Chapter Sixteen
“We’ll start with the meeting of the prince and princess,” John said. Seated at an easel that held brownish paper, he laid out pencils and pieces of charcoal and chalk. He looked at Aedan and Christina, who stood side by side.
“What should we do?” Christina asked, tentative.
“Face each another, aye, like that. Aedan, take both her hands in yours.”
Her fingers quivered as she offered them to Aedan. His clasp was warm and firm as he raised their linked hands a little. “How is this?”
“I like it,” John said. “It shows fascination, and love at first sight. That’s the theme I want to bring out, the strength and poignancy of that.”
“Ah,” Aedan murmured. His fingers pressed hers.
Delicate shivers rippled through her. She had already succumbed to love at first sight, she thought. The laird of Dundrennan was too enticing for her lonely heart to resist.
“Excellent. Hold that.” John sketched with long, loose strokes on the large paper. “I knew you were both perfect for this. Your coloring, your trim figures, your classic features are all perfect for this. And I see something indefinable there too,” he went on. “It fairly sparks around you.”
“That spark might come from our disagreement over Cairn Drishan,” Aedan said wryly. He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Which the prince and princess never had to contend with,” she said.
“Whatever it is, it’s perfect.” John folded back the paper and began drawing on a fresh page.
“This will be the first meeting of the briar princess and the Druid summoned by her father to teach her to read and write. MacGregor will pose for the Pictish king and Mrs. Gunn for his queen. I thought Lady Balmossie might make a stunning Celtic priestess.”
Aedan laughed. “Did they have familiars? Miss Thistle could perch on her shoulder.”
John chuckled. “I may pass on that privilege. The focus of the mural scenes will be the growing love of the Druid prince and the briar princess. The other characters will be faded back in color washes and line. You two will stand out in brighter colors. Gaze into each other’s eyes if you will—perfect!
When I’m done with these sketches, we can try another pose if you are not too tired. ”
“Not in the least. Madam?” Aedan pressed her fingers.
“That would be fine,” she said, keeping her gaze on Aedan.
John looked up. “Christina, take off your eyeglasses.”
“Oh!” She set them aside, and Aedan took her hands again.
“And your hair—let’s try it long and loose. And your skirts are too wide. I did hope to sketch you in costume. I brought boxes of art materials and a few costumes back from my last trip to Edinburgh. I found some tunics that Father used for some of his history paintings.”
“That was fortunate, then,” Christina said.
“If you wear a costume, perhaps the laird would wear on too. Seeing you in those would help speed the work along. You are accustomed to wearing the kilt, sir. The tunic costume is similar to that.”
“If you have them here, we could try them now,” Aedan said.
Christina blinked in surprise, not certain about that. “Are you sure?”
“Please do,” John said. “The costumes are in that small trunk over there.”
“There is a small sitting room next door where you can change privately,” Aedan told her.
She sighed. “Oh, very well,” she conceded. “I will only wear a costume if no one else sees us doing this.”
“We are hardly running a brothel up here, Chrissy,” John remarked. “And the human body expressed in art is a beautiful thing. We do not leer, we only admire.”
“True,” Aedan murmured.
Scowling at them, she went to the trunk and chose a long, pale tunic gown that she remembered from years before in a family of artists. Seeing a larger red tunic that would probably do for the prince, she drew it out and left it on the trunk lid.
“Chrissy,” John said, coming over to her.
“I want to capture elegance and grace in the princess. I want to show her extraordinary natural beauty—your own beauty—in the drape of clothing over the human form. I am thinking of models in the Pre-Raphaelite group, like Jane Morris and Lizzie Siddall, who often wear medieval dress in paintings.” He hesitated.
“So as your brother, can I ask that you go without stays and petticoats? The antique waist, they call it among my artist colleagues.”
“Wretch,” she said, half teasing. “Very well, if it is for your art.” She bundled the tunic gown in her arms and passed Aedan on her way to the sitting room.
He leaned against a table, arms folded, wearing the kilt and black jacket he had worn at dinner.
His legs were hewn muscle, arms and shoulders broad, all of him so appealing that she blushed and left the room.
Slipping into the simple gown without corset and full-skirted petticoats, she felt free, unhampered, secretly excited for the chance—the permission of the situation—to embrace Aedan without the barrier of formal clothing.
Perhaps Aedan and John were right. Posing for the princess again could be a joy this time rather than a regret.
She had not acted boldly for years. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed the costume, cut carefree as a nightrail, the cloth more substantial.
Of heavy silk, the tunic felt fluid and comfortable against her.
It was belted at the waist with a length of rope, its long sleeves belled, calf-length hem edged in embroidery.
Loosening the pins from the braids wrapped around her head, she combed through its length and glossy thickness with her fingers until it was a thick, rippled, dark cloud over her shoulders and down her back.
She spun around, loving the sensual, flowing delight of silk and cotton and freedom.
When she returned to the long gallery, Aedan and John simply stared.
In turn, she blinked at Aedan. He wore the dark-red tunic with a plaid cloak draped over one shoulder, fastened with a large paste brooch of Celtic design.
His legs were bare, as when he wore the kilt, and his muscled limbs gleamed in the lamplight.
His torso was taut and strong beneath the soft woolen fabric.
She moved toward him as if in a dream, as if she was not about to model, but had stepped into the misty surround of another place and time, a world of legends and magic.
“Beautiful,” Aedan murmured. He held out his hands to resume the pose they had held before, drawing her toward him. Clasping her hands in his, she realized they formed a sort of knot between them, and her heart quickened. She felt taken up by love and held fast.
“Perfect,” John said, sketching in chalk that scraped soft against the paper. “Perfect.”
“Comfortable?” Aedan murmured.
Christina nodded, and felt a sudden prick of tears in her eyes. Neither Stephen nor Edgar would have even asked that question. She was not used to kindness couched in the quiet iron strength of a good man.
“This is going so well,” John said after a little while. “I have an idea for the next pose. Aedan, would you help me move that table closer?”
Aedan and John shifted a compact, sturdy table near Christina. Then John took his sister by the shoulders to move her, too, as if she were a piece of furniture, so intent was he on his idea.
“Just there, and Aedan here,” he said. “In this scene, the prince comes to his princess through the window of her tower. She welcomes him with open arms,” John gestured. “Use the table as if it’s a window ledge. Pretend you are just meeting at the windowsill.”
Lifting a knee to the table as if climbing, Aedan kept his other foot firm on the floor. Then Christina leaned toward him over the table like metal to a magnet.
“I hope you will not feel awkward,” John said, “but we need an impassioned embrace here, not just leaning to say hello. Reach out, Chrissy. Go into his arms if you do not mind. Please,” he added as she hesitated. “And Aedan, you are determined to be with her, aye?.”
“Aye,” Aedan said, reaching out as she did.
He pulled her toward him by the shoulders, close enough that her breasts, draped in silk and cotton, brushed against his chest. Even in pretense, the pose felt compelling and natural all at once, so that she closed her eyes for a moment and breathed. But she had to maintain her composure.
“Like—like this, John?” she asked.
“Aye,” her brother said, rapt and lost in his sketching.
She leaned her forehead against his, feeling his breath caress her cheek. Supported by his hands on her shoulders, she felt as if she might dissolve, then and there. She hoped he could not sense the fast beat of her heart or the wild track of her thoughts.
“What were their names?” John asked as he worked. “The prince and princess?”
“Aedan mac Brudei,” Aedan said. “And my father called the princess Liadan in his poem about the briar maiden.”
“It was apparently her name,” Christina added. “My uncle found it somewhere in the Dundrennan Folio.”
“I did not pay much attention to Father’s work. How curious that her name is there.”
“I can show you later,” she said, holding the pose, her nose nearly brushing his.
“I would like that,” he whispered.
“Hush, you two,” John said. “Be still.”
She closed her eyes. A secret craving built steadily within her, and she wondered if he felt it too. His hands, where they touched her, grew warm through her thin clothing.
“Wonderful pose, very loving,” John commented, half to himself. “Good.”
Aedan sighed so softly that only she knew. Eyes still closed, not moving, she knew she was deeply, rapturously in love, a tumble likely to go nowhere in the end.
“What was Sir Hugh’s verse about love at first sight, when they first meet?” John mused as he sketched. “Something like—
‘A glance, a murmur, a touch of hands.
Souls entwined, and the need began:
Storm-fierce, falcon-swift, deep as time.’”
“I think so,” Aedan said. “Christina?”