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Charity Begins at Home

Page 13

by Alicia Rasley


  "What fun! I hope the doors aren't locked, after all our work!"

  But at Lord Braden's touch, the French doors swung open smoothly, and she saw that the old sunroom had undergone a transformation. This studio bristled with evidence of artistic activity, and Charity, usually disoriented by mess, found the chaos oddly appealing. Forgetting for a moment the man who created the place, she squeezed between two easels and made a slow circuit around the sun-filled room, examining each unfamiliar item.

  The shelves along one wall, once used for repotting plants, held the artist's supplies: jars of oil paints stuck on sheets of an Italian newspaper, a box of brushes, a clutch of palette knives, a jug of linseed oil with a wide cork stopper. A pitcher and ewer, the water a muddy gray, took up most of the marble surface of a console table. Next to it was a jar of brushes soaking in turpentine. She wrinkled her nose at the sharp smell and went on, stepping carefully to keep from catching a heel in the dropcloths that protected the plank floor.

  She stopped at a table strewn with charcoal pencils, their box lying discarded on the floor. She retrieved it and gathered up the pencils, tapping them on the table to even them and then boxing them up. She looked up to Lord Braden's laughing eyes.

  "I wondered how long it would take you to begin tidying."

  Charity flushed and placed the box of pencils back on the table. "I'm sorry. It's just a habit."

  "Don't apologize! It's rather endearing, actually."

  Perhaps it was only a half-compliment, but it warmed Charity. He wasn't a flirtatious man, given to rhapsodies and raptures whenever a lady was in earshot. No, usually he had that slight formality she attributed to his foreign heritage. His relaxed bearing with her was even more of a compliment.

  "I do like your studio," she said, clasping her hands firmly behind her back out of temptation's way. "I can see now that underneath the disorder, it is organized in a fashion to suit you. I will wager your last studio was arranged much the same way."

  He gazed around him in some surprise, as if he had never really seen this room before. "Indeed, I think you are right. I like to keep all my supplies accessible, not away in some cabinet." He crossed to an easel and pulled the cover off, saying over his shoulder, "And I like a southern light. I've already chosen the room I'll use for my studio at Braden, and it is very like this. But then," he added thoughtfully, studying the painting, a barely started still life, "I don't know if Braden Hall is up to this sort of chaos. It's very precise. A Palladian house, you know. Perfectly symmetric. Geometric order. Manicured and squared lawns."

  "You must have a very good steward," Charity commented. "Especially as—" She broke off before she said something impolite about absentee landowners, but Braden looked up from the canvas to laugh.

  "Oh, your brother's already taken me to task for that. Says the steward should have robbed me blind, were he not a devout Methodist. But he's done me better than I deserve, I suppose. I should be pleased. But—"

  "But?" She wished he wouldn't examine the painting so minutely, that he would move away so she could see it, too.

  "But it doesn't look much like a home. Too perfect. Nothing to soften that stark facade."

  This, at least, was an art Charity knew something about. "You need a few great flowering trees right in front. Two on one side, perhaps, and one on the other, to break up the uniformity. There is a dome, I imagine?" At his nod, she said wistfully, "I love domes in houses. If only we didn't have a Tudor house—a dome would never fit in a Tudor. Then," she added briskly, returning to his landscaping problem, "a nicely overgrown garden along the drive, tall flowers, lilac bushes."

  "Flowers will not be enough to make that museum a home."

  "Oh, no. Only living in it will. But once you move in, prop your paintings against the wall, and toss some rugs about, it will no longer be quite so perfect. A house can only be a home when there are people there to muss it a bit."

  Finally, with a bit of ceremony, he yanked the cover off a large wide canvas. "This one is closer to completion, but I've been neglecting it of late."

  The painting was a seascape, much like the one she had seen in the Royal Academy exhibition, a pretty whitewashed village around a harbor filled with fishing boats. It was a picture full of light and color, and very charming. "Oh, that's lovely. Is that Ferendisi again? You know it very well, don't you?"

  "We stayed at a villa there every winter when I was a child. And I still winter there."

  Every winter in Italy? No wonder he felt alien here. "Surely you didn't continue after the war started up again."

  Lord Braden's expression became abstract, and he gazed at his painting as if someone else had painted it and he were seeing it for the first time. "Actually, we did. We were trapped for two years when I was thirteen, when the French took Naples."

  British subjects in occupied Italy—it must have been terrifying for a sensitive boy. Charity almost reached out to touch him, as if she could soothe away the memory somehow. But she drew back her hand and looked back at the sunny painting. "How did you escape arrest?"

  "Oh, Mother's cousin is an archbishop, and so—" that unexpectedly merry grin flashed, and the abstraction was gone—"well-acquainted with lowlife sorts. He got us forged passports and smuggled out letters to my father in Oxford and bank drafts back to us. We weren't in any real danger. In fact, it was rather a lark. Anna got to dance with all the defeated officers who had gone to cover in Lecce, and I spent the time in Florence, studying art. My teacher was in a direct line from one of Leonardo's students." Thoughtfully he added, "The da Vinci connection has added a certain cachet to my reputation as no one else at the Royal Academy school was able to study in Italy during the war."

  To Charity, who hadn't even been to France except for one weekend after the war ended, it seemed a most nomadic life. She didn't know whether she envied him or pitied him. "But you must have found it hard to accustom yourself to England on your return."

  "Oh, children are adaptable. My mother never learned to feel at home when we came back to England, it's true. Too damp and cold." A wave of his hand included the pretty vista outside—the tender green backdrop of an English spring, the dots of lilac and pink and yellow flowers, the clusters of tan and brown houses, the gentle blue sky. "And all these misty pastels. She used to say the landscape here made her drowsy."

  It was odd, she thought, that sometimes Lord Braden spoke of the English as an alien race. With a flash of intuition she wondered if in Italy he spoke of the Italians the same way. But she did not voice this speculation directly. "Unlike those shocking primary colors you have in Italy?"

  She knew she had spoken his thoughts when he rewarded her with a quick grin. "Precisely."

  The next painting was a closer view of the same harbor, but the entire tone was different. It was at sunset, and the colors were duskier, cooler. Charity reached out to touch the mast of a fishing boat, its sails furled, its deck deserted. The paint was still damp but didn't smudge under her curious touch.

  "Such a lonely view, isn't it? Looking back to the harbor where everyone works. But everyone's gone home for supper and left the boats behind."

  Lord Braden didn't like this interpretation, she could tell from his frown. "A painting's a painting. It's not a story."

  Well, she saw a story in it, a story about an artist and his necessary isolation from everyday life. "But it captures a moment surely. There's a story in that moment and in why you chose to paint that moment."

  "I chose this moment because of the composition. The harbor and the beach are the horizontals, and the masts and cliff the verticals. And the light links it all. It doesn't have a story to tell, except about light and shadows and heights and widths."

  She had to admit that she didn't have the sort of mind that viewed a scene and saw geometric shapes, and that perhaps the audience saw what the artist never intended. But about the next picture's meaning, there was no doubt:

  A ship afire against the black night. The sails were long gone, the
masts charred and broken, residual flames flickering along the hull. The smoke was dissipating into shadows in the darkness. It was truly a moment suspended, an interlude between death and burial.

  Charity stepped back instinctively, backing up right into Lord Braden. She scarcely noticed his arms going out to hold her up, but she sensed the hard support of his chest against her back and closed her eyes. She dragged in a breath, shut out the vision she had long blocked and, turning her head, opened her eyes.

  She could see only the light tan weave of his linen coat, and it was to this she addressed her comment. "Very evocative," she said, in a voice that sounded false even in her own ears. She slipped out of his grasp and, stooping to pick up a balled-up piece of brown paper, added, "That's the one I would choose to send out, were I you. It's almost done, isn't it? Or perhaps the one of the village." Without giving him time to answer, she stuck the paper in her pocket and walked to the door. "We must get back, don't you think? I must stop by the church hall before dinner to see how Crispin's booth-building is doing. Let's take the long way out, shall we?"

  And with such light comments she got them out of the door and away from the studio. She knew that he didn't believe her cheerful mien, that he was studying her closely to discern her real feelings. But she wanted only to be away, away from fiery visions and ghastly memories, away from his work and what it revealed.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning Tristan added a last dash of white on the smoke, then stepped back to examine the painting of the ship afire. Had he gone too far? If anything, he had erred on the side of subtlety. He had scorned the cheap dramatics of bodies blown through the sky, of limbs floating in pools of blood, of sharks circling. He had seen all that one night from the rail of a ship, after a frigate caught fire and its gunpowder chamber exploded. But this painting was of a later moment, just before the ship sank. There were a few bodies, of course, but they were hardly noticeable, floating darkly against the dark sea, along with the other debris of the explosion.

  But perhaps it was more theatrical than he intended, or Miss Calder more delicate than he imagined.

  No. The Charity Calder he knew would not blanch at a bit of gore. She had only laughed when he described his vision of Jonah's whale, seamen impaled on his teeth. A mere painting wouldn't frighten her. No. This was something else, something personal.

  He left the painting to dry there on the easel and, musing, went downstairs to breakfast. He had been making a great point of starting the day with his sister. She was much improved but still likely to lie abed till noon and arise feeling dizzy and useless. So her new maid—the eldest Ferris girl—had been ordered to roust her out of bed and into clothing by nine.

  Tristan had grown used to sullen, silent breakfasts, so Anna's blithe humming this morning made him suspicious. "What plot are you hatching?"

  Anna looked up guiltily from her egg cup. "Plot? No plot. I just had a pleasant time yesterday on our excursion. 'Tis true, that folly is a blight on the landscape and entirely out of place."

  "That sounds like a direct quote from Sir Francis Calder."

  She shrugged. "Well, he's right. I've given him permission to have it pulled down. I hadn't realized it was in such a state of disrepair." She glanced around her as if the pleasant breakfast room were gray with cobwebs and neglect. "Like everything else around here."

  "Oh, it's not so bad now," Tristan said defensively. "All the work and money we've spent have had some effect, certainly."

  "But not enough to counteract years of neglect." Her mouth tightened and Tristan knew she was thinking about her husband, who had seen Haver as a source of income and nothing more. "The tenants' cottages need a great deal of work, and their common land gets flooded too easily. I never noticed such things before. I never knew that the church tower's masonry was in such poor repair, and it's of the Norman era, Sir Francis says, and part of the national heritage. The vicar said it won't take too great a contribution to restore it."

  A bit dryly, Tristan said, "You needn't borrow against the harvest for the tower, Anna. That's what the Midsummer fair is to pay for. If that is not enough, we will make up the difference. But the Calders, I think, have it well in hand."

  "That's just it, isn't it? The Calders have been carrying their own burden, and ours, too, all this time. It's the earl's duty to maintain the vicarage, but I think Sir Francis must be paying for it."

  And probably for the vicar's salary, Tristan noted silently, having seen no outlay for that in the Haver account books.

  His sister continued, "And Charity does all the church poor work for this side of the parish and organizes so many of the activities. I know Mrs. Hering helps, too, but some of this should be my responsibility."

  "Miss Calder seems to enjoy it, you know. She certainly needs an outlet for all that energy of hers."

  Anna nodded slowly. "Yes, you're right, of course. But all her duties have also confined her. You know she cut her season in London short because she was needed here. I wonder if that is why she didn't accept any of the men who offered for her, because she didn't think the village could do without her.”

  Tristan preferred to think that none of the men that offered for her intrigued her enough, but he agreed that there was something in what Anna said.

  "I would not have even known that the church ladies made rag dolls if Charity hadn't told me. I suppose I thought that the church just—just contracted with a dollmaker for a couple of dozen dolls. Do you know," she added thoughtfully, "that poor girls must cuddle sticks bundled up in rags if they haven't any dolls? Charity says that's why so many of them have children at an early age, because they never had a chance to love a little doll."

  Tristan laughed, choking on his hot coffee. It sounded like something Charity would say, a little outrageous, a little preposterous, yet somehow insightful. "Well, as many rag dolls as you have made, I predict a population decline in a decade or so. All the girls in the neighborhood will now have their own dolls to cuddle."

  "Don't scoff, Tristan. When I think of how many dolls I had, the finest china dolls from Milan—"

  "I remember. They filled your room. I wondered how you could sleep with a hundred eyes focused on you."

  "And you know, not one of them was special to me. But if a girl hasn't anything else, she cherishes the simplest rag doll. And they are so simple to craft! Still I try to make each one unique in some way, especially the expression. I change the eye color or plait the yam hair differently, something to give each a bit of individuality. I recalled how annoyed I was at the Gilder ball last year when Emily Mainsell wore the identical dress, and I thought that a little girl would want her doll to be different from her friend's."

  This was the longest speech Anna had strung together in quite some time that didn't detail her woes, and Tristan found himself touched by her compassion for the unknown girls. "Superior to her friend's, even. Or so she will believe."

  They were doing so well together, better than he might have imagined two weeks ago. They had not been close for a long while, since long before her marriage. Anna was always very much the girl, with no interest in art or horses, the only things he cared about as a boy. But those endless voyages back and forth from Italy must have built up a well of affection which, untapped for years, was available now that they needed it.

  And so they could fall right back into that sibling rapport, full of teasing and familiarity, knowing that their relationship had started at birth and would last till death, no matter how they mistreated each other.

  He saw the same dynamic between Lawrence and Jeremy when, well-scrubbed and well-mannered, they were brought in by Mrs. Cameron after their own breakfast. Their piping voices as they recited their spelling words were almost identical. Once, when Jeremy hesitated over the consonant cluster in church, Lawrence prompted in what he thought was a whisper, "C-H, clunch!"

  "C-H. I did real good, Mama."

  "Yes, you did, dearest." Anna bent to kiss his dark head and extended her hand
to draw Lawrence into the embrace.

  "You are the most beautiful mother in the whole world." Lawrence's vow was no doubt sincere, but showed he had inherited more than his looks from the silver-tongued Haver.

  Anna rewarded him with kisses and coos, and with a brother's disdain, Tristan wondered if she would ever get over her weakness for flattery.

  Lawrence, his duty done, pulled Jeremy away. "Come on, Jerry. Cammie's waiting."

  Mrs. Cameron, too dignified to be deferential, announced, "I told the boys I would walk them to the Grange if they spelled all their words for you. We are just on our way out."

  "We're going to see Charity!"

  Tristan put a protective hand on his coffee cup as Jeremy, unable to contain his glee, gave a few bounces.

  Lawrence tugged at Mrs. Cameron's hand, trying to pull her to the door. "Charity said she'd teach us how to do the three-legged race before Saturday so we can try out for the Midsummer games. Her and Ned won it every year for four years!"

  "She and Ned. Make your bows, boys." Mrs. Cameron detached her hand from Lawrence's and gave him a subtle shove. Lawrence bobbed a bow, Jeremy followed suit, and they ran off ahead to learn all the tricks from Charity.

  Tristan glanced at his sister, wondering if she weren't the least bit jealous to see her sons so enthusiastic about visiting another woman. But Anna, he realized, was content with the boys' performance and kisses and just as glad to cede this particular charge to someone else. At least this affectionate detachment was healthier than their own mother's alternate smothering and neglect. Lawrence and Jeremy would recall their mother as something of a goddess, whose embrace was always scented with perfume and soft with silk. They could worship her, for she'd never spoil her image by sitting down on a dusty floor to tell them a story or get muddy joining in their games.

  "Isn't Charity a very good sort of girl?"

 

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