“Devlin—” she said.
“Mama—” They spoke together.
And they gazed ruefully at each other.
“Tell me,” he said. “Why did you send me away? Why would you not even say goodbye to me when I knocked on the door of your room? Why me and not him?” He drew breath to pour out another dozen or so questions, but he stopped there.
“I desperately wished to protect you,” she said. “You were still so very young even though you were twenty-two. You were still very... innocent. And very bewildered and hurt. I needed to get you away from here until somehow the situation had sorted itself out and things had settled down. I needed to get you to safety for a while.”
“Safety.” He stared at her.
“I hadnoidea,” she said, closing her eyes briefly, “that you would turn to the military, and a foot regiment at that. It seemed the very worst choice for you, unlike Nicholas. I had no idea you would cut yourself off from us so completely. I never intended it to be forever, or even for very long. I never said that. If Ben had not gone with you, I might well have lost my mind.”
And that was what had mattered to her? That she somehow hold on to her sanity? That she keep the peace? And therefore that she keep her son and her husband apart? Was that what the whole of her married life had been about? Somehow preserving the threads of the illusion of a happy marriage and family life?
“Refusing to see you the morning you left was pure cowardice and selfishness,” she said. “Saying goodbye. I just could not do it. And afterward, when I understood how it must have seemed to you when you were at your most vulnerable, it was too late. I ran out to the stables, but you were gone. You and Ben both. I... thought I would die. No, that is foolish. IwishedI could die. For some things are so nearly unbearable that life itself seems unlivable, the future unthinkable.”
“Was it all my fault?” he asked her.
She set her cup and saucer down on the table. She had not touched her tea. She drew an audible breath and released it.
“You told the truth,” she said. “That can never be wrong, can it? Children are taught from the cradle up that they must always tell the truth, that lies are wicked and cause only harm. And you told it out of love—for me and for your sisters and grandmothers. For very decency’s sake. And out of a terrible disappointment in your father—whom you had always loved dearly. Perhaps you chose the wrong time and place. Or perhaps not. Either way, Devlin, it was not yourfault.It was your father’s. And mine.”
“You blame yourself for what he did, then?” he asked her.
“Not in the way you perhaps mean.” She sighed. “Only perhaps for never having the courage or the will to do myself what you did. To have the truth out in the open. To confront him. For fear of the very thing that did happen after you spoke out. A burst bubble. For it was no longer possible to pretend that we were the perfect Wares presiding with great benevolence over the neighborhood beyond our doors.”
“Pretend,”he said. “But youdidknow. Even before that day. Even before my outburst.”
“Devlin.” She looked directly at him, and her eyes were suddenly hard and her lips a thin line. “Womenalwaysknow. They live with the knowledge. They build a world for themselves that helps them avoid the pain and humiliation of it. They make their own happiness.”
“Happiness?” He frowned.
“Yes,” she said. “It is what we all seek, is it not? Men are free to find it in myriad ways. Women have to make their world small enough that they can enclose it and possess it like a precious gem. Derive their happiness from it. It is what being a woman means. It is what we aretaught.”
He gazed at her, appalled, as though he were seeing her for the first time. As though he were seeing society and womanhood for the first time—as perhaps he was. Were women never free, then? Not just because they were always the property of some man—either father or husband or other male relative—but because there could never betruthin their lives? Not if they wished to live with a measure of peace, anyway.
“Is it what you have taught Pippa and Steph?” he asked her.
She gazed at him, her mouth partially open.
“I am sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”
Gwyneth, he was thinking.Gwyneth.Was that whatshehad been taught? But his mind stuck there. He could not think about her yet. Everything was still too raw. And he was unaccustomed to dealing with feelings and what they did to him. He still resisted them with all his being, despite the cracks that were fast spreading in the impenetrable armor he had worn for six years.
She had loved him with all her heart, she had told him just a couple of hours ago. He seemed to remember that he had loved her too. With all his heart. A long, long time ago. When he had been someone else. When he had still had a heart to love with.
“Tell me what happened after I left,” he said, and braced himself.
She thought about it for a while. “Nothing very much,” she said. “Surprisingly little except that you and Ben were gone. She went away—that woman. I believe George saw to it. Everyone was obliging enough to behave as though nothing of any great significance had happened. Perhaps after a while they really believed it. People are good at that. And I daresay most had known of your father’s little weaknesses anyway even though he had never before been indiscreet enough to bring them here.”
Little weaknesses.
“He hired a new steward to take Ben’s place,” she said. “And all continued as before. With a few differences. I could no longer continue with all the elaborate social events I had organized here. Not without the help I had always been able to rely upon from you and Ben and Nicholas. And your father persuaded me to join him in London each spring for the Season while he busied himself with his duties in the House of Lords. Then he suffered his sudden heart seizure here and... and died. And you became Stratton.”
Self-deception was a powerful force, he thought. Did she really believe all she said? Thatnothing very muchhad changed after he left? When it was as clear as day to him thateverythingandeveryonehad changed. If other people were to be believed, the very active social life that had centered upon Ravenswood and his mother’s virtual withdrawal from local society had not happened because she no longer had the help of her sons. It had happened surely because she was deeply humiliated and ashamed and could not keep up the pretense. Yet she had continued to deceive herself. And she herself had changed. He could see it. Stephanie had commented on it. How must it have been for her, in a marriage with his father and unable to pretend to him that she did not know him for who and what he was?
But... Good God, who was he to judge? He was not a woman.
