For a few moments she was tempted to strip down to her shift and follow him into the water. It was an age since she had last swum in the lake or anywhere else. The desire to do it now, when she was still feeling a bit flustered after their kiss, was almost overpowering. But it would be the wrong thing to do. He had taken to the water himself because he had needed to get away from her, to compose himself.
There was something she could do, however. She got to her feet and made her away across the island to retrieve the pile of towels she had brought with them in the boat. She carried them back and sat again to wait for him.
Chapter Ten
At first Matthew thought Clarissa had left without him and half hoped she had. He wondered if she had taken his clothes with her. But when he looked again, he could see that she was back sitting on the beach, something white on the grass beside her. The towels she had brought in the boat, he guessed. The maternal instinct still burned bright in her. She had gone to fetch them.
His blood had cooled and the unaccustomed exercise of swimming had restored his equilibrium. But he still felt shaken. He had known he was attracted to her, a fact that complicated any chance there might have been of a casual friendship with her over the summer. He had not expected it to prove beyond his control, however. Saturday’s kiss had not bothered him unduly. It had been a spontaneous and understandable reaction to that breathless run down the hill. It had been an extension of their laughter.
Today’s kiss had not been at all like that.
She had been baring her soul to him, something he could not remember her ever doing as a girl. She had never seemed to havetroubles in those days, unlike him. Now she was caught in the dilemma of wanting both freedom and reputation. Yet she did not believe it was going to be possible to have both.
Clarissa had always chosen respectability over freedom. Though she had not called it freedom a while ago, had she? She had called it happiness. And he wondered again if she had ever been truly happy. For happiness came from freedom, it seemed to him. When had Clarissa ever been truly free, except perhaps in brief bursts very recently? Or had she always been free but used her freedom to choose duty and loyalty and respectability? There were never any clear answers to the deeper questions of life, were there?
All of which speculation was beside the point. The point was that he had kissed her when she had been at her most vulnerable. Oh, he might have started out with the idea of comforting her, but soon he had been kissing her with a panting need. One she had returned, it was true, but he had started it. When more than ever before she had needed a friend, he had responded as a lover. And so he had compounded her unhappiness, especially as they had more or less agreed that this would be the last afternoon they would spend together.
He did not know how long he had been swimming, but it was long enough. It was time to return and apologize. Not that a simple apology was going to be anywhere near enough. Unfortunately, he did not know what would be.
He waded out through the shallow water and saw that she was watching his approach, her expression quite unreadable—deliberately so, perhaps? The air felt downright chilly on his dripping body. He took up two of the towels in one hand, gathered his clothes with the other, and walked back a little way into the trees to dry off and dress—minus his drawers, which he squeezed out and wrapped inthe towel he had used to rub his hair dry. He made his way back to stand beside her and dropped his two towels to the grass. She did not look up at him.
“After all the times I spilled out my troubles to you when we were growing up,” he said, “you never once said or did anything to upset me further. You never scolded or sermonized or suggested that I was the author of my own woes. You never told me I was tiresome or too much of a troublemaker to be associated with you any longer. Instead you smiled and sometimes reached out a hand and somehow made me feel that I was special to you and worth knowing. You made me feel valued. You made me feel good about myself. I always went home happier and calmer than I was when I came. Today you opened your troubled heart to me, and what did I do? I dived at you and mauled you. I made your unhappiness all about me. I reached for my own gratification. And…What?”
He stopped talking, for she was gazing up at him now and she was smiling—a full-blown smile that lit her eyes and curved her lips. He would have called it a mischievous smile if mischief weren’t contrary to Clarissa’s personality.
“Oh, Matthew,” she said. “You did not dive. Or maul. What an absurd visual picture those words conjure. We ended up in each other’s arms. You responded to my need and kissed me. And I kissed you back because I wanted to do something entirely free. Because…why should I not? Whom was I harming? Not you, I judged. You wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you. I was glad you had the good sense to end it when you did because it would have been unseemly to continue in what is a secluded place but not entirely private. But, Matthew, you must not take all the blame upon yourself for what did happen, or any blame at all, in fact. What blame?”
“You want to end our friendship,” he said, “because all the servants here must already be buzzing with talk of it and Sir Ifor Rhys has given you a gentle warning. And because Miss Wexford has warned me, albeit gently too, and she is your friend. I take the blame for making things even more complicated.”
“Things,” she said as she got to her feet and brushed creases and grass from her skirt while he realized too late that he ought to have offered her a helping hand. She took up her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “You want to end it too, Matthew. I can believe Miss Wexford’s warning was tactful. She is of no more a malicious nature than Sir Ifor is. Nevertheless it was a sure sign that word is spreading and that those who feel kindly toward one or both of us are concerned.”
He bent to pick up the towels. He held the dry ones under his arm and the wet ones in his hand.
“I do not know about you,” she said, “but I am awfully hungry. I could devour one of your cheese sandwiches with no effort at all.”
“Instead,” he said, “you are going to have to settle for some of the exquisite dainties with which that food hamper by the boathouse is probably stuffed.”
“And champagne, alas,” she said, “instead of water from your flask.”
“I do not suppose I will ever live down that picnic fare,” he said. “You will have to excuse me—or not—on the grounds that I am just an old bachelor.”
“Widower,” she said softly. “And there is nothing to excuse, Matthew. I am not teasing you when I tell you it was the loveliest picnic of my life. Shall we go and have tea?”
He followed her back to the boat. He wondered how many people in the village and neighborhood realized that he was indeed awidower, not a bachelor. It was something he normally preferred to keep to himself. He celebrated his daughter’s birth and mourned her death and his wife’s on the same day each year. He did it quietly and alone with lit candles and meditation. One thing he had never done since his return to England, though, was visit their grave.
He hurried on ahead as they passed the little pavilion in order to be at the bank ahead of her to hand her into the boat.
—
She told him some amusing stories of things that had happened in London earlier in the spring. She told him of the picture of Carrie, the dog, that Joy had enclosed with a letter from Jennifer. She told him of the most recent letter from Pippa at Greystone. She frequently felt exhausted, she had written, just from watching Stephanie play with Emily and Christopher while they took shameless advantage of her energy and good nature.
“I am a typical mother and grandmother, you see,” Clarissa said. “Boring everyone who is polite enough to listen with doting stories of my children and grandchildren. I am sorry, Matthew. I do not mean to be tedious.” She smiled ruefully at him.
“You know,” he said, “despite the wide brim of that bonnet and perhaps because your parasol is lying idle beside the blanket, you will be fortunate indeed if your face is not sun bronzed tomorrow.”
“With freckles too?” she said. “Horror of horrors. Nobody will be able to look at me without swooning.” But she did not reach for her parasol.
“I would always want to look at you,” he said, grinning—the first time he had smiled since he went dashing into the lake earlier. “And I could not find you tedious if I tried.”
