Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(7)

He was not in any way like his father or his brother. He was lean and dark haired and dour of countenance. Though dour was an unfair word to use. He did not glower or frown or display open ill humor. He was serious of countenance, then. And good-looking, even if no one else had noticed. He had very regular, finely chiseled features and blue, blue eyes. He did not make anything much of those eyes, it was true. He was not a man who smiled often, though he was not dour. His eyes were gorgeous. He was gorgeous.

He was a conscientious worker. He had apparently excelled at school—Idris had attended the same one, though he had been a class ahead of Devlin. He had studied hard at Oxford too, while Idris had apparently played hard, with predictable results academically. Her brother had scraped through his final exams, while Viscount Mountford had flown through his. Now he worked on the estate, alongside his elder half brother, who was their father’s steward. Most young men of his social rank—or so she had overheard her father remark to her mother—were busy sowing wild oats at this stage of their lives. Though Idris was not. He was as devoted to their farm as Devlin was to his father’s land. It was no wonder they were friends.

Gwyneth was not sure why she loved Devlin so passionately. Some people might call him dull, though admittedly she had not heard anyone go that far. But he was indeed very different from Nicholas and his father and even young Owen. Those three had a lively charm and appeal that appeared to be quite lacking in him.

It did not matter to Gwyneth. She loved Nicholas. But she was in love with Devlin Ware.

She had been for a long time. It was an infatuation she really must shake off now that she was grown-up, however, for it was time to experience attraction and flirtation and courtship and marriage with someone who was also attracted to her. She knew a few men who were—or would be if they knew she and Nicholas were not a couple.

What better place to turn her attention toward her future life than the Ravenswood fete, which everyone from miles around would attend, including every young, single male? She would even have a new dress for the occasion. Her mother had been urging her to have Mrs. Proctor, the village dressmaker, make one for her, and she had finally agreed. Something . . . pink, she had decided, though it was a color she usually avoided as being too daintily feminine for her vivid dark coloring. There was no chance of attracting Devlin’s notice when she had not done so all her life. And her friendship with Nicholas was leading nowhere except to more of the same—which was very pleasant, but a woman needed more than friendship from a man after her eighteenth birthday. She needed romance and love and a husband and a home of her own and happily-ever-after.

She would look around with serious intent at the fete. Perhaps, if the opportunity presented itself, she would do a bit of flirting and see if she could feel a spark of romantic interest in someone who was not Devlin Ware.

Who, after all, would want to be in love with someone like him? Or married to him? Where would be the sunshine and the laughter? The passion? Such thoughts were pointless, of course, for she would want to be married to him. But it was time to be realistic. Time to step out into the world and cast old dreams aside.

Gwyneth sighed and went in search of her mother.



* * *



—

Ben Ellis had gone off to the island in the lake with one of the gardeners to put a fresh coat of paint on the pavilion. He had taken Owen with him but had left him on the bank of the lake with another of the gardeners, who had been mending a slow leak in one of the boats, a task that had caught the boy’s interest. Now Owen was helping paint the boat after having been given a workman’s smock to wear, much to his disgust, and strict instructions at least to try to get more paint on the boat than on his person.

Philippa was in the schoolroom with Miss Field, her governess and Stephanie’s, making ribbon rosettes to be presented to the winners and runners-up of the various contests at the fete.

Nicholas was looking over the equipment that would be needed for the archery contest, to make sure nothing was missing and nothing had deteriorated since last year. A few of the contestants—Matthew Taylor, the carpenter, for example—would bring their own bows and arrows, but most would not.

The Countess of Stratton was occupied with her endless lists, convinced, as she usually was as the fete drew closer, that she had surely forgotten something crucial, yet knowing with the rational part of her mind that she had not. Her housekeeper would have reminded her if she had, or her cook. Or Ben or Devlin, her right-hand men.

The earl was in the village somewhere, socializing, keeping out of everyone’s way, though perhaps not out of the way of those villagers who had work to do. He was always welcomed anyway. It was hard to resist his hearty good nature.

Devlin was in the carriage house in the north wing of the hall, seeing to an overhaul of the maypole with one of the undergrooms. The pole itself was showing signs of rust and needed to be scraped and painted if it was not to present a sad spectacle on the big day. The ribbons, though they had been carefully stored in a long wooden chest, had nevertheless become tangled and twisted. A few of them were fraying at the edges and needed to be replaced. Others, though still intact, had faded after a few years of use and also needed replacing. The groom set about restoring the pole. Stephanie, who had escaped from the schoolroom to help her brother, patiently untangled the ribbons and straightened them, spreading them out along the floor beside the big traveling carriage, which was used once a year to convey her papa to London and once a year to bring him home and not very much in between. She smoothed the ribbons with plump fingers to see if they would need ironing. A fat braid of fair hair swung forward over each of her shoulders.