His throat tightened as his resolve sharpened. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to reconcile and rebuild his family.
“Are you changing your mind, my lord? You want me to come by myself?”
“No. Of course not. The more the merrier.”
The front door rattled open and in came a fast-walking man. The way he checked his watch, one would imagine that something was behind schedule.
Pulling off her smock, Cecilia laid it over her bundle. “Looks like we don’t have to make any new decisions, my lord. Mr. Smithers is here.”
As the man grew closer, Felton became angry. What type of man would require a woman to work all night without any apology?
The balding man was well past his prime, slouchy and disheveled. He stopped close to the stage.
“Mr. Smithers,” Cecilia said, “I’ve finished on time as promised.”
“I’d heard that you were working through the night. But I still didn’t believe—”
“It was a struggle.” She pulled on her purple coat. “Then the right way to finish came at last. I think it one of my best.”
The man clapped his hands. “This will keep my production on schedule.”
He lifted his gaze again toward the panel. “Mrs. Cecilia, well done. But, the more I look at it, it’s not quite what I expected. But it’ll do.”
Smithers’s words didn’t match the greed in his bulging eyes.
Felton had hung back near the scaffold.
Invisible.
Nonetheless, he couldn’t be thus and allow her to be cheated. He stalked forward. “Another masterpiece. Betta than what she done for the King’s Theatre.”
With his cockney accent perfected, Felton added a grunt and then tossed on his waistcoat.
Her lips wriggled, then her gaze returned to Smithers. “It’s better than you hoped. Admit it, sir. The audience will see the hero’s journey when they think of a dusk sky of azure and silver. It brings the peace of the countryside to London.”
“For a foreigner, how can you be so sure? I suspect you haven’t been anywhere but here or one of the port cities. That’s where—”
Felton’s loud cough filled the space, cutting off what had to be something small-minded and a slight.
Cecilia grabbed her smock and brush bundles. She suddenly looked very small, very tired. “My travel is nothing to this. Fields are fields everywhere, but these are fields leading to the Isle of Purbeck.”
It was of that and more. Behind Warwick, away from the cliffs of Ballard, was a quiet meadow, one of Cecilia’s favorite walks. He’d picked flowers from the distant bushes she’d mirrored. Felton noticed the white and blue petals of the sweet violets. Was this from her memories of when they all lived there, or from the early spring before she went to Demerara?
“Mr. Smithers,” she said, with her accent beginning to flare. That happened when she was mad or filled with emotion. “Admit that this is more than you expected. Your patrons will be moved by it.”
Felton was. It stung his insides that Smithers objected and forced her to defend her art. Something would ease in his chest if he laid the fool flat out on the stage.
“I finished the commission.” Her voice rose, the words sounding proud like a command. “Compensate me.”
Smithers rubbed under his chin like one of the awful villains of theatre pieces. “What if we settle for half? Then we can be done with this haggling.”
“That don’t sound quite right.” Felton pressed forward. “In fact, I’d call you a cheat. Finished fine and ahead of schedule. And ya want to cheat.” Felton raised his fists. “Outside to settle ya debt.”
Smithers eyed him up and down. “Who’s this man? You’re a widow, Mrs. Cecilia. Thought you were decent.”
Her face reddened.
“I’m the good woman’s helper and part-time bill collector.” He yanked at the canvas. “I take this down for ya, ma’am.”
