That Summer: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Patiently, he said to Jane, “I shall endeavor to work as briskly as possible.”

  Jane sniffed and took up her sewing, effectively blocking out the light of one of the lamps.

  Imogen felt her temper rising.

  So she was to be chaperoned, was she? Never mind that this painting was at Arthur’s wish, Arthur’s insistence; never mind that the door had been left, appropriately, a good foot open; never mind that she had never, in a decade of marriage, given the slightest cause for suspicion or reproach.

  “I thought Cook needed her key,” Imogen said, keeping her voice low and pleasant. “Oughtn’t you make certain she has it?”

  Jane looked at Imogen with narrowed eyes.

  Imogen held her gaze.

  Jane jabbed her needle sharply into her embroidery, making a small, displeased noise. Dropping her embroidery hoop onto a side table, she stood abruptly, her skirts belling around her. “If you will excuse me, Mr. Grantham will be home shortly. Someone has to see to supper.”

  And with that parting shot she rustled her way out the door, pausing only for a pointed look at Imogen.

  Was she meant to rise and excuse herself, too? Was that what Jane wanted? It was absurd, and all really quite unnecessary. Jane could perfectly well see to supper by herself. It wasn’t as though she had ever welcomed Imogen’s interference in her housekeeping.

  Was it the intrusion of a male in the drawing room Jane minded, or that it was Imogen who would hang there rather than she?

  Mr. Thorne kept his eyes on his paper and his voice neutral. “Miss Cooper is Mr. Grantham’s cousin?”

  “His wife’s sister. His first wife’s sister.” Hastily, eager to change the subject, Imogen said, “Do you have enough light?”

  Mr. Thorne’s eyes were still on the doorway, where the sound of Jane’s displeasure vented itself in the weight of her footsteps against the floor, each one an exercise in indignation. “It will have to serve.”

  “But it doesn’t really?” Imogen said, to say something, to draw attention away from the slap of Jane’s footsteps against the floor of the hall. Imogen settled herself down on the stool that was meant to serve as the placeholder for the bench in the summerhouse. She shifted uncomfortably. There was a hard lump in the center, unfortunately apparent even through the multiple layers of skirt, petticoats, and pantalets.

  On the verge of a polite demurral, Mr. Thorne shook his head abruptly. “It’s not the same, you see,” he said. “There’s light and there’s light. Even with all the lamps lit, lamplight casts a very different tone from sunlight, just as the sun at noon is different from the sun at dawn.”

  “I had never thought of it,” Imogen confessed. She had been taught to sketch, indifferently, as a girl, and had produced the usual sorts of clumsy watercolors, but she had never had the eye for it, or the patience.

  “It changes the nature of the picture.” Mr. Thorne paused, considering. He looked at Imogen, his eyes intent on her. “When you sit in the summerhouse, the light falls across you in a certain way. It changes every surface it touches; it lights your face and shadows your chin; it creates swirls and eddies in your skirts.” His hand rose, sketching the path of the sunbeam, and then fell. “No artificial light could replicate just that angle, just that touch.”

  Imogen swallowed hard, breathing in against her stays. Even halfway across the room, that gesture had felt like a caress.

  Nonsense, of course.

  Sharply she said, “But don’t many artists work from their studios?”

  Mr. Thorne dropped his eyes to his canvas. “They do, and so do I. But those are often a different sort of scene. Indoor scenes. Or the finishing touches on a painting that’s already begun.”

  His words were terse, as though he regretted his earlier volubility.

  “Is it all artists who are so careful?” asked Imogen curiously.

  The question seemed to relax him. “No, not all,” he said. His chalk moved against the canvas even as he spoke. A bit displeased him and he rubbed it out. “Most aren’t. But my friends and I—we want to be as true to life as possible.”

  A strange notion from men who painted works rooted in myth. “Isn’t the purpose of art to improve upon the mundane?”

  “That’s only if you find the world as it is mundane.”

  Nostalgia stirred, for the cliffs of Cornwall and the scent of the sea, the beauty of the patterns in the waves. “‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,’” quoted Imogen, “‘Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head … / Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

  She could remember when she’d felt that way, a very long time ago.

  The corners of Mr. Thorne’s eyes crinkled. “I haven’t painted any venomous toads, but I’ve a friend who lost days on a painting because he wanted a water rat in the foreground and wouldn’t rest until he’d found a real one as a model.” A swift smile transformed Mr. Thorne’s saturnine features. “You’d be surprised at how hard such rats are to come by.”

  Half-jokingly, Imogen said, “Is it the object alone or the circumstances as well that must be exact? For example, must the water rat be in the proper place on the riverbank to be painted?”

  Mr. Thorne gave her question serious consideration. “It depends on whom you’re asking. I think that might be a bit much to ask of a rat, to expect him to stay as still as a model, but, if it were possible … yes, that would be preferable to seeing him through the bars of a cage.”

  Imogen could feel the boning of her stays pressing against her sides, digging into her ribs, contorting her into the shape society found pleasing. “I imagine few things are entirely themselves in captivity.”

  Something about her voice must have caught Mr. Thorne’s attention, because his gaze lifted to hers, searching.

  Imogen said hastily, “Have you thought at all of your painting for next year’s exhibition yet?”

  Mr. Thorne returned to his painting. “All of my friends appear to be working on religious subjects,” he said. “Rossetti is painting an Annunciation, with his sister as the Virgin Mary, Hunt has his early Christians persecuted by Druids, and Millais tells me he means to paint Christ in the house of his parents.”

  “But what of you?” Imogen asked. “I hope you don’t mean to take on one of the more gruesome martyrdoms.”

  “No. Next to the others, it seems sacrilegious, but…” Mr. Thorne shrugged. “It’s only an idea yet.”

  “Yes?” Imogen found that she was genuinely curious. Just so long as it didn’t involve her sewing box. “Not more Tennyson, I hope.”

  Diffidently, Mr. Thorne said, “I’ve been thinking of Tristan and Iseult. Not exactly on the same order as the Annunciation, is it?”

  “No,” said Imogen sacrilegiously, “far more interesting than that.”

  “And your father a vicar.” Mr. Thorne’s voice was serious, but she could see it now that she knew to look for it, the little twist at the corner of his lips.

  “My father would have been delighted by the notion.” And so he would have. His religion had been deeply felt but not a Sunday chapel sort of piety. His wonder at the workings of God had expanded to encompass all of God’s creations, even the more secular ones.

  Especially the more secular ones.

  For a moment, Imogen felt her father’s presence as though he were there beside her. But not, as in the past, with a sense of loss, but with all the warmth of his love.

  Imogen shook herself back to the present. “Which bit of the legend do you mean to paint?”

  Mr. Thorne’s brush moved busily. “That’s just it. There are too many possibilities.” Almost shyly, he said, “What I’d really like to do is a whole cycle of paintings, the whole story from beginning to end—but that would take too long, and the Royal Academy will only let me exhibit one. If they take that one, that is.”

  “If your one is successful, why not a cycle by and by?” The idea caught
Imogen’s imagination, fired it. She clasped her hands together in her lap, seeing the panoply of images playing across the wall, like the tapestries in a great lord’s hall. “They used to tell stories so, picture by picture, why not now?”

  Her enthusiasm caught him aback, made him choke on a hasty laugh. “One picture at a time, Mrs. Grantham!” But his eyes were bright, as if her excitement were mirrored in his own. “Rome wasn’t painted in a day.”

  “Yes,” said Imogen demurely. “First things first. Have you considered a banqueting scene?”

  Mr. Thorne paused with his paintbrush in the air. “The lovers together with King Mark looking on?” He seemed genuinely intrigued by the idea.

  “Or perhaps,” Imogen offered, “the introduction of Iseult to the king, with Tristan standing by.” That would certainly provide scope for emotion, cupidity on the part of the aging king at the sight of his beautiful young bride, Iseult’s veiled reluctance, Tristan’s unvoiced agony.

  Mr. Thorne’s eyes were unfocused, looking past her at a scene far away. “I could paint them on the ship, with the potion, in that first moment of falling in love.…”

  “Or later,” Imogen suggested, “when they flee the stronghold of King Mark. Can’t you just picture it, his hand on his sword, her backward glance over her shoulder? No matter how she loved Tristan, she must have had some second thoughts. Or not second thoughts, precisely. Fears, more like.”

  Mr. Thorne nodded his assent. “It’s no small thing to cuckold a king.”

  “Taking refuge in rhyme, Mr. Thorne?” Imogen raised her brows in gentle mockery. “My father’s parish was not far from King Mark’s keep at Tintagel. He took me there when I was little. On pilgrimage, one might say.”

  “I should like to see it someday,” said Mr. Thorne. “Tintagel.”

  He spoke the name reverently, imbuing it with untold layers of majesty and magic, bringing it vividly to Imogen’s memory, the ruined walls with the ivy creeping through the stones, the fallen arches in the Great Hall where once banners had flared and knights exchanged bragging tales of their own daring.

  Imogen smoothed her broad skirts. “It is all tumbled down now, but you can stand among the stones and imagine King Mark banqueting there and hear Tristan’s harp among the wind in the trees.”

  Thorne leaned forward. “Is it true King Arthur sleeps below the rocks, waiting only for the right moment to wake and rise again?”

  “I never stumbled across him.” For honesty’s sake, Imogen added, “Although not for want of trying.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mr. Thorne, his eyes meeting hers over the top of the easel, “you simply were not looking in the right place.”

  In the silent room, the tapping of the trees against the windowpane, the hiss of the wind and the rain, seemed very loud, the room very small and isolated, wrapped in the peculiar gray-yellow glow of a rainy day. Even with the door open, the silence from the hall lent to the sense of seclusion. Imogen was suddenly very aware of being alone with Mr. Thorne, with nothing but an easel between them.

  “Will you—” she began, just as he said, “If one were to—”

  The clock on the mantel chimed shrilly, pinging six times. Imogen rose from her stool, shaking out her skirts, her limbs heavy and stiff. She had been sitting there for two hours. It had felt like ten minutes.

  “Mr. Grantham will be home shortly,” she found herself saying. “And supper…”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Thorne, setting aside his palette. But he disarmed her by adding, “You’ve left me with much to think on. I’ll confess, I’m eager to return to my studio and sketch out some of your ideas.”

  “You will have to let me know how you get on,” said Imogen, and was surprised by how much she meant it. She hadn’t realized how starved she was for this, for the discussion of those familiar places and familiar stories.

  Mr. Thorne began packing up his things quietly, efficiently. “I’ll bring you the sketches and you can tell me if my Tintagel matches your memories.”

  “My memories are half myth,” Imogen said apologetically. “It has been so long.”

  Mr. Thorne’s lips crinkled. “So are the stories. It’s only in setting them down on canvas that we make them seem real.”

  Imogen raised her brows, unable to resist saying, “I thought you only painted what you believed to be true? The daffodil as daffodil, as it was? Or the water rat as water rat?”

  Mr. Thorne paused in the act of slinging his satchel over his shoulder. He looked at her with unfeigned admiration, and Imogen felt herself expanding under his regard.

  “Perhaps,” he said slowly, “it’s the truth of the emotion that lies underneath the myth that we seek to capture, whatever may have actually occurred. But,” he added with a crooked smile, “I should prefer to believe that Tristan was Tristan and Iseult Iseult.”

  “And that the king sleeps under the mountain,” agreed Imogen. She preceded Mr. Thorne through the door, stepping aside to let him make his own way through the hall.

  Outside, the rain had lightened to a mist and the first hints of light were beginning to peek through the crowds.

  “Until next week,” said Mr. Thorne.

  “Yes, next week,” said Imogen vaguely, and realized, with surprise, that she was looking forward to it.

  ELEVEN

  London, 2009

  Nicholas Dorrington’s shop wasn’t entirely what Julia had anticipated.

  From the reverent way Natalie had uttered the word “gallery,” Julia had been expecting something more like the galleries she knew from New York, glass doors and white walls and track lighting, like a hospital waiting room crossed with a futuristic minimalist aesthetic out of a low-budget seventies movie.

  Instead, the building to which he’d directed her was a two-story redbrick building that looked like it might have been a carriage house in another life, sandwiched between a garage and a rummage shop. Rather than immaculate sheets of plate glass, the windows were made of thick, old glass that gave a distorted, murky appearance to the items within. Both bow windows were filled with a jumble of china lamps with molting, feathered shades, cracked satin slippers, and low stools with tufted, embroidered cushions.

  Julia tried peering through the jumble, but it was no use; the interior of the shop was tantalizingly out of sight, blocked by merchandise and blurred by the old glass.

  It was kind of clever, in its own way. No window-shopping here; anyone who was the least bit intrigued would inevitably find their way into the shop.

  Julia straightened the belt on her pale blue cotton shirtwaist dress, last summer’s favorite dress, purchased in the anticipation of the sort of alfresco brunches and drinks on roof decks that everyone always talked about but that never seemed to happen. Not, of course, that she’d dressed up for Nicholas Dorrington. But this was her first time back in London since arriving at Herne Hill. She had felt it deserved a bit of fanfare, or at least something other than ratty shorts and a tank top.

  She’d forgotten there was a reason she never wore this dress. After her excursion on the train and the Tube, there were permanent wrinkles in the skirt and a distinct feeling of damp under the arms.

  Keeping her arms close to her sides, Julia tentatively pushed open the heavy wooden door. A bell jangled above her head.

  “Hello?” she called. The shop appeared to be empty, aside from the faint sound of Baroque music, harpsichord and horns.

  With the smell of must and old leather in the air, she felt as though she’d stumbled back a hundred years or more, into Dickens’s old curiosity shop, or a Harry Potter–esque slip in time. The jumbled look was deceptive; whoever had organized the place had done so in a series of set scenes, little domestic groupings. There was a Victorian parlor, neatly re-created, with rose-spattered china set out on a heavily carved walnut table drawn up by a matching red velvet upholstered settee; a Jacobean dining room, with a fantastically carved sideboard and cane-backed chairs; and a Georgian library, complete with globe and a bookc
ase with a delicately carved top.

  All of the objects were rich and rare and in the best condition, the gilded frames of mirrors reflecting the light, rosewood and mahogany glistening with lemon oil, but, despite it all, the place felt oddly cozy. Homey.

  If one’s home were in a Doctor Who episode jumping through time periods.

  A door opened in the back of the store, bringing with it both a Handel fanfare and a rumpled-looked Nicholas.

  He raised a hand in greeting. “Julia. Thanks for making the trip. Sorry to drag you out here.”

  He wore a blue Oxford cloth shirt, with the sleeves rolled up past his forearms, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. It was amazing how different a pair of glasses could make a person look. He seemed more boyish, somehow. More approachable. Although that might also be the rolled-up sleeves and the ink stain on his wrist.

  “Nicholas.” Julia resisted the urge to tug on her skirt. “It’s no problem. I was curious to see your shop. I mean, gallery.”

  “It’s a shop,” he said with a grin that brought out an elusive dent in his left cheek that might have been a dimple. He shoved his sleeves up his arms. “And it’s ‘Nick.’ Only my grandmother calls me Nicholas.”

  And Natalie. Julia decided to let that slide.

  “Nick,” she said. She let her eyes wander around the shop, not bothering to hide her admiration. “This place is great,” she said honestly. She gestured to the Georgian library. “I feel like George the Third is about to step in for a cup of tea.”

  Nick raised his brows. “You have a good eye,” he said. He gave the globe an affectionate pat. “This is all late eighteenth century.”

  “I spent a lot of time in museums growing up,” said Julia offhandedly.

  With her father working crazy hours, there hadn’t been much lure to coming home to an empty apartment, so she’d used his membership card to spend hours in the Met, checking her heavy backpack in the Great Hall and wandering unencumbered through the familiar marble halls. The galleries of European paintings, straight up the main stairs, had been her favorite places, but the period rooms, with their wealth of eighteenth-century furniture, had also been regular haunts.