Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Eight

Clarissa called at Cartref early on Tuesday morning. Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys were to leave for their annual family visit to Wales before nine o’clock, and Clarissa knew they liked to be punctual. Along with a number of other people, she had given them her best wishes after church on Sunday, but they had always been close personal friends, even before their daughter married her eldest son. Now the three of them shared two grandchildren.

She went to see them on their way and found them just getting up from the breakfast table and being fussed over by their son, Idris, and Eluned, his wife, who would not be accompanying them. Idris was exhorting his father to take the journey in more gradual stages than was his custom.

“Just remember, Dad, that Mam is not as young as she used to be,” he said.

Lady Rhys turned back to her son after greeting Clarissa. “Well, there is cheeky you are getting, Idris,” she said. “I am not in my dotage yet, young man.”

He threw up his hands, palms out. “It is just a suggestion, Mam,” he said. “But you know how you sometimes complain that as soon as Dad’s nose is pointed in the direction of Wales, he cannot get there fast enough and forgets about eating and sleeping. And even changing the poor horses half the time.”

“It is a sad day,” Sir Ifor said, “when one has to be told how to live one’s life by one’s own son. But never mind that. Clarissa, did I see you up on the crest of the hills on…Saturday, was it? I made a spectacle of myself by cutting a caper and waving my hat at you, but neither you nor your companion saw me. I did not see any carriage or even a horse. Never tell me you went there on foot.”

“Well, I did,” Clarissa said as everyone looked at her with interest. “We walked all the way from the house and all the way back. I was very proud of myself. And if any of my sons had been at Ravenswood, I would have defied them to imply that I am in my dotage.”

She smiled at Idris to show she was not being serious.

She wondered if Sir Ifor had seen whom she was with, since it certainly was not one of her sons. Sometimes it was easier simply to provide information than let people speculate.

“Matthew Taylor is going to make a crib for me to give Jennifer and Ben for the baby they are expecting,” she said. “He has already shown me sketches. It is going to be quite gorgeous—all covered with carvings of animals and plants and birds and butterflies. He accompanied me on that long walk on Saturday. We go back a long way, Matthew and I. We were close friends when we were growing up. His father’s land adjoined my father’s.”

“And a very gentlemanly man he is too,” Lady Rhys said. “Are you quite, quite sure you will not come with us, Clarissa? You know Devlin and Gwyneth would be more than happy, and the relatives would roll out the red carpet for you. I hate to think of you all alone at Ravenswood for what may be more than a month while we are enjoying ourselves.”

“Sometimes it is good to be alone for a while,” Clarissa said, not wanting to dwell on the relief she felt in her friends’ apparent disinterest in Matthew and the crib. “I am enjoying my quiet time here, though I am quite sure I will be more than eager to welcome my family home when they come. I will feel a renewed appreciation for their company.”

“Well, that is one way of looking at it,” Lady Rhys said. “Though being alone is not something I would choose for myself, especially when Wales beckons.”

As she spoke they had all been making their way out to the traveling carriage that was awaiting her and Sir Ifor. Clarissa stood back now to give the Rhyses a chance to hug and take a fond leave of one another. Idris handed his mother into the carriage, Sir Ifor climbed in after her, the coachman shut the door securely and climbed up to the box to gather the ribbons in his hands and give the four horses the signal to start, and they were on their way. Idris and Eluned waved until the white handkerchief fluttering from the carriage window was withdrawn and the vehicle disappeared from sight.

“Come and have some breakfast, Lady Stratton,” Eluned said. “You must have missed having it at Ravenswood. There is plenty of food left.”

“Thank you, but I must be getting home,” Clarissa said.

“To your nice quiet life,” Eluned said, smiling. “Enjoy it while you have the chance, Lady Stratton.”

Clarissa spent the rest of the morning partaking of a late and leisurely breakfast in her sitting room and gazing out through her open window, ignoring both books and embroidery. The letters she needed to write could wait too.

Had Sir Ifor known who was with her up on the hills three days ago before she told him? He very probably had. Neither he nor his wife had shown surprise when she told them. Lady Rhys—Bronwyn—had even been ready with her kind description of Matthew.

Were her friends really uninterested in her friendship with Matthew? Or had Sir Ifor raised the matter this morning as a sort of warning to her? That if he had seen them together, someone else might have too? And of course someone else had—two of the Ravenswood gardeners, in fact. They had seen the two of them walking hand in hand.

Did she care that word was probably spreading? Not really, she thought at first. Only the truly malicious gossips would try to make something of it. Many people would know Matthew was a gentleman. He spoke like one, after all. A few would even recall that his father and now his brother were close neighbors of the Greenfields, her parents.

However…

Well, perhaps she did care for Matthew’s sake. He was such a quiet and private man. He would hate to be the focus of any sort of gossip. It was no doubt pure selfishness on her part to like the idea of pursuing a friendship with him while she was alone here. She had enjoyed their two encounters, and she was looking forward to this afternoon’s drive to the lake and the picnic tea with an eagerness she had not felt at all in London, despite the glittering parties she had attended and the congenial company. The weather was perfect again, more like summer than spring.

Perhaps, after all, she needed to put an end to the friendship. This afternoon everyone in the house would know with whom she was going to share the picnic tea for two that was being prepared. But why end it now? People would grow accustomed to seeing them together from time to time. Or would they? Would they perhaps grow more scandalized the longer she and Matthew were seen pursuing a friendship that might be considered unbecoming for two people whose stations in life were so far apart?

How annoying to discover so early in this time alone she had snatched for herself that her freedom was not limitless after all. For it was not only her own reputation she was risking. She had no right to risk Matthew’s too. In many ways he had more to lose than she did.

It would be wrong and selfish to continue, she decided at last, gazing through her window at the sheep in the meadow without really seeing them. A continued friendship might destroy his peace of mind, a peace that had been hard-won during the year or years he had spent at that monastery north of India. It had served him well since then. One could see it in his eyes and in the quiet, modest life he enjoyed, earning his living with the labor and skill of his hands.

She could not in all conscience threaten that peace.

She would explain to him this afternoon. In the meanwhile she was going to enjoy every moment of their picnic. Memories could be very precious, and she knew she would remember these few encounters with him with great fondness in the years ahead.

But…would the memories be enough?

—

When Matthew arrived at Ravenswood, he saw an open barouche standing outside the main doors rather than the gig he had expected. A groom stood at the horses’ heads while a coachman used a soft cloth to rub off what must have been a smudge of dust from one gleaming door of the conveyance. Both men nodded politely when Matthew greeted them.

Clarissa must have seen him walking up from the village. She was stepping out onto the flight of steps to the front doors, wearing a summer dress of light figured muslin and a floppy-brimmed straw bonnet. She was carrying the brightly colored parasol her granddaughter had given her for Christmas. She was smiling brightly and looking for all the world like a woman half her age.

“Could the day be any more perfect?” she asked as he went to meet her at the bottom of the steps.

She was referring, of course, to the weather. He was very aware, however, of the two silent men behind him. He had sat with them a number of times in the taproom of the village inn, where he went occasionally in the evening for a pint of ale and a bit of male company, and where they went for a similar purpose. These very men, as well as other servants from Ravenswood, always treated Matthew as one of their own there and included him in their conversation. He was just the local carpenter to them, as well as the man they admired for his superior skill with a bow and arrow.

“I was pleasantly surprised half an hour or so ago when I stepped out of Colonel Wexford’s barn to discover that spring had passed into summer while I was hard at work,” he said, handing her into the barouche and following her in. “There are no windows in the barn and only lamps for light. It might have been raining or snowing outside for all I knew.”

“You were working on Miss Wexford’s dining table?” she asked.

“I was,” he said. “She seems pleased with what she has seen so far. She keeps assuring me on the one hand that she will not disturb me so I can get on, and finding frequent excuses on the other hand to come into the barn for a look.”

“It must be quite disconcerting for you,” she said, laughing as she raised her parasol over her head and the groom moved back from the horses’ heads and the carriage wheels crunched over the stones of the terrace on the way to the lake.

A large picnic basket was standing on the seat across from them. Matthew looked from it to her and raised his eyebrows.

“When our cook is asked to prepare a picnic tea for two,” she said, “I believe that in her mind she sees two companies of soldiers, all with voracious appetites that must be satisfied so that not even one of them will go away just a little bit hungry.”

“I would guess it will be somewhat more elaborate than Saturday’s picnic tea,” he said ruefully.

“Somewhat more,” she agreed, looking amused. “But I do not believe I will ever taste cheese sandwiches or seed cake more delicious than the ones you brought then, or water more refreshing.”

He laughed. Though the thing was, she seemed to mean what she said. He tried to relax. It was all very well to tell himself that class distinctions no longer meant anything to him, that he was done with all that nonsense. For years he had successfully mingled with all classes and had been comfortable with all. But a few days ago he had felt anything but comfortable when those two gardeners had seen him walking hand in hand with the Dowager Countess of Stratton. They were men he spent time with at the village pub as well. And today he was very conscious of the broad back of the coachman up on the box before them, a mere few feet away, a functioning ear on either side of his head.

“I decided after all not to bring the gig this afternoon,” Clarissa said. “It occurred to me that the poor horse would be stranded down at the lake for at least a couple of hours, waiting for us to return. This way the horses can be taken back to the stables and we can walk back from the lake whenever we are ready to leave.”

“A good idea,” he said. “And we will carry the hamper of leftovers back between us?”

“No.” She laughed. “Someone will fetch it later. But I wanted to tell you I wrote to Ben and Jennifer last evening to tell them about the crib. Not that you will be making it, but that it will be my gift for the new baby. I would hate to give it as a surprise when the time comes only to discover that they already have another set up in the nursery. But all the wonderful carvings with which you are going to cover this one will remain a surprise. It is going to be a unique piece of furniture. I can hardly wait to see it finished.”

“I thought,” he said, “I might include a chest of drawers to match it.”

“That would be wonderful.” Her face lit up with pleasure as she twirled her parasol.

He understood what she was doing. She was keeping the conversation focused upon the work project that had brought them together. It probably came as second nature to her to say in the hearing of servants only what she wanted them to hear. She might even be doing it now quite unconsciously.

It was not far to the lake. Matthew felt a bit helpless as the coachman lifted out the hamper and carried it into the shade cast by the boathouse a short distance away. The man then hauled a large blanket out of the boathouse and spread it on the bank a little farther along where they would have sunshine and an unobstructed view of the water and the landscape around it. Then he climbed back to his box and drove off without a word.

“Awkward,” Matthew said.

“Was it?” She looked after the retreating carriage and then at him. “I am sorry. Have I made life more complicated and less comfortable for you? I have not thought much about our friendship for years past. It was something that needed to end at the time, and it was ended. But recently I have looked back with a great deal of nostalgia and have come to the realization that there is no further need for us to keep an almost total distance from each other. We live close—even closer than we did during our childhood. You have no wife or other attachment as far as I know, and I have been a widow for six years. It seemed such a good idea for us to renew our friendship this year while I am here alone, without the distraction of family and house guests. And I have indeed enjoyed your company and conversation. I have felt honored by your confidences, which I know you have not shared with anyone else but me. But it seems I have been selfish.”

Here was his opportunity to end it. He could even walk away right now and leave her to solitude and the lake for however long she wished to stay before she walked back to the house.

Alone.

It would be most ungentlemanly of him.

“I have enjoyed your company too, Clarissa,” he said. “Since we are here now, shall we enjoy this afternoon too? Shall we feast our appetites on the contents of that hamper and our senses on the beauty all around us?”

For this one afternoon. This last afternoon. That was what he was really saying, and he could see that she understood and very probably agreed.

She was looking youthfully pretty this afternoon, he thought again, standing in sunshine in her light muslin dress and floppy- brimmed straw, the incongruously bright parasol over her head. She was smiling.

“I do not want to sit sedately on a picnic blanket admiring the view until it is time to eat and then walk home when we are finished,” she said. “I want to do something. Can you row a boat, Matthew? Not that I am helpless. I used to bring the children here all the time when they were small, and I would take the oars when the boys tired of trying and would row them a couple at a time around the lake. Sometimes I would pile them all in and row them across to the island to explore or to swim from what we called the beach at the far end of it. Those were lovely days.”

He wondered where Stratton had been when all this had happened. Still in London performing his parliamentary duties? Busy about estate business? Matthew had never had much use for the man. He could understand his popularity, for he had been endlessly and apparently genuinely charming and genial to everyone. He had been a perfect host at the many social events that had happened through the summers and winters. But Matthew had always suspected that he was essentially a lazy man and shallow of character. It was his countess who had appeared to do most of the work of organizing the elaborate entertainments and seeing that they ran with seamless perfection. Matthew had never had proof until that disastrous summer fete ten years ago that Stratton did not remain faithful to his wife during the months he spent in London, but it would have been surprising to hear that he did.

“I believe I can row without taking us in endless circles,” he said. “And without tipping us into the water and capsizing the boat.”

“Then take me rowing,” she said. “I will sit in the boat looking decorative.” She laughed.

Ah, Clarissa , he thought as he dragged out one of the boats and made sure there were no leaks and no sign of splits or wood rot in the oars while she carried out a small pile of towels and put them in. How happy could her life have been? She would have made the best of it, of course. She had lived a life of luxury here, she had fulfilled all her duties with meticulous care and grace, she clearly adored her children, even the one who was Stratton’s by-blow, and she had friends and friendly neighbors all around her. No doubt she now had financial security for life, and she had sons and daughters who would always love her and care for her. She had had a good life following her decision to marry a virtual stranger when she was very young.

But happy? How happy had she been all this time? How happy was she now? Her decision to come home early and alone from London had been a pretty drastic one. Her children must have offered her alternatives so she would have company through the summer. Her brother and his new wife, her friend, must have tried too. But she had come home, she had told him, for the express purpose of being alone with time to think and assess. And one of her early decisions had been to renew her friendship with him.

“Allow me,” he said, holding the boat steady against the bank with one hand while he offered her the other.

She stepped carefully in and sat down and watched him release the boat from its moorings before taking his place across from her. He used one oar to push them off from the bank.

“Let the adventure begin,” she said, and laughed again. “All the children used to chant that whenever I pushed off, and they would cheer as I rowed away.”

Matthew felt an ache of something in his chest. He had missed so much of her life. And how different his own life would have been if his daughter had survived her birth. She had been so perfect. He rarely thought of her—or of poor Poppy. They were from a former life.

“I do not hear a cheer,” he said.

She cheered and pumped her parasol in the air a few times while she laughed yet again.

He rowed around the south side of the island, mostly under the shade of the trees on the bank. Then he rowed into the more open water west of the island and saw the sloping bank that must be the beach from which she had swum with her children. There were very few trees close to the western and northern banks of the lake. A footpath had been constructed all around. It had been made for the viewing pleasure of those who walked there as well as those who rowed on the water. It was bordered on the landward side with flower beds just now coming into their own and ornamental bushes that must have bloomed earlier in the spring. And there was a rustic-looking shelter on the bend between the western and northern paths, looking very picturesque with its thatched roof and open, pillared front and hanging baskets of flowers that would bloom from now until the autumn.

It was an idyllic place, the lake at Ravenswood. Somewhere to relax. Somewhere to make one forget the world beyond.

“I loved the evening picnics we used to have here for the whole neighborhood,” she said. “I would always find an orchestra to play from the pavilion on the island, and everyone would feast on the east bank and converse and listen and be happy. Did you ever come to any of those?”

“To one,” he said. “I came with the Hollands. It was magical with all the colored lanterns strung from the trees, their light reflected in the water. And the music.”

“I used to think of it as our own private little Vauxhall,” she said. “Have you ever been to Vauxhall Gardens?”

“In London?” he said. “No.”

“Our entertainments were better,” she said. “Not that I am boasting or anything obnoxious like that. Of course, we never had fireworks, as they do at Vauxhall.” She sighed. “I am not ready to return to the real world yet, Matthew. Shall we go to the island and explore?”

“Will we need a ball of string to find our way out?” he asked.

“Make fun if you wish,” she said. “I know it is a very tiny island, but it is ours. Come and explore it with me.”

Instead of pulling the boat back in to the bank after rowing all about the lake, Matthew turned it in the direction of the island, where he could see the mooring place. Reaching it, he jumped out, secured the boat, and offered a hand to help her out.

“So,” he said, “let us explore.”

And he felt a strange welling of happiness.