“Most people could not possibly point to one specific day when that happened,” she said. “For most it must be a gradual process, not one giant shock.”
“You were happy,” he said.
“And also very, very sad,” she said.
He drew breath to ask if she had been happy after that day, if she felt she had done the right thing in marrying Stratton. But it was none of his business, and he did not particularly want to know that she had indeed been happy. He wanted even less to know that she had been unhappy.
“Life’s two extremes,” she said.
“Yes.”
She turned her head to look up at him. “Thank you,” she said.
For a moment he thought she was going to say more, but she did not. She smiled at him instead as she got to her feet and turned to the door.
“I will send word when I have sketches for the crib to bring for your approval,” he said.
“I shall look forward to seeing them,” she said, her hand on the doorknob.
Only after she had stepped outside and closed the door behind her did it occur to him that he ought to have opened the door for her. He listened to her footsteps as she went down the stairs to the pavement. Cam had still not returned to his anvil. He had probably gone home for his luncheon.
Chapter Two
Over the next few days Clarissa kept herself pleasantly occupied. She called upon Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys, who had not yet left for their annual visit to Wales, and was able to take them firsthand news of Gwyneth, their daughter, and the grandchildren in London. She called too upon her friends Prudence Wexford and Lady Hardington, and met more neighbors and friends at church on Sunday. She spent almost the whole of one day visiting her parents. She was able to report to them that her brother George’s marriage to Kitty was continuing to bring them both considerable contentment.
But she spent most of her time alone, as she had planned to do. If she had wanted a busy social life, she might have had it. But if that was what she had wanted, she would have stayed in London for what remained of the Season. She might have stayed, for example, to discover if her beau remained attentive and if she wanted their relationship to develop further. She smiled to think of Lord Keilly, with his silver hair and rather austere courtliness, as her beau. Shewondered what he would think if he knew she amused herself by describing him thus to herself.
But she really did not miss him. The whirl of the London Season had never held any great allure for her, even when she first participated in it as a young bride. She soon forgot it when she was back home, or remembered it as an alien world for which she did not yearn any more than she did for Lord Keilly. It was very unlikely she would ever marry him if he asked.
She roamed the vast house, absorbing the memories each room brought her—memories of Caleb and their children, more recently of their grandchildren too. She strolled the long gallery on the upper floor of the west wing, looking at all the portraits of Wares, going back generations and culminating in those that included her and her children. Devlin had commissioned a painting of himself and Gwyneth and their two children just last year. There were actually smiles on their faces, unusual for formal family portraiture. Bethan, still a plump, bald baby at the time, was standing with crooked legs on her father’s lap while he kept a close hold on her waist, and appeared to be waving one chubby hand at the painter and therefore at the viewer. Gareth was sitting more properly on his mother’s lap, but he seemed to be doing more than just smiling. He was surely laughing. Both Devlin and Gwyneth looked delighted with life.
Devlin had chosen the artist well.
She was so very well blessed in her family, Clarissa thought afterward as she sat in the turret room atop the front corner of the west wing. Some people referred to it irreverently as the onion room, or more poetically as the raindrop room, but everyone loved it, especially children, who were attracted by the illusion that it was perched on top of the world and used it mainly for cushion fights.How so many cushions had accumulated there Clarissa did not know, but they were bright and cozy, and it had never occurred to her—or to Gwyneth since she became countess, it seemed—to pare them down.
She sat now surrounded by them, holding one to her bosom. She had brought a book up with her, but she had known even before she picked it up that this was not the place where one typically read. There were glass windows above and all around the room with magnificent views in all directions. It was drizzling rain outside today, as it had been on and off since she came home, but that somehow made the room even more cozy. She could see the lake way off to her right, the sweeping front of Ravenswood Hall to her left, the river and Boscombe ahead. It was a picturesque village and enhanced rather than spoiled the rural loveliness of the view.
It was also where Matthew lived.
It was where he had lived and worked for more than twenty years. She had long ago grown comfortable with the fact. So had he, apparently. As far as she knew, he had never been tempted to go back to what she still thought of as his grandmother’s house, where he had lived during his brief marriage—he had wed a mere month after her own marriage to Caleb. His poor wife had died soon after giving birth to a stillborn child the following year, however. Within days of the funerals, according to Clarissa’s mother, he had disappeared and not returned for many years. During that time his grandmother had died and left everything to him. According to Clarissa’s father, her recently changed will must have come as a severe shock to Horace Taylor and Reginald, Matthew’s father and elder brother.
No one had seemed to know where Matthew had gone, though someone must have known, for the house and park had been leasedout in his absence, something that must surely have been done at his direction. Captain Jakes, a retired naval officer, had lived there with his wife and, more recently, her unmarried sister too, ever since. Matthew had reappeared after ten or twelve years and settled in Boscombe of all places, as a carpenter. He was skilled at his work, and his services had soon been in high demand. But he had always enjoyed working with wood, Clarissa remembered. He had been talented but unskilled through his boyhood. His father had never encouraged Matthew to develop his one passion.
Clarissa had smelled the smithy a few days ago as she climbed the stairs to Matthew’s rooms, where she had never been before. But when she had been inside, it was the wood she had smelled, and she had thought it a lovely, comforting scent. She had thought his small living room a cozy and inviting place. She had thought a person could be happy there, though the room was surely not much larger than this onion turret.
She had spoken to him for longer than she ever had before—since she was seventeen anyway. She had seen to it that she had a good reason for going, of course. But finally, before it was too late, she had mustered the courage to ask about the wood carving that had haunted her memory ever since he had entered it for the contest at the fete two years ago.
It was the most exquisite wood carving she had ever seen, though it could be no more than two feet high. Visually it was perfect. But it was far more than just something upon which to gaze with admiration. From the time she first set eyes upon it she had felt all its emotional force, its profundity, its essential ambiguity. Yet it had taken her a moment to recognize the figure standing against the tree as herself. He had been right, though, when she questioned him about it a few days ago. The woman he had carved was bothyoung and old and everything in between. She yearned toward something, as we all yearn. She was hopeful for the future, nostalgic for the past, rooted in the present. She was Everywoman. And more even than that. She was Everyperson. She was the human experience.
How on earth had he managed to convey all that in one relatively small, exquisitely fashioned carving? It was, after all, just a piece of wood. But at the heart of it all, catching at Clarissa’s breath every time she had thought of it since, was her conviction that the woman against the tree was her.
If she could go back, she thought now as she hugged the cushion more tightly to her bosom, knowing all she knew now, would she decide differently? Probably not. Undoubtedly not, in fact. And on the whole she did not believe she had made a disastrous choice. Her adult life had brought her security and contentment and many moments of outright happiness. It had not been perfect, of course—good heavens, it had not been perfect!—but she had this home and a deep sense of belonging. She had neighbors and friends she valued. And she had her children and grandchildren, all of whom—and this included Ben and Joy—were an enormous blessing.
A maid had toiled up all the stairs to the turret room in order to bring her a tray laden with a pot of tea and freshly baked scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Clarissa often wondered how the staff seemed to know instinctively where she was at all times and even when she was ready for her afternoon tea—before she knew it herself, in fact.
“I am being spoiled,” she said as the maid set down the tray and curtsied before withdrawing. “Thank you.”
Matthew’s child—Clarissa had never discovered whether it was a girl or a boy—would have been Devlin’s age now or a month ortwo older. She wondered how much pain Matthew had lived through at the time and later, even perhaps to the present day. She wondered where he had been all those years he was gone, and what he had been doing, apart from perfecting his carpentry and carving skills, that was.
