Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(71)
He had convinced himself that he had not once thought consciously of her in all those years. Except that he could remember—at least, he thought it was a real memory—Ben’s voice: No one has ever doubted it, Dev. She has never doubted it. It was when he, Devlin, had believed he was dying from the gash across his face that had filled his eyes and his mouth and nostrils with blood. He had been babbling something about letting Gwyneth know—please, Ben, please tell her . . . That he had always loved her, that he would love her with his dying breath.
Good God, he had forgotten that excruciating embarrassment. He wondered if Ben had forgotten. Very likely not.
She was looking a bit heavy eyed, her lips soft and moist and swollen.
“No,” she said quietly. “Don’t do that, Devlin.”
“What?” he asked. “Kiss you? It is a bit late now, is it not? Were you lying about Morgan?”
“Don’t retreat back inside yourself and rebuild that wall,” she said. “Don’t make yourself all hard and cold and cynical.”
“If you thought that was love and romance and roses and violin music just now,” he said, “you were mistaken. You asked me to kiss you, you assured me you had no commitment to your Welshman, and I accepted the invitation. It is what men do, Gwyneth. We do not need to be asked twice.”
She nodded and took a step back from him. Apart from the rosiness the chill had whipped up in her cheeks, she looked pale.
“I will not ask again,” she told him. “But I have long wanted to say this, Devlin, and I will say it now. You did the right thing that night. You are the only man—or woman—I know who would have had the courage to do it. I urged you to wait and confront your father privately. Probably everyone else believes that is what you ought to have done. But if you had, nothing would have changed. That new knowledge would have somehow been hushed up with everything else, and life would have continued as it always had been. The woman concerned would have left Boscombe quietly and without fuss, and everyone would have dutifully forgotten about her within a week.”
“Would it not have been better that way?” he asked harshly.
“No,” she said. “When people live in denial of the truth—sometimes large groups of them all together—they lose their . . . I am not sure of the right word. They lose something precious, something good and right and true. Their integrity, perhaps? You forced everyone to confront the truth—even those who did not know it before. You did the right thing.”
“Even though it deprived you of a marriage?” he asked.
She closed her eyes briefly. “Even though,” she said. “And do not go on to say that I could not have loved you then. I loved you with all my heart.”
“Past tense,” he said.
“Your words.” She looked back across the meadow. The house was out of sight from here, but there were the unmistakable sounds of clopping hooves and carriage wheels coming from that direction. Someone was home.
“Love can bring only unbearable suffering, Gwyneth,” he said. “I really do not know why anyone would want to risk it. Don’t love me again. I wish you all the good things in the world. But don’t love me.”
Her expression softened, and for a fleeting moment she looked like that wild child he remembered. She smiled and her eyes danced with merriment. But only for a moment.
“Don’t climb that tree, Gwyn. You will fall. Don’t ride that horse bareback, Gwyn. He will toss you. Don’t chase that dog, Gwyn. He will bite,” she said. “Never say don’t to me, Devlin.”
And she turned to walk back across the meadow with long, almost mannish strides—and looked achingly feminine as she did so.
He fell into step beside her and found himself in an undisciplined moment realizing that he might have been married to her for five years by now if things had turned out differently at that fete. She might have been as familiar to him as the air he breathed. She might have been as dear to his heart as its beating. They might have had a couple of young children or more. Dark clouds may never have threatened their skies.
Yet that very thought jolted him back to reality and reminded him that it was never a good thing to daydream. There were always dark clouds. In everyone’s life. No one was immune. There were no such things as eternal sunshine and fairy-tale endings and happily ever after. If it had not been that shock of knowledge of what his father was really like, then it would have been something else.
It was all in how one reacted to disaster when it hit. Perhaps that was what life was all about—the reason for it, the meaning of it. One giant classroom. One lifelong learning opportunity to divide the men from the boys and the women from the girls.
How well had he done on the test?
You did the right thing that night. You are the only man—or woman—I know who would have had the courage to do it.
Sometimes there was no definitive right or wrong. He would probably never know if he had done the right thing or the wrong thing that night. No one would ever know, because either answer was only opinion.
But ah, it had felt good—it felt good—to hear those words. From Gwyneth, one of those most deeply involved. You did the right thing that night.
“Idris and your mother are the first home,” he said as the house came into sight after they had crossed back over the stile. Idris was driving the gig to the stable block.