Chapter Seventeen
The following day was blustering and crisp.
The sky had turned a clean, bright kind of blue, and the light felt long and sharp, as if intending to bestow upon each leaf and blade its very own shadow.
My daughters and I were sandwiched into the bench of the chaise, along with a stack of quilts, a rolled carpet, two easels, paints, the half-finished canvases, and a basket of biscuits, tarts, fruit, and three loaves of bread.
“It is not entirely fair that Elin must repay you, when you used the apple money from apples we all picked.” Rosie had twisted herself into a small degree of concern for her stepsister and sat, eyeing Mathilde and I, with a look of mild reproach.
“She picked one apple for every five I got down. Every ten!” Mathilde, sitting on my other side, was distracted by retying the ribbons of her hat.
“Rosie.” I bent toward her, adding some slack to the reins in my hands. “We have been selling your embroidery bits for years to buy what we can. Both of you have worked and worked.” I shook my head. “It’s so much more than apples. I am done compensating for her indolence.”
Mathilde finished her bow and leaned forward to look at Rosie, across the bench. “Why do you suddenly care?”
Her question was ignored. “Why are we going out today of all days? We need to work on our dresses.”
“Today is more than a picnic.” I peered into the bushes at the side of the road, looking for the right spot to pull over.
“It’s because she complimented your hat, isn’t it,” Mathilde said, more to herself than her sister.
Rosie ignored her and bent forward to nudge the cloth off the top of the food basket. “How do you mean it’s more than a picnic? There is nothing but bread and fruit!”
“Any half-wit would know she isn’t talking about the food, Rosamund.” Mathilde sighed. “She has a plan.”
“If I am a half-wit, then you are a crotcheteer—”
“Better a grouch than a popinjay.”
“If you two would pause your debate for one moment…” I held the reins aloft. “We are nearly there.”
We were close to the Enrights’. Another half a mile and we would see the fence for their enclosure. I clicked at Arno and directed him to pull over to the side of the road.
“Here?” the girls asked, in unison. There was not much around us but a field of high grasses, and a ditch that edged the thoroughfare.
“Here,” I confirmed.
My daughters unrolled the carpet and arranged our picnic while I unhitched Arno and led him to the shade of a small sapling.
“Make it look perfect,” I called, watching them orchestrate the food. “Put the biscuits into a pyramid on that silver platter. When you’ve finished, set the paintings upon the easels and spread some fresh paint on the pallet and mix it around. You must make it look like you are painting.”
Mathilde gave me a questioning glance, but did as I requested, holding the brushes away from herself so as not to dirty her dress.
When it was all arranged as I had directed, I had them sit. “Mathilde, go next to your sister. No, not there, the other side. Now, turn your body to face me.”
“You poked me!” Rosie scowled at Mathilde.
“One cannot help sharp elbows.”
“But they can mind where they’ve stuck them!”
“You make a beautiful scene,” I called. Their little fingers, their pretty lips; they looked like a painting themselves, except a painting couldn’t have captured the field rippling in the breeze and their dresses rising and falling on the same drafts of air.
Nor would it have caught their bickering. “As long as you are not talking.”
I went back over to the chaise, stopping at its rear.
I could hear birdsong and closed my eyes to listen.
A wren’s rapid trill and a skylark’s elongated call as it hovered above.
So rarely did I get to see these small birds—those that quieted when Lucy was nearby.
Wishing for luck, I opened my eyes, and placed my palms against the back of the small carriage.
Using all my weight, I leaned forward to shove it into the ditch.
“Mama?” Rosamund cried, alarmed.
I pushed harder.
“Mama!” Rosamund repeated. Both girls’ mouths were open in small O’s of surprise.
With a final heave, I managed to get the chaise to lurch ahead. The gig rolled forward into the ditch, flipping on its side.
Mathilde turned to her sister. “She’s lost her senses.”
Both started to stand.
“Sit back down,” I called. “Don’t move, I’ve only just positioned you.” I looked down at the cart and frowned. I had not anticipated its flipping. One of the wheels had also broken. “God’s bones,” I whispered to myself.
“Positioned us for what?” Mathilde demanded.
“You’ll see shortly.”
I was operating on a series of assumptions.
I knew from Finnie that the prince was hunting that day.
And that the party would be looking for fowl on the Enright property.
The retinue would have to be large—large enough that the group couldn’t stay at most halls and would have come from the direction of the city—and they would need to take the main road for their many wagons and carriages.
The best time for hunting was late afternoon.
I hoped they would pass us, and slow to offer assistance.
I had positioned the girls close enough to the road that their faces might be remembered by a passing prince.
The wind in their hair. Sun-kissed cheeks and a paintbrush held aloft: a tableau of feminine grace and artfulness.
But, for a long while, nobody came. The sun dropped lower in the sky. The girls’ silence turned to complaints. Biscuits were pilfered and eaten. And, when, finally, there were hoofbeats, the dust revealed only a farmer and his wagon.
He tipped his hat and slowed, looking at the carriage. “You need help,” he yelled, as he got closer.
“No,” I called back. “No, thank you!”
He began to pull on his reins.
I shook my head at him. “No, sir, do not stop!”
“You need help!” he repeated, more plaintively.
“I do not,” I called. “Be going. Move along.”
Confused, he scratched his head.
“Shoo!” I shouted. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see my daughters’ looks of consternation.
The farmer shrugged, unbothered. But watching his cart trundle away, I felt less confident.
I didn’t believe in fate or luck; rather that you had to take a situation in your weathered hands and wrestle it into whatever shape you required.
But what if those instincts only served me a broken chaise in a ditch?
We couldn’t afford a wheelwright. And I couldn’t do without a chaise.
Dejected, I went back over to the picnic to eat another biscuit, further ruining the shape of the pyramid.
“When your father and I traveled after our wedding, the staff would set up a lunch like this every day,” I remembered aloud. “There were tables and chairs and even silver.”
“Yes,” Rosamund said. “And insects would get trapped in the canopy of the tent.”
“And the women were not supposed to talk,” Mathilde added. “And you had to sit in silence and listen to the men.”
I realized it was a repeated story—and perhaps not as sweet as my current recollection.
“Forget tables and chairs,” Mathilde said. “A picnic would be more enjoyable if you could eat all the food.” She stared longingly at a bowl of pears.
I was about to permit her one when the birds and insects went quiet. I lifted my head. A moment later, we felt the vibration in the ground, then saw the dust in the road, and, after a brief pause, a train of coaches. This was no farmer’s cart.
I leaned forward and, as gently as I could manage, slapped Mathilde across the face.
“What—” she cried, raising a hand to her inflamed jaw.
Before she could turn, I slapped her other cheek.
“Stop!” Rosie cried, confused.
“For color,” I explained. I handed Rosie my handkerchief. “And wipe yours. You have too much rouge.”
They stared at me.
“Do not move off the carpet,” I called over my shoulder and hurried toward the road.
Standing alone at the edge of the byway, I watched as the carriages drew near.
One at the middle, marked by the royal coat of arms, was larger and grander than all the rest. I was overwhelmed with quick relief—I had been right—which soon gave way to focus: It was imperative that the caravan stop, if only briefly.
A glance over my shoulder confirmed the girls were still in place: framed by pretty grasses, their yellow dresses as eye-catching in the browning field as if they had been glowing lanterns. I stepped out into the road as the caravan’s first riders neared. Armed guards and men on horseback.
I opened my mouth to call out but found I could summon no words. I recognized the first man, not only for the richness of his dress, but for the same yellow hair I’d seen in his portrait. The foremost rider was not an attendant or huntsman, but the prince himself.
I shut my mouth and sank into a curtsy, murmuring “Your Royal Highness” into the dirt.
I had hoped that I could plead for help from a guard or hunter, and that, in the brief delay, the prince would see my daughters through the window of his carriage.
That he might notice them, and later remember them.
That, seeing their faces amongst the many, many women at the ball, there would be a sense of recognition.
I had thought the attendants would quickly pull the chaise from the ditch.
I had not accounted for the flipping, or the broken wheel.
I had not prepared myself to converse with Prince Simeon directly.
As I rose from my curtsy, Agatha had no advice for me, but I felt her presence in my breath and in the staccato of my heartbeat.
“You are in distress,” the prince observed, face marked by the faintest trace of a smile.
I rose and peered up at him. He had brought his horse to a stop and was staring at the overturned chaise with interest.