Chapter Sixteen
Matthew shouldered his quiver and bow and picked up the target. She walked beside him along the terrace and onto the drive to the bridge and the village beyond.
“I hope to make a start on the crib next week,” he said.
“That will be lovely,” she said.
“I am just stuck upon where the elephant should go,” he said. “Nowhere seems right, but it must be included. It is central to my whole vision.”
“Oh, indeed,” she said. “Peering around the corner of one of the footboards, perhaps?”
He stopped abruptly. The meadows on either side of them were a riot of wildflowers, whose heavy scent hung on the air with a promise of summer. Sheep were grazing placidly among them. One ambled closer to the drive and stood looking at the two humans before baaing softly and turning away.
“That is brilliant,” he said. “It is one place I had not thought of.”
“Sometimes I really am brilliant,” she said, and they both laughed.
Inside, of course, neither of them was laughing at all. She had always known she had hurt him by marrying Caleb and thus putting an abrupt end to their friendship. She had known he was in love with her—as she had been more than halfway in love with him. And let no one tell her it had not been true love just because they were so young. He had reacted in a manner rather typical of him at the time. He had rashly and impulsively taken up with the somewhat notorious Poppy Lang and then married her when he had acknowledged that the child she was carrying might well be his.
And the thing was, as Clarissa had told him back in the rose arbor, he would have stuck by Poppy for a lifetime and cared for her and supported her. He would have adored the child and sheltered her from all harm. They would have been the making of him, taking him by sure degrees from rebellious boyhood to responsible adulthood. But they had died. The child—Helena—had not even drawn breath.
Clarissa had always known that those deaths would have been painful for him. She had just not realized until today how painful.
Did one ever recover from the loss of one’s child? She had been enormously fortunate in having given birth to five living and healthy babies without any miscarriages or stillbirths. Her children had all survived the perils of childhood. Nicholas and Devlin, as well as Ben, had survived the Napoleonic wars.
How could she possibly understand what it must have been like…
“Will you leave your things beside the driveway again and come into my parlor?” she asked him, keeping her tone light. “We will shut the door and be cozy and private together. I am not ready to let you go home yet. Tell me you are not ready either.”
He turned to smile at her. “Your cottage is built already?” he asked.
“Except for the tiles on the roof and the chimney,” she said. “Or perhaps thatch. I have not decided yet. And except for the windows and floors. Oh, and the walls. And there is no furniture.”
“No front door?” he asked.
“Alas,” she said. “No doors at all. Come anyway.”
“An abundance of imagination was not something either of us ever lacked, was it?” he said as he set down his things where he had put them last time.
They joined hands and walked along the bank of the river until they came to the clearing where she already lived in her imagination. She came here every day, sometimes merely to assure herself that yes, it was perfect, and sometimes to visualize how it would all look, cottage and garden. Alas, she was no architect. No landscaper either. She would recognize the perfection of it all when she saw it, but at present she had only a vague image in her mind, or perhaps more in her heart. An image of home. Her very own.
“A green door, do you think?” she asked. “Or red?”
“You will be surrounded by greenery,” he said. “Red would look cheerful.”
“Then red it will be,” she said. “Have a seat. Take that comfortable sofa.”
“The one with all the cushions?” he said. “Come and sit beside me, then. It is too big for just one person.”
They sat together on the rough grass, their arms about their updrawn knees as they gazed across the river to the village beyond it and slightly to their right. They could see the main road too from here. It was never very busy, though. One westbound stagecoach passed each day, and one that was eastward bound. Neither came into Boscombe, though both would stop and let off any passenger who was going there. Mostly, though, the view from here was of serene countryside.
“What will you do,” Matthew asked, “if Stratton refuses his permission for you to build here?”
“He will not,” she said. “He will bluster and complain and wonder what he has done so very wrong that I would choose to leave Ravenswood in favor of a lonely cottage here. But he will not say no.”
“You know your son so well, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It was a close-run thing for a number of years after I sent him away. He did not write—to any of us. Not even after Caleb died. He stayed away for another two years after that happened before coming home, cold in manner and with a heart he had hardened against all finer sentiments. I fear I must have given the same impression to him. Meeting each other again was the most excruciatingly difficult thing I believe I have ever done. Our relationship was strained, to say the least, for a while after his return. I believe it was Gwyneth who thawed his heart. She refused to give up on him. And then he and I had a heart-to-heart talk and we were finally free to love each other openly again. He will find it hard to understand now that his protective love is not enough for my needs, but he will accept my resolve. The real battle is going to be over who will pay for the new dower house. He will insist and I will resist. I will insist and he will resist.”
“Compromise?” he said.
“I will pay for the roof and chimney and floor, and he will pay for everything else?” she said.
“Oh, but you must pay for the red door too, Clarissa,” he said.
“And the knocker?”
“It would seem only fair,” he said, and they both laughed over their own silliness.
It had always been thus between them. They had never allowed gloom to dominate their mood.
“Will you come to visit me?” she asked him. “Frequently?”
“Perhaps Stratton will set up armed guards at the driveway end of the path,” he said.
She smiled. “Will you come?” she asked again. “Will you be my friend, Matthew?”
“Always,” he said, and he reached out and took her hand in his.
The scent of the wildflowers and the sheep in the meadow behind them mingled with the fresh smells of the river flowing by below the bank. There was a sound to the water too, hardly heard unless one deliberately listened for it. From the blacksmith’s shop in the distance came the ringing of a hammer against the anvil.
He raised their clasped hands and kissed the back of hers and then her fingers one at a time. He turned her hand and placed a lingering kiss on her palm. She dipped her head to rest on his shoulder, and he placed his arm about her shoulders and kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back and smiled at him.
He settled his cheek against the top of her head, and they gazed silently outward, drinking in the beauty and peace of it all. He was more relaxed than he had been earlier. He had been taut and ready to snap in two while they were in the rose arbor and walking down the driveway. Or so it had seemed. She had desperately wanted to dissuade him from going home alone like that, just as he had left home earlier. He had had a bad archery practice, surely a rare thing for him. He had lost his equilibrium and had been unable to recover it during tea—which he had not eaten apart from one bite of a jam tart.
He sighed after several minutes.
“I thought I was at perfect peace,” he said, “even knowing that I had blocked out a whole segment of my past. I suppose it was never a good idea to do that. I ought perhaps to have confronted my demons as soon as I came home from abroad, but I did not consider it necessary or desirable. I did not want to look backward but only forward. It seemed to work. Until now.”
“What will you do?” she asked him.
“Confront those demons?” he said. It was more question than statement. “Confront my own self-pitying and ill-informed assumptions about my family? About my brother anyway.”
She did not say anything. She had learned long ago that often with Matthew it was best not to do so. All through his childhood and boyhood he had been told how to think and behave. With her he had always been able to think for himself, to find some sort of calm spot inside himself. She would not give her opinion or advice now, though it was not easy to keep quiet and apparently relaxed.
“I have written my brother a number of letters in the past couple of days,” he said. “All of them I have fed to the stove to heat my kettle. But I cannot face him. What the devil would I say? He probably would not want to see me anyway, not after thirty years or so of my apparent ingratitude. I must persevere with the letter writing until I have expressed myself just so.”
“Remember,” she said, “that his son and daughter-in-law would have gone home a couple of days ago with the news that you never knew why your grandmother changed her will.”
He sighed. “I am going to have to go there, am I not?” he said. “It is the very last thing I want to do.”
They sat in silence again.
There was a vehicle coming along the main road from a distance, Clarissa could see. Not the stagecoach, but a private carriage. She watched it idly for a few minutes until it made the turn toward Boscombe. It was not a grand carriage, but it was considerably larger than most that belonged in the neighborhood. Except Ravenswood, that was. And Ravenswood was almost certainly its destination.
Clarissa sat up. “I have the distinct feeling that history is about to repeat itself,” she said. “There is a carriage on its way here.”
He shaded his eyes with one hand and watched it approach the village. “Do you recognize it?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It is not Devlin’s. I must go and meet it after it crosses the bridge.”
He got to his feet and offered his hand to help her up.
“You may stay here for a while if you wish,” she said. “Though I do not mean that the way it might sound. I am not ashamed of our friendship, Matthew. Good heavens, I am not. But you may wish to avoid any sort of confrontation or unpleasantness.”
“I am not concerned,” he said. “Besides, my things are piled at the end of the path, a sure sign that I am lurking not far off.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “Perhaps I am jumping to the wrong conclusion, but really I am starting to get very annoyed with my family.”
They arrived at the end of the path just as the carriage came rumbling over the bridge. It felt very like last week all over again, though it was a different sort of conveyance from Owen’s curricle.
There was a shriek from inside the carriage as it slowed and came to a stop. A little nose was flattened against the window, and two little hands were splayed against it.
“Grandmama!”
The door opened before the coachman could descend from his perch, and Ben swung his daughter down safely to the ground before jumping out himself to join her.
“We came! Great-Aunt Edith is looking after Mama, and Carrie is looking after both of them. She will bark and frighten anyone who tries to hurt them. We are to take you home with us. You can come to the beach with me and collect shells. You can watch me swim.”
Why did young children so often feel that they had to talk at full volume, Clarissa wondered as she bent to hug and kiss her granddaughter.
“Slow down, Joy,” Ben said. “Give me time to hug Grandmama myself.”
He proceeded to do so. “How are you, Mother?” he asked. “We have not come to bear you off to Penallen in chains, you will be happy to know. How do you do, Taylor?” He held out a hand to shake Matthew’s. “I was to tell you from my wife that having the wheeled chair you made her two years ago is the best thing that has happened to her. I hope she makes marrying me an exception to that extravagant claim.”
“I hope so too,” Matthew said while Joy jumped up and down on the spot and held one of Clarissa’s hands with both her own. “I will make my way home, Clarissa.”
“I will take the liberty of calling upon you tomorrow if I may,” Ben said. “But not, I hasten to add, in order to raise any sort of hell with you.”
“Tomorrow afternoon will be fine,” Matthew said as he bent to pick up his equipment while Joy gazed with frank interest at it all.
“Goodbye, Matthew,” Clarissa said. “I will see you soon, I hope.”
She watched him stride toward the bridge while the coachman lowered the steps to make it easier for them all to climb inside for the short ride up to the house. While Joy was scrambling in, Clarissa turned toward the son whose illegitimacy she had always steadfastly ignored.
“Ben,” she said, “what on earth are you doing here?”
—
Ben had no chance to answer until an hour or so later, after Owen had arrived home from his long ride, bringing Clarence with him. They had already escorted the ladies to their respective homes. The two of them had come to Ravenswood with the intention of bearing Clarissa off to dine with Marian and Charles, her brother-in-law. Clarence wanted to show Owen the new horse his father had recently acquired.
That plan quickly changed, however. The two young men exchanged hearty handshakes and some back slapping with Ben, but it was impossible for them to ignore an excitedly bouncing Joy, who was bursting with the need to impart to her favorite uncle all the news she had just been pouring out to her grandmama almost without a pause to catch her breath. Owen grasped her by the waist, hoisted her high, and tossed her toward the ceiling while she shrieked with fright and glee.
“Come and play,” she demanded. “Cousin Clarence can come too.”
Owen and Clarence went obediently from the room with her. They were going out to the hill to play one of Joy’s favorite games, rolling down the long slope all the way from the temple to the bottom into the waiting arms of one of the two men. Clarissa understood that Clarence was going to dine here at Ravenswood and sent word to the kitchen.
So much for her quiet alone time.
“You were going to tell me what on earth you are doing here,” she said to Ben.
“Was I?” But he held up both hands, palms out, when she would have spoken again.
Suddenly all her annoyance had returned. Who was next? Devlin and Gwyneth, just happening to have made a detour here on their way to Wales? In the hope, of course, that she had changed her mind and would go with them after all. Was a woman quite incapable of knowing her own mind? Even when her fiftieth birthday was galloping up on her?
“May I speak first?” Ben asked. “Then you may go for my throat if you wish. I have not come here to be a watchdog. Owen was the one appointed for that role, and it is quite obvious how effective he has been. No one could be less suited for the job. And I have not come to bear you off to Penallen against your will to keep you amused there through the summer until the family returns here. I will gladly stay for a while, of course, if it is what you wish. And I will very gladly take you back to Penallen with us if that is what you wish. But apparently you made your preference quite clear when you decided to come home early from London. And I assume you have not changed your mind since then. You wanted time to yourself, time to be yourself instead of always being someone’s mother or mother-in-law or grandmother or sister or even friend, and instead of being coddled and included and protected and loved to death.”
Ah. At last. Someone who understood.
“Nobody believes me,” she said. “Worse, no one trusts me.”
“I do, Mother,” he said. “I believe you and I trust you. So does Jennifer. She knows just what it is like to be loved so fiercely that the recipient feels smothered. We both knew as soon as I was appealed to that I would come. But not to rein you in. We both want you to know that you have our full approval and support.”
There was an ache at the back of her throat as she swallowed and fought tears. “It is not just my being alone here that has rung all the alarm bells, though,” she said. “It is my friendship with Matthew Taylor.”
“Jennifer adores him,” he said. “He made her chair and gave her more freedom than she had had since early childhood, before her illness. And he made her a crutch, which, together with the shoe John Rogers, the cobbler, made for her, has enabled her to walk after a fashion. She even walked along the aisle of the church to me on our wedding day. She refers to Matthew Taylor as an artist. I have always felt a deep respect for him. He is hardworking and humble and refined—and marvelously talented. He speaks like a gentleman and is, indeed, the son of a gentleman and his wife—which is more than can be said of me. None of which attributes really have anything to say to your case, Mother. You are free to choose your own friends, whoever they are or whatever they are, as well as your own romantic partners. I do not know if Matthew Taylor is only the one or both, and frankly it is none of my business. Or that of any of your children.”
“Well,” she said. “We have been seen walking hand in hand in the park.”
“Shocking behavior indeed,” he said. “Mother. Two years ago the alarm was raised in the family when it was observed that Jennifer and I were becoming friendly and perhaps eventually a little more than just that. The sister of the Duke of Wilby and the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. It was unthinkable. We almost succumbed to what others thought. We almost deprived ourselves of the love of a lifetime, however long our lifetimes last. It took some courage to go against the accepted norms. I remember it well. But we did it. We did what was right for us. And the sky did not fall upon our heads as a result. You must do what is right for you.”
“I am going to build a cottage on the bank of the river below the meadow,” she said. “I have the place picked out. There will be just room for the house and a pretty flower garden. It is going to be heaven on earth—with a bright red front door.”
He regarded her in silence for a few moments. “Poor Dev,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “I intend to pay for it myself. It can become a modest dower house for future generations. Ravenswood has never had one.”
“That was not what I meant,” he said. “If Dev agrees to have it built on his land, he will certainly insist upon paying for it himself, Mother. You will have what I would guess will be an unwinnable fight on your hands if you try to have your own way on that. I daresay the absence of a dower house until now has something to do with the size of this house?”
“It is rather large,” she agreed. “That is part of the problem, Ben.”
He smiled at her. “Joy and I will go back home in a few days,” he said. “I must confess to being uneasy at being away from Jennifer, though she has excellent company and care from Aunt Edith. You may, of course, come with us if you wish. We would be delighted, as you very well know. But I am not going to press the point. I may, however, persuade Owen to come with us. He always loves being by the sea. You will be alone here again.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Ben, it is not that I do not love you all. I do.”
“Is it not strange,” he said, “that children are expected, even encouraged, to make their own lives away from the nurturing love of their parents when they grow up. But when parents try to do the same thing, they cause something like panic in their children. Why should you not have a life of your own now that we are all adults and living the lives we have chosen? Even Steph is spreading her wings.”
“I worry about her,” she said.
“It is unnecessary,” he said. “Many people with a low regard for themselves will grasp at the first opportunity to settle respectably. Yet I have heard that she refused two quite eligible offers in London?”
“She did,” Clarissa said. “One of them came with a title.”
“That fact alone tells me she will eventually have a strong sense of self and will find what will make her happy,” he said.
“Oh, Ben,” she said, “when did you become so wise?”
“Perhaps,” he said, “it started when I was at the knee of the woman who loved me instantly and unreservedly when I was foisted upon her, while ninety-nine out of one hundred women in the same position would have spurned me and refused to have anything to do with me.”
Clarissa was spared the necessity of answering by the sudden bursting open of the drawing room door and the influx of three disheveled, grubby, grass-stained persons, who were still in a boisterous mood.
“Uncle Owen almost broke his leg and his arm when he tried rolling down the hill,” Joy shrieked. “He did not tuck in right. I had to show him how to do it.”
“I believe I did break my nose, though,” Owen said, rubbing it.
“You are a splendid instructor, Joy,” Clarence said, beaming down at her. “I rolled down without mishap.”
“Yes,” she said.
Oh, she would never be a hermit, Clarissa thought as she got to her feet. She loved people too much. She was enjoying herself enormously.
“I assume you are staying for dinner, Clarence,” she said. “You will be very welcome. But the butler will be handing in his notice on the spot if you turn up in the dining room looking like a scarecrow. Go with Owen and get cleaned and brushed up. Joy, go with Papa for a scrubbing.”
They all filed meekly from the room. Before hurrying off after them to change for dinner, Clarissa tried to decide if she wanted more to laugh or to weep. Sometimes the emotions involved were very similar.