Remember love, p.24
Remember Love, page 24
“Come to my sitting room in a little while,” she said.
This, Devlin thought a little less than half an hour later as he knocked on the door of his mother’s private sitting room, was the very last thing on earth he felt like doing. But then he did not want to be doing any of this. What he really wanted was to be back with his men and his regiment. It had suited him admirably, that life, for all its discomforts and dangers and brutality. Sometimes he thought his father had died deliberately to avenge himself upon the son who had wrecked the very satisfactory double life he had enjoyed for years by disclosing the truth of it to a large gathering of his family, friends, and neighbors. And, ultimately, to the ton itself. His revenge would be to force Devlin to give up his life of soldiering and return home to clean up the mess he had created.
Millicent, still his mother’s dresser, opened the door. “Come in, if you please, my lord,” she said. “Her ladyship is expecting you.” She let herself out after Devlin had stepped inside, and she closed the door quietly behind her.
It had been his sitting room—or his den, as he had liked to call it as a boy—attached to what had been his bedchamber and dressing room. The whole suite was now his mother’s. But he was immediately engulfed in a different familiarity. A faint scent of gardenia and the sight of the furniture from her old sitting room. There were the soft love seat and chair with their cheerful chintz covers, and the dark green velvet chaise longue, on which as a boy he had loved to lie when he was feverish or had the sniffles or was otherwise feeling under the weather and sorry for himself. His mother would cover him with the cozy wool blanket she had knitted herself, and he would thread his fingers through the holes and pull it up about his neck while she laid a cool hand on his forehead and bent to kiss his cheek and told him she would have him feeling all better in no time at all. Words he had always trusted without the shadow of any doubt. In those precious days his father had protected him from all ills out there somewhere while his mother had held him close in a nest of warm security and love in here.
Childhood was a golden time for those who were loved.
She was standing by the window, but she moved away from it as soon as he came in and she bent over the tray on the low table before the love seat to pour two cups of tea. She put a buttered scone and two small macaroons on a plate to hand him after she had set his cup and saucer before the armchair. Just as she had used to do, picking out the best of his favorites for him instead of offering him the whole plate. He had always loved macaroons. And scones with lots of butter but no jam or cream. You like scones with your butter, do you, Dev? his father had asked one day, laughing and ruffling his hair.
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.
“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.
But he was not Devlin.
Perhaps if Devlin had not come back . . . But he had come back.
Of course, Devlin was not Devlin either. Which was a head-spinning piece of nonsense. He was Devlin as he had become over a six-year retreat into cold, seemingly impenetrable darkness. When he had kissed her out in the meadow—at her invitation—she had been almost frightened by the barely leashed violence with which he had pressed her to him and invaded her mouth. It had been nothing like the sweet, youthful, romantic kiss of six years ago. And yet—oh, he had been Devlin. She had felt that long-lost man trying desperately to get out, and more than anything else in her life she had wanted to help him. To heal him.
It could not be done, of course.
Only he could heal himself.
And that realization had shattered her heart. All over again. For it was surely impossible.
He had spoken of taking a wife and having children as a duty. He had not offered her the position. She would not have accepted anyway. How could she? He was so terribly damaged and might—probably would—remain that way for the rest of his life. She could not take that upon herself.
And yet . . . Oh, there had been that look in his eyes while she was playing her harp earlier, so fleeting that she might have imagined it. Though she did not believe she had. And—I wish you all the good things in the world. But don’t love me. Ah yes. There had been those words too. Cold, crisp, decisive—yet surely there had been yearning behind them. The understanding that he had hurt her. The fear that he would do it all over again.
Love can bring only unbearable suffering, Gwyneth.
Which was true if one omitted the word only. That was not all love could bring. When love was at war with other powerful forces, which it had been in their case, then it seemed very easily vanquished. It seemed the weakest of all forces. But what if people got their definitions of strength and weakness backward? What if love was the one thing that always survived and could carry one through to the other side of suffering?
In front of the mirror in her dressing room she took her hair down, brushed it out, and coiled it at the back of her head again without summoning her maid. She leaned closer to the mirror to see if any of the aftereffects of that kiss still showed on her face, was satisfied with what she saw, and went back downstairs. She had heard carriage wheels crunching over gravel, and she could hear her father’s voice as soon as she began to descend.
Aled came toward her, his hands outstretched for hers, a warm smile on his face.
“We practiced those poor young people until they had almost lost their voices,” he told her. “But I was able to tell them at the end of it all that they are the best youth choir I have ever heard. I did not add the words outside of Wales. But I do believe I spoke the truth anyway. And I told them they were fortunate indeed to have the best accompanists anywhere in the world.”
“But you did not add the words outside of Wales, did you?” Gwyneth said, setting her hands in his.
“They were not necessary,” he told her, laughing. “I claim both you and Ifor for Wales. Did you get your letters written?”
“One of them,” she said. “It is three pages long.”
“Women are a marvel,” he said. “I have to work very hard and use my largest, most sprawling handwriting to achieve six lines.”
She took him into the library after dinner, on the pretext of finding their copy of the poems of William Wordsworth, which he had mentioned while they were eating. She put it into his hands and looked into his face.
“What is it?” he asked, setting the book down on a table beside him without opening it.
“I find myself embarrassed,” she said, clasping her hands at her waist. “You have not actually asked me, and you have not spoken to Dad, or I would have heard about it. But I believe—”
He came to her rescue when she hesitated. “You believe correctly, Gwyneth,” he said. “I do wish to marry you.”
“I want to save you the embarrassment of asking and being rejected, then,” she told him, wishing there were another way to say it. Something less abrupt and harsh. She supposed she could have waited for him to bring up the subject first, but it would have been unfair. “I cannot marry you, Aled. I am sorry. I like you exceedingly well.”
