“I think,” she said, and he felt a bit breathless because she was smiling and looking directly at him, “all men should learn to play the organ or the cello or harp and pour all the passion of their soul into music. Or some other form of art. The world would surely be a better place. But since we do not live in a perfect world and I daresay my mother is feeling very hungry after missing luncheon, I had better go in there and suggest we all go home. Thank you for the lemonade, Devlin, and for your escort here to the church.”
He had always noticed the slight lilt of a Welsh accent in her voice, though it was far less pronounced than it was with her mother and father, who often spoke Welsh to each other. He had not fullyrealized until today, though, how much it was part of her attraction. She had a low-pitched speaking voice to match her contralto singing voice. She had just called himDevlin.
He watched her disappear inside the church before he turned to look for Stephanie.
He drove her home by her favorite route and by far the longest one, over the crest of the hills between their land and Sir Ifor’s. He flatly refused to spring the horses, but she exclaimed enthusiastically anyway over the steep drop on both sides of the track in places while she clung to the armrest of her seat on the one side and his coat sleeve on the other. Much good that would do her if he pitched them over.
Gwyneth had never totally abandoned her wild nature when she was at home, though it had been less in evidence as she grew older. Or so it had seemed to Devlin, who had viewed it from afar during his visits to Idris. She had continued to go barefoot outdoors, to leave her hair unbound, to run free. He had seen her sometimes running at play with the dogs or sitting on a stile reading. Once she had been up in the not-so-low branches of a tree with her book, a cat perched on a branch beside her and within reach of her caressing hand. She moved, it had always seemed to him, with a natural grace rather than with the trained deportment of a lady. But only at Cartref. Elsewhere she behaved with accepted propriety—as she had this morning.
It had always seemed to Devlin that she was bursting with passion—a product of her Welsh heritage, perhaps.
He had looked upon her for years now with a young man’s yearning for what was unattainable. For it had always been clear to him that she was as different from him as night was from day. Yet he longed for her, for some share in that passion. He dreamed sometimes, with embarrassing foolishness, of running through a meadowwith her, knee-deep in wildflowers, hand in hand, laughing. She played the harp, the instrument that to him looked most impossible to play, though it could produce music more haunting even than the organ. She played it well. She looked one with her harp when she was playing it. The instrument of Wales.
She did not like him. It was the one constant in his relationship with her—or, rather, in the total absence of a relationship. Or perhaps what she felt was not as active as dislike. Perhaps it was worse—a total indifference toward someone who was not of any interest whatsoever to her. Because he was dull and never wild. Or fun. Or spontaneous. He was the polar opposite of Nicholas, with whom she had had a close friendship all their lives and perhaps more than that now they were young adults. She had admitted that she would worry about him when he joined his regiment in the autumn.
Devlin had tried not to love Gwyneth. Loving her led only to pointless heartache, after all. For he would not cut in on a brother’s preserve even if he could. Some things were simply not done. Besides, he loved his brother. And besides again,she did not like him.
He had tried not to love Gwyneth Rhys and had failed. He was hopelessly in love with her.
That truth had landed upon him heavily last year when he had come upon her at the foot of these very hills while they were both out riding alone. He had known before then—he had seen it with his own eyes—that she occasionally wore breeches, but he had never seen her close while she was wearing them. She had been wearing a loose white shirt with them, tucked in at the waist, and its very looseness had somehow drawn attention to her shapely bosom. Her legs had looked long and curvaceous through the tight-fitting breeches. Her hair, dark and glossy and untidy, had been flowing behind her, framing her oval Madonna’s face. Her large blue eyes, a few shades darker than his own, had widened at the sight of him.
He had drawn rein, shocked to the core of his being. His body had reacted with sheer lust even while his mind had fought for control. His mind had won, of course—it always did. Ever the dull dog. He had looked her over slowly while steadying his breathing, had gazed into her eyes, keeping all expression from his own, and told her it would be better if he pretended this encounter had never happened. Or something to that effect.
That was what he had said and done instead of smiling and making some jesting remark, such as asking her if she was aware that she had lost her hat and her hairpins somewhere along the way. That might have drawn an answering smile from her to replace the cool, defiant look she was leveling upon him. Thinly disguised contempt.
He might have followed up that jest with a suggestion that he turn and ride back over the hills with her to admire the views. It had been a particularly clear day, he recalled. They might have spent a pleasant half hour or so together. Perhaps... But he had reacted predictably instead and she must have ridden onward, laughing at him. Or merely confirmed in her dislike of him. Certainly relieved to be away from him.
He had ridden off home. Hopelessly in love. Literally that, in fact—without hope. How could someone like him ever attract someone like Gwyneth Rhys, even if hedidhave his viscount’s title and was heir to an earldom and property and fortune? Especially when there was his brother, who was everything he was not and with whom she was probably already in love.
“What about you, Dev?” Stephanie asked, breaking a long silence as they descended to flat land out behind the hall and there was no longer any danger to hold her attention. “Are you going to fall in love and get married and live happily ever after?” Her mind appeared to have reverted to their conversation at the inn.
“When there is someone for me to fall in love with, absolutely,” he said, turning his head to smile fondly at her. “I know that to you twenty-two must seem ancient, Steph, but really I amonlytwenty-two. Give me time. And opportunity. One day she will appear—my forever-after dream woman. I will fall head over heels in love with her and she with me and we will marry—notby elopement but after all the usual formalities so the family will be able to celebrate with me. I will ask her to let you be a bridesmaid, and she will say yes because she will be in love with me and will therefore love you too. And we will live happily ever after.”
His sister sighed. “Pippa too?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said. “I will ask my lady love to have both my sisters as bridesmaids.”
“I had better hope, then, that she does not have eight sisters of her own,” Stephanie said, and giggled gleefully as she patted his arm and gazed up into his face. “I would feel like part of aprocession.Will you still love me after you find her?”
“Steph.” He turned his head to look fully at her. “There is nothing on this earth that could stop me from loving you. Or in heaven or hell either, if you want all the alternatives covered.”
“Ah.” She sighed.
Chapter Four
The village of Boscombe more or less emptied out on the day of the fete as everyone crossed the bridge over the river and walked or rode in their gigs up the slight incline leading to the house.
People of all ages came, dressed in their best daytime finery, and people from all walks of life. The Reverend Paul Danver came from the vicarage on the green next to the church with Mrs. Danver and their three children, ranging in age from nine to fourteen. The Misses Miller closed their shop for one of the few times in the year—in addition to Sundays, of course—and came. As the elder of the two remarked to a group of neighbors while they waited on the lawn for the vicar’s prayer to open the day’s festivities, there was no point in keeping the shop open when there was no one to come shopping.
George Isherwood, the physician, came with Alan Roberts, the schoolteacher. Mrs. Proctor, the dressmaker, came with Audrey, her daughter. The day of the fete was always something of a triumph for the former, as a number of the women wore dresses she haddesigned and sewn herself, with some help from Audrey. Oscar and Amy Holland, the blacksmith and his wife, and their son, Cameron, and daughter, Sally, came as well as Mrs. Holland’s mother. Matthew Taylor, the carpenter, who had his shop above the smithy on the village green, came with them.
And then there was Mrs. Barnes, once nanny to two generations of the Ware children at the hall, who came with Alice, her great-niece. And Colonel Wexford with Miss Prudence Wexford, his sister, and Ariel, his twelve-year-old daughter. And Mrs. Shaw, the new resident, came alone, her companion being one of the few villagers—perhaps even the only one—who stayed at home. There were numerous others. The farm laborers all came from their cottages on the west side of Boscombe—it was almost like a village within a village, the cottages almost identical to one another but very picturesque nonetheless with their whitewashed walls and thatched roofs and doors of different colors, which helped distinguish them from one another.
Families came from miles around, some of them modest landowners like David Cox and his wife, who supplied the village shop with milk and eggs and vegetables in season. Others were tenants of the Earl of Stratton. A few were landowners of some substance and social prominence. The Rhyses were of this number, as was Charles Rutledge, Baron Hardington, with his wife and children, the eldest of whom was twenty-four, the youngest fourteen.
Members of the extended Ware family came if they lived close enough, as many of them did. Some still bore that name. For others it had changed upon the marriage of a Ware daughter. Some members of the family had come even if they lived at a considerable distance, arriving the day before the fete and staying so they could dress in the comfort of a Ravenswood guest chamber and consume breakfast at their leisure. They would stay for a night after the fetetoo. These house guests included Richard and Ellen Greenfield, parents of the Countess of Stratton, and their son George, the countess’s younger brother, a childless widower.
On the earl’s side the house guests included his mother, the dowager countess, and Margaret Beecham, her unmarried sister, with whom she now lived in what had been their childhood home. There were also his uncle and aunt Edward and Beatrice Ware, and his widowed aunt Enid Lamb, with Malcolm, her eldest son, and his wife, Jane, and two of their children. The earl’s younger brother, Charles Ware, with his wife, Marian, and their three children had come to stay too, whereas the earl’s elder sister, Eloise Atkins, arrived on the day of the fete with her husband, Vincent, and both their children, the younger of whom—Kitty—was with her new husband, Peregrine Charlton, this year and was already displaying to the observant eye evidence that she was in expectation of an interesting event.
