I gave the signal and we were off, bouncing and shuddering down the road. Several of my family members found carriages to be a trying way to travel, but I quite enjoyed them. The constant movement made it easy to let my mind drift along with the landscape, skimming over hillsides and through trees, dipping into ponds and flying on the backs of sparrows.
We didn’t have a destination. We never did on outings such as these. Stephen usually drove, while West rode alongside. Stephen knew that he had free rein to take any road in any direction. I would stop him when I found a spot that caught my eye and made my fingers itch for my pencils.
Stephen had been with me even longer than West, and was old enough to be my father. His steady personality and quick reflexes had aided me in avoiding more than a few embarrassments.
Still, it was West who I could almost consider a friend. It had begun with Tobias’s letter. Ever since he had laid it on my palm ten months ago, there was something different in the way he treated me. Perhaps he simply wasn’t intimidated by me anymore—after seeing me broken in half by Tobias’s death, he no longer believed that the stiff, rigid personality I’d strived to convey was the real me. The first time he had teased me, I’d been stunned speechless. And then I had laughed in a halting, unfamiliar way. His unconventional actions made it easier for me to change than if he had continued to be cowed by my orders. It was as though he had given me the permission that I hadn’t known I’d been seeking.
So on this day, as we drove, just like so many other days, Stephen stayed along the river, knowing my affinity for painting water. When I caught sight of a tiny dock, I signaled for the carriage to stop. It slowed as we pulled off the road, and I remained inside for a few moments to allow the guards to look about. When West opened the door, I handed him my box of supplies and he tucked it under his arm before offering me a hand.
Once on the ground, I grabbed a fistful of skirts, pulling them up before venturing through the ground foliage and trees that grew close to the river.
These were the only times I allowed my propriety to slip. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have dreamed of lifting my skirts above my ankles, or trudging through plants, but for the sake of a beautiful landscape, I was willing to compromise. As long as the only people who saw me were my guards, I trusted them to keep my secret.
Moving closer to the water, the trees opened up and I saw the dock. But in truth it hadn’t been the dock that had caught my attention, though it had character with its uneven weathering, a couple boards newer than others, and the texture of the cracking wood. It was the mother and child that had made me stop. The little one was stark naked, probably only a year old, and was splashing in the water with squeals of glee. The mother stood alongside him, ankle deep, the water soaking the bottom of her skirts as she allowed her child to play, pulling him to shallower waters when he tried to venture farther out.
“Here, Highness?” Stephen’s voice pulled my attention back. He had my stool in hand.
“Yes, right here is fine.” We were far enough from the dock to not be intrusive and when I set up, I faced the water instead of angling toward the dock. As I commenced working, I hoped that the mother would not notice me. I wanted to capture their expressions before she realized I was there and scurried off.
I sketched the mother and son first. Catching all of the details would be impossible, but I tried to capture the joy on the boy’s face and drew him with his knees bent, his little hands clutched together as he tipped his head back to grin at his mother, nose scrunched and eyes squinting.
I was almost satisfied with what I had caught of the child, but my skill was too lacking to capture the subtlety of the mother’s smile and eyes bright with love. I turned my attention to pulling the shapes from the scenery and translating them to paper through my pencil, filling in only rudimentary outlines of the trees that lined the shore, though I did spend a little more time on the dock. I leaned back to look at the drawing as a whole. It felt unfinished and raw. If I decided to paint this scene, I could never show it to Joseph, my instructor.
I set it aside and pulled out a new paper. This time I took my time with the details, broadening my view to include more of the river, and painstakingly catching the lines of the splintered wood that made up the dock. As I was about to start shading, I realized how much my back and arms ached. The mother and child were no longer playing in the water, and Stephen was still walking a slow circle around us, his eyes and body alert.
West, however, stayed close to me, affecting an air of casualty as he leaned against a nearby tree. He alternated between watching me work and watching our surroundings. I caught his eye easily.
An easy smile crossed his mouth. “Satisfied?” he asked, referring to the drawing.
I let out a small sigh. “No.” Though I hoped that the painting I would make of this scene would be satisfactory.
“Are you ever?” he asked with the same easy smile.
“Not yet.”
He pushed away from the tree and crossed to my side so that he could look over my work as I packed my pencils back into their box. “You’ve not finished this one,” he commented, no doubt surprised. I wasn’t in the habit of leaving things half-done. Usually I would have the shadows in place and would even have added notes about which colors I wished to use for certain sections.
“I know. I’ll have to finish another day.”
“And what of this one?” He reached down and picked up the mother and child portrait before I could protest. His brow jumped and he studied it for several moments. “This is beautiful, Princess. Different from your other work.”
I resisted the urge to snatch it away from him and instead pulled it gently from his hands. “Joseph would call it common, perhaps even crass.” I turned to continue packing.
“Joseph doesn’t know everything.”
“He knows art.”
“Does he?”
His quiet question made me turn to look at him. “Yes, he does,” I stated, though it came out sounding almost like a question. How could West question Joseph’s ability? And why had he called the portrait beautiful when I knew that my painting instructor would not approve of it?
He bowed his head. “As you say, Princess.” He turned away, but he stopped when I spoke up.
“Do you really think it’s well done?”
He came back and propped his shoulder against a nearby tree. I leaned my elbows on my knees and rested my chin in my hand as I waited for his reply.
He smiled the smile that let me know he was amused by my question. “Do you think I make a habit out of lying?”
“Not lying, but perhaps being overly complimentary.”
He tilted his head, then said in a most serious voice, “That’s not an ailment I suffer from.”
I smiled, enjoying every chance I had to speak with him this way. He had a knack for making me want to laugh. “I’m glad to hear it. It’s not one I’ve ever suffered from either.” Compliments had never been my strong suit.
“We all have our own crosses to bear. Yours is simply better dressed than the rest of ours.”
I stifled a laugh. “It’s probably also splattered with paint.”
“All the best ones are,” he said, pushing away from the tree.
He crossed to Stephen and clapped a hand on his shoulder, letting him know it was time to leave.
The return ride allowed me to lose myself in the scenery, contemplating new colors and noticing how the light cut through the trees overhead, turning hazy when it neared the dust of the road.
When we reached the castle, I returned to my room to change, clean myself up, and have Sarah reset my hair. I didn’t look at the vase that had hidden Tobias’s letter up until this morning. And I refused to think of the way the servants might be speculating about the torn parchment.
I took my midday meal with my parents before walking the gardens as I did most afternoons. I did my best to be sociable, speaking with Lady Sprinn about her daughter’s recent marriage and eve
n managing to enjoy my conversation with Lady Hadley.
Then I headed to the maze. I’d avoided the maze for a good many years, but had recently discovered that I enjoyed the statues there much more than those in the main gardens. It was a sort of rebellion, and I didn’t approve of my own interest, but the emotive statues of the maze reminded me of the portrait I had done of the mother and child. They were not proper, but there was an honesty about them that drew me in.
Of course, I hadn’t found them on my own. It had been only a few months ago that I’d agreed to let my sister, Ella, show me the maze, the garden where she had fallen in love with her husband. I had scoffed at first, but allowed the excursion. And now I couldn’t stay away.
I found a statue and studied it up close, then from afar. I circled it and ran my hands over the stone, trying to understand how an artist could infuse a piece of stone with such emotion. The statue depicted two people carved out of one piece of stone, the figures of a man and a woman with their arms wrapped around one another, her head on his chest and his cheek on her hair. Her face was crumpled in pain with the faint trace of tears on her cheeks. His eyes were wide and helpless, unable to overcome whatever difficulty they were facing. They clung to each other, looking as if they would fall to pieces if they dared to let go. Society would have called it indecent, but I had to call it brilliant.
More and more lately, I was being forced to confront the contrast between the rigid propriety I had demanded of myself and the honesty that I felt compelled to acknowledge in my paintings. I welcomed the chance to view things in a new light, but that didn’t make it easy.
Chapter Three
THE NEXT MORNING I finished my drawing of the mother and child then set it aside, knowing that I needed to work on the more traditional scene that I had drawn of the river. I finished the initial sketch, filling in the details I hadn’t had time to complete the day before, and then transferred the scene to canvas that afternoon. The day following, I set up my easel in my sitting room and pulled out the canvas. The basic outline was there, waiting for me to apply my brushes. Sarah knew I would be painting this morning and had taken a list of my needed colors to the colorman in town to acquire what I would need for the day. The paints were already set out, ready to be used. Sarah always insisted on going herself to get my paints, saying she didn’t trust anyone else to get it right.
It took me more than a week to complete as I battled with the scene my hands wanted to portray and the expectations of my instructor. I knew what Joseph wanted of me, and I was determined to deliver it, despite the way my view of life, of beauty, and of art seemed to be shifting.
The completed painting was good, probably one of my best, but I could still see every flaw, and I didn’t know how to overcome them. I let it sit for only a day before bringing it to Joseph’s studio. I wrapped my hand around the frame, my fingers slipping between the strings that held it to the canvas. It was still wet, but I knew my teacher wouldn’t mind.
I set it on the easel where Joseph could examine it. He stepped forward, leaning over so that he was at eye level with the painting, examining the brush strokes and the blending of colors. Then he stepped back and looked at it as a whole, stroking his mustache several times before heaving a sigh. “Tremendous.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “That’s all?”
He gave me a hearty smile, clearly proud of his student. “What else would you like me to say? I’m impressed and delighted.”
“But surely there are things I could improve on. The sun is not quite right. I could not get it to blaze as it should, and some of the trees look a little flat.”
“You are being too hard on yourself. It’s lovely.”
And he wasn’t being hard enough. Lovely? Was he content with my work being merely lovely? I wasn’t. I wanted my work to be more. I wanted it to be…I don’t know…moving? Profound?
I liked Joseph. He had taught me much, but lately I tended to walk away from our sessions frustrated instead of motivated. I needed to improve, but he was either unwilling or unable to be truly critical.
Perhaps if I were to show him some of my other paintings, he would be able to criticize more readily. During the past week, when I needed a change in focus, I had painted the mother and child. I hadn’t been able to help myself. It was still sitting out in my room. I had wanted to be sure it fully dried before putting it away.
I left Joseph with a frown furrowing my brow and returned to my room, where I studied the mother and child painting for a long time, trying to figure out what it was about the mother’s face that wasn’t quite right. The background lacked detail. It gave the impression of a river and sky, but little else. I hadn’t incorporated the detail and precision that Joseph required, much like the other paintings I had never shown to anyone.
I crossed to my wardrobe and pushed my dresses aside, revealing the rolled up canvases, tucked away behind the folds of fabric. I pulled them out to look them over. Some of them were Tobias’s paintings. That’s how I thought of them. They were paintings I’d done when I was thinking of him, and somehow that made me feel as if he owned them.
Some of their subject matter was mundane—objects that would be meaningless to anyone else. A sword with hands resting on the hilt, a key dangling from a leather strap, a quiver and bow left useless on the ground, a shadowed archway so dark that there was no telling what lay beyond, a dark stain on a dirt floor. There was one in which I had painted a portion of a face. A girl with her face upturned, pleading with the sky as tear tracks marred her cheeks. I didn’t know who the girl in that painting was. I didn’t want to know.
Each image had been painted in the hopes that if I got them out of my head and onto canvas, they would stop haunting me. I believed it was helping, but each time I pulled them out to look at them, I couldn’t help the weight that dropped into my stomach and threatened to drag me down.
Many others had nothing to do with Tobias, but gave me the same sense of weight when I looked at them. One depicted a girl standing in the middle of a bright, bustling ballroom. But despite the joy and revelry surrounding her, she stood alone and isolated. Another painting portrayed the backs of several young girls who faced a tutor standing at the front of the room. One girl sat with her back straight, her attention clearly on the tutor, while the other girls leaned together, whispering or smiling at one another. Yet another illustrated a fallen flower being crushed into the cobblestones by the heel of a boot. A thread of loneliness wove its way through each one, a loneliness I had felt all too keenly for too many years.
I put them away, rolling them up before leaning each one carefully against the back of the wardrobe. I needed to find a better place for them. I was running out of room, but I couldn’t let any of them go. They might not have been beautiful, but they were honest, and I valued honesty.
“Why do you hide those away?”
I jumped and turned, pushing the wardrobe doors closed with my back. Marilee stood in the doorway, her eyes vibrant and curious.
“You’re back.” I rushed to greet her, reaching out in an awkward attempt to embrace her. She stiffened in surprise, then squeezed in return. I stepped back, feeling unsure about what I’d done. Embracing anyone was still new to me and did not come naturally. “How was your trip?” I asked.
She linked her arm with mine and walked further into the room. “We saw so many beautiful places, it made me want to travel indefinitely.”
I pulled back, my brow skeptical. “Did it?”
“Yes, but then by the time several weeks had gone by, I remembered just how tiring it can be and I changed my mind.”
I smiled at her chagrined expression. “Where is James?”
“He’s still seeing to the horses, of course.”
“Of course,” I conceded, knowing of James’s love of all things equine.
“So, tell me.” She tilted her head toward the wardrobe. “Why are you hiding them?”
I lifted one shoulder. “They aren’t what
Joseph expects of me.”
“Isn’t the unexpected more fun?”
I couldn’t help the smile that escaped. Seeing Marilee with laughing eyes and lips that didn’t seem to have the ability to turn down was a tremendous relief. “It may be more fun, but it’s not more impressive. And I am trying to impress my instructor.”
“I thought you had outgrown Joseph,” she said with a curious pinch of her eyebrows.
I sank to my bed, her words reminding me of all my frustrations of late. I had told her that several months ago, but I hadn’t done anything about it.
She perched on the bed beside me. “I thought you would have been gone by now, off to study with a master, to work with someone who could challenge you. What happened?”
“I became distracted.”
“With what?”
“With figuring out…who I want to be?” It came out as a question because in reality, I didn’t know what I was doing lately.
“It was selfish of me, but I was glad that you didn’t leave before my wedding. I wanted you here, and it was so good to get to know you.” Her head tilted to the side, likely realizing how odd that sounded, since we’d grown up practically stepping on one another’s toes, but she waved that aside. “You know what I mean. I was grateful for your company, but I was sure that while I was on my wedding trip, you would go off on your own adventure. Convince Mama and Father to let you stretch your creative wings.”
“Fly away?” I smiled at the image of me soaring into the air on translucent wings.
“What’s stopping you?”
I considered the question for several moments before realizing the answer was quite simple. “Myself.” I dropped my eyes to the ground, saddened by the thought.
“Well then, perhaps it’s my job to push you out of the nest. We’ll be here for a week. I shall make it my duty to ensure that arrangements for your artistic adventures are in place before James and I return to Sutton Manor.”
Painting Rain (Books of Dalthia Book 4) Page 2
