“I have a feeling,” George said, getting to his feet, “that there is a story to be told here. You must tell it to us down to the last detailwhen we resume our journey, Clarissa. In the meantime, you have fifteen minutes to get ready to come with us.”
“Have you always been such a tyrant?” she asked with a smile.
“Have you not noticed that I am a shadow of my former self?” Kitty asked her.
Clarissa hurried from the room, laughing. Fifteen minutes. But Millicent would rise to the challenge of packing what she would need for a few days. She, meanwhile, had only to change into a carriage dress and write a quick note to be delivered to Matthew.
—
Matthew was disappointed when he received Clarissa’s note. The journey was a long and tedious one, and he would miss her company and conversation. However, perhaps it was just as well that they would not arrive together in Reggie’s carriage. He did not want to give his family the impression that they were anything more to each other than neighbors and friends. No more, in fact, than they had been when they were growing up.
He was actually glad she had gone with her brother and sister-in-law when the following day brought not only his brother’s carriage but Reggie too.
“What?” Matthew said after they had exchanged a firm handshake and Reggie stood inside his rooms, looking about with undisguised interest. “You decided to make a twenty-mile journey of it, here and back? Were you afraid I would change my mind and return your carriage empty?”
“This room ought to look like a hovel, Matt,” Reginald said, ignoring his questions. “Instead it looks like a home. I want to see your work, though I suspect I am seeing some of it in this furniture and those candlesticks. May I see more?”
They spent more than half an hour in the workroom. Reggie ran a hand over the crib Matthew had almost finished making for Ben Ellis’s child.
“I did not trust in your dream when you were a boy, Matt,” he said. “I am so glad you dreamed it anyway. I feel humbled. Forgive me?”
“Perhaps we ought not to play the blame and forgiveness game any longer,” Matthew said. “I did not know but guess now it is you who has looked after my wife and daughter’s grave with such meticulous care. I did not know you cared at all.”
“Addy and Emily are the ones who dispense with the weeds and coax the flowers to bloom,” Reggie said. “I hope the inscription on the headstone is adequate. Just a few brief words, but I agonized over them for what must have been weeks.”
“They are perfect,” Matthew said. “Thank you.”
They ate a luncheon at the inn and were on their way before the middle of the afternoon. His brother’s arrival prevented Matthew from feeling the apprehension that had hovered over him for the past week. A generous gesture on his brother’s part given the distance. But Matthew was now thinking he could accept that this party was something his family wanted to do for him. It was a sort of atonement, one that worked both ways. They would give the party, and he would attend it and do all in his power to enjoy it.
He felt love seeping into him. He had not realized quite how absent it had been. For most of his adult years he had loved in the abstract—and yes, it was a form of real love and essential to his being. But it had not been personal. He had friends and valued and loved them. But that deep sort of love that bound together certain individuals—family and the love of one’s heart—had been denied.
Now he needed to complete—or at least continue—what hehad started to learn at the monastery. He needed to open his mind and his heart and his very being to all the risks of loving fully and unconditionally and of being loved.
It was not an entirely comforting prospect. It felt a bit…uncontrolled.
It was a necessary step, however, if he wanted to be whole.
He had not realized until now that he had never allowed himself to be whole, that he had suppressed a large part of himself lest he be hurt.
The family—his family—was very obviously excited by his arrival and by the preparations they were making for tomorrow evening’s grand celebration, to which it appeared they had invited almost everyone they knew in the vicinity.
Philip and Emily bore him off soon after his arrival to meet their children, two boys and a girl, who proceeded to show him the treasures of the nursery. Mabel, his niece, arrived soon after with her husband, Albert, and their young son and daughter, and there was a flurry of introductions and hugs, loud conversation, and laughter. Adelaide shed tears over the wood carving Matthew had brought her of a woman sitting relaxed and dreaming in a rocking chair, a cat curled on her lap.
“I will treasure it always,” she told him. “Look, Reggie. The chair actually rocks. And if that cat is not purring, there is something wrong with my inner ear.”
Matthew allowed himself to feel happy.
—
Clarissa spent the day before the party talking endlessly with her parents, with George, with whom she had always had a close relationship, and especially with Kitty. They went for a walkin the park together during the afternoon, and Kitty, slipping a hand through Clarissa’s arm, demanded to know everything there was to know about Matthew Taylor.
“I know,” she said, “that he is a superb carpenter and wood-carver. I know the two of you were friends growing up. I know you are friends again now. I will not allow you to bounce our conversation off those few facts, Clarissa. We have been the closest of friends since we met in London as young brides, though most of our friendship has been conducted via letter, alas. Now we are face to face. Well, side to side anyway. And I want to talk about Matthew Taylor.”
“There are friends and friends,” Clarissa said after giving her answer some consideration. “There are those for whom we feel a warm affection, with whom we enjoy spending time. Those with whom we are comfortable. And then there are the friends with whom the affection and the communication run far deeper, those with whom we feel some sort of soul connection, if that is not too exaggerated a claim. Friends with whom we can and do talk about anything under the sun, including our deepest emotions. Friends with whom we can be silent for long stretches without feeling any discomfort or any disconnection at all. You have always been the second kind of friend to me, Kitty, though we are not often silent together, are we? There is always so much to say when we see each other so rarely. Matthew is also that kind of friend. He was when we were growing up, and he is now.”
“But a little more than a friend?” Kitty asked. “Perhaps a great deal more?”
Clarissa was about to deny it. But this was Kitty.
