“Oh, don’t tell me you weren’t wondering.”
“That’s beside the point,” he answered through his teeth. “There are ladies present.”
“Very well.” Mr. Nesbitt bowed his head in their direction. “My apologies, ladies. Please forgive me my barbaric Americanized ways. You were saying that Synne pulled a knife magically from the air…?”
Lenora fought back a grin. She had a feeling Mr. Ashford would not appreciate it in the least. “She went after Ivar, but he refused to fight back, though she drew blood. That tree there”—she pointed with her pencil to a tree not far from the largest of the pools, the only one that had dared to root itself on the craggy rock—“was said to have grown from the place where his blood was spilled.”
“But he didn’t die,” Mr. Ashford said, his voice stern, as if he were berating her for the story taking such a turn. “You said yourself they fell in love here at the pools.”
“No, he didn’t die,” Lenora assured him. Was it her, or did the man give a sigh of relief, his massive shoulders relaxing some?
Her heart twisted with…what? Affection? Flustered, she cleared her throat. “Synne realized her mistake in wounding him. If he died, her entire family would be made to pay. She quickly set about tending to his wound right there on the bank of the pool. Folklore says the magical properties of the pools healed him, bringing him back from the brink of death.”
“By then, of course, Ivar was completely smitten with Synne,” Margery added. “He never once revealed what she’d done, he was that in love with her.” She smiled at Lenora.
“Yes, he was,” she murmured. She was silent for a moment, thinking of the great brute Ivar, his heart snagged by small, ferocious Synne, protecting her even as she hated him so. “She didn’t trust that he wouldn’t reveal her secret, of course. She visited him day after day, demanding he tell her what he wanted in exchange for his silence.”
“And each day he told her the same thing, that he wanted only her heart,” Margery said with a small, happy sigh.
“Only her heart?” Mr. Nesbitt mumbled. “Not even a kiss? Not sure those Norsemen were the most intelligent of creatures.”
“Quincy,” Mr. Ashford growled again.
“When he was well enough, he asked to join her at the pools,” Lenora said, ignoring the small exchange. “She always refused. Until one day she didn’t.
“And though you may think the worse of him for it, Mr. Nesbitt,” she added, “he didn’t so much as steal a kiss. He won fair Synne with his conversation and his company. And each day she grew to love him more than the last. Until finally she was the one to ask him for a kiss. And that, as they say, was that.”
“He had a beautiful maiden begging him for a kiss?” Mr. Nesbitt stroked his chin. “Well then, perhaps Ivar wasn’t such an idiot after all.”
Mr. Ashford let loose another growl, like thunder echoing through the small valley.
“Lady Tesh did say late morning was the best light for painting the pools,” he grumbled, shooting his friend a long-suffering look. “Perhaps we’d best get to it then.”
Ah, yes, the painting. For a moment, Lenora had been so wrapped up in the story of Synne and Ivar that she had forgotten Lady Tesh’s reasons for sending them there—and her own reasons for needing to visit the place.
Hillram. His face swam up through the murky depths of her memories, earnest, full of love as he’d proposed. Guilt flared with it, and a pain so acute, she nearly gasped. Shaking her head, she pushed the image away. First, painting, she told herself desperately. Once that was out of the way she could face her remembrances. Squaring her jaw, Lenora turned to her paper and lifted her pencil.
The lines came without conscious thought, the tip of the pencil flowing across the parchment with the same certainty of the water that flowed over the rocks below. Here was the fluid line of water meeting boulder, there the graceful arch of a waterfall. Soon a precise sketch was laid out.
But all the while she sensed Mr. Ashford behind her, watching her. And suddenly the image before her wasn’t enough.
She saw in her mind what it could be: the swirl of movement under the water’s surface, the mix of color like in a sorcerer’s cauldron, as if the pools were alive with magic. There was a rock that resembled the craggy face of a troll. Beside it, a sparsely leafed plant, stretching up for the heavens, drinking in the warming rays of the sun.
The desire to capture that scene washed over her with frightening force, years of denying that part of herself quickly transforming it into a wave that crashed over her head, nearly drowning her in sensation. Fighting against the pull of it, she gasped and stepped back. Her pencil fell from her fingers to clatter to the stones at her feet, a harsh sound in the still peace of the place.
“Lenora, are you well?”
The familiar sound of Margery’s voice grounded Lenora. She managed a wan smile.
“Of course I’m fine. Just a hand cramp is all,” she lied.
Margery frowned. “Perhaps we’d best take a break for a few minutes before we add paint.”
“Yes,” Lenora mumbled, “perhaps you’re right.”
As Margery moved off to see to her things, Lenora hugged her arms about her middle and looked out over the pool. The force of her desire to draw what was deeper than the surface still thrummed inside her. And it frightened her witless. After three years of being denied, it seemed to have grown into a wild thing, a feral beast that demanded attention. She could not unleash it again.
“Miss Hartley, your pencil.”
