Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(68)

They had talked a bit more about the past six years, though. About the way much had stayed the same in the neighborhood, though everything had been somehow different.

“For one thing, you and Ben were gone,” Idris said. “And Nick too, of course, but that was expected and planned for, so was not in itself what upset the order of things. A bit like us all going off to school years ago and then to Oxford. This was different. All the usual big events at Ravenswood stopped, though the countess did continue entertaining on a smaller scale. The earl continued as before. He was as jovial as ever. No one turned on him or dropped his acquaintance. But . . .”

“But?” Devlin said.

“But there was a bit of a hollowness to it,” Idris said. “Just because everyone knew while they looked at him and listened to him, I suppose. Or could no longer pretend that they did not know.”

“He continued to spend the spring months in London?” Devlin asked unwillingly.

“Your mother went with him,” Idris said.

That was something new. Devlin wondered why she had gone. Should she not have wanted more than ever to live apart from him? Had she gone just to keep a proprietary eye on him?

“I am sorry, Dev,” Idris had said then. “It does not feel quite right telling you things like this about your own people. Even though we are friends.”

“Are we?” Devlin asked. “Despite my long silence?”

“You never did write to tell me we were no longer friends,” Idris told him. “Perhaps I am just slow about taking a hint. Did you know Gwyneth is here? She is writing letters in the parlor.”

No. Devlin had not known that. He had assumed she was at the church with her father and Aled Morgan, listening to the choir practice. Stephanie had walked there for it, having declined Devlin’s offer to take her.

Gwyneth was here? In this very house? Now?

“Come,” Idris had said, setting his empty glass on the table beside him and getting to his feet. “You can pay your respects to her.”

He ended up doing more than just that, of course.





Chapter Seventeen





None of this was good.

At least yesterday he had been prepared for her coming to that infernal tea. And somehow, seeing her there in company with Morgan, who was clearly dazzled by her, and seeing that they made a handsome couple and were glowing with an aura of what he could describe only as romance, had made it easier. It had enabled him to set things in perspective. Six years had gone by. She was just a beautiful woman he had once fancied.

Today, though, he had ended up not simply nodding politely from the parlor doorway and muttering some conventional greeting, but sitting right inside the room alone with her—where the devil had Idris gone?—listening to her play the harp and then singing to its accompaniment. And he had spoken the truth to her, dash it all—music was pure emotion. The sort of music she chose was emotion multiplied by ten.

He was defenseless against its onslaught. For he could not simply stand her to attention and bark out an order to her to cease and desist. He could not just ignore her music either. Or walk away without a word. He had actually asked her to sing. All he could do as the music—and she—attacked him from every conceivable direction was sit and suffer. He was not good at suffering. It was something he had stopped doing a long time ago—at least any suffering that was not purely physical.

And now. Damn and blast Idris. What the devil was he up to? That Welsh musician fellow was courting his sister. And she was happy about it. Morgan was, moreover, a guest in this house. Why, then, had Idris grasped the slimmest of excuses to flee the scene and leave them to their own devices, Gwyneth and him? He had done it quite deliberately too, like a damned matchmaker.

So here they were.

She got to her feet and moved out from behind the harp. “There really is no need for you to stay,” she said. “The very idea that I must have a chaperon in my own home is absurd. I am twenty-four years old. And surrounded by servants both indoors and out.”

“It looks as if the wind has died down out there,” he said, glancing toward the window. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

She sighed. “I’ll go and get ready,” she said, and left him alone in the room. And it struck him that she had always been someone else’s woman—or girl. For years it had been Nicholas. Now it was Morgan. For just that one day, that one glorious, disastrous day, she had been his. A long time ago. A lifetime ago. What business did he have now asking her to come walking with him? The best advice anyone could give her was to stay well away from him. He had nothing to offer except darkness.

He met her out in the hall. She was wearing what looked like a warm pelisse but no bonnet. He had donned his greatcoat and held his hat in his hand. He set it back on the hall table and opened the door for her.

Her favorite walk, he knew, was over to the east of the inner park, which was enclosed by trees and was intimate and lovely. Beyond, there was more the appearance of wildness, though the big meadow, in which the sheep were often turned loose, was carefully tended to look unspoiled but neither overgrown nor neglected. In the spring and summer it was colorful with wildflowers and waving grasses. Now the flowers were mostly gone and the grasses were beginning to take on an autumnal hue. She liked to sit on the stile, he knew. He had seen her there numerous times, either chatting and laughing with Nick or alone and reading a book. He had never been there with her himself.