Upon Gwyneth Rhys.
She would be twenty-four now. Undoubtedly married. But not to someone local, he hoped. He would rather not see her again. Perhaps she had married someone from Wales, where she had gone each year with her parents and Idris to visit relatives. Or where they had used to go. Who knew what changes might have happened in the past six years?
... and it will go hard with her.
If she had allowed her heart to be broken after a one-day courtship and one inexpert kiss, then the more fool she. He did not think Gwyneth was a fool, though. She would have shaken him off, like dust from her bare feet, and run laughing into the wind, her dark hair streaming out behind her. Then she would have found someone else. Not Nick, though. His brother had left home soon afterhehad, and unlike Devlin, he had not sold out when the wars ended. He was probably in Paris with his regiment at this moment.
The carriage brought them inexorably closer to Ravenswood, and Devlin thought for the thousandth time that he really did not want to be doing this. But he no longer had any choice. The wars were done, he was no longer Captain Ware of the 95th, and duty was calling him in another direction. He was the Earl of Stratton.
He could not even think of Ravenswood ashis.He could not imagine his mother as she might be now, forty-six years old and widowed. He could not picture his brother and sisters, the younger ones, who would all have grown up since he left. Even Stephanie would be on the brink of womanhood.
Had he changed the course of all their lives beyond recognition? Perhaps even beyond bearing? But how could he not have? On one perfect day at the end of July in 1808 they had all been at aRavenswood fete, living the grand illusion—one close, happy family in the midst of happy extended family members and neighbors. Not a cloud in their sky, either literally or figuratively. But before that day was over, the illusion had been shattered, possibly beyond repair. And the very next day the two oldest sons, one the heir to the earldom, the other the steady, competent steward of the estate, had been gone, never to return. Not for six long years anyway. How could everythingnothave changed drastically from that day on? Even before the death of the earl. And certainly after it.
And had he, Devlin, been solely responsible for it all? Or had that been on his father? Devlin still did not know the answer. Perhaps because in six years he had not asked. Nor had he seen the effects of what had happened on that fateful evening—or heard about them. By his own choice.
A man of extremes, Ben had once called him, with no tolerance for what went on in the middle, between the two extremes, where most people did their living. Was he still that man of extremes? He did not even know.
He glanced at the child asleep on Ben’s lap beside him, her cheeks flushed, her mouth partly open, her cocked thumb fallen out of it. She was now almost a year and a half old. Ben had played with her with what seemed to Devlin like infinite patience after their stop for luncheon until she succumbed to the motion of the carriage. Ben loved that child with all the quiet passion of his steadfast heart. For a moment Devlin felt the soreness of unshed tears at the back of his throat becausehehad not loved for a long, long time. He had lusted and enjoyed, liked and respected, but he had not loved. He did not believe he ever could again. He had not died on the Peninsula, but something in him had.
Ben must have felt his brother’s eyes on him. “I will not be staying for long, Dev,” he said.
Ah. Devlin had wondered about that but had been a bit afraid to ask. It had become too ingrained in them that nothing concerning home be as much as mentioned between them. Almost as though their history as brothers had been erased and only the fact of it remained.They were brothers.Ben had tried a couple of times in the first year or so to mention a letter that had come from some member of the family, sometimes addressed to him, sometimes to Devlin, but when his brother had not asked for details, he had not volunteered any. Soon he had stopped even mentioning letters.
“Why?” Devlin asked. Why would Ben not be staying for long?
“Ravenswood is not really my home,” Ben said. “It is where I grew up because my father took me there after my mother died. Now my father is dead too.”
It was the first time that fact had been mentioned openly between them since the day Ben had forced those two letters upon him—the ones from the solicitor and the countess—looking as he did so as if he might have been weeping. Though even then they had not talked about the fact that their father was dead. Devlin had read both letters, folded them carefully, and handed them back. Ben had disappeared for a few weeks after that. Devlin suspected he had gone to see Nicholas. Perhaps they had grieved together. He had half expected that Ben would not return, but he did.
“But your brothers and sisters are not dead,” Devlin said. “I am not, and Ravenswood is mine.”
Perhaps that was the problem, of course. Ben was older than he, the eldest son of the late Earl of Stratton, but it was Devlin, his second son, who was now the earl and owner of Ravenswood in his place. He was the one who bore the name Ware.Just because he had been born within wedlock while his elder brother had not.
“I will not be staying for long,” Ben said again. “I need to make a home for my daughter.”
“Where?” Devlin asked.
It seemed Ben had been thinking about it. “I was wondering if you would sell Penallen to me,” he said.
Penallen?It was one of the minor properties Devlin had inherited from his father. It was close to the sea and a picturesque fishing village, twenty miles or so from Ravenswood. They had gone there once when Devlin was a very young boy and Nicholas had been little more than a baby. He had a sudden vivid memory of the salt smell of the sea and of the fish Ben had brought back from a morning spent out on a boat with some of the fishermen. He had been almost bursting with pride as he displayed them for everyone’s admiration. The family had not gone there again. The house, which Devlin could not remember at all, was not large enough for his father’s tastes. Ben had been there a few times, though, in his capacity as their father’s steward. It was not one of the entailed properties. It could be sold. For the first time Devlin wondered why his father had not left one of the unentailed properties to his eldest son.
“There will be no need to—” he began.
“Donottell me,” Ben said, cutting him off, “that you will give it to me. I will buy it. If you will sell. I can afford it.”
Devlin wondered if his father’s not leaving him one of the properties had hurt Ben, implying as it did that only the gentry were worthy of owning land. The legitimate sons of the gentry, that was.
“You do not know my price yet,” Devlin said, flashing his brother a grin. “But don’t leave too soon, Ben.”I am going to need you.He almost said the words aloud, but it would be grossly unfair. His brother had stuck by him all this time, though it could not have been easy. Now he had a life to get on with. A life that centered about his daughter.
Joy had flung up one arm to touch Ben’s face. He held her tiny wrist and kissed her hand, gently pulling back her fingers with histhumb, and she smiled without opening her eyes, smacked her lips a few times, and curled deeper into him.
And Devlin realized the fathomless depths of Ben’s love for his child. He held the whole of his world in his arms. His own flesh and blood. Hisfamily.Whereas Devlin’s family, large and extensive, was estranged from him. By his own doing? By theirs? A bit of both? His mother was the only one of them who had actually told him to leave. She was also the only one who had summoned him back home. Though, to be fair, he had not given any of the others an opportunity either to invite him to return or to tell him to go to the devil.
And he had ignored the only summons he had received—summons or invitation, depending upon one’s perspective, he supposed. For two years.
“We are going to be there soon,” Ben said, and Devlin glanced with a heavy heart at the increasingly familiar landmarks beyond the windows.
Chapter Twelve
