Jules was already reaching for him.
The countess had come into the nursery with her husband.
“Has your mama given you permission to come and paint, David?” she asked.
“I hope,” Anne said, “he will be no trouble to you.”
“None whatsoever,” the countess assured her, stooping to pick up her three-year-old, who had come skipping across the nursery to meet her. “I am delighted to discover a dedicated artist in a young boy. And you, Jacques, my sweetheart, are to go outside with Papa and Jules and Aunt Judith’s William to look at the sheep, perhaps even to ride one if Papa can catch one. Will that be fun?”
“Watching me chase after the sheep doubtless will be,” the earl said ruefully.
“You will come with David and me, Miss Jewell?” the countess asked. “I am going to paint the sea. I persist in believing that one day I will capture the very essence of it, though I have been told that doing so is as impossible as it would be to hold a cupful of it in my bare hand.”
“But you have not been told that by me,chérie,” the earl said. “I have seen you do it with a river—capture the essence of it, that is.”
It was a lovely, sunny morning, and Anne enjoyed herself even though she chose not to paint. The countess set up her easel on the very promontory where Mr. Butler had been standing three evenings ago. It seemed a rather bleak setting to Anne, who would have chosen somewhere more picturesque, but the countess explained her choice before sitting down on the coarse grass, clasping her arms about her knees, and withdrawing into a silent world of her own.
“My poor governess used to despair of me,” she said. “She would find the prettiest parts of the park at Lindsey Hall and instruct me to paint the flowers and the trees and the birds. And then she would hover over me as I painted and disapprove of everything I did while telling me exactly how I ought to be doing it. But painting has nothing to do with prettiness, Miss Jewell, or with following the rules. At least to me it does not. It has to do with getting inside what I see with my eyes to the reality within.”
“To see things as they see themselves,” David said unexpectedly.
“Ah.” The countess laughed. “Youdounderstand, David. Have I chosen a place you would not have chosen for yourself? Have I been very selfish?”
“No, ma’am,” David assured her. “I can paint anywhere.”
Anne sat basking in the sunshine for what she was sure must have been a couple of hours while her two companions worked in silence.
She was to go walking with Mr. Butler again this afternoon, she thought. But this time they had a deliberate assignation. He had asked her and she had agreed. It was surprising that either had happened. She had had the distinct impression just two evenings ago that he did not really like her, though admittedly that was before they had sat and talked with each other for a while. And he was someone with whom she was not physically comfortable even though they had strolled on the beach with each other. It wasnoteasy to look at him.
And yet what a conversation they had had! She could hardly believe she had spoken so openly to him about things she usually avoided admitting even to herself.
She rarely thought of herself as lonely.
She was twenty-nine years old. Ten years ago—a little longer than ten actually—she had looked forward to a life of conventional happiness with the man of her choice. She had still believed in happily-ever-after at that time. But then there had been David—and what had preceded David—and her planned future had been in tatters.
For nine years—almost ten—David had been her all in all. He was her present. But he was not her future—she was well aware of that. Was the future so important to her, then, even though it did not really exist except in the imagination? Ought not the present to be enough?
But it was not so much the future that she needed, she realized, ashope.
It was her lack of hope that made her lonely and occasionally brought her to the edge of what felt frighteningly like despair.
Would she live out her life at Claudia Martin’s school? She loved teaching there. She really did. And she was very fond of all the girls, especially the charity pupils, and of Claudia and Susanna, and the other teachers too to a slightly lesser degree. There was nothing at all bleak about the prospect of spending the rest of her life there.
Except that there was.
Now Mr. Butler had invited her to walk with him, and absurdly such a little thing felt like something rather momentous. He, a gentleman, the son of anearl,had invitedherto walk out with him simply because he wished to spend more time with her. There could be no other reason. And she had agreed becauseshewished to spend more time with him.
It was as simple as that.
His looks did not really matter. This was no courtship, after all.
And truth to tell, she felt grateful—even honored—that he had even asked. In ten years no other man had asked her to go walking with him.
David was the first to finish painting. He cleaned his brushes and looked up at Anne.
“Do you want to come and see, Mama?” he asked her.
He had chosen to paint a single rock. It jutted out from the edge of the promontory, Anne could see, and would eventually break away altogether and fall to the beach below. But it still clung to the headland at a slight angle, and plants still grew in its cracks, connecting it to the land. David had painted it in such a way that Anne was made aware of details she had not noticed until now even though she had been sitting idle and with open eyes for a couple of hours. And he had used a multitude of colors to depict what to her unpracticed eye had seemed simply pale gray and green. Many an adult would have been proud to produce such a painting.Shewould have.
