He arrived home with his head full of the design he would commit to paper to show Miss Wexford tomorrow and noticed that one of the more modest carriages from Ravenswood was drawn up outside the village inn. Ah, the Wares were home from London, then, were they? He would have to be more careful about his jaunts to the poplar alley inside the park, though the whole of the park was open for the use and enjoyment of the public at large for three days out of every week. Indeed, Stratton—Devlin Ware, that was—had often been heard to say that he and his wife would be happy to see their neighbors strolling there or enjoying a picnic by the lake any day of the week. It seemed selfish, he had explained, to keep such spacious beauty all to themselves.
They were decent folk, the Wares, Matthew thought as he made his way up the outside stairs that led to his rooms above the smithy and heard the familiar ringing of a hammer on the anvil. They were not at all high in the instep. Years ago he had wished they were, so he would have some reason to hate them, but he had never been able to find any such excuse. Even if he had, it was a spiteful wish that was unworthy of him.
“Mr. Taylor,” a female voice called from the street below as he turned the knob on his door and was about to step inside. He had not locked it when he left. He never did. As far as he knew, no one did. Boscombe was a decent, safe place to live.
He would have known that voice anywhere, anytime. He turned to look down at the Dowager Countess of Stratton, his hand still on the doorknob.
“I was wondering,” she said, looking up at him, “if I might have a word with you.”
She was alone, he saw, though there was presumably a coachman inside the inn, keeping an eye on the carriage while he enjoyed his pint of ale and awaited the return of his mistress. There was no sign of a maid. It was not a shocking breach of decorum, of course, since Boscombe was in many ways just an extension of Ravenswood. But…Did she mean a private word? In his rooms?
“May I come up?” she asked, almost as though she had heard his thoughts.
“Please do,” he said, and stepped inside in order to hold the door open for her as she ascended the stairs, holding up the skirts of her dark blue carriage dress, which had surely been newly and expertly—and expensively—fashioned in London.
“Good morning, Lady Stratton,” he said briskly as she reached the top stair and raised her head to look at him again.
She smiled. “Good afternoon, Matthew,” she said.
“I suppose it is past noon,” he said, closing the door after she had stepped inside.
And suddenly the place felt not quite like his home. It seemed filled with her presence, and he felt half suffocated. It was a strange fact, when he had seen her with fair frequency for years past and had occasionally exchanged a few words with her. He had even danced with her once in the ballroom at Ravenswood. But she had never been here inside his home before. She was looking around with unabashed curiosity.
“What a cozy home you have,” she said, and it did not sound as if she was mocking him.
The room was not large, but it suited him. It was uncluttered—as was his life. There was a couch that would seat three at a push. Ithad seen better days, but it was marvelously comfortable. There was a rocking chair and a small table with two upright chairs, all of which he had made himself. There was a knotted cotton mat on the floor and, on the walls, a few pictures he had acquired on his travels. A bookcase he had also made stood beneath one of them, stuffed with his favorite books. There were wooden candlesticks, again his own handiwork, on a shelf above the stove, plus a couple of his wood carvings, though not his favorite one. That was in his bedchamber, a smaller room next door.
The smithy was large. The rooms above it, the original home of the Hollands, were of an equal size. Most of the space now, though, was given over to Matthew’s workroom. His living quarters were small, but he liked them that way. They served his needs.
“It is a little smaller than Ravenswood,” he said, and she smiled at him again.
“A trifle smaller,” she agreed. “It has a low ceiling. It must be warm in winter.”
“And stifling in the summer,” he said, “especially with Cam working below me. Ah, he has stopped hammering. That is better. Now we can hear ourselves think.”
He actually liked the sounds of the smithy and even the smells, though they had taken some getting used to at first. There was, of course, the additional smell of wood coming from his workroom.
“You have a pleasant view through the window,” she said, approaching it to look out over the village green to the river on the far side of it and the park of Ravenswood beyond that, though the house was out of sight from this particular window.
“Yes,” he said, and recalled his manners. “Will you have a seat?” He indicated the couch, but she pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “May I make you a cup of tea?”
“I will not trouble you, but thank you,” she said. “I came to find out if you are very busy at the moment.”
He was always busy, though he was careful never to allow work to dominate his waking hours or overwhelm him. He had learned to say no when he felt he had to. People came from near and far with commissions for him, both minor and major. He had wondered when he first set up here if he could possibly make a living from the proceeds of what he could make—or mend—with his own hands. He would not have been destitute if it had been impossible, of course, as there were the lease payments he received annually for the manor house that had been his grandmother’s and a considerable income from the farm. But he had vowed he would never use that money to live upon. He had decided long ago that he would make his own way in life, and stubbornness was one of his besetting sins, or one of his virtues, depending upon one’s point of view.
“Not too busy,” he said. He stood looking down at her, his hands clasped behind his back, and marveled at how well she had aged. She had been a very slender, vividly pretty dark-haired girl with a warm charm that seemed to be the very essence of her being. She no longer had the extreme slenderness of youth, but she was still slim and shapely in a more womanly way. She was no longer pretty. She was beautiful instead—and there was a difference, the first characterized by the sparkle of youth, the second by the calm dignity of maturity. Her hair was still dark, though if she removed her bonnet perhaps he would see some silver threaded through it. She was, after all, fifty years old or close to it. Her birthday was in the autumn.
She had been married to Stratton for well over twenty years before he collapsed and died in the taproom of the inn just downthe road from here. They had had five children, all now grown up, two of them already married with children. She was a grandmother. And there was also Ben Ellis, the sixth child, who was not hers but a by-blow of the late Stratton’s with a mistress he had kept in London. Matthew had always marveled that she had agreed to take in the young child when his mother died and Stratton brought him to Ravenswood, a mere few weeks after Devlin was born. That had all happened before Matthew left England and stayed away for more than ten years.
She was a remarkable woman, Clarissa Ware, Dowager Countess of Stratton.
“Ben and Jennifer are expecting their first child just after Christmas,” she said, again as if reading his thoughts.
Ben had done well for himself despite his illegitimacy. Stratton must have left him money. He had apparently purchased his home down by the sea from Devlin. Last year he married Lady Jennifer Arden, sister of the Duke of Wilby, who was married to the former Lady Philippa Ware. Matthew had had dealings with Lady Jennifer while she was staying at Ravenswood two years ago.
“Ah,” he said. “I made her a wheeled chair and a stout cane the year before last, both with help from Cam Holland. I hope she is doing well. John Rogers made her shoes at the same time to help her walk.”
“She uses them all with skill and determination,” Clarissa said. “The chair has given her great freedom of movement, and she actually walks, twisted leg notwithstanding, far more than anyone could have predicted just a couple of years ago, thanks to the special boot and the cane.”
