“I have certainly looked forward to this afternoon,” she said. “And I have been amazed and awed.”
“You successfully launched Lady Stephanie Ware upon society?” he asked her, changing the subject.
“I did.” She sighed. “She is nineteen and the daughter and sister of wealthy earls. She is enormously eligible, in other words. But she would not go last year and went this year only because Pippa was going to be in London with Lucas and the twins, and Gwyneth persuaded her that she would be sadly missed by all of them if she did not go too. What a gem of a daughter-in-law I have there. But what is it with my own daughters? Pippa would not go to London until she was twenty-two, an alarmingly advanced age even for a young woman of such beauty and eligibility. Fortunately she met Lucas—now the Duke of Wilby, no less—at her first social event, even before she made her official come-out. Something comparable did not happen to Steph this year, alas.”
“She is very young,” he said. He had never quite understood the compulsion young girls felt to marry almost before they left the schoolroom—before, in Clarissa’s own case. Most of them would surely benefit from a few years of experiencing life for themselves before settling down. However, that was the way their society worked, and very few people seemed to rebel against it.
“She also has such a poor opinion of herself that sometimes I could weep,” Clarissa said. “But there is no point in telling her overand over again that she is beautiful and sweet-natured and accomplished, that she will have no trouble at all attracting the sort of husband who will value her and make her happy. She is made for love. People are drawn to her, especially children. But until she can see these things for herself, she will never be happy, I fear.”
Lady Stephanie Ware was indeed a pretty young lady, though Matthew could understand why she could not see it herself. Physical appearance was of such importance to young girls. She was large in build and always had been. She had a round, youthful face that always seemed to glisten with good health. She had good skin. She wore her blond hair in a double row of heavy plaits wound about her head. The hair must be very long. He wondered if she had ever had it cut.
“She had two perfectly eligible marriage offers within a month of her presentation at court,” Clarissa said. “She rejected both. I was not entirely displeased. I might have been a little concerned, in fact, if she had jumped at the first offer. It might have suggested a certain desperation. But then she grasped the opportunity to go to Greystone with Pippa and Lucas when they decided to return home early so Pippa may be more comfortable during the months of her confinement.”
“So parties and balls held no attraction for Lady Stephanie?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Though I believe there was a specific reason as well as a general one. Do you remember Viscount Watley? Did you meet him when he spent a few weeks here a couple of years ago with Owen? They were at university together.”
“The handsome lad who had all the village girls sighing over him?” he asked.
“Tall, dark, and handsome,” she said, nodding. “Not tomention kind and charming—a natural charm, not an assumed one. He quite inadvertently made that summer insupportable for poor Steph.”
“Inadvertently?” he said. “He was not unkind to her, then?”
“Quite the contrary,” she said. “Owen tends to treat her with some carelessness at times. She is, after all, just his younger sister. But Viscount Watley went out of his way to draw her into activities when she held back and to talk to her and smile at her and praise her for her singing, among other things. He could not have treated her worse, as it turned out.”
Ah. Matthew was beginning to understand.
“She sees herself as fat and ugly, to put it bluntly,” Clarissa said. “And she fell painfully in love with a man she saw as a god. She was miserable. Oh, it would be funny if it were not also so tragic. And I am her mother.”
“He was in London this year?” he asked.
“Indeed. Two years older and even more handsome,” she said. “And delighted to meet Steph again. He made a point of introducing her to his twin sister, who is his female counterpart. Lady Estelle Lamarr is slim, elegant, dark-haired, beautiful, and charming, and she tried her best to make a friend of Stephanie. But…well, Steph fled to Greystone, when Pippa and Lucas had expected her to wait until the Season ended before joining them there with me.”
“It is not easy being a mother, then?” Matthew said.
“No, it most certainly is not,” she said. “But only because love hurts. Not all the time, of course. But sometimes.”
Yes, it did. He held himself aloof from the extremes of love now, but he still believed, even at the age of almost fifty-one, that what many adults dismissed as puppy love in the very young could be very real indeed. Very exalting. And very, very painful. The pain hehad felt over Clarissa was long gone, but he could remember what it had been like. He would not wish to be young again.
“Do you sometimes wish we were young again?” she asked, again as if reading his mind.
“Young and carefree?” he said.
She turned her head sharply to look at him. “That was not very tactful of me, was it?” she said. “My own family life was rather idyllic. I had parents who adored both George and me. They instilled firm principles in us, but they also allowed us a great deal of freedom to become the persons we wanted to be. There was almost never any discord in our home. All my needs were met. I would not have had a care in the world throughout those years if I had not known you, if we had not been friends.”
“My apologies,” he said.
“Oh, no, no, no.” She set a hand briefly on his arm. “I did not mean that the way it sounded. I valued our friendship more than I can say. My heart bled for you when you were frustrated and troubled and rebellious and in trouble, as you so often were. I learned empathy from our friendship. But it was not all gloom and doom. We had good times, did we not, Matthew? We had fun.”
He smiled as he thought back. “They were not always fun times for you,” he said. “Do you remember all the trees I made you climb?”
“Even though I was afraid of heights?” she said. “You used to call me a girl. There is no worse insult than to call a girl a girl. And then you would dare me, and up I would go, shaking in every limb.”
“So that we could be closer to heaven,” he said. “So we could have at least the illusion of being away from the world. So we could give wings to our dreams. And we did enjoy all the hours we spent in the boughs of trees. Admit it.”
“We often told outrageous stories too,” she said. “We used to feed each other lines until we ended up helpless with laughter. But I always dreaded the coming down again. Why is it always so much harder to go down than to go up? I might have broken every limb and bone in my body.”
“I always went down ahead of you,” he said. “I would not have allowed you to fall. I would have caught you.”
