Isabel’s mouth quirked. While gratified by Connie’s response, she had conveniently ignored the fact that Sebastian had forbidden the school in the dower house. Perhaps with Connie’s help she could persuade him to change his mind. She couldn’t imagine Sebastian saying no to anything Connie set her mind to.
She turned back to the paintings on the wall.
‘Those landscapes by the door are mine,’ Connie said. ‘The rest are mainly mother’s. She was very good. Father told me that after her first husband died, she kept herself and her baby by selling paintings. I wish I’d known her, but she died when I was born,’ Connie added wistfully.
‘It seems you have inherited her talent,’ Isabel said.
‘We all have to some extent. Matthew does excellent lithographs and Sebastian, like me, is very good at people. The picture in the black frame by the fireplace is one of his.’
Isabel turned to inspect the pen and ink sketch of two small children; Connie and Matt, she surmised. The drawing, executed with perfect confidence in strong, clear lines, captured the essential characters of the two youngsters. She thought of the little sketches in the margins of the prayer book and recognised the same confident hand.
‘The artist’s eye seems to sit oddly with his life as a soldier,’ Isabel said, more to herself than to Connie.
‘Even as a soldier, he never lost the opportunity to capture a moment. Do you want to see some of his work?’
Isabel nodded, her curiosity about the soldier artist piqued.
Connie pulled herself up in the bed and pointed at the chest of drawers. ‘In the bottom drawer of my chest you will find a book wrapped in a Spanish shawl. Can you get it out?’
Isabel complied, handing the parcel to Connie. The girl ran her hands over the bright embroidery of the fringed shawl.
‘Bas sent me this from Spain,’ Connie said. ‘It’s too beautiful to wear.’
She carefully unwrapped the parcel, revealing a small notebook. Its leather cover was stained and one corner appeared to be badly charred. She handed it to Isabel. ‘You can have a look but don’t tell Sebastian I have it.’
Isabel turned over the battered object in her hand.
‘What happened to it?’
Connie bit her lip. ‘When he came back from the war, after Talavera, it was like he had a terrible sadness inside. One day he lit a fire and threw a whole lot of letters and other documents onto it but this book fell out and I rescued it when he wasn’t looking. I had taken a peek at it when he was ill and the drawings are so good. I couldn’t bear to see it destroyed.’
Isabel looked down at the little book. The actions Connie described seemed at odds with the Sebastian she was coming to know. She sat down on the chair beside the bed and opened the book to the inscription on the first page.
My darling Sebastian. Christmas 1792. Mama.
Her heart lurched. It had been a gift from his mother to her son.
Like the portrait, the little sketches were done in pen and ink, executed in a hand that became more confident with time. The early sketches recorded life in Little Benning: the vicarage and scenes from around the village. She recognised the church and market square, peopled with the villagers, the character of each recorded with affection and accuracy.
A long gap moved the story to a troop ship bound for Spain and then to the Peninsula where the life of an army on active campaign came to vivid life. Sketches of encampments peopled with the soldiers, their women and children mixed with Spanish villagers, toothless peasants offering oranges or other produce for sale.
She recognised the face of Harry Dempster in several of the drawings and, as the war progressed, the face of a young woman, identified only in the first sketch as ‘Inez, Lisbon, 1808’, began to dominate.
Inez.
Isabel caught her breath. Here was the woman who still haunted Sebastian.
Inez appeared in various poses, even one of her asleep, her long, dark hair flowing over the bolster. Isabel turned to the last sketch of the young woman; a head and shoulders study, the hair carefully arranged to fall in ringlets around her oval face. He had caught the sparkle of laughter in the woman’s dark eyes and her gentle smile. Her love for the artist spilled through his pencil and Isabel, struggled to control an emotion she had never encountered before … Jealousy? She had never known what it was to love a man so much that it shone from your eyes like a candle in the dark and she yearned to share what Inez had known.
Connie leaned over to see what had caught Isabel’s attention. ‘Oh, that’s Inez. I don’t know who she is. Sebastian has never spoken of her in my hearing.’ An unspoken ‘but’ lingered at the end of the sentence. Isabel raised her eyebrows encouragingly.
‘When he was very ill, he called her name often, but...’ Connie paused and then said, ‘I think she must be dead.’
Isabel said nothing. It was not her story to tell. She hadn’t needed words to know how Inez had died at the hands of the French. It had been written in the deep lines that grooved Sebastian’s face even while he struggled to keep his tone neutral. Little wonder he could not speak of her to his siblings.
Inez, she thought, if only you knew that he still carries the memory of those beautiful, laughing eyes and your horrific death. Would you be angry? Would you want him to let you go and learn to love again?
She flicked through the blank pages that remained and on one page, unmarked in any other way, she found three words.
