“But I cannot see them as one creature,” Lance said. “To sketch them, in pencil or charcoal… yes, I can in some sense capture them all at once, as you have done so successfully. But to paint them… that is a different matter.”
“I cannot help you there,” Payne said, pulling a wry face. “I have never attempted oils or watercolours or pastels.”
“Hmm. It is a challenge,” Lance said. “Should you mind if I try to reproduce your sketch?”
“You mean, a painting that follows the same arrangement?”
“If I can. You have captured them so well… their heads together, the liveliness in their expressions, the way their hands move. One likes to capture a subject’s true nature, and your final sketch achieves it perfectly. I should love to do as well in my own efforts, but I can only paint them separately, so it will be difficult.”
“Having seen how well you captured Mrs Richard Merrington, I have no doubt that you will be successful,” Payne said.
Lance could not be so sure. He had only once before tried to paint a double portrait, and it had not gone well, but then it was a mother and her mischievous young son, and children never made good subjects. Not these pampered sons and daughters of the aristocracy, anyway, who did just as they pleased and were kept far distant from the realities of life.
He made a beginning, anyway, lightly sketching out the required positions of his subjects onto the canvas, and starting first with Charlotte. Sometimes one of her sisters was with her as chaperon, and they chattered together happily, and sometimes Charlotte was alone and talked instead to Lance, and he could not decide which was worse. If she talked to her sister, she was constantly moving, her expression changing by the moment, andif she talked to him, he could not concentrate on his work. It made progress very slow.
One day, Hester Merrington entered the library in great excitement, waving a letter. “Look! Look, Mr Chamberlain!" She paused to catch her breath. “It has come at last, a letter from Lady Patience. Well, a lady’s hand and franked by Lord Pentavon, so it must be. I brought it straight away, for I knew you would want it at once.”
“Thank you, leave it on the table there.”
“Of course. I did not mean to disrupt your work. So exciting, is it not, Charlotte?” she added, with a little wave as she passed by, leaving the room again with swift steps, her breathing still laboured from rushing.
For perhaps five minutes, the room was quiet, the only sound the ticking of the long-case clock and the occasional shifting of coals on the fire. Charlotte sat motionless, her eyes fixed on Lance, not even pretending to hold the pose he had set for her. Fortunately, that was not a problem, for he had long ago given up trying to fix her ever-changing expression in paint, and was working on her hair, perfecting the shade of brown that would do equally well for all her sisters. For five minutes, therefore, relishing the quietude, he got on very well.
Eventually, she could bear the suspense no more. “Are you not going to read it?”
“Later,” he said absently. Yes, that curl above her ear was coming out perfectly!
“Surely you want to know what she says. It does not look like more than one sheet — perhaps she has jilted you.”
He made no response to that.
“If I had received a letter from my betrothed, I should want to open it at once,” she said, as persistent as a bluebottle.
“But I am not you,” he said. “Whether she jilts me or not, the words will be the same whenever I break the seal.”
“I think you are afraid to read it,” she said, her face serious. “Or else you do not love her at all.”
That raised a sardonic smile from him. “It is not necessary to be violently in love with a lady to want to marry her.”
“But what other reason can there be?” she cried. “Oh, there must be some equivalence of rank and fortune and character, that is understood. But there must be a thousand young ladies you could have chosen, so why this one in particular?”
“Because she is the daughter of a marquess,” he shot back, amused to see the shock on her face. “Oh, did you expect me to describe her beauty, her accomplishments, her charming manners? She has all of those, but that is not why I chose her. She is a peer’s daughter who will bring to the marriage twenty thousand pounds and a house in Gloucestershire. The question you should be asking, Lottie, is whyshechoseme.”
“Anyone could seethat!”she snapped. “Every unattached female in Brinshire can see your attractions, but I shall not flatter you by reciting them.”
“Oh, I know them very well,” he said at once. “I am the son of a baronet — a younger son, I grant you, but the blood line is impeccable — and I have an income of three thousand a year. I am a gentleman of unimpaired respectability, and what more does anyone need to know? For Patience, it is undoubtedly coming down in the world, but then she is a younger daughter, so—”
“Oh, you—!” Then she laughed. “How did you meet your daughter of a marquess, anyway? In London, I suppose.”
“No, no. We hardly move in the same circles. I was invited to Pentavon Castle to paint her this summer. I spent a full month there, long enough to know she was precisely what I had been looking for.”
“The daughter of a marquess,” she said, laughing.
“And all her other attributes, which are manifold. She was, I thought, sufficiently encouraging to persuade me to approach her father, who promptly sent me away with a flea in my ear. Then, two months ago, she came up to town with her parents, I was invited to dinner and generally made welcome. The marquess told me she had been pining for me. We were engaged within a fortnight.”
“Pining for you!” She sighed gustily. “How romantic! Yet now that she has caught you firmly in her net, she is most reluctant to put pen to paper. I could not be so careless of a man I loved.”
“Patience is not you,” he said, smiling a little.
