Chapter 8 Savi
Savi
Savi had to admit, she was impressed with Silverburn’s cook.
She’d done what Alex had suggested and sent her favourite dishes down to the kitchens. She hadn’t really expected the cook to put much effort into making the dishes, but she was pleasantly surprised by the results.
Today’s lunch was the cook’s first attempt at vegetable shingaras and, in Savi’s humble opinion, they weren’t half bad.
And she wasn’t the only one.
An audible crunch sounded as she touched her pencil to the paper, glancing up at the spider she was drawing. She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a colourful little arachnid, from the vivid shades of orange on its back to its red-and-white banded legs, stretched out as it sat in its web.
It had been the perfect opportunity to experiment with her new Polychromos coloured fine art pencils from A W Faber.
When they’d first been released a couple of years ago, she thought them to be a bit of a gimmick.
Coloured pencils had always been for children, whilst pencils designed for fine art were strictly ones of black lead.
As she shaded parts of the darker orange stripes in cadmium orange, she was pleased to have been proven wrong.
“Can I have another of these?” Lily’s voice came.
Savi glanced up to see her new sister-in-law pointing at the small wicker basket containing the shingaras. “Be my guest.”
“I didn’t think I’d like them, but they’re very moreish.
” Lily took an enthusiastic bite, her free hand resting on the open book in her lap.
The early afternoon sun bathed them in light, turning Lily’s dyed blonde hair as bright as a lightbulb.
“I feel like I could easily get through half a dozen without realising.”
Savi let out a low chuckle, shifting on the stone bench next to the bushy plant in which the spider perched.
“They can have that effect.” She swapped her cadmium orange for dark cadmium, careful to not overdo it as she neared one of the four orange spots on its back.
Although there did seem to be something missing from the sketch.
She just couldn’t put her finger on it. “Do you know the name of this spider?”
Lily peered as close as she dared, her lips quirking to the side in evident distaste. “I think he looks like a Phillip.”
A huff of laughter left her. It had been the species’ name she’d been after, but nevertheless... “Phillip it is.” She smiled, jotting it down in the corner of the paper.
“Is it true you attended Oxford?” Lily enquired, wiping shingara crumbs off her fingers with one of the embossed napkins in the basket.
Savi nodded. “I did.” She’d been part of the very first intake of women admitted to study degrees.
“So you lived by yourself?”
She shook her head. “Not at that point. While I was studying, I had a room at my college, Lady Margaret Hall. It was quite strict, actually.” Her lips thinned as she remembered four long years of being told what to wear and what time to be back home at night.
“We didn’t get nearly as much freedom as the men.
After I graduated, I lived by myself, though. ”
Lily’s dark eyes widened. “That must have been wonderful and terrifying all at the same time.”
Savi smoothed her hands over her skirt—technically a lehenga—in what A W Faber would call pine green, but when paired with a white over-blouse was indistinguishable from a typical English outfit.
“For me, I’d say it was more on the wonderful side.
My flat was across the hallway from a friend I worked with at the museum, so help was never far away. ”
“You worked?” Lily reared backwards slightly, her lips parting in shock. “But…didn’t your parents pay for everything?”
Was this the first time Lily had encountered someone—in a personal capacity—who worked for a living? After meeting Katherine, Savi knew members of the upper classes were, in general, somewhat sheltered from the difficulties faced by working men and women.
“If my mother were alive, I think I would have received some help financially,” Savi mused, her thoughts returning to the sanatorium with a painful lurch. “But yes, I did have to work. I was an illustrator for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and with that job came freedom.”
There was an envious slant to Lily’s gaze. “How old were you?”
She had to think for a moment. “Twenty-four, or thereabouts.” Savi bit her lip, fiddling with the pencil in her hand as she tried to find an angle at which to prod. She wasn’t a natural conversationalist at the best of times. “One of the wedding guests mentioned Alex’s work with the sanatorium.”
Lily lit up with a proud grin. “Ben and I are ever so proud of him.”
Who was Ben? Her beau? But Savi cared about more important things. “Have you ever visited?”
She nodded. “Once, but it was before any of the patients arrived. I thought it was going to be like Kirknewton, but the sanatorium building is awfully grand.”
Savi’s hopes sunk. “What’s Kirknewton?”
“Well, after Craiglockhart closed,” she began, but evidently the confusion was clear on Savi’s face.
“It was a hospital for shellshocked officers in Edinburgh, but it closed in 1919, leaving a great many men to fight shellshock alone. Once we received the news, Alex decided to fund a facility at one of the larger buildings on the estate precisely for those men.”
“And it’s still open today?”
“It is.” Lily took another shingara from the little wicker basket. “Ben is there right now, actually, for talking therapy.”
Behind Lily, a familiar figure walked through the open doorway and out onto the terrace, the white lock of hair above his brow catching the sun. Savi lifted her chin as her gaze met that of her new husband, ignoring the way his appearance had her heart beating faster.
“You missed luncheon,” Lily scolded him, a smile playing about her lips. “It was rather good. We had shingaras, didn’t we?”
“We did,” Savi confirmed.
“Forgive me,” Alex said, rolling his shoulders like he’d stayed in one spot for too long. Those delectable shoulders. “I’ve had a mountain of paperwork to sort through. Savi, will you walk with me? I have something I’d like to discuss.”
Lily’s mouth turned downwards. “You’ll have to finish drawing Phillip another time.”
“Who the blazes is Phillip?”
“Lily and I have made a new friend,” Savi replied, getting to her feet as she packed her pencils into her folio.
Before she closed the sketching pad inside it, she turned it to show Alex what she was working on—firmly holding down the edges to ensure he couldn’t see what else she’d been drawing in recent days.
Alex blinked at her sketch. “Phillip is a spider?”
Savi gestured over to the bush in which Phillip had constructed his home. “Yes, he lives over here. I thought he was quite a dashing fellow.”
“Yet you’ve managed to capture his likeness so well,” he remarked, offering her a gentlemanly arm as she reached him. “Although I would prefer that he remain in the garden.”
“I’ll let him know,” Savi reassured him, falling into step as they bade farewell to Lily.
She expected Alex to take her into the castle.
Instead, he guided them down the arrow-straight pathway she’d journeyed down on their wedding day.
“Are we going for a dip in the lake?” she wondered, a mischievous lilt lifting her voice.
Alex’s brow rose in surprise. “You’d swim in the loch?”
“Of course. I spent most of my summer in Oxford at Tumbling Bay.”
“Tumbling Bay?”
The memories trickled in, curving her lips in a soft smile.
“It’s a public river bathing area in Oxford.
” It was a picturesque spot just off the banks of the Thames, enclosed on all sides by rich, dense greenery.
Despite it only being a few minutes’ walk from the city centre, it felt secluded; a hideaway from the world.
“It’s a large manmade pool with a weir—a tumbling bay,” she explained.
“It’s the perfect place to cool off on those sweltering summer days. ”
“And you’d swim in public? Wearing a bathing costume?” Alex’s voice was incredulous.
Was she about to get a telling off? She’d forgotten how uptight the nobility could be about something so natural as nudity. “Yes,” she said simply, glancing up at him as he led them deeper into the forest. “Do you object to such a thing?”
“No,” Alex laughed. “I’m just admiring your confidence.”
She was glad she’d dodged the telling-off bullet. “Would you not swim in public?”
“I would, yes, but I’ve found women tend to be a bit more reserved with these sorts of things.”
“True.” Among her more artistic friends, wearing a revealing bathing costume was the norm, but she rarely saw other women doing so—even when they went to Tumbling Bay, though the poor things must have been close to overheating in their heavy layers.
“But,” she breathed, “you wanted to talk about something.”
“I did.” Alex halted, turning off the arrow-straight path and onto a small track she hadn’t noticed on her initial jaunt through the forest. “Well, two things, actually.”
Savi took in her surroundings for the first time.
The absence of mist meant she had a comprehensive view of the woodland around her.
A light breeze ruffled the leaves above their heads, but she caught some additional movement that might have been a squirrel dashing from branch to branch, whilst the soothing cooing of pigeons was almost ubiquitous.
Unlike the carefully constructed path they’d just left, the track beneath their feet had been made by persistent footsteps winding their way through the trees—a rare occasion on which man bent to nature’s whims.
“The first,” Alex carried on, holding up a low branch to ensure she could pass through, “is down here.”
He didn’t expand upon his statement, but then she saw where he was leading them.