Gwyneth was here? In this very house? Now?
“Come,” Idris had said, setting his empty glass on the table beside him and getting to his feet. “You can pay your respects to her.”
He ended up doing more than just that, of course.
Chapter Seventeen
None of this was good.
At least yesterday he had been prepared for her coming to that infernal tea. And somehow, seeing her there in company with Morgan, who was clearly dazzled by her, and seeing that they made a handsome couple and were glowing with an aura of what he could describe only asromance, had made it easier. It had enabled him to set things in perspective.Six years had gone by.She was just a beautiful woman he had once fancied.
Today, though, he had ended up not simply nodding politely from the parlor doorway and muttering some conventional greeting, but sitting right inside the room alone with her—where the devil had Idris gone?—listening to her play the harp and then singing to its accompaniment. And he had spoken the truth to her, dash it all—music was pure emotion. The sort of music she chose was emotion multiplied by ten.
He was defenseless against its onslaught. For he could not simply stand her to attention and bark out an order to her to cease anddesist. He could not just ignore her music either. Or walk away without a word. He had actually asked her to sing. All he could do as the music—and she—attacked him from every conceivable direction was sit and suffer. He was not good at suffering. It was something he had stopped doing a long time ago—at least any suffering that was not purely physical.
Andnow.Damn and blast Idris. What the devil was he up to? That Welsh musician fellow wascourting his sister.And she was happy about it. Morgan was, moreover, a guest in this house. Why, then, had Idris grasped the slimmest of excuses to flee the scene and leave them to their own devices, Gwyneth and him? He had done it quite deliberately too, like a damned matchmaker.
So here they were.
She got to her feet and moved out from behind the harp. “There really is no need for you to stay,” she said. “The very idea that I must have a chaperon in my own home is absurd. I am twenty-four years old. And surrounded by servants both indoors and out.”
“It looks as if the wind has died down out there,” he said, glancing toward the window. “Would you like to go for a walk?”
She sighed. “I’ll go and get ready,” she said, and left him alone in the room. And it struck him that she had always been someone else’s woman—or girl. For years it had been Nicholas. Now it was Morgan. For just that one day, that one glorious, disastrous day, she had been his. A long time ago. A lifetime ago. What business did he have now asking her to come walking with him? The best advice anyone could give her was to stay well away from him. He had nothing to offer except darkness.
He met her out in the hall. She was wearing what looked like a warm pelisse but no bonnet. He had donned his greatcoat and held his hat in his hand. He set it back on the hall table and opened the door for her.
Her favorite walk, he knew, was over to the east of the inner park, which was enclosed by trees and was intimate and lovely. Beyond, there was more the appearance of wildness, though the big meadow, in which the sheep were often turned loose, was carefully tended to look unspoiled but neither overgrown nor neglected. In the spring and summer it was colorful with wildflowers and waving grasses. Now the flowers were mostly gone and the grasses were beginning to take on an autumnal hue. She liked to sit on the stile, he knew. He had seen her there numerous times, either chatting and laughing with Nick or alone and reading a book. He had never been there with her himself.
She did not stop there this time. She climbed over the stile and jumped down without his assistance. He climbed over after her and they set out across the meadow, the grasses swishing against his boots. It would be misguided, he thought, to imagine that it was only warm, sunny, blue-skied days that had any real beauty. There was something appealing too about low clouds and autumn chill. Something attractive also about the short, crisp days of winter. And spring—how had she phrased it in the village a few days ago?Spring always comes.And it always had come. Even on the Peninsula.
They had not spoken a word since leaving the house.
They came to the five-barred gate at the far side of the meadow. Beyond were cultivated fields, already harvested for this year, and wooded hills with more farmland to the east and west of them. Cartref was more of a working farm, less of a showpiece than Ravenswood, though it was large and prosperous and the house was somewhere in size between a manor and a mansion.
Instead of standing aside for him to open the gate, she leaned her arms along the top of it and gazed off toward the hills. He stood several feet behind her, watching her, his hands clasped at his back.
This idea of a walk had probably been a colossal, uncomfortablemistake. Damn Idris! What would they do now? Turn and walk back to the house in silence?
“What happened?” she asked him. “Out there on the Peninsula. What did war do to you? What did the long silence and estrangement do to you?”
Good God. How did one answer such all-encompassing questions? Did one let the silence continue? Was there any other choice?
She turned after several moments and leaned back against the gate.
“You are filled to the brim with darkness, Devlin,” she said, echoing the thought he had had earlier. “You are so terribly, terribly hurt. Was it dreadful out there?”
He licked his lips. “Violence and death are always dreadful,” he said. “I am not going to talk about it, Gwyneth.”
“Because it is not for the ears of a woman?” she said.
“Because it is not foranyone’sears,” he said.
“But it is not that, is it, or not that alone, that caused the darkness?” she said. “It has not happened to Ben.”
“Ben was not an officer,” he said. “Or an enlisted man.”
“Why did he go?” she asked.
