“I had better go and have a talk with your father since Stratton is in Wales,” he said. “Does a father in such cases take precedenceover a son, I wonder? Then I must get back to Reggie’s. My sister-in-law and nieces may panic if they think the guest of honor has gone missing.”
“Are you nervous?” she asked him.
“About the party?” he said. “When between now and then I have to face your father?”
“He is such an ogre.” She linked an arm through his.
He wondered if any moment now he was going to wake up from this strange dream he was having.
Chapter Twenty-One
Not long after Matthew returned to his brother’s house, having been persuaded to take some luncheon with the Greenfields, all became a frantic bustle as the ladies began to dress in their chosen finery and panicked over missing items and wanted the curling iron all at the same moment and worried that the first guests would arrive before they were ready to receive them and fussed over the two young children who had escaped from the nursery and called for their nurse to come and get them—and then called for the men to come and get ready too.
“At least an hour earlier than we need to do it,” Reggie said, giving a mock sigh for his brother and his son. “But we had better go up anyway before the ladies have a collective apoplexy.”
Matthew dressed in the evening clothes he wore on all such occasions and came downstairs at the appointed hour. He was feeling far calmer than he had expected, considering the whole event was in his honor. Perhaps it was because life here now was less about formality and rules and doing things right and more about warmthand love and family interactions. Reggie’s household was nothing like Matthew had expected it to be. It was nothing like it had used to be under his parents’ rule even though the house was the same, with very few real modifications.
The drawing room was the largest room in the house. Beyond it was another room of a decent size, variously called the salon, when he was a boy, or the library, or the music room, though there had been precious few books there and the only instrument in it was an aged pianoforte, always out of tune and rarely played. There were wide double doors connecting the two rooms. Matthew could not remember the doors ever being opened. They were open tonight, however, surprising him with the discovery that the combined space was impressively large. The pianoforte in the smaller room was new, or at least newer than the one it had replaced. The lid over the keyboard had been raised. There was music on the stand above the keyboard and a small pile on top of the instrument. There was a bookcase too, filled with books, along the back wall.
In the drawing room itself, the furniture had been pushed back against the walls and the rugs removed. The wooden floor of both rooms gleamed with a fresh coat of varnish. Candles burned in the candelabra overhead in both rooms, a rarity during Matthew’s childhood, when creating too much light during the evenings was considered a sinful waste of money and candles.
In the dining room, which he had passed on his way down from his bedchamber, the table with all its leaves added was packed as full as it could be with plates and bowls of food. Two side tables offered what looked like a wide variety of beverages and a punch bowl.
But there was little time for a leisurely look around. The family was downstairs too in all their evening finery, smartly dressedservants stood about, ready for action, and the first carriage was drawing up outside the house.
“You must stand between Reggie and me, Matthew,” Adelaide said to him. “Philip and Emily, stand on the other side of Papa.”
There was to be a receiving line, Matthew realized in some dismay. No effort was to be spared to show him off to the neighbors as a valued member of the family—though he was only a carpenter. No effort was to be spared to make him feel the joy his family felt at having him back among them. It was a realization that brought an ache of unshed tears to the back of his throat—and an intense embarrassment as he wondered how the neighbors, some of whom he had known as a boy, would feel about this grand gesture.
And then, of course, there was the whole matter of his engagement to Clarissa, which he had confided to Reggie and Adelaide, but not to anyone else in the house.
But this was not the time to dwell upon that or the delight—and surprising lack of shock—with which they had greeted the news.
—
Despite the short distance between the two houses, Clarissa rode to Reginald Taylor’s house with her parents and George and Kitty. It was a bit of a squash in the carriage, but there was something of a wind blowing outside, and Clarissa’s original plan to walk over to the Taylors’ house with her brother and sister-in-law was abandoned in order to avoid arriving with shiny cheeks and nose and hair that had been blown into an unruly bush.
They arrived early, something her parents had always done when they were invited out and Clarissa still tended to do. Even so, they were not the first to arrive. The house was buzzing with the merry sounds of conversation and laughter when they were admitted.It also seemed filled with light, very different from the gloom she remembered from the few girlhood visits she had made here. It hardly seemed like the same place.
She was amused to see a receiving line at the drawing room doors. Poor Matthew must be cringing with embarrassment. Yet he did not look particularly uncomfortable. He looked his usual placid, cheerful self as he stood between Reginald and Adelaide, who beamed at him while introducing him to friends and neighbors he had never met before. He was shaking hands and smiling and talking.
It was strange to see him tonight, a mere few hours after their encounter out at what she now thought of as their tree, knowing that everything had changed between them. That they were to marry. That they were betrothed.
She wondered if he had told anyone yet.
Kitty slid an arm through hers. “This is lovely to see, is it not?” she said. “George has told me some stories about what this home used to be like. He has told me what a rebel your fiancé was as a boy. Does that not sound wonderful—your fiancé? He is ruggedly good-looking in his carpenter persona. I have always thought so. But he looks downright handsome in evening clothes. Oh, Clarissa, I am so glad you have found romance in your life at long last. It is what you came home from London to discover, though you may not have known it at the time. George always calls me a hopeless romantic. But then he is one too, so it is a case of the pot and the kettle. Ah, it is our turn. I am so looking forward to the evening.”
She released Clarissa’s arm in order to pass along the receiving line with George.
“I am very happy you came, Lady Stratton,” Adelaide said a few moments later. She leaned forward a little and lowered her voice.“But soon I must beg leave to call you Clarissa. You are to be my sister-in-law and I could not be happier. Reggie could not be happier.”
Ah. They knew, then.
“Please call me by my given name now,” Clarissa said, and moved on to stand before Matthew and set her hand in his. They exchanged a lingering smile.
“No regrets?” he murmured.
“Not yet,” she said.
