Chapter Twelve
“Are you not cold, Matthew?” she asked when he raised his head a minute or two later. She was rubbing her hands briskly up and down the outsides of his arms. Up and down his shirtsleeves, that was.
“Strangely,” he said, laughing, “I am feeling quite the opposite of cold at the moment. But I am shockingly underdressed. Excuse me a moment, Clarissa.”
He went to pick up his coat and pull it on before fetching the target and stacking all his equipment against the tree where he had left them last time. He glanced up at the grayish, lowering clouds. It was hard to know if they were rain clouds, but the sky had looked exactly the same all day, and it had not rained yet.
“I have it on the reliable authority of our head gardener,” she said from just behind him, “that it will not rain today. I trust him utterly.”
“He has never been wrong?” he asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” she said. “And he has been at Ravenswood longer than I have. Of course, there are the times when he squints up at the sky and then off to the western horizon before he nods sagely and says that she may rain and she may not. The weather to him is feminine, it seems. But even on such occasions—especially on those occasions, in fact—he has never yet been wrong.”
“You are in a cheerful mood today,” he said, taking in the sparkle of laughter in her eyes and the upward curve of her lips, as well as the rosy glow in her cheeks and at the end of her nose. A bit of cold and wind had always done that to her.
“I am,” she said. “I came, having convinced myself that in all probability you would not be here. But you were, and I was glad. Did you finish Miss Wexford’s table? She called here this morning with Lady Hardington and Mrs. Danver. She was quite exuberant because you were very close to finishing.”
“It is all done except for a few final touches,” he said. “Mostly a bit of sanding and varnishing. And I will need to see it in place in the dining room to make sure it sits solidly on the floor and will not rock as soon as someone rests his elbows on it.”
“I am glad you said ‘ his elbows,’?” she said. “A lady would never do anything so shockingly ungenteel.”
“Never,” he said. “Ladies are invariably perfect. Shall we stroll?” He indicated the long alley.
They walked very slowly despite the chill of the day. He set an arm loosely about her shoulders, and she wrapped an arm about his waist. She smiled up at him now and then, and a couple of times he kissed her. Something, he realized, had changed in their relationship since the day of the picnic.
“We are going to be friends, then, are we, Clarissa?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We are.”
But of course they were already more than just friends. There was some sort of romantic or sexual attraction between them, and they were just going to have to see what came of it. They would have to make decisions as they went along. But ending the whole thing abruptly now, before anything had properly started, had not seemed to suit either of them.
“I am going to ask Devlin if he would very much mind my having a dower house built somewhere in the park,” she said. “I can afford it. I was thinking down by the river, perhaps to the east of the drive and the bridge, between the river and the meadow, with a pretty garden all my own and perhaps a rustic fence.”
He smiled at her. He had learned long ago—from her, in fact—that when someone had a story to tell, it was better to allow that person to tell it without interruption. She had mentioned a dower house when they were at the lake. Obviously she had done more thinking since then.
“Of course Ravenswood is large enough for an army,” she said. “And of course all four massive wings are available for my use except for a very few private apartments. I have one of those myself. It is spacious and comfortable and overlooks the front of the house. But…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged. “But that is not the point.”
“My rooms above the smithy have a front door,” he said. “I believe maybe that is the point, is it?”
“Yes, exactly. You do understand,” she said, stopping to beam up at him. He kissed her. “Those rooms are your very own, Matthew, even though I suppose they still belong to the Hollands. But you have your own front door and can retreat behind it whenever you choose. You have your own things and your own dreams there. You can keep out the world when you choose or step out into it whenever you wish. You can decide whom to invite in and whom to keep out. I was honored that you invited me in that morning.”
He did not point out that she had really given him no choice. And she could presumably do the same things with her private apartment at Ravenswood. But he understood what she meant. Total independence and privacy were very precious. Probably she had never had either, despite all the spacious luxury of Ravenswood. She had a loving family, which would always draw her in to share their lives and their company and their love. But her private rooms were only a part of the larger house, which now belonged to her son.
Matthew was beginning to understand more clearly why she had come home alone a few weeks ago and why she had some serious thinking to do about her future.
“I want a whole house to myself,” she said. “Nothing very large. A cottage. I do not want to run away. I love it here and I love my family. But I want a place that is all my own.”
He kissed her briefly and they strolled onward.
“Does this all sound very selfish to you when I already have so much?” she asked.
He looked at the poplar trees in their straight, regimented lines on either side of them, keeping them in, keeping the world out, and understood the lure of the alley—and of a home that was all one’s own, even if it was just in the form of rented rooms.
“It must be difficult,” he said, “to adjust to major change when one is a parent. For years and years you raise your children and love them. For years they depend entirely upon you, a dependence that dwindles as they grow up until the time comes when your roles appear to reverse. Yes, I understand, Clarissa.”
“Ah, Matthew,” she said, stopping yet again. “And our roles have been reversed too. Those words— Yes, I understand —were always mine.”
“And infinitely comforting to me,” he said.
“They are now to me when it is you speaking them,” she said. “I have not spoken explicitly to my children about these things, perhaps because the ideas have been all muddled up in my head and are only now becoming clearer to me. But I have hinted at them, and I can tell they do not understand at all. They are merely concerned about me and determined to redouble their efforts to love me and include me in their lives.”
“Perhaps you will marry again,” he said, “and begin a wholly new life somewhere else.” Perhaps her interest in their friendship was simply a symptom of a broader need, one he could not fulfill any more than he could thirty years or so ago.
“Well, there was someone,” she said. “Or rather there is someone, as I have not heard that he has expired since I left London. He is everything I could possibly want in a husband, Matthew. He is titled and wealthy and a fine figure of a man. Like me, he has been widowed for six years, though he is childless. He is courtly and well respected and…interested. He has the approval of my children and my brother.”
Matthew hated him, sight unseen. He did not want to know the man’s name.
“Has he made you an offer?” he asked.
“I escaped before he could do so,” she said.
“Escaped?” he said.
“Well, yes,” she said. “I was tempted, you see. Tempted to be sensible, to slip back into the role for which I was raised and educated, the comfortable role of lady and wife and hostess. I would be mistress of my own home again if I married him. I would not merely be the Earl of Stratton’s mother. I would be a person in my own right again. He was—is—amiable, as far as I can tell without a more intimate acquaintance. He liked me. He was a good conversationalist.”
“Yet you seem to be more inclined to talk of him in the past tense than the present,” he said.
“Yes.” She sighed. “For other people’s commonsense opinions cannot guarantee my happiness. I need to think with my heart as well as my head. But why are we standing out here getting colder when we are very close to the summerhouse? It traps warm air, as you know, and is probably several degrees warmer than it is out here. There will be no lemonade awaiting us today, though.”
“And no cakes either?” He frowned at her.
She laughed. “And no cakes.”
He tightened his arm about her shoulders and led her toward the summerhouse. They settled side by side this time on the long sofa after he had closed the door behind them. So it seemed she was not going to marry her London beau even though she had been tempted? It was probably one of the decisions she had come home to think through. And then she had renewed her friendship with a man who was unsuitable for her in almost every imaginable way, thus further complicating her life.
“Your heart and good sense have not agreed with each other upon the right course for you to take?” he asked her.
“About marrying Lord Keilly?” she said. “Assuming he intended to ask me, that is? Alas, no. But I really was tempted. I have been horribly envious of George and Kitty, you see. They are very happy with each other. They both look ten years younger than they did a year ago, I swear. I have never been jealous of them, I hasten to add. Only envious. They have something I realize I would like for myself. Not necessarily marriage, though. I have understood that since I came home. Just…Oh, how do I express it? Just…renewed life. Something to make the world seem new again and fresh again and full of possibilities once more. In fact, I believe I definitely do not want to marry again. Not yet anyway, and never unless I am convinced it is the only thing that can fulfill all my yearnings.”
He settled her head against his shoulder and held it there with one hand while he kissed her forehead.
“Hence our friendship,” he said. “And ignoring the warnings and advice of all your friends—I assume that was the reason for the call the three ladies paid you this morning.”
“They are very dear,” she said. “And really quite tolerant. But they are concerned. Because they care about me. I appreciate that. But I must live my own life. Every day I become more firmly decided upon that. Have you had any such visits?”
“Not quite,” he said, and chuckled. He told her about his experience at the village shop. “But like you, Clarissa, I live my own life my way.”
“It is not entirely easy to do, is it?” she said.
“When you attended your mother’s birthday party,” he said, changing the subject, “did you talk about me at all?”
“No.” She turned her head to look at him in some surprise. “Well, actually yes, very briefly. Your nephew asked if I knew you and I told him that yes, I do. I told him you are the carpenter at Boscombe and that we were close friends as children. I daresay he knew that first fact already, and apparently Reginald had told him about our childhood friendship. Mr. Philip Taylor told me he would like to meet you. But his wife reminded him that her father-in-law would probably disapprove.”
“He is coming to call on me next week,” Matthew said. “My nephew, that is. He wrote to ask if he might, and I gave him the definite date of next Tuesday.”
She gazed into his face. “How do you feel about that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I could hardly say no,” he said. “I have never had any quarrel with the boy. Man. He is over thirty. It is hard to believe.”
“Yes,” she said. “You have never reached out to your brother? Or he to you?”
“No,” he said.
“Was there a definite quarrel between you?” she asked him. “Something neither of you could forgive, that is?”
“No,” he said. “I left without a word to anyone after we buried Poppy and Helena. When I returned, I came straight here.”
“I beg your pardon.” She sighed. “This is none of my business. I told myself I would never ask.”
“You did not ask,” he said. “I told you that my nephew is coming to call.”
“Yes, you did,” she said, and sighed again.
“Change is happening,” he said, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “I hoped it never would. I have been happy here just as I am for more than twenty years. Well, contented anyway, which is often more desirable than active happiness. I would have been grateful for twenty more such years. But there are those phases of life you spoke of, those changes that press themselves upon us whether we want them or not, and there is no point in fighting against them. We must simply discover where they will lead and which ones will become permanent features of our lives and which will pass on through.”
“And I have forced some of these changes upon you,” she said. “I invited you to drink coffee with me one morning, and I suggested that we be friends again, at least for the summer. Possibly I am responsible for another change too. If I had gone to see my mother the day before her birthday or the day after, I would not have seen your nephew and perhaps put the thought of calling on you into his head.”
“Even if we were total hermits, Clarissa, we would not be immune to change,” he said. “It happens. It is what life is about. But we are not hermits.”
“I feel responsible anyway,” she said. “I am sorry for upsetting your life.”
“In truth,” he said, “I am glad you invited me to stay for coffee that morning, and I am glad I said yes. Those biscuits were delicious.”
She laughed. “You ate only one.”
“The power of self-control,” he said. “And I believe I am glad my nephew is coming.”
They lapsed into silence, and he gazed along the poplar alley and off across the park to the west. From where he sat he could just see the back edge of the stable block, which formed the northern wing of the house, and a little farther along to the trees that climbed the back side of the hill upon which the temple folly stood.
How strange a thing life was. He could never have predicted this particular twist in his own. Clarissa had cut herself off from him more than thirty years ago in order to marry into a stratum of society far above his own even if he had chosen to live the life of a gentleman. And he had cut himself off from her, first by marrying Poppy, and then by choosing a different life entirely from the one with which he had struggled all through his boyhood. Now he and Clarissa were oceans and continents and planets apart as far as social position and way of life were concerned. They both had established lives with which they had long been comfortable and contented—until recently, on her part anyway.
And until recently on his part too.
He turned his head and kissed her, and she kissed him back, warmly and willingly—but without the urgent passion that had almost overcome them out at the lake. It was better thus, at least for now. Perhaps if they were able to indulge all the deep affection that had lain dormant within them for so long, it would prove to be enough. Perhaps people would grow accustomed to seeing them together from time to time and life would settle back to a new normal that was not so very different from the old.
Perhaps…
Perhaps pigs would fly.
She drew back her head then, and her eyes were shining again.
“Oh, Matthew,” she said. “Let me show you where I want the dower house to be. We have to walk back along the alley for you to fetch your things anyway, and the place is very close by. I want you to tell me what you think.”
They walked briskly back, hand in hand, and he realized that things were changing rapidly indeed for Clarissa. Her new life was taking shape in her mind, and she was making definite plans. An open friendship with him, regardless of the opinion of her friends and neighbors; no marriage unless or until her heart was able to tell her that the whole of her present and future happiness depended upon it; a greater independence, financial and otherwise, of the family who loved her—and whom she loved; and a home of her own, paid for from her own purse, with a front door she could shut against the whole world if she felt so inclined.
She had commented that her brother and her friend had looked ten years younger since their marriage. He wished he could show Clarissa her image now in a full-length glass, red nose and all. She looked almost like the girl he remembered from all those years ago.
He picked up his things from the end of the alley, and they walked to the main driveway and down it, past the meadows on either side with their wildflowers and grazing sheep. But before they reached the bridge, she turned to her left and led the way along the bank of the river after he had set down his things again. The bank widened after a short distance, and she turned to him, her arms spread wide before twirling once about.
“Here,” she said. “Just here. In the park, below the meadow, not far from the house and in sight of the village, by the river. What do you think, Matthew? Is it not perfect?”
He looked critically, mostly at the river. The banks were high on both sides. Although the level of the water fluctuated through the year, he had never known it to overflow its banks. There was no more danger of flooding here than anywhere else in the village on the other side. There was ample room in this particular spot for a cottage and a garden separate from the meadow and the parkland above it. It would even be possible to widen the path between here and the driveway itself to accommodate a carriage. It would be a peaceful spot, somewhat withdrawn from any other building but not totally isolated either.
He wondered how she would cope with a greater solitude than she had now or had ever had. But he thought she would probably enjoy it. She would, after all, still be close to her family and friends and all that was familiar to her.
Closer to him.
She was waiting for his opinion.
“I agree,” he said. “I think it is the perfect spot.”
She beamed at him. “It will be so good for Gwyneth,” she said. “She will be the undisputed mistress of Ravenswood. Not that the matter is disputed now, of course. But there is a tendency when someone says Lady Stratton for us to turn our heads simultaneously and say Yes? We will both be happier when I am living here. Everyone will be happier. I will.”
“When you are living here,” he said, repeating her words. “Your mind is quite made up, then, Clarissa?”
“It is,” she said. “And suddenly I understand Miss Wexford’s excitement over her table.”
They both laughed.
They made their way back to the driveway and he stooped to pick up his things before they took their leave of each other. But they both became aware of the sound of horses’ hooves and light carriage wheels on the bridge and turned to see who was coming.
It was Owen Ware, driving a smart curricle.
“Owen!” Clarissa exclaimed at the same moment as the young man was hauling back on the ribbons and drawing his horses to a halt. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Despite her words, she sounded delighted to see him. He jumped down from his perch before tossing the ribbons to the groom riding up behind him, glanced at Matthew, and gathered his mother in his arms.
“Coming to beg you to put up with my company for the summer,” he said. “How are you, Mama?”
“Surprised,” she said. “Delighted. Let me have a good look at you.” And she cupped his face in her hands and gazed fondly at her youngest son.
“Come,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride up to the house. Just leaving, are you, Taylor? I see you must have been working on your archery. Trying to stay one step ahead of the rest of us mere mortals for next year’s fete, I suppose. Though you would still be a few miles ahead of us if you did not practice at all, I daresay.”
His words were genial, but there was a look in his eyes—a bit steely, a bit haughty—that told Matthew that he knew, and that the knowing was what had brought him home.
“I can but try,” Matthew said. “And yes, I am on my way home.”
“Goodbye, Matthew,” Clarissa said, smiling at him.
He had only a moment in which to decide how he would address her. “Goodbye, Clarissa,” he said.
He wondered, as he crossed the bridge and made his way around the village green toward the smithy, if it really was goodbye.