Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Ten

At first Matthew thought Clarissa had left without him and half hoped she had. He wondered if she had taken his clothes with her. But when he looked again, he could see that she was back sitting on the beach, something white on the grass beside her. The towels she had brought in the boat, he guessed. The maternal instinct still burned bright in her. She had gone to fetch them.

His blood had cooled and the unaccustomed exercise of swimming had restored his equilibrium. But he still felt shaken. He had known he was attracted to her, a fact that complicated any chance there might have been of a casual friendship with her over the summer. He had not expected it to prove beyond his control, however. Saturday’s kiss had not bothered him unduly. It had been a spontaneous and understandable reaction to that breathless run down the hill. It had been an extension of their laughter.

Today’s kiss had not been at all like that.

She had been baring her soul to him, something he could not remember her ever doing as a girl. She had never seemed to have troubles in those days, unlike him. Now she was caught in the dilemma of wanting both freedom and reputation. Yet she did not believe it was going to be possible to have both.

Clarissa had always chosen respectability over freedom. Though she had not called it freedom a while ago, had she? She had called it happiness. And he wondered again if she had ever been truly happy. For happiness came from freedom, it seemed to him. When had Clarissa ever been truly free, except perhaps in brief bursts very recently? Or had she always been free but used her freedom to choose duty and loyalty and respectability? There were never any clear answers to the deeper questions of life, were there?

All of which speculation was beside the point. The point was that he had kissed her when she had been at her most vulnerable. Oh, he might have started out with the idea of comforting her, but soon he had been kissing her with a panting need. One she had returned, it was true, but he had started it. When more than ever before she had needed a friend, he had responded as a lover. And so he had compounded her unhappiness, especially as they had more or less agreed that this would be the last afternoon they would spend together.

He did not know how long he had been swimming, but it was long enough. It was time to return and apologize. Not that a simple apology was going to be anywhere near enough. Unfortunately, he did not know what would be.

He waded out through the shallow water and saw that she was watching his approach, her expression quite unreadable—deliberately so, perhaps? The air felt downright chilly on his dripping body. He took up two of the towels in one hand, gathered his clothes with the other, and walked back a little way into the trees to dry off and dress—minus his drawers, which he squeezed out and wrapped in the towel he had used to rub his hair dry. He made his way back to stand beside her and dropped his two towels to the grass. She did not look up at him.

“After all the times I spilled out my troubles to you when we were growing up,” he said, “you never once said or did anything to upset me further. You never scolded or sermonized or suggested that I was the author of my own woes. You never told me I was tiresome or too much of a troublemaker to be associated with you any longer. Instead you smiled and sometimes reached out a hand and somehow made me feel that I was special to you and worth knowing. You made me feel valued. You made me feel good about myself. I always went home happier and calmer than I was when I came. Today you opened your troubled heart to me, and what did I do? I dived at you and mauled you. I made your unhappiness all about me. I reached for my own gratification. And…What?”

He stopped talking, for she was gazing up at him now and she was smiling—a full-blown smile that lit her eyes and curved her lips. He would have called it a mischievous smile if mischief weren’t contrary to Clarissa’s personality.

“Oh, Matthew,” she said. “You did not dive. Or maul. What an absurd visual picture those words conjure. We ended up in each other’s arms. You responded to my need and kissed me. And I kissed you back because I wanted to do something entirely free. Because…why should I not? Whom was I harming? Not you, I judged. You wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you. I was glad you had the good sense to end it when you did because it would have been unseemly to continue in what is a secluded place but not entirely private. But, Matthew, you must not take all the blame upon yourself for what did happen, or any blame at all, in fact. What blame?”

“You want to end our friendship,” he said, “because all the servants here must already be buzzing with talk of it and Sir Ifor Rhys has given you a gentle warning. And because Miss Wexford has warned me, albeit gently too, and she is your friend. I take the blame for making things even more complicated.”

“Things,” she said as she got to her feet and brushed creases and grass from her skirt while he realized too late that he ought to have offered her a helping hand. She took up her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “You want to end it too, Matthew. I can believe Miss Wexford’s warning was tactful. She is of no more a malicious nature than Sir Ifor is. Nevertheless it was a sure sign that word is spreading and that those who feel kindly toward one or both of us are concerned.”

He bent to pick up the towels. He held the dry ones under his arm and the wet ones in his hand.

“I do not know about you,” she said, “but I am awfully hungry. I could devour one of your cheese sandwiches with no effort at all.”

“Instead,” he said, “you are going to have to settle for some of the exquisite dainties with which that food hamper by the boathouse is probably stuffed.”

“And champagne, alas,” she said, “instead of water from your flask.”

“I do not suppose I will ever live down that picnic fare,” he said. “You will have to excuse me—or not—on the grounds that I am just an old bachelor.”

“Widower,” she said softly. “And there is nothing to excuse, Matthew. I am not teasing you when I tell you it was the loveliest picnic of my life. Shall we go and have tea?”

He followed her back to the boat. He wondered how many people in the village and neighborhood realized that he was indeed a widower, not a bachelor. It was something he normally preferred to keep to himself. He celebrated his daughter’s birth and mourned her death and his wife’s on the same day each year. He did it quietly and alone with lit candles and meditation. One thing he had never done since his return to England, though, was visit their grave.

He hurried on ahead as they passed the little pavilion in order to be at the bank ahead of her to hand her into the boat.

—

She told him some amusing stories of things that had happened in London earlier in the spring. She told him of the picture of Carrie, the dog, that Joy had enclosed with a letter from Jennifer. She told him of the most recent letter from Pippa at Greystone. She frequently felt exhausted, she had written, just from watching Stephanie play with Emily and Christopher while they took shameless advantage of her energy and good nature.

“I am a typical mother and grandmother, you see,” Clarissa said. “Boring everyone who is polite enough to listen with doting stories of my children and grandchildren. I am sorry, Matthew. I do not mean to be tedious.” She smiled ruefully at him.

“You know,” he said, “despite the wide brim of that bonnet and perhaps because your parasol is lying idle beside the blanket, you will be fortunate indeed if your face is not sun bronzed tomorrow.”

“With freckles too?” she said. “Horror of horrors. Nobody will be able to look at me without swooning.” But she did not reach for her parasol.

“I would always want to look at you,” he said, grinning—the first time he had smiled since he went dashing into the lake earlier. “And I could not find you tedious if I tried.”

“How very gallant of you,” she said.

At her request, he told her about some of the wood carvings he had done in his spare time during the past couple of years. His favorite was a short-eared owl perched on the stump of a tree and poised for flight but delayed by the long staring match in which it was engaged with the man who would soon capture it in wood.

“I love to convey the idea of movement or imminent movement in what I carve,” he said. “It is a huge challenge but makes all the difference to the completed carving, I believe. That bird was ready to go, but it was absolutely not going to concede the staring victory to me. I was the first to step back and look away and so release the owl into flight. We might still be staring at each other if I had not.”

“The sense of movement is one of the things that most astonishes me in your work,” she said. “It would seem to be impossible to achieve when the carving itself does not move. But you make it possible.”

“I aim to satisfy.” He grinned at her again, though she knew what he had said was not quite true. In his wood carvings, he was the true artist. He carved for himself and his vision and, in doing so, pleased all who were privileged to behold his creations. But how could she convey that thought in words? She did not try.

“I would love to see it sometime,” she said.

He merely smiled. Perhaps he would enter it in the contest at the next fete, though that would not be until next year. Perhaps he would show it to her…But no. Today was supposed to be their last day.

They were busy tucking into the contents of the picnic hamper, which were quite as sumptuous as he had predicted. There were cucumber sandwiches—the bread was fresh and sliced wafer-thin, as were the cucumbers—and sausage rolls with pastry that flaked to the touch and lobster patties that melted in the mouth and slices of cheese and fried chicken legs.

And then there were the sweets, usually to be resisted as much as possible but today to be indulged in because…well, simply because. There were biscuits made with lots of butter, small apple tarts, thin slices of fruitcake, and equally thin slices of a white four-layered cake, a creamy icing and strawberry preserves spread lavishly between each layer—but not oozing out. How did the cook accomplish that?

But before they started on the sweets, Clarissa suggested they carry them, along with the as-yet-unopened champagne, along the footpath north of the lake to the thatched arbor at the junction with the western path.

“It is such a lovely spot,” she said, “though I rarely go there. I only ever see it from afar.” She was about to add that it looked utterly romantic, standing just where it did in all its miniature rural beauty. But she really must not bring up the idea of romance.

She wrapped some of the sweets in two neatly folded linen napkins within a white cloth that had been laid over the top of the hamper before it was closed, and made a bundle she could carry in one hand. Matthew meanwhile took up the bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other.

And so they walked along the path, just for the pleasure of finishing their tea inside a small grotto, which held a single table of bare wood and a backless bench on either side of it, if memory served her correctly. But the walk was lovely, the lake water glimmering and lapping on one side, the undulating green landscape dotted with trees on the other, a few low bushes and flower beds bordering the outer edge of the path. They walked in a silence that felt comfortable, and it seemed to Clarissa that there must have been silences when they were growing up. They had often spent hours at a stretch together. They surely could not always have talked nonstop, though that was how she remembered it.

“I often avoid being in company with others,” he said. “Silence is seen as the great enemy of people gathered together, and they will do all in their power to fill it with the sound of conversation, no matter how meaningless. You are one of the few people I have known with whom I have always felt perfectly at ease, even happy, when we are silent with each other. Do you remember when we could sit for hours, often in the branches of a tree, without speaking a word but nevertheless comforted by each other’s presence?”

Ah. There had been such times, then, and he remembered them.

“And now see what I am doing,” he said. “I am breaking the silence in order to extol its virtues.”

They both laughed.

“In fact,” he said, “I believe it was our silences I valued most about our friendship. They were so soothing. I have not fully understood that until now. How strange.”

“It says a great deal for the quality of my conversation,” she said.

But he laughed again. “Clarissa,” he said, “you were quite perfect.”

She blinked a few times, unwilling to show any sign of tears. He had always treated her as though she were perfect—that troubled, sullen, rebellious boy, who was such a trial to almost everyone else who knew him. Caleb, for all his affection and admiration, had never really considered her perfect, had he? He would not have needed other women if he had. Though she was not going to think of that now. Or ever.

The gardeners must have been along here recently, she thought as they approached the grotto. In beds and pots and hanging baskets, pink, white, and lilac hyacinths bloomed in profusion along with pink peonies; yellow pansies; blue, purple, and white irises; and great balls of white and pale green allium. The combined perfume of them wrapped about her senses like a tangible thing. Someone had cleaned off the table and benches and swept the floor. They stepped inside and set the remains of the picnic on the table, using the cloth that had wrapped the sweets as a tablecloth. The grotto was open at the front, two pillars holding up the roof at the corners. The wide opening was framed by thatch above and flowers and greenery on both sides. The whole vista of the lake and the island was spread before them. The lake water was very blue.

He opened the bottle of champagne.

And this was the end, she thought.

But was it? Must it be?

Why?

“The glasses add a definite something to this picnic feast,” he said, filling them both.

“Though there was much to be said for drinking straight from the flask at your picnic,” she said, seating herself on one of the benches while he took the other, facing her. “Both of us from the same flask.”

“This is more genteel, Clarissa,” he said, grinning as he placed one of the glasses before her and raised the other in his right hand. “One must make a toast when drinking champagne, must one not? I believe there is a law.” His smile faded as he gazed thoughtfully across the table at her. “To friendship,” he said.

“To a lifelong friendship,” she said. “Even when it lies dormant for years at a time.”

They drank, their eyes lingering upon each other. The champagne was bubbly. She could feel it tickling her nostrils and dampening her cheeks.

“Is that what ours is?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“And it lies dormant for years at a time. Why?” he asked.

They both set down their glasses.

“Sometimes one of the friends is way up high in the mountains north of India learning to shoot arrows,” she said.

“And sometimes one of them is married to someone else for twenty years and more,” he said.

“Sometimes one has all the grandeur and burden of being a dowager countess,” she said, “while the other chooses to live as a humble workingman.”

“And all too often each of them worries about what will happen to the other’s reputation if there is gossip or even scandal,” he said.

“Even when they do not worry about their own reputation,” she said.

“And sometimes,” he said, “the friendship threatens to turn into something else.”

“And they both end up terrified and running a mile in opposite directions,” she said.

They had gone far enough. They stopped talking in order to take another sip of their champagne and look over the sampling of sweets they had brought with them.

“It would be a sin not to try everything that has been so lovingly prepared for us,” he said.

“But would it be more of a sin actually to eat it?” she asked.

They looked at each other.

“No,” they said simultaneously.

And so she ate a biscuit and a tart and a slice of both cakes, and thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful. She had brought three of everything, and he ate what she did not. Which meant that he ate twice as much as she did.

“Did I bring enough for you?” she asked.

“Far more than enough,” he said. “But how could I burden you with having to carry any of it back?”

“Ah,” she said. “And I thought you were eating the food because you really wanted it.”

They finished their champagne and he poured them another glass each. They drank that too. She took the cloth to the doorway and shook out the crumbs before folding it and sitting back down at the table.

“Is this not the loveliest place on earth?” she asked.

He looked about him and inhaled the scents of all the flowers. Then he looked at her with laughing eyes. He set his hands palms up halfway across the table on either side of their glasses, and she set hers palms down upon them and felt his strong, callused fingers close around hers.

“At least the loveliest place,” he said, “until you are somewhere else. Then that will be the loveliest.”

“You have become adept with flattering words,” she said.

“Ah, but the word flattery implies insincerity,” he said. “I never speak insincerely. Not to you or about you, at least.”

He was rubbing his work-roughened thumbs lightly over the backs of her hands, and she was thinking she had been quite right about this grotto. It was surely the most romantic place on earth, as well as the loveliest.

“Why did you not go home to the house you inherited from your grandmother after you returned from your travels?” she asked him. “Why here instead?”

She had not meant to ask.

“I was never interested in the life of a gentleman for the sake of social status,” he said. “And at the time I had little interest in farming. The same man had run the farm for years and years, and he was very efficient at his job and very protective of his authority. I wanted to live a simple life, but not shut up in a manor house, where I would not feel any real sense of belonging either with the class into which I had been born or with any other. I wanted to be a wood-carver with a side occupation of carpentry to pay the bills. I discovered there was need of a carpenter in Boscombe, and when I went there, the first thing I did was call at the smithy to make inquiries. That same night, my meager belongings were upstairs in the rooms where the Hollands used to live. I have been there ever since.”

“Your brother and his wife and their elder son and his wife were at my parents’ home last Sunday when I went there for Mama’s seventieth birthday,” she said. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I found that someone had arranged a small party for her. Captain Jakes was there too with his wife and her sister. They are considering going to live in Plymouth after their lease expires next year. They want to be close to the sea again.”

“Yes,” he said. “I have been informed of that.”

She felt she had encroached upon forbidden territory and must go no further. “I am glad you came to Boscombe,” she said. “But it must have taken some courage.”

“I stayed away from England for longer than ten years,” he said. “In that time I freed myself of all lingering traces of obligation to be the man I was apparently born to be. A gentleman, in other words. I became simply a person. A person with an unfocused dream for a long while. But it became more focused with time. I wanted, I needed, to work with wood and a knife, just as some people need to work with canvas and paints or with paper and pen or with a violin and a bow. Who knows why certain people are born with these cravings? But nothing brings contentment or peace of mind to such people except the decision to answer the calling and become the person one was meant to be. By the time I returned to my own country, Clarissa, it needed no courage at all simply to do what I had to do. I came here specifically because it was a familiar part of England and there was need of a carpenter. I have stayed here because I have never felt the urge to move on to something different. I was done with both restlessness and traveling.”

“And so,” she said, “it turns out that you are far stronger than I, Matthew. Yet it seemed the other way around when we were children.”

“Ah,” he said, “but it was you who always believed in me, who always encouraged me, often without the medium of words, to be the person I needed to be. Almost your last words to me on that final afternoon were to seek the fulfillment of all my yearnings and thus be happy.”

“Did I say that? Aloud?” she said. “So I encouraged your rebellion?”

“No, nothing as negative as that,” he said. “Quite the opposite. You…How do I express it? You permitted me to be the person I was deep within. You liked me just as I was and as I was becoming. It felt almost like love.”

“It was love,” she said. “Long before I knew anything about other kinds of love, I loved you.”

They smiled at each other and he squeezed her hands. Before he could let them go, she lifted her right hand and his left, drew them across her body, and set the back of his hand to her cheek.

“What do we do now, Matthew?” she asked. “Make this the last, glorious afternoon we spend together? Because of what people will say? Or will we continue? I am finding it difficult to be the person I want to be. Being the person I think I ought to be and the person other people expect me to be is very deeply ingrained in me.”

He drew a breath and released it slowly.

“I will be in the poplar alley on Thursday, as usual, practicing archery,” he said. “Weather permitting.”

And so they would delay their decision for another day.

He drew their clasped hands toward him across the table and kissed the back of hers before releasing it and getting to his feet.

She stood too and picked up the folded cloth. He gathered up their two empty glasses and the almost empty bottle of champagne, and they made their way back along the northern path to restore everything to the picnic basket, which he set inside the boathouse to be picked up later.

He carried his towels as they walked back to the house in near silence—and hand in hand.