Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(10)

It would have been far better to have kept his mouth shut. He could almost see her brain churning to come up with some reasonable excuse. He had never danced with Gwyneth. He had never asked, of course. She did not like him.

“I have not reserved any set for anyone,” she told him. “Papa always says it ought not to be allowed, especially in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else. He says it is humiliating for a man to ask a lady for a dance only to be told someone else reserved it weeks ago. It makes him look and feel stupid, he says. Twp is the word he used. It is Welsh.”

“Yes,” he said. “Idris has called me twp a time or two. I shall wait until the evening of the fete, then, to ask you for a dance.” That would give her plenty of time to think up another excuse.

She looked as though she was about to say something else, but Stephanie whirled away from the counter at that moment, her package clutched to her bosom, and beamed at Gwyneth.

“I am going to be allowed to watch the dancing until ten o’clock,” she said, “even though I am not quite ten. But, as I explained to Mama, I am in my tenth year. Pippa had to wait until after her birthday. She is allowed to dance this year because she is fifteen. But she is terrified no one will ask her.”

“I will ask her,” Devlin said.

She made that sound with her lips. “You do not count, Dev,” she told him. “You are her brother.”

“Ah,” he said. “Did I give you enough money?”

“You did,” she told him. “I even have one shilling and sevenpence ha’penny change to give back to you.”

“Admirable,” he said. “Good day to you, Gwyneth.”

“Lady Rhys is going to the church because Sir Ifor is practicing the organ there,” Stephanie said. “She just told me it could be a long wait.”

“Ifor loses track of time when he is playing,” Lady Rhys explained, turning from the counter for a moment. “Though I do not suppose that is news to anyone.”

“I could listen to him forever,” Miss Jane said with a sigh. “And even that would not be quite long enough.”

“You said you would take me to the inn for lemonade in the coffee room before we go home, Dev,” Stephanie reminded him. “May Gwyneth come too? Will you come, Gwyneth? May she, Lady Rhys?”

“Perhaps,” Devlin said, “Lady Rhys would like to come too for some coffee.”

“No, no,” she said. “I am very ready to sit down in the quiet for a while and listen to the organ. But you go, Gwyn, by all means. We will know where to find each other.”

“Then thank you,” Gwyneth said, smiling at Stephanie. “That will be pleasant.”

“I would show you the ribbons I chose,” Stephanie said as they left the shop together. “But Miss Jane wrapped them up so nicely and tied them so neatly with string that I would make a mess if I tried to open the package.”

“I will see them when they are hanging from the maypole,” Gwyneth said. “Then I will let you know what I think.”

She was looking pretty in a blue and white vertically striped dress with a blue spencer and matching bonnet. Her dark hair was confined in a tight knot on her neck. She always did look smart when in public, Devlin conceded as he stowed the package of ribbons behind the seat of his curricle and followed her and Stephanie, who were walking arm in arm toward the village inn on an adjacent side of the green. She very often looked quite different at home or on her father’s land. He had once thought of her as a wild child. She had often gone barefoot outdoors during three seasons of the year, her long hair loose and disheveled down her back. She had often worn old, loose-fitting dresses, perhaps because she so frequently got her clothes dirty or even tore them. Devlin doubted there was a tree on her father’s land she had not climbed or a fence she had not scrambled over even if there was a perfectly serviceable gate close by. Gates for Gwyneth had been made to swing on.

Devlin remembered one day in particular when a cat had been stuck at the top of a tall tree, mewing piteously. Lady Rhys had been anxiously muttering about gardeners and tall ladders and Idris had been callously predicting that the silly animal would find its way down eventually, as cats always did, and Devlin had wondered if he ought to volunteer to rescue it. Meanwhile, Gwyneth had simply climbed up and fetched it herself. And had her bare arms and knees badly scratched for her pains.

Ah, how he had loved her in those days. Though love was not the right word, he supposed, for he had been only a boy himself and there had been no sexual component to his feelings for her. He had envied Nick, who had run off to Cartref whenever he could and frolicked and laughed with her and encouraged all her excesses. Or perhaps she encouraged his. If he had been her friend, Devlin thought, he probably would have advised caution on a number of occasions for fear she would get hurt. And she surely would have laughed at him and done what she wanted anyway. Indeed, he would probably have goaded her unwittingly into additional wildness.

He could not have been Gwyneth’s friend even if he had tried. Not as Nick was. He had just wished he could be.

His father was standing outside the inn, a tankard of ale in one hand, talking with three other men, one of whom was the vicar, and with one woman. She was Mrs. Shaw, the new resident of the village. She was apparently taking her tiny dog for a walk on a leash.

Stephanie was hugging their father while he held his tankard out at arm’s length and patted her back with his free hand and beamed from her to Gwyneth to Devlin.