“Was I happy then?” she asked. “It was a mistake.”
“It was a spontaneous outpouring of joy,” he said. “It did not come from any of the disciplined rules of behavior you have followed so meticulously all your life.”
“It most certainly did not,” she said. “I was not taught to kiss random men.”
He regarded her through slightly squinted eyes, his head tipped a little to one side. “Is that what I am?” he asked her. “A random man?”
She sighed. “How did this get started?” she asked him, thoughshe did not wait for an answer. “I have loved two men in my life, Matthew. I have kissed two men. One of them was my husband.”
“And the other was me?” He phrased it as a question, though the implication was perfectly obvious. She had definitely kissed him at the foot of that hill a few days ago.
“When we set off on this outing earlier,” she said, “I did it with the firm conviction that it must be the last. I had the feeling that you had made a similar decision. For any friendship between us, no matter how casual or innocent, cannot be kept secret. Already word is spreading, and that is hardly surprising. We have been seen by various gardeners and other servants here. I have already received a very gentle warning from Sir Ifor Rhys, who saw us on top of the hill a few days ago and tried and failed to attract our attention.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had a warning this morning too. From Miss Wexford.”
“Ah,” she said. “So we must put a firm and abrupt end to our renewed friendship because gossip might be bad for your business and it might tarnish my reputation and that of my family, who will be seen as neglectful and unable to control me. So how am I to express this freedom of which you speak, Matthew? It is an illusion. I am bound hand and foot for the rest of my life by the expectations of society. And you cannot throw away the productive life of contentment you have spent more than twenty years building here, and years before that cultivating.”
“You are right, you know,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I did intend to make this the last time I would accept any of your invitations here. I could not see any comfortable way forward for our friendship. I had decided that maybe it was a mistake to have believed it could be renewed. For myself I did not fear notoriety. I have never deliberately courted the approval of my neighborshere. People may bring their business to me or go elsewhere with it. It has never mattered much to me. My financial needs are few. It does not take much to cover them, and I have never craved more. But I have been concerned about your reputation, especially now, when you are here at Ravenswood alone. I have not wanted to do it damage, even with an innocent friendship. But—”
“But?” She looked at him and smiled ruefully.
“But as time has passed this afternoon and I have seen you happy again,” he said, “that part of me that lived in perpetual rebellion when I was a boy asks why we should end it. Must we live only for the approval of others, who really do not know us or care deeply about us at all? Must everything be about unfailing respectability? Even at the expense of personal happiness?”
“One lesson was given great emphasis when I was a girl,” she said. “I was taught that reputation was a lady’s single most valuable possession. Give up reputation, and everything was gone. Probably forever, for people have long memories.”
“A dowager countess throws away her reputation, then, does she,” he said, “when she befriends a carpenter?”
“That or her happiness,” she said. “She cannot have both. And so, if she bows to the expectations of society, she really has no freedom to choose. She loses her power to shape her own future, to engage with friends and activities of her own choosing. She loses her ability simply to be happy, running down hills, shrieking and laughing, kissing random men, exploring an island scarcely larger than a pocket handkerchief with a carpenter just because she enjoys his company more than that of all others at the moment.”
She blinked several times so she could see his face more clearly and realized it was tears that were blurring her vision. But before she could lift a hand to swipe them away, he did it for her, cuppingher face with two large, slightly callused hands and wiping away her tears with the pads of two roughened thumbs.
And he kissed her, softly, warmly, his lips light and slightly parted over her own. She felt instant comfort, a sense of rightness, and sighed as she moved into his embrace, parting her own lips so she could feel his heat and taste him. And she lowered her knees, turned toward him, and wrapped her arms around him so he would not end the kiss almost before it had begun. She unbalanced herself in the process, and he lowered her backward onto the grass, holding the kiss as he did so, and following her down so she felt half his weight heavy across her.
He raised his head and gazed heavy-lidded down into her eyes.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
“Matthew,” she whispered. And it seemed miraculous to her that this man with the lines of age beginning to form on his face and the silvering dark hair, one lock down over his brow, was the boy she had adored as a girl, the boy with whom she had been falling in love when her upbringing and the excitement of being singled out for elevation to the dizzying heights of the aristocracy had persuaded her to marry Caleb. Yet here he was now, that boy, all these years later, just as dear as he had been then. Matthew Taylor. Calling her beautiful and meaning it.
He was kissing her again then, more fiercely and with greater heat, and she was kissing him back with all the longing of the years that had passed since they had gone on to lives that did not include each other. His hands were moving over her on top of her clothing, cupping her breasts, outlining her waist and her hips, pausing over the slight mound above the junction of her legs. Worshiping her. Making her feel young again and desirable again and full of ananswering desire. Her hands found their way beneath his coat and waistcoat to the smooth warmth of his shirt, and she felt the wiry strength of his back, the straightness of his spine, the powerful muscles of his shoulders. She could feel, after he had removed his hand, the hardness of his arousal pressed to her through the layers of their clothing and wanted him with a fierce desire she had not felt since the early years of her marriage. Oh, so long ago.
“Matthew.” She was whispering his name again into his mouth, and he raised his head to look down at her. She watched regretfully as the slightly glazed look in his eyes turned to a frown.
He sat up abruptly and pushed the fingers of both hands through his hair. “Oh, God,” he said. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
She reached out a hand to reassure him, but he had leapt to his feet and moved a short distance away. His eyes were on the water of the lake as he began to peel off his clothes. Her eyes widened as she watched him, but he seemed almost unaware of her. When he had stripped down to his drawers, he ran into the water and kept going until it reached his waist. Then he waded a little farther and dived under, to reappear a few moments later farther out in the lake. He shook his head and glanced back but then swam away with powerful strokes.
Ah, Clarissa thought, trying to bring order back to her hair before clasping her knees and gazing after him. This was why any sort of friendship between them was unwise. For it was definitely more than just friendship, and more too than just romance. She had already admitted it to herself. She had felt it, surely, from the beginning, when she had gone boldly to his rooms to ask if he would make a crib for Ben and Jennifer’s baby, hoping she would also find the courage to ask him about the wood carving he had entered inthe contest at the fete two years ago. She had known she was playing with fire. She had known it with greater clarity at each subsequent meeting.
Must it be ended, then?
Common sense said yes.
Something inside herself she had never explored before argued back.
Why not have the boldness, the backbone, to reach for what she wanted and to…to…to what? To disregard, to assign to perdition, what anyone else might think of them? Or say of them?
It was not a decision that involved her alone, of course.
