Eva took her to the library. Once Padua saw its impressive size, she doubted she would easily find any particular book for a good while. Eva went directly to one case, gazed at its shelves, and reached up. She pulled out a large, heavy tome about Renaissance art, set it on a table, then took her leave.
Padua sat at the table and turned the pages. The paintings she sought were near the front, since Giotto had painted them two centuries before the Renaissance proper began. She examined an engraving of the exterior of the chapel and imagined her mother approaching it. Her mind filled in the missing colors and landscape.
She turned a page to see the chapel’s interior, then another. Each page now held engraved images of each scene in the fresco cycle. Looking at them called forth her mother’s voice. She succumbed to the nostalgia, and allowed her memories to give her a tour.
***
“Disgraceful excess.” Gareth muttered the criticism while he looked over his shoulder.
He, Lance, and Ives stood in the night in the familygraveyard. At their feet, all but invisible in the dark, lay a simple rectangular stone marking their father’s grave. They had come out to raise a toast to him.
The object of Gareth’s scorn stood ten feet away. A behemoth of a sepulcher, it rose fifteen feet high, its white stone glowing in the moonlight. In that particular grave lay their eldest brother, Percy. No one had suggested they raise a toast to him too.
“I have rebuilt the cottage that he burned down,” Lance said. “There are tenants in it now.”
“And the empty cottage nearby?” Gareth asked.
“I visited, after it was empty of its recent holdings. I discovered that our brother used it as a private lair. There was evidence that he indulged his appetites there.”
“A rendezvous for discretion’s sake? And here I thought he never partook of amorous pursuits,” Ives said. “I thought he chose to be virtuous, to be better than us.” He looked down at his father’s grave marker. “To be better than him.”
“I suspect that his desire for privacy involved much more than discretion,” Lance said. “I do not choose to say more than that. Just that there is much about our brother that we did not know. I for one would not mind leaving it thus.”
They began strolling back to the house.
“She is very tall, isn’t she?” Gareth asked.
Ives sighed. “You are speaking of Miss Belvoir, I assume.”
“I am certainly not speaking of Eva, who is average sized.”
“I agree she is tall. I do not know why everyone is obligated to comment on it. While it gives her a distinctive elegance, it is her least notable quality as I see it.”
Gareth paced along on his right, and Lance on his left.
“Of course she is much more than her height,” Gareth said in a musing tone. “It is just upon seeing her, her height is a little startling. Then one starts wondering.”
“Wondering?”
“Imagining.”
Lance laughed lowly.
Ives glared at Gareth’s shadowed profile. “Imaginingwhat?”
Gareth shrugged. “She is taller than most women by almost a head, so one can’t help but imagine what it would be like. Calculate the difference it would make.”
Ives’s jaw tightened. His fists clenched.
Gareth walked on, unaware that he was in danger. “For an average-sized man, it might prove awkward, but for a tall man, there could be benefits.”
“For certain positions, that is true,” Lance offered.
Ives snapped his head around and glowered through the dark at Lance.
“Yes, that is what I mean,” Gareth said, warming to the topic. “For example, standing, it probably would prove impossible if one tried to raise a woman that tall, but since one might not need to do that, other options come to mind.”
Ives’s head felt explosive. That he had immediately wondered when he first met Padua did not mean othermen should presume to do so, let alone his brothers. “I cannot believe that you are speaking so outrageously about this woman who is a lady and our guest.”
