question? It was none of his business. She answered anyway.

“I have had a number of eligible offers,” she told him. “None of them suited me.”

“Waiting for love, are you?” he asked.

Oh, his eyes! And his lips, with that curious twist to them that was not a smile. Could this possibly be Devlin? This man with his ill-mannered, intrusive questions? Was he trying to hurt her? Or annoy her? Or . . . or what? But she was not going to quarrel with him. Or simply walk away back to the church.

“I am waiting for someone with whom I can be comfortable,” she told him.

“It sounds dull,” he said.

He was definitely trying to provoke her. But why? Because he now disliked her? But surely dislike would merely breed indifference. Because somewhere deep inside this strange, stony exterior, then, there was pain of some sort? It was impossible to know, and she did not want to know. Oh, she wished she had stayed in her pew.

“Comfort is never dull,” she said. “It is—” But there was nowhere to go with that sentence.

“Comfortable?” he suggested.

“Yes,” she said, and then she was horrified and definitely not comfortable when they both smiled at the same moment. A real smile on his part. Not just that twist of his lips.

Her stomach felt as though it had turned over. For during that moment he had looked just like . . . Devlin. Though Devlin had not often smiled—except on that last day, which she would really rather not remember.

“Are there any comfortable men on the horizon?” he asked her.

The mockery with which he had asked the last few questions had gone. “Yes,” she said, though she was not sure that it was a comfortable life she could expect with Aled. Interesting, perhaps. Stimulating, almost surely. Anyway, he had not asked yet.

“He is a fortunate man,” Devlin said, straightening up. “I had better walk you back to the church before Sir Ifor misses you and organizes a search party. Is that likely to happen? Or should we walk up to the hall so I can drive you home in the gig? I can stop in at the church on my way back to let him know where you are.”

It was tempting. To go home, that was, to seek out solitude until she had found some composure. But she would have to walk all the way up to the hall with him and then ride beside him in a gig. And the chances were that her mother and Idris would see him and come out to speak to him and invite him inside. She was not prepared for any of that. This had been quite enough for one day.

“I will go back to the church,” she said. “You do not need to escort me.”