But how was she to capture what she saw with her eyes and felt with the welling emotions of her heart? How did one paint not just daffodils nodding in the grass but the eternal light and hope of spring itself? It was her first full spring here with Dora, and she had greeted it with a certain longing for something she could not even put into words. For life to resume, perhaps, as more than just a genteel existence. Or perhaps for life tobegin, though that was a somewhat absurd notion when she was twenty-six years old and had already been married and widowed.
She did not usually think with her emotions.
She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon.
She set down her easel and bag and just stood and looked for a long time: breathing in the smells of nature, hearing birds singing among the branches of the cedars close by, feeling the cool March air overlaid by the fresh warmth of the sun.
After a few minutes, however, she knew that she was seeing only half the picture and maybe not even that much. For the trumpets of the daffodils were lifted to the sky. The petals about them faced upward. If the flowers could see, as in a sense she supposed they could, then it was the sky, rather than the grass beneath them, upon which they gazed. She, on the other hand, was looking down upon the flowers and the grass. She turned her face upward to see that the sky was pure blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now, of course, she could no longer see the daffodils.
Well, there was a solution to that.
She kneeled down on the grass and then stretched out along it on her back, careful not to crush any of the flowers. The grass sprang up between her spread arms and her body and between her ungloved fingers when she spread them wide. Daffodils bloomed all about her. She could smell them and see the undersides of the petals and trumpets of those closest to her—and the sky beyond them. And now there was a vast blue to add to the yellow and the green.
And she was a part of it all, not a separate being looking upon creation, but creation looking upon itself. Oh, how she loved moments like this, rare as they were, and how she ached with the longing to capture in paint something of the inner experience as well as the outer beauty. Perhaps this was how truly great painters felt all the time.
Perhaps truly great artistsfeltall the time.
But suddenly there was a sense, sharply intrusive, that she was not alone. And here she was, stretched out in the meadow among the daffodils, defenseless and foolish and trespassing even if shehadbeen told by Lord Darleigh as well as by Sophia that she might come whenever she wished.
Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was no one else here after all. She lifted her head cautiously from the ground and looked around.
She wasnotwrong.
He was standing quite still a short distance away, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tall hat so that she could see neither the direction of his gaze nor the expression on his face. But he could not possibly have missed seeing her. Ablindman could not have missed her. Even Viscount Darleigh would have sensed her presence. But he was not Viscount Darleigh.
Of all the people he might have been—and there were ten of them at the house—he was the very one she had most wantednotto see. Again. What were the chances?
She was the first to speak.
“I do have permission to be here,” she said and then wished she had not. She had immediately put herself on the defensive.
“Beauty among the d-daffodils,” he said. “How v-very charming.”
He sounded utterly bored. If one could speak and sigh at the same time, he did it. He was wearing his drab riding coat. It had six capes—she counted this time. It was long enough to half cover his highly polished boots. It was pure nonsense to feel that he was more male than any other man she had ever encountered—but shedidfeel it.
Instead of leaping to her feet, as she probably ought to have done, she laid her head back down on the grass and closed her eyes. Perhaps he would go away. Was it possible to feel more embarrassed, more humiliated than she did?
He did not go away. A cloud suddenly came between her closed eyes and the sun—except that there were no clouds. She opened her eyes to find him standing beside her and looking down. And now she could see his face, shadowed though it still was. His eyes were green and heavy lidded, as she remembered them from the night of the ball. His left eyebrow was partly elevated. His mouth was curled up at the corners, though whether with amusement or scorn or both, she could not tell. One lock of blond hair lay across his forehead.
“I could offer a h-helping hand,” he told her. “I c-could even play the gallant and carry you to the h-house, though I daresay I should expire at your feet of some h-heart condition after arriving there.Areyou hurt or indisposed?”
“I am not,” she assured him. “I am merely viewing the world as the daffodils view it.”
She winced—quite visibly, she feared. Was it possible to feel more mortified than mortified? What a ridiculously stupid thing to say! Oh, please let him just go away, and she would gladly agree to forget him for all eternity.
His right hand, clad in the finest, most costly kid, disappeared beneath his coat and came out with a quizzing glass. He raised it to his eye and unhurriedly surveyed the meadow and then, briefly, her. It was a horrible affectation. If there was something wrong with his sight, he ought to wear eyeglasses.
And through it all she lay where she was, just as though she were incapable of rising—or as though she believed she could hide more effectively down here.
“Ah,” he said at last. “I g-guessed there must be a perfectly sensible explanation, and now I see there is. I r-remember you as being sensible, Mrs. Keeping.”
He had remembered her name, then—or he had asked Sophia. She wished he had not.
“No,” he said, removing his hat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of her easel and bag, “that is not strictly c-correct, is it? I expected you to be s-sensible, but you were enchanting instead.”
The sun turned his blond hair to a rich gold as he sat down beside her and draped his arms over his raised knees. He was wearing tight buckskin breeches beneath his coat. They hugged powerful-looking thighs. Agnes looked away.
Enchanting.
