How she loved them all!
And how delightful that Pippa and Stephanie were able to have time with each other without her constant presence with them too. There was a six-year gap in their ages. Pippa was twenty-five, Steph nineteen. It was an age difference that had distanced them from each other when they were younger, though there had never been any real hostility. Now, it seemed, the gap in their ages mattered less. They were becoming firm friends.
Ben and Owen and Joy had arrived safely at Penallen. Jennifer had written a brief note to tell her so. It had arrived yesterday while she was away. Jennifer was very happy to have her husband and daughter back home—she never called Joy her stepdaughter—and delighted that Owen had come with them. If her mother-in-law had come too, her happiness would have been complete. But she understood entirely her mother-in-law’s need to be alone for a while. She would press no further invitations upon her, only the assurance that she would always be more than welcome.
Clarissa smiled through tears that never seemed to be very far off these days. How could she be distancing herself from a family that cared so much for her? How could she be dreaming of—and plotting for—a home of her own with a bright red front door she could shut against the whole world whenever she chose?
But they understood.
At last they seemed to understand.
She sat up in the turret room after luncheon. The rain had eased but not stopped entirely. She did not mind. It was the rain that kept the grass almost emerald colored and thick and springy to the touch. It was the rain that gave color to all the wildflowers blooming in the meadow and the cultivated flowers in their carefully weeded beds. And she was actually glad of the excuse to be lazy today, to remain at home, sitting and dreaming.
—
Devlin came with Gwyneth and the children the following afternoon after Clarissa had spent the morning, in her rain boots, strolling from one flowery nook to another in the dips of land between the house and the lake. She had stopped for what must have been a whole hour in the one with the small lily pond after checking that the seat was not still wet from yesterday’s rain. She breathed in the scent of the sweet peas growing there.
They had called in for a day or two on their way to Wales, Devlin explained. Ravenswood was far off the much shorter route from London they would normally have taken. But when she pointed out that fact, Gwyneth explained that they had wanted to give her one more chance to go with them. She looked at her mother-in-law with a twinkling smile as she said it.
“We will not press the issue, Mother,” she said. “We know you quite deliberately chose to come home to be alone and have probably been enjoying your freedom to come and go as you wish and do whatever you please. We guessed that you have been somewhat frustrated by the interruptions to your peace.”
Clarissa merely smiled back at her. Making a detour here was Devlin’s idea, not Gwyneth’s, she understood.
“Gareth and Bethan will interrupt it even more when they wake up from their naps,” Gwyneth said.
Clarissa laughed. “What are grandmothers for?” she said. “I have missed them. Has Bethan walked more than just that once yet?”
“She has not,” Devlin said. “You asked the wrong question, Mama. You ought to have asked if she has run.”
“Ah.” Clarissa laughed again. “Let the fun begin, then.”
“Is it any wonder,” Gwyneth said, “that we want you to come with us?”
They stayed only until the following morning, during which time Clarissa played with the children and read them their bedtime stories. But while Gwyneth stayed in the nursery to tuck them into their beds and remain with them until they fell asleep, Devlin spoke with his mother in the drawing room.
“We came because I needed to talk with you in person, Mama,” he said. He held up a staying hand when she drew breath to speak. “It is probably not quite what you expect. I have not come to object to whatever is between you and Matthew Taylor. You do not even need to explain to me or justify the relationship. We all reacted with rather ridiculous alarm to the hints various people dropped in the letters they wrote to us. As though you were a child. Or an imbecile. And I did not come to object to your remaining here alone through the summer. I have been assured, even apart from what you yourself told us before you came here, that it is what you want. You know there are several alternatives if you should change your mind, though I do not expect you will. I have come because both Ben and Owen have informed me that you have some sort of proposition to make to me and I had better listen to it carefully without dismissing it out of hand. Neither gave any hint as to what that proposition is.”
And so she told him of her wish to build a cottage for herself down by the river, a home that could become a dower house after her time since it would be on Ravenswood land. She told him she had no wish whatsoever to move away from her family or cut herself off from them. She wished only to have a place all her own. She told him she intended to pay for it herself. It would not cost him a penny—only his permission to proceed.
His expression was black by the time she had finished speaking. Or so it seemed to her.
“It is still light outside,” he said curtly after glancing at the window. “Show me.”
They walked down the driveway and along the river path in silence until she stopped.
“Here,” she said. “The cottage will go over there, just this side of the meadow, and there will be room left for a flower garden. Matthew says the chance of flooding is slim to none. And it will be very close to the house but separate from it. Devlin—”
He was still looking a bit thunderous. He held up a hand again.
“Just one thing,” he said. “It will be on my land. It will be my property. I will pay for it.”
He was not saying an outright no?
“It was my idea,” she said. “It would be an expense you were not—”
His hand was up yet again.
“It is not negotiable, Mama,” he said. “I will compromise on only one thing.”
