Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(66)

There was a tap on the door and it opened. Idris stood there, Devlin behind him.

“Dev wants to pay his respects to you, Gwyn,” Idris said. “He did not even realize you were here until I mentioned it just now.”

She turned in her chair.

“How do you do, Gwyneth?” Devlin said, moving into the doorway while Idris stepped back. “I wanted to thank you again for coming to Ravenswood yesterday. It meant a great deal to my mother to put on a show like that. I wanted to congratulate you too. Idris has been telling me about the competitions you have won with your harp music at the . . . Well, that Welsh word I can never quite get my tongue around.”

“Eisteddfod,” she said. “Thank you.”

“I can remember wondering the few times I heard you play when you were a girl,” he said, glancing at her harp in the corner of the room, “how on earth you could know which strings to pluck and how you could possibly make music from them. But you did.”

“After a lot of practice and grinding of teeth, it does become almost instinctive to pluck the right string,” she said.

He hesitated. She hesitated.

And then she heard herself say something quite unplanned. “Would you like to hear it now?”

His eyes came to hers. “I would,” he said. “If I am not interrupting something important, that is.”

“I have finished my letter,” she said, getting to her feet and crossing the room to her harp.

Devlin advanced farther into the room and stood watching. Idris propped a shoulder against the doorframe, folded his arms, and crossed his feet at the ankles.

She played a few simple folk melodies, first without any embellishment, then with. By the time she had finished, Devlin had taken a seat closer to her and Idris had disappeared, half closing the door behind him.

“I have always considered music undisciplined,” Devlin said. “Or maybe that is the wrong word. It must be played correctly and with much concentration and practice, so it is not by any means undisciplined. But it is not played for the intellect and the understanding, is it?”

She did not know what reply to give him. She gave none. She stood the harp upright again but did not rise from her chair. He was frowning down at his hands—until he looked up and directly into her eyes. “It represents chaos. It bypasses thought and reason and . . . discipline. It speaks directly to the emotions.”

“And emotions are by definition chaotic?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “They are unstable. Hard to control. Impossible to master.”

“Should not emotions sometimes be surrendered to?” she asked. “In a safe way? Through music and art and fine literature?” Why had she used the word safe?

“Is that not like a drunk thinking it safe to allow himself one drink?” he asked in return.

“No, I do not believe so,” she said. “If one surrenders to the power and beauty of music and art, one is not therefore doomed to react to every experience of life with undisciplined emotion.”

Are you afraid to love? She almost—ah, she almost—spoke the words aloud.

“Has Idris offered you tea? Or something stronger?” She got to her feet.

“Play again,” he said—quite illogically in light of what he had just been saying. “You used to sing. Do you still?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Can you play and sing?” he asked.

“Yes.” She sat again and tilted the harp down to her shoulder. She rested her hands against the strings and thought of what she would choose. She sang the haunting lyrics of “Barbara Allen”:


’Twas in the merry month of May

When green buds all were swelling

Sweet William on his death bed lay

For love of Barbara Allen.



And so on to its sad conclusion, the rose growing from William’s grave twining about the briar that grew from Barbara’s. Gwyneth pressed her hands to the strings to still the vibrations.

“It does not really matter that the story is rather unbelievable, does it?” she said. “Or do you simply want to give William a swift kick for allowing himself to die of unrequited love?”

She smiled. He did not.

He sat gazing at her until his eyes narrowed slightly. “The song relies for its effect upon the raw emotions we all feel from time to time,” he said. “Even the conviction that unfulfilled love might kill us. Or that it ought to kill us because there seems no further point in living.”

“Yes,” she said. And she sang a Welsh folk song—in Welsh:


Y deryn pur a’r adain las,

bydd i mi’n was dibryder.

O brysur brysia at y ferch

Lle rhois i’m serch a’m hyder


O gentle dove with wings so blue,

fly quickly to my lady.

And take to her a message true,

while in her garden shady.



Another rather sad song. Why were so many folk songs heart wrenching? But so beautiful? She did not sing the English words aloud.

She looked up just as he was swallowing. And something had happened to his eyes, though whatever it was disappeared almost immediately. Ah, she thought, he was so full of darkness. And pain? There must be pain. Why else the darkness? She had the sudden conviction that feeling had been suppressed in him for a long time. Perhaps since that harrowing visit he had paid here as he was leaving home more than six years ago. Now he could see emotion—love—only as chaos that threatened his control over his life. Ah, Devlin.