Wonders of the Invisible World (10 page)

Toward the end of the session, when she was drained, angry, and thoroughly confused, he would tell her some improbable yet fascinating story about how he had acquired one or another of his animals. One had been found floating in the middle of the sea, surrounded by the flotsam of a sunken ship, alone in a rowboat but for a litter of fishbones and a bloody pair of boots. Explorers had come across another on a tropical island; it had chased them up a tree, then settled into a vigil among the roots, waiting for them to fall one by one like coconuts. Such things colored her weary thoughts, painted bright images; imagining them, she forgot that she had been angry.

So when Ned, waiting at the gate, saw them across the garden, she and Mr. Wilding would seem to be amiably chatting like friends and her smile might seem for him rather than in expectation of Mr. Bonham’s face. Even this, Wilding used as a weapon, she knew. The truth lay in his painting: the warrior queen fighting her strong-willed adversary over a realm to which he had no claim.

The evenings belonged to Ned.

Tired and content in his company, she had little to say on their walk to Adrian’s apartment. She didn’t encourage questions; she might inadvertently tell him something that would make her posing for Mr. Wilding impossible, and ruin all expectations of the prized exhibit. I must go through this, she told herself adamantly. I will have my reward.

So she kept her comments light, asked about Ned’s painting day, about his posing with Miss Bunce, and which of her brother’s friends he had met that day.

“Valentine DeMorgan,” he answered with awe one evening. “He wears a cloak lined with purple satin, and yellow gloves. He keeps in one pocket a slim volume of his poems, all of which are so dreadfully sweet you could stir them into your tea.” Or: “Eugene Frith, the reformed pickpocket turned bookseller. He taught himself to read, Adrian said. And now he is an expert on rare editions. Your brother must know half the city.”

But she did not fool his painter’s eye, which caught the troubled expressions on her face at odd moments, and the faint lines and shadows left by her never-ending days.

“You’re tired,” he told her one evening after a few weeks of the inflexible routine.

“A little,” she confessed.

“Has Wilding been—”

“No,” she said quickly. “He wants his painting too much to drive me away.”

“Or do you want that exhibit too much?” he guessed shrewdly.

“He’s working very fast,” she temporized. “And his painting will be wonderful. I have been working hard, but that part of my day will come to an end.” She smiled at him brightly. “Then I can pose for you, if you like.”

He didn’t answer her tactless suggestion, just gazed at her, frowning a little. They were sitting in a comfortable corner of Adrian’s studio; Ned was sketching her as she leaned back in her chair, too weary herself to draw. Beyond their little lamp-lit world, Adrian and Linley Coombe, Miss Bunce and Marwood Stokes, another painter who had brought a couple of friends with him, sat around the table cracking nuts and drinking and telling stories. Their laughter rolled across the room, but somehow didn’t disturb what lay within the intimate circle of light.

“I know,” Ned said abruptly. “I’ll take you up north for a rest. To my house on the lake. It’s lovely there, this time of year.”

She stared at him. “But we can’t just go away together, as if we were—as if we were—”

“We are,” he said simply, “in our hearts. Anyway, I’m not suggesting that. We’ll take your brother with us. Slade!” he called abruptly, turning toward the merry group. “Let’s take our paints north to my lake house for a week or two. Your sister needs a rest. The scenery is amazing, and we can live on fat salmon and grouse. The house is big enough for everyone.”

Adrian, who had reached an affectionate understanding with his wine, raised his glass promptly. “Brilliant. Coombe can come and catch fish for us. And Stokes here can shoot. But—”

“No,” Emma said firmly, raising her voice. “No, no, no. I can’t go now.”

“But we won’t invite Wilding,” Adrian finished, then peered at her. “No?”

“I can’t go now. Please.” She straightened, nearly took Ned’s hand, stopped herself. “I would love to go,” she told him softly. “But I’d rather do it when I can truly relax and not have any worries. Anything complicated,” she amended quickly, “like the exhibit or Mr. Wilding’s painting to come back to.”

“All right,” Ned agreed reluctantly. Their hands and fingers and knees were very close as they leaned in their chairs towards one another. The company around the table watched them owlishly. “But promise to tell me the moment you change your mind.”

“I will.”

At the oddly silent table, someone hiccuped. “Slade,” Stokes said excitedly. “What is this we’re seeing? Can it be—”

“Mr. Stokes, I forbid you to mention my sister’s name in the company of other gentlemen.”

“Her name will not leave my lips, on my solemn oath,” Stokes said earnestly, hiccuping again. “But are we to understand that this—this goddess and this young painter of the most exciting potential—”

“No,” Adrian said firmly. “We are to understand nothing of the sort until we are given permission to understand it. Fill your glass and be quiet. Coombe is going to recite all nine hundred lines of his latest masterpiece.”

“You look tired,” Marianne Cameron said brusquely a few days later, as Emma arranged two pears from Mrs. Dyce’s pantry and a bunch of wildflowers from the park on a platter. “You’re too pale, and there are smudges under your eyes. You’ll make yourself ill. Go home and put your feet up. Or go and buy yourself a bonnet. Get some sunlight.”

Emma shook her head. “Don’t worry,” she said absently, trying the pears in different positions. “I think this needs something else... What do you think?”

“You’ve got ovals and circles and horizontal lines,” Marianne said, gazing at it, and forgot her advice. “You need a vertical. How about a candlestick? Or your brushes in a cup?”

“My brushes. The very thing. A bouquet of brushes in a jar.”

She drew contentedly until noonday sun spangled the river with light, and Mr. Wilding’s face insinuated itself into her thoughts.

“You’ve got interesting shadows under your eyes,” Mr. Wilding commented that afternoon as, in bearskin and tunic, she took her position. “They make you look even more heroic and doomed. Perhaps I’ll use them... Has your brother been keeping you awake with his late hours?”

“I haven’t been sleeping well. But Adrian is never less than thoughtful.”

“You mustn’t get ill. Perhaps you should stop going to Miss Cameron’s studio until I finish my painting.”

“I will be fine,” Emma said stolidly, shifting her grip on the spear until it balanced properly. “I have no intention of giving up my studio time.”

He reached out, gently shifted hair away from her eyes. “Your hair has such lovely shades of saffron in it. Perhaps I’ll take forever with this painting,” he added. “What I weave by day I will unravel by night, like Penelope... Miss Slade, you look positively horrified. Where has your fighting spirit gone?”

“I hope you are joking, Mr. Wilding.”

“Perhaps,” he said lightly. “Perhaps not. I don’t intend to stop seeing you.” Her hand tightened on the spear. “That’s better. The hawk’s glare rather than the hare’s stare of terror.”

Emma didn’t answer. He painted a while, mercifully silent. Her thoughts strayed to Mr. Bonham. Edward, she thought fondly, remembering his face in the lamplight as he sketched her. Edward Eustace. My Ned.

“Perhaps your sleep is troubled by foreboding,” Wilding commented after a while. “No, don’t answer. Don’t move an eyelash. Foreboding of the future. A house full of caterwauling children, a husband who, no matter how good his intentions, cannot, for the sake of his own art, put your work before his needs. You are equals now. But marriage has a way of altering the scales. He will tend to his art. You will tend to everything else.” His eyes flicked to her frozen face. “You think I am cruel. I am only thinking of you.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said sharply. “You have told me that no matter what I do, my art will be inferior.”

“I did not say that,” he answered calmly. “I said that most female painters lack depth. Surely not all. But I can’t know what your art might become.”

“No.”

“Don’t speak. And neither will you know, if you marry. You simply won’t have time. What is regarded as novel and intriguing and perhaps is important in you now will be looked upon as irrelevant when you have a household and a husband to look after. I’d think very hard about those things, if I were a woman. Don’t speak. I’m doing your mouth.” He concentrated on it for a while, then went on smoothly, “I never wanted children around. Noisy, messy, ignorant little barbarians who must be taught the slightest thing... Nor do I need a wife to make myself seem respectable. What I have longed for is a companion. An equal, in wit and temperament and of course in beauty. Free to indulge herself in whatever she might consider important. She would not need my permission to do as she pleased because legally I would have no claim on her. Consider that, Miss Slade.”

She did, straightening so suddenly with a whirl of spearhead that he blinked. “Mr. Wilding,” she said icily, her voice trembling, “what kind of monster are you, trapping me and then tormenting me?”

He raised his brows, gazed at her perplexedly for a moment. Then he put down his brush. “I think, Miss Slade, that I will send you home early today. You must be very tired to be imagining such things. Tell your brother that you need a good night’s sleep. Forego the studio in the morning just this once. Try to come back refreshed tomorrow.”

“Mr. Wilding—”

“It’s all right. I’ve just given you some things to think about, that’s all. They may seem a bit confusing now, but they’re worth examining. Get dressed. I’ll walk you out and send you home in my carriage. Fender had an unfortunate encounter in the garden this morning; it will be a while before he’ll be up and about.”

Emma flung open Adrian’s studio door and said tersely to the group of startled faces—Ned, Euphemia Bunce, and Adrian—around his easel, “Mr. Bonham, I have changed my mind. I really do need to get away. Can we leave for your house in the north as soon as possible?”

Ned didn’t ask questions. He didn’t dare. There was tension in his beloved’s voice and in her movements that told him simply to do what must be done as quickly as possible. He sent word to his caretaker and housekeeper in the north to prepare for a full house, perused the train schedules, and started packing. Beneath his alarm for her, he was delighted, and afraid that if he delayed or discussed her reasons for the abrupt decision, she might change her mind again. Long hours rambling through the country was what she needed: sun and rain on her face, work whenever she wanted, laughter in the evenings, fish out of the rivers, fresh cream and strawberries, and long, peaceful, dreamless sleeps.

Two days later, when the train to the north country began to move out of the station, Ned saw the tension suddenly melt out of Emma like something palpable. She turned to look at him with wonder. Around her, friends and her brother and their older female cousin Winifred, whose art lay in her embroidery threads, chatted and laughed. Aisles and racks were piled with their luggage, as well as baskets of provisions, sketchbooks to record the journey, blankets, books and a great trunk full of the paraphernalia of their art.

“We’re moving,” she said incredulously. “I thought it wouldn’t be possible. Something would happen to prevent it.”

“Is Wilding that difficult?” he asked her, appalled.

She thought, watching the city flow past her, before she answered. “He is playing a game to make me feel like Boudicca. But, unlike her, I will win. I just needed to retreat for a week or two.” She smiled at him, the shadows like bruises under her eyes. He could not find a smile to give back to her.

“You will not go there again,” he said flatly. “I will explain that to Mr. Wilding.”

Her smile faded; he glimpsed a look in her eyes that Wilding must have put there: fierce and inflexible.

“You will not fight my battles for me,” she said softly. “If I can’t fight for myself and my art, then what kind of an artist can I be? Only what you will permit me to be.”

He blinked at her, startled at this stranger’s face. Then he thought about what she said, and answered haltingly, “I think I understand. This is that important to you.”

“Yes.”

“More important than me or Wilding.”

Her face softened; she touched his hand, held it unexpectedly. “No. As important as you. The only important thing about Wilding is what we will get from him when this is finished.”

He opened her fingers, let his own explore her long bones and warm, softer skin, roughened here and there by a callous from her pencil, or by scrubbing to remove dried paint. Though their hands were tucked neatly out of sight beneath her skirt, he felt that warmth against his lips, as though longing, for an instant, had made it so.

“Miss Slade,” he said huskily.

“Mr. Bonham?”

“Will you please marry me so that I might have the privilege of putting my arms around you?”

She nodded, sighing audibly. Then she added quickly, “I mean no. I mean not yet. Soon. I meant that—I dearly wish you could. How long have we known each other?”