“Where should I look?” she asked.
“Anywhere you wish to.”
Owen was uncertain how long he had been painting Diana, for he was lost in the moment. For a change, he wasn’t thinking about the two of them being seen by wayward gardeners or the prospect of the duke coming back home and finding them together; he was only thinking of Diana and his painting.
She gradually grew in the picture, with her green eyes staring at him from the paper, just as she was truly gazing upon him. The golden hair was escaping out of her updo and her bonnet, hanging around her chin tauntingly.
He had half a mind to leave his painting and cross towards her, scooping that hair away from her face to kiss her, press her body against one of the trees close to them, relive something of what they had experienced together on that rug in the study, but not out in this cold.
The next time he loved Diana in such a way, he wanted it to be in a bed, somewhere that she deserved to be adored.
Fixing his focus back on the painting, he found he began to paint in her wings again. Unlike in the charcoal sketch he had made of her before, this time, the wings were misty, as though constructed from fog themselves, barely seen because they were so delicate. There was another difference to the charcoal sketch. Her wings were more intact. He still made them frayed around the edges, with one or two holes, not quite perfect, but nearly unblemished.
“What is it you like about painting?” Diana called to him from her perch on the tree.
“It is hard to put into words. Perhaps … I like the freedom,” he said, pausing with his painting and hovering the brush in the air. “Now, I am unbound. I can paint things as I see them, rather than having to follow anyone’s orders. I can trace beauty with paints, recreate them. So when I’m old, and my memory fades, I’ll have something to remind me of all the beautiful things I have seen in life.”
“Very poetic indeed.”
“Why I paint you, though … that is another matter.”
“It is?” she asked, her voice pitching high with surprise. Owen’s eyes found hers across the distance between them as he deepened his voice to say his next words to her.
“You could call it adoration,” he whispered to her. “I do not seem to be able to stop recreating your likeness.” She blushed almost as much as she did the time that he pleasured her. “Ha! I’ll have to say more things like that in the future. I like the effect it has on you.”
She giggled too and turned her head away a little.
Owen continued to paint for some time in silence before he spoke again.
“I am enjoying my dream at this moment. What of yours?”
“My dream?”
“Your writing,” he explained. “Did you write off to the publishers?”
“This very morning,” she said, sitting back and resting her head on the trunk of the tree. Something about this new position of hers made Owen more animated, painting her more intensely with that wistful look in her eyes. “I am both excited for their reply and nervous of it.”
“It deserves to be published, Diana. Truly, it does.”
“Since when do we get what we all deserve?” The words were spoken so sadly that Owen lowered his painting, looking to her. She was biting her lip and hanging her head forward. He wished to argue with her, but he couldn’t.
“Perhaps we don’t always get what we should deserve, but I’d say it’s high time God gave you something your way, Diana.”
“He already has done,” she smiled softly, lifting her eyes to him and nodding her head in his direction. He laughed, about to say something when a twig broke nearby. They both flicked their heads in the direction of the sound. “A deer, perhaps?”
“It wouldn’t come out in this weather. No … it could be a person.” Owen quickly packed up his paints, being careful to leave the painting loose and hanging from his fingers so that it could dry as he jumped down from the tree and hurried towards her. “Time to go.”
She climbed down from her position, too, just as more twigs broke nearby.
“They’re getting closer,” she whispered.
Owen reached for Diana’s hand on impulse and dragged her away through the forest, glancing back repeatedly as they moved fast between the trees. At one point, he thought he saw a shadow of something following them, perhaps the shape of a bonnet, but the next glance showed empty trees basking in the winter sun. Then the sounds of twigs breaking came from somewhere off to their left, and Owen abruptly changed their direction, making Diana yelp in surprise.
“Who is it? Do you think we have been seen?”
“No, but I think they’re trying to see us.” Owen couldn’t escape the feeling. He towed Diana forward as quickly as he could, aware that her ankle might still be delicate from her recent fall.
When they reached the slope of a hill, he saw their opportunity to hide. At the bottom of the hill, behind a bank of trees, there was a woodland grotto. Those that worked on the land had told Owen it had been built by the current duke’s father and had fallen mostly out of use. Carved out of old stone to form a kind of cave within the stone ground beneath the bank of trees, it was the perfect place to hide.
