Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(94)

“Until after the Marquess of Roath came here with James Rutledge for Easter the year I turned eighteen,” she said. “The year I was supposed to go to London with Mama and Papa and make my come-out. He came with James to watch a practice of the maypole dancing. I had joined the group after my birthday. Mr. Johnson suggested that the marquess partner me for one dance, and James nudged him and waggled his eyebrows and told him I was Lady Philippa, daughter of the Earl of Stratton. The marquess looked at him as though he had just had the shock of his life and said something like ‘Stratton? I do not dance with soiled goods, Jim.’ And they both left. I heard he went away altogether a day or two after.”

Devlin gazed back at her, thunderstruck. “And no one did anything?” he asked her. “No one knocked his teeth down his throat? He was allowed just to . . . leave?”

“They were in a group of men,” she said. “I was in a group of women, all chatting and laughing. They did not know I had heard. I probably would not have done if he had not been so handsome and I had not fallen in love with him as soon as he walked into the barn with James. I was so . . . ridiculous in those days.”

“What you were,” he told her, “was a young lady of eighteen, ripe for love and courtship. Oh, Pippa.”

They were still standing, his arms about her. She drew away then and sat back down on the sofa. He sat beside her and took one of her hands in both of his.

“A few days after that,” she said, “a letter came from Ben telling us of the terrible wound to your face, though he was able to assure us that you would live and would not be blind. And I turned on Papa when I was alone with him after he had read the letter aloud at the breakfast table and told him it was all his fault. That everything was. It all came bursting out of me. At last. He did not deny it but actually apologized to me. I told him it was to you he ought to be apologizing. And to Ben. And he promised that he would write to both of you. I do not suppose he did, though. I told him also, and I told Mama, that I would not be going to London, that I did not want to go. And I remained firm on that even though Mama pleaded with me. What if he was there in London? I would not have been able to bear it. And what if everyone else there had called me soiled goods? Then, only days after he and Mama came home from London, where they had gone without me, Papa died. Without saying goodbye. Without giving us a chance to say goodbye to him. At least we were able to say goodbye to you and Ben. Not that it made any difference.”

She turned her face into his shoulder and wept with noisy, gulping sobs.

Soiled goods. Those words stuck in Devlin’s mind. Soiled goods. Pippa. His sister, that bright, happy little star. Who the devil was this Marquess of Roath? If he was still alive, why was he still living?

When her sobs had subsided to a few forlorn hiccups, he set a handkerchief in her hand, and she turned away to dry her eyes and blow her nose. Clouds had moved over the whole of the sky, Devlin saw, though he did not believe they were rain clouds.

“Pippa,” he said. “I do not know who the Marquess of Roath is, though I will find out. And he will be dealt with. But . . . Are you going to allow an ill-mannered man of such low character to blight the whole of your life?”

She turned back to look at him. Her face was marred by red blotches. Her eyes were bloodshot. But the beauty that had already been blooming six years ago was still there. It just needed something to light and animate it.

“I am not going to London, if that is what you are about to suggest,” she told him. “I do not want a Season.”

Which was answer enough, he supposed.

“Has anyone else here ever insulted you?” he asked her. “James Rutledge, for example? Sid Johnson?”

She thought about it. “No,” she admitted. “Edwina Rutledge said James sent Lord Roath away, but that was absurd. You do not send away a marquess, the heir to a duke, do you, when you are yourself only the second son of a baron and he has deigned to be your friend?”

“Yet it is just what I would expect James Rutledge to do,” he told her, “from what I remember of him. I would also expect that Sid Johnson would have had a word or two to say on the matter.” She had not, he noticed, mentioned that birthday party from which she had been excluded, according to Steph. Perhaps that had been in the early days, when everyone would still have been embarrassed about the scene Devlin had made at the fete.

“What you must remember, Pippa,” he said, “is that you are the elder daughter of an earl. And the elder sister of an earl. Twenty-one years old and dazzlingly eligible. Do you think perhaps it is time you learned to waltz? At Sid Johnson’s this evening, where the lesson will replace the maypole dancing practice?”

It was no solution to what ailed her, of course. He did not know the solution, if there was one. But sometimes all one could do to cope with life was get oneself upright and set one foot before the other to begin the journey.

Her chin lifted an inch and she gazed at him for a long while. “What time are we leaving?” she asked.



* * *



—

By the time the carriage from Ravenswood stopped outside Cartref to convey her to Sidney Johnson’s, Gwyneth was feeling very glad of the chance to escape from home for a while. Not that she was ungrateful for the outpouring of love after Devlin took his leave, but sometimes her normally placid mother became overwhelmed by emotion, and everyone around her became the victim of it. Her father had prudently withdrawn to the church to look for some music he was convinced must be there because it was not at home. Idris had disappeared to attend to some unspecified farm business. That had left Gwyneth.