Remember love, p.30
Remember Love, page 30
“Yes,” he said.
The lake looked cold as a small cloud moved over the sun, and he wondered if it would freeze over this winter. It did sometimes. They used to go out there and skate and slide though they had always been warned to stay close to the edges, where the ice would be thickest. He and Nick—rarely Ben—had always tested those limits, of course, when there were no adults close enough to bellow at them. Or save them if they fell through. Children were often idiots by their very nature.
“You are not planning to come with Steph and me this evening?” he asked her. “She wants to learn to waltz.”
“No,” she said.
“Are you going to the assembly tomorrow evening?” he asked.
“I suppose I will feel obliged to,” she said, “since it is to be held here. Though you are not going to be the master of ceremonies, are you?”
“No,” he said. “That will be Colonel Wexford. It will not be in any way a family affair. There are committees and subcommittees planning everything. I think people are enjoying themselves. I believe they felt a bit stifled for a number of years.” They had felt condescended to, he thought, though he did not say that aloud.
“Yes,” she said. “Maybe I will not go.”
Could this young woman with the lackluster voice possibly be the vivid, eager girl who had twirled for his approval in her new gown on the evening of that fete? The girl who had sparkled on the brink of womanhood and all it promised in the way of parties and beaux and courtship and marriage?
“There were men out on the Peninsula, both officers and those in the ranks, who cracked,” he said. “Not for any discernible reason, in most cases. Some would rave, out of their minds, and have to be hauled away in a straitjacket. A few ran away. Others curled up on the ground somewhere, covered their heads with their arms, and refused to move. Any threat of punishment—a whipping for the enlisted men, court-martial in the case of the officers—had no effect whatsoever. There were no physicians for them as there were for those who were physically wounded. Their condition was considered shameful. It was attributed to cowardice or to weakness—to not being a man.”
He paused for a moment, but she said nothing.
“They were just the few, though,” he said. “There were many more who did not crack but were nevertheless shattered inside. They kept the facade of manliness. They carried on. They followed orders and did their work. They often showed great courage and were held up as an example to other men. But inside they were lost and empty. Even if there had been physicians able to treat their condition, they would not have appealed to them for help. They would have denied that anything was wrong at all.”
Still the silence from behind him. Though no, she had broken it.
“As you did,” she said. “And do.”
Oh, hell! That was not where he had been leading. He spun around to look at her. She was gazing back, her eyes large and blue in a pale face.
“Pippa,” he said. “You were fifteen. I think it was probably worse for you than for anyone else. Nicholas was able to set out for the new life he had been preparing for. Owen and Stephanie were still children. Mama was an adult with an adult’s experience and maturity. You were betwixt and between any of those things. Our father was no longer a rock upon which to lean. Ben and I were both gone. I see in you what I saw in some of my men. Differently manifested, of course, but essentially the same thing. Life has been too much for you, and there has been no one to give you the help and support you need.”
She was half smiling at him, a ghastly expression. She shrugged but said nothing.
“What in particular has overwhelmed you?” he asked. “Or is there no single thing?” There probably was not. And that was the whole trouble. With his men it had often been the guns. The incessant pounding of the cannons.
“Nothing,” she said. “I adored Papa and then I hated him and then he died. And I was glad.”
The brevity of her story, especially its ending, chilled his already cold heart. But she was not finished.
“You think you were the only one who noticed,” she said, “because you were out there on the hill when he was there with that woman. I saw her at church and a few times in the village before that day, and I was afraid because she looked at him and he looked at her, mere darting glances, but I felt like vomiting though I did not understand why. And that day. She came to dance about the maypole while Steph and I were there and then you. And Papa stood and watched and laughed and clapped for everyone. But she was dancing for him, and he was there to watch her. Oh, they were very careful all day long, and I tried very hard just to enjoy myself and not even see them. I hoped and hoped she would not return for the ball, but she did, and he danced with her, smiling and laughing as he always did, though it was different with her. And then after supper he took her outside and did not come back and every minute as I danced I felt like screaming and screaming without stopping. And then . . . it started. I heard raised voices and realized one of them was yours. I knew before you came close what must have happened, and I was glad that at last someone else had found out and was doing something about it.”
He bent over her and took her ice-cold hands in his. He drew her to her feet and into his arms. He held her tight. Good God! Where had this come from? She had noticed even before the day of the fete and been uneasy? Just as he had noticed when he was in London with his father? But she had denied it, just as he had, and bottled it all up inside. That bright-eyed, happy girl. Was there no end to the illusion under which this family had lived?
“The one thing we could never seem to do,” he said, “was speak truth to one another. Yet we considered ourselves the happiest family in the world. Pippa! This has to change. For all of us.”
“I was glad,” she said again, her voice muffled against his neckcloth. “But I left it all to you to deal with. I did not say anything—at the time, or when everyone was in the drawing room afterward, or when you were leaving. I only begged you to talk to Mama. I was horrified that you were the one being sent away and that Ben was going with you. But I did not say anything. I did not have the c-c-courage.”
“Pippa,” he murmured against the top of her head. “You were fifteen. For God’s sake, you were still just a child. You were absolutely, totally innocent.”
“I never did say anything,” she said. “Not until— Oh, never mind. I never said anything.”
“Until . . . ?” he said. “Tell me. Please tell me, Pippa.”
She tipped back her head to look up at him.
“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.
How on earth, her mother had asked her, were they going to solve the problem of Sir Ifor playing the organ at her wedding and at the same time escorting Gwyneth into the church as father of the bride? Oh, and did Gwyneth think there was any merit in suggesting a double wedding with Idris and Eluned? She answered her own question in the negative before Gwyneth could open her mouth, however, for of course Marged, Eluned’s mother, already had that wedding more than half planned. And could there be any mother anywhere happier than she, Bronwyn Rhys, was today, with two children getting married and the hope of grandchildren in the foreseeable future? And would they have Adeline Proctor make Gwyneth’s wedding clothes, or should they go up to London to a more fashionable dressmaker? But would Adeline be hurt if they did that? Oh, and what did Gwyneth think about . . .
And so it had gone on through the day until Gwyneth was ready to suggest to Devlin that they elope. Not that she was seriously considering it, of course, but really . . .
Sir Ifor had come home with ideas for music he would play at the wedding. He had discussed the matter at great length with himself and confirmed his own ideas and contradicted them quite indiscriminately while Idris had winked at his sister and was probably relieved that his own upcoming nuptials were no longer the full focus of his parents’ attention. Today, anyway.
Gwyneth was very glad, then, that she was to have an unexpected evening out, and on her own, without her family. She was going to brush up on the steps of the waltz, and tomorrow evening she was going to dance it at the assembly—with Devlin. She did not know how that would be accomplished, but it would be. He might even think it was all his own suggestion. Oh, she did know something about feminine wiles.
She could hardly wait to see him again.
But it was Stephanie who came hurrying down the steps of the carriage, her arms spread wide. “I am so happy,” she cried, folding Gwyneth in her embrace and squeezing tight. “One story at least is to have a happy ending. May Pippa and I be bridesmaids? It is quite all right if you say no. Who would want me anyway? But I thought I would ask. Oh, Lady Rhys. And Sir Ifor. Is this not exciting news?” She rushed up to the door to hug them too.
Gwyneth laughed while Devlin came down the steps to hand her into the carriage. She set her hand in his and felt unabashed happiness. His eyebrows were raised.
“Need I say,” he said, “that my choice of bride has met with the approval of my sister?”
“I would never have guessed if you had not told me,” she said.
She was surprised when she climbed into the carriage to find the elder of his sisters sitting there. “Oh,” she said. “Hello, Philippa.”
“I am happy for you too,” Philippa said, her voice quiet and grave. “I agree with Steph. Sometimes stories really do have happy endings.”
“Thank you.” Gwyneth smiled at her. “Are we all going to take the assembly by storm tomorrow night with our waltzing skills?”
“Yes,” Philippa said. “We are.”
She looked very like Devlin at that moment, Gwyneth thought in some surprise. Serious, hard-jawed, a whole lot shut up inside herself. Gwyneth could not recall seeing her at an assembly during the past couple of years or so. She did not attend many other social functions either, except the occasional tea, when she sat beside her mother and participated very little in the general conversation. She seemed to have distanced herself from all the friends of her own age she had once had, both male and female. Yet she could not have made friends elsewhere to compensate for their loss. She had never had a come-out Season in London despite the fact that she was Lady Philippa Ware, daughter of an earl.
It was a very damaged family into which she was about to marry, Gwyneth thought as she took a seat facing Philippa and made room for Devlin beside her. Stephanie climbed back in and sat beside her sister. It was a daunting task she had set herself. Though perhaps not, for she had not really set any task at all. She had decided simply to love and to do it quite openly and without apology. If she was being quite disastrously naïve, then so be it.
Devlin surprised her by taking her hand in his and setting it palm down on his thigh. He kept his hand over it. She wondered if he had done it deliberately. To convince his sisters that he felt some regard for his betrothed, perhaps? It did not matter. She turned her head to smile at his stern profile.
* * *
—
Sidney Johnson and Edwina Rutledge had already taught the steps of the waltz to the regular group of maypole dancers. They were all dressed as though for a performance, Devlin was interested to find, the women in their pastel-shaded dresses, the men with shirts to match. The garlands for the women’s hair were absent, however. Sidney and Edwina awaited the raw recruits, of whom there were several. And no one was to be without an experienced partner. Sidney had it all organized.
Sidney himself would dance with Philippa, Bradley Danver (Owen’s friend from the vicarage) with Stephanie, Clarence Ware with Gwyneth. It was all very satisfactory to Devlin, who had agreed to come as an escort for Stephanie and had been prepared to dance with her if absolutely necessary. It was not going to be necessary, however. Everyone had a partner. Except—
“I need not be a wallflower after all, Sidney,” Sally Holland, looking pretty in her peach dress, called. “Here is the Earl of Stratton cowering in the corner. Looking ferociously military. I can remember you once dancing about the maypole, Devlin, and doing a creditable job of it. Waltzing is far less intimidating. I will show you.”
He was given no choice in the matter. She was standing before him, the blacksmith’s daughter, grinning mischievously, her hand outstretched for his. The other couples had all turned their heads to watch. The fiddlers were waiting to begin playing. Devlin, it seemed, was about to learn to waltz. Which did not bode well for tomorrow evening. Nothing boded well for tomorrow evening actually. Gwyneth had informed him on the way here that Sir Ifor had sent a notice of their betrothal to the morning papers in London and expected that it would be published on Monday. He had also had a word with Colonel Wexford in Boscombe this afternoon, sworn him to secrecy, and asked him in his capacity as master of ceremonies at the assembly to make the announcement there.
