Remember When (Ravenswood #4)

Chapter Twenty

Clarissa enjoyed the following week more than she had enjoyed any other for a long while, it seemed to her. She spent hours at a time alone, both indoors and out, and was thoroughly at ease in her own company. She was embroidering and reading again, though she spent a great deal of time too just sitting or walking and gazing about her, appreciating the fact that she was alive and healthy and in possession of an abundance of blessings upon which to build a future that would be personally fulfilling without also being selfish. She wrote letters. She called upon friends and neighbors and received them when they called upon her.

An architect presented himself at Ravenswood a mere two days after Devlin left to look at and survey the piece of land she had chosen by the river and to make notes of what her ladyship wanted. He returned two days after that with detailed drawings of a two-story cottage, cozy enough just for her but large enough to allow her to entertain groups and accommodate overnight guests. There was to be a whole section at the back for the kitchen and servants’ quarters. She expected that Millicent would move there with her, and she would need a housekeeper and cook, preferably all in one person, and a gardener and general handyman. Perhaps she would be able to find a married couple to fill the roles. There was to be space for a garden, which she planned to fill with shrubs and flowers as well, and a lawn. She pictured a vegetable and herb garden to the east of the cottage.

Her ladyship could expect work to begin within the next couple of weeks, the architect informed her with a bow as he took his leave. Clarissa felt a bit breathless. Could all this really be happening? And so quickly? Her dream of having a cottage of her own had only recently been conceived, as well as her search for the perfect setting.

She saw Matthew a number of times during that week. Their friendship was no longer to be hidden away. Mostly they met and strolled in the park in the late afternoon or evening, but once Clarissa walked into the village and, by prearrangement, met him outside the inn and shared a pot of tea with him in the dining room, enjoying the view over the village green from their table by the window. They even allowed themselves to be persuaded into eating some of the landlady Mrs. Berry’s freshly baked rhubarb tart with their tea. Afterward they went together to the shop, since Matthew needed a few groceries and Clarissa wanted to look at a newly arrived batch of embroidery silks. The Misses Miller, wide-eyed and simpering, were almost visibly storing up the sensational news to spread among their customers for the rest of the day.

As they left the shop, Matthew reminded her his brother was insisting upon sending his own carriage to convey him the day before the party in his honor. Matthew was trying to persuade Clarissa to share the conveyance with him since she had been invited and fully intended on going.

“It seems a bit pointless to take two carriages, one behind the other,” he said.

But Clarissa felt uneasy about accepting. Reginald had not specifically suggested that she travel with his brother. Perhaps he did not think it necessary to do so but simply assumed she would. She was not sure she wanted to give him and his wife the impression that she and Matthew were a couple, however. And were they? They had acknowledged only a friendship so far, though they frequently shared hugs and kisses and once or twice an altogether more heated embrace.

She did not know if she wanted them to be a couple.

She suspected he did not know if he wanted it either.

They were middle-aged and set in their ways. He had enjoyed independence for many years. She was just discovering her own. Perhaps the whole of their relationship would be ruined if they tried to take it further, and that would be incredibly sad.

As it turned out, she was saved from the dilemma of deciding whether to go with Matthew in his brother’s carriage or take her own when yet another member of her family—and surely the last—arrived unexpectedly at Ravenswood two days before the Taylors’ party.

Clarissa was in the turret room, a place in which she had spent far more time during the past month than she had in years past. She was dreaming of her cottage and of the grandchildren who would be born soon after Christmas. She was dreaming of Nicholas coming back to England soon, to stay, she hoped. She was dreaming of Owen finding his way in life and of Stephanie finding happiness. One thing she was not doing was reading the book she had brought with her. It was always virtually impossible to read in the turret room.

But she sat forward on the couch when she heard horses’ hooves and carriage wheels. Looking out the windows, she saw that a traveling carriage was coming up the driveway, but not one that any of her local friends would be using so close to their own homes. It stopped before the front doors below and to the left of her, and out stepped her brother, George, and then Kitty. Their visit was unplanned and unhinted at in their most recent letters. Clarissa laughed softly to herself as she got to her feet and made her way downstairs.

“We decided we simply must spend a few days with Mama and Papa before going home,” George said a few minutes later, after Clarissa had gone downstairs to greet and hug them. “I have been feeling guilty over missing Mama’s birthday. A special one too, her seventieth.”

“I insisted that we come anyway, late as we are for the birthday,” Kitty said, beaming at Clarissa. “And I insisted too that we call upon you on our way there. I have missed you dreadfully.”

They would have had to make a detour of many miles to come here. Ravenswood was not on their direct route from London to her parents’ house. They intended to resume their journey after taking tea with Clarissa and relaxing for an hour or so.

“Mama and Papa will be delighted to see you,” she said as she led the way to the drawing room, where tea was served almost immediately.

“Are you not lonely here all on your own, Clarissa?” her brother asked. “Though I daresay you have been making some new friends.”

“One specifically?” she said while Kitty winked at her, unseen by her husband. “The one that has brought you here, though I am sure your desire to see Mama and Papa is genuine? Matthew Taylor is not a new friend, however, as you are well aware, George. We were close friends through most of our growing years, and we are friends again.”

“Some of your neighbors have been a bit…concerned about it,” George said.

“So I have heard. But I have also decided to let them be,” she said. “It is really none of their business, is it?”

“I suppose you think it is none of mine either,” he said, frowning. “Clarissa—”

But Kitty was patting his arm. “Mr. Taylor transformed Jenny’s life when he made her that wheeled chair the year before last,” she said. “It also happens to be a work of art. And he made the cane that has helped enable her to dispense with those useless crutches she used to have. I would like to be his friend too if only because of what he has done for my niece. Clarissa is a grown woman, George, as I have been explaining to you since we waved her on her way back to Ravenswood.”

“I know,” he said. “And she is five years older than me. You have been reminding me of that too, Kit.”

She beamed at him and then at Clarissa. “We must be on our way soon,” she said. “We still have another ten miles to go. I suppose you do not want to come with us, Clarissa? Nothing would make us happier.”

“Well, as it happens, I do,” Clarissa said, and watched as both their faces lit up. “I was going there tomorrow anyway. I have been invited to a grand party Reginald and Adelaide Taylor are organizing for Friday. It is in honor of Matthew. I am quite certain you will be invited too.”

“I have a feeling,” George said, getting to his feet, “that there is a story to be told here. You must tell it to us down to the last detail when we resume our journey, Clarissa. In the meantime, you have fifteen minutes to get ready to come with us.”

“Have you always been such a tyrant?” she asked with a smile.

“Have you not noticed that I am a shadow of my former self?” Kitty asked her.

Clarissa hurried from the room, laughing. Fifteen minutes. But Millicent would rise to the challenge of packing what she would need for a few days. She, meanwhile, had only to change into a carriage dress and write a quick note to be delivered to Matthew.

—

Matthew was disappointed when he received Clarissa’s note. The journey was a long and tedious one, and he would miss her company and conversation. However, perhaps it was just as well that they would not arrive together in Reggie’s carriage. He did not want to give his family the impression that they were anything more to each other than neighbors and friends. No more, in fact, than they had been when they were growing up.

He was actually glad she had gone with her brother and sister-in-law when the following day brought not only his brother’s carriage but Reggie too.

“What?” Matthew said after they had exchanged a firm handshake and Reggie stood inside his rooms, looking about with undisguised interest. “You decided to make a twenty-mile journey of it, here and back? Were you afraid I would change my mind and return your carriage empty?”

“This room ought to look like a hovel, Matt,” Reginald said, ignoring his questions. “Instead it looks like a home. I want to see your work, though I suspect I am seeing some of it in this furniture and those candlesticks. May I see more?”

They spent more than half an hour in the workroom. Reggie ran a hand over the crib Matthew had almost finished making for Ben Ellis’s child.

“I did not trust in your dream when you were a boy, Matt,” he said. “I am so glad you dreamed it anyway. I feel humbled. Forgive me?”

“Perhaps we ought not to play the blame and forgiveness game any longer,” Matthew said. “I did not know but guess now it is you who has looked after my wife and daughter’s grave with such meticulous care. I did not know you cared at all.”

“Addy and Emily are the ones who dispense with the weeds and coax the flowers to bloom,” Reggie said. “I hope the inscription on the headstone is adequate. Just a few brief words, but I agonized over them for what must have been weeks.”

“They are perfect,” Matthew said. “Thank you.”

They ate a luncheon at the inn and were on their way before the middle of the afternoon. His brother’s arrival prevented Matthew from feeling the apprehension that had hovered over him for the past week. A generous gesture on his brother’s part given the distance. But Matthew was now thinking he could accept that this party was something his family wanted to do for him. It was a sort of atonement, one that worked both ways. They would give the party, and he would attend it and do all in his power to enjoy it.

He felt love seeping into him. He had not realized quite how absent it had been. For most of his adult years he had loved in the abstract—and yes, it was a form of real love and essential to his being. But it had not been personal. He had friends and valued and loved them. But that deep sort of love that bound together certain individuals—family and the love of one’s heart—had been denied.

Now he needed to complete—or at least continue—what he had started to learn at the monastery. He needed to open his mind and his heart and his very being to all the risks of loving fully and unconditionally and of being loved.

It was not an entirely comforting prospect. It felt a bit…uncontrolled.

It was a necessary step, however, if he wanted to be whole.

He had not realized until now that he had never allowed himself to be whole, that he had suppressed a large part of himself lest he be hurt.

The family—his family—was very obviously excited by his arrival and by the preparations they were making for tomorrow evening’s grand celebration, to which it appeared they had invited almost everyone they knew in the vicinity.

Philip and Emily bore him off soon after his arrival to meet their children, two boys and a girl, who proceeded to show him the treasures of the nursery. Mabel, his niece, arrived soon after with her husband, Albert, and their young son and daughter, and there was a flurry of introductions and hugs, loud conversation, and laughter. Adelaide shed tears over the wood carving Matthew had brought her of a woman sitting relaxed and dreaming in a rocking chair, a cat curled on her lap.

“I will treasure it always,” she told him. “Look, Reggie. The chair actually rocks. And if that cat is not purring, there is something wrong with my inner ear.”

Matthew allowed himself to feel happy.

—

Clarissa spent the day before the party talking endlessly with her parents, with George, with whom she had always had a close relationship, and especially with Kitty. They went for a walk in the park together during the afternoon, and Kitty, slipping a hand through Clarissa’s arm, demanded to know everything there was to know about Matthew Taylor.

“I know,” she said, “that he is a superb carpenter and wood-carver. I know the two of you were friends growing up. I know you are friends again now. I will not allow you to bounce our conversation off those few facts, Clarissa. We have been the closest of friends since we met in London as young brides, though most of our friendship has been conducted via letter, alas. Now we are face to face. Well, side to side anyway. And I want to talk about Matthew Taylor.”

“There are friends and friends,” Clarissa said after giving her answer some consideration. “There are those for whom we feel a warm affection, with whom we enjoy spending time. Those with whom we are comfortable. And then there are the friends with whom the affection and the communication run far deeper, those with whom we feel some sort of soul connection, if that is not too exaggerated a claim. Friends with whom we can and do talk about anything under the sun, including our deepest emotions. Friends with whom we can be silent for long stretches without feeling any discomfort or any disconnection at all. You have always been the second kind of friend to me, Kitty, though we are not often silent together, are we? There is always so much to say when we see each other so rarely. Matthew is also that kind of friend. He was when we were growing up, and he is now.”

“But a little more than a friend?” Kitty asked. “Perhaps a great deal more?”

Clarissa was about to deny it. But this was Kitty.

“We were a bit in love when I was seventeen and Matthew was eighteen,” she said. “When I decided to marry Caleb, though that was not entirely a calculated decision, I genuinely fell in love with him. And I never really regretted marrying him. Though perhaps…Well, it is complicated. He gave me my children, whom I adore. He gave me Ravenswood and my neighbors and friends there, and they make me happy. And he was genuinely charming and affectionate. Any deeper connection between Matthew and me would not have worked out well as we were at the time anyway. Not for either of us. We would have destroyed ourselves and each other. Perhaps. Probably. Who really knows?”

“You needed to wait until you were fifty,” Kitty said. “You are there now.”

“Yes,” Clarissa said. “Almost.”

“Was he the reason you went home to Ravenswood?” Kitty asked.

Clarissa looked at her in surprise. “No,” she said. “I did not go there to find anyone but myself. Sometimes a woman can lose herself in her family. It can be a happy experience. For most of my life it has been for me. But sometimes a woman needs to pause to ask who she is in herself. Sometimes she needs to discover if her life is personally fulfilling. I went home early and alone because I was starting to feel a certain emptiness at the core of myself, if that makes any sense. I launched Stephanie upon society and then realized that all my active obligations to my children were fulfilled. What was left? It was rather a bleak feeling. Almost frightening.”

“And does Mr. Taylor fill that emptiness at the core of yourself?” Kitty asked.

Clarissa frowned. “I am not sure I want him to,” she said. “The core of myself should be filled with me, though I have no idea what I am talking about. What I am trying to say is that I should be able to stand alone as myself.”

“I understand,” Kitty said. “But does he make you happy, Clarissa? Does he make you feel that your life would be immeasurably enriched if he could be your friend—and perhaps more than your friend—for the rest of your life?”

Clarissa sighed. “Oh yes,” she said, and Kitty squeezed her arm.

“I look forward to seeing you together tomorrow evening,” she said.

“And what of you and George?” Clarissa asked. “Is your marriage everything you dreamed it would be, Kitty? Not that your personal life is any of my business. And how can you say anything but yes when he is my brother?”

Kitty laughed. “Do you really need to ask?” she said. “I am over the moon in love with him, Clarissa. I sometimes feel it is unseemly in a middle-aged woman like me. But why should it be? Why should anyone deny herself—or himself—the wonder of romantic love just because she is fifty or seventy? Or ninety? The miracle of it all, Clarissa, is that he is as deeply in love with me. Am I not the most fortunate woman on earth?”

“No,” Clarissa said. “Only one of the most fortunate.”

They both laughed.

—

By the following day, the day of the party, Clarissa was craving some solitude again. George was in the library with their father, and Kitty was in her mother’s dressing room, helping her select a gown for the evening. Clarissa wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and stepped outside alone. The air was fresh and cool, and the sounds of nature were the only ones to assail her ears.

How she needed her cottage, she thought. Much as she loved company, especially that of her family and close friends, she had come to understand during the past weeks that she needed solitude too. And silence. Most of all silence.

She set out on a walk through the park. It was not entirely aimless. She had noticed something yesterday when she was strolling with Kitty. Something she would not have expected to recognize but did. She had not realized how deeply embedded in her memory it was. Perhaps it was that wood carving of Matthew’s that had jogged the memory.

Yesterday she had recognized the tree against which she had leaned all those years ago after telling Matthew that she was expecting a marriage offer from Caleb the following day. She had been feeling excited at the prospect and deeply upset at the knowledge that she had hurt Matthew, and herself too, with her decision. She had stood against that tree bewildered by the extreme emotions only a seventeen-year-old could feel. Looking ahead, looking back, feeling the exultation and pain of the present. Aware of him standing silently not far off, not moving, not saying anything, the distance that would be between them for more than thirty years already an almost tangible thing.

She found the tree now and verified by looking around that yes, indeed, this was the one. She leaned back against it again after dropping her shawl to the grass. She felt with both hands for the trunk behind her and drew sustenance from the life force she could sense moving up to the branches from the roots belowground. She rested the back of her head against the tree and closed her eyes.

Just here. Where so much had ended. The day before so much had begun. Two men, one of whom had been her friend, her soul mate, the other of whom had become her husband and father of her children.

Two men she had loved on that day.

Did life offer second chances?

Though she could not chastise herself about choosing Caleb over Matthew at the time.

Was now the right time?

Would it be foolish to try to recapture a romance that had been about to blossom more than thirty years ago? Though perhaps that was not what was happening. Perhaps they were not trying to recapture anything. Perhaps what was happening between them was all new.

Ah. And perhaps she was the only one who was experiencing this turmoil of emotion and indecision. Perhaps for Matthew what was between them was nothing more than friendship with a few pleasant kisses included.

She opened her eyes and looked at the trees and greenery surrounding her. She tried to draw peace from her surroundings, a calming of the mind. There was so much for which to be happy.

—

Yesterday had been a day full of chatter and laughter and stories intended to fill in some of the long gap of the missing years. Matthew had felt so thoroughly welcome in his brother’s home that he had quickly forgotten his self-consciousness and apprehension about the upcoming party. He had slept well in a bedchamber that had not been his when he was a boy—a touch of thoughtfulness on Reggie’s part, he guessed.

Today was somewhat different. All was anxiety and busy activity as preparations were made for the evening’s festivities, and Matthew spent most of the morning trying to stay out of everyone’s way, mainly with Albert, Mabel’s husband, as an accomplice.

“There is nothing more to be dreaded than a busy woman,” that young man said. “She will invariably either accuse the men in her orbit of getting in her way or find all sorts of uncongenial tasks to keep them busy. It is far better to stay out of her way.”

It was a vain hope, however. Mabel found her husband and Matthew talking at their ease behind a large potted plant in the conservatory and sent the former off to carry some chairs from one room to another since all the menservants were rushed off their feet. She looked in horror at Matthew when he offered to help.

“You are the guest of honor, Uncle Matthew,” she said. “Mama would die of mortification if she saw you carrying chairs.”

So Matthew did what he had been wanting to do since yesterday. He walked over to the Greenfields’ house to call upon Clarissa and instead drank coffee with her parents and with George and his wife.

“I understand, Mr. Taylor, that the gathering to which we have been invited this evening is in your honor,” George’s wife said.

“It would seem so,” he said, grimacing slightly. “The prodigal has returned. Until very recently I had not seen any member of my family for more than thirty years. It is a long story.”

“I love long stories,” she said, smiling. “But…another time. You will have come to see Clarissa.”

“She went outside for a stroll a while ago,” her mother said.

“She walked past the window of the library, where I was sitting with George,” Mr. Greenfield said. “I daresay you will find her out there somewhere unless you would rather wait here. I suppose the Taylor women have driven you from the house.”

“Only by refusing my help even in the conveying of chairs from one room to another,” Matthew said. “They insist upon treating me as though I were someone special. I will go and search for Clarissa, if you will excuse me.”

“You are excused,” Mrs. Greenfield said.

He looked around after he had stepped outside but could see no sign of her. She might be anywhere. The park was not nearly as large as the one at Ravenswood, but there were more trees to obscure one’s view. He set out in the direction they had taken most often when they were young. Then he thought of the last time they had walked here. It was a heavy memory of abandonment and grief, and for a moment he felt all the desolation of the boy he had been then. Yet there had been years before that when he had found consolation here and acceptance and the lightheartedness he had experienced rarely if ever at home.

He had found friendship here and a measure of love.

Did the same description apply to them now? Friendship, yes. And…a measure of love?

Was it enough?

And then he had an idea and changed direction. His footsteps slowed after a while as he sought out the exact tree and hoped he would recognize it—and that it still existed. He had carved the scene, but he had never come back here. Would she remember? Would it be important enough that she would try to find the exact tree? She had loved the carving, but would she—

And then he stopped walking abruptly and felt his breath catch in his throat.

She was standing with her back against the tree—and there was no doubt it was the tree—her arms slightly behind her on either side, her palms pressed to the bark. Her dark hair was dressed neatly on her head, not flowing as it had been that other time. Her dress was less full, more Grecian in line than the one she had worn on the earlier occasion. She was no longer that svelte, pretty young girl but a shapely, elegant, and beautiful woman of middle years. But she was the same person. And she gazed ahead of her, as she had done then, though her expression was surely more readable. There was dreamy longing in her face, though he could see it only in profile.

He was not standing in exactly the same spot as before. He was close but out of her line of vision. He stood very still and drank in the sight of her. He yearned for her.

She could not see him. And she had given no sign of having heard him come. But she must have felt his presence after a couple of minutes had passed. She turned her head slowly, and they gazed at each other. She smiled very slightly.

He moved toward her and stood in front of her, as he had stood then. They continued to gaze silently at each other until he spoke.

“I wanted very badly to kiss you,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “You told me a while ago, but I knew it at the time. And I wanted you to kiss me, to force my hand, to make me change my mind. That was wrong of me. What I ought to have wanted was for us to kiss each other. A mutual embrace of equals. Alas, it is not how girls are brought up to think—or do. We are not taught to insist upon equality of decision and responsibility. Let us kiss now, Matthew.”

She moved her arms away from the tree and twined them about his neck while her body leaned against his. He wrapped his arms about her and kissed her with all the ardor of his love and the sexual desire that thrummed through his body. She kissed him back the same way, until at last they drew apart, their arms still loosely about each other.

He drew a slow breath and released it while she smiled at him.

“Reggie is hoping I will move back here next year, after Captain and Mrs. Jakes’s lease runs out on my house,” he said.

“And will you?” she asked him.

“I am thinking about it,” he said. “I could live the life of a gentleman. I would have a suitable home to offer.”

“To whom?” she asked him.

“To you,” he said. “I could ask you to marry me.”

“You could indeed,” she said after a short silence. “A gentleman and a man of property. And you might be happy here, back with your family.”

“Yes,” he said.

She released herself from his arms and leaned back against the tree again while her eyes searched his face.

“Or,” she said, “you could continue to live in your rooms above the smithy and visit me at my cottage. You could continue to be Boscombe’s carpenter and a wood-carver. You could even ask me to marry you and come to live with me at the cottage. And keep your rooms as your working space.”

He swallowed. “Yes,” he said.

They gazed at each other in silence for long moments.

“What do you really want to do, Matthew?” she asked at last.

“I want to be able to offer you a life at least somewhat similar to what you are accustomed to,” he said.

She shook her head. “It is not what I asked,” she said. “What do you want? The life of a gentleman here or the life you have lived for the past twenty years and more?”

He hesitated, though there was only one true answer.

“I want you,” he said.

He might be way out of line. He might be destroying their friendship once and for all as well as any hope of a different sort of relationship with her.

“If I did not exist,” she said, “what would your decision be?”

He continued to gaze mutely at her. For she did exist. It was impossible to imagine his life without that fact.

“I must confess,” he said at last, “that the prospect of living in a house with a red front door has a certain appeal.”

Her eyes smiled and then her lips too and she laughed softly.

“You can have it,” she said. “We can have it.”

He took both her hands in his and squeezed them tightly as he bowed his head over them and rested his forehead against them.

For more than thirty years the impossible dream. Was it really possible now?

He went down on one knee before her without releasing her hands and looked up at her. Her smile had faded, but her eyes were still bright.

“Clarissa,” he said. “Will you take the utterly foolhardy step of marrying me? When all I have to offer is a steadfast and lifelong love?”

He watched the smile return, slowly and softly.

“It sounds good enough to me,” she said. “Especially since I love you too—steadfastly and forever. Yes, Matthew, I will.”

He kissed the backs of her hands and got to his feet.

“On the understanding that you will have a mere carpenter for a husband,” he said.

“And a superbly talented wood-carver,” she said. “And that we will have a cottage by the river in which to live,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

She came back into his arms and raised her face to his.

“With a red door,” he said. “That is not negotiable.” He kissed her.

They smiled at each other afterward, and she laughed and flung her arms about his neck.

“I had better go and have a talk with your father since Stratton is in Wales,” he said. “Does a father in such cases take precedence over a son, I wonder? Then I must get back to Reggie’s. My sister-in-law and nieces may panic if they think the guest of honor has gone missing.”

“Are you nervous?” she asked him.

“About the party?” he said. “When between now and then I have to face your father?”

“He is such an ogre.” She linked an arm through his.

He wondered if any moment now he was going to wake up from this strange dream he was having.