“This room, too, belonged to your mother?” Pippa asked when he hesitated, trapped for a moment by the rush of memories.
He swallowed. “Yes, it did. She preferred this floor for the view of the gardens and the lake below. She found it inspiring, she said.”
Pippa’s hand found his. “You do not need to show me today. This can wait.”
“No, it cannot.” He opened the door and tugged her over the threshold with him. “I want to show you her work. Perhaps returning to this room will give me a sense of peace.”
Within, everything was as Mama had left it. Her desk pulled to the window for better light, so that she might overlook the rolling Yorkshire hills. Charcoal and papers scattered upon its surface. An easel was propped along the bank of eastern-facing windows. The room smelled as if it had been closed up, and yet, for a heartrending moment, he could imagine his mother standing there at the desk, clad in one of her sensible cotton painting gowns, smiling brightly at his entrance.
How he missed her.
“You have not been within since your mother’s death?” his wife guessed, her fingers giving his a squeeze.
Here she was, being the well from which he drew his strength. A renewed rush of gratitude for her presence in his life hit him.
“It was too difficult, initially,” he answered. “And then, the more time that went on, the easier it became to stay away.”
“Because returning might hurt.”
They had stopped in the center of the chamber. The pain was still there, but having Pippa at his side blunted the sting, filling him instead with a rush of melancholy. “Yes. But it does not hurt as badly as it would without you here.”
“I am glad for it.” She turned to him, her expressive hazel eyes drawing him in with their warmth. “Will you show me her sketches?”
Somehow, he had gone from almost making love to her in the music room, to intending to make love to her in his bedchamber, to catching an errant pup, to bringing Pippa here. Now they stood together in the room and the memories he had kept sealed away for so long.
“Yes.” He wanted to kiss her.God, how badly he wanted her.
But he contented himself with guiding her to Mama’s desk, where two of her sketchbooks had been left stacked in a tidy pile in the corner, as if awaiting her return. His hand shook as he reached for the one on top, thinking of when she may have placed them there. Had it been the summer of her illness, so unexpected and sudden? He had been visiting friends in Cheshire, but he had rushed to Wylde Park when word had reached him. Likely, one of the chamber maids would have lifted it since then in her dusting duties, but the notion that he may be the first to touch it after his mother filled him with a renewed sense of bittersweetness.
If only Mama could have been here to show off her sketches herself.
He flipped open the book, surprised to find the subject matter of the first sketch.
“It is you,” Pippa said.
And it was indeed. A younger Roland looked back at him, fishing in the lake, a hat tipped at a rakish angle on his head, an effortlessness to his posture that bespoke a man who had yet to have his heart broken or know much suffering.
“I have never seen this sketch before,” he said honestly, taking in her attention to detail. The grasses at his feet and even the leaves in the tree possessed such a beautiful realness to them. He almost expected his charcoal self to step from the page.
“How young you look.” Pippa cast him a shy smile. “Younger than you were in Oxfordshire, I should think.”
It was likely that he had been. “I was probably no more than eighteen at the time she sketched this. A mere babe. God, this was so long ago. I scarcely recall who I was then.”
So much had happened after those easy summers here at Wylde Park with Mama, spent fishing and riding horseback, running through the countryside until his lungs ached, swimming in the lake, rowing her in the boat while she regaled him with tales from her own youth. He would forever treasure those memories.
“It ought to be framed,” Pippa said. “Why is it not hanging on the walls? Surely some of the paintings you dislike in the picture gallery might be replaced with your mother’s work.”
Roland was ashamed to admit the thought had never occurred to him before now. What a shame it had been, to keep Mama’s sketches and paintings that were unfinished here, out of sight, nearly in the attic rafters.
“I reckon we might find another place to hang some of the old familial portraits. However, I do not know if I wish to walk through the gallery and see myself either.”
“Nonsense. If you do not want to see this sketch framed and hanging, then I would dearly love to have it myself.”
Her request gave him pause. Could it be that she felt something more for him than mere lust? He was afraid to hope. But warmth sifted through him all the same.
He clenched his jaw to chase some of the emotion which had made his throat thick. “If you wish.”
“I do.” She was firm.
