She could not possibly still be pining for him. It would be too utterly pathetic.
She heard his boot heels on the gravel of the terrace a few minutes later and looked up again. He walked with firm, purposeful strides, very straight backed, his expression stern beneath the brim of his tall hat. Like a military officer. Or a man who was not really looking forward to the coming encounter with his former friend. What had it cost him to come home? Or washomequite the wrong word for what Ravenswood and his family now meant to him?
She shook her head and returned her attention to her letter.
She finished it, all three pages of it, in a heroic act of determined concentration. Perhaps she ought to have gone to the choir practice with Aled. Would he think she was not really interested in him?Would he be right?She let the ink dry naturally as she cleaned her pen and quelled the sudden panic she felt. Not again. Please, not again. She wastwenty-four, perilously close to being left on the shelf. She knew a number of women who would be over the moon with happiness if they had won the notice of a man like Aled Morgan. And shelikedhim. She would even say shelovedhim if that were a word that did not frighten her to death.
There was a tap on the door and it opened. Idris stood there, Devlin behind him.
“Dev wants to pay his respects to you, Gwyn,” Idris said. “He did not even realize you were here until I mentioned it just now.”
She turned in her chair.
“How do you do, Gwyneth?” Devlin said, moving into the doorway while Idris stepped back. “I wanted to thank you again for coming to Ravenswood yesterday. It meant a great deal to my mother to put on a show like that. I wanted to congratulate you too. Idris has been telling me about the competitions you have won with your harp music at the... Well, that Welsh word I can never quite get my tongue around.”
“Eisteddfod,” she said. “Thank you.”
“I can remember wondering the few times I heard you play when you were a girl,” he said, glancing at her harp in the corner of the room, “how on earth you could know which strings to pluck and how you could possibly make music from them. But you did.”
“After a lot of practice and grinding of teeth, it does become almost instinctive to pluck the right string,” she said.
He hesitated.Shehesitated.
And then she heard herself say something quite unplanned. “Would you like to hear it now?”
His eyes came to hers. “I would,” he said. “If I am not interrupting something important, that is.”
“I have finished my letter,” she said, getting to her feet and crossing the room to her harp.
Devlin advanced farther into the room and stood watching. Idris propped a shoulder against the doorframe, folded his arms, and crossed his feet at the ankles.
She played a few simple folk melodies, first without any embellishment, then with. By the time she had finished, Devlin had taken a seat closer to her and Idris had disappeared, half closing the door behind him.
“I have always considered music undisciplined,” Devlin said. “Or maybe that is the wrong word. It must be played correctly and with much concentration and practice, so it isnotby any means undisciplined. But it is not played for the intellect and the understanding, is it?”
She did not know what reply to give him. She gave none. She stood the harp upright again but did not rise from her chair. He was frowning down at his hands—until he looked up and directly into her eyes. “It represents chaos. It bypasses thought and reason and...discipline.It speaks directly to the emotions.”
“And emotions are by definition chaotic?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “They are unstable. Hard to control. Impossible to master.”
“Should not emotions sometimes be surrendered to?” she asked. “In a safe way? Through music and art and fine literature?” Why had she used the wordsafe?
“Is that not like a drunk thinking it safe to allow himself one drink?” he asked in return.
“No, I do not believe so,” she said. “If one surrenders to the power and beauty of music and art, one is not therefore doomed to react to every experience of life with undisciplined emotion.”
Are you afraid to love?She almost—ah, shealmost—spoke the words aloud.
“Has Idris offered you tea? Or something stronger?” She got to her feet.
“Play again,” he said—quite illogically in light of what he had just been saying. “You used to sing. Do you still?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you play and sing?” he asked.
“Yes.” She sat again and tilted the harp down to her shoulder. She rested her hands against the strings and thought of what she would choose. She sang the haunting lyrics of “Barbara Allen”:
