He found his grandmother’s grave and his parents’ first and stopped to acknowledge a pang of grief for them, though he had not allowed himself to grieve deeply when he heard of his parents’ deaths—a long time ago. He thought of what he had learned today and knew that all humanity was flawed. No one was totally innocent. No one was entirely guilty. We are all varying shades of gray.No man is an island…His grandmother had rarely spoken kindly to him, yet she had given him a home when he was homeless. She had been kind to his wife. She had left him everything she possessed when she died.
It was a large, sprawling graveyard. He searched for an unkempt mound. At least he hoped there was some sort of mound. One would have thought the exact spot would be seared upon his memory. But he had been too distraught at the time. Not outwardly. Outwardly he had seemed dead to all feeling, even grief. He knew that because people had told him so—with disapproving frowns.
He missed the double grave for a while because he was looking for the wrong thing. When he saw the neat headstone and the well-kept grave with its cluster of pink pansies growing from the ground, he looked almost idly at what was written there. He had been feeling near to despair at the very real possibility that he would never know quite where they were buried.
Poppy Taylor,he read,beloved wife of Matthew. And beneath that,Helena Taylor, cherished daughter. And the dates, the first showing that Poppy had died at the age of twenty-four—she had been five years older than Matthew. The second date was singular.Helena had been born and died on the same day in the same year. She had never drawn breath, never been given the chance to live.
But cherished nonetheless.
Someone had put the headstone here. Someone had composed the simple inscription. Someone had looked after the grave ever since, for more than thirty years. Someone had planted the flowers.
Someone had cared. Someone did care. Not past tense but present.
Matthew knelt beside the grave and pressed his hand to the stone so that the base of his palm touched Helena’s name and the tips of his fingers touched Poppy’s.
Ah, dear God.
His two women, the two he had vowed to love and protect for the rest of his life. The two who were supposed to be his salvation after a troubled boyhood and a misplaced romantic attachment. How different life might have been…Poppy, dead at twenty-four from some mysterious fever and convulsions coming seemingly from nowhere an hour or two after the midwife and doctor had left. And Helena, with no chance at life at all. The cord that had attached her to her mother for sustenance had been wrapped about her neck.
He had been helpless in the face of his responsibility to love and cherish them and keep them safe. And so he had failed in every imaginable way. And had fled. Briefly, as he crossed the channel from England, he had thought of dropping over the rail of the ship to the black waters below. But it was too easy a solution. He needed to suffer, to face himself and his many demons. And so he had forced himself to live on.
“Poppy,” he murmured now. “I would have loved you for alifetime. Sometimes love is a deliberate choice. I would have made it. I did make it. I did love you. I am sorry it was not enough.”
He moved his hand to trace the letters of his daughter’s name.
“Helena,” he said. “I could not save you. I could not die in your place. Life does not work that way. But I have always loved you with every breath I have drawn since you died. Forgive me for failing you.”
And he pressed his hand to his mouth and clenched his eyes closed, swallowing the tears that had been more than thirty years in the making.
Eventually he got to his feet, patted the top of the gravestone, and made his way back to the carriage, where Clarissa awaited him.
Along with what remained of his life.
Chapter Nineteen
They traveled home largely in silence, alone with their own thoughts, though they held hands most of the way and occasionally laced their fingers. Their arms and shoulders touched. For a while Clarissa tipped her head sideways to rest on Matthew’s shoulder. But she knew it was too soon for him to talk of all the teeming emotions the day had brought him. And she had much to think about herself. A great deal had happened since her return from London.
“I need to concentrate upon work for the next few days,” he said as the carriage made its turn into Boscombe.
She needed to be alone again too.
“You will not neglect your archery?” she asked him as the carriage drew to a stop before the smithy.
He hesitated for a moment. “I will go three days from now after I finish work,” he said. “Weather permitting.”
She knew he would need to practice. Not because his skills would have grown rusty but because he would need to find thatsource of peace and balance within himself that had been severely disturbed lately.
“I will not come to watch,” she said. “But I will have tea taken out to the summerhouse. You may join me there when you have finished if you wish. But only if you wish.”
He smiled at her and they left it at that. They both needed to be alone. They needed to sort themselves out. She did not know quite why she felt very close to tears as the carriage resumed its journey back to the house.
What if they did indeed sort themselves out and the way forward did not include each other?
It rained the following day. Even so she trudged up the hill to the temple folly, wearing rain boots and holding a large old black umbrella, which had belonged to Caleb, over her head. She sat under the roof of the temple all morning, breathing in the lovely country smells of wet earth and greenery and distant sheep. She had not brought a book with her. She had not read in over a month. She wondered if she ever would again. Perhaps when she was alone and cozy in her cottage by the river…
She thought of the letters that had been delivered this morning. They had come together in one package, one from Pippa, the other from Stephanie. They must have been talking to each other about her, for both had basically the same message. They loved her. They missed her. She might come to Greystone whenever she wished and for as long as she wished—that was Pippa. Stephanie would return to Ravenswood if her mother needed her and stay all summer and all winter too. Yet each understood—both had emphasized the point—her need to be free of family and obligation and even the distraction of entertainments for a while. They understood that shehad reached a turning point in her life and needed time and solitude in which to make some decisions. They sent all their love.
It was a great relief to feel their understanding and to be assured that they were no longer puzzled by what she was doing, or offended by it. Perhaps it was because they were her daughters, without the strong protective instinct that characterized her sons.
