Chapter 21 #2
She busied herself with laying out her brushes and pigments how she liked them—the cake of red farthest from her, then yellow closer, then blue, and burnt sienna at the top of the next column.
The orderliness somewhat calmed the chaos in her heart; she knew how to do this, and the routine of it would get her through.
“Shall I stand?” he asked, near the wall again and to the left of her easel.
“If you can tolerate it, yes,” she said, closing one eye to study him and decide on her composition. “A little to your right, perfect! That fern is agreeable where it is, and the boughs behind your head will tell the story of this…rather unusual Christmas. Have you been painted before?”
“As a child, yes, with my family,” he said, adopting a three-quarter profile stance, head comfortably neutral, one hand on his hip to flare out the waist of his coat. “Strange, I suppose, that loving art as I do, it never occurred to me to commission someone.”
“And where shall this masterpiece hang in the magnificently refurbished Clafton Hall?” asked Violet, putting on a booming, serious voice that made his smile widen. He did have such a blazing smile when he was at ease, though it was terrible to paint teeth, and she would not consider attempting it.
“In the hall with the best light, right beside your self-portrait. After you finish it, I mean.”
Violet nearly dropped the paper she was stretching over the easel board. “My…But it survived the rain that night? Why did you never tell me?”
“To savor your look of surprise now?” He shifted and shuffled his feet back and forth. “Do not ask me to explain it, Violet. My urge to take and keep it is as befuddling as what lies between us now.”
“And what lies between us?” she asked, raising a brow. It was her turn to glance here and there to make certain they were still alone. This was a conversation for hushed whispers, not a wide-open gallery in a house full of nosy guests.
“You know,” he said. Then, lowering his head, and softer, “You know.”
“Our thoughts are one.”
Alasdair nodded.
She smirked and disappeared behind the easel again.
Say it, she pleaded with him silently. Say it, and I will do the same.
But Alasdair had fallen silently into thought, staring out the window, across the piled, snowy fields to the very home they had just mentioned.
Clafton loomed in the distance, a dark shadow, unfinished and waiting.
“How long until your home is restored?” she asked, stalling.
“A month, perhaps two,” he replied. “The snow is a considerable setback, but progress will be swift after the thaw.”
She looked between him and the blank canvas. “It’s a formidable structure.”
He raised a brow. “I’m glad you think so.
The master builder and I endeavored to re-create it as faithfully as we could.
The ruins it was originally built upon were largely untouched by the fire, so the castle foundation endures.
We even repaired the tunnels that run underneath.
Freddie and I played in them as children, which irritated our father.
Local legend insists the lord who built the castle was a nervous lunatic, and his ghost is said to wander those tunnels still, though I never saw him.
I don’t know if they will ever serve for a daring escape, probably more useful as a wine cellar. ”
You had better start painting, little fool; before you know it, he will depart.
“And so too will the light,” she muttered.
“Hm?”
“Nothing important,” Violet assured him, picking up her pencil.
Her mind went blank. That practice she had just decided to rely upon for comfort fled.
All at once, she had never drawn or painted a day in her life, did not know which colors to mix to match the lightest hues of his skin, or which color to apply for a subtle shadow.
The pressure to get it right—to re-create the full height and grandeur and weight of him, to properly commute observation to paper—was too much.
“Good lord,” she murmured, loud enough for him to hear. “I’m petrified.”
“Frightened? The woman who risked burning up to rescue a cat?”
“I…can’t explain it,” she said with a sigh. But she could. “I’m afraid. Afraid everyone will find out something about me when they see this, suddenly know what I feel when I look at you. It’s…terribly exposing.”
Alasdair watched her steadily, the light flashing off his spectacles obscuring his eyes. “And what is it that you see? What are you afraid they will know?”
That even this short distance between us is agonizing. That I would give anything to be back in the library, thrown over your lap, sealed to you in passion, with no obligation but to chase whatever fancy takes us.
Without answering, she tied on her smock and reached for the pencil again. Then, pulling in a deep breath, she aimed it toward the yawning stretch of blank canvas.
“Your hand is trembling.”
Violet bit down on her lip, hesitated, closed her eyes. “I want to get it right.”
“You will,” Alasdair gently assured her. “No one sees me as you do.”
They fell silent while Violet completed the drawing then set about mixing her paints.
The wobbles never left, but she found greater confidence with every stroke.
As the hours evaporated and the honeyed light faded, that fear she had given voice to came true—there was more than just Alasdair in the painting, but some of her, too, the affection she felt for him shining through in the heroic tilt of his head, in the noble space he occupied, imposing but not overpowering, in the special attention she had paid to capturing the slanted shadow his spectacles cast across his cheek.
Everyone will know I’m falling in love with him.
How could I possibly care?
“It isn’t finished,” she warned, putting her brushes down for the day and working the creaks out of her fingers.
Alasdair drew his shoulders back, forcing an audible pop from his sternum as he unfroze from the pose he had held admirably for so long.
“Lord, what if you hate it? Remember, there’s far more to do. You don’t even have both legs yet…”
“I won’t look if you don’t want me to.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” she said, sighing, scrunching her eyes shut while she awaited the verdict. “Just please don’t call it silly.”
Alasdair approached the easel as if it were a feral, cornered beast. When at last he had the courage to behold it, she saw the breath catch in his chest. His eyes softened, and for an agonizing spell he was speechless.
“Is this truly how you see me?” he asked in a whisper.
“I…didn’t want to include any birds or symbols,” she said. “Just you as you are. There’s no need for anything else when the subject is dear.”
He was reaching for her again, closing the narrow gap between them, when someone loudly banged the gallery door open behind them. They flinched and jumped apart. It was a maidservant going room to room, announcing that dinner would soon be served.
Violet wiped her hands down her smock, smoothing the fabric against her stomach. She could sense him sliding behind the genteel wall of manners that ought to dictate his every thought and deed.
“We will have to arrange another sitting, Miss Arden. The piece already shows promise,” he said, bowing and turning on his heel to walk toward the doors that had just been opened.
Violet stayed in the dying embers of the sunset, watching the wetter areas of the canvas dry.
The edges crisped, the colors settled into themselves, and the watery sheen dulled down to a satisfying matte.
It was good, she thought, perhaps her best work yet, but something about it made Violet turn away in terror.
She wondered if he sensed what she did, that time was slipping away from them.
Once he left Pressmore, the world would impede, and she could do nothing but hope and pray that he held firm.
To what? There is no formal understanding between you, just kisses and implications.
She felt sick all through dinner. Alasdair must have noticed, for she caught him staring with concern after the soup was taken away.
A jovial mood pervaded the table despite Violet’s sulking, and with great excitement, Lane reported that the road conditions had improved markedly. Violet slumped lower in her chair.
Later, in bed, that sickness blossomed into a fever.
Maggie and Winny swore she did not feel warm to the touch, but Violet had convinced herself of her grave illness.
She shivered under the blankets, willing the sky to unleash another storm and hold them all hostage for a few more days.
Preferably months. When sleep came, it did so like spilled ink bleeding across a page.
In her nightmare, she wandered a barren field of waist-deep snow, following distant shouts, sometimes from Alasdair, sometimes from what she knew to be wolves.
She tore awake dripping with sweat.
Anything was better than the nightmare, so she wriggled under the warmest shawl she could find and left Winny and Maggie snoring peacefully.
A house in winter, dressed in moonlight and haunted by unseen breathing bodies, was hardly better than a nightmare, but Violet refused to go back to bed.
She wandered, her cold ankles sliding together for the wisps of warmth each time they rubbed.
And she didn’t know where to go but felt called to retrace her steps back to the gallery, now empty and dark as a tunnel straight to hell.