Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(57)

“But I will,” he said. “It is what gentlemen do, I believe.” They walked in silence for a short while before he spoke again. “The man in the church with your father is a fellow musician?”

“Aled Morgan,” she said. “A Welshman, as his name would suggest. Yes, he is a musician of some renown. He sings and plays a number of instruments, but he is best known, even outside Wales, as a conductor. I believe he will soon be conducting orchestras in places like Vienna and Paris and Rome now that the wars are over.”

He had his head turned toward her. “Ah,” he said softly.

She thought of how a brief, chance moment could change the whole course of life for many people. If Devlin had suggested returning to the ballroom a minute sooner than he had that night, or if his father had brought Mrs. Shaw—if that had been her real name—up to the pavilion a minute later, would they be married now, she and Devlin? Perhaps with little ones? Would his father still be alive? Would all of life in this place have proceeded as it always had? Would there have been fetes and Christmas balls and . . . happiness?

But who could know? One could never predict the future, and the past could never be changed. The only influence one could ever have upon one’s own life or the lives of other people was in the present, yet the present was such a fleeting thing, gone even as one thought of it. Then one was confronted with yet another present moment, and so on throughout a lifetime. Each moment unveiling choices and decisions, any of which might have long-lasting consequences. It was a dizzying, even frightening thought, for any hope one might have of permanence or stability was just an illusion.

The organ was still playing inside the church.

“I am going to stay out here for a few minutes longer,” she said, turning to him. “I am going to wander about the churchyard. I always enjoy reading the gravestones and contemplating the long history of this place where I live and the ongoing connection of families through the generations. I find it soothing rather than morbid. Thank you for walking with me.”

But something had happened to his eyes. They had turned opaque—if that was the right word—as though he had shut himself up inside himself so that the world would not see in. And she remembered with a great sinking feeling that his father was buried in the churchyard and in all probability Devlin had not seen his grave.

“It was my pleasure.” He inclined his head to her and turned to stride away diagonally across the green, skirting the duck pond as he went. Striding, like a military man.

Gwyneth felt the soreness of tears prick the back of her throat.

Oh, she did not want this.

Whatever this might be.



* * *



—

He ought not to have told Gwyneth she was prettier now than she had been, Devlin thought as he strode homeward up the drive. For one thing, it had sounded condescending. For another, it was not really true. She had been a pretty, vibrant girl. Now she was a woman, and some of the vibrancy had gone. Or perhaps it was just being with him that had dampened it temporarily. Pretty was not the best word to use of her now anyway. She was beautiful.

And presumably she was in some sort of a courtship with that musician with a Welsh name. Somebody Morgan. They almost certainly had a great deal in common and were therefore well suited. Did she still play her harp? Did she still sing?

His mind was abuzz with her, and he did not like it. He had liked being a military officer. It had enabled him to focus his mind entirely upon his duty and the task at hand. He would not say he had not thought at all during his years on the Peninsula. It was, after all, impossible not to think. But there had been enough to occupy his mind every day, so that his thoughts had rarely strayed. When they had, he had brought them firmly back to the present before they could take root in the past.

Now his thoughts were straying all over the place, and he did not know what to do to control them. For he must live here. It was his duty to do so, and ultimately duty had always been the guiding principle of his life. In being here and doing his duty as Earl of Stratton, however, he must also relate to his family and, to a lesser degree, to his neighbors. He had known that. He had even spoken about it on his first evening at home. The Rhyses were his neighbors. And so, God help him, was Gwyneth, for she was not yet married or even betrothed. She would surely have said if she had been. She had told him that Idris was engaged, after all.

Memories were asserting themselves after years of being suppressed. He was remembering things she had said to him the last time he had spoken with her—at Cartref the morning he left, when he had gone to say goodbye. And suddenly it was all as though it had happened yesterday.

He stopped to watch the sheep amble about the meadow below the ha-ha. One of them looked up and greeted him with a baa. Sheep always sounded comically human, he thought.

“And good day to you too,” he said—and felt a sudden, unexpected gladness that he was in England, that he was home, that this land was his. His in trust, to nurture while he lived and to hand on to his children and his children’s children, as it had been passed on to him.

His father’s mortal remains were in that churchyard.

He walked on, thinking desperately about sheep. He had missed the shearing this year—and for the past six. He had always enjoyed the shearing.

If he loved her, Gwyneth had told him on that long-ago morning, he would not have made that public scene the night before. She had begged him not to, but he had done it anyway. Had she been right? If he had loved at all—his mother, his brothers and sisters, his friends and neighbors, Gwyneth—would he have kept quiet and confronted his father privately the next day? Had the choice been between love and truth? But were they not the same thing? Or, when he thought he had acted out of an adherence to the truth, did he really mean righteousness? Righteousness—the need to judge and condemn in the name of a perceived truth. He had chosen righteousness. But also truth. And surely love too. It was his fierce love for his mother and his sisters that had so incensed him and convinced him that he could not allow the terrible indiscretion to continue one moment longer.