Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(90)

Sir Ifor nodded slowly, his lips pursed. “I think maybe you just did, son,” he said. “All except for the magic.” His eyes twinkled suddenly. “But maybe you have to be Welsh to experience that. We do like to live on the edge of our emotions, we Welsh.”

“Dragons?” Devlin said.

“Those too. Red ones.” Sir Ifor laughed and stepped closer to slap a hand on Devlin’s shoulder and squeeze. “I’ll go and fetch Gwyn. She is in the drawing room with her mam. You have my blessing.”

And he left Devlin alone in the parlor. Where she had been writing her letter at the escritoire last week. Where she had played her harp for him and sung her melancholy folk songs, one in English, one in Welsh. He had not understood a word of the latter, but it had not mattered. The harp music, her voice, what had been behind her voice, had spoken straight to his heart. The heart he did not possess.

She stepped into the room alone a few moments later, and they stood looking at each other. She was wearing a pale green dress of fine wool, high to the neck, with long sleeves snug to her arms and a narrow skirt falling from just beneath her bosom and molding to her curves. It was totally unadorned. It did not need to be, though. She had a perfect body whether she was clothed, as she was now, or whether she was naked, as she had been in the summerhouse yesterday. Her dark hair was shining and smooth over her ears and the crown of her head and confined in a knot high at the back of her head, with wisps of ringlets feathering over her ears and neck.

“I think,” she said, “that on your way home from the Peninsula you must have gone to London and stopped off on Bond Street.”

“A bit overdone?” he asked her.

“You look gorgeous,” she said.

“You have stolen my words,” he told her. “Now how do I describe you?”

“A bit underdone?” she suggested.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “Your father has given his blessing, Gwyneth. Does your mother give hers too?”

She nodded. “They are a bit anxious,” she said. “But they know that for me it is you or no one. And they trust my judgment.”

He marveled. She had never really known him, just as he had never really known her. They had had no relationship even though they had loved each other for years. There had been only that one day, and only parts even of that, because his wretched sense of duty had sent him to mingle with other guests at the fete too, when all he had wanted was to be with her. There had been that one set of dances at the ball and the one chaste kiss and a brief confession of their mutual love out on the hill. There had been some sort of marriage proposal—he could no longer remember just what he had said. Yet her feelings for him had apparently remained constant . . . they know that for me it is you or no one.

We like to live on the edge of our emotions, we Welsh.

It was more than just emotion with Gwyneth, though. There was the solid weight of something else behind it.

Love, perhaps?

“Come.” He held out a hand for hers, and she came farther into the room and took it. He closed his fingers firmly about her hand and did the ridiculous thing—not quite the extraordinary gesture she had asked for, perhaps, but surely what was expected of him. He went down on one knee and looked up at her.

“Gwyneth,” he said, “will you do me the great honor of marrying me?” He seemed to remember as he stopped speaking that he had had a whole speech both planned and memorized. Unfortunately, he could not recall any of it.

She was smiling down at him, her eyes twinkling with merriment and—with tears.

“Yes, Devlin,” she said. “I will.”

“I will do my best,” he told her, “not to break your heart again.” And good God, where had that come from? It had not been part of the speech.

She bent a little closer. “It was at least severely bruised,” she told him. “But I have discovered again since your return what I always knew about you. You are incapable of breaking my heart completely because it is not in your nature to be a scoundrel. It was not you but circumstances that caused all the pain at that time. Now, today, I am utterly happy. I do expect to be happy with you. But it is not a burden I am putting upon you. I have no illusions. I do not expect more than you can give. What you can give will be enough.”

Ah, devil take it, Gwyneth. How could there not be a burden in what she was saying? But there was not. She was not a fragile female who depended for every moment of happiness upon the man who had the charge of her. He would not even have the charge of her except in the strictest of legal and ecclesiastical senses. She was a person in her own right. She had a very strong sense of self. She had come to Ravenswood yesterday, had she not, to propose marriage to him? Or a betrothal resumption agreement.

“There you go again,” she said. “Almost smiling.”

He got to his feet and drew her into his arms. He held her close and rocked her. “Thank you, Gwyneth,” he said. “I am the most fortunate of men. And why is it that I can seem to talk only in platitudes this morning?”

“Because often platitudes hold great truth,” she said.

He held her away from him. “I have no ring to give you yet,” he said. “Or any other jewels, though I might, I suppose, have picked something from the family heirlooms, which will be yours anyway after we marry. For your lifetime, at least. I did not bring any of them. Doing so would not have been a personal gesture. I did bring you gifts, though.” He turned to the table beside her harp, where he had set two folded linen handkerchiefs before she arrived. But now he felt very foolish indeed and wished he had said nothing, or at least not called them gifts. It would have been better to have come empty-handed.