Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(75)

“Tell me what happened after I left,” he said, and braced himself.

She thought about it for a while. “Nothing very much,” she said. “Surprisingly little except that you and Ben were gone. She went away—that woman. I believe George saw to it. Everyone was obliging enough to behave as though nothing of any great significance had happened. Perhaps after a while they really believed it. People are good at that. And I daresay most had known of your father’s little weaknesses anyway even though he had never before been indiscreet enough to bring them here.”

Little weaknesses.

“He hired a new steward to take Ben’s place,” she said. “And all continued as before. With a few differences. I could no longer continue with all the elaborate social events I had organized here. Not without the help I had always been able to rely upon from you and Ben and Nicholas. And your father persuaded me to join him in London each spring for the Season while he busied himself with his duties in the House of Lords. Then he suffered his sudden heart seizure here and . . . and died. And you became Stratton.”

Self-deception was a powerful force, he thought. Did she really believe all she said? That nothing very much had changed after he left? When it was as clear as day to him that everything and everyone had changed. If other people were to be believed, the very active social life that had centered upon Ravenswood and his mother’s virtual withdrawal from local society had not happened because she no longer had the help of her sons. It had happened surely because she was deeply humiliated and ashamed and could not keep up the pretense. Yet she had continued to deceive herself. And she herself had changed. He could see it. Stephanie had commented on it. How must it have been for her, in a marriage with his father and unable to pretend to him that she did not know him for who and what he was?

But . . . Good God, who was he to judge? He was not a woman.

His mother did not blame him, she had told him. Let him not blame her either, then. None of it had really been her fault. She had merely been coping as best she could. The man who was to blame for the whole of it was dead.

“Mama,” he said. “Can we now have done with the Stratton and Mother business? I love you.” They were always the most difficult words to say, whether to a lover or to a mother. Sometimes, though, they were necessary. And in this case they were true. He might have deadened emotion in himself, but that did not preclude everything. Not now he was back. Life here would be insupportable if he did not love his mother and his sisters and brothers. And he would not deceive himself and call it mere duty to those for whom he was responsible as the head of the family. He would call it what it was. Truth mattered.

It was love.

Not an emotion, but a fact upon which his behavior would be based.

“Devlin,” she said. “I have never for one moment not loved you since I knew you were in my womb. But . . . Your tea will be cold, and it is obvious you are not going to touch either your scone or your macaroons. Will you please go away now, then? I am very, very tired.”

He could see that she was close to tears.

He got to his feet and bent over her to grasp her shoulders and kiss her forehead. “I promise always to do my best to see to your comfort now that I am home,” he said. “And I will never dishonor you, Mama.”

She patted one of his hands.

“I must tell you before you hear it from someone else,” he said, “that the village assembly planned for the assembly rooms next week is going to be held here instead. But you need do absolutely nothing about it except perhaps attend. Everything will be seen to. Everything.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And there will be no arguments about that,” he told her.

“Go away, Devlin,” she said.

He went.





Chapter Nineteen





After Devlin left Cartref, Gwyneth retreated to her room to avoid her mother’s questions—and to be in a safe place if her father and Aled should come home in the next little while.

She was inclined to chastise herself for having practiced self-deception. But that was not it, was it? She had never deceived herself. She had known that she loved Devlin heart and soul and for all time. The fact that she had been only eighteen at the end of it all did not diminish those facts. She had got over the terrible pain, of course. One did. She had put it behind her. Got on with her life. She had had no choice. One did not literally fade away or die of love as Sweet William had done in the song she had sung earlier. One lived on.

Any of the men whose marriage proposals she had rejected in the past six years would have made good husbands. She was fortunate to have attracted the regard of such estimable men. Aled would make a good husband, even though he would always be distracted for long stretches of time by his music. It was an honor indeed and a great compliment to have captured his notice at all. But those men and any others she might meet in the coming years were lacking in one essential component. None of them was Devlin Ware. Just as Nicholas, the beloved friend of her girlhood, had not been.

She had been trying for six long years to tell herself that she would do perfectly well without Devlin if she could merely find someone else upon whom to focus her esteem and affection, even her love. With Aled she had come very close to convincing herself that it had happened at last. He had everything to recommend him, including the respect and affection of her family both here and in Wales. With him she could embrace her rich Welsh heritage and yet reach out into the world too. With him she could move on into full adult independence, away from her parents’ home. Away from Ravenswood.