“We were a bit in love when I was seventeen and Matthew was eighteen,” she said. “When I decided to marry Caleb, though that wasnot entirely a calculated decision, I genuinely fell in love with him. And I never really regretted marrying him. Though perhaps…Well, it is complicated. He gave me my children, whom I adore. He gave me Ravenswood and my neighbors and friends there, and they make me happy. And he was genuinely charming and affectionate. Any deeper connection between Matthew and me would not have worked out well as we were at the time anyway. Not for either of us. We would have destroyed ourselves and each other. Perhaps. Probably. Who really knows?”
“You needed to wait until you were fifty,” Kitty said. “You are there now.”
“Yes,” Clarissa said. “Almost.”
“Was he the reason you went home to Ravenswood?” Kitty asked.
Clarissa looked at her in surprise. “No,” she said. “I did not go there to find anyone but myself. Sometimes a woman can lose herself in her family. It can be a happy experience. For most of my life it has been for me. But sometimes a woman needs to pause to ask who she is in herself. Sometimes she needs to discover if her life is personally fulfilling. I went home early and alone because I was starting to feel a certain emptiness at the core of myself, if that makes any sense. I launched Stephanie upon society and then realized that all my active obligations to my children were fulfilled. What was left? It was rather a bleak feeling. Almost frightening.”
“And does Mr. Taylor fill that emptiness at the core of yourself?” Kitty asked.
Clarissa frowned. “I am not sure I want him to,” she said. “The core of myself should be filled with me, though I have no idea what I am talking about. What I am trying to say is that I should be able to stand alone as myself.”
“I understand,” Kitty said. “But does he make you happy, Clarissa? Does he make you feel that your life would be immeasurably enriched if he could be your friend—and perhaps more than your friend—for the rest of your life?”
Clarissa sighed. “Oh yes,” she said, and Kitty squeezed her arm.
“I look forward to seeing you together tomorrow evening,” she said.
“And what of you and George?” Clarissa asked. “Is your marriage everything you dreamed it would be, Kitty? Not that your personal life is any of my business. And how can you say anything but yes when he is my brother?”
Kitty laughed. “Do you really need to ask?” she said. “I am over the moon in love with him, Clarissa. I sometimes feel it is unseemly in a middle-aged woman like me. But why should it be? Why should anyone deny herself—or himself—the wonder of romantic love just because she is fifty or seventy? Or ninety? The miracle of it all, Clarissa, is that he is as deeply in love with me. Am I not the most fortunate woman on earth?”
“No,” Clarissa said. “Only one of the most fortunate.”
They both laughed.
—
By the following day, the day of the party, Clarissa was craving some solitude again. George was in the library with their father, and Kitty was in her mother’s dressing room, helping her select a gown for the evening. Clarissa wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and stepped outside alone. The air was fresh and cool, and the sounds of nature were the only ones to assail her ears.
How she needed her cottage, she thought. Much as she loved company, especially that of her family and close friends, she hadcome to understand during the past weeks that she needed solitude too. And silence. Most of all silence.
She set out on a walk through the park. It was not entirely aimless. She had noticed something yesterday when she was strolling with Kitty. Something she would not have expected to recognize but did. She had not realized how deeply embedded in her memory it was. Perhaps it was that wood carving of Matthew’s that had jogged the memory.
Yesterday she had recognized the tree against which she had leaned all those years ago after telling Matthew that she was expecting a marriage offer from Caleb the following day. She had been feeling excited at the prospect and deeply upset at the knowledge that she had hurt Matthew, and herself too, with her decision. She had stood against that tree bewildered by the extreme emotions only a seventeen-year-old could feel. Looking ahead, looking back, feeling the exultation and pain of the present. Aware of him standing silently not far off, not moving, not saying anything, the distance that would be between them for more than thirty years already an almost tangible thing.
She found the tree now and verified by looking around that yes, indeed, this was the one. She leaned back against it again after dropping her shawl to the grass. She felt with both hands for the trunk behind her and drew sustenance from the life force she could sense moving up to the branches from the roots belowground. She rested the back of her head against the tree and closed her eyes.
Just here. Where so much had ended. The day before so much had begun. Two men, one of whom had been her friend, her soul mate, the other of whom had become her husband and father of her children.
Two men she had loved on that day.
Did life offer second chances?
Though she could not chastise herself about choosing Caleb over Matthew at the time.
Was now the right time?
Would it be foolish to try to recapture a romance that had been about to blossom more than thirty years ago? Though perhaps that was not what was happening. Perhaps they were not trying to recapture anything. Perhaps what was happening between them was all new.
Ah. And perhaps she was the only one who was experiencing this turmoil of emotion and indecision. Perhaps for Matthew what was between them was nothing more than friendship with a few pleasant kisses included.
She opened her eyes and looked at the trees and greenery surrounding her. She tried to draw peace from her surroundings, a calming of the mind. There was so much for which to be happy.
—
Yesterday had been a day full of chatter and laughter and stories intended to fill in some of the long gap of the missing years. Matthew had felt so thoroughly welcome in his brother’s home that he had quickly forgotten his self-consciousness and apprehension about the upcoming party. He had slept well in a bedchamber that had not been his when he was a boy—a touch of thoughtfulness on Reggie’s part, he guessed.
