Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(6)
Unfortunately, he did not even know she existed.
He was four years older than she. That had seemed a very wide gap of time when she was a child. He had come to Cartref almost as often as Nicholas had, but he had come to spend time with Idris, his best friend and close to him in age. She had been about as visible to him in those days as a spider on the wall. Perhaps less so. But she had loved his visits anyway, except when he and Idris had gone off alone somewhere together. More often, though, she had been able to sit quietly in a corner, her head bent over some busy work, while they talked—about books and school and music and religion. Devlin had been a serious, earnest boy, quite unlike his younger brother, but she had loved to listen to him. He had had firm opinions and the knowledge to back them up. He had also, though, listened attentively to opposing ideas and sometimes acknowledged their merit. Not many people were like that. Most people, when they were apparently listening to an opposing argument, were really just waiting for the moment when they could jump back in to reassert their opinion. Very few people listened.
The age gap had seemed to narrow as she grew older, though she was still invisible to Devlin Ware. Not that she had done much to make herself seen, for she had started to feel uncharacteristically awkward and shy when he came. He was so serious-minded and intelligent and mature, and he had the title and would own the whole of Ravenswood one day. And in her eyes he was gorgeous, though in a quieter way than Nicholas or his father. Indeed, whenever other people talked about the Ware men, it was of those two they spoke with most admiration. Most people seemed not to have noticed Devlin’s good looks, perhaps because he did not have the outgoing personality to go with them.
Gwyneth’s stomach had started to tie itself into uncomfortable knots whenever he came to Cartref, and she had continued to hide in a dark corner or behind her mother lest he notice her and not like what he saw. Not that he would look. He never had. If anyone had asked him, he might well have said that there were just three members of the Rhys family—her father and her mother and Idris. Though that was surely an exaggeration.
As she grew up, she had wanted desperately for Devlin Ware to notice her, yet she did all in her power to see that it did not happen. Sometimes the hardest person in this world to understand is oneself, she had thought in exasperation. For it was most unlike her to hide, to cower, to be unsure of herself, to behave like a chastened mouse. Most unlike.
Finally, though, he had noticed her. It had happened last year when she had been behaving most like herself. Their paths had almost crossed while they were both out riding—separately. She had been about to turn up onto the line of hills that divided her father’s land from his, and he had been on his way down. She had been riding alone—Nicholas had still been away at school. She had also been riding astride, as she had been allowed to do after she promised her mother and father one day when she was thirteen that she would never venture beyond their own property while so clad or so scandalously unaccompanied by a responsible male.
“The English are far more straitlaced than the Welsh, Gwyn,” her father had said. “In some ways anyway. But since we are living here, you must try not to offend anyone unnecessarily and find yourself being called a hoyden.”
“I despise that word, Ifor,” his wife had said. “It is applied exclusively to girls. Have you noticed? I know a few wild boys, and people generally think none the worse of them—boys will be boys. I have never heard any of them called hoydens. But listen to your dad anyway, Gwyn. He gives good advice. Most of the time.”
Gwyneth had been wearing breeches that day—also allowed on their own land, though her mother was beginning to make rumbling sounds of disapproval—and she had been hatless. Her hair had been streaming loose behind her in a tangled mass. She had not bothered to braid it or even tie it back before she left home. The whole episode had been unfortunate. She had told herself it was quite safe and unexceptionable to ride up over the hills, which were sort of her father’s even if they were sort of the Earl of Stratton’s too. She was not sure anyone had ever actually surveyed the hills to discover where the boundary line lay. Right down the center of the track? It seemed unlikely.
He had drawn rein when he was still some distance from her—Devlin, Viscount Mountford, that was—while she had felt every inch of herself blush, a reaction she had disguised by throwing back her head and staring defiantly at him since there had been nowhere she could literally hide. His eyes had swept over her from tousled head to booted feet in the stirrups, and he had nodded curtly and unsmilingly.
“Gwyneth,” he had said by way of greeting—he had not even paid her the courtesy of addressing her as Miss Rhys, even though she had been seventeen at the time. “I believe I will pretend this has not happened.”
And he had turned his horse’s head and ridden away back toward Ravenswood, leaving her to her own thoughts. Well, at least he saw me today, no matter what he pretends to the contrary. And at least he does know I exist. He even knows my name.
They had not been particularly consoling thoughts. He had not looked disgusted or angry or startled or . . . anything. He had not questioned or scolded or said or done something to give her an excuse to flare up at him. She flared anyway. What business of Devlin Ware, Viscount Mountford’s, was it what she did or how she looked on her father’s own land?
I believe I will pretend this has not happened.
How dared he! And what a very stuffy thing to say.