“What have you heard of her?”
Concern clouds her face. “Nothing favorable, I’m afraid. And very few people will remember her at all now. She came through Newlyn so long ago, looking for something from some distant past and causing quite a flap. I cannot remember what about, though.”
He grunts, then pours the steaming water over the tea strainer in each cup.
She slowly shakes her head. “She’s exquisite. Haunting, almost. There’s something about her that’s so…lost.”
He swallows. Swallows again, though she isn’t even looking his way. It’s the portrait she’s speaking of. “Being lost isn’t a sin.”
“Indeed not.” Her voice is still hushed. Reverential. “Some must become lost to find what’s truly important.”
She’ll take up permanent residence at this rate. “You’ll have someone worrying about you.”
“What will you do with it? You cannot hide it away in here, this stunning masterpiece.”
Why is it always such a shame for something to be alone? “Thought to put it in the gallery up Penzance way, but—”
“But they’re too dull-witted to realize it’s a true Covington.” She tips her face in a way that makes her seem less silly somehow. Smarter.
He stirs the tea. Stares. At the painting, not the girl.
“I wonder how Covington knew her. He never painted people, but that is most certainly his work, isn’t it?”
If only she were the professional authenticating it. He sets one cup in front of her and cradles the other himself.
“I’m Florence, by the way.”
Florence. Like the Italian city. Like the emotions that flow out of her. He’ll never remember. “William.”
She blows on the tea. “I must have seemed a bit forward when you came into the shop. It’s only—well, mayhapyouaren’t lonely, but I am. And it isn’t too often a fine-looking man walks directly into my shop, interested in art. Me, I’m a bit on the shelf of course, but I thought perhaps…” She pauses. “Maybe you could take me out. You never know.”
A jolt to the chest. “Absolutely not. I’ve a wife!”
Her nostrils flare. “There are ways of advertising that, you know. A ring, for example.”
His fingers instantly find the band of smooth skin on his left hand where a ring used to be. He’s floated on a cloud of happy memories lately, cherry-picking his favorites and becoming nostalgic. Twenty-six years in the making is his love story with Helen, but it hasn’t an ending, exactly. It simply changes with time and fades out as life crowds into the foreground.
He can picture that ring on the windowsill where he left it, though he was tempted to hurl the thing at the time. Helen came rushing home that day, sure they’d been robbed. “The accounts,William. They’re empty. We evenowethree pounds—how can that be? We had so much saved up.” Sobs burst from her. “We’ve sacrificed so much.”
He’d had to take her by the shoulders and tell her who had robbed them.
It had been him.
Even though she’d been against it, he’d purchased an investment property in Europe that was projected to rise in value nearly forty percent. He told her.
The resulting slap had been quick and shocking. That gentle hand that had soothed their babes, smoothed hair off his forehead, served thousands of family meals, left a mark on his cheek like a bee sting.
He rushed to justify his actions, to explain why he’d had to move quickly.
“Or what, we’d miss out on being robbed? I told you it was a terrible idea. You agreed. We’ll wait, you said, until we’re both ready. A team, you said. A partnership.” She’d been shaking, that slender bracelet on her wrist quivering. “Now we shall be partners in poverty. We’re trapped in this disgusting, smoke-filled city…”
“It’s not like that,” he’d argued, but she’d been right.
“We have nothing, William.” Her blue eyes were nearly clear. “Less than nothing.”
That word had rattled around in the hollows. The life he’d given her so far was, apparently, nothing. Less than nothing. Decades of daily work…nothing. She had collapsed onto the cedar chest at the end of their bed and sobbed.
He’d taken a step toward her but stopped. When a woman cries over a single thing, it’s never just about that thing.
