Prologue
1785
It was a moment Matthew Taylor knew he would never forget. A fanciful thought, perhaps, when he was eighteen years old and all of life and life’s experiences stretched ahead of him. Or so it was said, most notably by his parents, as though his childhood and boyhood were of no consequence.
He knew, though, that he would always remember. He stood watching Clarissa Greenfield, drinking in the sight of her, willing the present moment not to end, hoping she would not move or speak again for a while.
She was leaning back against a tall tree, her arms slightly behind her on either side, her palms pressed to the trunk. A breeze he could scarcely feel fluttered the sides of her long, full skirt and her dark hair, which she had shaken loose when she’d dropped her straw hat to the ground. She was achingly pretty, with all the freshness of youth and the innate warmth and charm that were an essential part of her.
She was seventeen years old.
Their families were neighbors. She had been his closest friend for most of their lives, though they could not be more different in nature and temperament if they tried. She was even-tempered, devoted to her parents, and obedient to them and her governess. She wanted to be the sort of young lady they wished her to be. They loved her, after all. She had a deep affection too for her brother, a good-natured lad who was five years younger than she. It seemed to Matthew that there was never discord within the Greenfield family.
He, on the other hand, was a misfit within his family. He had tried to love his parents and Reginald, his brother, who was ten years his senior. In his more generous moments he admitted they had probably tried to love him too. It just had not worked. His mother and father had very rigid ideas about the sort of person a second son ought to be if he was to expect a prosperous and respectable future. His father, though a gentleman of property, did not have a large fortune. Everything he did possess would pass to Reginald upon his death, just as his father’s property had passed to him while his younger two brothers had forged successful careers, the elder as a diplomat, the younger as a solicitor. Matthew had not met either uncle or their wives and children, his cousins. His uncles wrote to his father but never came home for a visit. His father used them as examples of what Matthew must aspire to be. He must be educated to enter one of the professions suited to his birth.
The whole of his boyhood was designed to prepare him for that future. Any idle activity, any behavior that ran counter to the plan, was firmly discouraged. It seemed to Matthew, looking back from the age of eighteen, that he had never been allowed to be simply a boy, exploring his world and perhaps finding enjoyment in it.
He had decided early in his life that he could not always, or even often, conform to the sober, joyless expectations of his parents.He gave up even trying after repeatedly being scolded and punished for behavior that came naturally to him—falling into streams, for example, while trying to cross them on mossy stones he had been warned were unsafe; whittling away at pieces of wood with a knife he was not supposed to have and being careless about clearing away every last scrap of shavings that gathered about him on furniture and floor; being late home when visitors were expected for afternoon tea—late and grubby with dust and mud and sweat from head to foot. The list went on and on. He spent more time in his room with only dry bread, stale water, and a Bible for company and sustenance than he did anywhere else, he sometimes thought.
Even his grandmother—his mother’s mother, who lived on the estate adjoining theirs and next door but one to the Greenfields—upon whom he called quite frequently as a young child, told him one day that unless his behavior at his own home improved, he would no longer be welcome in hers. He had never again gone there voluntarily.
Matthew gave up trying. He developed into a moody, rebellious boy, until the worst thing of all happened. His brother, the beloved Reggie of his early years, began to punish him for bad behavior by refusing to do things with him such as fishing in the stream or flying a kite in the meadow or going to the village shop for the rare treat of buying sweetmeats. When Matthew had rebelled even more in protest, Reggie had washed his hands of him and become Reginald ever after. Their mother sometimes wept and complained that she did not know what she had done to deserve such a disobedient, ungrateful child. And the more his father tried to insist that Matthew toe the line for his own good, the more Matthew deliberately did just the opposite.
Life at home became intolerable—for all of them, perhaps. Ithad seemed to Matthew as he grew up that his only real friend was Clarissa Greenfield. She was the one person in the world who accepted him as he was, though she had never tried to excuse his least admirable exploits, such as the time he had been told to take his ball farther from the house lest he break a window and had instead hurled it quite deliberately through the one at which his father was standing while issuing the order. Clarissa had merely asked him why.
It was a question she asked frequently as they grew up, but it was never rhetorical, an accusation in disguise, as it was whenever his parents asked the same thing. It was, rather, a question in genuine search of an answer. She always waited for his explanation. More important, she always listened and never told him afterward that he had been wrong or bad, that he ought to do this or that to make amends. She allowed him to rant when he needed to and pour out all his bad temper and self-pity. She listened until he ran out of complaints and instead talked about his dreams and listened to hers.
She could always bring out the best side of his nature, though he was never sure quite how she did it. Just by being a good listener, perhaps? By never judging him? She was also a good talker, given the chance, a cheerful and amusing companion. They had often laughed together over the merest silliness, sometimes quite helplessly. She was one of the few people with whom he ever did laugh, in fact. She was the only person who seemed to give him leave to be happy, to frolic with no purpose but pure enjoyment.
And frolic they did through long summer days, always remaining within the boundaries of her father’s property because that was where she was expected to be. They walked and ran and waded in the stream and lay in the grass and picked daisies to fashion intochains and talked endlessly about anything and everything that came to mind. They often just sat cross-legged in the grass, their knees almost touching, while he whittled a piece of wood and she tried to guess what he was making.
“A beaver,” she would say. “How darling it is, Matthew.”
“A squirrel,” he would say, and they would both laugh.
She never told him to be careful with the knife. She always admired what he carved and called him marvelously clever, even when she mistook a squirrel for a beaver.
Even in winter they had spent time together, sometimes tramping about the park side by side, dressed warmly with little more than their eyes exposed to the elements, but more often in a small, little-used salon inside, where cakes and biscuits and warm chocolate or tea were brought to them in a steady stream and Mrs. Greenfield would ask him if his mother knew where he was.
“She will guess,” he would say.
She would smile and tell him she’d send a note so his mother would not worry, and she would include in the note the time at which she would turn him out of the house and direct his footsteps homeward. But those words to him were always spoken with a good-humored smile. And the funny thing was that he always left at the appointed time and hurried home so his mother would have nothing for which to blame Mrs. Greenfield.
Now Matthew watched Clarissa leaning back against the tree, all but grown up, just as he was. But after all these years, she had just broken his heart. Oh, it was an extravagant way to describe his feelings. But he was about to lose her and was trying to postpone the realization that he might find the loss unbearable. It was a silly idea—yes, silly was the right word—to describe his heart as broken, whatever that meant. He was eighteen years old, for the love of God.
He watched as she gazed ahead at a seemingly endless expanse of lawn and trees stretching off into the distance across the park. The afternoon sunlight was upon her face, but he could not tell what she was thinking. Was she staring off into the brightness of her future or back with nostalgia to the past she was leaving behind? Or was she fully present and feeling the breeze on her face and in her hair while being consciously aware that everything familiar was about to change? Was she aware of his silent presence close by, almost in her peripheral vision, or had she forgotten he was there? Did she know she had broken his heart?
Surely she was feeling at least some sadness. She loved him, after all—as a friend. But sadness was not her dominant mood today. He knew that. She had told him so.
“He is so…gorgeous, Matthew,” she had said. “So good-looking and charming and good-natured. And his smile! Everyone admires him. Mama says he is possibly the most eligible bachelor in all England. Yet he has chosen me.”
She had been talking about Caleb Ware, Earl of Stratton since his father’s death three or four years ago. He lived about ten miles away at Ravenswood Hall, an imposing mansion and park close to the village of Boscombe. Matthew had seen him a time or two and knew him to be well thought of by his neighbors. But he had no personal acquaintance with the man. Stratton must be twenty-four or twenty-five years old and, yes, a very eligible bachelor since, in addition to everything else, he was said to be fabulously wealthy.
Two days ago the earl, with the countess, his widowed mother, had taken afternoon tea with the Greenfields, by appointment. Before they left, Stratton had arranged with Mr. Greenfield to return three days hence—tomorrow—to discuss a matter of some significance to them both. His mother, meanwhile, had had a privateword with Mrs. Greenfield, and the two ladies had agreed that a connection between their families, specifically a marital connection, was greatly to be desired.
Stratton was coming tomorrow, then, to have a word with Richard Greenfield, and it was no secret what that word was to be. In all probability it would be followed immediately by a marriage proposal to Clarissa herself.
She intended to accept, even though she was only seventeen years old. If she asked to postpone her decision for a year or two until she was eighteen or nineteen, she had explained earlier, she might very well lose her chance altogether. The Earl of Stratton would marry someone else, and his choices would be limitless. His mother had apparently explained to Mrs. Greenfield that she would far prefer to see him married to the daughter of a respected near neighbor than to someone of possibly higher rank about whom she would know very little. It was time Caleb settled down. He had the succession to ensure, besides which he had been restless lately and clearly needed a bride who would have a settling influence on him. He would almost certainly not wait, then, nor would his mother, if Clarissa asked for more time.
