“Oh, Andrew!” Miss Wexford exclaimed with glee. “My brother does like his little joke, Mr. Taylor. Take no notice of him.”
She was going to plan a party to show off her new possession, she announced, and she made her own prediction that within a week of the party Matthew would have so many new commissionshe would have to give up sleeping at night. The idea caused her a great deal more merriment, while Matthew wondered if he was doomed to having the Wexford table become his artistic legacy to the world.
But he was touched to have given so much pleasure and was smiling as he climbed the outside stairs to his rooms a little later. Someone hailed him from the street before he reached the top. He was unsurprised to see that it was Owen Ware, who was coming from the direction of the inn. The boy must have been watching for him—though he must get out of this habit of thinking of men in their twenties and thirties as boys. It was a symptom of his own advancing age, he supposed.
“I would like a word with you, Mr. Taylor,” Owen said. “Perhaps I could buy you a pint of ale?”
“You had better come on up,” Matthew said, imagining how the landlord and any patrons who happened to be taking midafternoon refreshments at the inn would strain their ears to overhear the conversation if they went there. “I’ll make us both a cup of tea.”
He went inside his rooms and left the door open while he started a fire in the stove and filled the kettle from a large pitcher of water in the corner. He heard the door close quietly.
“Ah, that lovely smell of wood,” Owen said. “I suppose you are so used to it that you scarcely notice it any longer.”
“I try not to take anything in my life for granted,” Matthew said. “Have a seat at the table.”
Owen sat and ran his hand over the smooth surface. “I suppose you made this yourself,” he said. “It must be marvelous to have a skill like that. One thing about growing up in a wealthy, privileged home is that one ends up pretty useless by the time one reaches adulthood. Everything practical is done by someone else who is paid for doing it.”
It was not exactly how Matthew had imagined this conversation beginning. He took the chair across from Owen’s, since the stove and the kettle would take a while to perform their tasks.
“One can always learn what one wants or needs to learn but did not learn during boyhood,” he said.
“Is that what you did?” Owen asked. “You are Reginald Taylor’s brother, are you not? My grandparents’ neighbor. I suppose you were a younger son.”
“As are you,” Matthew said. “Youngest son in your case.”
“Except that in my case there is plenty of wealth to go around,” Owen said. “I do not have to do a day’s work in my life if I choose not to.”
“Would a life of idleness satisfy your soul?” Matthew asked.
“That is an odd way of putting it,” Owen said. “Satisfy my soul? I suppose you expect that as the third son I am going to be a clergyman.”
“I would guess it is something you do not wish to do,” Matthew said. “What do you want to do?”
“Well, there you have me,” Owen said. “I am twenty-two years old and do not know what I want to do when I grow up. It is as frustrating as hell. I want to use my privilege and relative wealth to help those who have nothing, but as soon as I put the thought into words I feel the distinct urge to stick a finger down my throat and vomit. I expect to look in a mirror to see a halo hovering above my head. I do not like self-righteous piety. I do not know what I want.”
“Give it time,” Matthew said. “Do not try to press the issue, especially as there is no compulsion upon you to do something in order to avoid starvation. Life has a way of leading a person in the right direction if that person does not try to get in the way.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Owen asked. “How did you end up here? It could not have been what you expected when you were growing up. Was it?”
The kettle was boiling and Matthew got up to make the tea. He covered the teapot with the patchwork cozy he had bought at the last fete and set it on the table to steep. He set sugar and milk beside it with a slop basin and strainer, and put the only two matched cups and saucers he owned before them.
“I always felt a compulsion to whittle wood,” he said. “I thought of it as a hobby, one at which I was not very good. I never made the association with carpentry and the chance of making a living with it. That understanding came gradually while I was wandering about Europe, not thinking of anything in particular except picking up the odd job here and there and seeing what was to be seen. By the time I came back to England—oh, about the time you were being born, I suppose—I knew without any doubt what I wanted to do and how I wanted to live. I had learned the necessary skills at the hands of masters.”
“So you settled here,” Owen said, looking about the room while Matthew poured the tea, having ascertained that his guest took both milk and a little sugar in his tea. “You have been here for most if not all of my life. Did you never have the ambition to expand the business with employees working under you and a fortune building in some bank for your future needs?”
“No,” Matthew said.
“Are you sorry now you were not a bit more ambitious when you were younger?” Owen asked as he stirred his tea.
“No,” Matthew said.
Owen tapped his wet spoon against the rim of his cup and set itdown in the saucer. He looked up and met Matthew’s gaze directly across the table. He was looking a bit white about the mouth, Matthew thought. He was about to get to the point, it seemed.
“What is your interest in my mother?” he asked.
It was what Matthew had expected him to ask as soon as he walked through the door, but more belligerently expressed, perhaps.
“Lady Stratton was a close friend of mine years and years ago, before she married your father,” he said. “Before I married. After that she moved way up on the social scale and I moved way down—deliberately so on both our parts. It is a number of years since your father passed on. It is many years since my wife died. In fact, she passed a year after we married of complications following childbirth. Our daughter died too. We have discovered in the last few weeks, your mother and I, that our friendship never fully expired but lay dormant all these years. We have enjoyed a few outings together—all on Ravenswood land—and lengthy conversations. I am not ambitious, not in my professional life and not in my personal life. And I believe your mother can be trusted always to do what is right and best for her and all who love her.”
