Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Five

Clarissa spent the following morning in the library, writing letters. She had been amused and rather touched at how many she had received since her return. Her family and friends must have started writing almost as soon as her carriage drove out of sight of the group of them gathered outside Stratton House to wave her on her way.

They had probably felt guilty at allowing her to return home alone. They would fear that she was going to be lonely. Obviously she had failed to convince them that it was something she really wanted to do.

Kitty and George reported that they were still enjoying the Season in London, though they would return home soon—home being the dower house on the estate now owned by Sir Gerald Emmett, Kitty’s son. Clarissa must never forget that she was welcome to join them there at any time. Lord Keilly had asked particularly about her at the soiree they had attended the evening before and had appeared a little taken aback and hugely disappointed to learn that she had returned to the country.

Kitty had underlined the one word.

Gwyneth was missing both Clarissa and Stephanie, as well as the frequent visits from Pippa. Devlin would probably be pleased, however, to receive fewer bills from her shopping trips now that her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law were no longer available to accompany her. There was very little pleasure to be had from shopping alone, alas. She was looking forward to leaving for Wales as soon as the parliamentary session ended. It was still not too late for Clarissa to go with them. Everyone—she had underlined the word—would be delighted.

Owen—yes, he had actually written his mother a letter, a rare feat for him—was missing her and “even that pest of a sister of mine.” He had started to help out at a home in London for delinquent boys, and his hair might well be a uniform gray by the time his mother saw him next. He would still be happy to join her at Ravenswood for the summer if she felt herself in need of company. All she had to do was let him know.

Stephanie reported that she was very happy indeed to be at Greystone, which was far better for Pippa’s health than London. The twins, now two years old, were exhausting, and Lucas kept assuring her that she need not feel she must amuse them during their every waking hour since they had a perfectly competent nurse, not to mention a doting mother and father. But playing with them was fun. She hoped her mother did not need her at Ravenswood just yet. She did wish, though, that Mama would come to them. Both Pippa and Lucas would be delighted, as would the children. And she would be over the moon.

Pippa had written with very similar news and sentiments. She was feeling considerably less tired than she had much of the time in London. In fact her energy had surged back now that she was home. Even so, she was so glad of Stephanie’s company. Only Mama’s company too could make her happier.

Ben had written from Penallen as soon as he learned Clarissa had returned home alone from London. Jennifer was blooming with good health and exuberant spirits despite—or maybe because of—her condition. His aunt Edith, who now lived permanently with them, was enjoying fussing over her, and Joy kept bringing both women gifts of wildflowers and shells and pebbles from the beach. Joy was enormously excited at the prospect of a new brother or sister, though she had almost seven months to wait. Both Aunt Edith and Jennifer were in the process of writing letters of their own to Clarissa, and Joy was drawing her a picture of Carrie, her collie, now two years old and as frisky as ever. But Mother did not have to wait for letters. She would be more than welcome to come and stay whenever she wished and for as long as she wished. Ben would even come and fetch her if she would but say the word.

Clarissa wrote to them all, a time-consuming process since she could never be satisfied with writing just a brief note. And she felt a welling of love and gratitude for all of them. She felt slightly guilty too, since she knew she had worried them and made them wonder if they had done something to drive her away, despite her firm reassurances to the contrary. It seemed absurd that after fifty years of active living she sometimes felt as though she knew and appreciated everyone and everything around her except herself. Her family seemed to be in an unconscious and entirely well-meaning conspiracy to keep things that way.

Who exactly was Clarissa Ware, née Greenfield, Dowager Countess of Stratton? Sometimes it seemed that she had dreamed her way through life, that it was all something that had happened to her rather than something she had lived with conscious intent. Yet she had never had much time to dream. There had always been so much to do, and she had wanted to do it all well, to be perfect, not to neglect even the smallest duty.

How fortunate it was that at least she knew beyond any shadow of doubt that she loved her family. All of them. She had even loved Caleb in a way it would be hard to explain. It was a bit surprising she had loved him at all, since in many ways he had been a weak man. He had left the running of the estate entirely to a steward and later to his eldest sons, Ben and Devlin. He had left the raising of the children and the running of the home and social events like the grand annual summer fete to her. He had left them all behind for a few months every spring while he went to London, supposedly to fulfill his duties as a member of the House of Lords, though Clarissa had suspected he had little interest in politics. He had spent those months partying with the ton during the Season, flirting, committing adultery, betraying both her and their children over and over again.

Yet he had undoubtedly had a great fondness for them all. His pride in his children and his admiration for her had been genuine. He was a man with an enormous amount of natural charm. He loved people, and people loved him. Until the great upset at the summer fete ten years ago, they had been seen as a happy family at the heart of a happy neighborhood. And it had not been all illusion, though it would be hard to explain that to any skeptic.

Matthew Taylor leapt to mind.

But had she been equally weak? Had she convinced herself that it was better to have half a life than none at all? Had Devlin’s moral outrage when he found his father up in the temple with that woman in the middle of a ball exposed her own weakness of character as much as it had Caleb’s? Was that why she had sent Devlin away? Had it been not so much to protect him as to save herself from having to look inward and admit the truth about herself? She and Caleb had never talked out all the sorry mess that had been made of their lives. Rather, they had moved onward as though nothing monumental had happened. She had genuinely grieved when he died suddenly of a heart seizure four years later.

Human relationships were never as simple as it seemed they ought to be. Nor was understanding oneself.

But she had fallen into a daydream. She picked up her bundle of letters and took them out to the hall, where she set them in the silver bowl that held outgoing mail.

She loved her family. They were the anchor of her existence. So was Ravenswood. And Boscombe and the neighborhood surrounding it. She had dear friends and many friendly acquaintances here. She belonged here. But was it all something to which she clung because there was nothing else? Just a void at the center of herself? It was a thought that disturbed her. She had come home to find and confront the answers.

She went upstairs to her room, found a warm woolen shawl, and left the house after informing the butler that she would probably not be back for luncheon but would have something cold if she was hungry when she did return.

Then she walked, taking the lower path west of the house, veering off among the trees between the path and the river after she had passed the end of the meadow, and reducing her pace as she wound her way among the trunks and looked up through the branches to the sky and the clouds floating lazily by. It was closer to heaven up there, she thought, her eyes upon the upper branches. And she smiled. She had always liked that idea, concocted one day by Matthew to persuade her to climb. And he had been strangely right. They had seemed to leave cares behind them whenever they did climb, and they would relax on a sturdy branch and dream away the hours together, or laugh them away as they composed one of their ridiculous stories.

She set a hand flat against the rough bark of one of the trees and imagined, as she had all those years ago, that she could feel the energy push its way through the roots and the soil, up through the trunk and into the boughs, all the way to the topmost branches and on up into the heavens. Trees lived for a long time, sometimes even centuries, stalwart and rooted in one place. Did they know of their own existence? Someone—was it Matthew?—had once told her that when a tree fell, whether brought down by a storm or by an axe or even old age, the whole forest wept.

She stepped back out onto the path and across it instead of following it to the lake. She struck off north, across rolling grassland with its upward slopes and dips into unexpected little flower arbors.

They were very different from each other, she and Matthew. She was securely established at Ravenswood. She enjoyed the love of an ever-growing family. She had roots here that ran as deep as those of the trees she had just touched. This would be her home for the rest of her life, though she would never be fully dependent upon Devlin. She had her own modest fortune upon which to live in comfort. She had, in fact, everything for which her upbringing had prepared her. Hers was a success story. It had not been without its upsets, it was true, but that same upbringing had enabled her to smooth them out and live through them and beyond them.

Matthew, on the other hand…He had made a life for himself that must have seemed a shocking failure to his father before he died. Matthew did not live as a gentleman lived. He seemed uninterested in doing so, though it would surely have been possible, since as far as Clarissa knew he still owned the home and estate his grandmother had left him. He had cut himself off from what remained of his family. She had not heard of there being any communication between him and his brother. He worked as a carpenter, a job that financed his basic needs, she supposed, but would not allow for many luxuries. Yet he was not reputed to spend long hours and days on more and more work so he could earn more. He seemed to be a man without ambition.

Some people might say he had crawled home after years of travel, exhausted, defeated, unfulfilled, having never made his fortune or even found the place in life the younger son of a gentleman of property might have expected. But it was impossible to know Matthew Taylor, even in the limited way Clarissa now knew him, without seeing that he was a man…Oh, how did one describe it to oneself? At peace with his world? At one with it? Living just exactly the sort of life he had been born to live?

His prevailing mood was so different from what it had always been when he was a boy that it was impossible to explain to herself what had caused the change. But she wanted to know, to understand. She suspected that most if not all the answers lay in those lost years, about which she still knew very little. They had not been lost, though, according to him. He had lived through them and come out the other side a changed and, he said, happier person.

He had gone away to find himself all those years ago, and it appeared he had done just that. In contrast, she had stayed at home all her life, at her parents’ home until she married, at Caleb’s after that. And she had never been on any search for herself. Why should she? She had always known perfectly well who she was and where she belonged. Until now.

It occurred to her suddenly that in many ways she and Matthew had reversed roles during the thirty-plus years since their friendship ended. It was a startling thought.

She found one of the quiet flower arbors over a rise of land and went to sit on the seat at the center of it. There was always a seat, though she knew these little arbors were intended primarily for the viewing pleasure of anyone who rode in the park or traveled about the perimeter in a light carriage. She was surrounded by quiet, fragrant peace. She breathed slowly in and out with conscious contentment. How privileged she was to have her home at the heart of all this beauty and tranquility.

How could she possibly be feeling restless?

She looked forward to tomorrow with the eagerness of a child awaiting a treat. Perhaps it was a mistake to try to recapture the friendship she and Matthew had enjoyed during their youth. Perhaps some things were best left to memory and not tampered with. But she had so enjoyed watching him shoot his arrows in the alley yesterday and then talking with him in the summerhouse, reminiscing.

Tomorrow she was going to get him to talk more about the missing years. She wanted to know when and why he had taken up archery and become such a master at it.

—

So often when one looked forward to an outdoor activity too eagerly one ended up horribly disappointed when the weather did not cooperate. Clarissa knew a moment’s dread the following morning when her maid woke her as usual with a cup of chocolate and crossed to the window of her bedchamber to pull back the heavy curtains. But she need not have worried. She could see clear blue sky out there even before she sat up to hug her knees and confirm her first impression that there was not a cloud in sight. She could hear birds singing their hearts out from the trees down by the river. She breathed in fresh air and the smell of recently scythed grass from the open window.

It was going to be a lovely day, perfect for a long walk.

“I will have breakfast up here in my sitting room, Millicent,” she told her maid. “Afterward I will need my green walking dress and bonnet. A parasol too. The floral one, I believe. And my stout walking shoes.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Her maid cast a look of mild surprise her way, though she did not question her mistress’s choices. She knew that Clarissa thought those shoes the most unattractive footwear ever invented and kept them to wear only in heavy rain or when she knew there would be mud she could not avoid. That clearly was not the case today. And the parasol! It was garish, to say the least. It had been a Christmas gift from Joy, who had chosen it herself, according to Jennifer as she smiled sympathetically at her always quietly elegant mother-in-law.

The shoes had one virtue, however. They were marvelously comfortable, and Clarissa guessed she was going to need that comfort today. As for the parasol, well, she was feeling in a giddy mood and she knew she would enjoy telling Matthew where it had come from and how Joy had bounced up and down with excitement as her grandmother unwrapped the parcel on Christmas morning.

How ever had she agreed to trudge all the way out to the hills and back—and up over the hills, which would be no mean feat in itself? But he had always had a gift for persuading her to do things she had no wish to do, like climbing trees. Or at least he could as long as they were not strictly forbidden activities. She had never gone swimming with him in the river, for example, because it was specifically not allowed. She guessed no one had thought it necessary to forbid tree climbing, since her fear of heights was well known.

Did Matthew believe she was still that girl of long ago? They had walked endlessly when they were very young, it was true. But neither of them was young any longer.

Yet she felt young a while later as she turned off the main driveway into the village, onto the narrower path that led east, and could see that he was waiting for her at the southern end of the poplar alley, where they had agreed to meet. Like her, he was early. He stood with his back against one of the trees, his arms crossed over his chest, one booted foot flat against the trunk. There was what looked like a canvas bag on the ground beside him. He watched her come, a smile on his face.

“Ever the elegant lady,” he said as she drew close, his eyes sweeping over her small-brimmed bonnet and her dark green walking dress and black shoes—which were anything but elegant.

“You have not seen my parasol unfurled yet,” she said. “When it is raised it looks like an overabundant flower garden in full, blinding, unlikely sunshine. It was surely intended for a very young woman to twirl about her head to draw admiring glances in a crowded park. It was not meant for an aging matron out on a sedate walk. But my granddaughter chose it specifically for me and told me so at great length on Christmas morning.”

“Is that how you see yourself, Clarissa?” he asked. “As an aging matron? There must surely be a full-length looking glass somewhere inside Ravenswood. But you probably see in it what you expect to see or what you believe you ought to see since you are a dowager countess and have five adult children—six if you count Ben Ellis, as I daresay you do. I myself, however, see a woman of vibrant beauty, who has every right to twirl a garishly bright parasol above her head. Clearly your granddaughter sees you the same way.”

She laughed as he hoisted the canvas bag over one shoulder, and hoped she was not blushing. But yes, her title, amended to dowager countess after Devlin married Gwyneth, and the existence of grown children and growing grandchildren did make her feel—oh, not old exactly, but…unyouthful, if there was such a word.

He did not appear youthful either, but he did look like a man who took care of himself and was in the prime of life. He was lithe but looked strong despite the lines on his face and the gray in his hair. He was certainly not dressed for elegance—or to impress. His coat was not so form-fitting that he would need a valet to squeeze him into it. It fit him comfortably. It had seen better days—quite a while ago, surely. His shirt was plain and unadorned and clean. His boots, though freshly polished, were creased with age. His tall hat was not in the first stare of fashion—or the second or third. Clarissa guessed his ever-so-slightly shabby clothing had nothing to do with any inability to afford better, but rather had everything to do with a certain carelessness over material things.

He looked strangely appealing.

“What is in the bag?” she asked. “It looks heavy.”

“I thought,” he said, “that by the time we get to the crest of the highest hill we will be thirsty at the very least. Probably hungry too.”

“How thoughtless of me,” she said. “I did not remember to have a picnic luncheon sent out there in one of the wagons. Now I feel bad that you have to carry everything.”

“It is part of the fun of going on a walk with a friend,” he said. “Do you not remember, Clarissa, when we used to do it all the time? Usually with food and drink from your kitchen. Your parents were very kind and your cook extremely indulgent.”

They made their way at a fairly brisk pace toward the hills and the eastern boundary of the park. And they talked. At first about daily matters. She told him how exuberant with delight Stephanie was at being at Greystone with her sister and brother-in-law and twin niece and nephew and how it made her, Clarissa, wonder why she had gone to all the trouble of presenting her younger daughter in London this year. She told him of the letter from Gwyneth that had been delivered just this morning, informing her that Bethan, Gwyneth and Devlin’s daughter, had taken her first steps—five of them in a row, in fact, before she looked suddenly alarmed and plopped down on her padded bottom before laughing and clapping her hands but refusing any repeat performance.

He told her about moving his tools and equipment and piles of wood with Cam Holland’s help to Colonel Wexford’s last evening and setting up a temporary workshop in a barn there. He could do a lot of work on Miss Wexford’s table at home, particularly the numerous and intricately carved legs and feet. But his workshop would scarcely hold the table itself once he put it together, and what would he do with it when it was finished? How would he move it, vast and weighing a ton, out of his workshop and down the steep stairs to the pavement and out to the colonel’s? So he was going to work on it there, and it would be up to the colonel himself to mobilize an army of burly servants to get it from the barn to his dining room.

“Miss Wexford buzzed around us like a particularly persistent bee when we arrived,” he said. “She had a thousand suggestions and a million questions. She did promise before we left, however, that she would not disturb me once I start work there but will leave me alone to get on with it.”

“By which words you understood that she will be forever in your way, I suppose,” Clarissa said.

“I am afraid so,” he said with a laugh. “One cannot help liking the woman.”

“Can you not shut and lock the doors to the barn?” she asked.

He laughed again. “I would not even if I could,” he said. “She is so terribly excited about this table, Clarissa. I will humor her. I do not believe there has been a great deal of excitement in her life. More than that, I do not believe she has ever done much purely for herself. She has been an excellent sister and housekeeper to the colonel and a good aunt to his daughter. She has never had her own family or home. I suspect her only personal possessions are what she has in her own room. She has been well loved and appreciated and cared for in return, but I am not sure those things have been enough to satisfy her…soul.”

“And a new dining table will do that?” she asked.

“One she has commissioned and will pay for herself in defiance of her brother’s assumption that the expense will be his,” he said. “One she has more or less designed for herself. Yes, curiously, I believe her soul is being nourished.”

“Matthew,” she said, pausing to look at him while she opened her parasol, having felt the slightly uncomfortable warmth of the sun against the back of her neck. “You are a very perceptive and very kind man.”

Even she would not have described him as kind when he was a boy. He had been too needy, too disturbed by frustration and rage.

He looked at the parasol as she raised it over her head. “I like your granddaughter’s taste,” he said. “And I am glad her parents allowed her to indulge it.”

“So am I,” she said. “Do you by chance remember the very garish and cheap jewelry with which both Joy and Jennifer bedecked themselves at the fete two years ago?”

They were on a not particularly steep section of the narrow roadway that went up over the crest of the hills from the low land near the river before descending at the far end and winding its way back west on the northern side of the park. It was easy enough to ride up or to go in a light carriage. Clarissa had done it numerous times, though not recently. She had never done it on foot. It felt very steep indeed today after the already long walk from the house. The roadway ahead looked like an endless, undulating ribbon of pure torture.

“Give me your hand,” Matthew said.

She did, and the climb seemed much easier with the steady support of his strong workman’s hand as it closed tightly about hers. She felt ashamed at having to accept his assistance when he was carrying that heavy bag over his other shoulder.

“We will sit and rest at the top, and we will doubtless agree that the long walk and the climb were well worth the effort. Not too far now,” he said with a smile.

“Hmm,” Clarissa said. It was hard to catch her breath and impossible to say more. But her eyes already told her he was right. She had seen the view before, of course, but never as a result of her own exertions. Somehow it made a difference. And the sun was shining down from a sky that was still as clear of clouds as it had been when she woke up. It was a perfect late spring day, the air not quite as hot as it would be in a few weeks’ time. There was a welcome coolness to the breeze.

When they finally stood at the very crest of the highest hill, they turned slowly in all directions. Sir Ifor Rhys’s neatly cultivated farmland stretched away to the east of the hills, the large manor house that was Cartref in the distance. The pretty cottage in which Idris Rhys, Sir Ifor’s son and Gwyneth’s brother, lived with his wife and family was a short distance beyond the main house. There was a pretty, though not large, park surrounding the buildings.

And on the other side of the hills there was Ravenswood, with its vast park, closely packed trees to the south and north of it and others dotted pleasingly across it, and the river winding past with the main road on the other side, along which a heavily laden stagecoach was swaying. And, slightly back from the road, the village of Boscombe, with its picturesque houses and village green and church with a tall spire and the stone bridge that connected the village to Ravenswood. The mansion itself looked vast and imposing from here, its four wings surrounding cloisters and gardens at its center.

“You were right,” Matthew said, setting down his bag. “These are not particularly high hills, but the view from the top is spectacular. Shall we sit for a while?”

He did not wait for her answer but opened the bag and drew out a light blanket, which he spread on the scrubby grass before gesturing for her to sit on it. He followed her down and gazed over the park, one leg stretched straight ahead of him, the other bent at the knee with one arm draped over.

It was a relaxed, informal pose. The very size of the blanket dictated that they sit rather close to each other. They were not touching, but she could both feel and smell the heat coming from him. She was very aware of him, of his masculinity, and wondered how he could be so relaxed. She felt taut with something that was not quite discomfort.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, a lazy smile on his face. His hat was tipped slightly forward to shade his eyes from the sun.

“Are you as parched as I am?” he asked her. “I am too lazy to take the drinks from my bag. There is a flask of water and one of tea. I could not remember if you take milk and sugar. I packed a little of both separately.”

She delved into his bag and pulled out both flasks. It was water she wanted more than anything. She could not find any cups.

“I decided to travel as lightly as possible,” he told her. “No cups and no plates, I am afraid. We will have to drink directly out of the flasks.”

Oh my! How very ungenteel. She smiled with inward amusement.

She drank from the water flask first before wiping off the top with a clean handkerchief—there were no napkins either in the bag—and handing it to him. The water tasted faintly of whatever had been in the flask before it—tea? Coffee? It did not matter. It tasted as good as the finest wine to Clarissa.

There were two packages of food, both wrapped securely in clean cloths. One held two sandwiches made of thick slices of bread with an almost equally thick layer of very yellow cheese in between. The sandwiches were quite inelegant and the bread a little stale, as were the large slices of seed cake he told her Mrs. Holland had brought for him a few days ago. But to Clarissa it seemed like the most delicious feast she had eaten in a long while. Perhaps ever.

The problem with bringing milk and sugar for the tea but no cups and no spoon, of course, was that they were virtually impossible to use. And Clarissa did remember that as a boy he had drunk his tea black. That was how she drank hers from the flask today—lukewarm, very black, and so strong that a spoon, if there had been one, would surely have stood upright in it without touching the sides. But it was like the perfect ending to a perfect picnic.

“Thank you,” she said as she shook out the crumbs and folded the cloths before putting them back into the bag with the empty flasks. “That was delicious.”

“Liar.” His eyes laughed lazily into hers.

“Oh, not so, Matthew,” she said in protest. “It was the best picnic ever. The best meal ever.”

But she laughed with him at the extravagance of her words, true though she was convinced they were.

“Are you ready to leave?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “You were going to tell me about the archery,” she said.

“Was I?” He turned his face away to look out over the park again. “Are you sure? It is a long, boring story.”

She did not answer him. She sat still and waited until at last he pushed himself to an upright sitting position on the blanket, crossed his legs at the ankles, and draped his hands over his knees.

“Well,” he said. “It all began when I was in India and decided to go on a hike with a couple of holy men.”