Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(64)

“Steph,” he said softly. He gripped his hands hard between his spread knees.

“And now you are back and I want you not to have changed,” she said. “But you have changed. You do not want to be here. You see your life here as one of strict duty and service. I do not doubt you will perform both quite conscientiously. But I do not want you to serve me, Dev. I want you to love me as you always used to do. You more than anyone. You look a bit like my brother who went away. But you do not feel like him, and if my heart was not already broken, it would break now.”

He stared at her, appalled. What the devil had he done?

“I never stopped loving you, Steph,” he told her, “though during all those years I dared not think of you. I was all broken up. Into a million pieces. The only way I could survive was by cutting all ties, quelling all feeling, and doing my duty.”

He got abruptly to his feet, drew her to hers, and wrapped his arms about her.

“I am here now,” he murmured against the top of her head. “And you were always my favorite sister, Steph—coequal with Pippa.”

“There are only the two of us, silly,” she said into his shoulder. “Would you have survived, Dev, if Ben had not gone with you? Or did you quell all feeling for him too?”

They were perceptive questions. He considered them.

“Ben kept me alive,” he said.

“And me too,” she told him. “He did write in answer to my letters. And each time he told me you were alive and well. I kept all his letters.”

“Forgive me?” he said. “Can you, Steph?”

“Yes,” she said, drawing back her head to gaze up at him. “I can and I do. I keep seeing you now in a million pieces of pain but looking and behaving like a tough, ruthless military officer. That is what you did, I think, and what you were. It is what you still look like now.”

“The scar does not help,” he said.

“It actually makes you look rather dashing,” she said. “Thank you for thinking about me this afternoon, Dev. For bringing me the food.”

“Do you feel like getting some fresh air?” he asked her. “Down by the lake, maybe?”

“I do,” she said. “May we take out a boat? Will you let me row?”

“In this chill weather?” he said. “But at least if you are at the oars I will be able to crouch down and take shelter from the wind.”

“Poor Dev.” She laughed with some of the glee from her childhood. “Let me go and put on something warm. Ten minutes?”

“Nine,” he said. “I want to get this boat-and-rowing torture over with as soon as possible.”

She laughed again.





Chapter Sixteen





Living in the same house with the man one was expecting to marry was somewhat different from seeing him for a few hours every couple of days or so, Gwyneth was discovering.

She had seen Aled frequently during the weeks she spent in Wales in the summer, and during those times he had focused most if not all of his attention upon her. He had talked almost exclusively with her. He had taken her for walks along beaches and drives through the countryside. He had courted her, and she had felt very close to him. She had felt that she would gladly spend the rest of her life with him.

Now he spent very little time exclusively with her. It was understandable, of course. He was a guest at the home of her mother and father, and, as courtesy perhaps dictated, he spent most of his time with them and with Idris. And with her too, of course. But they were rarely alone together.

On the morning following the tea at Ravenswood, he strolled outside with Gwyneth for half an hour before suggesting that the blustery wind and autumn chill were rather unpleasant and perhaps it would be more comfortable for her if they went back inside and joined the others for coffee. After luncheon he was going into Boscombe with her father for the young people’s choir practice. He was a little disappointed that Gwyneth would not be accompanying them on her harp—because it was too big and heavy to be carried back and forth to the church except for a very special occasion. But he brightened again when it occurred to him that her father would therefore be providing the accompaniment on the organ.

“I suppose you always manage perfectly well to play and conduct at the same time, Ifor,” he said. “One does when there is no alternative. But maybe I can twist your arm and persuade you to let me do some of the conducting today. I particularly love working with young voices, and I know from having heard them at the eisteddfod that you have a very good choir.”

They would be there for hours, Gwyneth thought. Perhaps until the children began to fidget and yawn and start pushing and shoving one another and tittering and giggling. And, she thought disloyally, she would surely feel as they did. She loved music, both as a performer and as a listener, but it did not consume her soul. It did not even consume her father’s as it did Aled’s. Her father knew that there needed to be a quite strict time limit upon choir practices. In the company of his guest, though, he was likely to forget that.

“But without your harp, Gwyneth,” Aled said, smiling at her, “you will be able to relax and simply enjoy the singing.”

“Oh, I am going to remain at home,” she told him. “I have some correspondence to catch up on, and this afternoon will be a good time to do it. You and Dad will enjoy the practice better without having to worry about me.” Not that they would worry. They would forget all about her, whether she was there or not.