Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(59)

She had not answered his question, he noticed.

“Do you have any beaux?” he asked her. “I more than half expected that you would be married by now.”

She shrugged again, so unlike the old Pippa, who had glowed with youth and the eager expectation of courtship and a brilliant love match and a life vibrant with happiness as soon as she turned eighteen. “I am not interested,” she said.

Chilling words. She was twenty-one years old.

“You are Lady Philippa Ware,” he said, “daughter and sister of an earl. Have you never gone to London for a Season? You looked forward so much to doing that, I remember.”

“I would not go when I was eighteen,” she said. “I did not want to. Then, when I was nineteen, Papa died. We were not quite out of mourning for him last year until well after Easter. By then Grandmama Ware was very sick, and then she died. We were still in mourning for her in the spring this year.” She told her story of crushed dreams and dashed hopes in a flat voice, as though really they were nothing at all. Her following words confirmed that impression. “It did not matter anyway. I did not want to go. No one teaches you that the future is not assured, do they? They teach you useless things like the plays of Shakespeare and the difference between who and whom. They teach you to add and multiply and divide. They teach you to find Italy and India and China on a map, and how to paint in watercolors and embroider your initials across the corner of a handkerchief without pulling the linen out of shape. You have to learn all the important things from life itself.”

“You will go to London next year,” he said. “I will take you myself.” He was going to have to take his place in the House of Lords anyway.

She looked at him with weary scorn. “You cannot promise any such thing,” she said. “You may be dead by then. I may be. Besides, I will be twenty-two next year. I will be old.”

“You will be greatly sought after,” he said. “There is happiness awaiting you, Pippa.”

A fine one he was to promise her that. What the devil did he know about happiness or courtship or love? Only that all three could be crushed in a moment and ought never to be risked.

She was looking steadily at him, apparently unconvinced. Or—worse—uninterested.

“Devlin,” she said, “are you really going to stay?”

“I am,” he said. “It is my duty to take on the role of Stratton and see to it that Ravenswood thrives at least in material ways. I am not like our father and never can be. I cannot light up a room or a village street with my mere presence. But I will always do what I can see needs doing. Like seeing to it that you have your Season in London next year and your chance for happily ever after.”

She was still gazing at him. “No one can ever be someone else,” she said. “But even if you could, Devlin, or if you could at least be like Papa, I would not want you to do it. I loved him with all my heart, but he did not love us.”

Her words chilled him again.

“He loved us in his own way, Pippa,” he said, and thought with some surprise that it was probably true.

“It was not good enough for me,” she said. “I think the only person he really loved was himself.”

Strangely, Devlin was not sure about that either. He had determinedly not thought of his father all these years. But the man had beamed love to all around him. Maybe it was not a pure love, since he undoubtedly took a great deal of pleasure for himself at the expense of those nearest and dearest to him. But it was love he had given them nevertheless. They could not possibly have been so deceived by him if it had not been. Could they?

His father had been a . . . complex being, Devlin thought, and was contented to leave it at that. He did not want to analyze him. He did not want to think about him at all.

He did not ever want to step into the village churchyard.

“Pippa,” he said. “I ought to ask you rather than tell you, ought I not? You are an adult. What have the past six years been like for you? What may I do for you? How can we mend what is broken? Is it even possible?”

She looked at him for a long moment. “You were not to blame,” she told him. “Even though the consequences were terrible, I was never really sorry that you did what you did. I was actually proud of you. For if you had waited and talked privately with Papa and even perhaps with Mama and the grandparents, everything would have been hushed up when it needed to be shouted from the rooftops.” She paused then. “There is one thing I do blame you for, though. Papa died more than two years ago. We waited and waited for you to come home, but you did not come. Steph worshipped you, Dev. She took to hanging about down by the river, and though she said nothing, I know she was watching for you. For two years. And Owen has needed you terribly. He had three older brothers and then none. And not even letters from you. Nothing. Just silence. Because you could not bear to think of us, I suppose. And now you have come back all turned to stone. Or so it seems. And talking about how you are going to take charge.”

He gazed mutely at her. What the devil was there to say? He closed his eyes and hung his head.

“You are not the only one who has suffered,” she said, getting to her feet. “It is chilly out here. I am going inside.”

He let her go and stayed where he was. And realized something with a sinking heart. For six years he had shut himself up inside himself in an act of self-defense that was incredibly selfish. And now he had come home to do his duty. But cold duty was definitely not going to be enough. He was indeed going to have to mend what was broken in this family. Yet he was surely the least suitably equipped man on earth to do so.