There was so much of the more than thirty years since their friendship ended about which she knew nothing—because she had been living her own busy life. She had thought of him occasionally, of course, and wondered about him and worried a bit about him when he disappeared and no one knew where he had gone. After his return and the surprise of his settling so close, she had grown accustomed to seeing him from time to time and not thinking of him too much. Many childhood friendships waned and even disappeared when one grew up and grew apart, after all.
She had put her husband and family and her social duties as Countess of Stratton before all else. It was what she had been raised to do, what all ladies were expected to do. But why was she still doing it when she no longer had a husband, when her children were all grown, and when the bulk of her social obligations had been taken over by Gwyneth?
It was these very questions she had come home to consider, of course, though she had not been thinking specifically of Matthew when she made the decision—except she had known that above all else she must see that carving again and find out if the woman against the tree really was her. She had not asked herself why it was important that she know.
Now she sat and gazed at Matthew and wondered…They were thirty-three years older than they had been then, when she had stood against that tree and he had gazed silently at her. But they were still alive. They were both free.
He was a carpenter living and working above an old smithy, while she was a dowager countess with an earl for a son, a duchess for a daughter, a cavalry colonel for another son. She lived at Ravenswood Hall. It might be foolish to dismiss those facts as though they did not matter. But he was a gentleman just as she was a gentleman’s daughter. Why should they not resume some sort of friendship if they wished? It could never be quite as it had been, of course. She could not picture them frolicking about the park here almost all day, every day, through the summer. But could it not be something that would offer them both some companionship and simple enjoyment?
She did not know how he would react to such a suggestion. She really did not know him at all. He did not know her. They were virtual strangers. They had been children when they were friends. They were middle-aged adults now. They had lived quite separate lives in the interim, moving along ever-divergent paths.
But…
But he kept that wood carving in his bedchamber, and it really was a carving of her, as he remembered her from that last day of their friendship. It pulsed with emotion, if it was possible for wood to do any such thing. It was, of course, the carver rather than the wood who had put the emotion there.
She wondered how he was feeling now. They had been sitting in silence since they sat down. Perhaps for him it was an excruciatingly uncomfortable silence.
“It is lovely out here,” he said, as though he had read her thoughts. But his words sounded heartfelt, not just a stilted conversational opener.
“We are very fortunate to live in England,” she said. “In Britain.”
There was the suggestion of a smile in his eyes when he turnedhis head to look at her. “Now, how many other countries do you know, so you can make a fair comparison?” he asked.
“None.” She laughed. “But I stick by my opinion. I cannot imagine anywhere on earth I would rather be.”
“Actually,” he said, “nor can I.”
“And what other countries do you know?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Most of the countries of Europe,” he said. “Countries of the East. India. Nepal.”
She stared at him. “They are where you went during the missing years?” she asked.
“The missing years,” he said, still looking slightly amused. “They were not missing for me. I was there the whole time, keeping an eye on them. They were crucial years in making me the person I am today.”
And who is that?she wanted to ask him. For he was very different from the rebellious, troubled, often sullen boy of her memory.
“You ran away,” she said. “Had your life become so unendurable that you could not stay? Though I do not really need to ask. I am more sorry than I can express in words for the grief you were made to endure.”
“I did not run away from anything,” he said. “I always knew, after all, even as a boy, that I could never escape from myself. It was the one thing I must always carry with me wherever I went, like a persistent shadow. When I left, Clarissa, I ran to.”
But they were interrupted at that point by the arrival of their coffee, and Clarissa was not sure if he had finished his sentence or not. The footman who brought the tray poured them each a cup before withdrawing, and Clarissa waited for Matthew to add cream to his before she offered him the plate of freshly baked shortbread biscuits.
“Thank you,” he said, setting one in his saucer. He stirred hiscoffee. “You cannot know what guilt a man feels when his wife dies as a consequence of childbirth. And the child…She was perfect in every way except that she never drew breath. My grandmother and my parents and brother heaped words of comfort upon me, assuring me that it was all for the best since Poppy was beneath me socially and had a bit of a temper and a sharp tongue to go with it and an unsavory reputation as a woman of questionable morals. It was even possible, they hinted, that the child—she was Helena, but they never called her by name—was not mine. Poppy, they implied, had lured me, a gullible, mixed-up boy of eighteen, four years her junior, into giving her respectability.”
“Oh.” Clarissa grimaced as she absently stirred cream into her own coffee. And the thing was that his relatives, his parents at least, would truly have intended their words to be comforting to the bereaved husband and father. They were respectable, well-meaning people, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, both now deceased. They had done their best to sort out their troubled younger son and form him into the sort of man they believed he must learn to be. The fact that what they were trying to do was impossible had only ever frustrated them and made them try harder. They had been totally without imagination or sensitivity. They had lacked the ability to discover who their son was and how they might best guide and help him to a future that would bring him both security and personal fulfillment. “I am so sorry, Matthew. But the thing is that they must truly have believed they were saying what would soothe your grief.”
“Strangely enough,” he said, “I can see that now. I can understand them as I doubt they ever understood me. I can forgive them and hope that before their deaths they forgave me for making their lives a true hell for many years.”
“Did you find what you were searching for after you left here?” she asked. “Or is my question too intrusive?”
He took a bite of his biscuit and chewed and swallowed before answering. He was gazing off toward the lake again.
“I am not sure I was consciously searching for anything,” he said. “I just wanted to be away from everything and everyone familiar. I wanted to be alone with myself in places I had never been and with people who did not know me. I wanted to let go of my self-centeredness, my bitter hatreds and disappointments. I felt them poisoning my whole being and needed to be rid of them. I did find one thing after I arrived in Switzerland, however. I even stayed there for a few years. I found wood carvings everywhere. They were on every building—beautiful and exuberant. They were in churches and in village squares and on mountaintops. They were in shops and workshops. I was in awe of the vision and skill of all those workers. I stayed and apprenticed myself to one I admired particularly, who was willing to take me on and teach me what he knew. And suddenly my hands felt like an essential part of me again and I knew I was doing what I wanted to do, what I needed to do and would always do no matter what else the future held for me.”
Clarissa set down her empty cup and saucer on the table beside her. She did so quietly in the hope that she would not break his train of thought. But he turned his head to look at her cup and the coffeepot, and she poured them each a second cup and offered the plate of biscuits again. He stirred cream into his cup but did not take another biscuit.
“It was not until I finally left Switzerland, though, and went to Italy,” he said, “that I understood what I really wanted to do, what Imust do with wood. I went inside St. Peter’s church in Vatican City, as all visitors to Rome do, I suspect, and I saw thePietà, sculpted by Michelangelo. It is a depiction of the crucified Christ, newly taken down from the cross and splayed across his mother’s lap while she looks down at him. I stood there for hours without moving, for almost the whole of one afternoon, in fact. I could not tear my eyes away from it. Someone approached me eventually and took my arm and spoke gently, asking if I needed to sit down, if I needed a glass of water or wine. It was only then that I realized my cheeks were wet with tears.”
