Chapter 21
Cassian had not, in twenty years, looked at the painting.
It hung in the small portrait gallery between the morning room and the long library in a corner that did not get a great deal of light.
He had hung it there on purpose. He had hung it there because he had not wanted, in the years after his father’s death, to see it from any of the windows.
He had wanted it in a corner that would require him to deliberately walk to it, and he had then arranged, with the unfailing discipline he had brought to most of his arrangements in those years, never to deliberately walk to it.
It was the only painting his father had not burned.
His father had burned the others on a particular Tuesday in October sixteen years ago in the small grate of his study at Langton while fourteen-year-old Cassian had stood in the doorway and watched a great many small black-edged squares of canvas curl in the fire.
There had been eleven of them. Those eleven had been everything he had painted in the previous four years.
That day, he had been allowed to keep only one: the small portrait in oils of his elder brother Henry, sitting on the stone steps of Langton’s southern lawn at thirteen with the dog at his feet and the apple in his hand.
His father had kept it because he had liked the dog. His father had not, on that Tuesday, been able to read the portrait closely enough to see that the painter had loved the boy in it more than he had loved any other thing in his life.
His father had been dead for twelve years now.
Cassian had not, since the funeral, taken the portrait down.
In fact, he had not looked at the portrait.
The portrait had hung in its small corner of the gallery with the dog and the apple and the boy, and Cassian had walked past it on every morning of his life at Langton with his face turned away.
He had not arranged for Joanna to walk Alice past it this evening.
He had not arranged for Joanna to do anything.
He had been lounging at the far end of the long library with Richard on the small couch by the second window with a glass in his hand and the careful expression of a man whose bride had not, since the lake at one in the afternoon, looked at him properly.
He had been telling himself that this was the natural course of his promise to her at Mrs. Hatcher’s. He had told her he would not press. He had not pressed, and she was not pressing back. He had been telling himself this for three hours and still could not believe it.
He had been on his second glass when Alice had walked through the open door with Joanna at her elbow.
He had looked up, but Alice had not seen him.
She had been looking at his sister, who had been pointing at something in the small portrait gallery and saying something he could not hear, and Alice had turned obediently, in the grave way she had been turning all afternoon, to look at whatever Joanna was pointing at.
Cassian had set his glass down. Without saying a word to Richard, he had gone to the door of the long library and from there to the open door of the gallery and had stood in the door of the gallery with his hand on the frame.
Alice and Joanna were staring at the portrait.
“… actually painted it,” Joanna was saying.
“He was twelve, I think. He used to paint a great deal when we were little. He had a small studio at the top of the house where he put his canvases. He painted Henry, mostly. He painted the dogs sometimes. He painted me once when I was three, but I have not seen that one in years. I believe Father burned that one, too.”
“Joanna.”
“It is all right, Alice. I am quite over it. Father burned a great many things he should not have burned, and I have made my peace with it in so far as I can be expected to. But this one… this one is the only one left. Cassian saved it on a particular Tuesday in October when Father had decided that painting was no longer a thing the heir to the duchy could be permitted. I think he saved it because Father liked the dog. There is a great deal of comedy in our family if you look closely.”
“It is a beautiful painting, Joanna.”
“It is.”
“Is that Henry?”
“That is Henry. He was thirteen here. He was always the easy one. Cassian painted him a great many times. I think Cassian loved him more than I have ever loved anyone, including Cassian, which is saying a great deal.”
“Joanna—”
“No, do not say anything kind, Alice, or I will cry. I have not cried about Henry in twelve years, and I do not propose to start at my brother’s house party.
Look at the dog. He was called Romulus. Romulus lived to be eighteen which was tremendous for a dog his size.
He died when I was nine. Cassian sat at his head during his last three nights.
I do not think he slept on any of the three. ”
“Oh, Joanna.”
Cassian did not move from the doorway. Alice had not, at any point in the last three minutes, seen him.
She was standing in front of his only surviving painting in a pale yellow muslin dress that, in the four hours since the lake, had dried into the soft shape of a thing that had been very wet earlier.
She was looking at the portrait of his brother with her face quite still, and she was, he realized after a moment, listening to his sister with the undivided attention she gave people she was trying very hard not to interrupt.
She is gathering up our family. She is gathering us up the way she gathers up her own family.
Oh… I am in a great deal of trouble.
“Joanna,” he said from the doorway.
They both turned.
Joanna, who had been about to say something else about Romulus, closed her mouth. She had long since learned to read his face in very small ways, and what she read on it now made her draw a slow breath and step back half a pace from the portrait.
“Cassian.”
“Joanna, the other guests are gathering for the card game in the long drawing room. Mrs. Pendleton was looking for you a quarter of an hour ago.”
“Was she?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Joanna looked at him then looked at Alice.
She gave a small smile. She had just been told, in coded family language, that she might wish to be elsewhere.
“I shall go find Mrs. Pendleton,” she said.
“That would be kind of you, Joanna.”
“Alice, we will continue this tomorrow.”
“Yes, Joanna.”
Joanna left.
Cassian closed the gallery door.
He did not often close the gallery door.
The gallery door had not, in twenty years, been closed for more than the interval required by a servant carrying a cleaning cloth.
He closed it now. He turned the small brass key in the lock very quietly, set the key on the small console table by the door, and crossed the gallery to where Alice was standing in front of his brother’s portrait.
She did not turn around. She had heard him close the door, turn the key, and cross the gallery, but she had not turned around.
She was still looking at Henry on the southern lawn at Langton at thirteen years old with Romulus the spaniel at his feet and an apple in his hand.
His painted face was very bright and very open, the face of a boy who had not yet been hit by anything.
Cassian could see from the set of Alice’s shoulders that she was crying very quietly.
She cried without a sound with tears running down her face in two small straight lines and her hands very still at her sides. “Alice…”
“I am sorry, Your Grace.”
“Do not be sorry.”
“I am sorry, I—”
“Do not be sorry, Alice.”
“He was—”
“Yes.”
“He looks—”
“Yes.”
“You loved him.”
“Yes.”
“You loved him a great deal.”
“Yes, Alice.”
She did not say anything else.
After a moment, she lifted the back of her gloved hand to her face and dried the two thin lines on her cheeks with grave efficiency.
It was the efficiency of a woman who had been crying privately for years before she learned to do it in front of anyone.
She drew a breath, still looking at Henry’s portrait.
Cassian came up behind her. He came up slowly, his Hessian boots quiet on the floorboards.
He did not touch her when he reached her shoulder.
He did not kiss her or take her hand or do any of the dozen things he had spent the past hour in the library deciding he would not do this evening because he had promised her a week of no pressing.
He did, however, gently lay his hand on the back of her neck where her hair had come loose at the lake and been pinned up again by Joanna with a great deal of slightly amused effort, just like Joanna pinned all hair, and he left it there for two breaths. Then he dropped it and stepped back.
He had told her he would not press. He had not, on the whole, pressed.
“You painted this,” Alice said, very quietly.
“I did.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“And the others?”
“Burned.”
“All of them?”
“All of them but this.”
“Because of the dog.”
“Because of the dog.”
“What did you paint in the others?”
He drew a breath. “Henry, mostly. The dogs. Joanna in her cradle. The orchard at Langton in October. The little south chapel where my mother is buried. The kitchen garden when the apples were ripe. A self-portrait, once, that I made on the day I turned thirteen and burned in the same grate because I had not, in any of the four months I spent on it, managed to like my own face.”
“Cassian.”
“It is a long list, Alice.”
“Yes.”
Outside the gallery, somewhere in the south corridor, a clock chimed the half hour. Alice waited until it had finished.
The dark gleam of the portrait’s varnish caught the lamplight at one corner, and Henry’s painted face was, for an instant, a little more alive than it had been.
She took a deep breath.
She took a deep breath because she had decided, somewhere in the last quarter of an hour, that she would not leave this gallery without having extracted from Cassian a few of the ordinary things she had not in two years of knowing him.
She had been his betrothed for nearly a fortnight, and she did not even know his favorite color.
“Your Grace.”
“Yes.”