That Summer: A Novel (25 page)

Julia wondered if he’d gotten any flack from his family, if his parents had minded his throwing in a promising job in finance to run an antiques shop in Notting Hill. Or was that just the American reaction? She hadn’t had the guts at twenty-one to tell her father that what she really wanted to do was look at paintings for a living; she couldn’t imagine how he would have reacted to her opening a shop.

Of course, her father thought anything that wasn’t medicine was one step away from pole dancing, so he was his own special case.

Nick set his fork down on his plate and dropped his napkin next to it. “You promised me paintings?”

Sharing time was clearly over.

Julia took a final sip of her soda and pushed back her chair. “‘Promise’ is such a strong word … but since you brought the curry, yes.”

Nick glanced back at her over his shoulder as he carried his plate to the sink. So cute, thought Julia, and apparently house-trained, too. “What would I get if I brought dessert?”

“Indigestion?” Julia quipped, and led a quietly chuckling Nick back down the corridor, her flip-flops an anachronism against the old hardwood floor.

She had to remind herself that he was here for professional purposes. It would be far too easy to let the false intimacy of dinner delude her into reading more into the evening than she should.

“I brought the Thorne painting down to the drawing room,” she said, flipping on the drawing room lights, “so you can look at both together.”

The drawing room looked even more dingily pink than usual. Nick squinted up at the fixture. “You’d probably get more light if you cleaned those globes,” he said. “That looks like a few decades of grime.”

Julia switched on a table lamp. It helped a bit, but not much. “I get the feeling that Aunt Regina didn’t use this room much. Anyway, that’s the portrait of Imogen Grantham over there.” She gestured to the lady over the mantelpiece.

Nick moved to stand in front of it, locking his hands behind his back. “I see what you meant,” he said soberly, “about her expression. She looks…”

“Lost?” offered Julia.

“Something like that. It’s an amazing portrait. Much better than that one.” Nick nodded towards the gentleman with ginger whiskers. “That one’s flat, conventional, the background muddy. This one … The detail is incredible.” He turned abruptly. “Where did you say the Thorne painting was?”

“Here.” Julia had cleared the top of a table of its clutter of vases and knickknacks, propping the painting up against the wall.

She waited as he examined both, prowling back and forth from one to the other before saying finally, “You’re right. It’s the same woman.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” said Julia lightly. “It doesn’t take a PhD to spot a face. Although it is nice to have confirmation. I was beginning to wonder if I was imagining things.”

Like all those bits and fragments of memories that kept bubbling up, bits of old conversations, sensory impressions. Sometimes it made her wonder if being alone out here was making her lose her grip on reality.

“It’s not just the same woman; I’d lay money on it that it’s the same painter,” said Nick, prowling back and forth between the two paintings. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him, like an electric current. “There are certain similarities in style. If you compare your Imogen portrait to the other portraits in the room…”

“Yes?” prompted Julia.

Lost in mid-sentence, Nick was staring at the portrait of the man with the ginger whiskers. Looking slowly from the portrait to the painting, he let out a low whistle. “Now, isn’t
that
interesting.”

Julia was beginning to feel like she was losing the plot. “Isn’t what interesting?” she asked impatiently.

Nick snapped out of whatever trance he’d fallen into. “Your Imogen Grantham isn’t the only person in the room in that painting.” He pointed to the portrait of the ginger-haired gentleman on the far side of the room. “Look closely. That portrait’s not great, and Thorne’s shaved his whiskers and given him a beard, but if you can look past that…”

Nick was right. Take off the whiskers, add a beard, and there he was, the ginger-haired man, front and center, smack in the middle of the banqueting scene, a gold circlet around his brow, his eyes narrowed as he looked out over the trysting lovers.

“Oh,” said Julia. How in the hell had she not seen that before?

“‘Oh,’ indeed.” Nick folded his arms across his chest, looking more than a little bit smug. “There’s your King Mark.”

Julia felt a strange chill down her spine as though someone had just breathed down the back of her neck. A goose walking over her grave, the old saying went. She wasn’t quite sure, but …

“You mean Imogen Grantham’s husband.”

Nick’s eyes met hers. “If that’s her husband, then who’s Tristan?”

FIFTEEN

Herne Hill, 1849

“Go on,” said Imogen, dropping down onto a convenient fallen log. She’d learned to recognize the expression on Gavin’s face that meant he’d spotted a particularly intriguing bug on a branch or quirk of the light. “I don’t mind sitting while you sketch—so long as you don’t sketch me.”

Gavin squinted at the sky. “Nah, it’s passed,” he said, and folded himself down next to her, nudging her to make room. He slid an arm around her waist and she leaned comfortably into him, the contours of his body already a familiar landscape. His fingers traced a pattern along the curve of her waist. “Why do you so dislike being drawn?”

Imogen gave a little shrug, leaning her head against his shoulder. At her feet, the grass was already beginning to turn from green to brown. It felt so natural and easy being together that it was a constant effort to remind herself that their time was finite, that it would be foolish to let herself feel too much.

“You see so much of me,” she said, at last. “It is not always comfortable.”

Gavin rested his cheek against the top of her head. “But all of it beautiful,” he said quietly.

The simple words made Imogen’s heart ache. “You find water bugs beautiful, too,” she said determinedly. “And frogs.”

“It’s not quite the same thing,” said Gavin drily. Pulling back, he flicked a finger against her cheek. “Your gills aren’t nearly so green.”

“Honeyed words,” said Imogen mockingly.

She made as if to rise, but he caught her hand and tugged her back down. “Shall I tell you it’s your spirit I find lovely, then, and not your skin? As charming as that is,” he added, with a hint of a grin.

It made her uneasy when he spoke so, uneasy because part of her so wanted to hear it.

Imogen wrinkled her nose at him. “There’s no need to try to seduce me. You already have. Come,” she said, imperiously holding out a hand. “Shall we sit or shall we walk?”

Since the portrait session had ended, Imogen had developed a habit of long walks, an eccentricity entirely in line with her character. Jane attributed it to Imogen’s ridiculous rural upbringing; Arthur made no comment at all, except to remark that it was nice to see some color in her cheeks again.

Two, sometimes three times a week, Gavin would fall into step with her just past the orchard gate and together they would roam the still rural reaches down along the dale of the Effra, a million miles away from the world. Here there were no prying eyes, no sniping tongues. Arthur’s set, when they left the hill, departed by carriage, taking only the well-traveled roads. They would never have thought to climb over stiles or risk their shoes in the mud of the damp ground by the tributaries of the river. Sometimes a heron would be startled into flight by her and Gavin’s passage; other times their progress would be regarded by the liquid eyes of grazing cows. Otherwise, they might have been the first man and the first woman, alone in their innocence.

Not that their walks together were always innocent.

There were days when just the touch of his gloved hand against hers was enough to set her skin burning, when a picnic blanket might become an impromptu bed, more luxuriant than the softest goose down swathed in linen.

There were other days when it was enough just to be together, walking easily side by side, the ground sucking and sinking beneath their shoes, the smells of autumn all around them in the rich loam of the earth, the first tinge of coal smoke in the air.

“‘Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness!’” quoted Imogen, lifting her face to the late-afternoon sun.

Tucking her hand under his arm, Gavin said with mock seriousness, “‘Think not of the songs of spring.’”

“I believe you mean, ‘Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them,’” said Imogen loftily, although she knew that Gavin knew the poem better than she.

It was Gavin who had introduced her to Keats, quoting verse after verse, each line an offering, a gift from him to her. For a man with little formal education he had a store of poetry and stories, and something about the way he savored them, the way he rolled them on his tongue, reminded Imogen that such tales were originally meant to be spoken aloud, to be shared, not confined and hoarded between the leather covers of a book.

He found beauty everywhere and, finding it, showed it to her, even in the bruised side of a fallen apple, or a path trodden by dusty feet. When she was with him, colors were brighter, scents sharper; she felt as though she had awakened after a long sleep into a world she was learning again, piece by piece.

There was no one to interfere with Imogen’s outings. Arthur was always away from home, and Evie had struck up a friendship with one of the Misses Cranbourne, which kept her busy with teas and picnics.

“I thought you couldn’t stand Eliza Cranbourne,” said Imogen idly, picking up her embroidery frame as she joined Evie in the drawing room before dinner one evening.

“People change,” said Evie enigmatically. She was, noticed Imogen, looking particularly pretty, her cheeks pink and her hair arranged in a new style. It made her look, thought Imogen with a pang, practically grown-up. “We were such children then!”

“Elderly at seventeen,” Imogen teased, but she wasn’t moved to inquire further. Even Jane had nothing to say about the Cranbournes, other than that they seemed to be quiet, well-bred girls and it was a pity they hadn’t an older brother rather than a sickly little six-year-old one.

Fotheringay-Vaughn hadn’t called again, and Imogen allowed herself to hope that he had been called to greener pastures or greater heiresses.

On a day when he knew Fotheringay-Vaughn would be out, Gavin took Imogen to his studio.

“At last!” she said. “The Bluebeard chamber.”

Gavin slanted a sideways glance as he let her in through a narrow entryway, up a steep flight of narrow stairs. “You know I’d have shown you sooner, but for Augustus.”

“A convenient excuse,” Imogen teased. “I expect a scene of the utmost decadence.”

“Mess, perhaps,” said Gavin, opening a door at the top of the stairs, “but hardly decadence.”

“Orgies of dust?” Imogen poked her head around the door. “Goodness.”

There seemed to be bits of paper everywhere. Sketches, scattered wantonly along a long table, curling at the edges, spilling over onto the floor. Gavin hadn’t been joking about the dust; she could see the dust motes dancing in the light from the uncurtained windows. A strong smell of charcoal and paint scented the air.

One corner of the room had been roped off into a makeshift dressing room by the simple expedient of hanging a piece of cloth from a string. Imogen had known, intellectually, that he and his friends believed in painting only from specific examples, but it was one thing to hear it said and quite another to see the pile of theatrical doublets and pasteboard swords, glass gems, and pieces of fabric of every type and color imaginable.

“You never told me that it was Aladdin’s cave,” Imogen said. Imogen lifted up a sapphire blue gown, a needle still stuck through a corner of the sleeve. The seams were all sewn in the simplest of basting stitches, the trim tacked on with more of the same. “Is this your handiwork?”

Gavin held out his hands in acknowledgment. “I can’t afford a seamstress to make my costumes.”

“It’s beautiful.” The fabric was cheap, the trim tawdry, but Imogen could see it as it would appear, transmuted in paint, the sleazy blue silk something rich and rare, the ha’penny trimmings trappings for a queen.

“It’s for the Tristan and Iseult painting. Your painting,” Gavin added. He insisted on crediting her with the inspiration for it. His lips quirked as he saw the way she was looking at the gown. “Put it on. I designed it with you in mind.”

“It won’t hurt it?” Imogen found she wanted to put it on, very much.

“My stitches aren’t pretty, but they generally hold.” Gavin bundled the fabric into her hands and pushed her lightly towards the screen. “Go on.”

Behind the curtain she found a straight chair and a washstand with basin, both currently empty of water. Her own dress wasn’t difficult to shed. The basque buttoned down the front, as did her corset. Her petticoat, stiffened with horsehair, would have to go, of course—Iseult’s gown wasn’t designed for such things—but Imogen hesitated over her pantalets and chemise.

In for a penny, in for a pound. She felt as though she were sloughing off a second skin. Petticoat, pantalets, shift, stays, all piled on the ground, leaving her feeling light and free as she slid Iseult’s gown over her head, feeling the whisper of the silk against her naked skin, following the curves of her body, flaring gently from waist to hip.

Her shoes and stockings joined the pile of underclothes. Modern and practical, they would never do for a Cornish queen.

On an impulse, Imogen reached up and pulled first one pin from her hair, then another. When she raised her arms, the silky fabric of the bodice brushed across her breasts, a strangely erotic sensation. The last pin gave way and her hair fell heavily around her shoulders, fanning out along her back, tickling her bared shoulders.

“Don’t laugh,” Imogen warned.

Tentatively, she stepped out from behind the screen, her bare toes curling against the wooden boards. The skirt was just a little too long; she held it in both hands, the silk fabric sliding sensuously around her legs as she moved. She stopped, self-consciously, in the center of the room, shaking back her hair, so strangely loose and free.