Chapter Twelve The Watercolour Romance
ANNE DE BOURGH SAT in the morning parlour of Rosings Park, staring at a blank sheet of watercolour paper with profound hostility.
It was a Tuesday. Tuesdays at Rosings were historically reserved for the inspection of the linens, a process during which Lady Catherine would summon the housekeeper, Mrs Hodges, and shout at her about the brightness of the pillowcases until someone, usually Mrs Jenkinson, began to weep into a handkerchief.
Anne usually used this time to escape into the sanctuary of the morning parlour, a chamber situated in the west wing with excellent natural light and sufficiently distant from the linen closets to muffle the sounds of domestic warfare.
Today, however, the sanctuary felt oppressive.
Anne dipped her sable-hair brush into a pot of clear water, swirled it into a cake of sap green, and dragged it across the rough texture of the paper.
She was attempting to paint a landscape.
Specifically, she was attempting to paint the view of the ornamental lake that could be seen from the window.
It was boring.
"Trees," Anne muttered to herself, stabbing the brush into the paper to create the vague suggestion of an elm. "Smug, stationary, leafy bores. You just stand there, drinking rain and feeling superior. You have no dramatic tension."
She sighed, leaning back in her chair. The truth was, her mind lacked the tranquillity required for landscapes. Ever since Richard had sprinted out shouting about horses and Lady Catherine's jurisdiction, Anne's internal serenity had been overthrown.
She had spent dinner the previous night in a state.
Richard, the man who treated dining as a gladiatorial combat of loud anecdotes and bread consumption, had sat beside her in bizarre, hushed reverence.
He had watched her eat soup as if she were performing a sacred ritual.
He had intercepted the salt cellar. He had untangled her embroidery silks with his large, clumsy soldier's hands, looking at her as though she were the most precious thing he had ever encountered.
Anne looked down at her hands. They were thin and stained with a smudge of burnt sienna.
She was not a romantic heroine. She was twenty-six years of age, she had a constitution her mother insisted was made of spun sugar and damp leaves, and she had spent her adult life perfecting the art of fading into the upholstery.
Why, in the name of all that was holy, was the most handsome, vibrant man in Kent looking at her as if she were the centre of the universe?
"Perhaps he hit his head," Anne mused aloud, mixing more green paint.
"Yes, that must be it. A low-hanging branch on his ride.
He is suffering from a concussion, and his affection for me is a symptom of brain swelling.
Mother's medical encyclopaedia suggests leeches for that as well.
I shall have to ask the gardener to check the pond. "
She was just considering the difficulties of attaching aquatic parasites to a cavalry officer when the door opened.
Anne paused without flinching, her brush held aloft, a drop of green water suspended in mid-air.
Richard stood on the threshold. He did not bound into the room, nor did he offer a booming greeting or an exaggerated bow. He stepped inside, closed the door slowly behind him, and then turned to her.
He looked, to put it mildly, as though he were about to face a firing squad composed of his disappointed ancestors.
He was wearing his full regimentals—the blue coat, the gleaming brass buttons, the golden epaulettes, the immaculate white breeches.
It was the uniform of a man preparing for a major offensive, but his face was a picture of unmitigated terror.
He was pale beneath his tan, a sheen of nervous perspiration glistening on his forehead, and his eyes were wide and slightly frantic.
"Good morning, Richard." Anne calmly touched her brush to the paper. "Are the French invading Kent? Because if so, I must ask them to wait until I have finished this elm tree. It is going very poorly, and I require the concentration."
Richard did not answer. He stared at her for two seconds, then abruptly spun on his heel and began to pace.
He did not pace like a normal human being.
He paced like a caged tiger that had just ingested a large quantity of strong coffee.
He marched from the fireplace to the window, his boots striking the Persian carpet with a rhythmic, thudding stomp-stomp-stomp.
He reached the window, pivoted, and marched back to the fireplace.
Stomp-stomp-stomp-pivot. Stomp-stomp-stomp-pivot.
Anne watched him, her paintbrush suspended. "Richard, you are making me seasick."
He ignored her. He was muttering to himself, his lips moving in rapid, silent bursts. He marched past a marble pedestal bearing an imposing bust of the Roman Emperor Caligula. Richard's broad shoulder clipped the pedestal. Caligula wobbled precariously.
"Mind the emperor," Anne warned, not raising her voice. "If you smash him, Mother will add the cost of the marble to your mess bills."
Richard shot out a hand, blindly catching the bust by the nose and shoving it upright without breaking his stride. He continued his relentless march across the room. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at the floor. He looked everywhere except at the table where Anne was sitting.
"Are you attempting to wear a trench into the carpet so that you might hide in it?" Anne asked, setting her brush down and resting her chin in her hand, thoroughly entertained by the spectacle. "Because if so, you will need a shovel. The wool is very thick. It was imported from somewhere abroad."
Richard stopped. He took a shuddering breath, inflating his chest to its maximum capacity, and then let it out in a long, shaky exhale that ruffled the gold fringe on his epaulettes.
He turned to face her, and the determination on his face was so intense that Anne felt a tiny flutter of anxiety in her own chest.
"Anne," Richard croaked. His voice cracked, sounding like a pubescent choirboy rather than a battle-hardened officer. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Anne. Good morning."
"We have established that it is morning, yes," Anne replied, keeping her tone meticulously flat to hide her nervousness. "Though, given your current state of distress, I cannot guarantee it is a 'good' one. Are you quite well, Richard? Shall I ring for a glass of water? Or Mr Collins?"
"I do not need Mr Collins," Richard said, taking a stiff step closer. "I need... I need to speak with you. I need to execute a conversational manoeuvre. A flanking action of the heart."
Anne stared at him. The man who had effortlessly spun poetry to Elizabeth Bennet, the man who could charm a dowager duchess out of her pearls with a single smile, was speaking in incomprehensible riddles.
"A flanking action of the heart," Anne repeated slowly, tasting the absurdity of the phrase. "Richard, have you been drinking my mother's medicinal sherry? Because it contains a very high percentage of laudanum, and it makes one hallucinate."
"I am sober!" Richard protested, taking another jerky step forward.
He was now standing roughly five feet from her table, looming over her like a very handsome mountain.
"I have never been more sober in my life!
I have spent the entire night being sober!
I stared at the ceiling of my bedchamber for eight consecutive hours, Anne.
I counted the plaster roses on the moulding.
There are forty-two. Forty-two plaster roses of sleepless clarity! "
"I am thrilled for your architectural enlightenment," Anne said, picking up a dry rag and wiping a smear of green paint from her fingers.
She was trying to maintain her cynical armour, but it was cracking.
He was looking at her with the same expression he had worn the night before—as though she were the only thing in the room, the only thing in the sprawling, gilded absurdity of Rosings Park, that mattered.
"But what does your insomnia have to do with me? "
"Everything!" Richard shouted, throwing his arms wide in a gesture of surrender.
He immediately realised he had shouted and winced, lowering his arms and taking a breath.
He took the final two steps to her table and pulled up a delicate, spindly-legged gilded chair, dropping his large frame onto it, the chair creaking ominously in protest.
Richard leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He stared into Anne's face.
"Anne," Richard said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, "I have made a catastrophic tactical error."
Anne swallowed hard. She forced herself to look back at her ruined landscape painting, unable to bear the burning sincerity in his blue eyes.
"If this is about Miss Elizabeth, Richard, I have already told you—"
"This has nothing to do with Miss Elizabeth," Richard interrupted, the name flying out of his mouth as though it were irrelevant to the current state of affairs.
"Miss Elizabeth is a lovely woman whom I hope marries someone wonderful and moves to a different county so that I never have to feel like a performing circus bear again. "
Anne's gaze snapped back to him, her eyebrows rising. "That is a rather abrupt dismissal of the woman for whom you were prepared to shear sheep forty-eight hours ago."
Richard groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Do not remind me of the sheep. I was possessed. I was dazzled by the shiny object. I am a moth, Anne. A stupid, military-issue moth who flew to the brightest flame in the room because it was making witty remarks."
He dropped his hands and looked at her, his expression twisting into a grimace of self-reproaching agony.