At last Isabella was in bed and alone. She asked Lisette to leave the curtains open so she could see the sky. She asked her to please make sure she was not disturbed. Lisette brought her herb tea on a tray. It tasted unpleasant, but it always eased her head.
It seemed so long ago since this morning when she woke that she felt as if she was in another day.
‘You are hot, Miss Isabella, you should not have been out riding so long in the rain. I hope you are not coming down with a fever.’
Lisette fussed and tucked and fiddled and folded until Isabella thought she would scream. At last she said goodnight and left the room. Isabella knew that she would go straight downstairs to Sir Richard and complain that he had kept her out too long, that she was overtired and now must be left to sleep. Isabella smiled. Richard was a little afraid of her Lisette.
She watched the clouds scud across a navy sky studded with stars, and little by little she let her mind go over the moment she turned and saw Tom Welland again. When she had suddenly recognized who it was her heart beat so loudly she thought Richard must hear it. She remembered that earlier time in the boatyard with the smell of sawdust and a boy with his shirt off, bent to his work.
Mama had been watching her and she had ridden ahead of her out of the boatyard so that she might not read her face. She needed to keep to herself, to hide this strange excitement. Then, suddenly, like a punishment, Mama was snatched from her. Isabella could never look upon her beautiful face or talk to her again. She was gone in the moment it took her to reach the sea.
On the quay, standing next to her husband, the same feeling flooded through Isabella with such force as she looked at Tom Welland once more that she thought her knees would give way, that she would fall onto the wooden boards of the quay in front of all those people.
Isabella had felt sick to her heart, angry with herself, that until the day she died, Tom Welland would be inextricably linked to the memory of Mama’s death and her neglect of her. Yet, clear to her, clearer even than the memory of her voice, was the treacherous way she had reacted at the sight of him. Faint, like a schoolgirl. Breathless when he looked upon her.
Isabella sits in the shade of an apple tree, watching me. Lisette has sent the gardener’s boy out with a garden chair and a rug although the day is warm. Isabella looks stiff and self-conscious and cannot relax. There is tightness in her shoulders and mouth and still I have not picked up my pencil to sketch her.
Finally, in exasperation, I ask, ‘Are you comfortable, Miss … Lady Isabella?’
‘Quite comfortable, thank you,’ she says coolly, though it is obvious that she is not.
I pick up my drawing pad and do a quick little drawing which I show to her.
‘Who on earth is that?’ Isabella cries crossly.
‘Why, it is yourself, your ladyship.’
She looks up sharply. ‘Please do not call me that! That drawing looks like a cross old spinster lady.’
‘Indeed?’ I peer at it. ‘So it does. I only draw what I see. So what shall we do about this? Shall Sir Richard have the only cross figurehead in the world? It may, of course, start a fashion. Captains of the fleet may compete to have their wives carved upon the prows of their ships in order to see their scowling little faces plunged through the waves …’
Isabella giggles. ‘I think it is the chair. I would rather sit upon the ground. I cannot relax in the chair.’
I take the rug and place it under the tree, and Isabella sits leaning against the apple tree. I sigh; at last a face I can draw.
‘Will you close your eyes for a moment and talk to me of something that gives you pleasure?’
Isabella closes her eyes. She is silent for a while then she says softly, ‘I like the early morning and the sound of the sea which breaks into my sleep. It is wonderfully soothing, the rush and slap of the waves … I like the moment before I open my eyes when there are infinite possibilities before me … I like my new rose garden and the scent of the roses that floats over to me as I lie reading …’
The voice stops and I see she is watching my fingers moving across the page as I sketch her likeness. Her eyes are dark and fathomless and my fingers holding the pencil grow slippery under her gaze. Even with her eyes closed, those intense eyes seem to scorch my skin. Hot, I shake my head to free my hair from my eyes, breathe slow to steady my hand upon the page.
There are bees in the apple blossom above where Isabella sits and the orchard is full of their gentle noise. My fingers move fast and true over the page and I catch that faint, secret smile upon her lips. Now her features are relaxed I can capture the beauty of her cheekbones. Her hands in her lap are upturned as in sleep. Small, white hands.
I ask her to open her eyes and when she does they are somewhere far away. Although she does not know it, those eyes which look so directly at me sear me with their sense of innocence and loss.
Over the white page my fingers fly as if possessed, for I must capture these first moments of her face unguarded; capture this heavy-lidded, sleepy expression that makes my hand tremble. I must carve a face from wood that will last long, long after we both are dead.