Matthew shouldered his quiver and bow and picked up the target. She walked beside him along the terrace and onto the drive to the bridge and the village beyond.
“I hope to make a start on the crib next week,” he said.
“That will be lovely,” she said.
“I am just stuck upon where the elephant should go,” he said. “Nowhere seems right, but it must be included. It is central to my whole vision.”
“Oh, indeed,” she said. “Peering around the corner of one of the footboards, perhaps?”
He stopped abruptly. The meadows on either side of them were a riot of wildflowers, whose heavy scent hung on the air with a promise of summer. Sheep were grazing placidly among them. One ambled closer to the drive and stood looking at the two humans before baaing softly and turning away.
“That is brilliant,” he said. “It is one place I had not thought of.”
“Sometimes I really am brilliant,” she said, and they both laughed.
Inside, of course, neither of them was laughing at all. She had always known she had hurt him by marrying Caleb and thus putting an abrupt end to their friendship. She had known he was in love with her—as she had been more than halfway in love with him. And let no one tell her it had not been true love just because they were so young. He had reacted in a manner rather typical of him at the time. He had rashly and impulsively taken up with the somewhat notorious Poppy Lang and then married her when he had acknowledged that the child she was carrying might well be his.
And the thing was, as Clarissa had told him back in the rose arbor, he would have stuck by Poppy for a lifetime and cared for her and supported her. He would have adored the child and sheltered her from all harm. They would have been the making of him, taking him by sure degrees from rebellious boyhood to responsible adulthood. But they had died. The child—Helena—had not even drawn breath.
Clarissa had always known that those deaths would have been painful for him. She had just not realized until today how painful.
Did one ever recover from the loss of one’s child? She had been enormously fortunate in having given birth to five living and healthy babies without any miscarriages or stillbirths. Her children had all survived the perils of childhood. Nicholas and Devlin, as well as Ben, had survived the Napoleonic wars.
How could she possibly understand what it must have been like…
“Will you leave your things beside the driveway again and come into my parlor?” she asked him, keeping her tone light. “We will shut the door and be cozy and private together. I am not ready to let you go home yet. Tell me you are not ready either.”
He turned to smile at her. “Your cottage is built already?” he asked.
“Except for the tiles on the roof and the chimney,” she said. “Or perhaps thatch. I have not decided yet. And except for the windows and floors. Oh, and the walls. And there is no furniture.”
“No front door?” he asked.
“Alas,” she said. “No doors at all. Come anyway.”
“An abundance of imagination was not something either of us ever lacked, was it?” he said as he set down his things where he had put them last time.
They joined hands and walked along the bank of the river until they came to the clearing where she already lived in her imagination. She came here every day, sometimes merely to assure herself that yes, it was perfect, and sometimes to visualize how it would all look, cottage and garden. Alas, she was no architect. No landscaper either. She would recognize the perfection of it all when she saw it, but at present she had only a vague image in her mind, or perhaps more in her heart. An image of home. Her very own.
“A green door, do you think?” she asked. “Or red?”
“You will be surrounded by greenery,” he said. “Red would look cheerful.”
“Then red it will be,” she said. “Have a seat. Take that comfortable sofa.”
“The one with all the cushions?” he said. “Come and sit beside me, then. It is too big for just one person.”
They sat together on the rough grass, their arms about their updrawn knees as they gazed across the river to the village beyond it and slightly to their right. They could see the main road too from here. It was never very busy, though. One westbound stagecoach passed each day, and one that was eastward bound. Neither cameinto Boscombe, though both would stop and let off any passenger who was going there. Mostly, though, the view from here was of serene countryside.
“What will you do,” Matthew asked, “if Stratton refuses his permission for you to build here?”
“He will not,” she said. “He will bluster and complain and wonder what he has done so very wrong that I would choose to leave Ravenswood in favor of a lonely cottage here. But he will not say no.”
“You know your son so well, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It was a close-run thing for a number of years after I sent him away. He did not write—to any of us. Not even after Caleb died. He stayed away for another two years after that happened before coming home, cold in manner and with a heart he had hardened against all finer sentiments. I fear I must have given the same impression to him. Meeting each other again was the most excruciatingly difficult thing I believe I have ever done. Our relationship was strained, to say the least, for a while after his return. I believe it was Gwyneth who thawed his heart. She refused to give up on him. And then he and I had a heart-to-heart talk and we were finally free to love each other openly again. He will find it hard to understand now that his protective love is not enough for my needs, but he will accept my resolve. The real battle is going to be over who will pay for the new dower house. He will insist and I will resist. I will insist and he will resist.”
“Compromise?” he said.
