“It ought to have happened years ago,” he said. “My reconciliation with Reggie, that is, not necessarily the party. But perhaps neither of us was quite ready until now, just as you and I were not. It is not always wise to try to hurry life along. No, I am not sorry, Clarissa. Not about anything that has happened this year.”
“Not even Prudence Wexford’s table?” she asked.
He laughed. “It made her happy,” he said. “And I made it as tasteful as I could while still giving her what she dreamed of.”
“I am not sorry either,” she said. “Though when I came home to take a long and solitary look at my life to determine where it ought to go in the future, I had no idea my search would lead me to you or to a cottage by the river, or to the discovery that though my children are very protective of me, they also respect my wishes when they understand just what they are. I had no idea about any of this. I have always called regularly upon Mama and Papa, and I have occasionally met some of their neighbors. But I have always avoided your brother and his wife whenever I could. They seemed a dour couple to me, and I blamed Reginald for not loving you ashe ought to when you were a boy. I did not expect that I would be proved wrong and come to like them exceedingly well.”
“Do you want to go directly home, Clarissa?” he asked when her father’s house came into sight.
“Do you have anything else in mind as an alternative?” she asked him.
“I have been wondering,” he said, “what our tree looks like by moonlight.”
“Well,” she said, “we have the perfect night to find out.”
They changed direction and walked in silence toward the rolling lawns and trees farther into the park. It was not as easy to find their exact destination as it had been in the daylight earlier today. The trees, though not thick, were plentiful enough to cut out some of the moonlight and starlight. But they found the tree eventually—the one he had carved with such exquisite skill and pulsing emotion a few years ago. Where she had told him she was going to marry Caleb, though she was half in love with him and knew him to be more than half in love with her. Where this afternoon he had created new memories by asking her to marry him. Or was it she who had asked him to marry her? Did it matter? They had asked and answered each other, and there was no more melancholy to be associated with this place.
He turned her so her back was to the tree, on the side against which she had spread her right hand on previous occasions, and pressed her to it with his own body. He searched for and found her mouth with his own and kissed her with unleashed passion and urgency. Her arms went about his shoulders and her fingers pressed through his hair while his hands explored her body with a bold disregard for subtlety.
He wanted her. And almost instantly she wanted him too.
“Are you going to make me wait until our wedding night?” he asked, his mouth still on hers. “Whenever that is likely to be.”
“Whenever everyone has been summoned to celebrate with us,” she said. “Perhaps after a cottage has been built by the river and furnished. Perhaps after a couple of babies have been born and their mothers are able to travel. Who knows? But whenever it is likely to be, it is far, far too long to wait.”
It had been so very long. She had been celibate for more than half a decade and had not experienced the joy of unbounded passion for some time before that. She wondered briefly if Matthew…But she did not want to know. It did not matter.
The past did not matter. Nor did the future. Tonight mattered. Now mattered.
“Make love to me,” she said.
It was not, she supposed later, the most comfortable encounter in the world. The ground was hard and uneven. They had only his coat to lie upon and her shawl with which to cover themselves afterward. The wind was a bit chilly. A number of insects had to satisfy their curiosity by buzzing about them and even crawling upon them. Dealing with their clothes without actually removing them all was tricky.
But it was only afterward she thought thus. While it was happening, nothing could have been more perfect.
She shook her head when he would have taken her on top of him to shield her from the hardness of the ground. She wanted to feel his weight on her. She wanted him to take her from above. And it was glorious and wonderful and any other superlative the mind cared to offer her. The foreplay had happened while they stood against the tree. On the ground he entered her almost immediately,his hands spread beneath her to cushion her, her legs twined about his, her pelvis tilted so he could come deep and deeper. And he took his time. They took their time as she matched him thrust for thrust, almost lazily for a while as they savored all the unfamiliarity and all the pleasure of their joining. After a while their lovemaking became more urgent, more frenzied, deeper and faster, until she was hot and slick inside and they were both panting and searching out each other’s mouths again.
And then it was over with a final burst of energy and passion, a moment of excruciating pleasure—or was it pain?—as they reached the climax together, and a descent into the utter relaxation of a sated desire.
“My love,” he murmured against her mouth.
“Matthew.”
They did not sleep. They did not even linger very long. Someone would surely be waiting up for her at her father’s house. And they were going to have to make a probably futile attempt to put themselves back to rights before going there so no one would suspect the truth. But they relaxed against each other for a minute or two, murmuring love words Clarissa could not even remember afterward. It did not matter. Some things were beyond words.
They walked back to the house with fingers twined and shoulders touching.
“We could just elope,” he said before they arrived.
She laughed, though the suggestion was surprisingly enticing. “To Gretna Green?” she said. “Your family would be severely disappointed. So would mine.”
“I suppose,” he said, “weddings are for families, are they not? I am unaccustomed to thinking of families in connection with myown life. Throughout my adulthood I have done just as I please, when I have pleased.”
“I thought,” she said, “that was going to be the outcome of this year for me too. And to a certain degree it is. But my family is at the heart of my life. I cannot live totally independent of them or in disregard of their feelings. I believe you will learn the same thing of your brother and sister-in-law and your nieces and nephews, Matthew, now that you have found them again. It can be irksome at times, but the rewards are beyond measure.”
“So no elopement,” he said. “And no hasty wedding.”
“Irksome, is it not?” she said, and they both laughed.
