“Future plans for a woman need not always involve marriage,” she said. “It was all I thought of once upon a time, admittedly. I married your father when I was seventeen. I did it freely and gladly and did not regret it. But I am going to be fifty soon, Owen. I maywant—in fact, I probably will want—something different now. Like friendships with people of my own choosing. Throughout my girlhood, until I married, I had a very close friendship with Matthew Taylor. I am not sure you are aware of that. The Taylors lived right next to Grandmama and Grandpapa Greenfield. They still do.”
“But things have changed since then, surely, Mama,” he said. “He is a carpenter now. He lives above the smithy, for the love of God. I have the greatest respect for him. He is the best wood-carver and the best archer I have ever encountered, yet he is very modest about both. It would be hard not to like him, in fact. But…well, you are a Ware. Of Ravenswood. The Countess of Stratton.”
“The dowager countess,” she said.
“Even so,” he said. “It really is presumptuous of him to take advantage of your being alone here by trying to revive an old—a very old—friendship.”
“It was I who suggested that we renew it,” she said.
He gazed at her, a troubled frown on his face.
His tea, she could see, was cold in the cup, and his saucer was an untidy mess of crumbs he had dumped there. She emptied the cup into the slop basin and shook the crumbs into it too before removing the cozy from the teapot and pouring him another cup. She placed a fresh biscuit on the saucer.
“In the two and a half weeks since I came home,” she said, “I have spent a great deal of time alone, both indoors and out, just as I planned. I have called upon friends and neighbors and received their calls. I have attended church. I have been twice to visit your grandparents—it was Grandmama’s seventieth birthday last weekend, as you perhaps recall. I have written letters. I have behaved in exemplary fashion, in fact. But of course I have added a friend to my repertoire. An old friend, now new again. We have sat up in thetemple folly and strolled in the park. We have walked to the eastern boundary and climbed the hills for a better view. We have picnicked at the lake and rowed on the water. I have watched him practice shooting his arrows and marveled at his skill. We have sat in the summerhouse and drunk lemonade. And today, just before you arrived home, I took him to see the clearing on the bank of the river where I am going to persuade Devlin to allow me to build a dower house—a cottage that will be all my own while I live.”
“A dower house?” He gaped at her. “When you have all of Ravenswood Hall as a home? Mama. Whatever has come over you? It seems to me I have come home just in time.”
“To bring me back under control?” she said, smiling fondly and with considerable amusement at him.
“I hardly recognize you,” he said.
“Good.” She laughed outright. “The time I have spent alone here has borne some fruit, then.”
He opened his mouth to speak again, but she held up a hand. “Drink your tea before that too turns cold,” she said. “Inevitably, Owen, people have noticed that Matthew and I have spent some time together, though it has not been a great deal. He is, after all, a workingman, and I have come here deliberately to enjoy some solitude—which I have been doing. A few people have given each of us gentle warnings of possible gossip. At first I was a little alarmed, as was he. And he may yet decide that it would be unwise to consort further with me. For my part, I refuse to give up what makes me happy just because the general consensus may be that being friends with a gentleman-turned-carpenter is not quite what might be expected of a dowager countess.”
“He makes you happy, Mama?” Owen asked, frowning again.
“Being with him makes me happy,” she said. “I am remindedof my girlhood, a very happy time in my life. And he played a large part in my happiness then. We played and laughed together. We talked endlessly of anything and everything that came to our minds. After thirty-three years we are discovering that all that has not changed. Everyone should be fortunate enough to enjoy such a friendship.”
“You play?” he asked, sounding aghast.
She laughed again. “I did tell you we took a boat out on the lake,” she said. “We also landed on the island and went exploring. Do you remember the days when we did that, Owen, and you children peopled the Dark Forest with all sorts of monsters and villains and wild beasts and went to vanquish them?”
“You explored the island?” he said.
“We did, though all we found was a mother duck and her ducklings, bobbing out toward open water,” she said. She could not resist continuing. “And when we climbed the hills on the eastern edge of the park, we did not walk the whole length of the roadway over them. We found the least steep descent directly to the park and climbed and scrambled and ran down it.”
“You were on foot?” he said. “And you ran down one of those slopes? I almost broke my neck the only time I tried it, and Ben threatened to tan my hide if I ever did it again. Not that he ever carried out any of those threats, but I was never willing to take the chance.”
She smiled at him. If she had heard about that descent of his at the time, she would probably have had a fit of the vapors.
He heaved a great sigh and set down his almost-empty cup.
“Whatever am I going to do with you, Mama?” he said. “If this connection with Mr. Taylor blows up into a full scandal, you know, all the blame will be heaped upon me.”
“I will tell you what you are going to do,” she said. “Tomorrowyou are going to take me in your curricle all about the perimeter of the park and even up over the hills. And you are going to name to me every flower we see. There are so many of them blooming right now, with many more to come, that I find it impossible to identify more than half of them. You used to be very good at knowing them all. If there was one even the gardeners could not name, we always consulted you.”
“I daresay I made things up from time to time,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Right after breakfast.”
He grimaced.
—
Miss Wexford was euphoric. Her new dining table was in place in the dining room, larger and more imposing than the old one, weighing considerably more, steady on its many broad feet, ornately carved, and surpassing in splendor even the most extravagant of her dreams. She would not cover it with a cloth, she told Matthew and her brother. Not, at least, until all her friends and neighbors had been given the chance to admire it.
“I hope you understand, Prue,” Colonel Wexford said, “that we are going to be stuck living at this house until we die, and probably Ariel after us. Every one of the male indoor servants and every one of the gardeners and grooms, not to mention my valet, has threatened to quit my service en masse if they are ever again called upon to lift that table.”
