Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Six

Matthew waited hopefully for her to laugh, to tell him that if he could only talk nonsense, then she did not want to hear it and it was time to make their way back home anyway.

It did not happen.

But he might have known better than to expect she had changed. She had always waited for him to speak when she knew he had something to say. She had always listened to him too—really listened. In those long-ago days of their childhood, it had seemed to him that she was the only one who ever did.

He turned his head to glance at her. She was slightly behind him but very close. The blanket had determined that. She was hugging her knees and looking steadily back at him. And, Lord, she was more beautiful than any woman her age had a right to be. And full of vitality. She had walked here stride for stride with him, talking and laughing with him and twirling that garish parasol behind her head, making him forget that she was no longer that girl he had loved once upon a time. Just as he was no longer that boy.

“I will try to make a long, boring story as short as I can,” he said as he turned his head back to look out over the park. “After a few more years in Europe, first learning carpentry, then working at whatever job I could find to support myself, I thought I would probably end up coming home, though I never felt I was quite ready. I just did not know what ready would look like. Then I made the acquaintance of Joe Hopkins, who was a bit like myself—a wanderer, a man with itchy feet, as he liked to describe himself. We were soon firm friends, and off we set for the East. He had an uncle in northern India who had a senior position with the East India Company. Joe was confident he would offer us employment and enable us to make our fortunes. Not that either of us was particularly interested in being rich. It took us a long time to get there, but we did eventually arrive and miraculously were offered work with the company—as the lowliest of lowly clerks.”

Matthew had hated it. The supposed superiority of the white man. The contempt for all things Indian—its people, its customs, its religions. Especially its religions. To company men, even God was white and superior and contemptuous of all that was not white or superior or a worshiper of the English God. Matthew had soon grown almost ashamed of being white and English. He saw himself as an interloper in the country of these people, and he found himself wanting to get to know them—but from their point of view, not from that of his fellow countrymen.

Fortunately for him, Joe felt much the same way, and together they plunged into the life of India as it was lived by the Indian people. They acquired some friends and friendly acquaintances and a gradual knowledge and understanding of a culture very different from their own but just as richly steeped in history. Perhaps more so. It was a civilization far older than theirs. They acquired a smattering of the language so they would not have to rely wholly upon the services of an interpreter.

“I was particularly intrigued,” Matthew said, “by the holy men who roamed the streets and the countryside, begging for their food with bowls they held out whenever they were hungry, but with never a word of pleading and always a murmur of thanks when food was given. They were seen as dirty, lazy beggars by my own people, of course, but they were treated with deep respect, even reverence, by their own people. There was something about them that fascinated me. I never could quite put my finger upon what it was. They seemed always to be content and at peace, though they apparently had nothing beyond their robes and sandals and begging bowls. They never seemed to feel the urge to do anything or go anywhere. They just were wherever they happened to be. They spoke to people who spoke to them, but never in the form of lengthy sermons or speeches. They gave blessings when asked for them. They sometimes sat unmoving for long hours, seeming to stare into space, though they never looked bored or as though they were simply daydreaming. They never seemed to fall asleep. I had the impression they were very present at every moment. When Joe told me one day that two of them were about to return to their monastery in the mountains north of India and that he had decided to go with them, I chose to go too, abandoning the job I so hated. I expected it to be an interesting adventure for a week or two.” He paused, turning to look at her. “I must be boring you horribly, Clarissa.”

He had been droning on for what seemed a long time. He turned back to gaze out over the park spread below him, and marveled as he often did at the green serenity of England, which he had taken so much for granted as a boy.

“You are not,” she said, and he turned his head to glance at her again.

“The monastery was a long way into the mountains,” he told her. “It took more than two weeks of rough walking and rugged scrambling to get there. It was cold and stark. There was little to eat, and even water was not always easy to find. The pace was very un-British. We took longer breaks than I expected, sometimes not moving onward after a night’s rest until almost noon by my watch, stopping again when there was still an hour or more of daylight left. Sometimes we went a whole day, once two days, without moving onward at all, though there was never any apparent reason for the delay. I had to learn the rhythms of their lives. Life was not always about getting somewhere. One was not at the mercy of time. What was time anyway? I grew less and less impatient as the days went by, so much of them apparently wasted. But we arrived eventually, and Joe and I were accepted without question. We were each given a tiny room in which to set our things and sleep. We were fed twice a day with everyone else. We were given mats upon which to sit cross-legged alongside all the monks for hours on end, meditating while staring at a blank wall a couple of feet or so in front of us.”

He had been a bit taken aback at first. They were neither questioned nor treated as temporary visitors or curiosity seekers. It was assumed they had come to seek something specific. Enlightenment was the word Joe had used. And so Matthew had sat and tried to meditate and achieve enlightenment.

“We were supposed to still the body and the mind,” he said. “We were to listen to the ebb and flow of our own breath and, if necessary, chant a mantra silently to ourselves until we moved into a state of understanding. We were not told what that was exactly or how we would recognize it when we got there. It was nothing to do with what we would call God, since they did not seem to see God as an entity separate from all else. To them it was not helpful to use that word to describe the divine, since it immediately made of it a separate being, someone to be worshiped. No one could tell me what the divine was, however. In fact they did not even use that word. The whole experience of enlightenment could apparently not be described in words. And it could never be achieved if one thought in terms of success and failure. It could not be willed. The more one strove to achieve it, the more one moved back into one’s mind, and that never worked.”

He must be sounding like a madman.

“Why did I persist?” he said. “Why did I want to achieve something no one could even explain to me? It was not as though I was being forced. I was not stranded in that monastery. After the first couple of weeks or so, a small group was going down to the plains to bring back supplies, and Joe went with them, his curiosity satisfied. I do not know which of us was the more surprised, him or me, when I chose to stay. By then I was deeply frustrated and more and more determined to succeed at all costs. Why? It seemed to me that I was searching for the missing link that would make me whole after all my years of rebellion and restless wandering. And it seemed to me that the answer lay there. I would not leave until I had found it.”

He fell silent again, wondering ruefully why he seemed unable to cut the story short, as he had promised to do. He had never told this story to anyone else and very much doubted he ever would again. But he had always told her everything. Well, almost everything.

There was one monk at the monastery who was deeply revered by all the others. He rarely emerged from his small room. Matthew had never seen him. He apparently spent his days and most nights deep in meditation. One day Matthew was summoned into his presence. Until then he had thought of the man as a sort of mythical being.

“I knew at that moment,” he said to Clarissa, “that I was a failure, a nuisance, that I was about to be dismissed, asked to leave. I sat cross-legged, facing him, on a mat identical to his own and no fancier than those in the meditation room. I was on the verge of tears. I did not understand why. I was not interested in their religion or any other. I did not want to join them permanently. But when he spoke, it was not to reprimand me. He told me that for some people, particularly Europeans, stilling the mind in meditation was a near impossibility. Our culture frowned upon stillness, he said, which it equated with laziness and a waste of precious time.”

Do not send me back , Matthew had begged him. He had been quite abject, to the point of self-pity. I have been in pain all my life. I need to find peace .

I do not have the power, nor do I want it, to send you anywhere , he was told. Those who come here to seek may stay until they find or until they choose to leave of their own free will. There are other ways of stilling the mind, however, ways that involve a disciplined exercise of the body. You may wish to try one of these ways. Have you ever shot an arrow?

Matthew had raised his eyes to look in surprised puzzlement at the monk. With a bow, you mean? he had asked foolishly. No .

We have a master of the art living with us at present , he was told. He has helped a few men like yourself who desperately seek but cannot find because they cannot let go of their desperation. He is willing to instruct you if it is something you wish to try .

It is , Matthew had said eagerly, though he had not for the life of him been able to imagine what archery of all things had to do with this monastery or his search for inner peace.

“And what did it have to do with your search?” Clarissa asked, and he realized he had been talking aloud.

“I was embarrassingly awful at it for a long, long time,” he said. “I could not hit a target to save my life. More often than not, my arrows died an ignominious death at my feet. Even when I improved, I could still shoot only one arrow before having to stop and set up all over again. I watched my teacher in despair. His arrows flew straight and true and so close together, one after the other, that it was hard to see where one ended and the next began. But I did improve—over a long, long time, though I could not see how what I was learning was helping in my search. My teacher explained it to me—but only after I had become proficient with my bow. When I understood, he explained, that the bow, the arrow, the target, the air through which the arrow flew, my arm that held the bow, the arm that fitted and shot the arrow, my stance, my eyes, my whole person, were, in fact, all one, then I would understand everything. And then suddenly, one day, it happened. I no longer had to think of what I was doing. I no longer had to think of success or failure. I was one with the whole process. Unfortunately, it is an experience impossible to explain adequately in words. Or perhaps it is not unfortunate, for if we could explain it, we could also manipulate it and change it, personalize it, make some sort of monument of it.”

He dropped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. He was very glad she was Clarissa. She did not rush into speech. She had always been the same. She had always listened. She had never said much afterward. She had never lectured or advised or even given an opinion most of the time. Her silence had always brought him infinite comfort. The comfort of acceptance for the person he was—a not very pleasant person when he was a boy, according to most people who knew him.

“Thank you,” she said at last, and he turned his face toward her.

“It is a foolish story,” he said.

“You know it is anything but foolish,” she told him. “And so you came back home.”

“And so I came home,” he said. And for some strange reason he felt close to tears.

“And you are a happy man,” she said.

He laughed softly. “Making a home of rented rooms above a smithy?” he said. “Earning a modest living as a carpenter? How could I possibly be happy?”

She smiled at him. And oh, that smile. He wondered if she had ever realized the power of it. It was not her social smile, charming and genuine as that was. It did not involve sparkling eyes or a flashing of teeth, only a curving of her lips and a softening of her whole facial expression and something from within that beamed from her eyes and wrapped about the recipient like a woolly blanket or a warm hug. It was a smile intended for that person alone.

Ah, he had missed it. For more than half his lifetime.

“If I do not stand soon,” she said, “I may never be able to stand again.”

He jumped to his feet and held out his hands to help her up. She both laughed and groaned as she stood, clinging tightly to his hands.

“Oh, Matthew,” she said. “We are no longer young.”

“Thank goodness,” he said. He far preferred the age he was now. He preferred her the age she was now too, with all the poise and dignity the years had given her to add to the vibrancy she had always had.

She smiled at his comment. Their hands were still clasped between them. And he could see the sudden awareness arrest her expression. He released his hold on her and bent to pick up and fold the blanket while she shook her skirt and smoothed out the creases.

“Shall we continue on our way?” he said, pointing to the downward and upward undulations of the road ahead, which would eventually take them down to the park and back to the house along the northern path.

“Yes,” she said. “It would be as far to go back as it will be to continue.”

“A long way, in other words,” he said. He felt suddenly guilty. Even with the lengthy tea break they had taken, this was a long walk. He ought not to have ridiculed her idea of bringing a gig. But they had no choice now but to trudge onward. Unless…

She raised the bright parasol over her head and gave it a twirl.

If they had brought a gig, of course, they would have no choice but to keep to the roadway. But since they were on foot…

From the bottom of the next dip, the drop down to Sir Ifor’s land was almost sheer. But on the Ravenswood side it was a far more gradual slope. It also appeared to be all grass with just a few protruding stones. He stopped and moved closer to the edge to peer downward.

“No,” she said firmly before he could voice his thoughts.

“It would be relatively easy to go down here,” he said. “We would cut off a huge corner and at least half a mile of our journey. Probably more like a whole mile.”

“No,” she said again.

He turned his head to grin at her. “It would be exhilarating,” he said. “It would be like being children again. And it is really quite safe. There are even a few large flat stones in conveniently strategic places upon which to rest. I will help you. You are not a coward, are you?”

“You are doing what you always used to do,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You are goading me into doing what I know is madness and what is entirely against my will and better judgment. It is how you got me to climb trees.”

“Did you ever fall?” he asked.

“Utterly irrelevant to the present situation,” she said.

He held out one hand toward her. “Come and see,” he said.

She shook her head, exhaled with audible exasperation, and came to stand beside him, though she did not take his hand. “I suppose you do not remember,” she said, “that I am afraid of heights.”

“All the more reason to get down from this one by the quickest, easiest route, then,” he said. “Look at it, Clarissa. There are no difficult obstacles, like sheer cliffs, for example, and there is no dangerously steep part of the slope. We seem to be high up only because we are up rather than down. From down there it will look like nothing at all. Shall we find out?”

“You are quite determined to do this, are you not?” she said.

He merely turned his head to grin at her again, and she huffed out another exasperated breath.

“I might have known,” she said, “that deep down you have not changed at all.”

He laughed. “Ah, Clarissa,” he said. “Nor have you.”

She lowered her parasol with a snap, and he took it from her. “We will do it,” she said. “And if I survive the ordeal, I will call you the monster and the idiot you are.”

“Take my hand,” he said.

They descended the first part of the slope very slowly as she felt out every foothold and clung to his hand as though her very life depended upon it. They paused when they came to the first rock, which was flat enough on top to give them firm footing. She looked ahead for perhaps the first time.

“Oh,” she said. “We have scarcely started. I think we should go back.”

“Look behind you,” he said.

She did so and let out one of her huffs. “Did we really come down all that way?” she asked.

“It would certainly be foolish to change our minds now,” he said.

“And it is not foolish to go on?”

“Well,” he said. “We could stay here. Perhaps for the rest of our lives. Or possibly someone will come looking for us after a week or so. I believe there is a little tea and water left in the flasks.”

“Oh,” she said. “You are enjoying this. Come along, then.”

The grass was thin on the next stage of the descent and they did some slipping and sliding on loose stones that had not been visible from above. But there was never any real danger. And the slope became far more gradual and grassy below the next big boulder, which was not as flat as the other one had been but nevertheless gave them a firm base upon which to stand and catch their breath.

“It is easy from here to the bottom,” he said. “You can walk it sedately, Clarissa, or you can take it at a bit of a run. I’ll show you. I’ll go down first and be there to catch you at the bottom.”

“You are not going to leave me?” she said, alarmed.

“No,” he said. “I’ll come back up if you need help. But you will not.”

It was a fairly gradual slope, though admittedly longer and steeper than it had looked. It was far easier to take it at a run than at a walking pace. He ran down most of it. Children could have a feast of delight rolling down here, he thought, and wondered if children ever had. The hills were a long way from the house.

He watched her begin a gingerly descent, holding up her skirt with one hand to show her still-trim ankles, her eyes on her feet and the grass immediately ahead of them. But after a short distance the slope became too much for her and she had no choice but to fall or run for it. She ran, holding her skirts up with both hands now, and shrieking as she came. She reached the bottom just as she was about to topple over, but he caught her in his arms and swung her off her feet and around in a complete circle. They were both laughing helplessly.

“Matthew,” she said as he set her feet back on the ground. She tipped a flushed face to his. Her arms were wound tightly about his neck. “You reckless, utter idiot.”

“Guilty,” he said. “And aren’t you glad of it?”

He watched the laughter fade from her face even as he felt it drain from his own.

“Yes,” she whispered. “You idiot.”

And suddenly they were kissing with passionate intent as though they would fold themselves into each other if they could. A whole lifetime of yearning went into that kiss, it seemed to Matthew, and who could ever say which of them had initiated it? Perhaps it had been entirely mutual. It was very definitely a kiss. Their mouths were open, their tongues clashing and twining and exploring, their breath mingling. They were not going to be able to convince themselves afterward that it had been a mere pecking of lips, a mere extension of their exuberance and laughter.

“You idiot,” she murmured again when he softened the kiss and moved his lips almost away from hers. And she deepened the kiss for a few moments longer until full awareness returned to her, as it had already begun to do to him.

Awareness of what they were doing, he and Clarissa Ware, Dowager Countess of Stratton. Their first and only kiss at the age of almost fifty in her case, going on fifty-one in his. And as impossible now as it had been when she was seventeen and he eighteen. More so, in fact. At least then he had been a gentleman and she a lady without all the trappings of title and aristocratic status. Now he was a carpenter and wood-carver by his own choice. His closest friends, the people with whom he most often associated, were fellow workmen and shopkeepers. And she was a dowager countess.

He raised his head, and she drew hers back at the same moment, though they did not immediately release each other. Her eyes were large and slightly dreamy as they gazed into his. Her cheeks were rosy from surely more than just the exertion of running downhill. Her lips were soft and moist and deep pink.

“When you stood against that tree,” he said. “After you had told me Stratton was coming to offer for you the following day and you were going to marry him. When I came to stand in front of you, I wanted desperately to kiss you then.”

“I know,” she said softly. “And I wanted desperately for you to do it.”

“What would have happened if I had?” he asked her. “Would the whole of the rest of our lives have been different? Would you have changed your mind?”

She thought about it, her eyes lowered, her teeth sinking into her lower lip before shaking her head. “No,” she said. “But there would have been more heartache.”

She had loved him, then? But she had married Stratton anyway? Because his offer had been too dazzling, too tempting to resist? No, he must not be bitter. There had been other reasons, all of them sensible.

“I loved you,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” she said, moving her hands to his shoulders and patting them. “And I loved you. But love would not have been enough, not for us. We would have ended up desperately unhappy.”

He was about to argue the point, but he was no longer the lovesick eighteen-year-old he had been then. And even at the time, he had known that love would not have been enough for them.

Whoever thought love was all that mattered was living with his head in the clouds. Though romantic love was not the only kind of love, of course. Not nearly.

He bent to retrieve his bag and her parasol.

“Oh, Matthew, you lied!” she cried suddenly. She was gazing up the slope they had just descended, a look of horror on her face. “You told me the hill looked high just because we were up there, looking down. You told me that from down here looking up, it would seem like nothing at all.”

“Well,” he said. “Almost nothing at all.”

“Look at it!” she said, flinging out her arm and pointing with the parasol. “It goes on forever, and it is almost sheer.”

It had been a longer, steeper descent than he had estimated from above, it was true. And there had been that tricky bit in the middle.

“Are you not all the more proud of yourself for doing it?” he asked.

She drew breath to make some sharp retort before closing her mouth with a clacking of teeth. After a moment she laughed. “Ah, Matthew,” she said. “You have made me feel young again today. And very foolhardy again. We might have killed ourselves.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “Besides, I was there to catch you, as I always was.”

“But who would have caught you?” she asked.

They were on grassland, halfway between the southern and northern riding paths. They set out straight across rolling lawns dotted with trees and surprising little sheltered nooks of flowers and ponds and rustic seats. Matthew wondered if they were ever used, though a whole army of gardeners must be kept constantly busy tending them all.

“I believe some people from the village bring their picnics to these more isolated parts of the park,” she said as though she had read his thoughts. “They come on open days, as they are invited to do, but some of them are too shy to use the more obvious attractions closer to the house. My children would often come back from rides in the park and tell me I simply must go and see the lilies or the sweet peas in such and such a spot or the daffodils or bluebells turning a whole grassy slope yellow or blue in another place. I would go with them to see, though riding has never been one of my favorite activities. They were good days. I suppose Devlin and Gwyneth’s children will drag them off to appreciate similar sights when they are older.”

He took her hand in his as they walked, and she made no objection. It was something he had never done as a boy, he realized. He did it now only because he had not thought before he did it. It felt natural. It felt…comfortable.

Two gardeners were at work in one of the flower nooks. Matthew thought perhaps he and Clarissa would pass unseen, since they were about to descend another dip in the land some distance from where the men were working. But one of the men straightened up to remove his cap and cuff his obviously sweating brow. He caught sight of them and raised the cap as he bobbed his head.

“A fine afternoon, my lady,” he called, and the other gardener looked up and snatched off his cap too.

“It is indeed,” Clarissa called back.

So much, Matthew thought ruefully, for meeting at the end of the poplar alley earlier instead of at the house. He did not doubt that within a very few hours everyone who worked at Ravenswood, indoors and out, would know that the dowager countess had been strolling in the park with the village carpenter.

Hand in hand.

By tonight there would hardly be a soul in Boscombe or on the neighboring farms who did not know it.

Dash it all! But he did not release her hand, and she did not pull it away. And when she asked him as they took their leave of each other on the driveway if he would join her on Tuesday for a picnic at the lake, he did not say a firm no as common sense told him he ought.

“I can come after work,” he said. “About four o’clock?”

“Come to the house,” she said. “We can take a picnic basket in the gig.”

She had clearly realized too, then, that there was no further point in trying to keep their friendship to themselves.

“Thank you for today,” she said. “I have enjoyed it more than any other day this year. Maybe last year too. Thank you for thinking to bring food and drink. It was quite delicious.”

He laughed, and she laughed back.

“It was,” she said as she turned away from him.

He watched her walk up the drive to the house before he strode past the meadow and crossed the bridge toward home.

He was still smiling.