Be kind to yourself, my son.
And his signature, large, bold, unapologetic.
Stratton.
What did hefeel? Devlin asked himself after he had folded the letter with care and restored it to the bundle, the string enclosing all the letters. In the realm of emotion, which had been dead to him for so long and had been slowly returning only recently, how did hefeel?
He felt only one thing. Nothing extreme. Only a sort of grudging respect. His father, imperfect and aware of his own shortcomings, had ultimately been honest with the son who had seen throughthe illusion to the heart of a weak man. It was a bit ghastly to think of his father that way, but it was the truth. A weak man but not an evil one. One whose weaknesses were not to be in any way excused—as he himself had admitted. But he had not been abject with apology. He had not been like so many people whose sins had found them out—dreadfully sorry, but perhaps more regretful that they had been caught than of what they had done. His father did not regret his infidelities and had admitted as much to his son. But hewassorry for the suffering he had caused. He had claimed to love his family.Hadhe loved them? But perhaps love was no more a pure thing than evil was. Perhaps it was possible to love and to do harm to the loved one at the same time.
There was a faint headache knocking at his temples as he got to his feet and went indoors to drop off the letters in his room and fetch his greatcoat.
—
Sir Ifor had driven Lady Rhys to Ravenswood to call upon the Countess of Stratton. He did not go inside with her, however, weddings, in his opinion, being the exclusive preserve of the women most nearly concerned—except for the music, of course, and the important, heart-pounding matter of escorting one’s daughter into the church and along the nave in order to relinquish her into the permanent care of her chosen bridegroom.
Gwyneth did not stay either, since she had been assured that wedding preparations were for mothers, and the bride did not have to worry her head over them. Her father let her off outside Mrs. Proctor’s, where she was to pick up a gown that had been altered slightly for the assembly this evening. She stayed for half an hour since the former Audrey Proctor, now Audrey Davies, was visiting her mother and had her two-year-old son with her. She was withinweeks of a second confinement and was lamenting the fact that it seemed forever since she had last seen her knees.
Gwyneth was a bit surprised not to hear organ music when she arrived at the church afterward, but her father was indeed in there. He was standing behind the organ bench, in conversation with the vicar and Devlin. Two of them merely smiled and raised their hands in acknowledgment of her arrival, but Devlin came striding along the nave toward her. He took her by surprise when he was close by, taking both her hands in his and squeezing them tightly.
“If your father could choose all the music he feels would be perfect for the occasion,” he told her, “our wedding would be six hours long.”
He was hurting her hands.
“I have spoken to the vicar about the banns,” he said. “They will not need to be called just yet, of course.”
She might be walking out of here with eight squashed or cracked or broken fingers. Her thumbs seemed relatively safe. His eyes were more intense than usual. Was this just wedding nerves? Second thoughts?
“I have just been walking around the churchyard,” he told her.
Ah.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said suddenly. He looked down at their hands and loosened his hold on hers, but only in order to set them palm to palm and clasp his own more loosely about them. He kept his eyes on their hands.
“I think,” he said, his voice abrupt, his words clipped, “I have always demanded perfection of myself yet have been aware every single day that I have not achieved it. I have expected it of others and occasionally been colossally disappointed when I have not found it. I thought we were a perfect family with a perfect father and mother. But because I knew myself to be imperfect, I never feltworthy of them all. I... Dash it all, Gwyneth, did you have to come through the door just when you did?”
If they had not been standing in full view of her father and the Reverend Danver, she would have leaned forward and kissed him—on the mouth. “I have been collecting my gown for this evening from Mrs. Proctor,” she said. “Having a skilled dressmaker so close to home makes a person very lazy. I am not an enthusiastic needlewoman, Devlin. You ought to know that about me before it is too late. I am not perfect.”
“Neither was he,” he said curtly. “Indeed, he was veryimperfect. He hurt us all. Irretrievably. But there was goodness in him too. I always believed that he had an affection for me and that he was proud of me even though I was not the son he had hoped for. I always believed he loved usall, including my mother. Including Ben. I could not have been entirely wrong despite the secret life he was living behind all our backs. Children know when someone is... not perfectly genuine. Especially someone close to them. A parent. I adored him and wanted more than anything else in the world to be like him. Funny, that, when I also always wanted to be perfect. I am going to let him go, Gwyneth. I will remember what was good about him and accept what was not. He was human. We are a bewildering species.”
Did he realize that darkness was emptying out of him? Slowly but very surely. Not that she was either expecting miracles or depending upon them. He was as he was, and she would live with him and love him until her dying day—or his—and be ever thankful for the idealist she was about to marry, the man who wanted to be perfect but was gradually learning the painful lesson that nobody was. That nothing was. Everyone and everything was in a state of becoming. That was the terror and the wonder of life.
“We are,” she said. A bewildering species, that was. “Are we not wonderful?”
He tipped his head to one side and frowned.
The other two men were descending upon them. The vicar, beaming, held out a hand for Gwyneth’s.
“I am delighted indeed at your news, Gwyneth,” he said. “It will be my great pleasure to officiate at the nuptial service of the Earl of Stratton and the daughter of Sir Ifor Rhys. Goodness me, how grand that sounds! My chest will be puffed out for at least a month afterward. I will be the envy of all my fellow clergymen in this county and beyond. But be assured that my lips are sealed until after the official announcement, which will be this evening at the assembly, I believe?”
He patted the hand she had placed in his and continued to beam at her while she smiled back. Devlin continued to frown.
—
Did I do the right thing?” Devlin asked his mother later that evening. “I intended to take a burden off your shoulders. But perhaps you feel you have been displaced. I ought to have consulted you first.”
“No,” she said. “You did the right thing. Planning something even as relatively simple as a village assembly is a large undertaking, and I am done with that part of my life. I could not be more delighted that you will be marrying soon. Before Christmas. Gwyneth will be a good countess. I will be happy to relinquish my duties to her.”
“She will never have to do them alone, Mama,” he said. “We will work together, she and I. And if any of the work becomes too onerous, then I will simply hire people to do it.”
