“We must not ruin Clarissa’s ball over a slight family quarrel,” the earl said in an attempt to reassert his old jocularity of manner. “What has happened to the orchestra? I must go and have a word with them.”
“The ball is at an end,” Mr. Greenfield said. “It has been a very pleasant day and a lovely evening, but it is over. It is time for these good people to go home. Go and make the announcement, Caleb. It is what my daughter sent me to say.”
Devlin went without another word and with only one hard look at his father. He did not enter the house through the ballroomdoors but strode off toward the front. It seemed to Gwyneth that he had probably forgotten her very existence.
The earl swayed a bit on his feet and looked about in an obvious attempt to gather the shreds of his dignity about him. But Gwyneth did not find out if he succeeded or not. Her father suddenly appeared at her side.
“Here you are, Gwyn,fach,” he said, taking her arm in a firm clasp.Fach—little one.It was a Welsh endearment he had not used with her for many years. “Come along. It is time to go home.”
Her mother appeared at her other side and took her other arm. “I am so sorry you had to get caught up in that unpleasantness, cariad,” she said. “I do not knowwhatit was all about. I cannot believe that the earl would... And I am stunned that Devlin could so forget his manners as to cause a public scene like that. And you caught up in the middle of it. We will get you home and make a nice cup of tea, will we, and perhaps by tomorrow... Oh, but the poor, poor countess. She does not deserve any of this.”
They made their way along the side of the house toward the north wing and the carriage house, where all the carriages had been taken and lined up in such a way that they did not block one another. Idris was there with a groom, hitching the horses to their carriage. He handed his mother inside, and then turned to pull Gwyneth into a hug.
“Your happiest day, I daresay, Gwyn,” he said, his voice not quite steady. “And I know Dev well enough to have seen that it was his too. That damned scoundrel, Stratton! Good God, I could punch his nose out the back of his head.”
“Language, Idris,” their father said, but he said it halfheartedly, and Idris did not apologize. He helped Gwyneth into the carriage to sit beside her mother, who set an arm about her shoulders andcuddled her close, just as though she were a little girl again and suffering some earth-shattering disappointment, such as discovering when she went to the village shop with her penny that the sweets she had set her heart upon had sold out half an hour before.
They drove home in silence. Goodness only knew what the morrow would bring. But Gwyneth knew something with utter certainty. Tomorrow would not bring Devlin to talk with her father and then to deliver his carefully rehearsed speech to her from bended knee.
For the world had just ended.
And, God help her, she did not believe she was exaggerating.
Chapter Nine
Devlin had changed out of his evening finery. He was the only one who had, though, he saw when he stepped into the drawing room forty minutes after leaving the terrace. He had heard voices below the window of his room and the sounds of horses and carriages and, without looking out, assumed everyone had left. He could hear no music.
He had not known what to expect. He had not even known until the last moment that he would go down and find out. He had done so only because he could not think of what else to do. Go to bed? Sleep soundly and wake up tomorrow to discover that the last hour or so had been a bizarre and horrible nightmare? His fury had spent itself and left behind a dull, flat feeling and the conviction that nothing would ever be the same again. He had come down in obedience to his grandfather’s command. And that command was strange in itself. His maternal grandfather was the mildest of men. More than once Devlin had heard him say that he minded his own business and expected other people to mind theirs, and they usually did.
But tonight Grandpapahadbeen minding his own business. His daughter, the Countess of Stratton, Devlin’s mother, was his business. He had taken charge when it had become necessary forsomeoneto do so.
Devlin had not known what to expect in the drawing room, but now he saw. The room seemed crowded, large as it was. His father was standing before the fireplace, facing it, gazing down at the unlit coals, his hands clasped at his back. His mother was seated, not in her usual chair by the fireplace, but some distance from it. She sat very straight, her back not touching that of the chair, her hands clasped in her lap. Her face was the color of alabaster but perfectly composed. Nicholas was standing beside her chair. Philippa, looking pale and mulish, as though she had recently been arguing with someone—perhaps someone had tried to send her to bed—was seated on a sofa near one of the windows, between her two grandmothers. Ben was behind and to one side of the sofa, standing in the shadow of the heavy curtains that covered the window. Devlin’s grandfather was standing on the other side of the sofa.
There were other people in the room too, all family members. George Greenfield was there, back from escorting Mrs. Shaw home. Charles and Marion Ware, the earl’s brother and sister-in-law, were there, as were his sister and brother-in-law, Eloise and Vincent Atkins. Edward Ware and Enid Lamb, the earl’s uncle and aunt, brother and sister of his late father, were there too.
The drawing room door closed quietly behind Devlin. He did not move from where he was, just inside the room. Apparently he was the last to arrive. The grand entrant. The star of the show.
“We find ourselves in a situation,” his grandfather said, breaking what had probably been a lengthy and uncomfortable silence while they awaited him.
It was such a massive understatement that Devlin might have laughed if he had remembered how.
If it was a conversational cue, it fell flat on its face.
“You have some explaining to do, Devlin,” his grandfather said.
“Ido?” No one was looking at him, Devlin noticed, except for his grandfather and his uncle George, who was frowning. “Ihave something to explain? My father has dishonored my mother by bringing his mistress not just to the village here, but right to Ravenswood itself, andIhave something to explain? He had her up on the hill inside the pavilion, not a quarter of a mile from where my mother and my sister were dancing in the ballroom, and I have something to explain? I told him repeatedly to get her away from here. But perhaps I did her an injustice by calling her a whore and demanding her removal when he was at least equally guilty. Perhaps it washisremoval from Ravenswood I should have demanded.”
“Enough, Devlin,” his uncle Charles said. “And watch your language, if you please, in the presence of ladies. It was you who caused the public scene from which it will be extremely difficult, even perhaps impossible, for the family to recover fully.”
Devlin’s eyebrows rose in disbelief as he looked from one person to another. With one or two exceptions—most notably his mother and his father—everyone was looking at him now. But no one was jumping to his defense. No one was pointing the finger of blame at his father.
“What is this?” he asked. “AmIthe one on trial here?”
The dowager countess, his grandmother, his father’s mother, answered him. “I never thought to hear any grandson of mine so disgrace me and his mother and his father. And his whole family.”
What?
“Disgrace mymother?” he said. “It was in defense of her that Ispoke out. It is myfatherwho has disgraced and dishonored her and, in the process, his children. And you, Grandmama, and all his family and Mama’s by association. Was I to turn my face away and pretend I had not noticed when I caught him in that pavilion in a thoroughly compromising position with that woman? Ought I to have pretended I did notknowwhat he was doing, what he had done? Was I to smile and dance afterward as he brought her back to share a roof with Mama? And with Pippa? And with you and Grandmama Greenfield?”
