Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Seventeen

Ben Ellis came, as planned, to Matthew’s rooms the following afternoon. The surprise was that he did not come alone. Clarissa was with him. His daughter was not.

“Joy has gone off for a swim in the lake with Owen and Clarence,” Clarissa explained. “Clarence Ware, that is. He stayed last night.”

So, Matthew thought—Owen, Ben, Clarence Ware, Joy. Poor Clarissa. Her lovely solitary late spring and summer had fast changed into a series of visits by family members. He could only wonder if any more of them would turn up. And it was all his fault. Well, not all, he supposed. But he was certainly the cause of these impromptu visits.

“I have come,” Ben said after shaking Matthew’s hand, “so I may report to my siblings and my uncle in all honesty that I have had a word with you and done my best to sort out the situation. Here I am sorting it. I have known Mother since my father brought me to Ravenswood when I was three years old. I am now thirty-five. In all that time I have never once seen her behave recklessly or improperly. She has always been the perfect lady and the perfect mother and grandmother. I would not presume now to question her choice of friends or style of living. I want only to see her happy. You are a man I have known since I was a lad. I have always looked upon you with the deepest respect and admiration for your talents and skill. I would not presume to confront you on any choice you make about your own life. There, that is done. Now, I seem to recall from two years ago, when you were making a wheeled chair and a cane for my wife, that you keep a display of your wood carvings in your workroom. I will go and have a good look at them if I may. I do not need company. Sometimes art is best viewed and appreciated when one is alone and behind a closed door.”

Matthew exchanged glances with Clarissa. She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Ben did not wait for an actual invitation but strode off into the workroom and shut the door firmly behind him.

It was a good thing, Matthew thought, that he had taken the sketches for the baby’s crib into his bedchamber along with the pieces of the frame he had cut out that morning. Not that he had expected their meeting to take them into his workroom, but one never knew. One never did, indeed.

“Ben is your chaperon?” he said.

“I believe he decided that at my age I do not need one,” Clarissa said. “He also understands that we need to talk. I am sorry about all this, Matthew. Perhaps I should have predicted it, but I really did not. I hope this is the end of the matter, but I would not wager upon it. Ben is going back home to Penallen the day after tomorrow. Owen is going with him.”

She went to sit at the table, in the place she had sat last time, and Matthew took the chair across from her.

“Perhaps your family’s reaction to any change you decide to make in your life is something you needed to discover,” he said. “There is a quotation hovering at the outer edges of my mind. Ah. I have it. No man is an island. By John Donne, the poet, though that particular work was not poetry. Perhaps what you wanted to do this summer was never something you were going to be able to decide all alone, Clarissa.”

“Every man is part of the main,” she said, recalling the words as closely as she could from a little later in that passage by Donne. “Presumably he meant every woman too. I think perhaps it would be altogether better for your peace of mind, Matthew, if you stopped seeing me. I would absolutely understand.”

“Is it what you want?” he asked her.

Her hand came partway across the table and then started to withdraw. He took it in both his own before she could do so.

“My family’s concern and the concern of my friends and neighbors here is rather touching from my point of view,” she said. “It shows me how much they all care. However, from your point of view it is more than a little insulting. There would not be all this bother if you were Lord Taylor of such-and-such, with a grand stately home and property. My family was mildly encouraging of the budding courtship of Lord Keilly earlier in the spring. This must all be humiliating for you. Yet when all else is stripped away, I am merely Clarissa Greenfield and you are Matthew Taylor, children of neighboring gentry.”

He drew a couple of breaths but still seemed not to have filled his lungs. “I am going back,” he said.

He saw the incomprehension in her eyes change to understanding. She set her free hand over their clasped hands. But she said nothing. Typical of the way she had always been, she waited for him to continue.

“I am going to talk to Reginald,” he said. “If he will talk to me, that is.”

He felt sick to his stomach, as he had been feeling ever since Philip’s visit. He had tried to ignore his new knowledge. There was little point now in raking up all those old troubles. His brother had probably lived a happier life without him. He himself had lived a happier life free of his family. His childhood and boyhood were like a bad dream that had faded almost to nothingness. He had been at peace with himself and his world. His life for more than twenty years here had been exactly as he had wanted it to be.

He felt even worse now that he had put it into words— I am going to talk to Reginald . As though he had burned a few bridges behind him. As though he could not now change his mind.

“And I am going to visit their graves,” he said. “Poppy’s and Helena’s.”

If he could find them. They were probably completely overgrown. He had not even had a headstone made for them. His stomach gurgled quite audibly.

“How will you get there?” she asked.

“I will hire a horse or a carriage,” he said. “It is what I do whenever I have a distance to go.”

“Let it be a carriage from Ravenswood,” she said. “Let me come with you. I can visit my parents for as long as you need.”

Their eyes met across the table.

Strangely, it was what he had dreaded most, the journey there. The anticipation. Ten miles without anything to think of except what it was going to be like to see his brother again after all these years and what he was going to say. Wondering what it would be like to walk into the churchyard to hunt for a grave he had treated with such disregard he had not even made arrangements to have it marked. And then there would be the long journey back to Boscombe, alone with his thoughts again.

“I cannot go tomorrow or the day after, though,” she said.

“The day after that?” he said. “It would be a great imposition upon your good nature, though.”

“Matthew,” she said softly, and tears welled into his eyes.

He felt horribly humiliated. He snatched his hands from hers and scraped back his chair to scramble to his feet. But she was on hers before he was and had come around the table. One of her arms came about his waist, the other around his shoulders, and she moved against him and tipped back her head to look into his face.

“You are my friend,” she said fiercely. “I love you.”

He rested his forehead in the hollow between her shoulder and neck and closed his eyes as his arms came about her. She was not talking about romantic love, of course, despite the kisses they had shared out by the hills and at the lake. But there was a love that was a little more than just friendship. She loved him. And of course he loved her. Always had, always would. He had avoided putting a name to the type of love it was—except when he was eighteen years old and lived his whole life on raw emotion. Love was love. It did not always need to be defined or subdivided.

“I beg your pardon,” he said after a minute or two, lifting his head and looking into her face. “I have learned to live my life without any extremes of emotion. I have liked it that way. It has given me balance and tranquility.”

It had not struck him in all that time that perhaps he had repressed a great deal that mattered in life in favor of what was not, after all, real peace.

She raised the hand that was around his shoulders and cupped it about the back of his head. She smiled at him and kissed him. And he tightened his hold on her and kissed her back.

Someone coughed inside the workroom and then fumbled noisily with the door handle before opening it. Matthew had almost forgotten Ben was still in there. He released Clarissa at the same moment as she released him.

“Have you ever considered having an exhibition of your work?” Ben asked. “At a summer fete, for example? Or are they not intended for people to gawk at? You are a true artist, you know. You are not a mere dabbler.”

“I had not thought of it,” Matthew said. “Perhaps I ought.”

“That owl,” Ben said. “It is a masterpiece. Is it for sale? I would love to give it to my aunt for Christmas, although that is looking ahead quite a way.”

“I would be delighted,” Matthew said, with just a slight pang at the thought of parting with what was his favorite piece apart from the one that he kept in his bedchamber. “Is she the aunt who turned up so unexpectedly at Ravenswood during the fete a couple of years ago?”

“My mother’s sister,” Ben said. “Of whose very existence I knew nothing until that day. She lives with us at Penallen. It has turned into a happy arrangement for all of us.”

“Then she will have her owl for Christmas,” Matthew said.

“Thank you.” Ben looked from one to the other of them. “I may come for it tomorrow?”

—

They left soon after that. Matthew stood at the top of the stairs watching them descend to the street. There was no sign of a carriage. They must have walked here.

Life had certainly changed for Ben Ellis two years ago with the arrival of Lady Jennifer Arden, sister of Lady Philippa’s husband, as a guest for the summer. And then with the unexpected appearance of an aunt and a half brother to fill in some of his blank history on his mother’s side. Apparently all he had known of her until then was that she had been the mistress of the late earl, his father, until her death when Ben was three.

Ben’s life had changed for the better since then.

But his own? And Clarissa’s? It was impossible to know yet. All they could do was live from day to day and face whatever changes came—either separately or together.

Together was not a word he had ever really associated with Clarissa and himself. Not, at least, since he was eighteen.

He sighed and went back inside his rooms and shut the front door.

A bright red door, he thought, the only specific feature yet planned for Clarissa’s dream cottage. He smiled and then chuckled aloud as he went to fetch and then wrap the wooden owl, which was still poised for flight while holding his gaze with a stubborn determination not to be the first to look away.

—

Three mornings later the carriage from Ravenswood stopped outside the smithy. Matthew was already trotting down the stairs. Within a minute he was inside the carriage and it was in motion again.

“I could have walked up to the house,” he said.

“And good morning to you too, Matthew,” Clarissa said. “Our friendship is no longer a secret. Why should I not stop for you here, with perhaps half the village looking on? It does not matter.”

“Your sons left yesterday?” he asked.

“They did,” she said. “I felt guilty about not encouraging them to stay longer. But I know Ben was anxious to return to Jennifer, whom he should not have left in the first place. I know too that Owen brightened considerably at the prospect of spending a few weeks by the sea. Joy was over the moon that he was going with them. She has major plans for him.”

“And you are happy to be alone again,” he said.

“I really was sad to see them go so soon and to know they had come here only to make sure I had company and was not lonely,” she said.

“And were not being devoured by a big, bad wolf,” he said.

“There is that too.” She smiled. “But I am happy to be alone again.”

He was looking slightly pale, she thought. His manner was a bit strained. He seemed more like the old Matthew than the one who had lived and worked here for the past twenty years and more. It was hardly surprising. He was on his way to see and talk with the brother with whom he had had no dealings in more than thirty years.

They sat in silence for a while. Clarissa knew that nothing she could say was going to take his mind off the ordeal ahead. If he needed to talk, if he needed her to talk, then he would take the initiative. It was strange how she had forgotten, though he had not, the long silences that had characterized their friendship almost as much as all the intense talking and more relaxed chatting and laughing they had done. And it was what she had craved in the past few years, was it not? She understood silence more consciously now. It was through silence that she was becoming more comfortable with herself and the irrevocable turn her life had taken with Caleb’s death six years ago. The members of her family had been precious gems of love and concern, making sure she was almost never alone, except in her bed at night, involving her in their own activities and conversations. Their great kindness had been part of her problem, though. She could wallow in it quite happily for the rest of her life if she chose. But at the end of it all, would she feel that she had somehow wasted the second half of her life?

Matthew spoke at last.

“There was a time,” he said, “when he was my favorite person in the whole world. My hero, the person I aspired to grow up to be like.”

“Reginald?” she said.

“Reggie, yes,” he said. “The ten-year age difference seemed enormous when I was a child. He always seemed grown-up to me, and kind and indulgent and…fun.”

She set her hand in his, and his fingers closed about it.

“He used to take me fishing,” he said. “And birding. He never shot at birds. He taught me their names and their distinguishing features and their song. He would talk to me about the marvel of flight. How wonderful beyond belief it must be, he used to say, to be able to spread one’s wings and soar into the sky. And to fly hundreds, maybe thousands of miles to a warmer climate for the winter and return for the summer. If one could understand the mystery of a single bird, he told me, one would be very much closer to understanding the mystery of everything. Of the whole universe.”

Reginald Taylor had said that? He had always seemed very prosaic to Clarissa, like a man without any imagination at all.

“He would take me to work with him in the stables and the barns,” he said. “He would take me up on a horse with him when he rode about the farm, checking on the crops or on the sheep and cows. He was very young at the time but very conscientious. When our father told him to do something, he did it. He understood things and would explain them to me. More than anything in the world I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be with him. I dreamed of the day when we could work together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and I would be as strong and as knowledgeable as he. We would live together and work together and be happy together for the rest of our lives, never needing anyone else.”

And this had been Matthew as a very young child? Surely it must have been before the time he and she had struck up a friendship.

“It is strange how some long-forgotten memories can pop into one’s head as if from nowhere,” he said. “I cannot recall how old I was. Five? Six? No more than that. I was sitting at the table with Reggie and our parents. I did not always eat with them. I suppose I was still considered too young. It must have been some sort of special occasion. I can remember feeling that I might burst with happiness. Perhaps I had been helping Reggie and he had praised me and called me quite the little man. It is something I remember him saying more than once. I poured out all my dreams to my family at that table.”

He fell silent for a few moments.

“Many parents could have humored me and laughed and praised me for being so eager to help with the farm work,” he said, continuing. “My parents always prided themselves upon telling the truth, however. My father did not seem to recall or understand what it was to be a young child. He told me quite firmly at that table that there was no question of my remaining at home past the age of eighteen or of ever working alongside my brother on the farm. As the eldest, Reggie would inherit and I would have none of it. I felt the bottom fall out of my world. All my security was snatched from me. As soon as I grew up, I was going to have to leave my home. I was going to be all alone. Abandoned. Without home or family. Without my beloved brother.”

“Oh,” Clarissa said. “But did no one reassure you that it would not be quite like that at all?” Surely Reginald had. The Reginald Matthew remembered from that time anyway.

“How can one possibly know if what one remembers from that time in one’s life is accurate or not?” he said. “It seems to me, though, that everything changed from that moment on. Reggie did try to reassure me, but our father told him to hold his tongue, and he did.”

“Your mother?” Clarissa asked.

“They always worked as a team, my parents,” he said. “My father had a talk with me in his study the following day—or week or month. I am not sure exactly when, but it was soon after. And he told me the bare truth—the primary virtue by which he lived. He told me it was time to stop following Reggie around like a shadow, getting in his way and slowing him down. He told me it was time to begin my schooling in earnest and learn the things I was going to need to know when I grew up so that after I left home I could have a gentleman’s profession and a respectable income upon which to live. I can remember the terror I felt as he talked, and the panic I felt afterward when I ran to talk to Reggie and he looked at me almost as sternly as our father always looked and told me I must listen to our parents and do as I was told so I could be a proper man when I grew up. I did not realize it at the time, but it is almost certain that our father had had a talk with him too before he spoke to me.”

Clarissa squeezed his hand. She had never quite understood why Matthew had been so very rebellious and badly behaved as a boy. She had understood his frustrations, yes, and the shortcomings of his parents, who had tried to force him into being the person they wanted him to be instead of nurturing him and coaxing him by small degrees toward an adulthood that would suit both him and them.

But she had not known of the blind terror of a little boy who had been told the bald truth of his future when he was far too young to understand it. His home would not remain his home after he grew up, he had been told. The work his brother did would never be his work. What might have been an exciting prospect if he had been allowed to grow up to the gradual realization that his life was going to be his own to plan had been a nightmare to him instead.

“I behaved badly,” Matthew said. “Even when I was old enough to know better. He meant well, my father.”

Meaning well was sometimes no excuse. Nor was telling the truth.

“And my mother always supported him,” he said. “She was a good wife in that way.”

And the world’s worst mother, Clarissa thought viciously.

“Reggie tried to reason with me when I started misbehaving,” he said. “Then he started withdrawing favors. He refused to take me fishing one day when he had promised he would and the weather was perfect and I was out of my bed early and eager to be on our way. I had got all my sums wrong for my tutor the day before, and when my father reprimanded me and sent me to my room without tea to do them again, I drew cheeky-looking squirrels in all the places where the answers were to go.”

Clarissa smiled despite herself.

“You probably remember how poor I was at making creatures look like the ones I intended,” he said. “My father thought I had drawn a caricature of his face, and when I looked, I had to admit he had a point. I even said so.”

Clarissa winced and then laughed outright.

“Then a bit later Reggie cut all treats,” he said. “He told me he would have nothing more to do with me until I had learned to be obedient to our father and take life seriously. I never called him Reggie after that day. Not until very recently, at least.”

They sat in silence for a while as fields and hedgerows passed outside the carriage windows and clouds scudded by overhead to reveal the occasional glimpse of blue.

“How did this start?” he asked. “How did any of my self-pitying monologues ever start? Why should any of these memories matter after all these years? I have been contented with my life. I have done what I wanted to do. I have earned my living and been a burden to no one. The past is long gone. It is of no significance. I survived it. Reginald survived it. It is best not reopened.”

Except that he was on his way to do just that.

“Do you think we should just turn around and go home?” he said.

“Did you write to tell your brother you were coming?” she asked.

“Yes.” He winced. “Perhaps he has gone away on a full-day excursion.”

“And perhaps not,” she said.

“And perhaps not,” he agreed with a sigh. “I wonder if this is how a man feels when he is on the way to his own execution. I would rather be doing anything else on earth than this. Lord, everything is starting to look familiar. I can walk over from your parents’ house if you wish, Clarissa. I did it often enough when I was a boy. I will probably not get lost.”

“The carriage will drop you off outside your brother’s door,” she told him. “You can walk over to us when you have finished.”

He turned to take her other hand in his and squeezed them both tightly, almost to the point of pain. “I love you so much, Clarissa.” She saw the dismay in his face as he realized what he had said. “I did not mean that quite as it sounded. I…I thank you so much. You are very good to me.”

She smiled and leaned toward him and kissed him.

They were driving by his own property, she realized. The house, a sizable manor, was prettier than she remembered it. She usually drove to and from her parents’ house by a slightly different route. Hollyhocks, hyacinths, and numerous other flowers were blooming against the walls of the house, and colorful window boxes hung from the upstairs windows. The garden surrounding the house was bright with smooth lawns and well-kept flower beds. White curtains fluttered at one open window downstairs.

And then the carriage was drawing to a halt outside the Taylor home, and even before the steps were set down, the front door opened and Reginald and Adelaide Taylor stepped outside, their son Philip with his wife behind them. The young people were smiling, Clarissa saw, while the older couple were not. This must be every bit as difficult for them as it was for Matthew, of course. But they had not fled on a day’s excursion. Nor had they barred the door against him.

They all raised a hand in greeting to Clarissa when she waved from the carriage window, and then they turned their attention to Matthew, who was walking up the long path to meet them, his tall hat in his hand. The coachman put up the steps and shut the door, and Clarissa leaned back in her seat while the carriage rocked into motion again. She did not look out her window.