“What would have happened if I had?” he asked her. “Would the whole of the rest of our lives have been different? Would you have changed your mind?”
She thought about it, her eyes lowered, her teeth sinking into her lower lip before shaking her head. “No,” she said. “But there would have been more heartache.”
She had loved him, then? But she had married Stratton anyway? Because his offer had been too dazzling, too tempting to resist? No, he must not be bitter. There had been other reasons, all of them sensible.
“I loved you,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” she said, moving her hands to his shoulders andpatting them. “And I loved you. But love would not have been enough, not for us. We would have ended up desperately unhappy.”
He was about to argue the point, but he was no longer the lovesick eighteen-year-old he had been then. And even at the time, he had known that love would not have been enough for them.
Whoever thought love was all that mattered was living with his head in the clouds. Though romantic love was not the only kind of love, of course. Not nearly.
He bent to retrieve his bag and her parasol.
“Oh, Matthew, you lied!” she cried suddenly. She was gazing up the slope they had just descended, a look of horror on her face. “You told me the hill looked high just because we were up there, looking down. You told me that from down here looking up, it would seem like nothing at all.”
“Well,” he said. “Almost nothing at all.”
“Look at it!” she said, flinging out her arm and pointing with the parasol. “It goes on forever, and it is almost sheer.”
It had been a longer, steeper descent than he had estimated from above, it was true. And there had been that tricky bit in the middle.
“Are you not all the more proud of yourself for doing it?” he asked.
She drew breath to make some sharp retort before closing her mouth with a clacking of teeth. After a moment she laughed. “Ah, Matthew,” she said. “You have made me feel young again today. And very foolhardy again. We might have killed ourselves.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Besides, I was there to catch you, as I always was.”
“But who would have caught you?” she asked.
They were on grassland, halfway between the southern andnorthern riding paths. They set out straight across rolling lawns dotted with trees and surprising little sheltered nooks of flowers and ponds and rustic seats. Matthew wondered if they were ever used, though a whole army of gardeners must be kept constantly busy tending them all.
“I believe some people from the village bring their picnics to these more isolated parts of the park,” she said as though she had read his thoughts. “They come on open days, as they are invited to do, but some of them are too shy to use the more obvious attractions closer to the house. My children would often come back from rides in the park and tell me I simply must go and see the lilies or the sweet peas in such and such a spot or the daffodils or bluebells turning a whole grassy slope yellow or blue in another place. I would go with them to see, though riding has never been one of my favorite activities. They were good days. I suppose Devlin and Gwyneth’s children will drag them off to appreciate similar sights when they are older.”
He took her hand in his as they walked, and she made no objection. It was something he had never done as a boy, he realized. He did it now only because he had not thought before he did it. It felt natural. It felt…comfortable.
Two gardeners were at work in one of the flower nooks. Matthew thought perhaps he and Clarissa would pass unseen, since they were about to descend another dip in the land some distance from where the men were working. But one of the men straightened up to remove his cap and cuff his obviously sweating brow. He caught sight of them and raised the cap as he bobbed his head.
“A fine afternoon, my lady,” he called, and the other gardener looked up and snatched off his cap too.
“It is indeed,” Clarissa called back.
So much, Matthew thought ruefully, for meeting at the end of the poplar alley earlier instead of at the house. He did not doubt that within a very few hours everyone who worked at Ravenswood, indoors and out, would know that the dowager countess had been strolling in the park with the village carpenter.
Hand in hand.
By tonight there would hardly be a soul in Boscombe or on the neighboring farms who did not know it.
Dash it all! But he did not release her hand, and she did not pull it away. And when she asked him as they took their leave of each other on the driveway if he would join her on Tuesday for a picnic at the lake, he did not say a firm no as common sense told him he ought.
“I can come after work,” he said. “About four o’clock?”
“Come to the house,” she said. “We can take a picnic basket in the gig.”
She had clearly realized too, then, that there was no further point in trying to keep their friendship to themselves.
“Thank you for today,” she said. “I have enjoyed it more than any other day this year. Maybe last year too. Thank you for thinking to bring food and drink. It was quite delicious.”
