There was a shriek from inside the carriage as it slowed and came to a stop. A little nose was flattened against the window, and two little hands were splayed against it.
“Grandmama!”
The door opened before the coachman could descend from his perch, and Ben swung his daughter down safely to the ground before jumping out himself to join her.
“We came! Great-Aunt Edith is looking after Mama, and Carrie is looking after both of them. She will bark and frighten anyone who tries to hurt them. We are to take you home with us. You can come to the beach with me and collect shells. You can watch me swim.”
Why did young children so often feel that they had to talk at full volume, Clarissa wondered as she bent to hug and kiss her granddaughter.
“Slow down, Joy,” Ben said. “Give me time to hug Grandmama myself.”
He proceeded to do so. “How are you, Mother?” he asked. “We have not come to bear you off to Penallen in chains, you will be happy to know. How do you do, Taylor?” He held out a hand to shake Matthew’s. “I was to tell you from my wife that having the wheeled chair you made her two years ago is the best thing that has happened to her. I hope she makes marrying me an exception to that extravagant claim.”
“I hope so too,” Matthew said while Joy jumped up and down on the spot and held one of Clarissa’s hands with both her own. “I will make my way home, Clarissa.”
“I will take the liberty of calling upon you tomorrow if I may,” Ben said. “But not, I hasten to add, in order to raise any sort of hell with you.”
“Tomorrow afternoon will be fine,” Matthew said as he bent to pick up his equipment while Joy gazed with frank interest at it all.
“Goodbye, Matthew,” Clarissa said. “I will see you soon, I hope.”
She watched him stride toward the bridge while the coachman lowered the steps to make it easier for them all to climb inside for the short ride up to the house. While Joy was scrambling in, Clarissa turned toward the son whose illegitimacy she had always steadfastly ignored.
“Ben,” she said, “what on earth are you doing here?”
—
Ben had no chance to answer until an hour or so later, after Owen had arrived home from his long ride, bringing Clarence with him. They had already escorted the ladies to their respective homes. The two of them had come to Ravenswood with the intention of bearing Clarissa off to dine with Marian and Charles, her brother-in-law. Clarence wanted to show Owen the new horse his father had recently acquired.
That plan quickly changed, however. The two young men exchanged hearty handshakes and some back slapping with Ben, but it was impossible for them to ignore an excitedly bouncing Joy, who was bursting with the need to impart to her favorite uncle all the news she had just been pouring out to her grandmama almost without a pause to catch her breath. Owen grasped her by the waist, hoisted her high, and tossed her toward the ceiling while she shrieked with fright and glee.
“Come and play,” she demanded. “Cousin Clarence can come too.”
Owen and Clarence went obediently from the room with her. They were going out to the hill to play one of Joy’s favorite games, rolling down the long slope all the way from the temple to the bottom into the waiting arms of one of the two men. Clarissa understood that Clarence was going to dine here at Ravenswood and sent word to the kitchen.
So much for her quiet alone time.
“You were going to tell me what on earth you are doing here,” she said to Ben.
“Was I?” But he held up both hands, palms out, when she would have spoken again.
Suddenly all her annoyance had returned. Who was next? Devlin and Gwyneth, just happening to have made a detour here on their way to Wales? In the hope, of course, that she had changed her mind and would go with them after all. Was a woman quite incapable of knowing her own mind? Even when her fiftieth birthday was galloping up on her?
“May I speak first?” Ben asked. “Then you may go for my throat if you wish. I have not come here to be a watchdog. Owen was the one appointed for that role, and it is quite obvious how effective he has been. No one could be less suited for the job. And I have not come to bear you off to Penallen against your will to keep you amused there through the summer until the family returns here. I will gladly stay for a while, of course, if it is what you wish. And I will very gladly take you back to Penallen with us if that is what you wish. But apparently you made your preference quite clear when you decided to come home early from London. And I assume you have not changed your mind since then. You wanted time to yourself, time to be yourself instead of always being someone’s mother or mother-in-law or grandmother or sister or even friend, and instead of being coddled and included and protected and loved to death.”
Ah. At last. Someone who understood.
“Nobody believes me,” she said. “Worse, no one trusts me.”
“I do, Mother,” he said. “I believe you and I trust you. So does Jennifer. She knows just what it is like to be loved so fiercely thatthe recipient feels smothered. We both knew as soon as I was appealed to that I would come. But not to rein you in. We both want you to know that you have our full approval and support.”
There was an ache at the back of her throat as she swallowed and fought tears. “It is not just my being alone here that has rung all the alarm bells, though,” she said. “It is my friendship with Matthew Taylor.”
“Jennifer adores him,” he said. “He made her chair and gave her more freedom than she had had since early childhood, before her illness. And he made her a crutch, which, together with the shoe John Rogers, the cobbler, made for her, has enabled her to walk after a fashion. She even walked along the aisle of the church to me on our wedding day. She refers to Matthew Taylor as an artist. I have always felt a deep respect for him. He is hardworking and humble and refined—and marvelously talented. He speaks like a gentleman and is, indeed, the son of a gentleman and his wife—which is more than can be said of me. None of which attributes really have anything to say to your case, Mother. You are free to choose your own friends, whoever they are or whatever they are, as well as your own romantic partners. I do not know if Matthew Taylor is only the one or both, and frankly it is none of my business. Or that of any of your children.”
“Well,” she said. “We have been seen walking hand in hand in the park.”
“Shocking behavior indeed,” he said. “Mother. Two years ago the alarm was raised in the family when it was observed that Jennifer and I were becoming friendly and perhaps eventually a little more than just that. The sister of the Duke of Wilby and the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. It was unthinkable. We almost succumbed to what others thought. We almost deprived ourselvesof the love of a lifetime, however long our lifetimes last. It took some courage to go against the accepted norms. I remember it well. But we did it. We did what was right for us. And the sky did not fall upon our heads as a result. You must do what is right for you.”
