“It is,” the vicar told him. “He has a famous conductor with him—Mr. Aled Morgan. He is a guest out at Cartref. The Prince of Wales shook his hand after an orchestral performance in London a year or two ago. They have been in the church for an hour or more.”
“Perhaps I will step inside, then, and listen for a while,” Devlin said. “I will try not to disturb them.” The church would besomewhere to hide for a while since he did not fancy strolling about the green alone but did not want to go back home so soon either. More important, though, he had always loved the sound of the organ in this church. When Sir Ifor was playing it anyway. It was not just music that came from the instrument when he played. It was sheer emotion. Sheer beauty.
He opened the church door quietly and slipped through. He closed it softly behind him and was engulfed in familiarity. There was a certain quality to the light inside here as it filtered through the stained glass windows. Something suggestive of eternity. Something that induced serenity. There was a familiar chill too, which was not quite coldness. And there were the mingled smells of ancient stone and prayer books and candles and incense.
He had been given similar impressions by other churches, but there was something unique about this one. It spoke of home as Ravenswood no longer did. He felt a sharp stabbing of nostalgia—pain and regret and a wish that history could be changed. And a knowledge that it could not. Not if one was honest with oneself about what was real, that was, and what was merely wishful thinking—like his father having died of a heart seizure.
Somewhere—if he allowed it in—there was terrible pain in knowing that he had turned into a drunk.
The organ was playing something both intricate and majestic, though he did not recognize what it was. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he could see Sir Ifor seated on the organ bench while another man stood behind and to one side of him, bending forward, apparently totally absorbed in what he saw and heard.
Devlin went to sit at the end of the back pew, and for the first time since coming home, it seemed to him, he relaxed. Perhaps it was the first time since he returned to England. He closed his eyes briefly and gave himself to the comfort his senses brought him. Butsight was one of those senses, and he loved the sight of the church interior on a sunny day. He opened his eyes again.
And found himself looking at a fourth occupant of the church. Someone he had not noticed when he came inside. She was sitting with her back to him, several pews ahead. She was still and quiet and gazing toward the organ.
Gwyneth.
Was she not married and gone from here, then? He wished like the devil that she had gone away. He felt rather as though he had been punched low in the abdomen.
It was impossible to know if she had heard him come in or, if she had heard someone, whether she knew it was him. Perhaps it could not be inferred from her utter stillness that she did. When one was immersed in the total enjoyment of something, one did not fidget.
Did one also look tense, though?
He could get up and leave as quietly as he had come. Heshoulddo it. He did not want any encounter with her. Dash it all, he did not. Yet he continued to sit and gaze at her. Numbness, he thought, sometimes felt a little too much like pain. Yet there had been just one day.One.Six years ago.
And then it was too late to take the initiative. She stood up abruptly, moved out from her pew, and came along the aisle toward the back. She stopped beside him. By that time he was on his feet too.
They gazed at each other in the semigloom. A shaft of colored light caught one side of her bonnet and left her face in the shade. But he could see her well enough. It was not a girl’s face he looked into but a woman’s. She had not changed a great deal, though. She was still dark haired and beautiful—with firm jaw and flashing eyes.
“I am going outside,” she said just as the organ music was building to a grand crescendo. “I need some fresh air.”
“I’ll come too,” he told her, and for a few moments she continued to gaze at him while he wondered if that was what she had intended.
The music came to a close.
“Dad.” Gwyneth turned her head.
But the men were already talking to each other with passionate intensity.
“Dad.” She raised her voice a bit.
They were too involved with what they were talking about to hear her. The man with Sir Ifor—Morgan, had the vicar said?—was leaning forward to play a chord on the lowest keyboard.
“They do not know anyone else even exists,” Gwyneth said. “They probably will not come back to earth for another few hours.”
She turned and led the way outside without looking to see if Devlin was following her.
Chapter Fourteen
Gwyneth had been feeling irritated. Which was a bit of an understatement, for there was more than one cause of her bad mood.
For one, she hadnotbeen looking forward to tomorrow and the tea to which they had all been invited at Ravenswood Hall—even Aled. An invitation had been delivered for him just this morning to prove how quickly news traveled. Normally a social event might have been a welcome break from the monotony that often threatened life in the country, and these days events at the hall were rare. But the formal invitations that had been sent out had stated quite clearly that the tea was in honor of the return to Ravenswood of the Earl of Stratton. No mention ofDevlinorhomeor the pleasure their company would give the countess. Even Gwyneth’s mother had remarked that there was something a bit chilling about the card.
Who knew what was to be expected? Opinion had always been divided, quite sharply in some instances, on that scene Devlin had created before leaving home. Some people claimed to havesuspected that Mrs. Shaw was the old earl’s mistress and to have been uncomfortable and outraged on the countess’s behalf and that of her children. Those people tended to defend what Devlin had done. Others pointed out that his ill-considered outspokenness had hurt his mother and his sisters and young brother as much as they had chastised his father, perhaps more. Those people were of the opinion that good manners were sometimes of greater importance than the truth. Now a sizable number of both groups, as well as those, like Gwyneth’s parents, who refrained from giving any opinion or passing any judgment, were to gather at Ravenswood to face the very man who had hurt his family and divided the neighborhood.
Gwyneth did not want to be one of them. It was a farce, what the countess was doing. And how wouldhereact? She did not want to know. She did not want to see him. Her connection to him was history, and she would have preferred to leave it that way. But... good manners dictated that she go. And since this morning she did not even have the excuse that she ought to remain at home to keep Aled company. He was delighted to have been invited.
“I will be pleased to be your escort, Gwyneth,” he had said, even though Mam and Dad and Idris would be going too, and they had always been escort enough for her—if she needed an escort at all.
