Elisabeth Fairchild (21 page)

Grace Fletcher and her easel were set up under the trees along the track she chose. It was not Walsh, after all, but Aurora who insisted, “We must pause a moment! I would wish Grace a good morning.”

Walsh hesitated, his eyes dwelling heavily on the young woman who chose to capture forever this place in paint. He did not seem in the least inclined to step down from his saddle. Aurora wondered if he was uneasy in the company of two women when he made efforts to woo them both.

“I would not interrupt an artist in the midst of a burst of creativity,” was what he said.

Grace turned her head in that moment to stare at them, no, to stare at Lord Walsh, who appeared more comfortable approaching those who gathered under the trees, than in lingering to discuss art.

Rue was one of those sitting comfortably in the shade. He waved a greeting to Aurora. She waved back and dismounted to quietly approach the spot where Grace and her easel commanded a bit of a rise. Grace was daubing paint to paper with dexterous authority.

“Will I disturb you in wishing you good morning?” Aurora ventured.

“Not at all, Miss Ramsay!” Grace claimed, her focus fixed first on her painting and then on the gathering beneath the trees. “I must, after all, boast to you of my success in first coaxing your brother out of the library and then in introducing hi a local writer who has come to watch the shearing. He is, I am very pleased to recount, as taken with Rupert’s stories as I am.” She waved her paintbrush at one of the gentlemen Rue spoke to. “They will talk of nothing now but the ins and outs of publishing.”

“You have read Rue’s writing?” Aurora was astounded.

“I was up half the night reading what he has with him,” she said, as if such a thing were not at all unusual. “I am sure my complexion will be ruined if I make a habit of such nocturnal excess.”

“How very kind you are!” Aurora exclaimed. “Rue seems very animated in his discussion. He is actually smiling and laughing. I can recall only one other occasion in this visit to Holkham when I have seen him so happy.” That moment, too, had everything to do with Miss Grace Fletcher, but Aurora forbore mentioning as much. Perhaps she had been hasty in judging Grace a trifling female who meant to break Rue’s heart.

Grace cleaned her brush on a much-daubed rag that hung from the corner of the easel. “Come have a look,” she said. “And tell me what you think of my watercolor. I would much rather be remembered for my artistic endeavors than for my kindness.”

Aurora was only too happy to view the work in progress. She had been quite consumed with curiosity as to what Grace did, but considered it a rudeness to peer without an invitation.

“How lovely,” she said. Her first impression was just that.

The watercolor, shimmering and light--ephemeral in its half-finished state as only a watercolor can be--was of the clearing. The temple figured large, just off center in the middle of the page. Before it a party gathered, as there was a party gathered now, with the difference that there were two extra characters painted into the scene, a man and a woman.

“Oh my!” Aurora breathed. The woman had red hair and was wielding a fan as she bent her head coquettishly close to that of the gentleman, whose face and hair had yet to be painted in completely.

“Do you like it?” Grace asked. “I am striving for the feeling of a Watteau. He captured the romance of the outdoors so well. Do you not agree?”

Aurora paid little attention to her words, much less what painter she might have modeled her watercolor after. She was lost in the memory of the picnic brought to life again with this dabbling.

She could not tear her eyes from this evidence, trapped forever on paper, of her indiscretion with Miles Fletcher. It would not do for Walsh, or anyone else, for that matter, to view this display.

“I am immensely taken with it,” she managed to say without choking. “Do you mean to keep it?”

“Why do you ask?”

Aurora wondered if Grace meant to tease her. Her expression looked bland enough, but surely she must be conscious of the consternation the working of her hand did wreak.

“I was wondering if I might coax you into letting me have it,” Aurora said, panicked, and yet truly taken with the painting for all the embarrassment it might cause her. It promised to be above the average in its rendering.

Grace dipped her brush in a dark green color and set to work adding depth to the treetops in her painting. “I am very flattered,” she said sweetly, “but the painting is already promised to another.”

Aurora felt her panic rise. “Oh? Who is the fortunate recipient? I must do my best to persuade them to part with it.”

“You are welcome to try such persuasion, but I do not forsee any success in such an endeavor. Miles can be quite mule-headed whhe latches onto something. He assured me he had never been more taken with any of my earlier watercolors. The setting struck him most particularly.”

Aurora was caught completely off guard by such a revelation. She might have argued more vehemently for the painting had not Walsh called out to her that she must come and meet his friends. With the feeling that she and Grace left their discussion unfinished, she obliged him.

As she smiled and traded meaningless niceties about the weather with Lord Walsh’s acquaintances, she looked again in Grace Fletcher’s direction. Rupert stood now beside the easel, his posture awkward in leaning upon his crutch, as if he were unsure of his reception. Grace too, was changed. She seemed less focused on her watercolor. Her face was luminescent when she smiled. Aurora could see tension between the two. Rupert stared at Miss Fletcher too intently, too earnestly, while she shot Rupert only the occasional glance from beneath lowered lashes. Aurora felt another twinge of concern for Rupert’s tender heart. Surely such tension hung only between incompatible affections?

Walsh, who witnessed the same exchange between Aurora and Rupert, was in a sudden hurry to ride on.

“Shall we take them for a gallop?” He set heel to his mount with a pent up energy Aurora was unused to sensing in his demeanor. She was left to follow, and chasing after Walsh, Aurora could not like.

In skirting one of the cultivated fields of which Thomas Coke was so proud, the riders encountered the second Fletcher to put Aurora in mind of the tension between two of incompatible affections.

Miles and Tom Coke bent over in a row of swaying wheat, examining the soil, engaged in earnest conversation, interrupted only when the horses came almost lee with them.

“Well met, sir,” Coke cried, holding up his hand to stop their passing as he rose from the wheat field like a dolphin rising from the sea. “Well met, indeed! I have news for both of you.”

Mile rose from the swell of unripened grain as well, but he made no move toward them as Coke waded through the knee-deep crop, patting his pockets with a look of concentration. His expression was troubled. He could not seem to locate what he was searching, and so he opened up his coat and began to dip into the pockets within.

“Your mare, I am sorry to report, my lord, has jumped the fence at Farmer Pelhams,” he said as he searched.

“Jumped the fence?” Walsh was alarmed.

“Yes,” Coke was unperturbed. “Naughty girl to go gallivanting. But never fear, the farmer and his lads have been dashing about the countryside after her. She is safely home again and tucked away in the barn. There is only a scratch on her foreleg I thought you might like to take a look at. Ah!” Coke discovered what he sought in his pockets and drew forth a letter. Aurora recognized at once the scrawl addressing it.

“For you, Miss Ramsay.” Coke held it up to her.

Aurora took the letter, but felt no pleasure in its having come. Her brother’s handwriting marked the outside, and no good news was to be expected from that quarter. She tucked the letter in her breast pocket after a cursory glance, and looked up from so doing to find Miles Fletcher watching her, as though he found it odd she should not open it on the spot.

Strange how this gentleman could reach out to touch her from the middle of a wheat field with no more than a look while the man she meant to marry, the man who sat horse beside her, spoke outright to her and raised no feeling at all other than a concern for his mare.

“She was not exposed to a stallion at any time durig this mad midnight dash, was she?” Walsh was saying. “Blast the beast. This cut is not serious is it?”

Coke was eager to soothe. “If Miles has no objection, I will be happy to ride with you now to take a look at the beast.”

Walsh turned to Aurora. “Do you mind if we cut short our ride? It would seem I’ve a mare needs attending.”

Auorora opened her mouth to say that she would like to see this precious, precocious, perambulating mare, but before she could stick her foot quite firmly between her teeth, Miles Fletcher interrupted.

“I should be pleased to escort Miss Ramsay back to the stables, if she has no objection to the scheme.”

For the first time that morning, Aurora felt a surge of anticipation. “Yes. Yes,” she waved a dismissive hand at Walsh. “Do go on. See to the horse. I shall be quite content to remain in Mr. Fletcher’s care.”

“You will not forget to join me at the barns for the covering of the mare?”

“I will not forget.”

Thus it was arranged, and as Lord Walsh and Tom Coke rode away, Aurora pondered her choice of the word “content” to describe her feeling at being left alone in Miles Fletcher’s care. Content was not really an accurate description. She felt more alive in Miles’s care, more vibrant, clever and amusing. She would feel the tension she had seen humming uneasily between Grace Fletcher and Lord Walsh this morning.

That same uneasy awareness made her start nervously when Miles approached her through the swaying stalks of grain saying, “Would you care to read your letter, Miss Ramsay? I do not mind waiting. I have myself received news today and would not keep you from yours.”

Aurora bit her lip. “Thank you,” she said, “But, as this missive brings me nothing but bad news, I am in no hurry to read it.” She wondered why she felt free to tell him as much.

He stopped when he reached the edge of the field, a frown troubling the smoothness of his brow. “Has this aught to do with your brother’s recently incurred gambling debts?” he asked gently.

Her head rose so abruptly her mount shied. “How do you know of that?” she demanded, sliding nimbly from the saddle.

He guessed her intention and moved to help her dismount, but she had no need of his assistance and landed almost on top of him. For an instant they stood toe to toe, almost nose to nose. His gaze, she thought, lingered far too long on her lips.

Life is short, Miles thought, far too short to continue denying his desire for Aurora Ramsay. He must tell her, and tell her now of his discussion with her brother, of his uncle’s part in Jack Ramsay’s latest reason for the nickname Rakehell, and what it meant now that Lester was dead. And yet, the words did not come easy. Lester’s demise, relayed to him by the same post that brought her word from her brother, was too fresh to be mentioned with composure. And Miles was a man who prided himself on his collectedness.

Impatient with his silence she struck at the weeds that grew along the perimeter of the field with her riding crop. “Has the latest gossip arrived then, along with the latest guests from London?” she snapped.

Miles frowned. “I have bad news from London, news I would share with you,” he suggested gently.

“Oh? What news?” She continued to thrash the weeds, unhappy in the receipt of her letter or unhappy with his suggestion, he could not tell.

He watched her intently, offering no clarification.
Slap. Slap.
The weeds were decapitated. The green of her eyes hd streaks of gold in them when she was angry. How could it be he had never noticed before.

“As you seem unwilling to tell me,”--she turned away from his scrutiny--“shall we talk about weeds again, or perhaps dirt?” She stabbed her quirt into the ground.

“Depends on the type of dirt to which you refer,” he said agreeably. How was he to go about telling her of his involvement in the current state of her affairs? It would be best if he explained before she read her letter. It likely brought her news that hinted of his involvement. Yet, how did one explain the knotted situation he had come to unravel?

“I will gladly discuss dirt with you, or any other subject for that matter, if you will but tell me one thing.”

“What might that be?”

“Does your brother’s recent folly at cards have some bearing on what you do here, or are you set on capturing Walsh for reasons of your own?”

She frowned, bent to catch up a handful of soil and let it trickle through her gloved fingers. “Ah! You would talk of dirt after all.” She would not look at him, gazing instead at the far horizon. “I’ve my own reasons,” she said. “Land is one among them.”

Miles felt an impatience with such coldly practical reasoning. “Life is surely too short for such a bloodless approach.” His voice shook with emotion. Lester’s death had hit him hard. He had expected life to respect the pattern and timing of his own making. He had expected to be there at his uncle’s passing. “What of love?” he asked, almost hating her as she coolly struck down the green stalks that lined the edge of the field and spoke so reasonably, so coldly of land as motivation for marriage. “Do no emotions stir when you consider the prospect of marriage, other than this lukewarm lust for land?” he asked, without the slightest hint of diplomacy.

She flinched, ceased her destruction of plant life and turned to glare at him through narrowed eyes. “You cannot know what it is like to be homeless and penniless, sir, else you would never have made such a cruel remark. Is land not enough for you? It is enough for me. Certainly many marriages are based on far less. Land, I understand. Love, I do not. Land lasts through all eternity. Can you say the same of love?”

“We, ourselves, do not last for all eternity in this mortal form, Miss Ramsay.” Miles could not disguise the contempt in his voice, nor the anger in his gesture as the clod of earth he held between his fingers was cast from him. He bent to raise another handful, and as it sifted through the fingers of his glove he took her hand and removing the offensive quirt from her grasp he pressed the dirt into her palm instead, curling her gloved fingers around it.