Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(74)

He did not want these memories.

“Thank you,” he said, taking his place and setting down his plate beside his saucer. Any food would surely stick in his throat.

She sat on the love seat, her own cup and saucer cradled in her hands. “Well, Stratton,” she said.

“Well, Mother,” he replied.

And they had spoken volumes with just those four words. The whole history of the past six years with its bitterness and pain and estrangement was in them. Stratton and Mother. The silence between them was loud. No, not that. There was no suggestion of sound. The silence was thick.

“Devlin—” she said.

“Mama—” They spoke together.

And they gazed ruefully at each other.

“Tell me,” he said. “Why did you send me away? Why would you not even say goodbye to me when I knocked on the door of your room? Why me and not him?” He drew breath to pour out another dozen or so questions, but he stopped there.

“I desperately wished to protect you,” she said. “You were still so very young even though you were twenty-two. You were still very . . . innocent. And very bewildered and hurt. I needed to get you away from here until somehow the situation had sorted itself out and things had settled down. I needed to get you to safety for a while.”

“Safety.” He stared at her.

“I had no idea,” she said, closing her eyes briefly, “that you would turn to the military, and a foot regiment at that. It seemed the very worst choice for you, unlike Nicholas. I had no idea you would cut yourself off from us so completely. I never intended it to be forever, or even for very long. I never said that. If Ben had not gone with you, I might well have lost my mind.”

And that was what had mattered to her? That she somehow hold on to her sanity? That she keep the peace? And therefore that she keep her son and her husband apart? Was that what the whole of her married life had been about? Somehow preserving the threads of the illusion of a happy marriage and family life?

“Refusing to see you the morning you left was pure cowardice and selfishness,” she said. “Saying goodbye. I just could not do it. And afterward, when I understood how it must have seemed to you when you were at your most vulnerable, it was too late. I ran out to the stables, but you were gone. You and Ben both. I . . . thought I would die. No, that is foolish. I wished I could die. For some things are so nearly unbearable that life itself seems unlivable, the future unthinkable.”

“Was it all my fault?” he asked her.

She set her cup and saucer down on the table. She had not touched her tea. She drew an audible breath and released it.

“You told the truth,” she said. “That can never be wrong, can it? Children are taught from the cradle up that they must always tell the truth, that lies are wicked and cause only harm. And you told it out of love—for me and for your sisters and grandmothers. For very decency’s sake. And out of a terrible disappointment in your father—whom you had always loved dearly. Perhaps you chose the wrong time and place. Or perhaps not. Either way, Devlin, it was not your fault. It was your father’s. And mine.”

“You blame yourself for what he did, then?” he asked her.

“Not in the way you perhaps mean.” She sighed. “Only perhaps for never having the courage or the will to do myself what you did. To have the truth out in the open. To confront him. For fear of the very thing that did happen after you spoke out. A burst bubble. For it was no longer possible to pretend that we were the perfect Wares presiding with great benevolence over the neighborhood beyond our doors.”

“Pretend,” he said. “But you did know. Even before that day. Even before my outburst.”

“Devlin.” She looked directly at him, and her eyes were suddenly hard and her lips a thin line. “Women always know. They live with the knowledge. They build a world for themselves that helps them avoid the pain and humiliation of it. They make their own happiness.”

“Happiness?” He frowned.

“Yes,” she said. “It is what we all seek, is it not? Men are free to find it in myriad ways. Women have to make their world small enough that they can enclose it and possess it like a precious gem. Derive their happiness from it. It is what being a woman means. It is what we are taught.”

He gazed at her, appalled, as though he were seeing her for the first time. As though he were seeing society and womanhood for the first time—as perhaps he was. Were women never free, then? Not just because they were always the property of some man—either father or husband or other male relative—but because there could never be truth in their lives? Not if they wished to live with a measure of peace, anyway.

“Is it what you have taught Pippa and Steph?” he asked her.

She gazed at him, her mouth partially open.

“I am sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

Gwyneth, he was thinking. Gwyneth. Was that what she had been taught? But his mind stuck there. He could not think about her yet. Everything was still too raw. And he was unaccustomed to dealing with feelings and what they did to him. He still resisted them with all his being, despite the cracks that were fast spreading in the impenetrable armor he had worn for six years.

She had loved him with all her heart, she had told him just a couple of hours ago. He seemed to remember that he had loved her too. With all his heart. A long, long time ago. When he had been someone else. When he had still had a heart to love with.