Chapter Six #3
It was not as good as the White Cliffs or the lonely endemic animal idyll in the sitting room, but it was still very good.
It was a still life, and her chosen scheme was immediately apparent.
There was no bowl to contain the fruit. The table was strewn with fabrics, and four cracked pomegranates.
All were halved, but jaggedly so, not one seemed to have been sliced by an expert hand.
The red juice soaked through the fabric, as if it were a scene of butchery, not of delicate, jewel-like fruit.
The white chambers of the fruit clung to the remaining pips, glistening like protected and coddled babies, while the rest of the pips were strewn about like soldiers dead across a battlefield.
One of the pieces of pomegranate was torn, upside down, juice draining from it, like a body being left to decompose.
Next to it, another half lay exposed, but with few pips remaining, as if the white chambers were the bones of the fruit, bleached in the sun.
The effect was disturbing. A bit overly romanticized, and he couldn’t imagine what an art critic would say.
But for himself, he could see it and feel it.
The emotion was visceral and biting, clawing at him.
He wanted the painting. He also wanted to never have seen it.
If this was painted from Mrs. Reid’s inner turmoil, he had no right to pry.
Whatever had widowed her was a terrible event, indeed.
And he wasn’t sure if her marriage had been a happy one.
Given her ineptitude at seeming an “attractive lady,” he couldn’t imagine that her first union had been one made of love.
He slid that canvas back into its slot and pulled out another.
This one was wildly different in composition and colors.
This pastoral village scene evoked actual memory, as he could tell from the repeated attempts at positioning a window on the side of a brick and daub public house.
If he looked closely, he could see where she’d fussed with it and painted over it repeatedly.
He didn’t know why that particular window bothered her so much, but clearly it was something that made her fret.
The sign of the inn was legible, as was the lad and the boar painted on it.
Dobbers and Boar it read. No doubt that if he went looking around Colchester, he’d find this particular place.
Not that he wanted to, as it looked provincial and underwhelming.
The kind of place where a person of rank would be fussed over and not let alone all evening.
She must be from wherever this place was, as even the shrubbery was identifiable down to the exact species.
But that made sense, considering Mrs. Reid’s need for absolute truth—she would insist on making the shrubbery exact, and not an approximation.
Heaven forbid there was something like artistic license where one might change the shrubbery or add blooms not in season.
He slid this canvas back in place and looked at another.
They were all variations of a kind, where she was clearly working through a curriculum of some kind.
Devised either by herself, which wouldn’t surprise him, or some kind of mail order instruction.
Each was either a different type of painting—still life, landscape—or a different technique of color blending or brush style.
He could see her getting better with each one, learning and growing as an artist.
Until he got to the last canvas. It was utterly unlike any composition he’d ever seen before.
On one hand, it held all the traditional markings of a classic self-portrait.
Nothing the Masters hadn’t done. And the tableau she created was in the traditional ideals of balance on the canvas.
But instead of her sitting as the painter, a nightmare creature that would be at home in a medieval tapestry sat as the artist, with black claws glistening as it held the paintbrush.
Its pointed white fangs grimaced in that same approximation of a smile that Mrs. Reid had displayed for him in the sitting room.
On the canvas portrait, however, the docile image of Mrs. Reid sat with her hands crossed in her lap, holding a book.
Her brown eyes were wide, and there was careful detail paid to the folds of the filmy fichu she wore tucked into the collar of her dress.
This was a portrait of her from some ten years ago, he’d guess.
She looked girlish there. Young and na?ve, completely at odds with the steely reserve she displayed now.
What did this painting mean? Surely this was not how she saw herself.
There was a knock at the door. “Lord Beckett? May I bring you anything for your comfort?” It was Mrs. Reid.
“Not at all. I doubt you have any spare men’s clothing lying about.” He stared at the canvas, trying to unpick its meaning, as if it would give him insight into the woman’s character. Or her past? Had she done something terribly wicked? Or had her parents? What was this all about?
“I do not, and I fear Jacobs’s clothing is not a proper fit.”
“I instructed my man to return with trousers. He shall return shortly.” A small worry occurred to him. Was she a femme fatale? Did she woo unsuspecting men? Was he in danger? Then he thought of their daily silent walks. Her awkwardness today. The woman could not woo a dog with a piece of cheese.
But he’d been instructed to come here at the behest of a gambling den maven. His suspicion was piqued. Obviously, there was more to Mrs. Reid than met the eye. But was it nefarious or simply odd?
“Do you—” Her voice stopped short. There was scuffling in the hallway. Was she fidgeting or doing something else? He couldn’t tell. “Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“In the powder room?” he asked, unable to contain his tone of voice.
“Oh, I suppose that would be awkward.” Mrs. Reid sighed. “I do so apologize for trying to seem more like a proper lady. I am very out of practice, and I have always been rather bad at it anyway.”
It was Beckett’s turn to sigh. He shook his head.
In some ways, it felt easier to talk to her like this, without her massive doe-brown eyes staring him down.
“I’m flattered, Mrs. Reid. It has been a very long time since anyone has wanted me to feel—” oh, how to say this without sounding like a scandalous lecher? “—feel warmly toward them.” Warmly?
“Oh,” Mrs. Reid said, the short syllable coming out like a pop of a cork. “Well, then, I am flattered that you are flattered then.”
He chuckled. “Likewise.” There was a pause, but no sound of her having walked away and left him alone.
“May we still continue on our morning walks? Or have I ruined it all?” Her voice was small and high. Girlish, he would say, if he didn’t know better.
“You have ruined nothing, madam. All is well. But I still would like a steaming cup of that Assam you’ve chosen. Pure blends are among my favorites.” Indeed, a bracing cup of tea would be helpful after standing here in cold trousers for a half hour.
“I have instructions to keep the water hot,” she assured him. There was another length of silence, which she didn’t use to excuse herself. “Lord Beckett?”
He looked at the canvas again, her strange self-portrait. The longer he looked, the more convinced he became that she was not nefarious in the least. She seemed tortured, not dangerous. Perhaps her parents still lived there, in the village with the public house in her painting. “Hm?”
“Would you mind so very much to tell me something about yourself? I’m afraid we talk at great length about my thoughts and opinions. I feel rather selfish.”
It was his turn for that surprised cork sounding syllable. “Oh.” He slid the canvas back into place as slowly and as quietly as possible. “Certainly. What would you like to know?”
“Anything you’d care to share through a powder room door.”
“Certainly. I have a sister, who has children. I don’t see them often as they live farther north.
She says London isn’t a place to raise a child.
Not that I would know. I do not go back to my country estate very often, as I have a capable steward who knows the land and the people.
It is very beautiful there, and I have promised myself that someday I will return and live out an idyllic life. ”
“Once your Parliamentary responsibilities subside a bit?” she ventured.
That surprised him. “What do you know of my Parliamentary responsibilities?”
“I am not a fool, Beckett, you know that. I read often and I read widely. You are the leader of the opposition. It’s a great task. And one that requires a great deal of time and energy. Yet, here you are.”
“Yes,” he said, looking down at his wet trousers. “Here I am, spending time in your powder room.”
“Not quite as nice as a seaside cottage in Brighton, I’d wager.”
“But peaceful,” he said, looking round the tiny room again. “I daresay no one will recognize me here.”
She laughed, a little twittering, twinkling sound that he quite liked.
Strangely, he felt proud that he had been able to make her laugh.
She was a serious person, who didn’t express mirth easily.
“I hope not. Oh, wait. I hear Jacobs coming through. Yes, your man has returned. I will leave you now to change and get the tea at the ready.”
He heard her slippers skidding across the floor, and then the heavy stomps of his footman. There was a knock, and he opened the door, receiving the trousers. And then, knowing this was a terrible, terrible idea, he handed two canvases through the door.
“Don’t let them see you with these,” he said. “Put them in the carriage.”
Bah. He was going to Hell.