Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Eleven

Clarissa had spoken of the various phases of life one could distinguish as one grew older. For her, there had been her childhood and girlhood as one phase and her marriage and motherhood as a second. Now she was into the third, which had started with the death of her husband.

It seemed to Matthew that his own life had been lived in three distinct parts too so far, and that the third was the longest and the most satisfying. He wished it could go on forever. But nothing did. Change was inevitable even when one scarcely noticed it happening. And actually one had very little power to prevent it.

For more than twenty years he had lived in much the same way—in the same rooms in the same village with the same friends and acquaintances, doing the same work. He earned his living with carpentry, and he spent his spare time carving and practicing archery and reading and socializing. He was known as an even-tempered man. The closest he had come to losing his temper had happened ten years ago during that disastrous ball at Ravenswood on the night of the summer fete. He had been a witness to the ghastly scene Devlin Ware had created on the terrace outside the ballroom, when he had accused his father of having brought his mistress from London and of having behaved in a most unseemly fashion with her up in the temple folly while his wife and children and their friends and neighbors were dancing, oblivious, in the ballroom a mere few yards away.

All of Matthew’s suspicions had been confirmed, and Matthew had wanted to throttle the man right at that ball. He had wanted to throttle him when he heard that it was Devlin who had been forced to leave Ravenswood as a result of the fracas, not Stratton. He had wanted to throttle him when he heard stories of how Clarissa had withdrawn from society as much as she could and hidden away in that vast house, which had so often flung wide its doors to the community at large. He had wanted to throttle Stratton when he heard that most people had stopped going to the park on open days because they wanted to give the countess the privacy she seemed to crave—and they feared the terrible embarrassment of a chance meeting with her. He had wanted to throttle Stratton because all his sons and daughters had been negatively affected by his behavior, even the youngest two, who were still children at the time. They were Clarissa’s children too.

He had wanted to hurt Stratton because the man had been in possession of one of the most precious gifts the world had to offer—Clarissa herself—and had spurned her and sullied her and hurt her beyond imagining and possibly ruined all that remained of her life.

Matthew had not throttled the man. Doing so would have solved nothing, and if there was one thing he had learned in all the years after he left home, it was that acting violently was almost never justified and almost never brought lasting satisfaction. He had not hurt Stratton, but he had steadfastly avoided being in his company. If he went to the village inn for a pint of ale and discovered Stratton there before him, he simply closed the door of the taproom without stepping inside. If Stratton arrived after him—as had happened on the night of his sudden death—then Matthew simply left and went home.

He had hated the man with a passion. He had not mourned his death. Indeed, if he was strictly honest about it, he would have to say he had rejoiced.

In the main, however, the twenty or so years he had spent in Boscombe had been years of tranquil contentment. Yet now he could sense definite change coming, and he seemed helpless to do anything about it. Or perhaps he was unwilling to do anything about it. He went about his daily routine as usual and waited for his life to settle back to normal, though he suspected it was not going to happen.

For one thing, there was his renewed friendship with Clarissa. Though friendship was not an adequate word, for it had become increasingly obvious to him that it was a romance that was developing between them, and a romance was far less convenient than mere friendship. Yet even romance was not quite a strong enough word. They wanted each other—he was in no doubt that she shared his hunger. And that would certainly not do. There was no way on God’s earth he was going to begin an affair with Clarissa Greenfield.

Yet the desire was very real and must somehow be dealt with. The most obvious way would be to put an end to the whole relationship, but that seemed not to be working. On either side.

Then there was the gossip, which bothered him more than he cared to admit and probably bothered her too.

He went into the village shop after work the day after the picnic at the lake and found there were two women ahead of him at the counter, enjoying a cozy gossip with the Misses Miller, to whom the shop belonged. It was not an unusual occurrence. Normally Matthew would cheerfully have awaited his turn and even joined in the conversation. He was well known to everyone and accepted as one of their own. But on this occasion a strange hush fell over the shop as soon as he entered it, and the hush was succeeded by a self-conscious rush to comment upon the weather. The customers soon took their baskets of goods and left, favoring him with self-conscious nods as they edged past him, and he was left to the tender mercies of the Miller sisters.

“You had a lovely day for your picnic with Lady Stratton yesterday, Mr. Taylor,” Miss Jane, the younger of the two, said.

“The dowager Lady Stratton, Jane,” Miss Miller reminded her.

“Yes, of course.” Miss Jane smiled as Matthew handed her his shopping list. “You had a lovely day anyway. It is lovely, the lake at Ravenswood. Did you take out one of the boats?”

“We did,” Matthew said.

“Lovely,” she said, setting the items from his list one by one onto the counter. She seemed to have become stuck on the one word as a descriptor.

“The late Mr. and Mrs. Taylor lived right next to the Greenfields,” Miss Miller said. “The dowager countess’s mama and papa, that is,” she added, lest Matthew be unaware of the fact.

“Yes,” Matthew said. “We were neighbors. And friends. The dowager countess and I are less than a year apart in age.”

“Ah,” Miss Jane said. “That would explain it, then. We sometimes forget that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor—such a lovely couple—were your mama and papa, Mr. Taylor.”

Everything that was on his list stood before him on the counter.

“I think that is all for this week,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

And Miss Jane had no choice but to add the prices to his list and work out the total with the stub of a pencil that had never seemed longer than it was now and never seemed to get shorter either. Perhaps the sisters kept an array of identical stubs under the counter.

He paid the bill, bid them a good afternoon—a wish they returned with bright cheerfulness—and made his way home, half smiling and half resigned to the fact that if all the staff at Ravenswood knew, and the Misses Miller at the shop, the very center of village life, knew, then there could be no one for at least a five-mile radius around the village and Ravenswood itself who did not know that he had gone picnicking yesterday at the lake and had walked hand in hand with the dowager countess through the park a few days before that and had taken coffee with her one morning on the terrace outside the ballroom.

Change was coming, unless both he and Clarissa put a firm end to whatever was developing between them right now and provided the gossips with no further fuel to feed their curiosity and mild sense of outrage. At least, at the moment it seemed to be mild.

His relationship with Clarissa and the reaction to it was not the only change that was pending in his life, however. There was also the letter that had been awaiting him in his rooms—Cam must have brought it up and pushed it under the door—when he returned from the picnic.

It was a brief note from his nephew, Reginald’s elder son, asking if he might call upon his uncle one day. He had informed his father that he was making the request, he had explained in the letter, but though his father had warned him that his uncle might refuse to have anything to do with him, he had nevertheless not tried to forbid his son from making the attempt. The nephew had signed the letter Philip Taylor, Matthew’s obedient servant.

He had been just a toddler when Matthew left home. His brother had been little more than a baby. Their sister had not yet been born.

So here was some definite change coming, Matthew thought. Not inevitably, of course, for he could refuse the request or even simply ignore it.

But he sensed change was happening.

First Clarissa had mentioned that his brother and nephew and their wives had attended Mrs. Greenfield’s birthday party. It had been the first mention of his family anyone had made since he could not remember when. After his return from his travels, he had made no attempt to see any of them, and none of them had made any attempt to see him.

There had been a total estrangement ever since. No one had begun it—unless he had, years before, when he left home without a word to anyone except his grandmother’s solicitor, who had agreed for a reasonable fee to keep him informed of any essential information he needed to know, provided Matthew always made the solicitor aware of how and where he might be reached, of course.

No one had formalized the estrangement after his return. By what had seemed mutual consent, he had ignored their existence and they had ignored his. He had never gone even as close as his grandmother’s house, now his, since his return. He had found out about the deaths of his grandmother and his parents from the solicitor. He had not reacted to any of those events. Not outwardly anyway. He had wanted things to remain as they were. Life was more peaceful that way.

But he had always known that it was the one area of his past life—a rather large area, actually—with which he had never dealt. Ignoring its very existence would perhaps not serve him until the end of his life. He pondered his response to his nephew’s letter, but there was really no doubt in his mind how he would respond. He had no quarrel with the boy—no, not a boy. Philip was a man in his thirties now. Matthew had no open quarrel with his brother either. Just an estrangement that neither of them had confronted in the more than twenty years since Matthew had come to live in Boscombe.

He invited his nephew to call upon him the following Tuesday at four o’clock in the afternoon, if that was convenient to him.

And then there was tomorrow, his regular day for practicing archery in the poplar alley at Ravenswood. Weather permitting, of course. He had told Clarissa he would be there. He had not suggested that she come too, and she had not said she would—or would not. They had come to no explicit decision on what to do about their friendship despite the fact that they had both begun the picnic intending that it should be the last of such meetings. They had walked back to the house from the lake hand in hand and in near silence.

He did not know if she would come tomorrow. He did not know what it would mean if she did not, though he would assume it was the end of an experiment that had just not worked. Except that it had worked all too well.

He expected to come very close to finishing Miss Wexford’s dining table tomorrow. He would go to the poplar alley after that. If Clarissa did not come, he would need to practice longer even than usual. Life was changing, but he must not disintegrate with the changes.

—

Clarissa was late arriving at the poplar alley the following afternoon. Deliberately so, which was unusual for her. But she did not want to delay or interrupt his archery practice if she could possibly avoid doing so. Besides, it was a cloudy, chilly day and she wondered if he would be there at all. It would not hurt to have a look, however. One ought to take some outdoor exercise each day, after all, though it was easy to make excuses when the weather was not to one’s liking.

She dreaded seeing him again and dreaded not seeing him.

She did not know where it was headed, this friendship that was quickly renewing itself after so long and at the same time turning into something else. Romance? Sexual desire? Love?

At the age of almost fifty she had no experience with the first. She was surprised when she considered the matter and realized it was true. Yes, there had been a great deal of external romance surrounding her marriage to Caleb. They had been the golden couple, the fairy-tale couple, the happily-ever-after couple. She had been completely dazzled by her bridegroom and head over heels in love with him. There had even been seeming romance within the marriage itself, for he had remained charming and attentive, and she had made no effort to hide her infatuation with him. Why would she? In addition to everything else, she had had something resembling a palace in which to live and luxury wherever she turned. The physical side of their marriage had been, and had remained almost to the end, sensual and satisfying and frequent. He had been proud of her and almost worshipful of her until the end of his life. He had not once spoken a harsh or indifferent word to her.

She had equated it all with love and romance. For a long while, even after she had begun to suspect and then knew that all was not paradise with her marriage, she had thought of herself as the most fortunate and the happiest of women.

But there really had been no romance.

They had never stolen off to the summerhouse alone together, she and Caleb, to watch the sunset—or sunrise. They had never picnicked alone together at the lake or sat in the thatched grotto to drink champagne and gaze into each other’s eyes. They had never walked hand in hand in the park or anywhere else. They had danced together, but only in the presence of their neighbors and really for their benefit so all could see them as the eternal golden couple. Though maybe she was being overly cynical. Caleb had loved to open a ball with his countess. He had loved to set the tone for an evening of happy revelry with his friends and neighbors.

But he had never taken her in the middle of a ball up the hill to the temple folly to marvel at the night sky—and to steal a few kisses and perhaps a bit more while their family and friends danced in the ballroom and on the terrace below them.

No. Romance was new to Clarissa, as she had admitted during a day spent alone yesterday, most of it either in her private sitting room or up in the turret room. It was so new and so intoxicating that she really did not want to put a stop to it.

She still did not want to end it today, even after the morning visit three of her friends paid her together—Lady Hardington; Mrs. Danver, the vicar’s wife; and Miss Wexford. They were amiability itself, their faces wreathed in smiles as they invaded the drawing room, where she had hurried after witnessing their arrival in Lord Hardington’s carriage through the window of her sitting room. They hugged her and kissed her cheek and apologized for descending upon her with no prior warning.

“But it is such a gloomy morning,” Mrs. Danver explained. “We needed to find a way to cheer ourselves up. And we could only imagine how lonely you must feel here sometimes, all alone, especially on a raw day like today, Lady Stratton. So here we are.”

“We are sorry if we have interrupted some congenial activity, Clarissa,” Lady Hardington added. “But here we are indeed, and we do not intend to go away until you have warmed us up with some coffee or, better yet, chocolate.”

They all laughed and sat down, and Miss Wexford informed Clarissa that Mr. Taylor was hard at work on her dining table in her brother’s barn.

“It is very close to completion,” she said. “He may even finish it today, but will almost certainly do so no later than tomorrow. I cannot wait to see it set up in the dining room and to invite a party to dine with us—provided each guest promises solemnly to admire it profusely, that is.”

They all laughed again.

And they continued to speak of Matthew, all three of them, with the greatest good humor and tact. They spoke of his marvelous skill as a carpenter—and they had heard he had taken on a commission from Clarissa herself. They spoke of the wonderful wood carvings he had entered in contests at the summer fetes and wondered if he had made many others and what he had done with them. They regretted that the long estrangement with his family had apparently never been resolved. They wished at least that he would find a more genteel home in which to live. It would surely be more comfortable for him than those rooms above the smithy and more indicative of the social status he could claim by right of birth. As it was, no one who did not know his history would even suspect that he was a gentleman.

“Except for the way he speaks,” Mrs. Danver said.

“And as far as anyone knows,” Miss Wexford said, “he does still own the manor house and property his maternal grandmother left him.”

“As things stand,” Lady Hardington said, “there is an unfortunate air of near poverty about the dear man. When did he last purchase a new coat? Or new boots? One does wonder, since there must be income from the lease of the home that was left him, why he needs to pretend to be nothing more than a humble carpenter living on the edge of poverty. Perhaps it is because he does not have a wife. You have been gracious enough to extend some hospitality to him lately, Clarissa. Perhaps you have asked him some of these questions?”

“I have not,” Clarissa said, and smiled.

It was more or less the answer she gave to all their musings over the half hour of their visit.

“It might almost be said, Lady Stratton,” Mrs. Danver said eventually, “that Mr. Taylor is not being fair to you. If you are kind enough to invite him to walk with you in the park and enjoy a picnic with you at the lake, the very least he can do in return is try to look and behave more like the gentleman he is. Not that it is any of my business.”

“But I do not issue invitations on the understanding that the person concerned rise to any preconceived conditions I may set,” Clarissa said. “How presumptuous of me that would be. Besides, Mr. Taylor has always been the perfect gentleman when in my company.”

“Well, that is good to hear,” Miss Wexford said, beaming at her. “And it is not at all surprising, given the fact that he was raised a gentleman. He has always treated me with the utmost respect whenever I have gone to the barn to ask about his progress with the table. I have never felt the necessity of taking a maid with me. Nor has Andrew ever suggested that I ought. I daresay you have never felt the need either.”

“I would not dream of any need for a chaperon when I am with him,” Clarissa said. “We grew up as close neighbors and friends, there being less than a year between our ages. I never needed a chaperon then. My parents trusted us while we spent hours together roaming the park and climbing trees and making daisy chains.”

“Climbing trees,” Miss Wexford said. “Oh my. I am envious, Lady Stratton. My mama and papa would never allow me to climb any, though Andrew was forever pretending they were the high tower of a fortress or the mast of his imaginary ship and climbing to the very top to survey the land or sea around him. I do wish girls were allowed to do at least some of the adventurous things boys do all the time.”

“Well, do be aware, Clarissa, that there are comments being made about your apparent friendship with Mr. Taylor,” Lady Hardington finally said, getting to her feet at last as a signal to the other two ladies that it was time to take their leave. “None of them openly malicious, of course, as far as I have heard.”

“There are probably comments too about Mr. Taylor working in our barn and me taking him cups of tea there a couple of times each day,” Miss Wexford said. “I know myself innocent and you know yourself innocent, Lady Stratton. But it behooves friends to watch out for one another and pass along gentle warnings.”

“Perhaps,” Mrs. Danver said, “your family will all be home soon, Lady Stratton, as the Season in London must be drawing to a close. Then there will be no further cause for gossip. It really is sad that women are never quite trusted to behave rationally when they are alone.”

“Alone with a houseful of servants,” Clarissa said, rising too to see them on their way.

They all laughed again. The three of them hugged her once more and beamed at her—and were genuinely concerned for her.

But Clarissa was not having any of it. She had decided that during her blessed day of solitude yesterday. She was going to live in future as she wished to live. That did not mean that henceforth she was going to throw upbringing and respectability to the winds and live a life of open scandal. But it did mean that her behavior was not going to be determined by what others expected of her, whether those others were her family or her friends or more casual acquaintances—or servants.

There was nothing scandalous in her enjoying a friendship with Matthew—or even in her indulging in a mild romance with him. She was, after all, a free woman. She had no husband or betrothed. She had no children dependent upon her. She was independently wealthy.

And she was going to be fifty years old in a few months. It was time to do some living on her own account.

So she was not going to change her mind about going to the poplar alley this afternoon. The raw weather would not deter her. Nothing else would either. But she would go late so that he would have time to set up and immerse himself in his practice.

If he went at all, that was.

There was always the chance that he had decided differently from her and would never again set foot inside the park at Ravenswood. If that was the case, then she must accept it. She would not force her company upon him if he did not want it.

But oh, how dreary that would be.

She did not realize the full extent of her anxiety until she came to the end of the poplar alley and saw that he was there. He had his back to her, and she could tell that all of his concentration was upon his shooting. She went quietly to sit on the grass before the first of the poplars on the eastern side and propped her back against the tree while gathering her woolen shawl more warmly about her shoulders and across her bosom.

He had removed his coat and hat and stood there in his shirt and waistcoat over breeches and top boots. His large quiver was over one shoulder. One arm was holding his bow in position while the other hand plucked arrows from the quiver, set them to the bow, and shot them into the center of the target a long distance away.

Clarissa gazed with frank admiration at his long legs and narrow hips, at his powerful shoulders and arms. Only the silver threads in his dark hair betrayed his age from this back view. She loved those silver threads and the laugh lines on his face. She was so glad he was no longer the deeply unhappy boy of her memory and that she was no longer the girl who had the whole of her future life happily mapped out for perfection.

She expected that after he had stridden along the alley to retrieve his arrows and turned to make his way back, he would see her. But she could tell from the look on his face and the language of his body that he was in another world. No, not exactly that, for he had to be fully present to shoot the way he was shooting. But she knew his concentration did not include what was peripheral to the task at hand.

She watched him shoot all his arrows again and go to fetch them—and again and again until at last when he returned from his walk to the target he looked up and looked around, frowning, first back to the summerhouse, then to this end of the alley, then to the tree where she had stood last time. And finally his head turned her way and he saw her on the other side of the alley. He set down his bow and quiver on the grass at his feet and came striding toward her. She smiled up at him.

“You came,” he said, stooping down on his haunches and reaching out his hands, palm up, for hers.

“Did you think I would not?” she asked, setting her hands in his and feeling their familiar roughness and hardness as his fingers closed about them.

“I did not know,” he said, and smiled back at her.

And she knew something had changed between them in the days since the picnic. An awareness and acknowledgment, perhaps, that this was far more than just a friendship, and that it was not about to end.

“And I did not know if you would come,” she said.

“I am glad I did,” he said. “I am glad you did.”

He squeezed her hands as he stood up again, bringing her with him and wrapping her tightly in his arms.

Ah, it felt good. So very, very good.

“So am I,” she said. “Glad that you did and I did, that is.”

They both laughed before he kissed her.