Chapter Nine
She was going to squeeze every ounce of pleasure out of this afternoon, Clarissa had decided anew as soon as the barouche disappeared back along the narrow road toward the house. If it was to be the last of their friendship, then so be it, but let it at least be an afternoon to remember.
The weather was perfect, a sumptuous banquet awaited them in the picnic hamper, and they were all alone in what must surely be one of the outstanding beauty spots of all England. Memories abounded of those lovely years when her children were young and she had been a lot younger than she was now. But today she wanted to create a new memory.
Those days of their youthful friendship, hers and Matthew’s, had been so very long ago. And at the end of them, when they had both married and thus taken their lives along vastly divergent paths, they had only just begun to be aware of each other as a man and a woman. Neither had admitted it to the other at the time because any relationship but friendship had been impossible for them.
Well, now they were friends again, and they had those feelings again. There was no point in denying it to herself. There was no ignoring the sexual nature of that kiss on Saturday and the way they had held hands all the way back to the house afterward. It was probably why they both seemed to have decided they must put an end to whatever was between them. But the end had not come yet. They had given themselves today to enjoy first.
And there was an island to explore.
“Stay close so you do not get lost,” she said when he had tethered the boat securely so they would not be stranded. Actually, the idea of being castaways had its appeal, but it was a bit of an unconvincing one. They could swim back to the boathouse without any great effort, after all. Besides, the food hamper was over there.
“Very well,” he said, grinning at her and taking her hand in his. “I will trust you to bring me back safely to civilization.”
“The pavilion here is an almost exact replica in miniature of the temple up on the hill by the house,” she said. “As you have probably noticed before. It is a lovely place to come and sit and dream, though I always loved it best by lantern light at night when there was an orchestra playing inside and crowds of neighbors and friends on the bank. That has not happened for a long time.”
For a moment she felt a pang of nostalgia for those days.
“And then there is the forest,” she said. “Come and see. The children called it the Dark Forest and tried to frighten one another or catch bandits or hunt down lions and bears.”
“A strange mixture,” he said.
“Not to children,” she said. “And not to adults who think like children. Are there not to be elephants and giraffes and dogs and monkeys and bears all coexisting with numerous other forms of life on a certain crib that awaits the carpenter and wood-carver’s skills?”
“Touché.” He laughed.
They moved among the trees, running their fingers over rough barks as they had always used to do, as though to feel the very life force of the tree within, and gazing up through boughs and branches and leaves to the sky above. They listened to the songs of unseen birds and the chirping and whirring of equally unseen insects in the undergrowth. They stepped carefully as they drew close to the water lest there be unexpected marshland to clog their shoes with mud and perhaps unbalance them. They clutched each other’s hands in mutual warning and stood very still as a duck led her line of ducklings out of an inlet into open water before they all bobbed away into the sunshine.
Soon—it really was not a large island—they came out onto open ground and the gently sloping grassy bank that had always been called the beach, perhaps because it sloped right into the water and retained its gradual incline for some distance out. One had to be careful not to ground a boat when one rowed close to here, but it was a young swimmer’s delight—and that of the adult who had charge of even younger ones who could do little more than splash and shriek in the wide shallows. There was no sudden drop into deep water and no great danger provided the adult watcher remained vigilant.
The beach was partially shaded by trees on three sides. The afternoon sun sparkled on the water of the lake on the fourth side. Flowers and bushes were blooming along the edge of the footpath on the western bank beyond, as they had seen from the boat a short while ago.
“This is a little piece of paradise,” Matthew said.
“It is,” she agreed. He was still holding her hand. He looked relaxed and contented. And—yes—virile and masculine. Why pretend she did not notice? She might be close to fifty, but she was not dead yet. And perhaps that was what was wrong with Lord Keilly, her beau. Not that he was dead either. He was a seemingly healthy, good-looking man with everything that might recommend him to her as a beau. He was a gentleman of good birth and property and solid fortune, a man of good character, according to all reports, and a man of impeccable breeding and what seemed like an amiable disposition. But there was no…Oh, what would be an appropriate word to describe what it was about him that failed to attract her? There was no sizzle. It sounded like a very frivolous word to use in such a context. But that was it exactly. There was no sizzle in her relationship with Lord Keilly and no chance of there ever being any.
One ought not to expect sizzle from a romantic relationship when one was firmly established in middle age.
Oh, what utter nonsense!
Was it sizzle she felt with Matthew, then? It was certainly more than just friendship and even more than mild attraction. Goodness, they had wanted each other during that kiss. She had no doubt it had been mutual.
“A penny for them,” he said.
For her thoughts? She smiled, imagining how he would react if she answered truthfully. “I was thinking,” she said, “that perhaps we ought to have brought the picnic hamper over here with us.”
“I can go back for it if you wish,” he said. “But I think I would prefer to wait for my tea. Shall we sit down?”
“I did put a few towels in the boat,” she said. “Old habit. There was almost always a need of them with the children. They do not serve well as blankets, however.”
“And what is the matter with bare grass?” he asked, releasing her hand in order to bend down to rub a hand over the ground. “Bone dry. And looking and feeling like a thick carpet. Would you like my coat to sit on?”
“No,” she said, and sat, arranging her skirts carefully around her before removing her bonnet and fluffing up her flattened hair as best she could. The air felt deliciously cool against her bare head. The grass was lush and springy all about her. He sat and turned his head to smile at her.
“Definitely paradise,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Our last outing was almost all about me,” he said. “It is your turn today, Clarissa. Tell me more about this crisis with which you are dealing.”
“Crisis?” She frowned at him, startled. “That is rather a strong word.”
“I believe you have reached a definite juncture in your life,” he said. “It is probably something you consider impossible to discuss with your family, or even your women friends. It is, rather, something you feel you must work through alone. Tell me.”
It was something she had never done, strangely enough. Even in the days when they had spoken freely to each other and he had poured out his heart and frustrations to her, she had never had anything remotely similar to share with him. Her life had been almost unbelievably trouble free. Even when she had learned years after her friendship with Matthew was over that her marriage was not going to be all she had hoped it would be, she had had her training as a lady to fall back upon and had been able to ignore what might otherwise have been unbearable. One thing her education had not trained her for, however, was coping with widowhood and the sense that somehow she was superfluous to the life at whose very center she had lived and functioned for so many years.
How could she possibly talk about it?
Where would she even begin?
“Nobody can fully understand widowhood who has not actually experienced it,” she said. “You were married for a short while, Matthew. I do not know how much of this applies to you, though everything did end in horror for you, and I do not imagine you recovered quickly or even at all. Losing a spouse is not like other bereavements. Most people assume, and one assumes oneself, that after a certain time—a year, perhaps two—one will have recovered from the worst of the grief and adjusted to the changes in one’s life and will be forging onward with renewed purpose. One assumes it especially, perhaps, if the marriage itself was less than perfect, as mine was, particularly during the last years. There was a certain…distance between Caleb and me, though we never really talked things through with each other—or perhaps because we did not. And of course I had sent Devlin away and Ben had gone with him. I feared I had lost both of them forever, and I knew their absence weighed heavily upon Caleb. It was a dark time, and then he died in the middle of it.”
He did not break the silence when she paused.
“There is an emptiness in my life where he was,” she said. “Other people might think his sudden death was a fortunate release for me, a blessing in disguise. Indeed, especially in the early days, I expected that it would be. But then the emptiness set in, sometimes a sort of absence of all feeling, but often a little more painful. An ache of something missing at the core of myself. For of course it was not just my husband I had lost. I lost my position too, after a few more years, when Devlin came home and married Gwyneth and she became Countess of Stratton in my stead. It is rather a jolt to the system to become a dowager when one is still only in one’s forties.”
“The mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is not an ideal one?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said. “I do not wish to give that impression. Quite the opposite is true, Matthew. Gwyneth is wonderful and I adore her. She makes Devlin happier than I have ever seen him, and she is the perfect mother and countess. She is much beloved in the neighborhood, as you must have seen for yourself. She is the perfect daughter-in-law. She took over her duties immediately after her marriage instead of dancing delicately about me, as so many new brides tend to do, pretending she still considered me to be the real countess and looking for a tactful way to take command. But she involves me in many of her decisions. She asks for my thoughts and suggestions and even help. But she is never obsequious about it. If she disagrees, she will say so and give a reason. She never rides roughshod over my feelings, though. I believe she genuinely loves me, just as I love her.”
“But—?” he said. “I can hear a but in your voice, Clarissa.”
She was quiet for a while, watching what was surely the same duck leading her ducklings back to the inlet on the southern shore.
“Much of my sense of purpose has been stripped away,” she said. “There is still Owen to settle, of course, though I do not suppose a mother’s influence or interference will be of any great service there. He will find his own way. He has too much intelligence and too much…conscience to fritter away his life as an idle gentleman about town. And if he does need a guiding hand, then it will surely be Devlin’s he will seek. I have Stephanie to settle also, though I have done all I can do already. I presented her at court this year and introduced her to the ton by taking her to dozens of parties and balls. Devlin and Gwyneth gave her a glittering come-out ball. I do not believe she will allow me to do much more by way of presenting her with eligible young suitors for her hand. She can be very stubborn. No, that is an unfair word to use. She is of very firm character, and I respect that. I just wish she had a more positive image of herself. But that is something she must discover within herself, if she ever does. It is not something I can teach her or persuade her of. A mother’s power is far more limited than she expects it to be when she gives birth to her children.”
She fell silent and hoped he would change the subject—perhaps suggest again going to fetch the picnic hamper or returning to the bank to eat there. But he remained silent too, and she had the feeling his attention was fully focused upon her. Oh, this was difficult. She was so unused to talking about herself to other people—really talking, that was. She had come closest to it down the years with Kitty, but for most of those years they had lived far away from each other and communicated only in long, long letters. It was not the same. It was easier by letter. There was time then to think before one wrote, to choose one’s words carefully, to filter out what one could not fully understand oneself.
“Hence the crisis, if you still wish to call it that,” she said. “I know that in innumerable ways I am one of the world’s most blessed and fortunate of women. I have all this for my home.” She made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “I am dearly loved by all the members of my family—including, I believe, both of my daughters-in-law and my son-in-law. But I am not sure I am needed. And the very fear that I may be right about that annoys me, for I do not wish to descend into self-pity as I approach my fiftieth birthday. I am quite determined, in fact, that it will not happen. But I need to…find my place.”
Still he said nothing.
“Do you notice how life is lived in quite distinct phases, Matthew?” she asked. “There was my childhood, my first seventeen years before I married Caleb. Then there were the years of my marriage. Each phase was very different and very clearly defined. I knew my role in each and embraced it. Now I have entered the phase of my widowhood. I am already six years into it, in fact, but I still do not understand what my role is to be, if any. Or how I will fill the dwindling years. And what a horrid word that is— dwindling . Where on earth did it come from? It is not a word I remember using ever before. It has occurred to me only recently how strange it is that despite the vast size of the park here, no one has ever thought to build a dower house. I think I might be happy living in one—close to my family and all I have loved since I was seventeen, but separate from them. In a place where I could close the door and be alone with myself if I chose. Is that how you feel in the rooms above the smithy?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yet my very wish for a dower house is selfish,” she said. “Many people live in hovels, if they are fortunate enough to have a home at all, while I have all the vastness of Ravenswood to call my home.”
She drew her knees closer to her body and wrapped her arms about them while she felt Matthew’s gaze still upon her.
“This is how I see the three phases of your life,” he said. “The first two were all about obligation—what your family and society expected of you as a lady. You spent your childhood and girlhood learning what would be expected of you and preparing yourself for it. You were very single-minded about that, Clarissa. I remember. You were always very happy, but there was no breath of rebellion in you. The future you were expected to prepare for was the future you wanted. Your marriage was about obligation to husband and family and your role as Countess of Stratton. And again you did your duty superlatively well. You have raised a lovely family. You have carried out your obligations to the neighborhood around Ravenswood with dedication and grace and…humility. You have the respect of all and the affection of many. You have left the present countess with the difficult challenge of being your equal. Now, in this third phase, you no longer have pressing obligations. This phase is for you. It is a phase without the weight of duty or obligation upon your shoulders. And while you drew pleasure and a sense of fulfillment from the performance of those duties, you never did know much about freedom, did you? About the freedom to be the person you really are, living the life you really want to live.”
“But that is the whole point,” she said, turning her head to frown at him. “Who exactly am I, Matthew? What is the life I really want to live?”
“Alas,” he said, “I cannot answer those questions. Only you can. But I have seen you happy a few times recently. Not happy in the way I witnessed down the years when you fulfilled the role of countess and were known for your warm cheerfulness, which always seemed genuine. And not happy in the way you must have been as a young mother, when you brought your children swimming and exploring here and no doubt did numerous other things with them to keep them entertained. More recently I have seen you happy in yourself. Just in brief, snatched moments, perhaps, but very real. When you walked all the way from the house to the hills and then toiled up them to the crest of the highest peak, you were weary and desperate for the rest we took. But you should have seen the look on your face as we stood there at the top and gazed at the countryside all around. You were panting and flushed and vividly happy. I am not even sure you were aware of it, but it was…breathtaking to see.”
“Well, it was an accomplishment,” she said, laughing. She rested one cheek on her knee and continued to look at him. “My children are very solicitous of my comfort, you know. They insist that I ride everywhere in a well-sprung carriage. They pamper and care for me. They make me very aware that I am the matriarch of a grown family and a grandmother of four, with more on the way. They would be horrified if they knew how you dragged me on that long walk.”
He grinned at her. “Is that what I did?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“And are you sorry you gave in to tyranny?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “When else have you seen me happy in myself?”
“When you ran down the hill,” he said, “instead of taking the safe long way down by the road.”
“Happy?” she said, raising her head. “Matthew, I was terrified.”
“And laughing helplessly when I caught you and twirled you about,” he said. “And kissing me with reckless, scandalous abandon.”
They locked eyes. Neither spoke for several moments.
“Was I happy then?” she asked. “It was a mistake.”
“It was a spontaneous outpouring of joy,” he said. “It did not come from any of the disciplined rules of behavior you have followed so meticulously all your life.”
“It most certainly did not,” she said. “I was not taught to kiss random men.”
He regarded her through slightly squinted eyes, his head tipped a little to one side. “Is that what I am?” he asked her. “A random man?”
She sighed. “How did this get started?” she asked him, though she did not wait for an answer. “I have loved two men in my life, Matthew. I have kissed two men. One of them was my husband.”
“And the other was me?” He phrased it as a question, though the implication was perfectly obvious. She had definitely kissed him at the foot of that hill a few days ago.
“When we set off on this outing earlier,” she said, “I did it with the firm conviction that it must be the last. I had the feeling that you had made a similar decision. For any friendship between us, no matter how casual or innocent, cannot be kept secret. Already word is spreading, and that is hardly surprising. We have been seen by various gardeners and other servants here. I have already received a very gentle warning from Sir Ifor Rhys, who saw us on top of the hill a few days ago and tried and failed to attract our attention.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had a warning this morning too. From Miss Wexford.”
“Ah,” she said. “So we must put a firm and abrupt end to our renewed friendship because gossip might be bad for your business and it might tarnish my reputation and that of my family, who will be seen as neglectful and unable to control me. So how am I to express this freedom of which you speak, Matthew? It is an illusion. I am bound hand and foot for the rest of my life by the expectations of society. And you cannot throw away the productive life of contentment you have spent more than twenty years building here, and years before that cultivating.”
“You are right, you know,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I did intend to make this the last time I would accept any of your invitations here. I could not see any comfortable way forward for our friendship. I had decided that maybe it was a mistake to have believed it could be renewed. For myself I did not fear notoriety. I have never deliberately courted the approval of my neighbors here. People may bring their business to me or go elsewhere with it. It has never mattered much to me. My financial needs are few. It does not take much to cover them, and I have never craved more. But I have been concerned about your reputation, especially now, when you are here at Ravenswood alone. I have not wanted to do it damage, even with an innocent friendship. But—”
“But?” She looked at him and smiled ruefully.
“But as time has passed this afternoon and I have seen you happy again,” he said, “that part of me that lived in perpetual rebellion when I was a boy asks why we should end it. Must we live only for the approval of others, who really do not know us or care deeply about us at all? Must everything be about unfailing respectability? Even at the expense of personal happiness?”
“One lesson was given great emphasis when I was a girl,” she said. “I was taught that reputation was a lady’s single most valuable possession. Give up reputation, and everything was gone. Probably forever, for people have long memories.”
“A dowager countess throws away her reputation, then, does she,” he said, “when she befriends a carpenter?”
“That or her happiness,” she said. “She cannot have both. And so, if she bows to the expectations of society, she really has no freedom to choose. She loses her power to shape her own future, to engage with friends and activities of her own choosing. She loses her ability simply to be happy, running down hills, shrieking and laughing, kissing random men, exploring an island scarcely larger than a pocket handkerchief with a carpenter just because she enjoys his company more than that of all others at the moment.”
She blinked several times so she could see his face more clearly and realized it was tears that were blurring her vision. But before she could lift a hand to swipe them away, he did it for her, cupping her face with two large, slightly callused hands and wiping away her tears with the pads of two roughened thumbs.
And he kissed her, softly, warmly, his lips light and slightly parted over her own. She felt instant comfort, a sense of rightness, and sighed as she moved into his embrace, parting her own lips so she could feel his heat and taste him. And she lowered her knees, turned toward him, and wrapped her arms around him so he would not end the kiss almost before it had begun. She unbalanced herself in the process, and he lowered her backward onto the grass, holding the kiss as he did so, and following her down so she felt half his weight heavy across her.
He raised his head and gazed heavy-lidded down into her eyes.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
“Matthew,” she whispered. And it seemed miraculous to her that this man with the lines of age beginning to form on his face and the silvering dark hair, one lock down over his brow, was the boy she had adored as a girl, the boy with whom she had been falling in love when her upbringing and the excitement of being singled out for elevation to the dizzying heights of the aristocracy had persuaded her to marry Caleb. Yet here he was now, that boy, all these years later, just as dear as he had been then. Matthew Taylor. Calling her beautiful and meaning it.
He was kissing her again then, more fiercely and with greater heat, and she was kissing him back with all the longing of the years that had passed since they had gone on to lives that did not include each other. His hands were moving over her on top of her clothing, cupping her breasts, outlining her waist and her hips, pausing over the slight mound above the junction of her legs. Worshiping her. Making her feel young again and desirable again and full of an answering desire. Her hands found their way beneath his coat and waistcoat to the smooth warmth of his shirt, and she felt the wiry strength of his back, the straightness of his spine, the powerful muscles of his shoulders. She could feel, after he had removed his hand, the hardness of his arousal pressed to her through the layers of their clothing and wanted him with a fierce desire she had not felt since the early years of her marriage. Oh, so long ago.
“Matthew.” She was whispering his name again into his mouth, and he raised his head to look down at her. She watched regretfully as the slightly glazed look in his eyes turned to a frown.
He sat up abruptly and pushed the fingers of both hands through his hair. “Oh, God,” he said. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
She reached out a hand to reassure him, but he had leapt to his feet and moved a short distance away. His eyes were on the water of the lake as he began to peel off his clothes. Her eyes widened as she watched him, but he seemed almost unaware of her. When he had stripped down to his drawers, he ran into the water and kept going until it reached his waist. Then he waded a little farther and dived under, to reappear a few moments later farther out in the lake. He shook his head and glanced back but then swam away with powerful strokes.
Ah, Clarissa thought, trying to bring order back to her hair before clasping her knees and gazing after him. This was why any sort of friendship between them was unwise. For it was definitely more than just friendship, and more too than just romance. She had already admitted it to herself. She had felt it, surely, from the beginning, when she had gone boldly to his rooms to ask if he would make a crib for Ben and Jennifer’s baby, hoping she would also find the courage to ask him about the wood carving he had entered in the contest at the fete two years ago. She had known she was playing with fire. She had known it with greater clarity at each subsequent meeting.
Must it be ended, then?
Common sense said yes.
Something inside herself she had never explored before argued back.
Why not have the boldness, the backbone, to reach for what she wanted and to…to…to what? To disregard, to assign to perdition, what anyone else might think of them? Or say of them?
It was not a decision that involved her alone, of course.
For a few moments she was tempted to strip down to her shift and follow him into the water. It was an age since she had last swum in the lake or anywhere else. The desire to do it now, when she was still feeling a bit flustered after their kiss, was almost overpowering. But it would be the wrong thing to do. He had taken to the water himself because he had needed to get away from her, to compose himself.
There was something she could do, however. She got to her feet and made her away across the island to retrieve the pile of towels she had brought with them in the boat. She carried them back and sat again to wait for him.